PlayStation & Bioware Get Major Shake Ups - Kinda Funny Games Daily 01.29.25

Summary

Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast Episode: PlayStation & Bioware Get Major Shake Ups
Release Date: January 29, 2025
Hosts: Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Tim Gettys, Blessing Adeoye Jr., and guests

---

Introduction

In today’s episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily, hosts Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, and Blessing Adeoye Jr., along with guest Ryan Reynolds, delve into significant changes within the gaming industry. The primary focus lies on a major leadership shakeup at PlayStation, BioWare's restructuring under EA, updates to PlayStation accounts on PC, and Sega XD's unconventional "brain rental" service. Additionally, the episode touches on other noteworthy gaming news and engages with audience super chats.

---

1. Major PlayStation Leadership Shakeup

Timestamp: [11:10] – [19:53]

Key Points:

• Hideaki Nishino’s Promotion: Rebecca Valentine from IGN reports that Hideaki Nishino has been promoted to the sole CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), effective April 1, 2025. This move consolidates leadership after previously sharing CEO responsibilities with Herman Holst.

• Hiroki Totoki’s New Role: Hiroki Totoki, formerly the CFO of SIE, has been elevated to President and CEO of Sony Corporation, succeeding Kenichiro Yoshida, who served as CEO since April 2018.

• Implications of Dual CEO Structure: The dual CEO arrangement, initially intended to streamline operations between hardware and studios, has shown signs of inefficiency. Greg Miller shares, “This sounds confusing as fuck,” referencing the unclear division of responsibilities.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller on Nishino’s new role: “[...] this sounds confusing as fuck.”
• Hideaki Nishino: “I am truly honored to take the helm at Sony Interactive Entertainment. Technology and creativity are two of our biggest strengths as we continue to focus on developing experiences that deliver entertainment for everyone.” [12:15]

Discussion Highlights:

• Efficiency and Strategy: Greg and Ryan debate whether the consolidation under Nishino will lead to more streamlined decision-making or create bottlenecks, especially considering the previous dual CEO setup was deemed ineffective.

• Future Impact: They ponder the potential long-term effects on PlayStation’s strategy and project management, with Greg noting, “Maybe they are planning to streamline and focus more effectively,” while Ryan remains skeptical about the transparency of these changes.

---

2. BioWare’s Restructuring and Focus on Mass Effect

Timestamp: [19:53] – [41:05]

Key Points:

• EA’s Restructuring of BioWare: EA has announced a restructuring of BioWare, moving developers to other projects and concentrating efforts solely on the upcoming Mass Effect game. This follows previous layoffs and high-profile departures.

• Impact on Dragon Age: A portion of the Dragon Age team faces role terminations, with EA offering opportunities to apply for other positions within the company.

• Historical Performance: Greg highlights BioWare's fluctuating performance, mentioning past successes like Dragon Age: Inquisition alongside failures such as Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller on BioWare’s focus: “Mass Effect development is now being led by series veterans including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamanuku, Derek Watts, and Parrish Le.” [25:05]
• Ryan Reynolds reflecting on BioWare’s struggles: “BioWare, what a fucking heartbreaking story of just EA not being able to get out of their own fucking way. Just let BioWare be BioWare.” [35:39]

Discussion Highlights:

• Strategic Missteps: The hosts discuss EA’s potential mismanagement of BioWare, questioning whether the focus shift indicates a lack of faith in BioWare’s multi-IP strategy.

• Future of BioWare: Speculation arises about whether Mass Effect will be BioWare’s savior or if the studio is on the brink of being shuttered, especially considering the long gap since their last major hit.

• Audience Concerns: Super chats echo concerns about BioWare’s direction, with some blaming the restructuring on underperformance and others expressing hope for the Mass Effect revival.

---

3. Changes to PlayStation Accounts on PC

Timestamp: [45:42] – [53:18]

Key Points:

• Enhanced Benefits for PSN Accounts on PC: Starting with the release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for PC, PlayStation is incentivizing the use of PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts by offering additional benefits such as trophies, friend management, and exclusive in-game items.

• Optional PSN Integration: For titles like God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, signing into a PSN account on PC will be optional, but opting in provides players with unique content unlocks.

Notable Quotes:

• Adam Michelle, Director Game Services Content: “As we shift to PS5, PS4 games will no longer be a key benefit and will only be occasionally offered for PS+ monthly games in game catalog starting January 2026.” [46:34]

Discussion Highlights:

• Player Reception: The hosts express mixed feelings, with Greg appreciating the added content but critiquing the lack of creative marketing. Ryan praises the move as a positive step towards enhancing player experience.

• Future Implications: Blessing notes the challenges for PC players who prefer not to tie their gaming experience to a PSN account, while Greg laments the potential loss of PS4 game benefits.

---

4. Sega XD’s Brain Rental Service

Timestamp: [53:47] – [61:38]

Key Points:

• Introduction of Braintool Rental: Sega XD has launched a novel service called Braintool Rental, allowing companies and local governments to "rent" the expertise of professional game designers for brainstorming, proposal development, and project planning.

• Service Tiers: Braintool offers three plans—Idea Plan (brainstorming), Proposal Plan (detailed project planning), and a higher-tier for comprehensive support.

Notable Quotes:

• Greg Miller on Braintool: “I think this is really cool and really innovative,” but he also voices concerns about developer compensation, saying, “I hope they are increasing the developers’ pay or giving them some kind of compensation or credit.”

Discussion Highlights:

• Innovation vs. Exploitation: While recognizing the innovative nature of the service, Greg and Ryan humorously role-play potential scenarios, highlighting both the creative possibilities and the ethical considerations of "renting" developers’ brains.

• Industry Impact: The hosts debate the potential impact on game development and whether this model could lead to more creative collaborations or simply exploit developers for corporate gain.

---

5. Other News Highlights

Timestamp: [53:47] – [67:52]

Key Points:

• Expedition 33 Collector’s Edition Sold Out: Push Square reports that Clear Obscure: Expedition 33 has sold out its collector’s editions due to overwhelming demand, with restocking not guaranteed.

• No Man’s Sky Update: No Man's Sky releases its Worlds Part 2 update, introducing new planets, stars, and story elements. Notably, the update claims to add a trillion new planets with enhanced generation algorithms.

• Sega’s Fast Travel Games Cuts Jobs: Fast Travel Games, a VR studio under Sega, has cut 30 jobs across publishing, marketing, and admin departments to consolidate down to a single development team.

• Capcom’s Financial Outlook: Capcom remains on track to surpass last year's net profits despite a 33% year-over-year decline, thanks to strong sales from Monster Hunter Wilds.

• Silent Hill Remakes and Dyna Crisis: Silent Hill 2 Remake sells 2 million copies, and Dyna Crisis and Dyna Crisis 2 become available on GOG.

Discussion Highlights:

• Market Trends: The hosts analyze the implications of high demand for certain collector editions and the continuous evolution of games like No Man's Sky in maintaining player engagement.

• Industry Challenges: Greg and Ryan discuss Sega’s job cuts, reflecting on the volatility within the gaming industry and the balancing act between innovation and financial stability.

---

6. Audience Interactions and Super Chats

Timestamp: [20:42] – [68:46]

Key Points:

• Super Chat Contributions: Throughout the episode, listeners contribute super chats offering insights, asking questions, and sharing opinions. Notable interactions include:

  • CJ Explicit: Suggests a crossover between Parappa the Rapper and Rift of the Necro Dancer, blending rhythm game mechanics.

  • Wiener: Shares how he uses PlayStation Plus games to build a gaming library for his son.

  • Kevin: Alternates between PlayStation Plus games and purchased games, maintaining a diverse and extensive library.

  • Cozy Bear: Plays on words with "Kill Braintool," humorously engaging with Sega XD’s service.

Notable Quotes:

• CJ Explicit: “Speaking of rhythm games, would a new rapper work in 2025 if the music was really good, maybe Sony Music Artists could cameo as characters.” [67:01]
• Greg Miller responding humorously: “They did a great work with Cadence of Hyrule, as far as I can tell.” [67:30]

Discussion Highlights:

• Community Engagement: The hosts appreciate the active participation of listeners, integrating super chats seamlessly into the conversation and fostering a sense of community.

• Creative Suggestions: Ideas from listeners inspire playful discussions, such as potential game crossovers and innovative use of existing franchises, highlighting the audience’s creative engagement with the content.

---

Conclusion

In this episode, Kinda Funny Games Daily navigates through significant shifts in the gaming landscape, from high-level corporate restructuring to innovative service offerings and community-driven content. The hosts provide insightful analysis, balanced with humor and audience interaction, making the complex changes accessible and engaging for listeners.

Don’t Miss Next Episode:
Following this episode, viewers can look forward to Gamescast, featuring Greg and Paris discussing Avowed, and other exclusive content available to Kind of Funny members.

Support the Show:
If you enjoy the podcast, consider supporting through the Kind of Funny Membership on Patreon or YouTube, granting access to ad-free shows and exclusive content.

---

For more updates and detailed discussions, visit kinda funny games and join the conversation on YouTube and Twitch.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said, what the are you talking about? You insane Hollywood? So to recap, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a [e-mail] Switch $45 upfront.

[Greg Miller]

Payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only Taxes and fees Extra Speed slower above 40 gigabytes. E details I think you're on mute. Workday starting to sound the same. I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn job collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like Flexpto or hybrid workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get [e-mail] jobs finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how. Today's stories include a major PlayStation leadership shakeup, PlayStation accounts on PC are getting a major change and a shift in PS+ games being offered while all this and more because this is Kinda Funny Games Daily. Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kinda Funny Games daily for Wednesday, January 29, 2025. One of your host Blessing Adioye Jr. Joining me is Mr. Starr's in the Bank. Ooh.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hey, it feels good to hear that.

[Greg Miller]

Greg Miller.

[Ryan Reynolds]

How are you?

[Greg Miller]

I'm doing well.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Are you ready to give me Tim Starr? I've been trying to cash the bank in for two days now and he hasn't been here. I feel like it's only fair that I just get the star.

[Greg Miller]

Are you scared that you can mess this up? Roy? Roy, just fuck this up.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Me? Just. Yeah, Greg Miller. Because here's the thing, Mr. Stars in the Jars. You think he's going to screw this.

[Greg Miller]

Up because like many people, you're just saying game showdown oftentimes inspired by many things. Right. I won't say their names out of fear of litigation, but some might say, you know, stars in the bank. Similar to the wwe. Money in the Bank.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And the thing is, I think edge is the one that made it famous of like, oh, my opponent's already beat down. I'm going to go in, I'm going to cash in on them while they're already beat down. What does that look like for you?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Like, catch him off guard.

[Greg Miller]

You're going to catch him off guard. Like, how are you Going to see I. Where is he when he's going to be in a state to where he can't answer trivia questions? I mean, you gotta tape his mouth shut or something.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I've already bounced ideas off of you, and I think, you know, they're all absurd and they're all gonna catch him off guard. I mean, it's just like, it's just about getting him in a state. Whether it be drunk, whether it be funeral, whether it be sleepy, whether it be you wedding, whether it be some other bullshit we make up, because that's the other thing. We make up whatever we want. You know what I mean? We can figure it out. What if it. I wait and it is in the middle of a Nintendo Direct, right? What if I do. What if I do it in the middle of the Switch to reveal? And so then the only thing he can do is like, I got to end this as quick as possible to get back to the Switch to reveal. You win, Greg. You know what I mean?

[Greg Miller]

God, would you sacrifice that piece of content?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't think. You know, I will burn. I will raise every field. I will burn every crop. I will do whatever.

[Greg Miller]

Because here's the bad man.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is my season is because it'll.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Still be headlined Kind of funny reacts to the Nintendo Switch to Reveal.

[Greg Miller]

We're still going to get those views. But it's the thing of, you know, like, a Switch 2 reveal might get 100,000 views at least, right? And like, maybe 20,000 of those people know what's going on. There's an 80,000 people watching that are like, what's happening? Why are they doing trivia all of a sudden? I want to see Mario.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Better way to make a new kind of funny best friend than to show them the absurdity we do if they think we're just buttoned up news all the time. They don't know about Ronald.

[Greg Miller]

But I think the problem then becomes, like, there's a new Mario. Like, they're showing off the 3D Mario, right? And like, all of a sudden we're doing trivia. I'm trying to watch. Like, how is he gonna jump into the pipe this time?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

Meanwhile, Greg's over here backing.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And that's the good thing, too, is not only does it punish Tim, it punishes you. And it really encourages you as the host to finish this as soon as possible.

[Greg Miller]

That's true.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And so I think, honestly, what you do is go, tim, you can just forfeit the star right now if you want. That way, he just gives it up and the content goes fine. That would be my thing. You think a lot of times that's not. Let me back. In modern culture, the word terrorist has been given a negative connotation. I intend to take that back. I intend to take that back.

[Greg Miller]

I understand. Yeah. You're reclaiming it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm taking it back. All right.

[Greg Miller]

Taking it back implies that you had it in the first place.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm just saying, guys, anything can happen when you got number one terrorist Greg Miller on this scene.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. I don't know if we can say all that. Shifting gears for a second, though.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Getting away from this.

[Greg Miller]

Getting away from this and getting into music and rhythm.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yesterday, Elite Beat Agents, I was thinking about it, too.

[Greg Miller]

Well, close.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We haven't talked about that in a long time.

[Greg Miller]

Close. Rift of the Necro Dancer.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

This is one that I had. I think you had, like, hit us up for. Does anybody want codes for the embargo? The embargo is up. I saw it this morning, and I. It's funny because I didn't know the embargo was up until I started seeing people on social media reviewing it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

I only booted it up for the first time last night because I did a stream where I was just going through, like, all right, what are the games? I need to prioritize this year for the rest of this year. Now that there's been more things announced, I got to figure out my calendar. And I was watching trailers, and I watched the Rift of the Necro Dancer trailer, and I was like, oh, this actually looks really cool. I never played Crypt of the Necro Dancer. I played a little bit of. Little bit of Cadence of Hyrule, which is from the same developer. But Crypt of the Necrodancer was. Was never one that I got around to, even though it sounds like it would be my watching the trailer for Rift of the Necrodancer. This one is interesting because I requested a code because I knew it was a rhythm game, and I like rhythm games. I didn't realize how much how different this was. I think I saw the art style and immediately. Immediately was like, this seems like, you know, I don't know how to describe it. It reminds me of, I guess, like, flash game type, like super, like, clean 2D. Like simple. Simple is not the right word for it, but there's an art style to it that at first I was like, oh, I don't know about this. But after watching the trailer and understanding what it is, it is riffing off, pun intended, More of Guitar Hero in that style of rhythm. Game as opposed to being a dungeon crawler whatsoever.

[Ryan Reynolds]

As someone who appreciated the first one and was like, oh, that's cool. But I don't. I tried it and I was like, I got no rhythm and I don't want to try to fight on the beat. I did the same thing where I looked at the trailer for this and I was like, oh, it's Guitar Hero.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, interesting. Okay. I could play this and you go.

[Greg Miller]

Into the menus, and the menu reminds me of DDR and the way that, like, you have all these different tracks that you can jump into. I've not played that much. I only played last night a little bit before bed after I got home from volleyball, which for some reason was super late.

[Ryan Reynolds]

What is up with that? I look at my instagram this morning. 1009. You guys are doing volleyball?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. 1030 is supposed to be the latest would go, but like, 7:30 is the earliest. And so I was hoping to get more 7:30 games.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And yeah, last night was a 9:00pm game. Next week, 9:45, everybody. But I got home, booted this up on my steam deck, started playing a little bit of it, and I was pleasantly surprised by not only how much I like the presentation of it because the art style, I think somebody in chat said Cartoon Network, which I think might also be apartment in terms of talking about how this looks like, right. But the think of if you're an audio listener, right? Like the Guitar Hero, you got the.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Lanes coming down and you have creatures on them.

[Greg Miller]

But in the creatures is what makes this interesting, where you are essentially finding these creatures that are your notes that are coming down the lane.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

But.

[Greg Miller]

But each of the creatures have different qualities. And so, like, you'll have like a slime creature and like, there's three different colors of the slime creature which might, like, dictate different qualities it has. You have a bat, right? Like a bat that'll come down, and if you hit the bat, the bat will then move in the way that it's facing. And so you have to, like, hit it on the beat on the lane that it's in, but then hit on the very next beat, the lane to the right or the lane to the left, depending on which way the bat's facing. And like, between all these different skeletons, which, like, if you hit a skeleton, the head will fall off and it'll go like the opposite way of the lane and then bounce back based on, like, all these different creatures and, like, what color the creatures are and all this stuff. They have different qualities where it is like you really got to pay attention to because it looks one of my.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Faces glancing at it looks so simple. But you're, you're. It sounds like there's way more under the hood.

[Greg Miller]

There's way more under the hood. But it is simple. It's not like you got to memorize all these things because as long as you're quick about it and like you see what's happening as it's happening, you'll be able to keep up. It's not like an insane level of complexity. Yeah, but I, I just thought it was very inspired as I was playing and I was like, oh, I want to play more of this. And so I brought my Steam deck to work and I'm planning on just playing that at some point during the workday.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Love that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, let me get into Rift of the Necrodancer more to see. I really fall in love with it. But enough about that, Greg.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Enough of that.

[Greg Miller]

Let's talk about video game news. Because remember, this is kind of funny. Games daily. Each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube and now Spotify and Apple podcasts to get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Some of your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping for you. We're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. So today after KFD you'll get Gamescast which is the avowed hype cast with Greg in Paris.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's right, Paris Lily everybody joining us via the Internet to talk about Avowed. Talk about it right now. If you don't follow me on instagram.com gameovergregy I urge you to go there. Right now I'm posting a story and it says I like BlessingJr's shoes.

[Greg Miller]

Oh my shoe.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And it's a foot. It's a foot. I've never noticed these shoes before.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I actually like. These are probably one of my oldest pairs of shoes and I actually don't really like these shoes.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Stories up. Don't bring em up. Don't bring em up. Give me the second street experience.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, I'll give you the second screen.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Thank you very much.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I appreciate it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Chaperone something new too. Just turned her car. Huh?

[Greg Miller]

Chaperone did what she posted she's in.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The top of my feed right here.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, she's in her car chilling. Is she recording Greg Way? Like, what's.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, I mean, I don't know what she's doing. She's in her car. She's just like you and me. Drives a car. Who would have thought?

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Doesn't look like a fancy one either.

[Greg Miller]

Wow. Humble. Gotta love that about Chapel. Run the stream after Gamescast is going to be Kingdom Hearts 2 with Mike. If you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's Greg Way. And you can get Aliens in Review this afternoon and tomorrow on YouTube and podcast services. Thank you. Dark.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Let me tell you real quick, Alien in Review was one you didn't want to miss. Aliens in Review, this is one you definitely don't want to miss. Now, who's Me and Nick got something up our sleeve.

[Greg Miller]

Is it just you and Nick on this?

[Ryan Reynolds]

No. Andy and Tim are here too.

[Greg Miller]

Are you sure, Andy?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Positive.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Oh, that's.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Trust me. That's why. Notice how the schedule changed twice yesterday. I'm on top of it.

[Greg Miller]

I'm on top of it. I see. Well, don't miss that one. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by built rewards and BetterHelp, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report. It's time for some news. We have six stories today. A baker's dozen.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Welcome back, Barrett.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you. Starting with story number one. Sony leadership has a major shakeup. I'm pulling from Rebecca Valentine at ign. Hideaki Nishino has been promoted to the sole CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, with his new position effective on April 1, 2025. This comes from a press release dropped this evening, of course. This article went up yesterday, which also reveals that Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki is being promoted to president and CEO of the entire company. He replaces Kenichiro Yoshida, who served as CEO of the company since April 2018, succeeding. Additionally, the SVP Finance, Corporate Development and strategy Lintao is being promoted to cfo. Just last year it was announced that Nishino and Herman Holst would split the leadership of SIE between them after former CEO Jim Ryan's retirement, with Holst serving as head of PlayStation Studios and Nishino overseeing hardware and tech. With this change, Nishino now oversees the entire SIE operation as well as leading the platform business group, while Host will remain in his role heading up PlayStation Studios, specifically Nishino was has worked with Sony since 2000, previously serving as SVP Platform Experience Group. Quote I am truly honored to take the helm at Sony Interactive Entertainment, he said. Technology and creativity are two of our biggest strengths as we continue to focus on developing experiences that deliver entertainment for everyone. We'll continue to grow the PlayStation community in new ways such as IP expansion, while also delivering the best in technology innovation. I want to thank Herman for his expertise and leadership as he continues his role as CEO Studio Business Group. I am deeply grateful for the PlayStation community and their continued support and and I am very excited for what the future holds. End quote that's the end of Rebecca's article, but I want to bring in a little bit of more context from Variety, who say the handoff from Yoshida to Totoki also comes with a restructuring of the senior business ranks. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the company's Hollywood outpost, saw leadership transition earlier this month when Ravi Ahuja took over CEO duties from Tony Vincey. Cara Greg Miller yeah, You've been covering PlayStation for decades. Almost two decades, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, 18 years coming up in March.

[Greg Miller]

So you've seen a lot of leadership changes. You've seen a lot of things happening. Overstation. What does this one do for you?

[Ryan Reynolds]

This one is an interesting one and I don't know how much to read into it.

[Greg Miller]

Sorry, hero. Kegier says, Yikes. Grandpa to the you've been covering forever for sure.

[Ryan Reynolds]

For sure. You wish you had that kind of job security. All right, that's fair. You see the thing I put up yesterday. Somebody, one of the kids doing the thing with Jerrica sent me an email saying, hey, thanks so much for talking about drop in, drop out podcast. And he goes, I've been listening to you since I was in single digits and I'm 25 now and I'm like.

[Greg Miller]

Fuck this, Jesus Christ.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know what I mean? I need to hear that right there. I appreciate it. I love you. Thank you all for sticking with me so long. This is one where how much do you want to read into it? How much do you not want to read into it? I think there's all options on the table and I don't really know what to take away from it. I think there's the we can go the negative side. Live service hasn't worked out the way they wanted. PlayStation's had a number of high profile failures. Some wins with Helldivers too. But like, was that ever the case? I saw people smarter than me yesterday on Social Media talking about like, well, they were always going to get to being one CEO. The co CEO thing wasn't always going to work. And I was like, was it not? I don't know. I got it. When they said they were doing that, I was like, oh, bold strategy. Let's see if it pays off. Clearly it isn't. You know, Push Square had an interesting point in their write up that I liked and if you allow me to bring it in right, it does. This is. I'm joining Push Square already in progress. This is Sammy Baker over there who's about to pull in something from Variety. It does suggest, however, that the dual CEO setup wasn't working as effectively as Sony management would have liked. Back in October, both Hulse and Nishino attempted to explain their roles to Variety. Quote, this is not co CEOs, it's two CEOs for the company. Nishino confusingly explained, Herman runs his thing, I run my thing. And then we get together and talk about how to grow the business. Growing the business for success has a conflict as well. How we impact each other or how we want to sacrifice or not. It's a balance. It's an opportunity and a risk. End quote. That sounds confusing as fuck. And I don't. You know what I mean? Like I. So the way to read into it if in the more business y I would say positive way is like fucking CEOs of giant corporations and you know, sie right of corporation within a corporation or however you want to describe it, a division. It's like that doesn't sound like that's running well. So it would make sense to give one of them the reins over it. And in my head, yeah, if you're a business, you'd give the business guy the business role, which I think is CEO of SIU overall and let Herman continue to run First Party. So many people yesterday wanted to read into this the negative stuff and be like, oh, Herman's been demoted. Oh, it's like, well, on a paper org chart, yes, there's now a. The guy who was next to Herman is now above Herman Scher. But a demotion for Herman would have been cool. You're no longer running SIE or I'm sorry, PlayStation Studios. We don't believe in your vision that you're sharing, I assume behind closed doors for what the next five, 10, 20 years of PlayStation Studios are. And the fact that that didn't happen makes me go, this is people reading too much into moving people around on a chessboard in a boring business. Sense that doesn't make. I don't. We don't have the. In conference room shareholders, CEOs. I don't have a stake in it that way to be able to look at and go, this is why it's happening. I think it's happening because that sounds confusing as fuck, as Sammy points out from the Variety article. And that's a weird way to run it. And I sure was leading to all sorts of baggage for both of them and I would assume bottlenecks for both of them because it is, oh, we have to get together to discuss this decision to then make the next thing happen.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I wonder how many like how much you get into the issue of like approvals and like, oh, we need CEO signature. Which might mean you need both signatures on a thing which then backs things up more. And again, this is me speaking out my ass because I do not know how any of this shit works.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like my immediate read into this I think is one everything that you just mentioned. Right. As far as that. And then to like I wonder if there's a thing as far as having it be a co CEO situation versus a sole person being the top of the food chain. Like, I think that allows you to cast vision a little bit easier. Even though it doesn't sound like any. It doesn't sound like much is changing as far as their day to days. Like Herman Hulst is still doing everything as far as far as PlayStation Studios. Yeah, that was what he was doing before as CEO of sie. That's what he's doing now is what they called him CEO of PlayStation Studios Group or something along those lines. Right. Like Studio Business Group. It seems like his day to day is probably the exact same. Aside from less, I would say.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Bullshit.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. With less bullshit.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't know if that's how Herman sees it. Who knows? Like that's, you know. Again, we'd have to have him in a very open conversation to get that answer out of him. But I would be like, cool. You, you want me to have eyes on the studios. We're not thrilled with the output of PlayStation first party. I don't need to be in these meetings. Also about the business development, whatever the fuck part of sie.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Do you think, does this change anything? Like I guess on the audience? Like, do you think this is something that we see or experience on the audience side? Like you're a year or two down the line of like, oh man, the pipeline's gotten better. Oh man, it seems like Herman Hull seems more hands on like, does this affect us in any way?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I.

[Greg Miller]

That we, that we might be able to see?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I would say no. I think the only way is. And I specifically mean in a way we can see. In a way somebody could tell us, yes, you could see what you're saying. And it is that. Neil Druckmann, Intergalactic, we're talking about this. And he's like, yeah, last year when, you know, Herman had some of his responsibilities removed so he could focus on being first party, he's been so much more hands on. And this has helped in X, Y and Z, da da da. But I doubt you'd get that level of transparency from PlayStation nor is that really what's going to happen. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. I don't know. The way I would say you see something from this would be that if it is six months or a year, Herman is really demoted, is replaced, is something like that. Then I could see it being that, okay, this was the canary in the coal mine, that they weren't happy with.

[Greg Miller]

His performance, like the first step of it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right. But I, even then I doubt that's what it is because to go back to Herman and toss all this in the live service push and the failure of it, right. I place that not solely, obviously there's a million different leaders and stuff, but majority on Jim Ryan, like that's a decision that was made during Jim Ryan's tenure, right. And is carried over. And again we talking to Shuhei, right. And how him being put over to indies and this, that the other and Herman, like, it's what we're talking about with the studios of hey, you have somebody telling you this is what we think our future is. You're going to go make those kind of games. And we're talking about Herman Hulse, the guy who did all these Kill Zones Horizon. And we're like, we think he went in. He's like, everything needs to be live service. I'm like, I don't buy that. I buy that Herman is very much like probably the entire time in those meetings be like, yep. And we can, we can do live service and we should have the story based games that everybody loves for us. But yeah, who knows?

[Greg Miller]

I want to bring in some super chats. A lot of people writes in and says Grub had a good read on it. They wanted all these cancellations and closures to be pinned on Totoki, who was temp CEO. So that's when Nishino takes over. He gets a clean slate. Herman is in the same Spot.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

Streetshadow writes in and says, this is not a demotion. His roles and responsibilities are still the same. Nishino was given an extra role and promoted after Totoki was moved up. Foxy Steve writes in and says, I don't foresee any immediate changes to SIE strategy. Larger companies are not very nimble when it comes to change. And again, that, like, I think we're all in agreeance here, right? As far as that of like, you know, I. It would have to be so inside baseball of like, us talking to people who are in the know at PlayStation being like, yo, what was up with that? And like them being. It either being a mundane thing of, oh yeah, Herman got sick of the emails he got sick of getting of his inbox being full and having to show up to meetings that he didn't. Didn't really care about or didn't concern him or, or like it could range from that to oh yeah, like, they weren't happy with the last year of PlayStation software output, which, like, with how video game development works. Like, I couldn't see that happening because how long video games take to develop and all this, all these things. So another one from Volk Dasher. It's not great to say, but one day we'll all. We will all look at buying Bungie for near $3 billion as the decision which costs so many people on all levels their job. Herman may have kept his, but trust is gone. Is that something you put on Herman Hulse? The acquisition of Bungie and even the results of that, right? The layoffs, the. Those reports last year about like, Bungie seemingly misrepresenting the, the inner goings of, like, how they were doing and all that stuff.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't put it solely on Herman. I. I don't know. Again, this is such a weird question because we are. That's so inside baseball in terms of who's doing what over there, making it. I think again, the vision of PlayStation is part of that. And again, if you're. Again, if the vision of PlayStation from on high is we need more live service things and you. Even if we. And we're in that position for some reason, you and me are co Hermon or co Hermonds. All right? So Jim Ryan comes to us and he's like, we need. We need to fucking crush live service. And we go, sure. He's like, maybe we should acquire somebody. Yeah, we're going to look at Bungie. Bungie could be a great one. Destiny 2, you don't know. Underneath the Rock all the toxic shit and everything else going over there and the mismanagement.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Like, again, inside baseball, maybe there's a conversation of, oh, maybe we could have looked into this more. We could have, like, I don't know, maybe we could have done the insomniac thing of, hey, Bungie, you're going to get some at bats for us, but we're not going to buy you until you're fully proven. Yeah, we're not going to buy you until you've published one or two things under PlayStation. And, like, we'll start off as just a pure partnership. And then later, down the road, four years, five years in, when we really trust you. Okay, cool. We'll acquire you. But I think at that time, like, you look at Bungie, you Look at Destiny 1 and 2, you look at how well Destiny 2 seems to be going, and you look at the shift that you're trying to make right now as PlayStation, and I think you go, all right, cool. Yeah, like, this seems like the right decision, right? It's like if the number one podcast host. Or like, say we're trying to. We're trying to. This is a weird one because you already did this, right? But, like, say we're trying to shift into Twitch streaming or. No, let's say we're trying to shift into the D and D space. We're trying to shift into the DND space, and we got to make D and D content because that's the hot. That's the hotness, right? And Brendan Mulligan walks in, and if Chad. People listening, we don't know who Brendan Mulligan is. He. He's at Dropout. He's like a very incredible content creator, one of the best in the game right now, in my opinion, as far as, like, making nerdy content, making D and D content, even, like the trivia stuff they do at Dropout, he knocks it all out of the park. Brandon Mulligan walks into our front door and he's like, hey. And we're like, fuck, we're looking for this. Like, we're looking for a D and D guy, and he's the guy and he's available. We just have to pay a lot of money for him, but we can get him. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get him. And then we learned that, like, oh, man, he's been struggling. Turns out Brennan Lee Mulligan wasn't all he was.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Shocking. God damn it. He didn't solve this at all.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, like, that feels like kind of what happened with PlayStation. And, like, I think really what it's going to come down to is what is the next step? What is what are you going to do with Bungie now? Does Marathon have the stuff? Does Project Gummy Bears have the stuff?

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know, you got to have the.

[Greg Miller]

Gummy Bears, you know. Is this Smash Mobile game going to work like right now? I think that's what I'm looking at as far as PlayStation and Bungie, what are the next steps with it and can you salvage like this into something that is going to be fruitful for everybody involved?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Agreed.

[Greg Miller]

Let's move on into Breaking news. Greg, was this you that added this one?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm adding this, yeah, live from the chat and of course Barrett being on the ones and twos.

[Greg Miller]

You want to tell me about it?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure. Everybody, Breaking news Mass Effect. I cut off some part of this Mass Effect 5 bioware doesn't require support from the full studio EA moves some staff over to other teams this is Rebecca [e-mail] EA has announced it is restructuring Dragon Age and Mass Effect studio BioWare, moving a number of developers onto other projects within EA in focusing entirely on its upcoming Mass Effect game going forward. In a blog post from general manager Gary McKay, he wrote that the studio is, quote, taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at bioware, end quote. Given this stage of development, we don't require support from the full studio. We have incredible talent here at bioware and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit, end quote. IGN understands that EA has already placed an unknown number of developers from BioWare into other equivalent roles within the company. A smaller number of Dragon Age team members are also seeing their roles terminated and are being offered time to apply to other roles within the company if they so choose. BioWare's restructure I'm sorry. BioWare's structure has shifted repeatedly in recent years. The studio had a round of layoffs in 2023 and has seen a number of high profile departures throughout the development of Dragon the Veilguard, the most recent of which was Corinne Bush announcing her departure from the studio last week. It is unclear how many individuals work at BioWare today. IGN asked EA for any comment or specifics on how many individuals at BioWare are being impacted by this change, how many are facing potential layoffs and how many will remain at the studio. EA did not provide the specifics, but a spokesperson offered the following the studio's priority was Dragon Age. During this time, there were people continuing to build the new vision for the next Mass Effect. Now that Vailgard has shipped, the studio's full focus is Mass Effect. While we're not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right role to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development. The new Mass Effect in question was announced four years ago and is still in the early stages of development. IGN understands that BioWare's current strategy is to prioritize one game at a time, as some developers who had been working on Mass Effect were previously moved to Dragon Age to get the project over the finish line and are now moving back. Per the blog post, Mass Effect development is now being led by series veterans including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamanuku, Derek Watts and Parrish Le. This news comes a week after EA announced that Dragon the Valeguard missed its player targets by nearly 50% and reduced its guidance for the fiscal year due to this and more impactfully, weaker than expected sales, weaker than expected results from College Football 25. That's not correct though, right? That's gotta be a typo on breaking news.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. More importantly, EAFC is what they.

[Ryan Reynolds]

EAFC was the one that missed it. College football killed it. The company will hold its Q3 earnings conference call on February 4th.

[Greg Miller]

Huh.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Huh.

[Greg Miller]

That seems very bad for BioWare.

[Ryan Reynolds]

100%. Like, yeah, there's the part that, I.

[Greg Miller]

Mean, the part that stands out, right. Is obviously the first couple of paragraphs, but them talking about we're taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at bioware. That doesn't happen when your studio is killing it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Like if bioware was a studio that was knocking it out the park even with Dragon Age the Veil guard. If Dragon Age the Veil Guard met expectations or even like exceeded expectations and Everybody's happy with BioWare, you don't then go, okay, we're taking time between development cycles to reimagine how this works and we're going to shift a lot of people off of bioware to then work at other EA things. That for me, that to me sounds like you are getting ready to maybe sunset the studio maybe after Mass effective Mass Effect isn't.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Do you think they get Mass Effect out the door?

[Greg Miller]

No, I don't. I don't think so at this point. Like, I don't know. What's your, what's your read on this?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Bioware, bioware, bioware. What a fucking heartbreaking story of just EA not being able to get out of their own fucking way. Just let Bioware be Bioware. Right? Let them. Why did we get in there and tinker with everything and change everything? And again, the push to anthem and let's do a live service and a battle pass. It's like fucking make RPGs. Just make story based single player RPGs. What the fuck are you doing in Dragon Age? The Veil Guard. A game. I loved a game. Andy loved a game. Some people love a game. A lot of people hate all these different things. The number one knock I see from Dragon Age, well, that's not true. But from Dragon Age of Air haters that I want to listen to.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Is the fact that it wasn't Dragon Age. This isn't what the series has been. And as somebody who didn't connect to the series before Vale Guard, I was like, great, that's awesome for me. But I totally get this not being what you want as a Dragon Age fan. Right. And to sit there and be like, well, this is Dragon Age of Elgar, a game they salvaged. It was supposed to be this multiplayer game, right? That was all these things that then morphed into this. We're lucky we got it as good as we got. And again, what I think of it versus what everybody else, whatever. But like, come on, you know what I mean? Like what a cautionary tale. But it's not. It's like not but like fucking Mass Effect. The Mass Effect guys, remember when Mass Effect was like the biggest thing in the fucking world? Casey Hudson was a goddamn rock star walking around talking about this thing like, do you think we made N7 day? Like they were like the first developer and that's not true, obviously, but one of the first developers I remember that was able to make their IP so much more and really celebrate their fans.

[Greg Miller]

Do you think this gets into a Ship of Theseus situation where we are talking about Mass Effect? Like these are the Mass Effect devs. But when we're talking about the last Great Mass Effect, I'm not counting Legendary Edition, that was the collection of all the games. We're talking about the last Great Mass Effect. You're probably talking about Mass Effect 3, which I know people have issues with the ending, yada, yada, but I think that's what we're talking about. And how long ago was that? 15 years ago?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Something like that. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

So you're talking about like that long since the last Great Mass Effect. You're talking about Dragon Age Inquisition being a great title for the studio and that being 2014. It's been over a decade since it's felt like BioWare has had a major hit, let alone a hit. I think the only good thing they put out is, is the Legendary collection. Like I just looked it up on Google and The first the IGN article from 2021 says Mass Effect legendary edition sales were well above EA's expectations. So that's a, that's a win. You can check that in the win box. But when you're talking about their last three major standalone titles, you're talking about Mass Effect, Andromeda, which didn't do well. You're talking about Anthem which didn't do well. And that was supposed to be a live service thing. So they're expectations were probably even greater for that in terms of ongoing live rev live revenue over years. And now you're talking about Dragon Age the Veil Guard which did half of what they expected to do now.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Real quick pullover too. Yeah, I am not the numbers guy. I was always bad at predicting npd. I was always bad at predicting yada yada yada. Do you think because the one thing that's lost in oh, Dragon Age, you know, Met half of EA's expectations were is it. And I haven't been on the conver. I've never been on these conversations on games daily because I'm doing stuff. Is it reasonable that EA expected 3 million players in two months for Dragon Age? Because Dragon Age was never the most giant franchise. Right. Like it was never Mass Effect. Mass Effect had this huge player base. Dragon Age didn't. And that was because of varying quality of the games. A lot of no's in there, a few yeses. Like I just feel like one of the things that's getting lost in this conversation and even in today's restructuring is the fact that I don't think EA knows what they fucking have. Because again I'm not saying and I'm not saying that oh they have something huge with Vailgard. I'm saying I don't think Vailgard was ever going to be a man. Three million in two months. That sounds crazy.

[Greg Miller]

I'm trying to find Jedi Survivor sales.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Just to like maybe put into context of the way EA is thinking about its own slate.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Because EA I think right now is averaging maybe like one major single player thing a year. And that is among like you know, the multiplayer things. Right. The regular money makers, efc, Apex Legends and like those live games. But then you have like that one major thing a year that I think or that one major single player thing a Year that I think you have those high expectations because you're only giving them like you're the one for the year. Right, Sorry, Shy Survivor was the one for 2023 when it came out and I gotta imagine that that did numbers. Now when we get into those numbers, we also get into licensing, we get into, you know, a whole thing that is hard to bring into the conversation in comparison to Dragon Age. But I wonder if you are looking at bioware and you are going, you're, you're looking at them and going, hey, your siblings are outshining you. Right? Like we got respawn over here that is getting, that is an A student right now. Right? Respawn over here. As soon as they got to high school, they started killing it with their grades. And like in elementary school, bioware, like you were that. But now you're in middle school, you're in high school and you're getting Cs. You're getting B minuses and the B minus isn't going to cut it when I got another kid over here that's making the A pluses over here.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Just to give more context in terms of Dragon Age, Specifically Dragon Age 2, I think in the first two months sold over 2 million copies. It came out in March 2011 and by May 2011 it sold over over 2 million copies. I don't have anything specific for Inquisition. Like they said it was over 12 million units over its lifetime, but that was an update in 2024, 10 years after launch. Yeah, but in its launch kind of window, they said it had sold almost the exact amount of launch week copies as 2011's Dragon Age 2. So Inquisition roughly in that same ballpark, maybe a little bit lower. I do think trying to expect something more for a series like a higher launch.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Dormant series.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, for a dormant series that like people don't talk about in the same way, I do think expecting 3 million for a series like that, that wasn't selling, you know, crazy, like blowing out all expectations when it was coming out. I think it was a little.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's my thing. So I'm not trying to care. Emmy, obviously I loved Vale Guard. I think I would have loved to have seen what that would have looked like as a single player from the start and whatever else. But it's like in like I'm not at all trying to carry water for the game right now. I'm just saying, like, I don't know if, like we keep coming back. Oh, I did half of the expectations, like, yeah, but.

[Greg Miller]

And I wonder, like, I Mean, you want to talk about one Dragon Age being a somewhat dormant franchise again, the previous title coming out in 2014.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I think you also talk about how much the space has evolved and how much competition you have where Dragon Age. I think maybe in 2010 Dragon Age might be a top, I don't know, three video game fantasy Western RPG franchise.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

And in 2025, is it top seven? Like we're talking about Baldur's Gate 3 coming out a couple. A couple years ago. You're talking about the Witcher 3 coming out in 2015 and changing the game. Right. You're talking about, I guess Skyrim came out before Inquisition. But like, you throw Elder Scrolls, right? Like, it's in the conversation and you're talking about more and more of these games, I think competing for that top spot to where. Yeah, like, I think I. For what the hype was for Dragon Age, the Veil Guard. I think I. And this is just, just based off of like my own perception, right. Like, I would have expected more. Like, I thought Dragon Age of Yogaard would have demanded a bit more. Oh, It's a new BioWare RPG. Like everybody's paying attention to it in the way that Mass Effect felt when it. When that was coming out. Right. But like, I don't think people are as hyped for Dragon Age when there are so many other Western fantasy RPGs that are doing it either just as good or way better.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Let's get fucking nuts.

[Greg Miller]

Let's get nuts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Next month. Do you think Avowed is able to put up better numbers than Velgar? Do you think two months in Avow's moved more than 1.5 or gotten more. And this is just players talking about.

[Greg Miller]

Sales or players players.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Because game pass. This is. This is including EA whatever play, right?

[Greg Miller]

That's a really tough.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think it does.

[Greg Miller]

I think it does.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think. I mean, I mean, as somebody who loves Veil Guard and we're about to do the Avowed hypecast Me in Paris, which is just us talking, watching old videos are about a vowed, right? Like, I think about's pound for pound a better RPG. I think, I think, like really 100%. I think. Because I think this is going to give you. This is Avowed based on the previews, based on the videos they've put out. Right? And this is just strictly. I do not have code. I wish I fucking did. But Avowed, based on what they've shown and how they talk about it, is going to do what fucking veilguard didn't let you do. Which is like, do you want to be a dick? Do you want to be evil? Do you want to. You want this ending? Do you want to change that? Like I think it's going like when I talked about it in my preview of choosing my background and like the first person I run into, it's like, whoa. I like seven options to talk to, respond because it's pulling from my back stories and this and if I want to be an asshole and I. You know how much I love the ideas of Baldur's Gate, even though I don't like the gameplay but like the fact of oh, I could just kill this person and never see them again. Like that's what I wanted from Starfield, what I wanted from valeguard. Right. You don't get that with your party. Whereas I think, I think about is going to be that nerdy person's RPG and that's what I want out of it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I mean what you're talking about when Starfield launched on Game pass, obviously like Starfield Bethesda thing, but that got what, 10 million in like a few days. And so we're talking about 10 million in a few days for Starfield. I could see it being 3 million. I think it's going to be the first where.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Excuse me, there's so there were so many expectations for Veil Guard from Dragon Age fans and they. It didn't live up to that. Right. I think there's some expectation on a vowed because of Obsidian and like that.

[Greg Miller]

What.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But I think it's going to live up to what an Obsidian RPG is going to be. And I think the time it's hitting right now where we're all very hungry for new games. Right. I think it's going to hit at the right time. It's going to be on Game Pass. It's going to be hopefully knock on glass. Great. And I think it's going to be so much buzz from nerdy ass RPG people like me that love Western RPGs that it'll get other people. Like I got Game pass. Why not boot it up?

[Greg Miller]

It's at 3 million the first week. Not in the first week, but I think I could see it over two.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Months is what I'm saying. Can you beat the. Can it be 1.5 or the expected 3 million in two months?

[Greg Miller]

I could see it. Okay, man. I even think about that kind of comparison.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's why I'm here, everybody.

[Greg Miller]

That's wild. You know what else is wild?

[Ryan Reynolds]

The good terrorist.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, Jesus.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Just be really slow about it.

[Greg Miller]

I Don't know if I can transition to AD after that one. So let's read some super chats.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, you can't, you can't. It's fine. They watch the beginning, they get the joke. It's a joke. It's called Kind of Funny Games Daily. Not we're fucking buttoned up serious all the time. We don't do anything. Ok. Games Daily.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

This is the third time in the last week that you've like sworn right before it had Games Daily.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Kind of Funny Games Daily. I've done it. I've did it. I did enough.

[Greg Miller]

A brown spot writes in and says, as a decade long Dragon Age fan, Vilgard was everything I could have asked for. It is tuning, turning the ship, but not as quickly as EA would have liked. Also a really short marketing window for a long dormant franchise with Dragon Age. Am I coping? Maybe.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think we also glossed over this. It was at the top of the conversation about what this means for Mass Effect. Like them slimming down the studio and they're focusing on one game again. I think it's not a great look for bioware after all the years they've had and all the trouble they've had to get to where they are now. But I do understand of like, we don't need the Dragon Age people for where Mass Effect is. Da da da da. But it's like what does this mean? Do we, like what are, what are our hopes for Mass Effect? Do we expect Mass Effect to be great? Back to the ship, Theseus? Like are the people who do are. Is EA staying out of the way? Like all the tumultuous leadership changes over there, like, what are we really going to get with the next Mass Effect?

[Greg Miller]

I'm also fascinated by what happens if Mass Effect is great. Like is the, is the writing already on the wall for Bioware where it's like it's too late? Like they're like, this studio hasn't delivered for us in over a decade. Right. As far as like something major, if Mass Effect comes out and it's what is what we want it to do, they just start hiring more people again. Like do they bring in the people that they shifted to other projects just now? Like, how does the studio evolve past that and does it just become the Mass Effect studio then is it you only, you only have one IP now?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Like, I mean that's their last gasp, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If they can't make this Mass Effect hit and be humongous out of the gate, then they just, they'll close by.

[Greg Miller]

One bite Snack writes in and says, is it not possible that the influx of Dragon Age dev on the project was just too much, too soon and they were burning budget?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes, 100%. That's what I'm saying. I think in terms if they're just doing the one thing and they're focusing this thing.

[Greg Miller]

Nando to Richie writes in and says, why doesn't Herman Holst. Oh, this is back to the PlayStation story. Why doesn't Herman Holst give an interview to you or any other podcast? It will clear up so many questions. Fans have all the best from Netherlands.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I mean, you'd have to ask PlayStation that question, why they don't do that and make them available. I think, I think PlayStation I, I. You know what, let's turn it back to yesterday's conversation and throughout the week's conversation about Phil Spencer and how people justifiably in some respects, I think unjustifiably in others, want to crucify him for things he said six months ago, a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. PlayStation understands that they just shut the fuck up and make games. Like, people might be mad, but you're still buying the console. You're still doing the thing. You're like, why step on the rake? Why, why give anybody ammunition? Why answer something Again, that is also matters to so few of us? We're. You're a person listening to a podcast, watching a daily video game podcast. God bless you. I'm just like you. We're not the majority of PlayStation 5 owners. They're, they're not like, we're very important to the ecosystem and everything else, but so many people don't care. And so it's not worth saying something wrong to then get it broken out that it does end up somewhere. It does end up actually in the Ethereum.

[Greg Miller]

Man. We got a lot more super chats, but we'll get to some of those later. For now, let me tell you about patreon.com kind of funny and YouTube.com kind of funny games where you can get the kind of funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free. Speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

[D]

This episode's brought to you by Built if you're a Renter. I'd start taking advantage of Built if I were you. Here's the thing. We earn points on groceries, trip, travel, and practically everything else we buy. But we should also be earning points on rent, one of our biggest monthly expenses. Bilt changed the game by letting renters earn high value points on rent and around their neighborhood. There's no cost to join bilt and as a member you'll earn valuable points on rent and your everyday spending. Bilt points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even the ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world. You can reach Redeem your built points toward Points can also be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only builds members can access. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is why not start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to join built.com kindafunny that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com kind of funny. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you there. Join built.com/kinda funny to start earning points on your rent payments today. This episode's brought to you by BetterHelp. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Every January brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled in. In 2025. Maybe you're ready for a plot twist. Or maybe there's part of your story you've been wanting to revise. Life isn't about resolutions that fade by February. It's about picking up the pen and becoming the author of your own life. Life Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters and create the meaningful story you deserve to live. Some of my best friends use BetterHelp, and they love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. And it serves over 5 million people worldwide. Write your story with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com kindafunny to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com kindafunny betterhelp.com kindafunny and.

[Greg Miller]

We'Re back with story number two. PlayStation accounts on PC are getting a major shakeup. This is from the PlayStation Blog. Starting with tomorrow's release of Marvel Spider Man 2 for PC, we're working to add more benefits to playing with an account for PlayStation Network. The last is Part 2 Remastered, coming April 3, 2025. In addition, God War, Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered will all soon be adding in game content unlocks for PlayStation Network account users. An account for PlayStation Network will become optional for these titles on PC. Players who still opt to sign into a PlayStation Network account will also enjoy added benefits like trophies and friend management detail. Wait, please. Oh, enjoy. Was that always the thing? Trophies on PC?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, they started doing that recently.

[Greg Miller]

Gotcha.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

But it's not like a new trophy list. I think it just shares a trophy list with like a PS5. Trophies.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, gotcha. Details on new benefits for players who opted to sign in with an account for PlayStation Network. You got Marvel Spider Man 2. You can get early unlock suits. The Spider Man 2099 black suit and the Miles Morales 29 black suit for God of War. Ragnarok can gain access to the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos at the first Lost Items chest in Realms Between Realms. In the Last is part two remastered. You can get plus 50 points to activate bonus features and unlock extras. And you can get Jordan's jacket from Intergalactic the Heretic Prophet as a skin for Ellie. Oh, that's actually really cool.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I like that one. That's actually the one on there. I'm like, all right, okay.

[Greg Miller]

And then Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, you can gain access to Nora Valiant outfit. Game creators at PlayStation Studios will continue to work on bringing more benefits to players who sign up for a PlayStation Network account. So be sure to follow studio channels for more information.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Like the chat says cross save.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Then you would get me.

[Greg Miller]

I. I love the story one because it's good news, but also because when you see the tweet they put out for this, it is like, the most, like, here you fucking go. Like, it's the most boring. Like, I think it's just a PlayStation logo. Like, they don't even have key art for the games. They're just like, here, fine. It's optional now. All right. And also, you made us go to our studios and go, hey, figure out how to put an outfit and give it to the players for free.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You delayed Intergalactic by a month.

[Greg Miller]

This is such a. Like, here you go. Like, we're tired of your complaining type of thing. But good for them for making.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's the right thing to do. It's what they should have done from, you know, the start. They shouldn't have been. If you want to get people to use the network, don't fucking put the gun to their head. Let them have something fun for it. This is the whole thing. I couldn't believe how badly they fucked this up for Helldivers.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Give them a new suit of armor and make it optional. We're talking about. We all would have done it.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

That's why we all hated that U2 album.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Exactly.

[Greg Miller]

Hated it.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Bless. Don't tell me you like that now.

[Greg Miller]

Well, no, because that was only on iPhones, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I never had an iPhone, so I never had to worry about that. I was laughing for my Android Samsung moment.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm sure you were.

[Greg Miller]

Gingerbread slide keyboard. It was great. What about Gingerbread? Are you talking about the operating systems? Nah, man. I had ice cream. I don't even know what I had, but it was probably something like that. Cheesecake. Something like that. Story number three, we got one more PlayStation shake up. Sony announces plans to shift away from offering PS4 games through PlayStation Plus. This is Tom Ivan at Video Games Chronicle. This one. I do have a super chat question for how often do you play PS plus games? This is one that comes up because I realized as I was reading the story that I have reached the point where I've become Janet Garcia, where I've stopped redeeming my PS plus games. And I used to make fun of her for it. I'm like, they're free. Like, just redeem them. And I don't think I've redeemed a PS plus game in months. And so I've become what I've hated.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure, but it's because you've been doing this long. Yes, but I do want everything you want. You have. So it's like. Then something else comes along. Well, I never asked for a code for this, so I guess I should redeem.

[Greg Miller]

Well, that's why I want to ask is to make sure that this is a me thing and like us thing of us. Yeah. Getting codes and all this stuff. Right. Versus, like. Because PS plus has been around for a very long time now. And I feel like back in. When I used to listen to beyond in the early 2010s, there was a shine to PS Plus.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, sure. It was a new thing. Me and Colin were tracking how much money we were saving, like every month.

[Greg Miller]

It felt like Christmas.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And I. I just. I just wonder if it still feels like Christmas.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, they just dropped the new games today, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, they announced them. The games are Payday 3. High on Life Impact, man. World repack.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Like that don't feel like fucking feel like.

[Greg Miller]

Here's the other thing too. I read the story but like, here's my other Thing too is that year one of PS5. I feel like it still felt like Christmas. Oh, you're getting these day one game. Like you're getting. What was the getting Maquette. Like, that's a plus game. Oh, we got. I know there are more examples I just can't think of. Was Stray. No, Stray was extra. It was extra.

[Ryan Reynolds]

See, that's why it gets confusing too, is that I feel like the free games for PlayStation plus in quotes have been undercut because there's in the library of the, you know, PlayStation Xbox to get answer to game pass. Right? So it's like, yeah, there's now it's even more of a convoluted message of what's going on. But the other day, like I'm in this weird spot right now, right, where we have this free time and so I was like, I'm going to just pop in and look around the store and went to the PlayStation plus tab and looked. I'm like, I'm not this crap.

[Greg Miller]

There you go. Jumping into the story. Sony has announced its intention to shift away from offering PS4 games as part of its monthly PlayStation plus offering starting in 2026. Offering PS4 games will no longer be a key benefit of the service, with Sony instead turning its focus to providing PS5 titles. QUOTE as many of our players are currently playing on PS5 and have shifted toward redeeming and accessing PS5 titles from the monthly games and game catalog benefit. PlayStation plus is also evolving with this trend and will focus on offering PS5 titles through the monthly games and game catalog benefit starting January 2026, as said Adam Michelle, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Director Game Services Content. That's a long title. Quote as we shift to PS5, PS4 games will no longer be a key benefit and will only be occasionally offered for PS+ monthly games in game catalog starting January 2026. We may still provide titles that can be playable on both PS4 and PS5 consoles after this date, end quote. This move won't affect the PS4 monthly games that players have already redeemed from the PS plus offerings, which will still be accessible as long as they remain a member.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hell yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Cool. Yeah, Give me more than PS5 titles. Yeah, exactly.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You got enough now. Enough PlayStation 5 games out there. You're going to be able to.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Where's more of a joke about the output of the PlayStation 5 lifecycle.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I see. Yeah, they got at least five games that are exclusive. Now. I'm trying to think of like, what are the PS5 games that they start to dig to put in there because they got to start at year one. And it's like you put on there the Pathless.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That has to have already gone through once, right?

[Greg Miller]

Probably.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. You put on there how much you love the Pathless. You were always talking about the path.

[Greg Miller]

And I still love the path. I got to go back and play it because this is what I realized.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Is launch Libraries have such a shine to them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

Where I'll play anything online.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, yeah, of course. Of course.

[Greg Miller]

Like Sack Boys. A Big Adventure was like list. It was in my short list for.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Game of the year.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It's a combination of excitement and desperation.

[Greg Miller]

You know.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But justification. Yeah. I paid this much money for this system also.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It's kind of fucked up. Like think about it's 2025. We're coming up on like those games are about to be five years old at the end of this year. And that just doesn't seem right.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

That doesn't seem right.

[Greg Miller]

I think they are already. No. November, it was end of 2020. That's a good point. But I Stand by the Pathless was a masterpiece. And it must have been. I stand by it. The Pathless. It had to be a masterpiece.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Because I remember it as a masterpiece now.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Was it?

[Greg Miller]

Because it was my first time experiencing that Nice of frame rate. Of course. With the PS5.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Maybe.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

But like they had Shadow of Colossus influence. The Pathos is amazing. Story number four.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You got responses on Super Chats. Oh, I see. Wiener says I use PlayStation plus games to build the library for my son. That's cute.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, that's really nice.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Really smart.

[Greg Miller]

Damn.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The Portland. Kevin says I alternate every game. A PlayStation plus game and then a purchased game. I only play something if I want to and I still have a massive library to play. That's fascinating. I love the idea of that being committed to it like that.

[Greg Miller]

I like that. Let's hop in. The story number four, clear, obscure. Expedition 33 is so popular the dev can't meet collectors.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is what happens when you have an awesome presentation.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Awesome, awesome presentation off of Xbox Direct. Because I'm the same way of like, I didn't even know. I barely knew what this game was. And then we saw it. I was like, fuck, I want to play this now.

[Greg Miller]

Somebody said, go play Solar Ash Blessing. I did play Solar Ash and I didn't like it as much as the Pathless. I love the Pathless. I'm pulling from Stephen Tallaby at push square upcoming PS5 RPG clear obscure expedition 33 is looking very promising indeed, and we're not the only ones who think so. The game has garnered enough fans that it's already run out of its collector's edition. In a statement on social media, the game's official account has outlined the situation. Quote, Never could we have imagined that we'd have sold out of our collector's editions so early. Nor did we know the demand for our physical editions would be so high. It reads, basically, the game is already so popular that fans can no longer purchase the collector's edition. And it looks like restocking isn't a guarantee. Quote, Truthfully, getting these made was a monumental feat for us. We are so grateful to see that the demand was there and that it exceeded our expectations. The statement says, though we will try our best to explore the options of restocking, we cannot promise it yet, and we hope you understand the limitations with this. End quote. Good for them. Can't wait for this game looks fantastic. I agree with you that the presentation was so good that you got to play.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You got to play.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You have to at least show up for it. It's on game pass, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

Hell yeah. Story number five. Sega XD launches a brain Rental service.

[Ryan Reynolds]

What the fuck is this sentence?

[Greg Miller]

Already letting companies rent its game developers to brainstorm ideas and write up projects. This is Amber V at Automaton. There's a lot to talk about with this.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

They're coming to you to figure out what the super game is.

[Greg Miller]

Now, can you. Before I even get into the article, can you guess what they're calling this service? The brain rental service.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Brain Buster.

[Greg Miller]

Close. It's called Braintool Rental. They put the words bringing rental together. Get the fuck out of here. That's some. What's the fucking Ryan Gosling movie? That was a sequel a Blade Runner 2049 title.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Didn't see that one coming. I was like, what bad Ryan Gosling title thing was there?

[Greg Miller]

Jumping into the story, Sega xd, Sega's gamification subsidiary has launched a peculiar new service that lets you rent the brains of professional game designers, appropriately called braintool. Appropriately, Amber V, the platform and its concept feel like a breath of fresh air amidst the ongoing AI brainstorming hype train.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Fair enough there, okay?

[Greg Miller]

Through Brain tool, entities like companies and local governments can request game developer support in coming up with ideas, drafting proposals, and working out the details needed to get a game development project started. The service is not available to individuals and is being marketed towards corporations that want to create a game, presumably for marketing or other PR purposes, but do not possess human resources for game planning. The idea. Oh God, I scrolled too fast, I lost it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The idea is to provide a way for companies to enlist game developers expertise only when they need it. The platform offers three plans at different price points. An idea plan. Jesus. Which involves support in brainstorming and coming up with ideas. A proposal plan which involves the creation of a project and a detailed plan in which the client receives detailed materials for the game project. Braintool's roster of rentable game planners includes several experienced developers with track records in app development, board game production and Sega game development.

[Greg Miller]

I, I'm of two minds with this one. I think this is really cool and really innovative and I like, I think to the article's point of like, hey, in a world that is looking for AI to like get rid of people. Yeah, yeah, like we're, we're putting our developers to work and all that stuff. On the other hand, I hope they are increasing the developers pay or giving them some kind of like, like compensation or like credit. Yeah. Like, I hope it is not just like, oh yeah, now part of your job is we're renting you out. Like go help Capcom or the government figure out their gaming stuff.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's just to steal a classic Tom Green segment. Undercutter's pizza. If you are a video game developer thinking of using Sega's new service that lets you rent the brains of professional game designers just to brainstorm game ideas, I will sell you Kinda Funny's brains at 25% less. You know what I mean? Whatever Sega's pricing it at. For the brainstorming thing, you and me get on a zoom call. Oh yeah, for a fucking hour. And we're like, all right, what do you got? Like, we got a hot dog and he's got four legs. I'm like, all right, well I'm sure we know.

[Greg Miller]

I'm sure we know as much as the lead developer of Persona. Like, I'm sure, I'm sure we know.

[Ryan Reynolds]

As much as brainstorming though, this is like top level. Like, I don't know, man. All right? This hot dog, I want the world to be a movie theater, a snack bar. That's where he lives. He's got a friend. It's a little popcorn kernel, right?

[Greg Miller]

Let's role play this.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Honestly, this is like. That sounds like a Psychonauts level. And honestly Greg, you're killing it.

[Greg Miller]

You're selling me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm saying, you know, let's take what people loved about Cool Spot. We make it a Hot dog out of four legs. His friend is a popcorn kernel. Unpop. What has happened is the manager, who's the boss, has taken the colonel and is going to pop him. We got to get him. We got to save him.

[Greg Miller]

Let's role play. So the role play this a bit. I'll be. I'm a developer on a new upcoming AAA video game. You are a SEGA developer, that is. I'm renting your.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I know, I'm kind of funny. You're renting the kind of.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, I'm rent. Oh, you're okay. I'm rent. I'm renting kind of funny's brain.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Hey, I'm making this game. I want it to be like an action adventure game. I'm looking for maybe a setting. What kind of settings are hot right now? You think?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, see, hot is interesting because it's kind of funny. We want to go the opposite, right? We are not going to chase trends. We're going to make trends. So, yeah, you could be in the jungle already done a million times, right? You can be in the Arctic. Already done a million times. You want action adventure? I'm saying we put you on the moon, but not the current moon, a far flung future moon. All right? And so what we've got here is moon bases all the time. This is a stopover where we used all the resources of Earth. So this is now what then became the planet portal of where we're jumping off, right? Where we have to go. Where we have to go. We're going to Mars, we're going to Venus. We're starting colonies out there. This was the closest one. But guess what? Earth's resources are all gone. Nobody's really used this in a long point. So you're just a custodian who's been hanging out there. But guess what? Now we got invaders who are coming there. They want to do all this stuff. They want to try to fix Earth. So now we gotta fight them all off with our broom. Action adventure. We're doing it now.

[Greg Miller]

I like the idea. Brainstorming.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, bad idea.

[Greg Miller]

Brainstorm. No bad ideas. Now, what I need your brain now for is there's a mechanic in our moon game. It's now a moon game where when we get into the action segments, whenever players press square, they clip through the world and the game crashes. How do I fix this bug?

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's not what the brainstorming section is. You didn't pay. You didn't pay for that.

[Greg Miller]

They said that developers would know.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You didn't know. They Wouldn't know.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

They would.

[Greg Miller]

Developers would know. That's not how that works, Blood. I'm making it. I'm making an Unreal game. Greg, I need your Unreal experience.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You paid for an idea plan that involves support in brainstorming and coming up with ideas, end quote.

[Greg Miller]

Ok, that's fair.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know what a detailed plan is the highest one and it says in which client receives detailed materials for the game project. You're not coming with a broken ass game falling through the moon saying, fix that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, okay, you got me. You got me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think you're going to give me a cool mechanic. And what I was going to say is the idea is that they've, you know, we've domed sections of the moon, right? So you're thinking zero G. I mean obviously there would be some stuff. But as the custodian, you have this cool data pad and so you can use the vents as offensive weapons so you can vent people out into space or whatever.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I like that. Kill. You're just pitching your own game now. Like I didn't even tell you. No, he's just pitching. You paid for me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You paid for me. No. Well, kind of, but no. No bad guys like that. You know what I mean? I'm more. I'm into the hot dog game. I think we got something that sounds like a fun Flash iOS game.

[Greg Miller]

I like it. Greg. The hot dog game.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Drink box. What are you fucking doing? Get me in there. Let's make an iOS hot dog game.

[Greg Miller]

I like it. Oh man. I had an idea. There was an idea that I came up with as we were podcasting, thinking about the devs for Rift and the Necrodancer and the rhythm thing, how they can work on a different franchise. But I'll figure it out. Hopefully the idea will come back to me by the end of the show. Okay, but Greg, your hot dog game idea, it's so big, it's so huge, it's humongous.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A huge wiener.

[Greg Miller]

Big old wieners. But if I wanted something smaller, say the tiniest news I needed to know about, where would I go?

[Ryan Reynolds]

You'd go to our last news story, the WE News channel, where we cover all the small news items you need to know about.

[Greg Miller]

It just came to me. There was a super chat earlier. Where is it? Where is it? There's a super chat that wrote in toward the beginning of the show about Parappa the rapper. I was saving it for the super chat section. I'll get to it in the super chat section. But remind me, if I say rapper the rapper remind me that I was going to connect it to Rift of the Necro Dancer.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Like what you're doing?

[Greg Miller]

We news for you from Eurogamer, the developer of Marvel Snap has confirmed it has landed a new publishing partner in the wake of this month's outage that saw the game suddenly become unplayable in the U.S. in a statement, Second Dinner said it had already signed agreements and started the work to bring almost all operational and publishing responsibilities in house with support from Skystone Games, a US based indie indie games publisher. Man, it's like one of those ones where like you break up with your partner and you already had another partner lined up because that was so quick. Like you dumped them quick.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You gotta do, you gotta do.

[Greg Miller]

And you're Marvel Snap, so you know you're in high demand. Like you know, you know you're the hotness.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Who knows what this administration is gonna do, all right? You gotta get out, you gotta get out. You gotta get done. You gotta be done.

[Greg Miller]

The latest major update for no Man's sky has been released today. Worlds Part 2 brings the game up to version 5.5 and includes new planets, new stars and new story elements. The update features new landscapes and a blog post developer hello Games said the algorithm of the universe has evolved to generate beautiful new mountains, deep valleys and sprawling plains on untouched planets waiting to be discovered. I read somewhere I couldn't find it in the story, but like I read somewhere that they added like a trillion new planets or something.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I saw that too. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Insane.

[Ryan Reynolds]

God damn. No man Sky. Every time this happens, I gotta go back. I feel like in the few times I've done it, I never get further than where I always end up stopping. Usually when they're like, all right now really make a base. We kind of want to.

[Greg Miller]

It's me in outer wilds where I keep getting to the same place and I'm like, what if I play played something fast and quick instead? What if I appealed to my just distracted brain? Star wars skins are coming to Destiny 2. They look really cool. From games industry biz, VR studio Fast Travel Games has cut 30 jobs, primarily in its publishing, marketing and admin departments. Although, quote, the studio will be impacted as it consolidates down to one development team. And quote, sad news there from vgc, Capcom says it's still on track to beat last year's net profit despite being 33 down year on year after Q3. The publisher is relying on Monster Hunter Wilds to end its fiscal year with a bang. Silent Hill 2 remake sold 2 million copies and then Dyna Crisis and Dyna Crisis 2 are now available on GOG.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Damn, there's a lot of Wii News there.

[Greg Miller]

A lot of Wii news there. So much WE News. I like elevated one of the Wii News items to the main restore. Yeah, it was like that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A promotion.

[Greg Miller]

And that is enough of WE News. It's the end.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Don't forget about Parappa the Rapper.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you. I'm going to bring in that super chat right now. CJ Explicit writes in and says, speaking of rhythm games, would a new rapper work in 2025 if the music was really good, maybe Sony Music Artists could cameo as characters. And to that. Yeah, I say give Parapper to the Rift of the Necro rapper. Rapper. Oh, is it rapper Rapper. Give Parappa the rapper. Are you sure it's not rapper positive?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes. Give parapp your mom like, are you playing it? Parappa the rapper.

[Greg Miller]

Give Parapper the rapper to the Rift of the Necrodancer developer.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

They did a great work with Cadence of Hyrule, as far as I can tell. And the new arts, the art style for Rift. I feel like you could translate that into some Parapper shit and it would work.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I was right. It's Parappa the rapper.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You were saying prepper though.

[Greg Miller]

No, this last time I said it as a joke the whole time.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I was. But you understand why I was confused. No, Barrett, hit him again with it. Because you're saying you had said earlier per rapper par Rapper the rapper is what you were saying. I'm saying PO wrapper.

[Greg Miller]

I said it as a joke the last time, but earlier on I was saying Parappa the rapper. Okay, rewind the tape, everybody.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, no, I definitely said rapper when I meant rap.

[Greg Miller]

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Also, yeah, I'm sure you brought this up, but yeah, they made the Zelda one. I forget what that was. Yeah, but like, they know how to fun have fun with other ip, so. Hell yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, they know how to make.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I can't believe we haven't gotten more Parappa. You would think that like out of all the dormant PlayStation franchises, like, and I'm saying this is a pat upon fan. I get more patapons, but I'm not getting Norman's doing anything with Parappa.

[Greg Miller]

You think they'd be happy with the 30,000 sales? Because that's what's going to do.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But again, I'm not saying you fucking put Sony Santa Monica on it. You do something like this, you do a little thing.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I mean, they tested the waters. I feel like with the remastered, you know.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, but nobody wants old games.

[Greg Miller]

And somebody in chat says blessing can never be wrong. We have the vod and I'm telling you to rewind the. The vod. I clarified.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Everybody calm down.

[Greg Miller]

Everybody calm down.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's Wednesday. We're going to be nice.

[Greg Miller]

No, man, it's too late. They ruined my Wednesday.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It's time to swing.

[Greg Miller]

Let's see more Super Chats for you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I was getting berries and me and Ben were just hanging out like we always do, but I was getting berries out of the kitchen and I saw it happen. I just want to see how it was going to play out. And Ben just hauled off and right in the penis to me. And I was like, no. And he goes. And I gave him a firm no. And he goes, sorry. I just like burst into tears because I was so curt with the no. He knows better.

[Greg Miller]

Video game journalist writes in and says, I write for popular indie game magazine Patch magazine. I'd love to interview one of you and send you some issues. Physical Max still live. That's awesome.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Cool.

[Greg Miller]

I think send an email to Greg.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, go for it. I thought he's gonna. He wanted. He was gonna, you know, take our brainstorming. He wanted us to brainstorm.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that's what I thought. It was going to give him the hot dog idea.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No, the hot dog. I mean, now that I've said it's copyrighted. Similar thing to my T shirt idea. I have a T shirt game I'm thinking of right now and I just. That's me now. Don't make a T shirt game.

[Greg Miller]

It's me, Jake Sepp writes in and says. Never mind. I realize you were not connecting the title to Brain Tool. I'm stupid.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You're not going to read every Super Chat.

[Greg Miller]

Sometimes I jump into them thinking that, like, I saw Brain Tool.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is going some. I was like, disregard the last super chat.

[Greg Miller]

I'm skipping that. Oh, I like this. Cozy Bear says merry Kill Braintool. Transferring and revengeance.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, wow. Oh, I kill Braintle. I. I mean, transferring so ahead of its time. I would marry it and I would revengeance.

[Greg Miller]

I'm marrying. Actually, no, Revenge sounds sexy. I'm revenge. I'm with you, Mary. Transferring Kill Brain Tool. I think that's it for super tax, actually.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Booyah.

[Greg Miller]

CJ Switzerland says a parappa game might sell 30k. But cross media got that cartoon.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, exactly.

[Greg Miller]

Put out the live action film featuring Michael Golden Book.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, man.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hey, it's me, Parappa.

[Greg Miller]

That's gonna be Parappa's Catch Parapper the Rapper Parapper the Rapper Michael Sarah would call it Parapper the Rapper. Let's hop into you're wrong. Of course you can write in let us know what we got wrong as we got it wrong so we can correct it. For those watching later on YouTube and listening later on podcast services around the globe, Joey writes in and says Dragon age Inquisition sold 12 million copies, which is almost as much as the Mass Effect series. And then Kebab says the no Man's sky update does add trillions of new worlds via purple star systems. Unlike past updates, these are additive and don't replace any existing worlds in the yellow or in the yellow, blue, green and red star systems. Previous updates like this affected the entire universe, often changing worlds that players had already settled on. So there you go. Cool. Greg that's it for kind of funny.com strong and that is it for Kind of Funny Games Daily. Remember, each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. Enjoy. Gamescast Next, which is going to be Paris and Greg in an avowed hype cast in the stream after, which is supposed to be Mike playing Kingdom Hearts 2. But until next time, Game Daily.