How to Fix PlayStation - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast - "How to Fix PlayStation" (April 2, 2026)

Hosts: Greg Miller, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike), Barrett
Theme: An in-depth discussion on whether PlayStation needs "fixing"—and if so, how—from the perspectives of industry trends, brand identity, release cadence, hardware, and community engagement.

---

Episode Overview

The crew tackles the question: Does PlayStation actually need "fixing"? What would that even mean for a market leader? They debate if Sony is coasting, losing its identity, or quietly set up for long-term success. Feedback from data analyst Matt Piscatella is shared, and the team lays out their ideas for future strategy—including games cadence, hardware, lost brand passion, and reaching new generations of players.

---

1. Does PlayStation Actually Need 'Fixing'?

Timestamps: 05:15–13:54

• Greg Miller sets the stage, calling this a more "energetic and interesting" conversation compared to the Xbox episode, but not as dire.
• Blessing Adeoye Jr.:
  • "Fixing implies something's broken. ... This generation especially, like, I think PlayStation has been broken this generation is what I'll say. ... I think there are things that could be fixed." (05:29)
• Snowbike Mike:
  • Argues PlayStation isn't broken, they just need tweaks: "You are in first for a reason. You have solidified this gap, this lead, this margin. ... Truly and honestly, right now PlayStation does not need any fixing. They need to stay the course." (05:57)
• Greg's take: PlayStation feels more mainstream and has lost some unique fandom. Their brand is "just the place you play your games" now, with the PS5 lineup of exclusives lacking excitement and identity compared to previous gens.
  • "PlayStation, I think, has been happy to lose its identity and become mainstream." (07:11)

---

2. Losing Excitement and Identity

Timestamps: 07:40–10:56

• Blessing: First time his Steam playtime overtook his PlayStation wrap. Excitement for exclusives feels muted:
  • "Ghost of Yotei, great game ... but it didn't really excite me like Spider Man 2. ... This generation feels like it's the remastered version of the previous generation." (07:51)
• Mike: Pushes back; says fandom has evolved with mainstream success, and gaming's about celebrating good games wherever they are—not about 'superfans'.

---

3. Industry Data Perspective — Matt Piscatella

Timestamps: 11:00–13:54

Greg shares industry data from Matt Piscatella (Circana):

• PlayStation is strong, but faces an "uncertain" hardware market and a new demographic wedded to PC/mobile and games like Roblox and Fortnite.
• "It's not about fixing but more about ensuring the future." (12:01)
• PlayStation's edge: balancing between console and new business models (cloud, PC, subscription).
• Notable Quote, Matt Piscatella:
  • "TLDR: keep doing what they’re doing (outside of all the live service blip) and pray the macro market stops being insane—and make Knack 3." (13:53)

---

4. The Sandstorm is Coming: Preparing for Market Changes

Timestamps: 15:00–17:59

• Blessing uses the "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" analogy: PlayStation (Tom Cruise) is scaling the building, but there's a sandstorm (market change and new player demographics) looming.
  • "What's on the horizon ... I do think that something's gotta give." (13:55)
• Xbox could overtake PlayStation next gen if value keeps being king and PS6 hardware is too expensive.
  • "If PlayStation 6 is over $1,000 ... value is going to be such a big deal." (15:02)
• Greg reads Sony CFO Tao Lin’s quote: Sony plans to 'monetize the installed base' to weather hardware cost increases—meaning more focus on getting existing owners to spend.

---

5. PlayStation's Brand, Faces, and Community Engagement

Timestamps: 17:59–21:35

• Greg: PlayStation’s peak was when it had faces—Shuhei Yoshida, Jack Tretton, Adam Boyes, Mark Cerny—attached to its identity:
  • "What I would fix? ... PlayStation was at its best when there were faces attached ... it became you knew more about what was going on." (18:49)
• Now, it's just a brand—no rallying point if times get tough.
• Blessing: Echoes similar critique—from both Xbox/PlayStation—of losing personable communication, and says PlayStation needs to get back to focusing on memorable games and IP.

---

6. The Games Release Cadence Problem

Timestamps: 21:35–24:59

• Blessing: Development time is too long. Need to get back to a steady cadence of new, exciting titles, maybe with more studios handling established IPs.
  • "We gotta get back to giving people the games they want. ... Video games take a long time to make. I shouldn't be waiting this long between some of these bigger PlayStation titles." (19:58)
• Mike: Collection of top-tier studios used to deliver a steady pipeline; now, too much focus on the few big blockbusters means content gaps.
  • Suggests more smaller games, like Astrobot, Sly Cooper, or through second-party partnerships.

---

7. Reviving & Delegating Legacy IP

Timestamps: 23:52–25:45

• Discussion about PlayStation’s big war chest of IP (Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter, etc.), and why they’re not handing these to external or second-party devs for smaller, experimental projects.
  • "There are so many other studios that I know would be down to do a second party ... There should be more people in your sandbox playing and creating for you." (24:29–25:08, Mike)

---

8. Importance of Library-Building, Indies, and Convenience

Timestamps: 27:09–31:21

• Greg: PlayStation risks losing players as convenience and indie libraries shift to Steam and Switch.
  • "If I want the cool new indie, it’s on Steam...Maybe it's on PlayStation, but usually it's on there." (31:21)
• Mike: Gamers feel "held hostage" by their digital libraries, but with too few games coming out, people may jump ship when a better value appears.

---

9. The 'Handheld Era' and Meeting Gamers Where They Are

Timestamps: 35:05–46:10

• Blessing: PlayStation should make a real handheld (not just the streaming-only Portal) to keep up with Steam Deck, Ally, and Switch.
  • "Everything you're saying, Greg, like, the pickup and playability. ... I think you need a handheld." (35:05)
• Greg: Success of Portal + handheld demand points to inevitable native PS5 handheld (maybe a 'PS5 S'), especially as market matures.
• Mike: "We're in the era of meeting the players where they're at." (37:29)

---

10. PC Strategy: Retreat from Day-and-Date

Timestamps: 46:12–49:07

• Greg shares news: As of March 2026, Sony will no longer release big PS5 games day and date on PC (Bloomberg). Only multiplayer/live service games will be multiplatform; singleplayer will be PS5-only.
• Mike's take: From a business standpoint, exclusivity is best for staying #1—forces PC players to buy consoles.
  • “There’s the businessman now at the table ... I’m pulling them away from PC. … These games are so good, they will come and buy that second console…” (47:14)
• Xbox’s "open floodgates" approach led to library erosion; PlayStation wants to avoid that.

---

11. The Solution: More New IP AND Revived Classics

Timestamps: 49:07–54:53

• The team advocates:

  • Letting first-party studios chase new IP if they want (e.g., Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic).
  • But also, not letting beloved franchises (Uncharted, Last of Us, Sly Cooper, Jak, Ratchet) languish—give them to external/second-party partners for smaller spin-offs or experiments.
  • Focus on faster, smaller games to fill content gaps and keep players engaged.

• Barrett: Studio budgets and timelines must be addressed:

  • "I think a big thing that needs to be talked about as well is dev cycles and how sparsely these games are coming out. ... Eventually it’s going to be unviable." (53:07)

---

12. Family/Kids Games, Nintendo Comparison, and Diversifying the Portfolio

Timestamps: 58:14–70:24

• Audience asks about lack of engaging family/kids games.
• Blessing pushes for more family-friendly IP:
  • "You play a Nintendo game and you expect that to be fantastic. ... I think PlayStation wants to chase that lifelong fan thing of, hey, we got you in with an Astrobot..."
  • Media Molecule should do a new LittleBigPlanet. (60:11)
• Greg and Mike are skeptical PlayStation can compete with Nintendo/Roblox for kids, but acknowledge diversifying helps plant seeds for future loyal fans.
• Discussion on the low sales of Sackboy and Astrobot compared to Mario, but value of having those experiences.
• Greg: Ultimately, Nintendo is the "gateway drug" for kids; PlayStation shouldn’t chase too hard, but should offer approachable options.

---

13. Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Timestamps: 70:24–End

• Core recommendations:

  • Re-establish PlayStation’s unique brand identity—make PlayStation feel special again.
  • Increase cadence of quality game releases (including smaller, creative projects).
  • Exploit their war chest of IP through second-party and indie partnerships.
  • Embrace the new handheld era with a dedicated PS5-native device.
  • Continue focusing on exclusivity, but meet gamers on their preferred platforms and devices where feasible.
  • Diversify the portfolio to reach young/new gamers and ensure long-term fandom.

• Greg’s closing: "Okay, we fixed PlayStation." (70:24)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Matt Piscatella, Circana:
  • "TLDR: keep doing what they’re doing (outside of all the live service blip) and pray the macro market stops being insane—and make Knack 3." (13:53)
• Greg Miller:
  • "PlayStation was at its best when there were faces attached ... it became you knew more about what was going on." (18:49)
  • "PlayStation, I think, has been happy to lose its identity and become mainstream." (07:11)
• Blessing Adeoye Jr.:
  • "This generation feels like it's the remastered version of the previous generation." (07:51)
  • "We gotta get back to giving people the games that they want... shouldn't be waiting this long between some of these bigger PlayStation titles." (19:58)
  • "You can't just make PlayStation for people in their 30s." (66:47)
• Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike):
  • "We’re in the era of meeting the players where they are." (37:29)
  • "I would be ... I think you'd be surprised. Most people just want to be able to play the game ... they're just happy they're playing the game." (44:10)
• Audience/Community:
  • Street Shadow: "Deals that build a library that I don’t want to give up."
  • Sandy Crane: "The issue about all this is that price of consoles needs to match the value ... PC not only plays games, its value is universal, which helps justify its price."

---

Key Timestamps for Reference

• [05:26] “Does PlayStation need fixing?” – Defining the problem
• [07:51] Blessing: “This gen feels like the remastered version of the previous gen…”
• [13:54] Matt Piscatella’s industry analyst perspective
• [18:49] Greg: “PlayStation was at its best when there were faces attached…”
• [23:52] Discussion about PlayStation’s dormant IP and second-party options
• [31:21] Greg: “If I want the cool new indie, it’s on Steam.”
• [35:05] The call for a native PlayStation handheld
• [46:12] PlayStation pulling back from day-and-date PC releases
• [53:07] Barrett: Need to focus on sustainable development timelines/budgets
• [58:14] Family games/kids segment—comparing to Nintendo

---

Summary Points—The "Fixes" for PlayStation

• Brand Identity: Reignite community with recognizable faces or mascots.
• Game Release Cadence: Close gaps between big releases; empower more teams with smaller games and revivals.
• Use the IP Library: Let 2nd/3rd parties experiment with classics for variety and nostalgia.
• Handheld Hardware: Develop a true PlayStation-native handheld to meet “play anywhere” expectations.
• PC Policy: Keep main exclusives on console, use PC as an auxiliary platform (especially for live service).
• Player Retention: Make PlayStation the most convenient, versatile platform—address being outpaced by Steam/Switch for indies and mobility.
• Young Gamers: Don’t chase Nintendo/Roblox head-to-head, but maintain approachable, family-friendly options in the ecosystem.

---

Conclusion

The Kinda Funny crew agrees PlayStation isn’t critical, but tweaks are needed: more creative output, faster iterations, leveraging classic franchises, and finally, innovating on hardware and accessibility for modern gamer lifestyles. The community is invited to weigh in with their "fixes" for PlayStation.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

Everything feels more expensive right now.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

That's why this matters. TikTok Shop has a huge selection of

[Greg Miller]

products with surprising deals. You don't expect affordable fines for everyday life. Download TikTok now. If unwanted thoughts are taking over, don't wait to get help. Visit nocd.com to book a free call with their team.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows go to patreon.com kindafunny.

[Greg Miller]

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kinda Funny Games cast for Thursday, April 2, 2026. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller alongside Forbes 30 under 30 aka New York Game Awards. Nominated aka PlayStation. Poppy Blessing. Eddie Oye Jr. Good day, Greg. How are you?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm doing good. How are you?

[Greg Miller]

Doing good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What's up? Would you look at me like that? What's on your mind?

[Greg Miller]

Little sleight of hand when you were looking at my eyes. I took the coaster. You didn't.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Oh, you know what I mean.

[Greg Miller]

You didn't always look at your wallet.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, no, I did get a new wallet, by the way.

[Greg Miller]

Let's see it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's very thin now.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Stop it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

If you didn't know Blessing had George Castanza wallet, he had a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's in ice.

[Greg Miller]

Whoa.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

That is ice. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

How's it feel? New life.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I keep getting scared I'm gonna lose it.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Sure.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's so light that I'm like, if it's not, like, don't pickpocket me. But if it's not there, I wouldn't notice, you know what I mean? Otherwise, like, you steal that for me, I'm gonna know.

[Barrett]

We'll hire a couple people to, like, test it out on you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, no, please, no. But yeah, it's like, I don't like, should I even be putting this in my back pocket? You know what I mean? Like, we're not even sure.

[Barrett]

Sure.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like a whole new world now with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I love that.

[Greg Miller]

Over there is the master of hype, Snowbike Mike.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Hello, Greg. Great to see you.

[Greg Miller]

Good morning.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

As someone who has a wallet very similar to that, please, please be mindful. If you put the wallet in your back pocket and then your cell phone on top of that, you reach for your cell phone, usually pulls the wallet out with you. It'll fall on the ground. Be mindful of that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Be mindful.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Demir, how far from just being done with wallets altogether? I know we're close, but, like, you figure you can have most of your credit, all your Credit cards on your phone right now. Google Pay, Apple Pay, you got that going. I know they got IDs you can put on your, your phone, but you can't drive with those. Right? Is that. I don't think it counts as a license. I think it's just an id. Yeah, y. Exactly.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think the, I think the idea is the last thing because I, I was doing the thing where I was like, okay, thin wallet. I gotta get down to the bare essentials. What do I really need?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And yeah, you're right. Like I can get most what my, my. My train car, my clipper card I can get on my phone. Yeah. My. I guess my laundry card because I go to the laundromat, I can't put that on my part. Yeah. So I do have that. And then. Yeah, my credit cards.

[Greg Miller]

Yay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't have cash. Really?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Gotta always cash on you.

[Greg Miller]

Did you even consider getting the wallet that attaches to the phone? That is just your cards or on the back of your phone or whatever. You seen those?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I've seen those. I don't know. It's scary to me. I don't know why. It's just changed.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Change in general, scary. Isn't that right, Mike?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Change is scary. And you know what? When we talk about change, changing the big dog behind us is a little scary.

[Greg Miller]

Let's talk about changing PlayStation. If you didn't know everybody, this is the Kinda Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday we run you through the biggest topics in gaming. Whether they be reviews, previews, or just things we need to talk about. We couldn't do without our patreon producers on patreon.com kinda funny. So thank you, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster Delaney, the Psalm Twining. Remember, if you want to be part of the show and tell me how you'd fix PlayStation. YouTube super chat right now, YouTube.com kind of funny games. Of course we're live on Twitch, but over on YouTube that's where you can super chat. Get your questions, comments, concerns, topics. Read here on the show, of course, like subscribe, share, pick up a membership, but I'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be topic of the show. It is how to fix it. We get kind of funny. Of course. Tuesday kicked off with how to fix kind of funny because we're far from infallible, but pretty close. Yesterday was a banger of an episode how to fix Xbox. Mike, great job with the presentation.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Thanks. Thank you so much. And shout out to the audience for being very active and involved. I will say the YouTube comments through the roof on this one. A lot of engagement, a lot of excitement, a lot of passion.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

And so I hope that they all bring it for this one as well.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You say passion, were they nice? I didn't, I don't read the YouTube comments.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

They were very nice. They were very nice. They were excited to talk about what they would do. I think the big one to remember is like we were talking in a dream world.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

What would CEO Mike in a dream world do? So like try to remember that when you would come up with crazy ideas, you know.

[Greg Miller]

Well, today's the day to jump into PlayStation. How to fix PlayStation is our topic and I feel this has got a lot of PS I love U XOXO DNA in it. A lot of topic.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I feel like this was every topic on ps. I love uxoxo.

[Greg Miller]

Nah, towards the end maybe, but it wasn't even as bad as it became and then as wherever we are now. But that does lead to the first topic. I'll kick to you blessing. Oh, does it need fixing? Does PlayStation need fixing? I think with Xbox, at least from my perspective, Xbox was the serious. Oh God, how do you save this? What are we gonna do with this brand? Blah blah blah. PlayStation is the more energetic. Interesting. I can't believe they're doing this, but it doesn't seem like they're in freefall. Would you term it as they do they need fixing?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think fixing implies that something's broken.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And when I say, would I say PlayStation is broken? Is broken. I don't know if I would go that far. But I do think there are plenty of things that you can make better. I do think there are plenty of improvements to make. I think this generation especially like I think PlayStation has been broke, broken this generation is what I'll say. I don't think the system of PlayStation is broken. I don't think we can. I don't think next generation necessarily is going to be a copy of this generation. Fingers crossed. But right now for sure I think there are things that could be fixed.

[Greg Miller]

Michael, is PlayStation broken?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I like that answer, bless, because I'm on the opposite side. But PlayStation is not broken and it does not need fixing. You are in first for a reason. You have solidified this gap, this lead, this margin. You have created a community of die hard fans that are in it to win it and are a part of this from now until doomsday most likely. And I do not see a reason why we need to fix it now, of course, when we get into this topic, I will have improvements I'd like to see. But truly and Honestly, right now PlayStation does not need any fixing. They need to stay the course.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, interesting. Okay. I think that's the one for me of like, does PlayStation need fixing? And again, I come at it from a more fun topic than it's the end of the world like we were. I think a little bit with xbox and I think the very least they need tweaking. Like, I really feel, to your point, Mike, of The die hard PlayStation audience, I think that has been eroded. And that's not to say that there aren't die hard PlayStation fans, but I just don't feel the fandom the way I did when we were doing beyond and we were talking PS3 and we were talking about PlayStation 4 and PSX. And I know of course I'm part of that equation of like, well, I'm not running a PlayStation podcast anymore and I'm not doing that. But it's like even outside of that, I think it was a conversation we had in a super chat last week on the shows maybe, right. Made a similar point, knowing we were going to get here and somebody said, well, it's like, you're crazy. PlayStation is more mainstream than ever. Look at all the top games, Call of Duty, Madden, etc. They're all there and they're all on PlayStation. And my point was like, that's. For me, the part of the problem is that PlayStation, I think, has been happy to lose its identity and become mainstream. It's just the place you play your games on, which is then eroded out of like, well, why are you buying this over another box? Why are you buying this as. Let's take memory loss out of the conversation. Why are you buying this over PC right when it's like, okay, well, I'm doing it for a few exclusives. And this PlayStation 5 lineup of exclusives hasn't been PlayStation.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, Greg, when you introduced me as PlayStation Poppy Pop, part of me wanted to stop you, but you called me Xbox Poppy yesterday, so I know you only did it. But like, to your point, I looked at my PlayStation Wrapped last year and I looked at my Steam wrapped and all the different wraps they did. And last year, for the first time probably ever for me, Steam was my number one platform. Steam had overtaken PlayStation for me. And it's to everything you're saying where I'm kind of just like, I just find PC right now, for me at least, the best place to play of course, console has the benefits. If you're somebody who's looking for something that's approachable, easy, don't to worry about drivers and all that shit. Right. Console's right there for you. But even with the games, right. Like I look at Ghost of Yotei, it's not a bad game whatsoever. Great game in fact. Right. But that didn't really excite me like Spider Man 2. I'll say the same thing. It's like that's a great game. Doesn't really excite me on the level of what we were talking about toward the end of the PS4 generation with like Spider Man 1, Horizon 1, Ghost of Sushi. I know I say in the same franchises, but that's the point. When they were new and when they were fresh, it felt like a different thing. And God of war 2018 and all this stuff, this generation feels like it's the. Almost like the remastered version of the previous generation. Which just doesn't sit as exciting to me as a player.

[Greg Miller]

Something I say around here and I'll kick it right back to you after this, but something I say in the office here a lot and I've been talking to Jen about right. Is like, this is going to sound highfalutin, but I really love the team and the content we make here. But what kind of funny does is an 11 person business? Every day is extraordinary, but when you do it every day it becomes ordinary. And I think we're back to that. To your point of like Spider Man 2. All right. It's more Spider man. Like yeah. You're not going to get the same ba Spider man reaction because the jigs up and it's a great game and that's awesome. But does that go down as someone's favorite game of all time, their favorite place?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Horizon Forbidden. What? I'm a Horizon Forbidden west defender when I see all the hate online. But I also get it at the same time.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

When it is the thing of like, all right, like the story. Horizon Forbidden west, story plot wise, wasn't necessarily a step up. Maybe it was a step sideways. Some parts of it I would say were maybe a little bit worse than the first game.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But that game's great. But yeah, it's just not landing the same way because I think it's just not as fresh. Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I mean I. It's interesting you guys bring that up because I think every new IP that PlayStation puts out is that fresh. Oh, wow.

[Barrett]

Moment.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

You bring up Horizon. We'll get Soros coming up here. Which is kind of fresh, but also.

[Greg Miller]

And I'm wondering, but we had this conversation yesterday. Does that work?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Right?

[Greg Miller]

Is it going to be. Oh, it's more returnal.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I think will be like the. The wow moment again. But I would push back on you, Greg, of like super fans. I do feel like that in gaming culture has kind of evolved and moved away. Right. And I think that is also easy to say when you're in first place and you are the juggernaut. Everyone is a PlayStation fan because we're doing that now. Right. It's like everyone's already here, so you're not getting much pushback. I think we are as gamers like moved on from that. It was like we're just here to celebrate good games and we're playing them wherever they are. When it comes to the console stuff, I think during COVID maybe when PlayStation backed out of E3 as well, that was kind of the end of like the PlayStation mega fans who Rob was celebrating it and it's like, hey, we just celebrate good games now. And so you don't probably hear that as much as it used to be. It's how I feel about that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I think, you know what's going to be interesting and fun about this show is both or I guess trio of us, all of us here at the table are going to talk from a passion perspective and a fan perspective. Right. I think already with the audience and super chats I'm getting here. Please keep them coming in. I'm seeing a lot of passion, a lot of fans shout out to Triforce Power, bring back Vita, bring back Kevin Butler. Like we're talking about that kind of thing. But I said, you know what, everybody? What if these three chuckleheads, these thousands of chuckleheads, shut the fuck up for a second. Oh, and we went to somebody who maybe wasn't going to seek from the passion point of view, would instead speak from the number point of view. So I reached out to the one, the only, Matt Piscatella at Circana and I asked a couple simple questions on a DM over on bs. That's a blue sky too. It was basically, we're doing this episode, how to fix PlayStation. Does it need to be fixed from your numbers perspective? And Matt wrote back a dissertation, which I adore. Thank you, Matt Piscatella. So we'll jump in right now. Of course, Sir Khan, if you didn't know, the industry tracking group, it used to be NPD pays attention to all the numbers, the trends. They're the ones telling you what the top games selling were, et cetera, et cetera, Matt says. So in my opinion, with PlayStation it's not about fixing but more about ensuring the Future. Right now, PlayStation is in a strong position across hardware, content and accessories globally, but with a hardware market that is currently, let's call it uncertain to perhaps understate the situation a bit, and a younger demographic that is more readily accepting of PC and mobile devices and has stuck with the big three of Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft for years now, how can PlayStation encourage and maintain a healthy player bas for years to come? They've been engaging with new and emerging methods of play and business models like cloud, subscription and PC for years, but have kept the console front and center to take the greatest advantage of the current market. But now that this may be forced to change, parentheses let me emphasize may as the future is a hell of a long way from clear at the moment. How will PlayStation make its umbrella bigger to make those more easily accessible areas more prevalent while not discouraging the currently more console based Coming off of Yesterday this is Greg interjecting coming off of yesterday's Xbox conversation and my whole thing of like cart before the horse they were early on cloud it could have been a bigger deal. Matt's talking the inverse of it, which I really do love. A PlayStation has that shit. But they're only talking about the consoles. Can't wait to dive into that. They have to balance the potential future with now with the now, something PlayStation has done better than any of the other major manufacturers in my opinion. I worry that recent changes may have slowed that flexibility a bit in hopes of securing the current console forward state of things. But who knows. So yeah, tldr keep doing what they're doing parentheses outside of all the live servers, outside of the all in on the live service blip and pray that things in the macro market stop being insane and make neck three.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's good.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you Matt.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Funny enough, one of the things and Matt puts it better in detail than I think I ever could, right? But like one of the things I was thinking about was the There's a scene in one of my favorite action movies, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol, where Tom Steamboat AKA Tom Cruise is. He's climbing on the side of the largest building in Dubai. And as he's climbing, he's on this mission. He's determined. He's like I know what I got to do. And he's like he's doing the Tom Cruise thing. It's like I'm carrying this thing out and Then he looks back, and in the very, very, very far distance, there's a gigantic sandstorm that's on the way. And as the eyes, the audience, the viewer, you're like, oh, shit, that's gonna come into play later. We're gonna see what's up with that thing later on in the movie. And I feel like right now we are Tom Cruise on the side of the Dubai building, looking and being like, what's on the horizon? Because all the things we talk about, right, like, whether it be younger audiences putting more time into the big three of Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, whether it be the rising costs of hardware and all these things, I do think that something's gotta give. And that's why yesterday, like, me and Mike continued the conversation of the Xbox thing into the marathon stream that me and him were doing. Not a marathon marathon stream. The marathon video game. The marathon.

[Greg Miller]

The hit PlayStation video game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The hit PlayStation. I don't know if I'd say hit, but it was the PlayStation video game that we like. And one of the things I mentioned is that I think Xbox is poised to maybe overtake PlayStation in the next generation or two, because potentially, if they carry out the like series S type, like, hey, let's have something that's accessible, approachable, easy for people to. Maybe not easy, but available for people to buy at a lower price than other hardware, that's going to be such a big deal. Like, value is going to be such a big deal. And I don't know what that looks like for PlayStation, providing that value to people. If PlayStation 6 is over $1000, if you have 7 is $1500.

[Greg Miller]

Well, there I think the interesting wrinkle about being Herman Hulse on the side of the building and seeing the sandstorm coming, right. What I've brought up a million times, and I want to bring back out, of course, is that cfo, the chief financial officer, Tao Lin, who talked about the shareholders and talk to the shareholders about the audience. Right? Stick with me. I'm going to read from Polygon's Patricia Hernandez reporting based on Sony's early February earnings call, where CFO Lynn detailed the Japanese company's latest business strategy to shareholders. Lynn's presentation noted that while sales of the new PlayStation 5 units are declining, Sony saw a small uptick in monthly active users for the console in December 2025. Revenue from PlayStation Plus Sony's gaming subscription service, quote unquote, reached a record high end quote last quarter. Lin said Sony intends to keep negotiating with suppliers to keep costs down on the hardware front. But the trajectory of these negotiations is hard to predict in the short term, Sony needs to find a way to keep making money. Given the stage of our console cycle, our hardware sales strategy can be adjusted flexibly and we intend to minimize the impact of increased memory costs on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the installed base to date. I think that is such an important quote. And this is before they raise the price, you know, Pro up to 150, 100, etc. Down to $50 for the portal. I think that's so important because I really do think, even though that sounds bad to a degree of monetizing, I think that is where we are headed. That storm is going to come ashore here and hit them and when they do, I think that they are in such a different spot than xboxes. On the Xbox show yesterday I talked so much about how I don't trust Microsoft coming down on them. This is bad. Eventually Xbox go or I'm sorry, Microsoft goes. Fuck it. Xbox dead. Microsoft gaming. That's what we're doing. Yada yada yada. PlayStation being so successful already. When this storm hits and it gets worse, as I've been predicting it will or whatever, I really do see them hemorrhaging. More closures, it sucks. More layoffs, it sucks. But getting back down to shit. We need to have the rallying cry of this is PlayStation and going back. Even I'm not talking numbers and it being that dire, but going back to that PlayStation 3 into 4 mentality of like, no, no, we. You are. We are groot. You are PlayStation. We are celebrating that we are talking to the audience and talking about the exclusives and talking about the developers and having a face that's actually connected to all this. Because for me, that's what I would fix about PlayStation Now. Both getting ready for that. But also think a little bit of what I talked about with Xbox. Like PlayStation was at its best when there were faces attached to PlayStation, when it was that, yeah, you could buy a PlayStation and just play the biggest games and never know the people behind your games. But when there was a shoe and there was an atom and there was a Jackie T. Jack Trenton out there, like that was fun for us. And it became you knew more about what was going on. And his PlayStation 4 took PlayStation to the stratosphere by having such a simple thing. Mark Cerny being out there on stage, we know we fucked up with the cell processor and PS3. This is easy to develop for. It's about games, Games, games, games, games. Well, Xbox said it's about Call of Duty and TV and Call of Duty and TV, TV. You know, like they went the opposite direction. PlayStation cooked them. And they lived in that for a while with the sharing video, Adam and Shu, all that different stuff that we loved. And then once they got humongous, they didn't want people talking anymore, so they shut those, shut that down. People left the company, you know, now Herman's there, but Herman barely speaks ever. And like, you're just at a place now where it's just a brand. And I think just being a brand can have brand loyalty, but it doesn't have that. All the shit's going south and I am committed to this platform feel to it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's fun. Yeah, go for it.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Go for it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's funny how I feel like some of our talking points here are going to so much echo some of the Xbox points, because I know Mike kind of brought up the same thing with Xbox of like, bring back Major Nelson. Bring back some faces that we can actually connect with. I think one of my main points in talking about this is to Greg's thing of we got to get back to like Prime PlayStation. We got to lock in and like, you know, focus to weather the storm is IP and is the video games. Let's get back to making the video games that people care about and want to play, right?

[Greg Miller]

Like games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I look back at late PS4 generation as like, damn, we were living, going back to the games I was mentioning, whether it be God of War 2018, Spider Man Horizon, Last of Us 2, Ghost of Tsushima, right? Like these are within a three year period of each other. If I was to reach back further, it would be bloodborne, right? Like Uncharted 4. This generation, we've seen so much development time get lost to this live service push and these games either not coming out or coming or coming out and disappearing in two weeks because oh shit, this didn't work. People didn't actually want this. I'm not, I'm not necessarily of the team. Wipe all live service from existence from PlayStation. I. I think there could be something there. Of course me, Mike, Andy are loving Marathon and like that's the game I want to continue to see live, even though I get scared. I was telling Mike before, I'm like, if Marathon shuts down, I'm out of here. I'm not doing video games anymore. I'm done. But we got to get back to giving people the games that they want, right? Video games take A long time to make. I shouldn't be waiting this long between, like some of these bigger PlayStation titles. Whether it be something like an Uncharted, whether it be something like the last was. Whether it be something like even Intergalactic.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like, and I would, if I jump in to go with your point here, you shouldn't be waiting so long between big PlayStation titles. And I would go as far as to say Ghost of Yote, Unchart, other studios. You just mentioned three Naughty Dog games. Sure, yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

But it used to be that it felt like, all right, well, Sony Bend will put out their game and then Sucker Punch, you'll do this. Then we'll get the Naughty Dog game. Then it'll be a Gran Turismo. Then you Pepper, you could see where we were going and see the lineup of why you're dedicated to take it a step further.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And this again will echo some of what we talked about with Xbox. I look at Naughty Dog, I look at. All right, you guys are all in on Intergalactic right now. Game is looking great. Awesome. Hey, somebody else is making Uncharted. I don't care if you don't want somebody else to make uncharted. We are PlayStation. We only IP. We need this right now because financial times are getting tough. We're taking Uncharted and we're giving it to a blue point rip or giving it to a studio that we own that would spend better time working on this than to make the next days gone. That comes and goes.

[Greg Miller]

Turned out it was baby steps.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

You nailed it for me. Bless of like I was going to echo exactly what you say. Right. Comes down to the games. And I would. I'm interested to have the conversation about the face. Right. Because I don't think PlayStation needs a face. They have the games. I think the games speak to the modern audience out there. I don't think they need a face anymore. They just want to see the games. Right. When you bring up that article of like, hey, the consoles are slowing down. How do we now make more money off the install base? I think it comes down to blessing. Plain simple. The games have. Are taking too long to make. Right. We need more games out there. You're seeing that. Hey, how do we get that install base to be engaged more and spend more money? Because that's what we need. Consoles aren't selling. Yeah, you're in first place. You've sold all the consoles you need. You need to start making more games. And on the opposite side, what I always think is like, Xbox tried to get themselves to that point by buying up all these studios so they have a ton of games. PlayStation on the opposite side went with quality over quantity. But now you're hitting the point where it's like, hey, those quality titles are taking so long to make that you are missing out on the dollars that we are willing to spend because we don't have the lineup. Like you said, Greg. Right. Of like we're not hitting the lineup that we need. Or maybe we need to start making smaller titles to fit into here like an Astrobot, a Sly Cooper, a Ratchet

[Greg Miller]

and Clank or start buying those smaller titles. We're back to, you know, argum exclusivity and stuff. Second party. But like for PlayStation to come in and support some of the weirder games that are coming out of Japan. Right. And get back to having that like even though it was Japan studio at the time, a local Roko a pat upon feel. Get something like that over here again. That's what I'm talking about with a brand identity. And I do think you 100% can be. There isn't a face of the company. Instead it is Astrobot and Sackboy and Nathan. But when we're in a generation, right. This where I feel it's so few and far between. That's where it would be so helpful to have a shoe that is just talking to the audience and putting out a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And like again we talk about. We're talking about these companies that have a war chest of ip. Where is Sly Cooper? I and I understand, hey, all your studios are busy. Cool. There are so many other studios that I know would be down to do a second party. Hey, we are partnering the PlayStation and we're going to make a Sly Cooper game.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah. The second party option is such a great option right here. Right. It's like you have the war chest, you have the idea, you have the IPs that really mix well with the PlayStation audience. Why are we not seeing an awesome indie dev team that's out there or a small double A team and going, hey, how do we support you? By you giving us what we need and our players needed. That's that game. Right? They should be doing that for sure.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. And I would extend that to you. Like we can sit here and list so many IP where it's like, man, you guys are doing Jak and Daxter. I would even say, I know we got Ratchet and Clank at the beginning of this generation. Like I insomniac. They're busy working on these Marvel games. Like and I understand. Hey, if they want to, if they, if they see like, oh, after we get through this thing, we're going to make Ratchet, that's cool. But if we're, if we're two, if we're three games away from a potential Ratchet and Clank game, well, who can we give it to? To at least experiment with it a little bit and try something fresh with it?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah, the chat brings up. Of course, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. They did that and they got a Metacritic score of a 70 with sons of Sparta.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I would push back on that and be like, yeah, more of that. Right? There should be more people in your sandbox playing and creating for you. That's the first time we've seen a God of War game that's not the big epic narrative adventure God of war game ever, right? It's like, hey, we need more of those.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I don't think, you know, in, in researching for this episode, right, I ran into one of the interviews with Herman where he was talking about the live service, Push, Concord, etc, and him being like, I don't want it to be a place where you can't fail. I want us to learn from the failings. And yada. I don't think the lesson from Sons of Sparta is, oh, fuck, don't do spin offs. Don't do.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

It's like more Lego Horizon.

[Greg Miller]

Do things that are more true to the ip, more true to the characters, right? Like if we were going to go and somebody was going to pay, hey, I'm making a sly coup. We go to a smaller 20 person, a way forward whoever, and we're like, give me a 2D side scrolling sly. Metroidvania. Like, you know what I mean? Not.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's not like a top down stealth game or something.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, there's a. Let's not spend the four to five years making a true 3D. We're spinning the camera around. Sly. Sly's been gone long enough. He did have his fourth game come out from Sansaru. Rest in peace. Thank you so much. Meta. Like, let people take these things and make you faster titles to fill these gaps between the next big things.

[Barrett]

Also, I think really the lesson from Sons of Sparta, even though Mega Cat was the one to pitch it, like, I don't know if that was the team who has mainly been doing backyard

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

baseball for the last couple of years.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I don't know if that was the

[Barrett]

team to really see a Metroidvania, like saying like doing like true to the character stuff like I do think a Metroidvania and God of War, like, would have fit with the right team.

[Greg Miller]

100, I think, yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I think I take chances is right, Greg, like you said, right. We need more to fill in here. And someone wrote in, it's like PlayStation is afraid to take that hit in quality. And it's like, no, no, no, I don't think that at all. Like, players know what they're gonna get. When that banner pops up and you see the. All the iconic names there, these smaller titles, I don't think players are going, if this isn't a 10 out of 10, I'm gonna be so disappointed. Right. I think they're going to celebrate more titles here.

[Greg Miller]

Street shadow 20 says patapon, ape escape, Stray, Sifu, etc are not. But they are deals that build a library that I don't want to give up. I need PlayStation to lean into those smaller titles. Be a little weird. That piggybacks off to the thing I was talking about from last week, where if we're going to sit here and be like, no, there's more PlayStation gamers than ever, but we're talking about the biggest titles. That is an audience that is ready to move. Whether it be, okay, cool, the Steam machine is cheap and affordable and gives me all this other stuff. Great. Whether it is, oh, man, play anywhere is exciting. You can't rest on your laurels right now and be like, well, we have PlayStations conquered the console market. Nothing's gonna happen. There's plenty of Steam or sand coming at you in the storm. You need to be ready for.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. And I know there's the big financial conversation about it and then there's the community conversation about it as far as how you measure the importance of a game like Asifu, or I think, back to Chicory, a colorful tale, which I don't think that was exclusive. I don't remember if that was exclusive, but. But I played that on PlayStation because PlayStation had adopted that as a PlayStation indie when they were making that a thing toward the beginning of the PS5 generation. And like, I miss that. There's a era where I would look at PlayStation and granted, it's because I. I think I mainly had a PlayStation in 2014 or 2015. Right. But, like, I looked at that library and went, damn, like, I want to try out a rogue legacy. I want to. Oh, it was Vita. That's what it was. I want to try out a rogue legacy. I want to try out these cool indie games. And I feel like a lot of that has been lost to PC and 100% Nintendo. And even with Game Pass, right, like a little bit of Xbox as well. Because that investment doesn't feel like it's as strong. And you can make the financial argument of, well, PlayStation, they're most worried about them big bucks. They're most worried about getting people to come over so they can play Fortnite or Genshin or. I don't know if Roblox is on PlayStation. I assume it is Roblox or whatever, Minecraft, right? Like they want, people they want. They're looking at that wide net of the most amount of gamers that are going to come through and spend those microtransactions or whatever. But I think when you focus all in on that, then you start to lose these little battles of people who associate with the community, people who are like, oh man, I like, what's the next PlayStation indie? I'm going to play this there. I'm going to plug come through 4C4 stray or whatever.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. If you're not, you're not getting those, you're not getting them out the gate, right? One of the things I want to call out Street Shadows thing says deals that build a library don't want to give up. This has been such a conversation with the Xbox crowd of like, I'm stuck here because I had it. And then also the Phil conversation from X Cast, right? Of like we lost the worst generation to lose. People have libraries again. I think if you start looking at, well, PlayStation, everybody's playing the biggest games on PlayStation. They have these numbers of people playing it. Yes, that's true. But I still think those kind of gamers are willing gonna be willing to move when the next big better deal comes. And right now it's what we're seeing, it's what we're talking about. Bless you. Bring up, you know, Steam being your most played thing last year, right? To look at me, Greg fucking Miller, right? And my trophies so far for I can go back through January pretty quickly here on PSN profiles, right? Last trophy I got was Loco Rocco. That was Ben trophy. Before that Rocket League, that was Ben. The Resident Evil Requiem thing is there, but I played that on Switch. That was me booting it, I think for the stream in there, right? Romeo is a dead man. Which I think it was just that we played the on my unit for free. Nicktoons, Dial Destiny, Dice of Destiny, Ben Hot Wheels, Ben. Sonic Racing, Ben Justice League, Cosmic Chaos, Ben. Finally, the last trophy I popped. I popped. Greg Miller popped on his PlayStation was in January 25th on skate. And I assure you that was me turning on skate and it was the ones I earned on my. My Rog Ally popping over there because they have cross everything.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah, I'm glad that Street Shadow brought this up and you brought it up as well, Greg. It was like what I was gonna say is you kind of have your players right now held hostage with this library. But. But as we continue to progress as blessing saying more people are buying games somewhere else. If your first party titles aren't enough. Right. When we go to, hey, I've only gotten three big first party titles this year, maybe two. Oh, now it's four. Right. If it's not enough to start building up that library to really make me go, ooh, next generation, I can't get rid of this.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Then players will start to leave. Right. And so you got to find a better cadence of more library, more, more, more. So I really have to go, oh, I don't want to give this up quite yet.

[Greg Miller]

And Matt Sanders in this live chat goes, and why is that though, Greg, of me, you know, going to play elsewhere. And again, it's that PlayStation. And this is what I've talked about a million times. Not that I'm trying to throw you out. I'm just admitting I say it a lot. PlayStation lost me because it wasn't about the trophies, it was about the convenience. I loved my PlayStation because I sat down and I turned it on and all the games I could possibly want were there. You know what I mean? With the rare Xbox exclusive. They were there and it worked. And now I turn on the Rog Ally. I turn on my Razer Blade 16 and it works. I turn on my Xbox, I play Starfield on my big tv. Jen says it's time to go to bed. I turn it off. I go up there, I turn on the Rog Ally, the save pops there. I get this gorgeous Switch thing and there's all these great Nintendo exclusives that are making me turn it on all the end of last year into this year and I am there and I'm like, well, I've been playing my Switch all year long. That's all right. All month, a few months long. Why not do Resident Evil Requiem there? Blessing says it's great. It's great there. It's that convenience of I am a gamer who wants it with me. And I think as you lose the ability of like, well, when I started giving up playing games, it's like, well, the indies aren't even there. If I want the cool new indie, it's on Steam, right? I'm gonna go get it there. Maybe it's on Switch, maybe it's over on Game Pass. Maybe it's on PlayStation, but usually it's on there. Not to mention those codes are always ready faster for us. Well cool then I don't care about the trophies. And when you start eroding that, it's like, well, I'll be back for the big stuff. But what's the big stuff? What? You know what I mean. You scroll all the way back here on the games I'm playing and it's what they yote yotay in 9-25-I so

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

that leads me to two two thoughts, right? And two big points that I think are gonna be a big topic conversation. My first one well, I love a

[Greg Miller]

good big topic of conversation. Yeah, and we couldn't have them without our supporters. If you love us and these big topics because we love having them, pick up a kinda funny membership patreon.com kinda funny YouTube.com kinda funny games, Apple, Spotify. You toss us 10 bucks, we toss to you more than 80 episodes a month of ad free content. You also get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller, and a 15 to 20 minute podcast series called Greg Way each and every day. And you get good karma for supporting an 11 person 11 year old small business. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsor. You finally sit down to game. Just you, your controller and zero responsibilities. When your brain decides that's the perfect time to say what if I'm secretly a terrible person and everyone can see it but me? And suddenly relaxing and enjoying yourself is impossible. Instead, your brain grabs onto that thought and will not let it go. Here's the thing. That kind of relentless thought spiral isn't just anxiety. It could also be ocd, a condition that's way too misunderstood and way more common than most people realize. But it doesn't have to be that way. OCD needs ERP or Exposure and Response Prevention, which has proven to be the most effective treatment. And that's where NOCD comes in. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment and it's covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. All of their licensed therapists specialize in ERP therapy and will help you learn to take the power away from the intrusive thoughts in live face to face virtual sessions. If unwanted thoughts are taking over, don't wait to get help. Visit nocd.com and book a free call with their team. That's N O C D dot com. And we're back. One thing I haven't able. And we're going to your topic. This is just a. This is a little piece of parsley. It seems too early to be booking SGF appointments. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, April.

[Greg Miller]

April 1st.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

April, May, June.

[Greg Miller]

Two months of June.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

So really, it's not that far away. Yeah. Big Miller, it's time. You're always busy. You're moving, bro.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So one of the things I mentioned at the top of this was that I think PlayStation this generation is broken. And one of the reasons I specify this generation is because when I look over the horizon, pun intended, I think you're gonna get your shit together and have these studios not working on as many live service things. And I think we're gonna start seeing those games come out and they will be like the more traditional, big single player, Sony stuff. We can get into the conversation of, like, what are those? But the other conversation here that I think excites us at this table more about is what's up with the handheld. Because I think you need a handheld. Everything you're saying, Greg, like, the pickup and playability. Hey, I want to take this thing with me.

[Greg Miller]

And the success of the Portal, and not only the success of the portal, which PlayStation has admitted they didn't see coming, their continued support of it, bringing cloud streaming to it, getting it there. Like, we don't, I know, like, give them credit for selling a device, but like, in supporting a device. But, like, they've done a good job with the Portal. I love my Portal.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes. And we're talking about. We're in the handheld era. You know what I mean? Like, you talk about the Portal, which comes directly from PlayStation, but also there are the Steam decks, There are the ROG allies, there's the Switch 1 and 2. People love handhelds right now, and people loved handhelds when PlayStation did handhelds, you know, rip the Vita, even though I know that didn't see the thing that they want. But like. Like, I think we're in a place where PlayStation can do that. PC, like, handheld, of course, not running on P. I don't actually know how that works, but, like, it would be PlayStation software, hardware, or whatever, it would be meant to play your older games. When I say older, I would say, like PS5 games.

[Greg Miller]

Can I. I'll jump in and tell you why it is happening. Without a doubt.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Of course, going forward by prioritizing monetization of our installed base to date, as you pare that back and get it down to what is the PlayStation faithful or what will become the new whatever you want to call it, PlayStation faithful. Those are the people who go, man, PlayStation 6 is still so far away. I this thing is dropping and it can play probably all my old PlayStation 5 games. I saw it way earlier in the chat and I'm sorry, I don't remember names because there's thousands of you are chatting. Thank you so much. Way earlier in the chat being, Man, PlayStation dropped the ball by not having a series S competitor. Right. That even though the handheld is going to be expensive, that is what this would be. Yeah, that's what this is going to be of like, hey, it's a PlayStation 5, I'm assuming S in the palm of your hand, right? And yes, if you want in higher depth, then click it over to cloud streaming. Click it over to, you know, remote playing. Go ahead, Mike.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

And as Blessing said, we're in the era of handhelds. I would push that further. We're in the era of meeting the players where they're at.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

That we've talked about with Xbox and why me and Greg and Bless have praised them so much. It's like the player just wants to play their games anywhere they are. Right. And I think PlayStation now, when you look forward, needs to do that. They have got the player install base, they got the great games. They need to make sure that the player doesn't have that. Question of similar to what happened with me with Xbox and the erosion of jumping over to Steam, like, blessings playing of like, hey, I saw a lot of games that I wanted to play on Xbox were on Steam before that and it was a long time to wait.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Same goes now. It's like a lot of players are going to be looking over at Steam with the Steam machine and the Steam handheld going, oh, well, I can do that. Xbox similar, like, man, Xbox is meeting the players where they are. PlayStation, it's their turn now to say, hey, you want a handheld, we're going to meet you there. I am surprised. We'll talk about PC a little bit later, which will be a fun conversation. But like, yeah, having that PlayStation library wherever you want to play is the next big moment for PlayStation and Sony to say, we're here, spend more money with us because we're going to make sure you can game anywhere you want to.

[Greg Miller]

So let me just bring you here over there. Megan E. Rid. Megan. Megan Rid.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Megan Reed.

[Greg Miller]

Megan Reed. Is that what it is? Why is all of it low and then R is uppercase? That is we're just gonna say Megan Ridd. Where they are is PlayStation though. And again that's to my point. We gotta monetize these motherfuckers. You're not buying another PlayStation 5 or a Pro because you already own it, right? They are gonna want you to buy and they're not ready to give you a PlayStation 6 because of RAM. Wherever we are, install bases, yada yada. And they know that you could sell the handheld and bring. If it's a PlayStation 5 handheld, roll those numbers in here. Right? Let me bring you.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I want you to buy a Steam machine. I don't want you to buy a Steam handheld. I want your money.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly, yeah. And so you know, another thing Matt tossed in his BSDMS to me was that the US install base of PlayStation 5 finished February at 29 million, currently trending 1.5% ahead of PlayStation 4 on a time aligned basis. Right, which is great, but how do you keep that momentum when you hit that ceiling of it's a mature market and we've sold that many. Right. Gamatsu had some stuff off of those same financial numbers that I wanted to call in just to talk about how well PlayStation is doing. I don't want this to be well, we're going to fix it. There are 132 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network as of September 30th, which is up 3 million from the same period the previous fiscal year. PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 software combined sold 97.2 million units during the three months ended December 30th, 31st, 2025, which is up 1.3 million from the same period. Of the previous fiscal year. 13.2 million units were first party titles, which is up 1.6 million from the same period. The previous fiscal year, 76% of software sales were full game software digital Downloads, which is up 2% from the same previous fiscal year. So like again, you have this momentum, you need to keep the momentum as Matt is talking about and to the, you know, CFO line, you got to monetize who you have. And since you can't sell another PlayStation to most people, right, you get this handheld, you put it the PlayStation a different place.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

It'll be interesting to talk console pricing when we get to this next generation because as someone in the chat wrote, Xbox players are jumping ship, right? And now it's like kind of that moment it will be very interesting of like when we get to the two next consoles announced, what is the pricing of both of them? If PlayStation were to come in cheaper than the Next Xbox. A lot of Xbox console players would jump there and probably stay there, as they already are doing.

[Greg Miller]

Michael, let me ask you a question from the super chat. Bam. Super Chats says, didn't meeting the players where they are hurt Xbox?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah, I didn't like that one. Bam. Because I think it only strengthened that. Actually. I, I would push back on that and be like, I think that was the reason why a lot of Xbox players stayed around because their library came with them to different devices. Most importantly, when you hear Greg Miller, the PlayStation super fan, talk about Xbox, what's his most celebrated thing? Play anywhere. Smart delivery, right? Like if you can do that with PlayStation, where me and Blessing buy a game on our PlayStation and it is now on my handheld, maybe one day on PC, on its own launcher, like that's a big deal.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

These are the benefits that players want.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I'm investing into these companies. They should be investing in me as well. Of like, like, let's keep this guy around longer. So I wouldn't say that there was a lot of other things that hurt Xbox, but meeting the players where they're at, Absolutely not.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Not having necessarily the games or the marketing, I think to bring them into it. But we talked about that yesterday. What I do want to bring is another super chat from Street Shadow. The portal is the cheapest entry point into the PlayStation ecosystem. You don't need a PlayStation console anymore if you just want to play a game on the cloud. And I think again, you're 100% correct. And it's them doing the opposite. The inverse of Xbox, where they do that, they put that out. We all care about it. We like our portal. Great. But you don't need to put your pedal to the metal on saying that because that's just gonna confuse people. Go buy the fucking PlayStation. Right? They're not shouting it from the rooftops. There aren't commercials. You don't need a PS5 anymore. Right. That is there. So that if you wanted to and you're that dialed in as a consumer, if you are that PC player who is never going to buy a PlayStation console, maybe this can entice you.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

But I think that's also in their quiver, though. Inevitably, if that storm hits and they needed to do that, everything suddenly went this shit. Even though it's going really good right now, when those winds change, they do have that ability to say, I remember though, right here. But I think the dedicated handheld is way more sexy. But again, that's because I want to go buy it because I already Own a portal. Like, I would do that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I'm somebody who. I have my portal. I rarely use my portal. I'm not really. I'm not gonna say I'm not a fan of the portal. It just doesn't appeal to me as far as the cloud aspect of it. I'm just not a big cloud.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah. I don't cloud.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. And a native handheld person. And I think the idea of the PlayStation handheld Future Excites me for the fact of we've seen Steam do it. Steam has their Steam verification process. Steam has the power to do that because they're Steam, because they're the guys. PlayStation has the power to go, all right, we are going to have a verification process for games that work on the handheld thing. We can also look at what we're talking about as far as the SIFU's, the strays, the. I bring up Rollerdrome. Even though people forget about Rollerdrome.

[Greg Miller]

Right. Everyone forgets about it, but it was a great game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You have games like that that you could partner with and go, hey, can you make sure this works on our handheld for us? We want to push you as like a premier thing for this. And like, if you can get some of those first party games. That's the one thing I worry about is can a new PlayStation first party game work on a handheld? I don't know. Unless you really. You really dial in your developers and go, no, we really want to push this and make it a thing. I think that's the one thing where we get into the Xbox series SX category where it is. All right, now, when does this thing start to hold back? The bigger thing?

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I would say my pushback would be. I would be. I think you'd be surprised. Most people just want to be able to play the game. Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And that's how I let it go.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I don't think a lot of people will poo poo going, this isn't up to snuff. Right. They're just happy they're playing the game. And sure, there's a line there that you can't cross. Like now it's like, no, it's not worth it. But like, I think that crew, like you're saying, bless, just give me something that can play. It's close to playable. We're on right there. People want that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That, yes. And one, there's a chat. Somebody's Ottercog says, Counterpoint Vita didn't sell in a world without competition from Steam. Right. Like, the thing I'd say is that this Is entirely different from apples and oranges. Yeah, apples and oranges. In the way that Vita brought you into a different PlayStation ecosystem. Right. Like this would be the same games that you're playing.

[Greg Miller]

This is why the switch was revolutionary.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I'm sorry there's no longer a console and a handheld. It's one like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I love, love the Steam deck.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like cool. I play Super Meat Boy 3D on one and then my PC, the save carries over. Super Meat Boy is a bad example because that doesn't have context. But for the most part. Right. That's so easy and simple and it's all in the same ecosystem. And as PlayStation, if you can make that push for, hey, we have games that are playable on this thing and it is the vast majority of your library. It might not be Crimson Desert, but it is XYZ games.

[Greg Miller]

That low power mode they keep pushing, it's going.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think that'll work. And we're talking about. We're talking about this in a world with dlss, pssr, all this shit to make games look and run better. Yeah. And we're also. I lost my other. I had another point I was going to talk about, but I already lost it. But yeah, we're talking about a world with that which I think excites people.

[Greg Miller]

So.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh. The other point I was going to make actually was we're also in a world where these games don't feel like they're necessarily pushing the PS5 like crazy. We're not. I'm not in a place where I'm like, I need the PlayStation 6 right now, tomorrow.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, God, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, you know what I mean? And I think we're going to still be there for a while, so I don't know. I think you could be able to pull it off and have a PlayStation handheld look and run well and have games that are good enough in terms of optimization.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

100%.

[Greg Miller]

Michael, what do you want to double back to? You were throwing some things out there. You couldn't wait.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Oh, I mean, like, oh, you know what the face we talked about. I am interested on live service and PC.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sure. Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Those would be my two right there that I'd have a conversation about. We could start off with PC. I think PlayStation has made the correct move, moving away from PC and forcing you to buy the console. Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like March 4, 2026, Sony pulls back from PlayStation games on PC. It's Jason over at Bloomberg. Sony is no longer plans to release its big PlayStation 5 games on PC. A major shift in Strategy that sees a video game maker returning to console exclusivity after six years of flirting with multi platform releases. Online games such as Marathon and Marvel Token will still be released across multiple platforms, but single player titles such as last year's samurai hit Ghost of Yotei and the upcoming action game Sorrows will remain exclusive to PlayStation 5.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Now for the audience out there, there's Michael Howard, Snow, Mike. Mike, who was very excited about PlayStation games coming to PC. The hope that hey, they're doing well, let's go day and date. That's where I dreamt of us going.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

But there's the businessman now here at the table that says, hey, if I want to remain in first place, I want to bring more people to the console. Yeah. I'm pulling them away from PC and I'm saying I'm letting them know these games are so good you have to come here. And they've already proven that.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

And it's already been done. They've absolutely killed Xbox. They're in first place for a reason. Players on PC. These games are so good, they will come and buy that second console or technically their first console, but they have a PC and balance the two to play these exclusives. There's no question that's happening right now.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

And so yeah, you just.

[Greg Miller]

That's the right call Sandy Crane Super Chats, right. And says the issue about all this is that price of consoles needs to match the value. Xbox and PlayStation need to focus on bringing the value through games. PC not only plays games, its value is universal, which helps justify its price. I think there's a lot of truth in that statement from Sandy Crane talking about this retreating from PC, looking at these numbers as PlayStation and being like, we got a good thing going. This PC thing was an interesting experiment. We're not getting the results we want out of it. And let's not give ourselves a cut right now. A tiny one that might get infected later on and change the way people consume. Do this. Look at what's happening with Xbox. Bring everybody here.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

As Bam wrote in with the other super chat, right? This is where you get into the Xbox conundrum, right. It's like it was working. And I bet you day and days they would have sold a lot. But you know what happens there? You open the floodgate a little bit of now players can go, well, they're launching all their games on PC. I don't have to buy this PlayStation anymore. I'll go over there, right? And that's where Xbox lost the floodgate of like it was fully open on day and dates and we went over there because that gave us so much more options. Right. PlayStation now is number one. Wanting to stay at number one. Having the high quality titles easily can go hey, no more of that. Come here. And we know you're going to come here. And players will come for sure.

[Greg Miller]

Doubling back and getting some other super chats in here for some of the other things we've been talking about Elvish for friend says. So are we saying we want to see a divestment in new ip if we're going back to some. Well, the well of old ip Because I don't think we can do both and I think to go back to what we were talking about in conversation there and how I feel is I'd love to see and this is no, this isn't insulting the first party studios make the games they wanted to. I am so much more excited for Intergalactic than I think I would be for Last of Us Part three than I would be even for Nate Drake returning for Uncharted 5 if they went did a Cassie thing. Okay, that's. I think that's different enough for I'm like oh let's see what that's about. Intergalactic is that new IP and I and when we're talking about Spider Man 2 okay, not. Not in a bad okay we like I love Spider Man 2, I love Ghost of Yote. But they were games that I thought I knew what they were when I went in and I knew what they were they and they were and now they're done and I don't think about them often in the same way I about Spider Man 1 or Ghost of Tsushima. So what I'd rather see to your point here and what I think we're on the same page about it sounds like I'd love to see these first parties go crank on that new ip, that new thing, that new vision or the old thing, whatever you want to do, make the game you're all passionate about. Meanwhile the Sly Cooper franchise, blow the dust off it and give it to someone to go in and make a game that isn't necessarily what you think when you think Sly Cooper, take it and make something fun. Do a game that is a two year development cycle that is a smaller eight bit thing, you know what I mean? And toss in Ratchet Medieval, all these things that are just sitting around and let the other parties do what they want to do.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I very much view it as like a multi step process because I like talking to People who I know who work or worked at PlayStation. Right. Like, PlayStation's pretty good about asking their devs, but not necessarily telling their devs what to do. You know, like, the studios usually have some level of autonomy in terms of picking projects. Of course you want to do what is going to make you money. And there's always this back and forth of like, hey, we think if you do live services, it's going to make us make you this amount of money. And it's on the studio to be like, all right, let's do it then, right? Or, hey, let's not do that because we believe in doing this other thing. Even though PlayStation can have to approve it at the end of the day, there's usually that back and forth there. What I would want to see is for it to be a. Hey, as Naughty Dog, we want to make Intergalactic. We don't want to make it last of us. We don't want to make Uncharted. We want to make. We want to make an intergalactic. Yeah, and this is to your point. I don't want then Uncharted last was to be locked by Naughty Dog. I would want it to be then PlayStation goes to their other studios and go, hey, bend. Hey, Blue Point Rip. Do you want to make Uncharted? Because we don't think we're going to see an Uncharted from Naughty Dog for a very long time.

[Greg Miller]

It's the fallout argument, Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's the fallout argument. And then if they say no, hey, we were going to work on this other thing. All right, cool. Now let's go third party with it. Right? Like, I want to see kind of a. A process of. No, we still want to make these IPs and put these IPs out there. Yeah, but yeah, like, look inward first and then look outward. If none of your studios really want

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

to do it, that I'll go to bear to you first. But yeah, that will be. The delicate dance that PlayStation has is the balance now of new IP and old IP, right? Of like, if Intergalactic comes out and it is like not lighting the world on fire and how long these games take to make, man, we are in for a long wait for the next one. Right? And so, yeah, Sony has a. This will be a tight rope with how small their teams are and what they make. And it's like, what do you choose here? That's going to be the balance they

[Greg Miller]

have to find in part of this conversation what we're talking about. Right. Couch Commander super chats and says Failing with Sons of Sparta is much better situation in learning than. Much better situation in learning than failing with multi million dollar failure like Concord. Make a smaller game first. If they hit it, then put them up for a bigger sequel. Again, less of an. We're always talking about the return on investment, the size of the investment. Go ahead and make these small investments with IPs and stuff that are dormant. Barry, what do you got for me?

[Barrett]

And jumping right off of that, like, yes, like, let your studios, like do their passion thing. You know, when they come to you and they're like, hey, we want to do something different. We want to go left when everybody expects us to go right.

[Greg Miller]

Awesome.

[Barrett]

Fuck yeah. Can you do it in four to five years? Like, I think a big thing that needs to be talked about as well is, you know, and we've talked slightly about it is like dev cycles and like how sparsely these games are coming out. Because especially with the bigger, you know, studios like Naughty Dog and especially like what we know of the budget of Spider Man 2. Like, those productions, I think need to be brought down a little bit because I do think eventually it's going to. It's going to be unviable for like, as a business practice of just like letting these devs go off for so long on like, you know, growing these budgets time and time again that it's going to be hard to sustain keeping just those studios alive, let alone the entire like slew of studios that you have under your belt. Which is why we see cuts to places like Bluepoint and to Japan Studio. Right? Like, that's the thing I see as well.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, I still let them be big

[Barrett]

studios, but we got to figure out like the amount that we're putting in in both time and money to these.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think the problem with that is that we're talking about. I think the problem not necessarily being, hey, can you make this in four to five years? And I'm going, ah, darn, I don't think we can. I think they think they can. And then the management and those processes just becoming unbearable and bad. Right? Like, I think that's.

[Barrett]

And that's words like, all right, we need to figure out scope.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah, 100.

[Barrett]

Because DJ Mayer says, but we also push for no crunch. Can't have it both ways.

[Greg Miller]

We can, we can.

[Barrett]

And there is a way to manage that situation. And it's about having a realistic scope of what these productions can look like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So the thing I'll say, right, and I think this is, this is some real talk when it comes to the PlayStation studios and how they operate and what the hierarchy looks like. Like, I think Naughty Dog gets way more leeway for that type of. Because they keep putting out these games that are like, all right, these are selling tens of millions of units. All right, we'll let that. We'll let. We'll let it slide when Naughty Dog takes six, seven years with it. But like, not every studio has that thing necessarily. Right. Like, I think PlayStation looks at insomniac and is like, thank God we have you at least because you put out games consistently. Consistently. Right. But like, yeah, I think with it, it is the fact of like, hey, we all know that management at Naughty Dog is not great at tracking, like, all right, we're gonna put this. They're not great at hitting those milestones to put these games out in three to four years. But PlayStation's like, all right, well, at least we get the last of us two out of it.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

So, yeah, I mean, there's something to be said about the game. Right. And what's going on. Spider man, you have a vision. We're kind of set to it. We're talking about art kind of with Last of Us where it's like, hey, we're kind of taking this in a different direction. Oh, we want to add this. We want to do something a little bit different. It's going to take a little bit longer. That's how I look at that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Spider Man, I know what. We're on a grid. We're going to make. This is right, the grid of man. A little bit different of that stuff.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Speaking about how bad it is, obviously as an industry right now, JC backfires super chats and says. Just want to say, as someone who got laid off from Dark Outlaw last week, this industry is brutal. Our studio is a small, nimble team of around 20, not working on a live service game and still got closed down. Of course, that was the Jason Blundle PlayStation Studio that. That have been talked about on a

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

podcast, never officially confirmed and then gone to piggyback. More off of Barry's point.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think PlayStation is very excited about a studio like Team Asobi as well. Team Asobe is make put out Astrobot and they're presumably making games at a more consistent, more at a faster rate than these AAA or than not even the AAA's than a naughty Dog. Right. Like, I think if we're having the conversation of how to fix PlayStation, we need more of those. We need more of those. Spider Man, Miles Morales, right. Of like the shorter games that are still like, oh man, I'm playing my spider man, but I can beat it in seven hours or whatever. Right. Or an uncharted lost legacy that it is. All right. This is a shorter thing, but it's still fantastic. We need those games that are able to be made in those three year.

[Greg Miller]

And it's that thing, right. Of like what you just don't see of people making the exact. Making the engine and making the grid work and then making three games off of that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Making them cheaper to Barrett's point. Right. Where if it was that, that, you know. Okay, cool. You can. We just made Uncharted so it's so simple to go make this Uncharted spin off. Well, it's like, why don't we just keep doing that two more times before we. While somebody's in pre pro and the next big, big one.

[Barrett]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Lots of super chats in here. I want to get some more before we get out of here. King James says Intergalactic has more hype for me than even GTA 6. New Naughty Dog IP is so intriguing. And again, that's another one that we talk about all the time where it's like GTA 6 is the elephant in the room. But I also feel like I know what I'm getting out of GTA 6. So I. I'm. It'll be harder for them to surprise me, even though I hope they're able to and get off of that. I like, you know, DJ do it says Indies can move faster. X Oliver did the new IP plus TMNT and that's what we're talking about. Right. Of the second party solutions you could be finding and bringing in people to go. This one I would like you guys to stake on. Aaron Lime says they need to push more family games as well. There's too much focus on the mature games. So now the only non rated MIP that's active is Horizon.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I don't know about that. You have MLB the Show, which I know is a little bit crazy, but like you have. You do have MLB the Show. You have games like Astrobot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

I think I would love to see more of those. Right. A Sackboy returning. I would like to see a Ratchet and Clank again. Jack and Daxter. Right. It's like, yeah, Spyro, there's a Lineage there. Right. But like I. I don't know if you only have that.

[Barrett]

Right.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Like you have other titles I also just don't see.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I mean this is such a broad term where, you know, we're talking about they need to have more family games as well. What are we talking about exactly there? Because we're trying, I understand we're trying to pull kids from Roblox and Fortnite and everything else, but for me, a kids game is still usually trash. And I play, I'll let Ben play Paw Patrol and I'll put on the blue E Wing. And it's like, all right, this isn't a game that's engaging. Whereas I'm trying to Google and I can't find it. Spider Man's rated T for teen. Yeah. Like, Ben plays Spider Man 2 and fucking adores it. Right. It's not mature. It's something you can get into. Yeah. Okay. Spider man is an M. Says lanky. Right. And same thing. Yeah. With an Astrobot or this. It's like, I don't know. Again, my hesitation on any of this would be PlayStation trying to chase kids I don't see working. You got to chase the core gamer and then get more kids to come over there. And I know this is a conversation in a hypothesis I've thrown out so many times. It's like, but kids are only on Roblox. And it's like, yeah, I would but hazard the guess that most of them were never going to come over. And I would imagine it's the same thing of when I'm growing up, the amount of kids I knew that played Mario Brothers but never wanted to get an NES of their own or never wanted to go buy another game after the or a system after the nes. Right. Like, there's always going to be atrophy of bringing people into this hobby. Just because you love Fortnite doesn't mean you're going to love the Last of Us. And like there's that push and pull of like people setting unrealistic expectations which has gotten us to 2026 in this industry. And why I think you can't chase that. That.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sorry.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Bless.

[Barrett]

Go ahead.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, I was going to say, I, I, I, I think I disagree in the sense of I think they even they know that they need more family slash kids IP because they're talking about like, I play a whatever game and I know it sucks or whatever. Right. Like you play a Nintendo game and you expect that to be fantastic. And Nintendo is great at making lifelong fans. I think PlayStation wants to change. Chase that lifelong fan thing of, hey, we got you in with an Astrobot and that's in the place I'll push back on the Super Chat. Is that like, we do have, have things like Astrobot you had a Sackboy and I, I think Media Molecule needs to make the next big little big Planet game, pun intended, right? Like I think you need to bring that back into the rotation. But I think PlayStation looks at that prospect of being like, hey, let's get them while they're 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, right? And like make them PlayStation fans then and have them grow up with the platform. And I would even explain that if I'm putting on my marketing business cap. I think they want to be able to make more adaptations that aren't rated M movies. I think they want to be able to make kids TV shows. I think they want to be able to make stuff that is able to speak to more people outside of the video games. And to do that you got to start with the ip, which is why we see so much Horizon shit. Because Horizon isn't the, it's not the only non rated MIP that PlayStation has, but it is the biggest one that they have full autonomy over that I think speaks to that wide audience. As far as hey, we can turn this into a LEGO thing. We can turn this into a, an adaptation for a movie or TV show, whatever it is. We can turn this into a multiplayer game, right? You can't turn God of war into Lego. You can't turn uncharted into Lego. I don't, least I don't think you can because I think PlayStation should be like ah, it's guns. We don't want to do that. We can't turn last was into Lego. I do think they need more IP to be able to do that type of thing with.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

It's an interesting one because now you're talking about a big competition against Nintendo, right? And like at this moment, right, Nintendo has that market down and dialed. The parents of kids who would be buying them consoles are going to Nintendo going, well the safe bet is Nintendo then eventually will evolve right to that PlayStation Adult focused games there. But like you're getting now you're going to really compete. And how many ukuleles have we seen that lucky Foxtails game, right? It's like these are great and there's good games there, but like they're not pushing that, right? It's like Nintendo has that.

[Greg Miller]

So bless you say that like you PlayStation must be thinking that. But I don't see them doing that, right? Horizon, yeah sure, a LEGO game or whatever. But it's not like we are still seeing them doing Sly, doing Jack, doing Ratchet the way we're talking about of giving them other people and Having them

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

go, I mean, I think they have a desire to. I think that comes back. This comes back to the who's going to make the Sly, who's going to make the Jack, who's going to make these things? And also I think within PlayStation, the conversation then ends up being, do people still care about this? Do kids care about Sly? And if we're being honest, kids right now don't care about Sly because they don't know who Sly is. They don't care about Jack because they don't know who Jack is. But I think they look at a little big plan. I think that's why we got Sackboy A Big Adventure, is because they're looking at the launch lineup and going, we gotta at least have a couple kids games for this thing at launch, right? Like, I think they view that as a vertical that they don't necessarily excel at, that they desire to excel at, because that then opens so many marketing opportunities up for them.

[Greg Miller]

PSO Warhead says the world needs little big planets.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Just like a quick little look, right? Like Astro Bot, 2.3 million copies sold worldwide as of March 2025. Little Big Planet Sack Boys, Big Adventure, 1.6 million copies, right? And then you flip over to Mario, right? It's like 17 million or whatever crazy numbers. Like, is the 1.6 million units sold enough to justify that for PlayStation?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, but like that's the spin off, right? I would love to see what a modern actual Little Big Planet game could do for. For a PlayStation if that comes out. I don't know if that supersedes what Astrobot did, but there's something to the play, create, share thing that resonated during the PlayStation 3 era. That maybe could, but.

[Greg Miller]

No, it wouldn't, right? No, like I feel like that. I feel like that era. So that era I think of in play, create, share. I think so much of the Vita conversation we're having and I would even throw in the DS where that was like such a. As competitive as it was less competitive time for games than it is now. I just feel that buy in, to jump in to play the game, to also create the game to unlock that, like that's going to speak to a very core audience.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, you're speaking about Roblox right now.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, but I think there's a Roblox now. I think we're back to like, I want to make the next Fortnite. No, there's a Fortnite. Yeah, like there's. It's just not going to happen.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Even Fortnite can't do Roblox.

[Greg Miller]

Even Fortnite Roblox can't. It's back to this thing where these, these very specific games hit with this giant audience and everybody goes, I can do that too. And it's like, well no, I, There was a special sauce there, there was an originality to it that they hit. And you're not going to get. The kid who only plays Roblox in two years is not going to play games anymore to come over and do that. I just feel like you'd get more people like us. We're making levels and for each other, but it's like that's not going to bring in the money as you look at dreams, which of course was a different ball of wax and way too complicated.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Fair enough, Fair enough. I was trying to throw to Barrett because Barrett was hanging out for a hot minute.

[Greg Miller]

I can't see we're having a good discussion. I don't see.

[Barrett]

No, yeah, that's totally fine.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett]

I, I've. When talking about the kids games stuff, I, I don't think there's a downfall to trying to diversify your portfolio to reflect a little bit of what the PS2 was doing where you have a, you have your God of War still and you still have Killzone was too early for PS2, but you have your mature games that are being developed by in house studios while still, you know, having things like Ratchet and Jack. I don't think that's a bad idea. But again it, it all comes down to managing that studio size, that budget. Yeah. And that expectation because like Mike is saying of like the return on Sackboy and like Ratchet and all of this stuff this generation did that actually reflect on what was put into those titles.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

So. And like on the flip side, Ratchet and clank, over 7 million copies. Like there's a massive win right there. You know what I mean?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I, I just, I, I worry about if you continue to only invest in the Greg's. The blessings, the mics of the world.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like your audience is gonna age up and die. Yeah.

[Barrett]

And that's my thought process. There is like you've gotta like, there's got to be something that like sparks this like childlike nostalgia for these kids now. And even if there isn't like a return like that can slowly build over time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Like you can't just make PlayStation for people in their 30s.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

Yeah. But it's an interesting one of like couldn't you. I guess like on the flip side, I don't push Back and be like, PS1 playing Rock Roblox. Now let them play Roblox. And when they mature out of that, we're here with the great games that their friends and colleagues are talking about, right? It's like, why chase that when there's already like a dominant force there that I'm not going to break through and let them make the kids games and then they'll come to me. Yeah, I got the games.

[Greg Miller]

I'm in a similar vein with that. Right. Even looking back and like, you can't make it for this. I think you look back at PS1, PS2, and it really was though, right? Like PlayStation 1. We're talking about Metal Gear Solid, right? And Castlevania, Symphony of the Night.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I didn't Crash Bandicoot. I was. I didn't learn about those until I got older. When the PS1 was out, I was playing Crash Bandicoot. I was playing Spyro the Dr. If you would ask me, Tony Hawk, Parappa the Rapper. If you'd asked me what's the biggest PlayStation game, like 10 years ago, like the PS1 game, I would have told you Spyro the Dragon.

[Greg Miller]

So here's my point, though, to jump back to it because we're. I'm still in the same gene pool of what I was talking about, right? Where it's like, that's what brought you into Games and PlayStation and then you figured out the bigger stuff because you wanted to hang out and lead. Love the hotel. I think Nintendo can still be the gateway drug of PlayStation. Can sit here, be like, we're never gonna make Fortnite and we're never gonna make Mario. So is the return on investment of us going and making a platformer for kids to get them to turn on their PlayStation worth it? I think they found it with Astrobot. Keep making Astrobots, make Astrobots faster. Ben loves Astrobot. Like, that is there for him. But it's like, you're not gonna have that quality or that quantity or that clip of, you got Mario, you got Mario Kart, you got. And I'm not even talking about Mario. So it's like, if let's let Nintendo usher in new gamers and then when they do want more, they go, now that's the same argument I'm making for Roblox, Minecraft, whatever. Because I think it's the same audience. I think there's a lot of kids who play video games and then one day go, you know what I want to do? Horseback ride. And they never play games again. And I think we have to be willing to go, that's going to happen. And then maybe they come back years later when they see something. But I think there's, you're planting those seeds that become the gamers like us that are like, I want something more than this, or I've heard about this game that's more than what I've ever seen. And da da da. Crimson Desert, let's please.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

It's an interesting conversation. Yeah, bless. I, I, I think to myself, like, yeah, Nintendo's got that. Roblox has got that. But also like, yeah, what if we did put out Sly Coopers and Sack Boys and like, we kind of filled in that gap of that catalog of like, what Greg's saying is like, oh, Lil Susie went off and like played this. Or Ben stopped playing games. He came back and wanted a little bit of that childhood nostalgia, but also like almost a, a preteen team game that is a Sly Cooper platformer, maybe that wins them over.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. And I, and I don't think it'll ever be number one or even top three when it comes to this as far as PlayStation putting out kids stuff. Right. You're not going to compete directly with a Mario. You're not going to compete directly with Roblox and Minecraft and stuff. But I think I do look at the success specifically on the Nintendo side more so than the like Minecraft and stuff, because those are just on a different level. Right. But when I look at what Nintendo does, the fact that new kids are falling in love with Mario to me

[Greg Miller]

and loves them to me speaks to

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

the idea of like, no, there's potential there to bring people in. If you find these characters, if you find something that is attractive enough to kids for them to fall in love with, they'll fall in love with that thing. Right? Like, yeah, the fact that Ben's into Mario, the fact that I look at my nephews and I'm like, you like Mario? I think you could find something like that. PlayStation. Not on that level, but again, I'm looking at the idea of being able to diversify, like Barrett's talking about and hike and speak to fans at a younger age. Doesn't have to be your biggest game. It could be a little Big planet. It could be maybe one or two more games like Astrobot. I don't know if it's a platformer at that point. Right. Like, it could be whatever, but I think you want to do that and then have that be a thing that you can expand upon and make more iterations of.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, we fixed PlayStation.

[Michael Howard (Snowbike Mike)]

We did it.

[Greg Miller]

Audience chat. Commenter, listener. What do you think you do? Or what does PlayStation need to do? What did we get right? What did we get wrong? Let us know in the comments on YouTube.com kindafunny games, Spotify. Wherever you can leave a comment, scream it out your window. Maybe we'll hear you. Of course, thank you for watching this episode of the Kinda Funny gamescast. We're here each and every weekday, of course. We're on a live talk show network called Kinda Funny. You can watch it. Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, YouTube.com kinda funnygames podcast services around the globe. We are not done with our programming day. From here we roll into Super Mario Galaxy in review. After that, I am Jesus Christ. Me and Nick are doing it. We're gonna be the Messiah, everybody. It's gonna be great. Of course, if you're not watching live and you want to catch any of that, check out YouTube. Like subscribe, share. Of course, pick up a Kind of funny membership patreon.com kindafunny YouTube.com kind of funny games, Apple, Spotify. To get everything ad free, get your daily dose of me and an exclusive podcast called Greg Way. And of course, get good karma. For now, however, the Gamescast is done, so it's been our pleasure to serve you.