The FlipScreen Games Podcast

Concord Gets Delisted… What Now? | FlipScreen Games Podcast Episode 155

The Concord drama reach new limits this week with a shock post on the PlayStation blog stating that the game was being taken offline and refunds were being issued.

Steve and Max discuss what comes next for the came and whether this is the end of live service games at PlayStation.

Credits⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Broadcast on:: 05 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

I don't know, I used them for something yesterday. I was trying to get this motherboard stand off at the screw was stuck in it. So I was trying to get that out. And then since that, this is just so much fun. Just the whole. I know I heard it. I heard it. Oh, no. Yeah. The Stanley pliers. Oh, no. What is he playing with this is keyboard? No, it's a Stanley fly. Oh, it could also be this. That's a little end or two case. I've been doing a lot of this. Oh, no. I used to be able to use fidget things away. Hello. Hello. You're tuning to episode 155, the flip screen games podcast, a weekly video game podcast where two best buds sometimes from different nations this week from the same nation come together to discuss the wide, wide world of video games. I'm your host, Steven Radford joined as always by my very good friend and co host, Mr Max Wright. Hello. Hello, Steve. How are you? I'm good. I don't have Stanley pliers, but I'm good. I need to get my hands busy with something else because I don't know. But there's just like a constant. Yeah, and it's not jigsaw coming out. It's not jigsaw coming out. No, no, no. I would like to quickly just take the top of the episode now to apologize to everyone for there not being a show last week. We did me and Pete sat down. We recorded two pretty long, pretty meaty episodes. I was exhausted by the end of these episodes because we had to get them done. And then Pete's computer blew up. We lost the episodes. So we missed out on a lot of good topics last week. You know what? I think really we can blame Intel for that. And I hope his next builds AMD. I don't think it is. Oh, I did suggest it because it would be cheaper. And he said that he wants to do editing on it. So he's going for the Intel. And it's his money. And that's fine. Cool. If you want another CPU to literally melt, that's all. I think he's had this for a few years. I think that's not bad. But similar topic this week is kind of a good thing that last week's episode didn't go out because it was all about Concord. And this week, Concord came crashing down to the earth in a phenomenal way. We got a blog post just put up on the PlayStation blog and tweeted out with the title an important update on Concord. And we got some pretty huge news that they're taking the game offline on September 6th for an indefinite period of time, whether it comes back or not, we don't know. And they're going to refund everyone that bought the game, whether that's on PC or on PlayStation, you're going to get an automatic refund from either steam or the Epic Game Store or the PlayStation Store. And if you bought a physical copy, you can take it back to the shop and get a full refund and they will give you a refund. I did wonder about the physical side of it because I think refunds are just being automatically just ding. Here's your money back on Steam or anything like that. So yeah, there's a note that says for customers who purchased a physical copy, a retailer location outside of PlayStation directly, please refer to the refund process of the retailer you purchased it from to obtain your refund, but they will issue you a refund. And that's so that's because I know that game, for example, as soon as you open a game, you can only trade in. I'm assuming there's going to be a special circumstance there. I think it's probably will in the same way there was for Cyberpunk 2077 when they had that whole issue. This is not unprecedented. We then have the same thing happen for Cyberpunk. But yeah, it's kind of crazy that the PlayStation's biggest live service game of the year has become like an absolutely massive flop, but I'll read the blog post. Well, hang on a minute. What about Hellblade? Helldive? Yeah, Helldive is, but was that expected to be their biggest release? Or was Ben Court expected to be their biggest release? I think they were putting their eggs in the Concord basket, but Helldivers was hatching over there. And that's really what people wanted to play. Yeah, there's some more evidence about how much they expected from Concord, but we'll get into that when we do the post Mortem. Yeah, so I'll read the blog post. It says Concord fans, we've been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC. I want to thank everyone who's joined the journey and board the North Star, your support and passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us. The sound and pre positive sounds like they're they're really happy, maybe moving the game in a different direction going to do something different. And then the next paragraph is however, while many of the qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we intended. Therefore, at this time, we've decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024 and explore options, including those that will reach our better reach our players. While we determine the best path ahead, Concord cells will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who purchase the game for PS5 or PC. If you purchase the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation store, PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued about the original payment method. And the same thing will also happen for the Epic Games store and Steam. It's outlined in the blog post. And again, if you've got physical copy, you've got to go back to where you've been from. What do you make of this? Like, what do you think the other options are? Were you surprised by this news? Like, what was your gauge on it? So last week, in the in the last episode, we spoke at length about what we thought, what we thought the game could what they thought they could do for the game, what sort of our options are for like, how can they bring people back in? And neither of us thought that they would take it down this quickly. We both said, oh, you know, put it on PS plus, you know, at least flood the service of people for a while, you know, at least give people a chance to get hooked, spread word of mouth, whatever. We also said about dropping the price or sort of like introducing more of like a freemium system like the other games have. And I even suggested that you, what it shows on originally is actually held back the game portion of it released the series portion of it, because there's an episode of, you know, the show secret level that they announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live. There's an episode of that based on concord. So they clearly expected this game to be a big smash hit. They clearly expected this to resonate with players. They expected an audience to get really wrapped up in the world, really appreciate the sort of live action, not live action, the CGI cutscenes, the story they were working on, because they're then maybe thought people were going to go, Oh, concord, I love concord. I'm going to go and watch the secret level episode, which is probably very expensive in itself, let alone when you factor in the rest of the costs of making this. So they clearly expected this to be, there's going to be an audience for this. How do I start the trend of thought quickly, Steve? I've lost it. No, that's it. What the plan was, I said they should, I should have opened, like got people hooked with the Secret Wars show and with the cutscenes, got everyone into the characters, and then done the game after or done the game later on, or had a single player element a bit, they introduced the characters, got people excited, so they cared, or they should have done it's like an open beta, like gauge it, test it, go down the route that valves gone down with deadlock, figure out if the game's actually fun and is resonating with people. I feel like people just didn't seem to care about the characters and about the game. So I think getting them to know the characters, like you said, would be a great way to do that. But I mean, the game had a lukewarm response. People were just comparing it to Overwatch and Valorant. There wasn't really all that much to remember the game by, like there wasn't really anything drawing you back in. There wasn't anything special here. It was it really seemed like it was just another hero shoot, and I feel like those have been done time and time again. And what those other games have is that they don't charge you money asking someone to give you $40 up front to take a risk on a game is a hard ask. I was surprised how well Helldive has to did because it also had that that cost up front, whereas I feel like you want to get these games off the ground. You really kind of have to go with the free to play model, especially when you're up against the competition, like Overwatch, like Valorant, like Fortnite. You know, those games don't have any costs associated to them. You can just get I mean, they make absolutely barrels of cash because they've got the the the freemium system down to a tee. It's like, okay, we'll get a battle pass. Then let's sell you some cosmetics and we'll go down that way. I mean, it's all that kind of was all started with counter strike. And then that formula has proven to work for decades. It's really strange to me that the PlayStation are so resistant to go down that route that they fill out their game seems to have an inherent value you should pay up front for, which I think Nintendo really follows that same approach as well. The same thing with like the same thing we spoke about with Splatoon 3, it's just like, well, if you made this free to play, more people will play. You could have gone down the battle pass route and actually had those catalogs that they had in Splatoon 3 have value and meaning and like a reason for you to keep coming back to the game. It would give you that long term money to keep investing into it when you're just asking someone for $40 up front and then promising that we're going to support this for multiple seasons and then taking it offline for a period of time that was, you know, shorter than Liz Truss's premiere ship as Prime Minister is kind of like crazy. This game didn't outlast a lattice. It's honestly mental. I think the cost of entry, I think so much of this game is based on eight years ago when the game started, I've watched came out and people were the developers were like, we need to do this. And then at no point have they changed trajectory or looked at what else is happening in the gaming world or seen what Israel isn't working because Overwatch was a game that cost $40, whatever it cost, I can't remember now, and then had loot boxes and things like that and sure, there's issues of them being predatory, but it had seasonal content. It had reason for you to want to engage and spend money if you wanted to, you know. They saw that eight years ago and thought, yeah, let's build the game around that. And then never, you know, in that time we've had PUBG came out, we've had Fortnite come out, you know, we've had all of these big games come out, we've had games come and go, we've had sort of entire new, you know, we've had loot boxes, we sort of pushed aside, we've had, you know, Overwatch 2 went free to play because they realised that was a better model for them. We've had all these things, valorants come out of all these things that have happened since then, at no point have they course corrected or changed or even from the scene sounds of it, like focus group tip because how they announced Concord, and I correct me if I'm wrong, the first time we ever saw or heard of what Concord actually was, we knew that Firewalk were making a game, we knew that Sony had bought them and they were working on a game from a big marketplace, again, that was supposed to be the sort of a big thing for them. The first time we saw it as Concord was introduced to the IP, introduced to the gameplay, it was that state of play two or three months ago, three or four months ago, whenever it was, and then we had one like little update on it that I'm pretty sure was just like, oh, the bait is ready now, and then the game came out, there was no big marketing campaign, there was no big push, there was no big push, that's the case with a lot of games, don't you Lee? And with this one in particular, it was really egregious because it really felt like they did a bait and switch with the original trailer, everyone seemed to be super excited about like, oh, what are these characters, it's really cool style, and then it's like, it's a 4v4 shooter, and it's just like, oh, okay, I was interested, I was interested in a core story games, and this call looking universe, and with a really core vibe around it, and then it was just kind of like, oh, it's another hero shooter. Yeah, we said before about how we see these really cool trailers, and then when you're soon as you realize, oh, this is just Diablo 4 DLC trailer, and that drives me crazy, as much as I love those cinematics, when I'm watching a presentation, and it looks like something like that, same thing with that Dune game that came out, and it was like, yeah, oh, this is so cool, and then it's just like, oh, actually, this is nothing like the gameplay, this is not what it's going to be like at all. It's like those videos you see where you're like, you're really hooked on, I want to know if I take this one guy, I'm running through the plus 10 times Tuesday, I want to know if I'm going to get to the end, with my 1000 dudes that have got loads of guns and get to the end, but no, you get down to the game, and it's just a base builder, why does the game not exist because I don't know, I always see those videos on Instagram, and I'm always like, oh, this is quite cool. Now they've started doing, it's like, hey, this is actually the, someone saw the game that all the adverts were doing, and I would have, you know, I made that game, someone made that game now, and you don't have that, and it's still a base builder, it just doesn't make any sense to me, why, how they've all come together, and obviously decided this is a fun and interesting concept, maybe Concord would have sold if they, that was what the trailer was, if that was the advert, like it was like just Concord characters running through those like math problem gates, and you just have to shoot it, and it's like plus five, minus 25, and when you, when you go through those gates, you beat the Concord boss instead of this like random generic boss, either probably down or anything else. And on the right hand side of the screen, there's subway surface going as well, so you don't get bored, look away from the screen, yeah, that's nice. Maybe we should make Jason Darulo down in the corner, just watching that. Yeah, we should make games, we should, this is great, we know what, we've got a finger up firmly on the pulse. Steve, you went here last week, and the episodes lost anyway, so maybe there's some people that aren't aware of why Concord, or how badly Concord did, and why it's shut down, so let me just do a recap of what we talked about last week, because luckily it's still written down here. So, the game launched to, I think, the most concurrent players that had on Steam, am I saying that right, concurrent, that's the right word, why am I current? Yeah, I thought, so why would I get confused about this? Are you okay today, like, if you had any caffeine, I did wake up a bit cranky this morning, I will be honest, do you know what it is? I'm about a hair kind, like two months, and I don't know if, I think that just sapped my energy. Oh, yeah, your brain, your brainwaves aren't, aren't just like able to get in a fox. They're being blocked, yeah, they're being blocked. Usually I'm faded, I've got all sorts of things, but this, I've just got this, like, shaggy mess now that I can't seem to get rid of. It's trapped me forever, so you're always going to have- I don't feel like you would be shaggy if you're in school, and I feel like you'd be frayed. Aww. Yeah, I have to say that. You've got Velma written all fucking over you, though. Velma real alone me. Yeah, you do. It is true, I can't see you without my glasses. Also, I know under that orange turtleneck you've got something good going on, I know you do. Well, I know you do. You are dressed like shaggy, though, so. I'm dressed like shaggy. I do have shaggy vibes, but I don't smoke, so, you know, it's true. And I don't carry scooby snacks around with me, unfortunately. No, but I have, I've seen you walk through in the background of this with a, like, a 10 foot tall sandwich, and you always put the olive in the top. You've always got the toothpick on the olive. I don't know how you do it. Yeah, I tried olives again for the first time, no, not the first time, because it's again, but I tried olives the first time in, like, 10 years. Yeah, the week. I like them now. Yes, what color? Green. Good. And was there anything in them? No, they were just pitted olives, but I feel like with a bit of feta in there, they'd be bad. Yeah, olives and feta's nice. The olive with the garlic in is really nice. Can't kiss anyone after that. No, I would, obviously. My girlfriend only seems like the black olives for some reason. And she's always like, whenever we have people around or we're going around so much, like, Oh, take some olives. And she just wants the black olives. She's like, why don't they just do a little tub of black olives? And I'm like, because you are a freak. Because nobody wants that. They want the mix or they want the green. And you know, if you're a black olive lover in this group, I'm sorry, you're such a freak. But this is, this is our boy in Concord is that we'd rather talk about olives. I think people would rather hear about olives than God God's brother. I think so too. I think so too. What about olives on Peter and all of them pizza guy? I've never had it, but now I like olives, you know, seemingly, I would try it. I re-watch Deadpool before I went to the third Deadpool. It was a little while going out, actually. And at the beginning, he orders a pizza as a way to lure someone in, I'll cut up what it is now. But the piece for you orders is olives and pineapple. And he says, Oh, you know, salty and sweet. That's really nice. And I can see that as someone you like to have a pineapple, someone who likes a salty and sweet thing. I can imagine that being really nice. You know, I've never had anchovies on one of them. See, I've always been very like, I'm not a big fish guy. I don't like fish. But I, the more I sort of think about, or the more I hear about anchovies is that, you know, not a fishy thing, but it's like a salty, marmy thing. And, you know, you can like put them in, you know, pasta sauces or whatever, just to give it like a stucco and another layer of flavor to it. It isn't fishy. It's just like, you know, really savory. Yeah, it's like what's a sauce. That's what that comes from. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just blitzed up anchovies. So I am tempted to give them a go. I just, my girlfriend's got a big sardines thing at the moment, but not eating sardines. It's, she's made sardines earrings. She's painted short sardines on her t-shirts. So maybe we need to, maybe it's the tinned fish era, maybe we're in the tinned fish era of, I was in the tinned meat era for a while, I was like a bam wagon. Oh, really? I love spam. My dad's a big tinned corn beef when he goes fishing, man. But I think that's for the fish, not for him. And my daddy's corn beef. It usually gets the slices in the packet. Yeah, my dad's a big corn beef. Now, I don't know if this is just a my dad thing, or if it's a universal dad thing. How, how old's daddy rats? Uh, 65. Oh, so he's about six. He's a few years older than my dad then. In fact, he's almost a deco roll in my dad. My dad loves cheat white bread, slice of corn beef, salad cream, dad run out of salad cream of your burger. But I could see that. I love salad cream. I love salad cream with salad cream instead of mayonnaise. Yeah, I don't, I'm not a big tuna man at all, but I can see salad cream being better because it's got like a, it's got, I think it's got like a, from the smell of it, like a moral, an acidity that like, like when like adding lemon to fish or adding lemon to something to sort of give it, you know, a sharpness. I think it's, I think it's got that. But yeah, anyway, Max, why is it on called shit? I'm going to, I'm going to get distracted again. I know we are. This is, this is more interesting though. Um, so, uh, the, the open beta response wasn't very good. People were saying it, you know, what we said before, it's just like overwatch and valorant. Um, they said the art style and the character design aren't great. And I do happen to agree with that. There's a couple of like, interesting characters. Um, I liked the big yellow robot dude. I remember saying, um, last week, I think it was first announced, I was like, I love this dude. He's just a big dumb yellow robot. Um, I always think back to when I was like, big onto the DS, there was a Wizard of Oz Japanese RPG I wanted to play. Um, it was called like Riz, Riz sword or something like that. Um, and that had a big dumb tin man. And I was like, I loved it. I loved that as a, as a character architect. And this has, has that. However, there's also like a woman with the, the big red shoulder pads and she's got like the long nails that are in the character, right? It's just, it's just not appealing. It's not cool. I can see that. And, and there are a lot of, um, sort of more in cell style, sort of anti-woke talking points about it saying, Oh, it's all, um, diversity. Oh, inclusion is all blah, blah, blah, but like, that's not what's wrong with the game. That, that, you know, that's just a thing that's in the game. That's not why the game isn't good. And I think it's being unfairly targeted for that. And people that are celebrating concours fairly, and not just, you know, I think we can both appreciate the, that it's a, a sad situation, but it's also a, a situation that's like, well, duh. And also that, you know, in some ways it's a bit funny because it's like they've come out and they've done this. It's, it's a sad situation, I think for firewall. Yeah. It's not a sad situation for PlayStation. I, part of me, maybe it's conspiracy theory. It's like, did they just put this game out to die on purpose? Did they pass right off? Yeah, did they know it wasn't very good? This is spring time for Hitler, the video game. Like, is that, is that what happened here? Like, well, you know, we've made the game, we might as well put it out. We're not sinking anymore cash into this because this was Jim Ryan's vision of, of life, and we don't give a shit about them because they're just not PlayStation. It's not what people associate the PlayStation brand with. We're going to let other developers take care of that and we're going to focus on what we do best, which is story, narrative, driven adventure games. And it really feels like they just put this out because like you said, they didn't really have a big marketing push. Like, yeah, there was that, that episode of that TV show, but really other than that, we got two trailers. One of them was the launch trailer. The other one was just like, you know, going through a bit of gameplay. And then I just, all I heard was just negatives about it. There was no real, it wasn't like say when Diablo goes out and there's always negatives about a Diablo game launch. Diablo three was a disastrous launch. Diablo four wasn't that much better because they fucked things up in the second month. And they always take time to correct it. And you kind of feel like, yes, they're here for the long haul. They're here and they want to, they want to make sure this game has longevity and life. This really feels like PlayStation is doing what PlayStation always does, which is when things get tough, they pull the plug. We've seen the exact same thing with the PS Vita. We saw it with the PSVR two. We're now seeing it with Concord. It feels like this was maybe the last of Jim Ryan's legacy. And they just don't care. And so they're just like, well, we'll take it off the shelves. We're not going to bother support in it anymore. I don't know if this game comes back. I really don't. No, I don't know if it's, if it, I don't know if it can be salvaged like at this point, because I think even if you do do a big launch, if you do have a big relaunch and you go free to play, you now have. There's a thing to this game. Wow, you nailed it. There's a stink to it that, you know, No Man's Sky took years and years and updates and updates to, to, to be better. I don't think, but I also think Cyberpunk managed to do it. Yes. But I think both of those games, the difference with both of those games is that they were disappointing because of people's expectations of them. No Man's Sky, can't remember the guy's name, but he came out and he, he chatted, he was just lying. He came out on stage and he was just all everything. Lying and bragging, he was all of these things. People had such a big, a big elevated expectations for the game. Then when it came out and it wasn't that, they were deflated. But because that expectation was still there in the back of their heads, when eventually they delivered on that, people were more willing to come back. Same with Cyberpunk. This is going to be the most immersive, like incredible game ever. There's going to be all these different things, this real world city. And when it launches and like, you know, you open a car door on the car starts flipping around and doing all sorts of things. And yeah, and the police just stand there during nothing. Yeah, when the game doesn't hit those expectations, it's an easier sell to say, hey, look, we fixed it. So you can come back and especially when like, you know, they released like a great DLC and like a 2.0 thing. Again, it took a couple of years to do it. But because people were already sold on that, the idea of what the game could be, it was easier and easier sell. The second Concord launched, they was negative opinion. It reminds me a lot of a Suicide Squad killer justice league. When that first got announced, it was first revealed, everyone's response was, oh, no, why are they doing a live service game in this day and age? Why is it too late? You know, you start these eight years ago when they are the height of their popularity. Yeah. And then you're releasing it into an environment and a market that just has no time for them anymore. So what Suicide Squad did was is it or Brocksteady did? And they've also been hit by gay officers now as well this week. Rocksteady's big thing was they said, right, we're pausing the game for a year. We're not releasing for a year. We're pushing it back. We're going to take time to work on these things. You know, we've not released the game that you wanted and we're going to go about where I'm working on it. And then a year later, they released the exact same game down like it was. They didn't take anything out. They didn't change anything. They didn't course correct. They released the exact same game. And because, you know, the expectation was already low and the release actually was released. People didn't want the game flopped. You know, the studios suffering now, people losing their jobs. So that is a huge shame, but they could have listened or, you know, or course corrected or something like that, whereas I don't think this game has launched in a such a bad way that it can't do it. It's crazy that Sony spent all this money on the team owning the game. They launched it, you know, all of these things based on what they saw, they must have believed in it. We're so committed to it like that. Yeah, but that was a previous leadership. It was it was under that previous strategy of life that was just our future. They bought bungee and look where bungee's net is, you know, they've had massive layoffs. They've had some bring people in to make a new studio at Sony because they just don't trust them anymore. It's just the whole strategy has been a disaster. And you only have to look at others other games studios to see that this was kind of inevitable. Look at anthem, for example, like so long. It was out for a very short period of time, and then it got shut down. This game was in development before anthem came out. So they've seen anthem happen. They've seen it happen, which feels like forever ago. And at no point did they go, guys, let's have a think about this. They've just gone, they've just gone shame for them. Yeah, let's keep on going. And Sony at no point. Sony Sony bought the studio like not too long ago. So they must have been looking at this game going, this is it for us. This is big. I know you say it's previous leadership, but they've they've now put this permanent stain on their brand by buying releasing like at no point, you know, they've what sunk cost fast, they've gone, we have to release it now because if we cancel it, it's going to be too expensive or whatever they were thinking. I don't know. That's going to be what it is. But how much more has it now cost them to market a game, release a game, make all of those discs, ship them out to then have to issue refunds to everyone after you've left the game up for less like a more a month. Yeah, it was three weeks, two weeks, 10 days, something like that. Mentor. How much do you think they were spending on post game support? And I don't just mean skins and things. I mean expensive CGI fully voice acted weekly, whatever it was, story cutscenes million can't have been cheap. And then and then to have the I'm assuming the same cast might be returning for the secret level. Is that just money down the drain? Are they even going to be able to release that? Is that going to be the TV show equivalent of the Mario and Sonic of the 2020 Olympic games where this comes out? And everyone watching them were like, what the fuck is Concord? And they look it up and it's a game that doesn't exist anymore. You know, like this, this that, you know, what an opportunity to do they just take that episode out and they replace something else? It's too late. What do they do? I hope they have the opportunity to replace or something else. But my guess is it's too late at this point. It's probably all been shot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, probably has been. Yeah. What like, what was Jim Ryan thinking? I'm going to blame it all on Jim Ryan, because why wouldn't you? I'm sure how when Herman Holst has some things to do with this. Herman's got to have something to do with it. He was head of PlayStation Studios at the time when this was acquired, when this was being developed. He's now the co-CEO of all of PlayStation. Yeah. He's got to take some responsibility for it. You know, and the post was just put up, but it was put up by Firewalk. You know, they surely shifted the blame over to Firewalk Studios to let them kind of figure this mess out and take it off shelves. But you've got to imagine that this directive to take the game down and move it and refund everyone did not come from Firewalk. It came from the publisher, which is PlayStation. Yeah. Because it was getting to a point where it's just like, you're right, it's putting a stain on the PlayStation brand, which has suffered a fair amount of stains of recent. You know, it's just had another price hike in Japan for the PS5, not great. The second one in its lifespan, very short lifespan. If not really put anything out this year, other than a Lego game, the only other game they had was held over two. Well, now we've got, I guess we've got Astro, Astrobot. Astrobot is going to, is going to, I think, do very, very well. But I don't know, like the PlayStation, this is surely going to affect the PlayStation brand. I think it should affect the PlayStation brand personally. I think like this is a decision they've made if they need to stick to. It affects other multiplayer games potentially put out by PlayStation, which is a shame because heldovers was such a great title and did really well for them. And granted, PlayStation just published that game. They didn't own the studio. It wasn't their creation. It was a third party. But you know, you've got to think that do you give pause to buy in another PlayStation multiplayer title in the future? You probably just say, oh, I'm not going to bother. Did you know that, and I want to talk about marathon after this as well, but did you know that Sony has a studio called Haven that's working on a multiplayer game called Fair Games? Yes. Because I didn't until today. Yeah. And it's the, like, heist game by Jade Raymond. What happens to that then? Well, what did they, how do they launch? Like, well, I don't, I don't think they do. That's the thing. And I feel really sorry for Jade. She got shifted around. She was at Google. She was at the stadium. And she moved to come work. She started her own studio, Haven, and then Sony was just like, oh, well, we'll snap you up. Yeah. That game's probably not not going to come out or come out really late, or it's going to have to be changed in some way or suffer because of this con called launch. Because I've never heard of this game until today. And I don't know if that's just because I'm an ignorant idiot. I think it was cool. Like, they did do an announcement at a PlayStation Showcase or a state of play as well. I think it was last year. It was a PlayStation Showcase in May, 2023. There's no release date. Nothing further about it. I don't remember it being. I've seen here. Push Square, Sammy Barker criticized the game's reveal in aesthetic, describing its premise as tone death. And I'm favoring and comparing it to Sega's own upcoming multiplayer title hyenas, which also is a game that doesn't exist anymore. So that's, that's not a great introduction to that for that game, I guess. No, no. I mean, I just, I don't really know kind of where they go from here. I, Max, I mean, I moved in February. I haven't even bothered playing at my PlayStation into my TV. But is that, is that that point where I'm just like, I don't really know what you've got for me at this point? That's right. But it's the only game I'm interested in that they have coming out. Me too. And it is a game I'm not willing to spend 70 pounds on. Me too. Because it's like, that's a lot of money to spend on a game. There are other games that are out already that are coming out around the same time that are much cheaper for me. Yeah, we just spoke about one on, on the Nintendo noise this week. Yeah. Echoes of wisdom. And it's just like that game, you managed to pick up the curries for half the price of, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then you've got Space Marine 2's out soon, Black with Wukong just launched the Plucky Squires coming out in a couple of weeks. Like, all of these games that are coming out that are going to be cheaper. And, you know, for the cost that I would get for, for, let's say, 12 hours of Astrobot. Now, Astrobot, I think looks great. But I think yeah, but it is something that we've seen before. It's not anything. It's not something new. We know what that game is going to be. We know how it's going to play. And it's going to be fantastic. I have no doubt about that. I really believe in, in a Soviet studio. But I, I don't know. It's just like, is that worth playing your PlayStation in for? No, probably not. No. I, or do I wait a year and it comes to PC and it's like cheaper on PC. That's what I was thinking. Because I know that the, what was it? Sackboy is on PC. And that takes you long. You see, we got a Russian client-risked apart on PC. Horizon. Horizons on PC. So, Ragnarok's coming very soon. Exactly. Like, all of these games, we know we're going to come to PC. My brother's like, jones him for my PS5. And I'm tempted with just Astrobot coming on the, coming out. I am tempted to, well, I mean, we've potentially got a PS5 Pro coming out. Yeah. We've got fuck all to put on it now. Yeah. Concorde's been completely out of failure. Astrobot's the game that you used to showcase the most powerful console I've ever made. Yeah. But I'm assuming I'm hoping Astrobot already runs in 4K 60 on the PS5. You'd hope so. You know, I don't know what, I don't know if a Pro is necessary. I really don't see why a Pro is necessary. They've not given me any demonstration as to why we need that Pro console. And like, it's seemingly real. We've had more leaks about it. And it's just like, well, why would I bother picking one up? Why would I bother spending the 700 pounds? It's probably going to cost to get one with a disk drive. Yeah. When I could just keep my PlayStation 5 and turn on every now and again to play a game. And granted, I'm in the luxuryist position and you are too, Max. So we have multiple ways we can play games. Yeah. A lot of people, the PlayStation is their only console. And like, they do just play everything on it. They play on the multiplayer titles on it. Whereas we play a lot of those on PC. We play some of those on Xbox on Switch. You know, we can, we can choose what we want to play. And I know that, but really, it's just like, I really do feel like a piece of prediction. Unfortunately, it's going to come true where it's Xbox this year and they've had a much better year than PlayStation. And that is hard for me to say considering how bad a year Xbox is sad as well. Yeah. Like, it's not been great for them either. I mean, I don't know if you discussed it on last week's episode, they got lost. Like the news that in the Ana Jones has come into to play. I think we've discussed that the week before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy news as well. It's just like, yeah, it really starts to feel like, why is there a reason to have either of these consoles? Yeah, PC, because everything's coming there. So what I did say on last week's Steam Deck podcast, which was lost, is that I've played now, I've finished completed 39 games this year so far. Granted, a lot of these are going to be a lot smaller titles because they haven't been as many like massive hundred hour experiences. So I've just been sort of paying a lot of indies and also catching up on a lot of old stuff. Every single one of those games, bar two, I've played on Steam Deck. And those two, I have streamed to the Steam Deck, sorry, three, I streamed to the Steam Deck from the PC or from one game on PS5 and it was held on ringing. That's only because my save file was there. And it was more expensive for me to play it there than it was to play it on PC. So, you know, there's really, for me, the Paytation just sits there as a just in case. Even my Switch this year has been a just in case you haven't bought a new game for it. But there's so much coming out for the Switch. Like the Switch of the three consoles is the one to have this year. It really feels like a new Zelda game. I'm looking forward to Mario Party, Jamboree, we've got Mario and Luigi, which looks cool. The Famicom Detective Club game, MEO seems to have landed pretty well. Like, there's a lot of there's a lot of good stuff going on over there. Whereas on PlayStation, it really feels like, well, if Final Fantasy 7, part two wasn't for you, it's kind of not a lot. Like, there's hell by just do, but that's not off. Yeah, you had Stellar Blade, which I think was a game that came and went. The only people that really cared about it that much were people who were horny. Or, I don't know, wanted to. Again, it's another like, oh, this game isn't bowing to the pressures of the liberals, the wokies, therefore it's our game and they were bowing for that game so hard. But as soon as the next game came along, I'm going to do that. Before they dropped this, I've not heard anything about it since. If it comes to PC, I'll give it a go just because I really like sort of like horny, because I'm horny. Now, I'm going to have, there's got to be at least one person making mods that puts more clothes on these characters. Oh, thank God. Yeah, you know, that is one of my pet peeves in Bayonetta when I played the Suffered through that game. Like, I put it in the like, angel mode so she actually has some clothes on. I had to stop playing Bayonetta 3 because I couldn't handle the criticism from my girlfriend while I was playing. Good. Quite right. And I caught myself being like, like going, well, actually. And then I was like, she is a woman. I'll let her decide what isn't, isn't feminist, or what isn't, isn't empowering. And I was like, yeah, cool. And I just stopped playing it. So I was like, yeah, she's right. I just can't be bothered with any like, it reminds me of playing January Chronicles 2, like Christmas 2020. And I'd been locked in my room for like two days playing January Chronicles 2 because I was so excited about it. And then I think I just like, I just like, redecrated, moved my room around, all that sort of stuff. And one of my parents walks in and there's just the one hot tubs, even the entire fucking game, and it looks like I'm watching some horny anime. And I was like, I promise you, promise you this isn't what the game's like. And there's just no going back from it. Earlier at work, I tried to show someone a Metroid, Samus neon light that I wanted to go right here. I was saying, Oh, look how cool this is, 50 pounds, like go on Etsy. I searched Samus Aaron and immediately get like a 3D printable porn figure. And she was like, Oh, I didn't rise you were into. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're wrong. I hate this. I hate this. End me now. Now I have to live with that being my opinion. I hope that doesn't spread back. Was that the most embarrassing moment of your life? No, I've had I've definitely had more embarrassing moments. I want to know what I so I was once I've been on Reddit and I was just looking through the all on Reddit and I was like a video like a TikTok video, whatever it was that was on Reddit. It was like a cringe subreddit. I get cool because there's a man coming to there's a big cupboard I have that's just full of like all compute parts and things like that. To our job of me having to sort of move this all out, catalog it with him and get rid of it. So I'm down there working, doing my thing. Well, that's upstairs by itself. And I get I noticed I've had like messages from like 20 minutes before being like, uh, your laptop's making a weird like suspect noise. Like I don't know if your phone's going to sit via Bluetooth, but it's like making weird sounds and it keeps talking about certain things. And I was like, what the hell could this be? For some reason it was just playing that TikTok video. I want to repeat a full sound, but it was like, I think the the it was like a, you know, cringy was a dude reacting to something that was cringy that was happening on the screen. I think must have had like a suggested tone to it. It was just blasting full volume from my laptop in the office for like 20 minutes before someone texts me. I didn't see it for 20 minutes after that. So for 40 minutes, it was just my laptop was just making really suggestive sounds. And they thought that I was like Bluetoothed into it. I don't know. I don't know how to know. Um, but that was quite embarrassing. And I had to like come up, um, because I looked really red and sweaty from moving all my stuff downstairs. They were like, Oh, you're right. You're a bit flustered by this. I was like, I've, I've just moved like 50 PCs like, you know, fine, fine, X, X, X, yeah, not, not ideal. Oh, Max. No idea. Um, but yeah, where do you think, where do you think Hong Kong goes from here? Do you think it comes back? Do you think? Or do you think this is the end of it? I thought I had something I want to say about Concord that was actually quite interesting. Uh, it's a great, it was a great kind of playing the first. I got a pointy nose, the concord, right on the ditch when it landed. And then, you know, the nose come went back up. Fantastic. You could get to New York in like two hours. Pretty good. What was I going to say about Concord? Why was that? Why have I forgotten what I was going to say about Concord? I had something really impressive to stay to say. I was like, Oh, yeah, I forgot about this interesting thing. And then we started talking about embarrassing things that have happened to me. Um, uh, I don't know. It's gone. I don't think, I don't think this game comes back. I think there's no way they can bring this back and have any resemblance to it because they're going to release it again and have the exact same thing. Maybe it's in the game. Yeah, but maybe you can. Do you go back and test and try out a game that's just like tarnished at this point? Unless it's free. There's no way you can bring this game back. Yeah. And, and that had people who took that gamble and paid for it and paid the $40 that you then had to refund. There's no way they, they doubled up and try again. Well, there's also, I doubt there's anybody they come back. I don't think because if you, even if you have like a, Oh, hey, the game's free to play now, come back. There's no way all people that have been burnt by this and who have put their time and money into it. Um, and I, and are now currently desperately killing themselves over and over again in the game to get the trophies because they're trying to get the platinum for it. The server shut down in two days. So the game's unplayable now as well. Like it's, the server is still up for two days, but it's you join a game. Everyone's just attempting to kill like to, to like speed run XP by killing themselves. Um, that was the interesting thing. They're just, it's kind of even playing now. Um, even if you say those people, Hey, the game's free to play now. How do you say those people, you know, as a thank you for giving it a go. I mean, they kind of did that with Fortnite, right? When they were charging for Fortnite originally and they got, you got like the founder's edition and you got like a bunch of stuff that was exclusive. Maybe you do that like exclusive cosmetics. So people know that you're one of the OGs, but everyone's been refunded. So surely the games out of their libraries, the gate, you know, there's the fucking point again, the platinum because it's going to disappear. That's a good point. I don't think they can take platinum's away. And they know it was the game thing. You listed what you still get the platinum. I think you still have, I think the platinum still exists. Well, you'll be able to get it. You'll be able to play it, but I do think the platinum still, it still sits there as a, you know, I think that's why people want it because it'll be one of the rarest platforms ever. Um, Hey, I got the platinum on that. I don't know if I don't know if there was trophies on that. But yeah, I don't give a shit about trophies. I find them pointless. But um, but yeah, I agree with you. Don't think it's coming back. Um, but you know, people should let us know if you think it's coming back. Let us know in the comments. And if so, how, how does this game come back and people actually play it because I struggled to see how it's going to be a tough one. But yeah, before we go, I need to thank our Patreon producers for the month of September. They are, of course, Arnold J. Romer, Christopher Valent, Gabriel Hasamite, AKSOB. Thank you, Ghost, Steve Stumpy, Susan Lexcats, and also Boobies, Booboo Vic, Tyler Dude and Waka Hula. Thank you all so much for supporting us on patreon.com/flipsgreengames. And if you want to get involved, you can head over to our website, flipscreen.games. You can find the link to the Patreon there. If you want to support us, you can come join our Discord, chat with us, answer our questions, ask us questions. I'm joining a great community over there. And you can check out our sister shows, Nintendo noise, and the standard podcast. And we shall see you on the next one. Bye. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]