Should devs center their plans on Next Fest?

Hello, welcome to the Game Discover Co. Show. The one thing in video games that isn't getting more expensive because you can't go up from free. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. I am the co-host here and I am joined as always by my co-host, Simon Carlos. How you doing today, Simon?
I'm good. And I'm delighted to see that you are not Chris Zukowski, which Google is convinced if you ask Google AI who presents the game Discover Co show. Apparently, it's me and Chris Zakowski from How to Market a Game.
You know, I'm starting to think that maybe this AI isn't perfect sometimes.
Yes.
Uh but we've got a whole slew of topics to talk about today, including a main uh topic about kind of what's going on with Steam NextFest, what were the winners, what does it even mean to throw your game into that massive pile at this point. But I want to work uh work our way through some news stories. Better AI effect adjacent. And the first one is Valve's Steam Machine price has

officially been announced. Pre-orders are uh now open via a random lottery. And the price is $1,049 for a uh for a 512 gigabyte and $1,349 for a two terbte in the US. And you know, throw in another $75 there if you want a Steam controller. It is a lot of money. And I'm I'm very curious about the reaction to it because people were not happy and and and I I saw blame falling on Valve here and I'm curious what you think about that uh as as a reaction to what's going on in the world. Yeah, I mean it's it's rough out there for you know computer component world and we knew this already and I think what's happening obviously is that uh people are reacting to you know that's a specific price and

it's the very first time this device has ever been introduced. So I think that's one reason why there's a reaction to it. Obviously, at the same time, we're having, you know, Xbox going up, you know, a digital Series X has just gone up this week to $750. I think the one with the drive is $800. And so, we're definitely in a situation where high hundreds of dollars is what you're going to pay for a console style uh style thing. I mean, Steam's this is a little bit more expensive, the Steam Machine, but I think um you know, I think I think that's where we are. I think it reminds people that maybe high-spec new machines are not what most people are going to be playing um games on in in the next two or three years, right?
Yeah. I think it is also distinguishing Valve from let's say Xbox or Sony that we're willing to subsidize the cost of their hardware a bit and that we're just in a different world. I'm I'm curious how much the companies are going to be

willing to subsidize at all moving forward. Um,
yeah, I I don't think I don't think that actually in recently years, in the last two or three years, that that the PlayStation or Xbox are particularly subsidized. I don't have any particular um I don't have clear data on this, but my impression is they were just very close to cost. Maybe they'll be losing them 50 bucks. I I don't think that it's it's like what it used to be, but then what it used to be was there were some consoles that were $99. So, that was a very different a very different space. I mean, I think you might want to see Steam um machine as a vanguard of Steam OS machines. My colleague was pointing out to me today that someone is now announced a Steam machine like which ships with Steam OS and it's $1,299, you know, and I think uh that's that's fine. It's quite different to the PlayStation situation where only PlayStation can make PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 6 because you're going to be

able to ship Steam OS on anything. When console prices come down, uh, sorry, when component prices come down as well, it's likely there's going to be a lot of Steam Machine likes. So, I think in some ways Valve is really showing people the way here rather than saying we tend to be the only we're going to be the only people making this type of machine for the next few years.
I'm I'm just so curious how mainstream that is though because I am playing Persona 3 Reload on game native which is a Steam I guess translation app on uh Android handhelds. Steam OS like you said is going to be on all these different PC platforms. But I don't think modding or OS resetting is like a mainstream path forward. Are should we expect to see Steam OS and machines that are appearing at let's say a Walmart or a Target or a Best Buy?
No. Definitely after that because if you've been to any of those stores at

least in the US recently, uh you're lucky if you can get any of the hardware software because it's all locked up and I have the impression there's increasingly less of it. So, uh, yeah, I I think you're right. I mean, I I guess the way I see it is Steam is doing great because a lot of people have various flavors of PC. Um, that that is it's just it's just another flavor of um it's just another flavor of PC. Steam Machine, like Steam Deck, is a is a PC flavor, right? So, I don't think Valve sees this as a kind of make or make thing for them. They're just like, "Oh, we're just we're just adding a flavor. We've added Raspberry Ripple to the um to the 47 other flavors you could get your Steam uh games in. Right. [snorts]
Yeah. There there's one other piece of this whole skyrocketing prices thing that I want to talk about, which is uh at a conference in Germany, I believe last week, a representative from Lenovo warned that RAM prices probably won't return to precrisis levels, that this is

a new normal. Should developers be designing for low-end specs? Are we heading towards a low-end spec future?
Actually, in the game discover code discord this morning, there were some devs talking about this and uh they were saying that if you look at a lot of the popular top games nowadays, um there's quite a lot of them, especially on the friendlop end, but in general, that will work pretty well on PCs. I would say uh traditionally console first companies have had significant issues adapting to making sure they fit lots of different PC specs. And I think if you've seen there's been a lot of Steam releases of games that were like PlayStation 5 first designed and then they really had tech issues on Steam. So, I think the answer is if you're high-end, you really need to tune for a variety of Steam systems, but I don't think you need to be low-spec. I just think you need to be um

not incredibly high-spec so everybody gets mad at you.
Yes. Yes. So, I want to go to the next story, which I will be very honest with you, might as well be written in Latin. Uh it is technical and I don't understand it. Here's what I vaguely get. Um, Steam made a change to how they talk about hosting third-party sales on the platform and the sales overview page in general. What the hell is going on here? What does this mean? Yeah, I I I wrote some notes for Chris here that are reasonably cryptic and um you know [laughter] and and they're reasonably cryptic because it's it's actually more like in general um interestingly I was talking I was reading a comment from someone about this um about about the Games Discover Co show and they were sort of saying great I'm two months behind on the emails now I can just catch up with the uh with the podcast or the podcast every week and what I'd say about that is I also had someone say they were very upset because they already like the news and they don't want to listen to the

same stuff on on the podcast and so what I'd say is in in in general this is different but but but this particular subject is one that is a bit more uh technical and specific that I would generally put in the newsletter but it's quite interesting so I wanted to bring it to the podcast as well like the specific thing is people are always looking for ways to promote and cross-promote their catalog on Steam and and specifically what you've seen in recent months and years is um there is a banner above the name of the game on the details page that a lot of people have been using to cross-promote sales. And so you'll see it uh when there's a Steam theme sale, you'll see it everyone in a certain, you know, Steam has a real-time strategy sale. Everyone in the real-time strategy sale, there will be a banner above on the on the details page that gets you to click through to that sale. So really what's been happening is a lot of publishers have been using this uh not just for their you know they get one yearly publisher sale that's um going to be featured but they've been doing a lot of sort of unfeatured publisher sales

which also have cross promotion in them and basically uh and I suspect I you know Valve sees all this stuff and I don't but I suspect there's been some people semi-abusing this stuff as well. Valve has also noted like there's been an issue with people doing big sales and then putting their pre their wish listable games at the top of it. In fact, uh a couple of years ago I was tracking down a massive wish list increase for the Indiana Jones game before it came out and I was like I cannot find this. And I eventually worked out there was a big Xbox sale on Steam and they put Indiana Jones as the top game. And so that was really good for wish list. So there's a lot of this kind of like cross promotion, extra wish list being on the top of sales pages and really running these cross promo banners a lot and I think it's been causing probably a lot of overhead for Steam and it's a little bit what they're not intending I think. So basically basically what they've done is they're directing people to the developer and publisher page for your non-yearly sales

and they're saying well once a year you can have a publisher sale or a franchise sale if you have enough games or enough games in the franchise and that's great but otherwise uh you can't have these ad hoc sales all the time which mainly being used for cross promotion because you won't see those sales on the front page of Steam but but you will see them when you click through to the details page. Well, I know whenever you try to prohibit bad actors from doing something, the rules can end up hurting the good actors, the people who are using it in a in a relatively normal way. Is there any collateral damage here? Are there any side effects or
Yeah, I think it's absolutely true that there's going to be some publishers, especially those who have a coherent catalog. uh you know if you have a c if you make if you make all horror games or all strategy games there's a lot of people who are actively helped by your sales because they're like oh there's this cool strategy game I want to check out stuff from the same publisher by clicking on this banner so and that's going to appear only once a year for

like 10 days now and it used to appear a lot more often. So I do think there's some collateral damage there. I was talking off the record to one of the good actors and he was sort of saying, "Oh, this really, you know, this isn't so good for us." And I was saying, "Yeah, I bet I I bet we don't know what the bad actors were doing with this to make Valve want to do this." And so I I I presume that that's a lot of the problem. And it's just a lot of overhead for Valve to manually vet so many sales pages, right? So So So Valve is still fine with they're still fine with a lot of types of sale. Like if you want to do an interesting theme sale, it's fine. But what they're not fine with is stuff like like I think people were doing publisher sales then inviting all their friends to join their publisher sale and that was kind of so people were making kind of
gorilla random sales and so I think I think I think Steam's trying to get more less ad hoc about it basically.
Yes. I mean, this gets at the point that I think we've talked about, not just here on post games and other other places of this sense of seal sales feeling so inescapable and so normalized

that they lose their purpose. They lose their sense of value and I I can tell that Steam is trying to correct that in some way. But yeah, I don't know how you do that without also causing a lot of trouble for a lot of people who need the help. I do want to talk about one more news item for the week which um wow could not have been more timely which is what is going on with physical game sales in the US. Uh they topped out at about 11.5 billion in 2009. They have fallen off a cliff since then. Uh we have $1.6 billion in the 12 months up until May 2026. And yet, and here's where it's interesting to me, it's kind of stabilizing around this. I think that number is actually a little bit up from the year prior. So, it seems like we found whatever the floor is. What is the physical games market these

days? Who are they even selling to?
Yeah, it's interesting. I think there is there is definitely a market obviously for Switch too. Uh especially first party. I think a lot of people still love getting their Nintendo games um directly from uh from a store in physical form or ordering on Amazon in physical form and and obviously the physical sele uh the physical collecting space has never been uh stronger on the on the niche end uh like retro games that are physical are going for a lot of money and there's a lot of reprints of um or there's a lot of kind of three or 5,000 copy uh prints of of existing digital only game. So there's sort of stuff happening there. But um yeah, in in general the people who are buying stuff like I noticed there's a game undisputed and it's it's a it's a boxing game. And I think that has done for example came out a couple of years ago. It's done quite well on physical because it's the kind of classic. If you were going to um sort of stereotype your

typical casual who might still go to a physical store to buy their physical games, they'd be buying
Yeah.
70 or 80 dollar games. they'd probably be buying like college football or NBA or firstparty Nintendo games is sort of, you know, I'm stereotyping massively and I don't have a access to all the data, but that's definitely my impression. Some family games as well uh are still, you know, licensed family games. There's still some businesses doing that. I think that got a lot rougher to be honest. Um, but yeah, and obviously GTA is coming out with a GTA 6 is coming out with a uh a physical edition, but it just has a game code inside it. But maybe some people will still come and pick that up to have a physical like something they can put on their shelf, I guess. But yeah.
Yeah. I I I'm going to follow up on the GTA a bit uh in just a second. But before that, I I want to talk about the physical market in games and how it differentiates itself or it is just forced to be different than let's say what's going on with the Blu-ray market because in film and Blu-ray there are so

many boutique labels popping up. Criterion is no longer like the key player. There are at least a dozen that are doing really, really interesting work. They are partnering with things like the BFI to get high, really high quality restorations out into the world. And I don't know if that's exactly what's happening with the physical games that we see from boutique labels here, which maybe I'm wrong, but seems like it's a bit more about collecting um and part of the larger conversation of collecting video games.
I don't know. I I I have a couple of friends who are Blu-ray collectors, and I think they have a lot of the same genes as [laughter] people people who collect video games. Well, the big thing with physical video games in recent years has been the kind of day one patch related issue and like is this game complete? And a lot of people don't like people like the idea of buying a game. You know, these Blu-rays feel like I think insurance to people. They feel

like in 10 years I can come back and I can check this out and it will be exactly perfectly pressed on the disc as I as I want it. And I think that that happens less um because of so many patches and games as a service things. The question is then what are you buying? You're buying in some cases a copy of a game that is pre-release and you can't even see because the there's a day one patch on there immediately that you go on and you have to download a big update. So I think that's one reason why physical has become less exciting. Interestingly, some um some boutique labels, I think, for games will sometimes wait till the game is like properly stable before putting out a physical
because people are more likely to buy it because they're like, "Oh, this is this is a version that feels complete even if I uh don't connect my Switch 2 to the internet ever again, which is a bit of a, you know, a bit of a prepper kind of mentality, but I feel like there's a lot of borderline broadwide hoy preppy things going on here." Yes, I I I will I will addendum.

Um collecting with games. I feel like there's collecting with the intent to resale that they'll acrue value that it's like it's like a commodity. Uh right versus like I think most people look at their Blu-rays and they're like, "Oh, well this is a depreciating asset. Nobody's going to want my Blu-rays when I'm dead."
Um but again, that's like such a niche of a niche. I want to talk about the big thing which is the GTA of it all. I remember for the past few months I I remember as if it is like somehow a forgotten time, but it was the cost that everybody was worried about. Uh oh, what are they going to do? Are they going to set it for $100, $120? Are people going to have to chase that as the new trend? The game ends up being $80, $100 for the special edition. I I wouldn't say like especially shocking or that unusual, but as you mentioned, the game will be available download only with a code that comes in the box. They have said that they don't intend for a game on disc to

ship any time in the foreseeable future. Is it likely for other publishers to follow their lead here? And and what's it's kind of two questions. One, are we going to see people follow the lead? And what is it that Rockstar fears here? Is it leaks, piracy? Do the S1 avoid disc cost?
Yeah, I think it's leaks and piracy. I think this is going to be one of the uh it's the kind of thing where I think a significant leak of GTA 6 like a couple of weeks before it came out could have I don't know billion dollar consequences. I don't think that's crazy to say that. I think normally I am not I'm not a big piracy. I think most piracy is done by people who would not otherwise buy your game. But in the case of GTA, it's a little bit borderline because it's so massive. And I think you just want to avoid avoid that happening. And also uh I think GTA's had a lot of trouble with people reverse engineering and the whole thing with GTA 5 and all the unofficial multiplayer servers. So I I think I

think they feel like they're under a lot of uh a lot of pressure to make sure it arrives on on the day and and not before. So I think a lot of the a lot of that that is it is just they don't want copies that people can access and start poking around in the code early.
Yes.
But but I I don't know and is as for it being a present. I mean, I do think I've talked about this sometimes in the newsletter, but you know, the state at least of US physical retail has been such a mess since the big box stores started locking everything up. I think that's got to have significantly decreased sales in, you know, my local Target or Walmart. Everything that is left, you have to go find uh find someone to unlock the cabinet to get it out. That's not a very attractive way to shop. And I think that's further decreased what what was already going to be a pretty a pretty big decline in physical. So I honestly think most people don't have this problem. I think you know EA has this problem with like the Maddens of this world about how they want to deal with that. And a handful of

other games do but if you look at a lot of the games that are popular nowadays they're really very digital first. You know like Mecha Mecca Chameleon is such a digital first game. So I think that's yes
increasingly where we are. Well, I want to talk about the main story, which is the Steam NextFest June results and also the trends. Uh, so many games. That's the top level. There are 4,382 demos in this next fest. That is 66% more than 2,645 demos in June 2025. I don't know how many more years we can keep having these giant percentages of growth. Which raises the the obvious question. Is this useful for most people who are putting their demos into this festival?
Yeah. Is it useful is a intriguing question. I think it is. I've said in the past I think it is something that you should do, but increasingly I'm

saying it needs to be a uh small to medium part of your marketing plan for your game pre-release and not a medium to large part because if you are relying as many people are on influencers paying attention or short form video, those people get hit up. I think I had some quotes from people about they get hit up by hundreds of the entrance in the week before it go. So you can imagine all these content creators, they're trying to work out what to play. A lot of content creators don't play new games much anyway. They just got like 500 new codes or links to demos. Um, you know, that's uh that's not an attractive environment to to get people to find out about your game. So, I think increasingly um I see Nextfest as important because what I'm seeing is and I saw this comment a little bit like there's no big surprises out of NextFest as far as I can see nowadays. There's no one saying, you know, day one of NextFest, here's my new demo, suddenly it gets 200,000 wish list. This is much more like these are

games that already have an alpha or beta. Um you know, like maybe they don't have many wish lists. Maybe they launched their demo a week before so they got a but they got some streamer attention before it launched. But I think you know the concept that you can you know announce your game on the first day of next and then have it picked up and suddenly have everyone notice it is unlikely particularly because Valve has changed the algorithm to be much more personalized. Like Valve did not like it that they felt like I think people were gaming the leaderboard. So they've basically tried to make it so that the leaderboard concept is a bit more buried and doesn't really exist anymore.
Yeah. I want to talk about the trends a little bit because we see dark fantasy and and Lovecraft specifically. Um we see co-op both hardcore and casual. There are some single player games that that are in the top uh of the list that you have on the newsletter. Does the trends we see in Steam Neckfest

in Steam NextFest reflect kind of what we'll see over the course of the next year uh in games or is it kind of local to what demo? Well,
it is basically what we're going to see minus there's a lot of AAA fair that does not want to do nextfest because they already have quite a lot of hype and so you know you're not necessarily going to see your Resident Evils in NextFest because they just they just don't need to. So I think uh you know it is largely I think the top 10 is largely original IP. So that's sort of nice, right? So I'd say uh it is the segment that is not necessarily big franchises already. But in terms of themes, I actually think the themes are quite resonant and the themes Yeah, there's a lot of co-op. There's a lot of kind of darker visuals, a little bit gritty. Um there's there's a lot of kind of survival stuff. There's a lot there's also some more Friends slop adjacent,

more novelty stuff like Bomb Banana is doing really well right now. and Bomb Banana, if folks haven't seen it, is is is a game where you're one of three monkeys with your buddies and you have to defuse bombs and and and one of you is blind, one of you is uh, you know, deaf, etc. So, yeah. So, [laughter]
do you think that like a game like that is going to fully transfer over to sales or are people fine with the demo? Because again, and this is like a real throwback showing my age, but there were demos that I would get from official PlayStation magazine that were a multiplayer game, like a Tony Hawk course, and that was enough. Like, I could just play that over and over and over again. Is that possible with Friend slop? Well, particularly Bomb Banana, I was thinking about that because it is pretty pretty high concept. And I have heard some people say that there might be some friend slop uh where um yeah like there does the a lot happens in a

demo and then you're sort of sold in the demo and then when the game comes out you've sort of played enough of it. So I think that is a concern but the other thing is Bob Banana's got to be a tiny team. The the upside the upside for them of doing a demo I think is pretty good. There is an argument that they would go viral on launch. So why did they go viral with a demo? But you know, I think it's still all a net win for them. So that I think people will continue doing this. I do think it's better. There are games that have done a better job, I suspect, of you can see some of it as f slot, but there's a lot more you want to see with with the final game. And so I think that is a good point and something people should think about. looking at the games that actually make the the top of your list, how much having how much does having prior success matter? Because and these games I actually don't think are on the top list, but there were games that I saw floating around, which is about fishing, which comes from the water

museum, which did Arctic Eggs, which had a bit of a moment a year or two ago. I also saw Penguin Colony which is another Lovecraft inspired game this time featuring penguins but that I think benefited from fellow travel fellow travelers reputation. Um I think their specificity of their publishing vision helped that. Do you have to have something to kind of help you break away?
I mean it's interesting that you saw those. I would almost say this is all a condition of there being near infinite filter bubbles and it's just whatever filter bubble you happen to be in cuz if you look at the top games I I think they just made it out especially via influencers. I think a lot of it is is is influencerled and there's just stuff out there that gets played by different influencers and it's just how high does that influencer or short form video overlap go. So yeah, so so I would say I if you look at the top 10 certainly

there were some publishers that I've heard of. There's some games like that that that Cthulhu game um is made by a known studio um from South America.
Uh but you know I think if you look at the top 10 there's sort of some people we've heard of but it's certainly not I mean you know the joke is always like you know what did what did this Blizzard veteran do next or or whatever because a lot of those Blizzard veterans got a lot of funding. I think we're not really seeing, you know, I don't have anything against Blizzard veterans, but we're not we're seeing a lot of kind of like scrappy stuff rising to the top here. You're not really seeing a whole bunch of established studios, and that's because it is kind of a little random. I mean, I looked at the top 30 games. I had not heard of 20 of them, probably 23 of them before NextFest. And if I looked at the top 100, there would be 90 of them I hadn't heard of properly. So it's it's it's it's crazy just the amount of games that are out there and the amount of niches there are is out of control. So uh yeah, I actually don't think it

matters that much. I think people do care a little bit about like some people will follow developers from game to game, but I don't really think that's how the market moves nowadays. I think the market moves based based on mass mass appeal to
large audiences via word of mouth and short form social media and visual social media. I [snorts] I will say on the ex Blizzard uh developer note, I think there's something to a critic or an influencer or a streamer wanting to feel like they discovered a thing. I think that's a powerful motivator and that part of why they might pick games that are don't have the reputation or maybe like lesser known is that sense of well I I helped in some way. I contributed. I discovered something. Um yeah, it is interesting. I, as with all of game development, am utterly overwhelmed by the idea of of participating in this thing that in some ways feels a bit like a lottery, but

also seems to help a lot of people.
Yeah. And and you can do well from anywhere. I think I think the exciting thing is there's a lot of opportunity here, but as you say, I I do agree that the games biz starting to feel more lotteryike because sometimes games are very successful. Um, and it's it's not clear what it's it's not clear that there was a massive plan behind that. It just sort of happened. And I guess we have to all be okay with that. [snorts]
Yes. I will say um uh my peer Jason Shrier, who now has a new YouTube channel, I think just did an entire video about the games industry as lottery. I think it is a anxiety that a lot of people are are sharing. I do want to talk about the games that are out. what came out last week, what is out this week on Steam? Can you give me an update?
Yeah, I mean the good news here is that because it's the summer sale this week I is there's not much coming up this week at all actually. So I'm I'm I'm going to

leave that one. But last week before the summer sale started and I actually noticed last week I was confused. I was like, "Oh, for the week after a Nextfest it should have been busier." But I forgot that this this particular June nextfest has summer sale starting the Thursday after it. So a lot of people don't want to launch on a Tuesday or Wednesday because they feel like they'll fall off the front page because the Steam fund page is redesigned uh significantly for the summer sale. So there's an argument you would lose momentum. So basically there only a couple of big titles and those were a Sand which I mentioned last week. Sand Raiders of Sophie has been really interesting because it is doing really well, but it's also I described it in Friday's newsletter for our paid subscribers as sort of being medium on fire uh in a bad way. And that's because uh I think it had some DDoS issues. the the devs are Ukrainian, so hopefully it wasn't u any Russian folks DDoSing them, but they they had some they have some DDDs issues and they had a lot of server and sort of early bug issues, but it's

very clear
that people really like this game. And so sometimes when this happens, you'll see it
just fade out, right? But I'm looking at CCU right this second. Uh we're we're filming this on Monday and uh it's it's CCU is is an alltime high today. Uh actually just off an all-time high of 38,000 concurrents. So, and they already announced I think they sold 200,000
and they're probably going over that quickly. So, I think it's a pretty it's a pretty complicated game for a smaller team. It's like PvPVE. It's got a bunch of scavenging in it. It's kind of a people say it's a little Sea of Thieves like which is actually quite interesting. Although it's very very post-apocalyptic kind of like Mad Maxy I think in vibes. Um but um yeah, I I think it's it's done well despite a bit of a rocky start and I I think it will continue to do well.
Um well, as always to wrap things up, I have my question. Um and my question for this week is not even a question so much as I would like to make a bet with you

uh for a dollar. I guess I don't know what's legal in California in terms of uh uh sport betting. Um, I would like us each to make a guess on the date that a indie, a relatively mid to large-siz indie announces its plan to release on the same day as GTA 6. So, do you think this will happen in August, September? I think personally this is bound to happen. It's too good of marketing for somebody not to take advantage of it. But I I don't know when somebody thinks will be the right time to announce something like that. Well, you are aware that people who work in games listen to listen to this, right? So, you you've just given them the idea
influencing them. Yes. [laughter]
Yeah. Um and it is funny. I actually um actually um Chris Chris Sukowski who is not the co-host of of this [laughter] but but but D man was mentioning in a recent in one of his recent newsletters that people should announce their release dates earlier nowadays and he

thinks because everyone uses the Steam personalized calendar and if you look at the Steam personalized calendar it goes out further. it goes out a couple of months and so there's some advantage now. You might appear on the personalized calendar if you if you announce earlier. So yeah, I agree like I don't think um you know I think the issue with release dates in general is people often do not as well as they would like and when they don't do as well as they would like with the release of their game, they would like to not think they made a stupid mistake. And a stupid mistake might be in in in your mind releasing the same date as GTA 6. I I suspect it's not. I suspect that it probably doesn't make a massive difference, but um you know, like people don't want to look back on that moment in their life when they launched a new game and it didn't and it well maybe it went better, but but the point is that they could have done better. And that's something that people want to want to kind of get out of their brain. But what I would say is you're right, it's great. It's great marketing to say you're doing this. Everyone will talk about you.

You'll get a bunch more wish lists. And I don't think it will have a massive effect. It also mean might mean, for example, that you're on new and trending on the Steam front page for longer because everyone is avoiding that week. So, and also GTA is not even coming out on PC. So, so yeah, I I agree. So, I'm going to say yes.
Um I I I'm going to say, what am I going to say? Uh it's June 29th. I'm going to say August the 14th is the date that this is going to happen. I initially thought earlier, but I now think October 10th, and we'll we'll jot these down. And I think October 10th is like, oh, I can be now a news cycle story. You'll fully be in GTA News every day and it will be picked up by everyone if you if you do that. Um, but I do realize we are we're kind of creating potentially a a a a press cycle here uh by accident.
But but of course the cleverest thing to do then would would to be announced that

you you're going to the same day and then later announced that you're moving away again because you're too scared because then you would get [laughter] cuz cuz then you would get two news cycles worth of worth of cycle. You you have to do it, but you have to move the day before GTA 6, [laughter] you know, have have all of your cake and eat it, too.
Um, okay. So, what what what's your day again? August 14th.
Yeah, I think so.
Okay. I'm going to I'm going to hold this down and and we'll just do closer. We won't do prices right rules and then we'll we'll celebrate whenever whenever we get an answer.
I don't understand prices, right? Having grown up in England, I have no concept of prices right rules and several people have tried to explain it to me since I moved to America and I still don't understand it. Don't don't try to explain it to me.
Let me be clear. I have a friend who uh is one of the most uh maniac people I ever know. He just uh kept betting or placing 420 as his number. End up making it to the final round. So, I don't think that there's much to understand. Um anyway, that has been another episode of

the Game Discover Co show where we mentioned 420 around the 35minut mark which really shows a lot of restraint on my part. Um, Simon, thank you so much for doing this. Um, it is it's such a treat. And we will be back next week and then we're going to have one week off as a hiatus and then we'll be back on full schedule. Is that the plan?
That is correct. Yeah. Yeah, there's one week I'm I'm occasionally allowed to leave my desk and I should be doing so after next week. So, yeah, we'll have one more and then we'll be off and then we'll be back for hopefully the rest of the year. So, we'll see you all then.
That sounds great. We'll see you soon. Great. I'll stop it.