Was Nintendo Switch 2 a success for third-parties?

Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. This week it is the fastest selling console of all time, but are third party publishers seeing the benefit of Nintendo Switch 2. We dig into the big summer gamefest numbers. Plus, we look at some of the key news stories of the week, including Xbox's partnership with AMD. Minds Eye launches and falls over, and an agreement is reached between SAG After and the video game industry. But first, let me introduce our guest host for this week. It's none other than the former Polygon editor-inchief and now founder and host of Post Games. It's Chris Plant. Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So, Chris, fill me in. Last time we spoke, you were still at Polygon. Yes. What's happened? What is Post Games? What are you up to? That's a great question. Um, I mean, briefly on Polygon. Polygon used to be a Vox Media company. Now, it is a Valet company. I used to work for it. I no longer work for it. But the I guess more interesting thing at this point for me is Post Games which is this show that I've launched and maybe you can relate

to this or anybody who goes really deep into management at some point in their career. You always have this fantasy of oh yeah but if I ever went back to the old thing this is what I would do. Oh I would go back and I'd be a critic or I'd go back and be a reporter. It's one of the funny things that happens in journalism is you get really good at something and then you like manage your way out of doing that every day. And this is the show that I had wanted to make for a really really really long time and finally had the time and space to to do it and to kind of take that risk and then the show itself was just a weekly audio magazine. You launched ahead of me and made it way less stressful for me. Um, our shows are very different and especially in I think their target audience, but you really showed a version of this weekly news show that reminded me of the sort of thing that I would expect to hear on the BBC or on in PR where I'm like, I know I'm going to learn every time I tune into it and I also know I'm going to have like a really nice time learning

that it's not just going to be, you know, watching the paint dry. My target audience is 30 to 60 year olds who uh love video games but now have kids and have maybe a half hour a week when they can really get caught up. And I I really want to make sure that that half hour to an hour that they're getting as much info as possible and that they're really really enjoying themselves and that it's really really well produced. Um there are a lot of great shows out there that are for people talking and finding their ideas. I do one of them. It's called The Besties. I'll plug that too. But, uh, I feel like there are fewer of these shows where the the creator is, you know, writing a script, really planning out the beats of the episode, having a topic, having a theme, and and that's what I've been setting out to do. I thought worried there you were going to say, I heard your show and I thought, oh, I can do better than that. That's fine. Definitely not that. Definitely had more stress. I was like, a damn, now I have to make it good. No, it's we're seeing that media shift,

aren't we? which is there is an increasing number of these. You you talked about I never really wanted to be the publisher of games industry or whatever my job title was in the end head of games industry job is. I was given this situation back in 2017, I think it was, where the boss of Gamer Network at the time, Rupert Lman, said to me, "Chris, we're making some changes. We want to put you in charge of games industry.biz." And at the time, I thought that meant editor-inchief. And I was like, "Oh, great. Amazing." And he said, "Uh, so we'd like to make you publisher." And I went, "Can I not be publisher?" Like, you know, um, because publishers, you know, they deal with the commercial side of things. The event I don't mind doing the event side of things. I've got a commercial brain, but I I didn't I didn't that's not what not gets me out of bed in the morning. And um he said, "You could do that, but we'd still have to put a publisher in above you if you did that." And I was like, "Oh, I had to choose between being in charge and doing Yeah. In the end, I negotiated a weird middle ground, but it was the thought of going back to

editorial writing and talking about the things I like to do all, you know, that I I think is interesting that I like to learn about as much as I like to report on all the time, was a big driving force actually behind doing this and not having to run another best places to work awards, which is a project I'm really proud of. But I did 12 of them. And I just it's a lot of work and it's a lot of management and it's a lot of staff. It's a it's a lot of meetings and and yeah. Um, I'm not saying this is necessarily easier. It's actually, I think, gets harder, but it certainly is more enjoyable. I think it also speaks to the trend towards independent or at least just smaller um, creative ventures because the overhead on these and the way that the internet has warped the revenue systems for these businesses, has made it so that you can have a lot of great ideas. You can get into a place of power at a publisher and yet that power is constrained by the increasingly difficult challenge of making money. Yeah. It used to be, you know, with the

newspaper there were all these different revenue streams and then yeah, you had some of the work that was really tough and laborious, but you also had a lot of like the prestige work, the stuff that you got into it for, the stuff that's really going to be helping people. And that becomes harder and harder as the ad dollars, you know, dwindle. And there is less opportunity to do those sorts of editorial projects. Yeah. On in my case, the team had got smaller. We still had to do all the commercial stuff, the stuff that was generating revenue. Yeah. But we reduced time and everything else. But this is what I love about post games is that every show that you've done so far, it's really creative. Like there stories that are or angles on stories that that haven't been like the latest one on AI was was was inspired in many ways. Like we haven't I haven't seen stuff like that. And that's what this independent that's the positive side. There's a negative side I think when that when we've got a load of individuals doing things. It it sort of I worry about the talent progression and bringing things to the industry and the growth of the media space or the lack of it. Um which is where I'm worried. But

it does allow for this sort of level of creativity and and for it to be an affordable thing to do because you can lean on your readers I guess to fund it. But um but anyway, sorry I got distracted by saying I I I think it's a really creative show with some really I say I said to you just before we press record, I thought there must be pressure on you to keep coming up with another creative concept and in pulling it all together in a show. It's it's excellent to to hear. Yeah, thank you. I mean in terms of like the pressure before I started work on a single episode, I mapped out a year of topics. Oh, really? and like just knew like I know I want to do these. These are stories that I live for and you know you as life happens you start throwing stuff in there and now that's probably about like a year and a half. It's just because stuff keeps getting bumped and do I think I'll hit all those topics? No. Do I think I'll have interest in all of them by the end? No. Do I think each of them is actually newsworthy once I get around to them?

No. But I knew that I would only want to do a thing like this and really, you know, bet my life on it. Quite frankly, if one, I thought there was enough out there that would interest people and two that I would not lose momentum or enthusiasm. Right. So, so far, yeah, I've done well, now I'm about to do a second episode on AI that's kind of a two-parter. I've talked about sex or lewd games and I have some stuff coming up that I'm really excited about. There's a a Broadway composer who is taking a leave from being a composer to create a video game and I like can't wait to tell the story, right? And it's a lot each week. I you know I am producing between an hour and an hour and a half of audio content. It's like pretty produced each week, but it's so much easier when it it's a story that you want to tell and like the second I wrap on one, I'm like, "Oh, great. Now I can go do that one that I'm still

excited about. We should talk again in like 6 months and see where I am." Uh, but right now I I haven't lost like any of that fuel or that momentum. Well, now I bring you on to a business podcast, so hopefully I love it. This doesn't drain. I live for this stuff. I I I I like I I I love I was just at SGF and and I love uh I mean I'm a journalist. I'm a professional gossip so I I love talking the biz side of things. So yeah, I missed you at Summer GameFest. I was obviously still there as well. I know. We did a show last week um which was a bit of a reaction show to it. I mean, you know, I've got some numbers about it and we'll talk about those in a moment, but did you see much? Was there something that anything that inspired you out there? Obviously don't want to spoil forthcoming postgame shows, but Yeah. Yeah. I mean, happy to talk about it. The two things that like really stood out to me personally, and not talking like do I think these things will be successful was uh Pragmata, the Capcom uh action/shooter/puzzle game. A great thing about doing this for

so long is you can see the future in some way. And I worry a little bit about my visions for this game, which is I put the controller down and I was like, I can't wait to talk about this game in 10 years when everybody decides they love it. I don't know if anybody's going to buy it when it comes out, but there, holy moly, does it have a um mid2000 Sega vibe to it, and I adored it. And then the other one, uh I can't remember if you talked about this last week, was Ambrosia Sky. The new game from Soft Rains. um in Soft Grains. For people who don't know, it's um a new studio but with a lot of talent. My friend Joel Burgess runs it. Former Bethesda, former Ubisoft, and it has a very I don't know, somewhere like Prey, I guess, is the game that comes to mind. Okay. Arcane, but uh with um some really great story. One of the writers on the story did um Oh, dang. Is it Mortician's Tale? I

think is the the right name of it, but it was fantastic indie game about the basically the funeral business. Um, yeah, rotation's tale. And this game is also dealing with death in some very interesting ways and and I kind of can't wait for it. Oh, wow. Well, I can come on to Pragmata cuz I do have some positive statistics about it. Yeah, it reminded me of um PO3 and Vanquish and that sort of capcomy sci-fi thing and I really enjoyed the combat as well. Interesting though, a couple people I talked to had the exact opposite reaction to Pragmata, but most people I spoke to have the same had the same reaction that you did, which is um was one of the best things that I played at the show. Well, there's some statistics. These some of these statistics are already out there. It's worth remembering that the game business is co-founded by Jeff Keley. I've heard of him and I'm here talking about the performance of summer gamefest. I'd love to tell you that I'm completely an independent voice in this. I'll try to be, but there is an element of inevitably the slight bias there, but the numbers the numbers are numbers. And if you talk about the Summer GameFest Showcase itself, which I never quite

remember the actual name of it. I think it's just called the Summer Game Fest Showcase. It had 50 million views collectively. I don't quite know how they worked that out. It's not quite the Game Awards numbers, but it's a huge number. It's actually the second biggest showcase this year behind the Switch 2 reveal, which is which sounds pretty impressive. Um, they say it's an 89% year-over-year peak viewership growth. If you look at level up analytics, they've done a lot of comparisons here to try and give us a bit of a sense of what does that number actually mean. Yeah. They say the peak viewership is 3 million and compared to other showcases during that week. So that Sha showcase event 3 million peak viewers is ahead of Xbox which had 2.2 million peak views and the PlayStation State of Play event which is just behind it on 2.1 million. If you look at the year before the opening events of the Summer Game Fest showcase in 2024 uh had 2.3 million peak viewers. It's a big jump on that and it's even a jump on the 2.5 million that was recorded in 2023 which was the previous record. So I Jeff is understandably pleased

about that number. If I look at the other showcases, the Xbox showcase was weaker this year. Last year's showcase at 2.7 million which was the previous record actually for the whole summer gamefest period. But of course last year's Xbox showcase was the big Activision, Xbox, Bethesda crossover with Gears of War, Fable, Doom, lots of big games. It was a big hype. it was being hyped up quite a bit and this year's one I thought was great. Loads of interesting games in it but a little bit less dramatic uh in terms of sort of AAA attention. Actually Sony State of Play this year did slightly better than last year. It did 2 million last year peak viewers and this year it was 2.1 million. So overall when it comes to the director to consumer stuff lots of people watched it seems like. Yeah and I think people are becoming tuned into into those. Did you watch all of them Chris or do you sort of catch up afterwards? There were, I think, roughly 50 of these. So, I I I didn't see all of them. I admired the people I saw in Blue Sky who were who were doing that uh service for everyone. I I'll be I'll be very honest. I don't have a tremendous

amount of interest in this window of trailer releases. And the reason is I don't find it to be the moment when big companies revealed their best like whatever like big big surprise twist. I feel like this is for me the middle tier of things. And I think there's a pretty clear reason for that which is companies now have access to their fans via all these different directs. So if they really want to make a big splash, they don't want to do it when everybody else is hopping into the pool. That said, what I adore about this change is I think that's better for the for the industry all around. I think it is better that we have discrete moments that we're not doing this thing that only made sense when we needed to get video games in the New York Times that one time that they would get there each year, right? Like that was a function that E3 served of get everybody in the

same room. Um it it just feels the idea of having to do it all at once for me feels like a bit of a relic. That said, still wonderful to see everybody. Um I will say this about SGF and what I've heard from people who program there. people love it who who are on the on the game publisher side and I'm not tied to Jeff so I I I'm happy to say this like you you will talk to people from I'm not going to name names but from different um game development studios and they will talk about the turnkey nature of it that you come in you pay a pretty reasonable set fee you can pay a little extra and they even do some decorations for you oh yeah that it's all ready for when you get there and I have used to work E3 and working it was a nightmare. I mean, having to get fabricators, having to get all these different, you know, vendors, having to set up, to build, to break down. It really was a a truly a miserable experience. And that

was for a pretty small stations that I worked at. For these bigger things, just cost a fortune and it was a headache. And this just feels like a a much better setup, at least for the relationship between the press and the publishers. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're talking about play days specifically, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear the same thing. E3 was LACC, which had its unions. You couldn't do anything. You couldn't even move things from one part of the building to the other without having to using one of their union workers to do that, which always ramped up the cost of these things. Made it, you know, the year E3 got cancelled, the cost of booking a booth at E3 was less than almost every other video game event. But when you factor in all the costs that come with it, it immediately skyrockets above it. And of course by doing it in the location that did it which is a kind of nice location when you're in the location around it is not so nice but it's um he doesn't have any of that and yeah it's quite turnkey. I mean when it comes to announcement events I do sometimes get I think I always find it very hard when I sit through stuff where

I've got a certain pre I've got a certain preference for video games. So when I watch a Nintendo Direct I almost certainly always enjoy it because I just a big Nintendo fan. So I like I like most of the stuff I see there. Yeah. I go to Summer Game Fest. I like certain Xbox games, but I don't like all of them. Same with PlayStation. As an individual trying to enjoy these things, I find it a little bit uh I can find it a little bit hard. And act kind of like the fact I could sort of skip I skip over this a retro Japanese RPG. I'll skip over this one. You know, those sort of um those sort of things. And it's not that I, you know, I think everyone could do that. I think that's kind of um interesting. I didn't think there was a bit of variety this year. I say that there was a lot of games. There was a lot of online multiplayer shooters that looked a little bit cartoony. There was a lot of grim, dark, sort of souls like games. Oddly, there was a lot of weirdly animated sort of cartoony games. I think probably Cuphead inspired Mhm. stuff. Um, there was a lot of licensed stuff actually. Game of Thrones, Dune, James Bond, obviously Lego stuff, and obviously lots and lots of retro stuff. But I actually thought when you started looking at all the different buckets

they sat in, you know, even this one set in the 1940s, I did get a quite a lot of variety. There was also a lot of similar looking things which obviously is part of the you asked about um Pragmata. Oh yeah. So I'll start with trailers, right? None of these numbers are going to surprise you. The biggest trailer of Summer Game Fest was Call of Duty Black Ops 7. According to Level Up, it generated over 85.3 million views, but it was neck andneck with Resident Evil Reququum, which managed 84.6 million views. Resident Evil Recreum, I felt, was like the sort of standout surprise Yeah. announcement of that event, even though we thought it might be there. They they did a great job of um tricking us into thinking it wasn't going to be. The one after that wasn't actually a game demo at all. It was The Witcher 4 and Real Engine 5 tech demo. Yeah. Which actually kicked off the whole period if you count Epic State of Unreal address that 67.2 2 million trailer views. And number five was uh the Xbox hardware was um the Rock Xbox ally. I'm just call Xbox handhelds. Um they did over 50 million views. Other games, Marvel's

TOCON was the number five most viewed trailer. Sea of Remnants, oh yeah, did really well, which was interesting. 37.4 million. Persona 4 Revival, 26.2 million. Then it's James Bond 24.7 million. Deadpool VR 24.4 million. And rounding off the top 10 was the year three character reveal for Street Fighter 6 with 24.2 million wow trailer views. So those were the top sort of performing and I'm not surprised by those. I was going to do a big deep dive analysis into wish lists and um followers on Steam, but Simon Carlos did that over at Game Discover, so I'm just going to quote him. Fantastic. Resident Evil Reququum was the big winner on on Steam as well. It was new on Steam that week. It wasn't hadn't been on there previously. It immediately went to nearly 30,000 followers, nearly 620,000 wish lists. It was number one regard. But number two was most wishlisted was Pragmata. Just shy of 350,000. I think Capcom games just do tend to do very well with that sort of audience. Yeah. And it's been awaited

for a while. There was some positive press around it. I think that that certainly helped. Other big games in the wish list, Atomic Heart 2 is in there. Grounded 2 is in there. I'm not surprised. Sequels to games for established audiences really. There were though a couple of surprises. Um, did you do you remember the body horror game Ill? Yeah. It was the third most followed game on Steam and the fourth most wishlisted game of the show on on Steam as well. Wow. So that's game discovered data. I wouldn't have predicted that at all. It was actually the 12th most viewed trailer as well. It got more people viewed that trailer than the Silent Hill F trailer just about. It was quite close, but I I thought that looked great. So that's game by Team Clout. Um, they should be pretty happy I imagine with those. Yeah, I mean this is classic uh Steam uh in that like I'm like I have not heard of this. Oh, it's the most popular thing. Oh, it looks pretty good. Sure. Um again, when a thousand games get shown in a week, I guess this is what happens. Yeah. Well, the other one, this wasn't even shown during the bigger uh well, it was shown during the feature game show, which is popular, but it's a lower profile. Um it

was the that's the sixth biggest showcase of the summer gamefest period behind PC gaming show, behind Day the Devs as well. Um, but they had a game on their stage called The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. Yeah. It was actually the second most followed game of the show on Steam and the sixth most wishlisted game on Steam. It's from Alcat Games. They know what they're doing. People know who they are. Um, it's based on established universe. It looked a bit mass effecty, but it's done really really well. Another game I didn't I hadn't. You talk about a heard of. I'd leave for remember ill, but I I I didn't. There are things um across my career at different publishers where you just knew you could say a word and it was like traffic gold. When I was at uh The Verge, one of our jokes was like fish content. If anything was about fish for whatever reason, boom, instant. Wow. You find a way to tie the Verge and fish together and like you were swimming in it. Um, and another one that I did not appreciate is the expanse in entertainment coverage. Oh

wow. And I've heard this from a lot of different people. The expanses following is hardcore and they will show up. Um, the second I saw that they were making this game. I just very very good sign at least for that initial bump. Those people are going to show up day one and get that game. Yeah, I'll keep an eye on that one. Yeah, there were some clear winners, some big numbers on the showcases. Can I ask you a kind of an industry question because I I mean this is like my chance while I'm on this show. Resident Evil 9, this one puzzled me to no end. Everything about it because we got the surprise announcement which was cheeky and like I get that and I like it. What I didn't expect was we were demoed it at at Play Days and did you have a chance to see I saw it. I didn't play the game. Some people played it. Yeah. But yeah, I didn't see it. I didn't play I saw it. Yeah. And I had a chance to see it and what was absolutely

peculiar about it is it feels like this game is like years away from release. There's barely there was not much to show as in it is a Resident Evil game and they don't show combat. And it is one of those like they have one of these in I feel like every one of the most recent modern Resident Evil games where you kind of do the uh indie horror thing of just hiding from a big scary unkillable thing. Perfectly neat and absolutely strange decision I felt in terms of introducing the game to people because it doesn't really show most of the mechanics of the game. And on top of that, it kept um cutting away. It kept doing these like blackout moments where they'd be like, "Well, that's 30 seconds of the game and here's another 30 seconds later on in that mission." And I I just don't I don't sometimes I I I see things and I I just from an industry marketing level, I don't understand why I'm seeing them. And that was a big one for me. I will give you my theory, but also a little bit about Cap. So Capcom

often release a game in what they call the Capcom slot, which is February, March. And they often ramp up their coverage from around the E3 before and then they begin with something there. Then they'll do something new at Gamescom. They probably release the thing we just saw as a demo knowing them like in September. Yeah. And then they do a big thing in like beginning of the year and then they launch it. So in terms of the release cadence, the reason in terms they show a little bit of it regarding so that demo is interesting because I was um if you read the Eurogamer piece, this is Alex Donson actually went and played the game. One of the few people that actually played it and I spoke to him after he played it. I want to know all about it. So, in that trailer, there's that bit where they cl you remember where they climb on like some trolley to get a she climbs on some trolley to get a screwdriver off the uh off the top shelf. Do you remember this bit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the game, they cut she looked away and then suddenly the trolley is there. In the demo, you have to move the trolley to that position in order to climb it. When you move the trolley, things fall off the trolley and make a really loud noise, right? And that and then you hear the creature outside the door going and

it sort of and Alex told a story about how he he turned his lighter off. He said, "Don't move. Don't make any more noise. Just do not move. Do not move." Waited for the noise to stop from the monster. Before he could get going again, he lit the lighter and the monster was right there. Right. And he he squealled. Right. Show that. Show that. Like I just I I I mean I I Let me be clear. I'm not even criticizing Capcom because I'm not that stupid because nobody is on a heater right now more than they are. Like they they seem to know what they're doing, but it it truly puzzled me. I think the reason that cuz here's the thing, they kept talking about this being a bold reinvention or a change of direction of the franchise. Yeah. And what we were shown was neither. Right. And because it was cat, it was a it was it was a horror game. Yeah. We saw a horror game and we saw a monster stalking them. This is exactly what they did in Resident Evil 2. It's what they did in Resident Evil 3. It's what they did in Resident Evil Village. Right. I' I've seen this and it's done very well and it's effective and I'm a Resident Evil fan so I was on

board with it. My theory is they've shown everybody the horror of Resident Evil before they start getting us into what the combat's like and where perhaps it goes a little bit different to Resident Evil. So often you find companies do it the other way around. They show you a completely different game. Everyone goes, "This isn't what I want. This isn't Resident Evil. I don't like this at all." And then they go, "No, no, we're doing the other stuff, too." And by then point, you may have lost people. And I think this is a way of going, "Well, can reassure the fans this is still the horror Resident Evil." And then maybe when we get to Gamescom or whatever, they'll show us whatever it look whatever that, you know, bombed out Raccoon City segments like or whatever. I hope they let me go like punch a volcano, you know? I'm bringing back that Resident Evil. That'll that'll be great. No, don't bring that. Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. But yes, I I I suspect there's there's talk of it being a little bit more explorationary and there's loads of speculation on what it could be. And I I took it as this was more of a don't worry, we made because they kept talking about it being a reinvention. Jeff said

on stage, I saw their vision for it and I was blown away. Yeah. And I'm like I'm blown away cuz I love this stuff, but it is it's res it's Resident Evil. That makes a lot more sense. I I like that. Yeah, that's my theory on it. I expect the next stuff is going to look quite different. Um there are some numbers that aren't positive. This proves that I'm not fully um uh uh because I was interested in what the media coverage was like because it was facing some pressures the media over last year. Um some of it's specific to this year that isn't going to be affected next year. So I got some data from press engine which tracks all video game articles and the keywords that are used in those articles. There are services out there that that outside of press engine footprints does something similar and I actually looked at footprints as data and I compared the two and it's roughly so I'm relatively confident these numbers are if they're not completely right they're at least trends are are the same. So, Press Engine sent me the numbers of articles featuring the term Summer GameFest between the start of May to June 12th. And that number was 5,653

articles across the internet on that term, those terms particular, which sounds great, but it's heavily down on the year before. Yeah. Where there was 9,761 articles that featured the term Summer Game best. If this is across the board, if you look at the platform showcases, the PlayStation showcase for the first three days after it aired, so the day it aired and the three days afterwards, it generated 2,186 articles. That's a drop of 3,035 articles published over the same period for the 2024 PlayStation State of Play. So again, a drop of nearly 900 articles. The Xbox Showcase again over three days went from 6,675 articles in 2024 to 2,750 articles in 2025. I'm hoping I've got that right. That was absolutely huge drop there. There were some big reasons for this. Some of which is unique to this year. One is there were fewer big games. The media outlets tend to focus on the big stuff. You know this. Uh and if you compare this year to last year in terms of big AAA SEO friendly titles,

there just weren't as many. Another really big one that's particularly unique to this year was Switch 2. We revealed in the game business that press didn't receive pre-release hardware or games um until the day the console came out. So they were unable to get reviews and coverage of ready for the Switch 2 launch. And the Switch 2 of course landed launch landed straight on top of Summer GameFest. So I know at least of two media publications that had to pull back slightly from Summer GameFest in favor of Switch 2 reviews and general coverage. Yeah. Also there's things like embargos to factor in. We're still got coverage going up now from the Play Days events. So these numbers aren't completely final. SGF was a little earlier last year. So all that needs to be taken out into account, but the big one that isn't unique to this year is there's just a drop in media coverage for video games generally. And there's also a fall in websites covering video games. So for the Xbox showcase this year, there were 640 publications that covered the event. That's a drop of nearly 400 publications over 2024. For the PlayStation State of Play event, the number of publications I wrote about that dropped from 835 to 64 64. So,

that's not quite as bad, but it's still pretty big drop. And for Summer GameFest All Up, for the entire of May to early June, publication count went from 1,2 in 2024 to 833 in 2025. So, again, almost a 400 drop in the number of places that use the term Summer Game Fest in their coverage. We spoke about this show about Yeah, I'll just top in really quick. I mean, obviously, I of all people, I'm not going to deny the changes that are happening to the games industry and outlets closing, but I I would poke a few holes in these numbers, or at least I I would want to push at them a little bit. I think there's a few things that I I see. I don't know if these are true. They're just the questions I as a reporter want to ask. One is the decrease in number of outlets that covered it. I know that last year there was a lot more streamers at Summer Games Fest and streamers who were covering it and felt like a significant decrease this year probably because um I think streamers are realizing that they're not journalist and that these things are actually quite boring after you have the

excitement of going to one for the first time. So I I I do wonder about that. The thing that I would say about the fewer articles and why I'm always skeptical of numbers about just raw total articles published is the value of an article, a single story on the internet changes monthto month, let alone year to year. Yeah. And by that I mean I could say at Polygon in the past with something like this, we often would find that one great story that was a roundup per thing did infinitely better than 20 short stories combined on all those individual pieces. So if if the goal here is eyes and attention on a game, it's not especially useful in my opinion if you said, "Hey, there were we went from a thousand stories." No. Then all of those stories got 500 views to uh we went to 500

stories, but all of them got 20,000 views. Yeah, it just is tricky. As well, we're talking about public, there are a if you look at the list of publications, look at the list of press, we did a piece a couple of months ago on this. Look at the list of there are fewer outlets and there's ones that we know about that have either cut down or or disappeared but there's a lot of really small amateur websites in in countries non-English-sp speakaking countries that you know you may not even notice. There's a lot of the drop in publications is around that. You're right the I mean I don't like to use these estimates of like the the numbers of readers these articles apparently got cuz I'm like I don't really know how you work this out properly really. But the number drop isn't quite so high in terms of the actual number of people reading it. It's a forever problem with data in journalism and games which I feel like makes your life I just imagine miserable in some ways is it's two places where they obfuscate everything. So you kind of have to like take the numbers that are available to you because good luck finding any data. Yeah. If you said to

me at the beginning of this event, "Will there be fewer articles written about video games from Summer Game Fest this year?" I would have said yes. Yeah. simply for all the reasons that I stated above. It's not a surprise. Um, and you're right. Here's the thing. I was at I Video Games Chronicle. I ended up using their they have a little they had a suite at Summer Game Fest and I went there a few times to their podcast and they were doing this and they they do still do this way, right? They they sit there watching the the press conference and they're writing up every story and I thought to myself, I remember when I used to do that and we don't we don't do that anymore. We just we we much rather do a really like everything that was announced like people. It's interesting the feedback I got, particularly from an industry publication, is that when they get the newsletter from GI and it's like 60 articles, whatever, you know, they're like, "Oh, I can't keep up with that. Can't you just do me one story with everything in it so I can see it all at a glance?" And so we moved to that model. We reduced our coverage of E3 at the time, probably about 75%. Yeah. um with that strategy of having a big story that really just showed you everything rather than having 50 small stories that

sort of gave you a nub to to play that SEO game. So, it is Yeah, there is. You're right. I suspect there's an element of strategy shift. Yeah, and I I expect we'll see it go down more and more too. Well, unless AI bots end up making the churn higher and higher. There's kind of two scenarios here. There's the humanmade content and the robot content. Yeah. But I still think it's important and I think this is Yeah, it is. I think the media element we can focus on it. Oh, it's not it's it's going down and down and down, but I still think it is important for the reasons that you give. I mean, it's great the director to consumer stuff's doing well and those numbers are much bigger. But I do think it's that translation, that media depth. I think people do look to that once they've gone through the they've watched the trailer. Oh, that's interesting. They want to they want to hear that followup. And I think that's I think you're right. I think that's important. And Jeff believes it. You know, I know he's got the big direct event. Yeah. he's invested in this. Play days is an event that he sort of he does with IM8 bit which is all about getting the media hands on these sort of things. I think it's important and I'd like to see more companies really do that um going

forward. Don't take those numbers as a reason not to do it. Yeah. Take those numbers as a reason to do it. Yes. Yeah. I'll just implore that even more again. Yes. To invest even more in good stuff. Yeah. Like if you do question those numbers, the question should be where if there are fewer places doing it, where are the places that are going to have great reach? Where are the places that are going to reach my audience in a compelling way? Um I think there used to be a bit of a kind of a shotgun blast approach of we do have a trillion outlets and they will write up literally everything. And now I think there it's all the more reason for especially the publicity team or marketing team to have an amiable relationship with the press. um that that is going to reach an audience because they're they're rare and fewer than ever before. I did see quite a few publishers sort of target a handful of like the Resident Evil hands-on demo element was given to a very small selection of people and I

thought that was interesting because that means that they went a bit harder on those get on that game coverage than perhaps they might have done if they were one of 50 because they wanted to make the most of the fact they had yeah some access and something interesting that perhaps they wouldn't have done if um and not saying they wouldn't have covered it but they probably would have just put it in amongst all their other coverage but you'll know more about that than me. Um, I'll move on to our second subject. Okay, Summer Game Fest is a fascinating, we could talk about it for ages. There's so many segments to it and so many elements to that uh thing. Um, and you're right. I think companies don't have to announce stuff during that week. I still think it's important to have a lightning rod moment where everyone pays attention to video games, but I think it's great that people, you know, Borderlands did its thing at PAX. You know, there'll be a bunch of stuff at Gamescom, a bunch of stuff at Tokyo Game Show. There'll be people doing standalone things. There will be, you know, Nintendo will drop a direct at some point. and they're just doing a Donkey Kong one. You don't have to follow that cadence, but it's still nice, I think, if you can if your game does line up um with that that sort of summer window. There's there's a lot of people paying attention um and we saw

some of the big wish list winners that it can when you have a few big games, not too many of them during Summer Game Fest or E3, other games can benefit. We often often people used to say to me years and years ago that, oh, why would you announce your game at E3? everyone's going to be covering the big Nintendo game, the big PlayStation game, the big Xbox game. When E3 went away, I actually had quite a few smaller publishers, AA publishers, indie publishers, say to me that those people came in for those games and then they discovered the others. Yeah, there's a trickle down effect. That's the reason why you got games like Ill and stuff like that do really well cuz people came in for maybe Resident Evil. Yeah, I think it's developers and publishers knowing which is the right match for them that there like all of the it's great that we have all these options now. I mentioned um Ambrosia Sky um earlier that soft rains game and here is a game that hardcore game players read game journalists are going to love and you need to play in a very quiet environment. Mhm. So, well,

that means PAX is out and you need to actually get people in the room to play the game because it really benefits from being played. So, where is that situation going to come up? We mentioned Pragmata. Like to me, that's like a perfect game for this for a larger publisher of it really sings once you play it. Are you going to come are you going to be able to get all the journalists to come out and do a trip to play this game? Maybe not. Where the Yes. the big events like does Rockstar ever need to show up at these? No. Like Rockstar is going to be fine. Yeah. Well, I I'll move on because I'm wary of the time and I've got so much more I want to talk about. And the other one is that we just had the biggest fastest selling video game console launch of all time in the Nintendo Switch 2. Three and a half million consoles sold in a matter of days. But we've been covering on the on the game business. We're talking about how we know Nintendo does well out of this stuff, but what about third parties? So I wanted to look into how third party games have done at the launch of Switch 2 and this is how

they've done. So Sakana covering the US market they revealed to me that 62% of Switch 2 physical software in the US was first party games. So 62% of games sold was basically Mario Kart and those Zelda Switch 2 editions. Now you may think why are you doing physical? Um Nintendo don't share digital data with any of the charts companies. That doesn't help. Um, but also Switch 2, Switch is a heavily physical console across Europe. 80% plus of a new Switch game sales are physical. So it's it's the opposite to Xbox. Yeah. In that sense, a very physical platform. Now, Switch 2, I have been sent some data for some continental European territories. I'm not supposed to see this data, and I'm not going to give the figures on the podcast for that reason. I don't want to um cause problems for any of the data companies. But what I'm going to say about it is that the digital things are pretty much similar for Switch 2 as there was for Switch One. There's a couple of games that dipped to sort of 70%. But most of them are 80%

plus, some of them even close to 90% of their sales were physical. So we're still looking at heavily physical platform. But anyway, yeah. So first party games accounted for 62% Switch 2 physical software sales during the launch week of Switch 2. CD Project ranked second in almost every market with Cyberpunk and Sega also did very well. Sega was number three in the US. Now I say very well this number does not include the bundle of Mario Kart World. GFK uh in the UK they say 86% of software sales of physical software sales for Switch 2 in the UK were of first party games. So only 14% of games were third party sales. If you take away Mario Kart uh so you sorry you take away the Mario Kart World bundle. Mario Kart World bundle is included in that stat. is actually 48%. So the the Mario Kart bundle skews this quite a bit for the launch. So in the US, the launch of Switch One, 81% of games sold were first party games. That didn't have a bundle

obviously. And in the UK, the launch of Switch One, 89% of sales were Nintendo games. Um so even if you if you take this UK number, 89% was for Switch One was first party games. 86% for Switch Two were first party games. There's a slight shift there. That's probably more to do with the fact there's just more games. Switch one's launch lineup was Zelda, Just Dance, One, Two, Switch, Skylanders, and Super Bowl Man. That was the entire physical lineup for Switch One. For Switch 2, there's a lot lot more. There's Hitman, the Cyber Punk, the Split Fiction, Hogwarts Legacy, Bravely Default, Yakuza Zero, Sonic, Civilization. There's quite a few more uh games in there. Um these are just physical games. Well, Nintendo Welcome Touris isn't in there. Um I don't think these numbers are great at all. So, Cyberpunk has done okay. It's the number two. USA number two game behind Mario Kart. Um, I understand in the UK and I understand this is also true of all markets or at least all a lot of other markets has outperformed what The Witcher 3 did on Switch at launch. So, or the Switcher as some people call it. It's certainly the biggest third party

launch, but we're still not talking mega mega numbers here. And there's some games that have done very poorly. Um, there's some games that have done sub 100 units uh at launch of of the Switch 2 when it comes to third party. Um, but for games, um, I'll do some caveats. Okay. Mario Kart is why people came in for Switch 2. Mhm. 80% of Switch 2 sales were the Mario Kart bundle. So, that is that's going to actually people had a game straight away at launch. It's possible we're going to see people who will put down Mario Kart and then start looking around at what's new. Um, so basing this purely on the launch week perhaps isn't entirely fair. There are no reviews for these games at launch. There was if you were trying to go, I've got Mario, what else should I buy? What are the critics saying? We weren't saying anything. So there was no there were no reviews. Yeah. So again, there might see a delayed effect on this, but this is my personal take on this. I've been speaking to a bunch of third parties in the buildup of Switch 2, and you know, I spoke to Take 2 and Strath

Zelnik. They're very much asking Nintendo to deliver for them. They're saying, "Look, we've backed you. We've given you some games. Nintendo, you need to help us be successful on your platform. Otherwise, why would we keep doing that? Um, too many people come in for your games. What can how can we grow our games?" But I still think they need to meet Nintendo halfway. The Switch audience is broader now. There are more adults that play Nintendo consoles than there were back in the 90s or whatever when Pat was more of a kids machine. But Switch users expect to be able to plug in their game and play it. That's what they expect, you know, and they expect to be able to take it out with them. They expect it to be flexible. When you've got a game like Hitman, which requires online connectivity and then also is a game key card you have to download the thing, I don't think speaks to that audience effectively. I'm not surprised Cyber Punk is the number one third party game because we had CD Project on the show about a month ago. They really thought about what the SW, you know, they knew Cyber Punk's not the, you know, isn't isn't a kids game, isn't the family game, but they knew the Switch audience might be interested in

it. If you can put the game on the cartridge and if you can make sure that, you know, it's adapts to both portable and the console environment. I just think Nintendo have got to be careful. They've done this before, uh, where they've sort of scaled back or at least softened their focus on first party in order to push third party. I think that would be a mistake. Um, people come into the Nintendo platform for Nintendo games and then they discover the other games and they might try the other third party games out. But I do think third party companies. I too many of these games were these game key cards. I'm not against the idea of them. I just don't think they work. I just don't think they're not going to work that well on Nintendo format because of the expectation of that audience. And indeed, a lot of the games didn't do very well. And a lot of them were effectively digital download required titles. Did you play any third party games on Switch? Did you have a Switch too, Chris? Are you on board? Are you I I do. I mean, the only thing that I've been playing outside of Mario Kart is Fast Fusion, which is the $15 indie game that is excellent. Um, and I think I've seen in the top 10 on the digital store.

Mhm. But I don't know what that means in terms of sales. No. No. Again, it's hard for me to make sense of any of this for for all the reasons you mentioned. and just the fact that it costs so much and then you buy Mario Kart and maybe you buy a subscription to Nintendo Nintendo online and at that point are you really just in the mood to spend more money on a game that is old, right? Like that's the other part. These aren't new games. These are some of them that have already been out on the Nintendo Switch. So I don't quite get the appeal. I know that like Cyberpunk I think is very clever in that people who buy the Switch and only the Switch maybe haven't had a chance to play that. Do I think people who want to play the new Sonic or even Hogwarts Legacy who also in a Switch are the type of people who have made an effort to go play those games elsewhere? Probably. I I I think. But again, it's

tough to know because the data is so invisible. The thing that I can't stop wondering about is where is Ubisoft and what does this say about Ubisoft? Because Ubisoft had a reputation with Nintendo for a while of being the publisher that's going to make new weird things for the launch at Nintendo. You know, Nintendo always tries to woo different third party partners and it feels like um a different set of them fall for it each time at the beginning of the console cycle. I remember uh ahead of the Wii U uh being shown Call of Duty and being told this is the grown-up third party uh Nintendo console, but Ubisoft was consistent. You know, you could expect a Red Steel, you could expect a zombie U. They would have something kind of surprising. They seem to have a really good relationship with Nintendo. And now it feels like they're just trying to survive. Hang on for dear life. And uh I imagine you can't make a

lot of space for Wii or Switch to launch games when you're in that position possibly. I mean the Prince of Persia that Prince of Persia game they released last year. Yeah. Which I know didn't do great numbers. It sold best on Nintendo, right? It was a very I know it wasn't an exclusive Nintendo game, but it was it was a I think also the ideas of exclusive sort of over. It's worth noting the Marian Rabbits team have largely dispanded. Although Ubisoft Milan still exists, the people behind that game have gone and formed a new studio. I know they had pitched another title um that didn't get approved. I don't know why, but it sort of never happened which was again I think tied to Nintendo. So that that sort of team was doing those sort of things. They do have Star Wars Outlaws coming. But I think I agree with you. I think it look easy. You can port your game to Switch 2 and you can probably find some players. And if you do it right, like Cyber Punk did it, you might be able to find an okay number of players. We had Matthew Ball on the show said, "Look, you're not going to your big audience isn't going to be on Switch, too." Yeah. People were

interested in Star Wars Outdoors. If they were interested in The Elder Ring or anything like that, they're probably they would have bought them on the other machines. You can still do something on these platforms with those games if you want to. But if you really want to succeed on Switch, we've seen it. Like people say Switch, Nintendo third party games don't succeed on Switch. The traditional third party games that we think of don't. But Lego games do. They do really well. Uh Just Dance does super well. Um Hogwarts Legacy did massive numbers on on Switch. You know, it came out much much later and it wasn't isn't too far off PlayStation figures now. Yeah. And there are games that do very well. Indie games because obviously a lot of indie developers are I think Nintendo inspired. Yeah. they do really well on on Nintendo platforms. So, there is definitely a market um there's definitely lots of third party success to have and it's worth noting that the end of the Switch's life cycle. It got to the point where sales of um first party games and third party games were evenly matched, you know. Um so, it certainly hasn't been a great start. As I say, um as you quite rightly say,

there is a lot there isn't actually a lot of things here. I was actually tempted by Hitman. didn't never played Hitman. When I found out I had to be online for bits of it, I thought, well, sometimes I play at a coffee shop and sometime like Yeah. I I uh anyway I I kind of share my my dream for um indies on Switch too because I don't think we live in the post Steam Deck world and I know not every casual person normal sane healthy person has a Steam Deck or a Rogue Ally X or whatever. But it is a reality that like the bump that indie games got when Nintendo Switch original launched is different than Switch 2. I would love kind of like Super Mario Allstars style packs of indie games that I could buy on the Switch 2 with a custom layer where I come in and it's like I picked my little arcade of four or five games. I am inspiring this largely on uh the Shovel Knight series which I think has done versions of this.

And again, I'm not talking about just like you buy it as a bundle in the store and then it's five games. I mean, a wholly like original standalone arcade experience inside of a piece of software. I understand that that sounds like an extra layer of navigation for hardcore players. That wouldn't be appealing, but I think there are real people who don't know what indie games are good or bad. Especially when you go onto the Switch shop now, it is completely impenetrable and a gamble on what you're going to get qualitywise. And I think that developers need to start working together and finding solutions for how they present their work and how they curate their work because if the stores aren't going to do it, it's going to fall on them. Um, so I'm I'm hoping for something. I'm hoping for some creativity in terms of how games are actually distributed on the Switch 2. I think a lot of good stuff is going to get lost in this market. There used to be um back in the retail physical retail days. Okay, this

is always in collaboration with the retailers and Nintendo don't seem that interested. But they used to do things like these are the BAFTA winners. Yeah, here the nominees for the game awards and they sort of, you know, whatever it is, you know, you could they sort of did these celebrations and and often they were reduced prices or in in collections and stuff like that. That's an interesting idea. Yeah, I I call it video games. Get this done. If you're listening, make that happen. Um, those are our big stories for the day. I do have some smaller stories, but we're sort of short on time, so I want to get through them uh relatively quickly. One of them's only relatively recently broken. It was broken on Wednesday. Xbox has partnered with AMD for future Xbox consoles. In a short video, Xbox President Sarah Bond said the deal is for future Xbox devices, including handhelds, consoles, and cloud. The multi-year partnership between Microsoft and AMD will see the two co-engineer silicon across several devices and AI powered experiences within a platform that is not tied to a single store or device and fully compatible with your existing Xbox game library. I wrote about this already on the site. Again, I

think we kind of gather this might be the direction of Xbox, but Chris, your initial reaction to the to that story. Unsurprising. I I think is the the general tenor here. I I hope that they have ideas about how they're going to respond to what Nvidia is offering. I think seeing how well things run on the Switch and how beautiful like Fast Fusion is, I don't know. I get the partnership. I get the history. We'll see how it goes. My My thing with it, and I did say this in the article, is this idea of an Xbox console that has you can play your Steam games on and basically Xbox becoming a PC that sits under your TV. Yeah, I think it's an interesting future. Xbox has great strategies. I often think they do. I thought this Xbox Series XS S strategy was a great one, but for some reason it doesn't always connect. Xbox has the games now. Perhaps they didn't have the games back then. It's a good pun. Oh, yes. It's It always sounds good on paper. It's It's whether it can deliver on reality. The idea of Windows, it feels like I've gone back in time 25 years. The idea of where gaming Windows

being the the heart of this, you know, I spoke to a games exec. I did an interview with them and afterwards they started talking about it and he pulled a bit of a face at that. But you know they're the biggest games publisher in the world right now. They speak to all different audiences, hardcore PC, gaming audiences, casual players, everyone in between. If there's one company that can create a unified ecosystem that crosses mobile, console, PC, brings all those things together, splits those things up individually. It's the company behind Minecraft and Candy Crush and Call of Duty and World of Warcraft and Diablo. I just think it always sounds good on paper. I hope, you know, Xbox had a bit of a rough time on the platform side of things and I hope that it's um well, I'm paying attention. I'm always they're always interesting to write about. That's all I can say. It feels like they've spent 15 years planning for the future and now the future is here and now we're going to see if that plan actually works. Yeah, they are they are a company in a constant state of transformation. um always do it. We don't have too much detail on this, but

the US actors union SAG AFA has suspended its nearly year-long strike and has instructed members to return to work on productions. It follows the announcement of a tentative agreement between uh the union and video game companies including Activision, EA, Epic, Insomniac, and Warner Brothers. While the union has successfully managed to negotiate on a variety of critical issues, including wages in line with inflation, job safety, those sort of things, they weren't entirely happy with the protections against exploitative use of AI. But I think it sounds like they've reached an agreement on that now. And AI is an interesting opportunity for the industry. We saw Darth Vader in in Fortnite. All of this stuff is interesting to experiment with, but I think we do need to get this sorted from the start. You know, we need to make sure artists are protected. We need to bottom this out. I think the whole industry wants that. Obviously, we don't have a lot of details what these exact protections are, but it's nice that people can go back to work. I have a uh tentative interview with a representative um from this union that will tentatively run Friday uh for anybody who wants to hear it. We'll see.

I am very curious because again, I I agree. They've been negotiations for almost two years. They've been on strike since July of last year. Mhm. I am I'm eager to hear what's going on because I do worry about the inability to to get this right from the start because I think the companies realize they also are very motivated to lock in the I would say uh antihuman approach uh now because it will be harder to seed that in the future. Rough times. Speaking of rough times, Mind's Eye from Build a Rocket Boy has finally launched after a really unusual series of events ahead of its release. It arrived full of critical errors, uh, bugs, and poor reviews. You're a Gamer gave it one out of five. GameSpot gave it three out of 10. IGN gave it four out of 10. I'm not one to pick on a game that doesn't deliver. That's not really what the show is about, but this story of this has been a bit of a strange one. And they released a short gameplay. I don't if you saw this because they released a short gameplay clip for the game about a month back. And the amount of people that text

it to me and said, "What the hell is this?" It it was really terrible yeah demonstration of what this game was. They then followed up with a better trailer and I had two reactions to that trailer. One was they kept talking about what looked like pretty basic gameplay elements of like ducking behind a wall and stealth and controlling a robot as if it was some form of huge revolution in video games. And I was like I I've seen this hundred times before. That was my first reaction. The other reaction was a we don't get a lot of GTA clones anymore. I'd be I'd be quite up for this. But then trailers, the trailers did get better, but then we had co-CEO Mark Ghard uh suggesting some of the negative coverage for Minds I'd received was financed by someone. I think maybe implying former employers as some people don't want Leslie or Builder Rocket Boy to be successful. Also, days before the game was due to launch, Builder Rocket Boy's chief legal officer and chief final financial officer both quit the firm. Leslie Wendy's, who runs Build a Rocket Boy, was at Summer Gamefest, but then didn't appear for some of his

planned media appearances, which included talking at our event, The Game Business Live, which we held in LA. He'd gone home, he said, because of a family emergency. And now it's come out and it's a bit broken. My my take on this story, and I could be completely wrong, but my take on this is that they had a really ambitious sort of metaverse vision for what was called Everywhere initially, which is the game they were making. This is before metaverse was even a term that we were using regularly. It's sort of the industry's gone through that metaverse fad and then come out the other side of it. Fortnite beat them to this userenerated content platform which is what everywhere was supposed to be. They pivoted to Mind's Eye being the heart of the product, you know, lead with the game which Minds Eye sort of a game made using Everywhere. There's also a userenerated content bit after Minds Eye. I think it's a bit of a confusing proposition. I suspect they've had to get the game out for financial reasons, but I I feel that perhaps they've they've been buffeted a little bit by the winds of the industry and what they've managed to come out with is is not delivering. Yeah. On any front. And actually, that's one of the reasons

why I was eager to get him at the show cuz I wanted to talk about this journey they've been on and almost the series unfortunate events they've had to contend with to get them here. But they do say that he still would appear on the show. I don't believe it. But um it's certainly been um a really tough time and it's not a fun story in any way. There's 400 odd people who work at Build a Rocket Boy and um this is this is I've ended on quite a bleak one. It's not a uh this is not a it's not a happy result. They're saying they're fixing it, but um I fear that with a game that's built that needs community and needs people building stuff and making stuff that they've got a real uphill battle now. I would love a story on how games die. And that sounds really bleak, but what I mean by that is like we see so many different versions of how a game can be pir into the world like this, which is yes, this feels like obligations. It feels like contracts made this game into the world. The fact that there was an event at Summer Games

Fest that was Hitman, but also this, which I had heard this event described by other members of the press as rough to say the least. Especially this part of it, the release of a video that clearly makes this game look bad, feels like obligation. All of it just feels like we're we're we're hitting these notes because we have to. Then we have the opposite where things seem to get cancelled because of tax purposes and benefits. And then we have things where they just go on indefinitely. There are so many ways to play these, you know, these kind of doomed projects and none of them are good. And I always wonder behind the scenes how much of this is yes we are literally stuck in a paperwork loop or we're trying to do the right thing or we are trying to you know save as much money as we can. There's so many different ways and the kind of void of transparency makes it hard to really tell anyone's motives on this and that's I think why you do get the mudslinging

behind the scenes of like well it's actually this person's fault. Who knows? Who knows how any of this went down? Yeah. I remember I went on my first job in games was a games tester and there was a game. It was a very good game. It was a PlayStation game actually that came through the testing company six times over the course of 3 years and it was largely finished when we first saw the test. Yeah. Like I still never found out why that it did come out eventually long after it was a PS2 game. It was long after the PS3 launch. Um but um I still don't know why that just kept coming back and I imagine there was some licensing issues or whatever that was causing it. Yeah. or maybe the team got moved on to something else or there was bound to be some internal story. Um maybe it was just one guy was the one left over working on the title and it was all it was all done. But yeah, um Chris, that's all we have time for. We are well over time, but I enjoyed chatting and hopefully we can have you back on the show at some point in the near future. That would be wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. We'll definitely pay attention to your interview with the SAG AFA representative. Fingers crossed we all come together. We'll cut it out if there too late. Um,

that's it for today's episode of the Game Business Show. We'll be back next week with another big executive interview. Until then, thank you for tuning in.