they won't be able to hear the birdies.
You don't reckon?
No.
But if we can hear them,
surely that's because the mic's picking it up.
No, these fuckers isn't, and it won't.
No, yeah, it's weird.
It's weird like that.
That's true, absolutely.
The sound sounds completely different.
I've hit record.
The sound sounds different on the headphones to when it.
It's very loud.
To when it, um.
Are you about to turn me down?
No.
You fucking are.
Turn your headset down.
Don't turn me down.
Is that better?
Is that better for you?
Yeah. Yeah?
Oh yeah, but now I can't really hear me.
Yeah, you've turned it right down.
I haven't turned it right down.
Look, just.
That's grand.
It's the fucking, perfect sound checking.
Why don't you just, yeah.
Well, you sound check normally,
and then you go, hello.
Like that.
Steph's here.
Yes, hello.
Sorry for the lateness.
Just had a busy weekend.
Well, somebody was upset when they got in on Friday.
I wasn't in a good mood on Friday,
so I thought, well, I'm not gonna be able
to bring you the best content like we normally do.
So I thought, well, we'll delay it.
But I also didn't want to put out a delayed message
because I went through like the Patreon feed and everything.
And it's like every other day, it just says delays, delays.
So I don't want to keep putting a delay message out.
Need to spice up social media, I think.
What'd you, you reckon?
Yeah.
What?
Get some other Patreon content in there, you know?
Some like pictures or something.
Yeah, but I.
I'm not being funny, right?
I subscribe to this.
I don't feel that I'm getting my value for money.
It's consumer feedback, is it?
Yeah.
There's nothing to really take pictures of though.
Like if there was like a nicely set up studio.
But obviously it's not here.
Yeah, but you only see it, you know,
even just like, pop of the week.
Pop of the week.
Pop of the week, you got enough.
That's a good like six months of content.
Food for thought.
Pop of the week.
I'm still trying to figure out how exactly you film it
and record it and get the audio to sync up because.
You just use the audio of one thing.
Yes, but every motherfucker that I've asked,
because it's not, it's how would you upload it?
Because I don't know what you'd upload it to.
What do you mean?
YouTube.
Yeah, but what, just YouTube?
How do people do it on Spotify?
Because I.
I don't know, but it might be,
you know like how some people,
like if you're on Instagram.
They might have a deal going.
You have, yeah, it's like once you get a certain amount
of followers, you can put a link in your story
and shit like that.
Yeah, maybe it is something to do with that.
Yeah, why are we having a business meeting on this pod?
I'm sorry.
What's happening here?
I'm sorry.
What's happening?
We actually have some subject to talk about.
Do we?
Cause we can both resonate with this.
As we are both handheld gaming people,
you show more than me.
There is a competitor to the Steam Deck.
Oh, I?
That is coming and it's made by.
Oh Lord, he's coming.
It is coming and praise him.
And it's being made by Asus.
Oh.
And it's called the Asus ROG.
Just throw that to try to say the Asus ROG Ally.
Is what it's being called as.
It's not very, very.
That's a working title.
I got the Asus ROG Ally.
And it's being released on the 11th of May.
Stop it.
11th of May.
This year now?
Yeah, yeah.
And they're doing a like showcase on the 10th.
Okay.
Price hasn't been revealed.
Okay.
They're going for that like sudden drop.
Yeah, the specs have been revealed.
And so there's speculation on the price.
Basically.
Oh, what a leg I imagine.
In terms of, so we've been,
we have been told that it will be under a thousand quid.
Oh, thanks.
So thank you.
Thank you so much for that.
There's speculation that I think it will be around
about the starting model, about 560 quid.
Okay.
But when you look at the specs of it,
it's basically double everything that the Steam Deck is.
Oh.
Yeah.
It's a powerful motherfucker.
Yeah, but can you, what, what kind of system
are we talking about here?
So the operating system is Windows 11.
Is what it runs on.
And then when you buy it,
you get free months of Game Pass Ultimate for free.
Oh.
So unlike, so the Steam Deck is obviously Steam OS.
Yeah.
So it has its own thing.
But then in part, when you switch over to desktop mode,
it's Linux.
Yep.
So there is a workaround where you can get rid of Linux
and have it run in on Windows.
So you can.
But even then I think it can only run on Windows 10
rather than Windows 11.
Right.
And it's weird.
Like Valve, they both support the Steam Deck
being run on Windows and don't at the same time.
So there's quite a lot of workarounds to make it happen.
But it does run perfectly fine on Windows.
But there's loads of people like saying before,
like comparisons to it running on Linux.
And are you good?
You're just fucking twitching.
I should have taken a hay fever tablet.
These wind, it's fucking so itchy.
Yeah, go on.
It's then.
No, cause I make the noise.
Oh.
That's another thing that we need.
Everyone keeps saying you should have a mute button.
Like a button that just automatically mutes
your mic separately.
So you can make noises and shit without interfering.
Well, you put a, sorry, it's so fucking bad.
I might have to go and get a Puritan.
Do you want to go and have a Puritan?
No.
You can, I can pause it.
We might have to.
We can see, no finish your point.
Cause otherwise you lose your point now.
What was I saying?
No.
About how there's work around.
Yeah, so there's comparisons to it running on Steam OS.
And then obviously on Windows and Linux and stuff like that.
And there isn't that much difference.
So you can run it on Windows.
Whereas this, this ASUS ROG ally.
That's ridiculous.
Will be solely on Windows.
Now I don't know if that means it will run
exactly how a PC would,
or if there will be launchers pre-downloaded onto it.
But the fact that it's going to have three months worth
of game pass straight off the bat tells me that
they're going to at least have the Xbox launcher on there.
Cause obviously you would if you had Microsoft.
But yeah, well you do with a,
you do with Windows 11 anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't you?
Yeah.
So the actual specs of the thing,
I won't bore you with like the GPU and all that,
all that type of shit.
But it's going to have 16 gig of RAM,
the same as the Steam Deck.
It's the display is where it comes quite cool.
So the Steam Deck is.
What's it looking like?
It looks like the Steam Deck.
But it doesn't have the touch pads.
Which I read an article and someone was like,
this is why it's not as good as the Steam Deck.
I don't even use the fucking touch pads.
They're pointless unless you're running it in desktop mode.
But I suppose maybe because the ASUS will be
a desktop handheld,
maybe the track pads would be a little bit better than,
cause how are you, it depends how it navigates.
But the, so the display on the Steam Deck is 60 Hertz
and 720p.
Okay.
Which is about standard.
The ASUS ROG is 120 Hertz, 1080p.
So it's crisp.
Yeah.
It's a decent and it comes as standard with 552 gig.
Raw.
Which obviously the higher end of the, so the lowest.
Yeah, if you give your lefty knee to Valve.
It's basically, it works out.
If the price that's being speculated is somewhat true,
then you're looking at a difference of 50 quid
from the highest end Steam Deck
to the lowest end ASUS ROG.
Wow.
And the highest end Steam Deck I think is 500 and something
gig.
So for the.
Yeah, but I'm sorry, how much was it?
A lot, wasn't it?
What, the Steam Deck.
Highest end Steam Deck was quite.
It's about 500 and something quid.
Anyway, so.
The difference is about 50 quid if the prices are true.
So for the sake of 50 quid, you could have the ASUS
with much better hardware and the same type of storage.
And that's just for the lowest end.
So it's very.
But at the same time, that being the lowest spec
that you can get for the ASUS one does alienate,
you know, people with less dosh to drop on something
like this.
Well, this is what people are saying is that Valve
now need to obviously, obviously there's very little
known at the moment.
So come 10th and the 11th of May,
when everything is out in the open,
they're saying that Valve needs to respond in terms
of pricing for the Steam Deck,
because what you're going to end up with is this portable
device with this certain amount of hardware.
And then for an extra possibly 50 quid,
you can have the same kind of device,
but with double the amount of hardware in it.
Obviously the battery life and everything is still
speculated.
There's nothing on there to say how long everything runs
and things like that.
Cause as we know,
the battery life on the Steam Deck is fucking appalling.
But it's definitely food for thought on this one,
because there are other copies of the Steam Deck.
I can't remember their names, but they're all weird names.
But there's a couple out there.
And this one seems to be the most,
cause ASUS is big obviously in the PC world.
They're big time.
I remember when I was going to get the ASUS ROG phone,
like the gaming phone,
cause I was going to get the Lenovo Legion,
but the ASUS ROG was the one with the better hardware.
So they're not slouches.
And the fact that they've then got this deal with Microsoft
and to run Windows and everything like that,
just as a base,
I'm really intrigued to see how that works.
So they're doing that showcase on the 10th of May,
which is where we'll find out
and we'll see like for good what everything is.
Do you want me to pause it
and then you can go and have a period?
I'm being attacked, I won't lie.
Let me pause it.
Let me pause it, we'll come back.
We are back and in the interim,
I've been watching a YouTube video
on someone that got a hands-on of the ASUS ROG.
I mean, he calls it a Zeus,
which just makes my skin crawl.
What?
Oh right, a Zeus.
A Zeus ROG.
Ah, it's ASUS motherfucker.
Yeah, it looks pretty cool.
I quickly like glanced over on the comments, as you do.
And a lot of people complaining about the lack of touchpads.
Maybe I just don't use my Steam Deck enough
because for me, if you remove the touchpads,
I'm not massively bothered, really.
Like I don't use them in games.
You can, but I tend not to.
A lot of people saying that the pricing
is gonna be a big one.
So the GPU and the CPU are the same.
They're made by the same people, the AMD.
So that doesn't change.
Obviously, the rest of the hardware in the ASUS
is different, apparently it's much lighter.
It's a lot less clunky.
But it's difficult to really talk about
the comparison and clunkiness
because one's on Steam OS and one's on fucking Windows.
Completely different.
Completely different UIs and formats.
For me, I think-
But ultimately, they should be comparable.
A lot of things are comparable.
But I think for me, with the Steam Deck,
I don't find it clunky at all because it's touchscreen.
So if you're navigating with the touchpad
or anything else, or the joysticks,
and then there's something that is being annoying to get to,
you just tap it with your finger.
So therefore, it isn't clunky anymore.
I suppose if you didn't want to actually use
the touchscreen aspect of it.
And then another thing that people were pointing out is,
with it being this powerful and that light,
people can't understand how the battery's gonna be
any better than what the Steam Deck is.
Because right now, if you're running AAA,
well, it doesn't even have to be a AAA game
on the Steam Deck, any game.
So Shadow of War, Days Gone, things like that,
then you're right.
What's up?
I was so allergic to the air.
I'm looking at you, I'm fucking nostril.
It's gonna come off.
I'm trying, sorry, as you were, go on.
There's no point in me shutting the doors
because it's already in your nostrils.
It is already in.
It's already fucked you.
It's dying.
I don't have hay fever, by the way,
so I don't understand how people struggle,
but I'm with you on the struggle.
I'm empathetic towards it.
Sorry, carry on.
I was just saying that with the Steam Deck,
you really don't get a lot of time.
Two, three hours is sort of the...
What's this dog fucking doing?
I don't know what she's doing.
I'm gonna check, I'm gonna have to fucking check.
Where were we?
Here we are.
Need to take this fucking pause button away from me.
Yeah, I just think that with that kind of hardware,
I don't think the batteries have caught up yet
to deal with that kind of thing.
Again, make no mistake that the games
that will be able to be played on the Asus,
obviously the exact same as the Steam Deck,
they are not designed for handheld purposes.
Nope.
But in saying that, the invitation of a competitor,
like Asus, into the handheld market
for this type of thing is great,
because now you have somewhat of a battle here
for Valve and for Asus to both...
Oh fuck.
What?
Did you not see that bee?
It's all right, it's gone.
Oh, he's there.
You're fine, man.
You're the one that frightened of him.
No, I'm all right with him.
Okay, as you were.
I was like, I'm buzzing in my ears.
Well, I was coming for you.
I was just letting you know, man.
Look, we either let the heat in with the doors open
or we freeze in here.
I'm doing it for our benefit.
Obviously not for your nose.
No.
Yeah, I think competition's always good.
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
Stop staring at the fucking wasp.
I'm sorry.
I'll be honest, it's completely throwing my point
with the wasp.
I'm just gonna nod.
Yeah, lovely.
Yeah, great.
That's great.
Sorry.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's something that,
I suppose Steam Deck or Steam Valve,
you know, all under one term,
has been able to kind of like corner that a bit,
IE being the most popular of that kind of area.
So it'd be interesting to see how it does.
Because I mean, like you say,
the price point is kind of,
is the next thing to see about
because they may not see it as a competition
in the sense of being,
my brain is literally full of pollen.
What am I getting at?
Like, if they're going for the more premium customer,
then Steam Deck will mop up everyone else,
won't they?
Yeah.
Like how, it's just not like,
to be out, to be unaffordable
equates to just also not being in your personal budget.
Yeah, because it's also the Steam Deck itself.
So I think mine was, what was it, like 320 quid?
Something like that.
Really not expensive for the hardware that you got.
They both do the same thing.
I swear to God, if you keep eye tracking this fucking wasp.
I think it's a B, isn't it?
I don't know, stop staring at it.
Sorry.
He's just fucking watching this bug.
It's gone.
Okay.
Do you want me to close the door?
No.
Scrant, go on, sorry.
It has gone.
I promise you, it has gone.
Lovely.
I'm gonna go and get a new one.
Lovely.
You're looking at it now.
Yeah, they both do the same thing.
So it's not like you're missing out on anything.
It would just be performance.
Yeah, and I think at this point in time,
I don't really think that there's any one person
that's gonna come and ruin.
I saw a thing the other day about how over the years,
and it's all the browsers that have been in favor.
Firefox.
Yeah, and there was Opera, Netscape.
Shit, they don't even know exactly,
but they were huge.
And then you watch and literally,
it goes into the Explorer, takes overload,
and then one day it just goes Chrome
and just goes all the way around.
I don't think we're at that point yet
where it's gonna be like,
oh, do you remember the Steam Deck?
Yeah, yeah, oh, barely,
because Asus, they've got this big thing.
Like you were saying with the battery and stuff,
there's so much limitations at the moment with the hardware
that I don't necessarily think anyone at Valve is like,
oh, fuck, oh my God, we're gonna have to really do this.
It's kind of like that,
we're almost in that experimentation phase
where everyone's trying out new shit.
The whole console wars,
you're gonna get people who will keep,
like yourself, at the end of the day,
Xbox would have to bring out some nutty, crazy thing
for you personally to ever leave PlayStation behind,
it's fair to say.
Whereas obviously you've got people,
I mean, Ash, me, whatever,
it's like, I'll get what I get because I want it.
Not necessarily being crazy loyal to just one.
And there were people who have a Steam Deck
that will try it,
but there are people who have that like,
no, I'm sticking with what I like.
I think it's like with the Xbox and the PlayStation ideas,
I've always been PlayStation, obviously,
because that's what my mom got me when I was a fucking child.
And I think now,
there's so much of a lack of difference
between the two of them.
They are the same thing, they both run the same.
Obviously there's very slight difference,
but they do the same shit, so what's the point?
And I mean, I might upset,
but they kind of always have been.
Yeah, yeah, similar, yeah.
Spec differences, exclusive titles,
but they've always been both ways.
They've never been...
Yeah, they've never been different to a point where say,
a Call of Duty comes out
and one's gonna run it better than the other.
They're both designed to run it exactly the same.
And when you're looking at, well, put it this way,
when we compared the two switches,
prior to seeing them next to each other,
it's not like the OG switch was bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, until you get something new,
or like when we were playing fucking Simpsons Hit and Run,
you weren't looking at this going,
Jesus, these graphics are chewy.
You know what I mean?
It was of its time and then it's only when it gets better.
Even like old photos, home videos, whatever, old shows,
you know, like when they were like old ass.
I feel like with the consoles that we,
with the PS5 and the Xbox One,
we have hit a point now where how good
can the graphics truly get?
How far can we really push this to a point
where it's even gonna be no, like you-
It's gonna look like you're playing real life.
You're gonna hit a wall.
Eventually you're gonna hit a wall when it comes to,
when it comes to visuals where is,
you ain't gonna be able to go any higher
than what your eyes can already fucking perceive.
So therefore you have to look,
you have to venture elsewhere.
The PS5 and the Xbox One in how they look
is fucking incredible.
Obviously there is room to go further,
but I don't think there is that much room to go further.
We see some of the shit on Unreal Engine 5.
Like that body cam, I don't know if you've seen it,
that body cam game where it was like,
it's not out yet and I don't know if it will be,
but that guy running around a building shooting people
and it's from the point of view of a body cam.
And there was genuine concerns of people
thinking that this was real footage of someone
running around shooting people.
Cause they're like, this is so realistic.
And it was all done in Unreal Engine 5.
And it's like, yeah, some of the stuff you see
is fucking crazy and trying to package that into a game
that you can sell and make a profit out of.
Obviously like we've spoken about so much before
until they drop the previous generations
and just focus solely on what we've got now,
that idea of being able to run games like that
will not happen because the older generations,
PS4, things like that, they can't run it.
They can't do that.
But that time is coming.
But I think in terms of the console wars,
I think the shift has changed from it being a purely
like graphics type thing to things like
what each company can offer.
So you look at Xbox Game Pass, fucking incredible.
The amount of games you can get on that
on day one releases, mental.
PlayStation's version is shit.
So you get people who are gonna go, right,
well, these two consoles are basically the same thing,
but for 10 pound a month,
I can get this whole massive catalog on day one releases
or for 10 pound a month,
I can get this stuff that I'm just not interested in.
So I'm gonna go for this one.
And especially with things like incorporating Discord
and cross play into these consoles,
there is no difference between, it isn't,
oh, I can't play with you because I'm on Xbox
and you're on PlayStation.
I mean, fuck me, we had it where you look at No Man's Sky.
So Connor can be on his PC, I can be on my PlayStation
and Ash can get fucking No Man's Sky on his Xbox
and we can all play the same fucking game
talking to each other.
It's crazy.
And then yeah, like PlayStation has Discord
incorporated into it.
I don't actually know if Xbox does or doesn't,
but I'd imagine if it doesn't, it will do very soon
or it might already have, I really don't know.
So the borders between gaming are so minuscule now.
Even on the Steam Deck, you can play with people,
if it's a cross play game,
so I could be playing whatever with you
and you could be on a fucking Xbox or PlayStation or PC
and I'm on a fucking handheld sitting in my bed.
It's got a cross play on the Switch as well.
Yeah, so I think, yeah, even the Switch,
we're fucking missing out that one as well.
And that's a console that's completely separate
from everything else that can still intertwine itself
with everything else.
So I don't think that it is hardware and things
that are necessarily the gap creator anymore.
I think it is what people are getting offered
and value for money in terms of,
I think cloud gaming is becoming a big thing now.
Yeah.
You look at Luna.
Yeah, and that would, this business of,
like when I say hardware, I think that's kind of like
the universal thing that's in the way of everyone.
You know what I mean, in the sense that,
you know, they want something like the Steam Deck.
The state of the battery life of the Steam Deck
is something that I imagine they sat for days
and days trying to, you know,
that is the best of the best at the moment.
But yeah, I think cloud gaming, that's a shocker.
Like seeing Lou playing Control
and it's not even downloaded on our relatively shit internet
and it looking pretty much like it did on your PlayStation
was tripping. With almost no input lag
because it's not running on,
it's running on a dedicated server,
which trying to get your head around it.
So the game that you're streaming from the launcher
that you're streaming it from, it's separate.
So you're launching the game from a launcher,
but the game's actually being run from a different server,
which has nothing to do with the launcher
to reduce input lag.
You're playing that on a fucking fire stick.
Yeah, and then you can buy an actual controller
designed for that to further reduce any input lag
so that it's basically non-existent
because that's obviously the massive issue
with cloud gaming is input lag.
Not so much for single player games,
but definitely for online games like The Division,
you can't, or Call of Duty,
you can't be having that input lag
because you're gonna get fucked up by the people
that you're coming across.
So trying anything you can to reduce that is massive.
But that Amazon Luna was seeing it firsthand,
a very nearly bought into it.
But after reviewing the gaming catalog,
I thought it's not enough for me to go for it.
But when you've got a massive company like Amazon,
you've got unlimited amounts of money.
They've already got Prime Gaming and things like that
that they're venturing into.
So it's a very interesting concept
because you used to have PlayStation Now,
which was cloud gaming, and it was fucking awful.
It was really, really poor.
Even with a decent connection, it was really poor.
And the quality of the game,
the graphics would like plump,
well, when you're watching a YouTube video
and it goes to fucking 360p or whatever,
it would be like that.
And that's what I was expecting
when I saw Lou crank up Luna.
And don't get it mistaken, people.
She's not playing it on some fucking crazy
tele setup and stuff like that.
It's literally like the kind of TV you'd see in a car wash
with a fucking fire stick plugged into it.
And she's sitting on the edge of her bed
and it's like really streamlined and looked really good.
It's cool, it was impressive.
Yeah, very, very unexpected.
And I'm excited to see kind of where that goes.
Because that's the thing, kind of like what we're saying
just then about the browsers, like shit,
what if in like 10 years time, we were like,
ha, remember when you had a physical console?
And actually all of a sudden,
we're just playing it in the fucking cloud.
I'm crazy.
And that would be like, I think,
perhaps the only thing that would
make all of these different companies kind of obsolete,
not obsolete, but if there is this,
if someone cracks this universal, like cloud based
and it's just perfect and crisp and all that shit,
what is the reason for shutting out for a console?
Why would you do it if it's so accessible?
It is somewhat there with Luna.
Oh, it's not though.
No, I mean in the sense that,
you know, like there are no more exclusives,
everything is on it, everything's available.
Like there's no reason to not.
In an ideal world, you would,
but even then is it ideal in that you get rid of,
you don't have Sony, you don't have Microsoft,
you don't have Nintendo, it's all one thing,
but then you don't get the competitiveness of it
and obviously the money that's invested
and the drive to do different things.
Or I mean in the sense of like Spotify.
In the sense that, no, who's buying the CD?
You buy a CD now, the last 50 CDs I've bought,
I've probably never even played them.
I just bought them to support it.
It's a nostalgia thing.
Do you know what I mean?
You're still having that individuality,
but it's under one umbrella.
But even then it's actually, to be fair,
I suppose that is, perhaps that's how it will continue
in the sense that really it's not just Spotify,
it's Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music.
Like they are still individual
and you do still make that choice
of something that is ultimately the same.
Maybe that's how they do it.
You have like Sony Cloud.
Yeah, I think the Cloud gaming is a very real thing
that is fast approaching.
Well, again, we've touched on it before
in the digital age about how even the gaming disks
are becoming obsolete.
It used to be that you downloaded half the game
was sitting on the disk and half of it wasn't.
A lot of games now that are coming out on the disk,
it's just the fucking key for a digital download.
And quite a few games are coming out
where certain editions don't actually have the disk anymore.
And then you look at the PlayStation 5 Pro
that is apparently supposed to be coming out
and then a new version of the PS5 where it will be,
she's just tried fucking running,
spun around in circles,
where it will be a digital only console
that will be sold or you can buy, sorry,
a separate disk reader.
So as to not alienate all the people
that have already bought the disk.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you watch the next iteration of that, nothing.
And that disk reader is interchangeable.
I think it's meant to be like 80 quid or something like that.
So it further like pumps up the digital age of it
in that you won't need the physical copies
because really and truly, I can't remember the last,
Dead Island 2 is the latest game that I bought
that's a physical.
And then before then I can't fucking tell you.
Definitely inside.
Yeah, even then I got returns.
But you don't need to buy physical anymore
because everything's digital.
And the price gap isn't that big anymore.
Obviously, I think the PlayStation Store takes the piss
in their pricing on digital.
I've never understood why a digital copy
should cost more than a physical in my life,
but that's normally how it works.
But the gap is closing.
But most new games I buy, unless Amazon's doing a deal,
will be digital anyway.
Yeah, yeah.
Because you've got the storage for it now as well.
Yeah, but then I suppose, then you, I think,
you know, like the, is it a conspiracy probably?
This idea that they're trying it so that no one
will truly own everything, anything or other, I should say.
And there is, I can see it in the sense that having
that tangible product that you physically own it
versus it all being online, there is that.
And then, you know, the idea of, well, think about
when we were in school and you're lending games,
you're lending CDs and shit to your mates,
and that just doesn't happen now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, obviously it does in some format,
but really you can't, I mean, shit, even,
it's kind of a real diversion,
but it kind of makes my point.
At the hospital, how many times we would go
and you'd use your ticket, and then you still
had two hours left, so you'd scour the car park
and you'd hand it to someone.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, no, now it's gone.
You pay, he's got your reg, you pay when you leave,
and off you go.
Yeah, because they want more fucking money out of you.
Yeah, and little cute things like that,
that's like a connection between two people is just going.
But game sharing is there.
You do it, Colin does it on Xbox with one of his pals.
Like, so only one of them buys a game,
and they just game share it.
So they both got access to it, the same as,
obviously I know it's not what we're talking about,
but the physical copies of games,
you can hand them to someone else and they can fucking have.
That's what I'm saying, it's gone.
It's going.
Yeah, but I think it's still there,
it's just becoming digital, but obviously they are making
it a lot more difficult to actually share a game.
There's been a couple of games,
I can't remember the names of them,
but there's been a couple of games
that me and Mark have played where only one of us.
Yes, but they are co-op games though.
Yeah, and a way out and it takes two.
But even then I think that was,
you can only play that if someone else,
if that person is playing it.
Yeah, yeah.
You're a piggybacking.
But this is what I'm saying,
so Dead Island, you can give that to Mark,
but you can't give Shadow of War.
No, yeah, yeah.
And this is what I'm saying,
when you look at, in my cupboard,
all of the Xbox 360, all the things like that,
you think Xbox 360 is like a whole shelf,
Xbox One, there's like five games,
because of exactly that reason.
I can't even log into a different PlayStation
and start downloading games that I've purchased digitally.
Because it knows that's not my PlayStation.
So I can only download the games that that PlayStation
knows has been purchased on that PlayStation.
And you are also at-
It's a primary, innit?
You're at the discretion of the terms and conditions,
in the sense that, so like you were saying,
this game sharing, so Colin,
currently he's sharing his games with his mates.
Oh, until actually new terms roll in,
that don't happen anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's nutty when you see
how quickly they can change stuff,
but you're already agreeing to it.
You're at the mercy, but like you say,
with the conspiracy that,
oh, you never own anything,
they can just switch it off with a touch of a button
and stuff like that.
But even if you do own the games,
they can do that now,
because you need to run it on the servers.
A lot of, you'll be amazed how many PlayStation games
require you to have PlayStation Plus to actually play them.
Fucking loads of them.
So, I mean, it's never really been something
that I give a fuck about,
because I think if they're gonna switch it off,
they're gonna switch it off, there's nothing I can do.
But they're not gonna do that,
because you'd miss out on loads of money.
Why bother?
Why make that a thing?
But it, so much stuff that you buy into
is at the mercy of the company that owns it.
Even trying to fucking return a game
that you've bought digitally is impossible.
Like with PlayStation's one,
if you buy the game,
it automatically starts downloading said game.
Most times, I think they might've changed it now.
And in their terms and conditions,
it's if you've started downloading the content,
not played it, it voids your ability to refund it.
So it's like, well, you fucked me there then.
So if I've downloaded it, but not played it,
I can't return it.
Like I said, I think that must've been changed now.
Well, and even like, I find the Ragnarok special edition
an interesting one, because, so you have this,
you've got this limited edition box set.
And yet if you wanna sell that, you're not selling the game.
Yeah, because I've already used the code
because it didn't come with a fucking physical.
I don't like that.
Yeah, don't give me a fucking empty steel book.
Don't give me, I don't think there's an issue
with making games that won't have a physical copy.
So let's say they made Dead Island 2 and they went,
we've made this game, it's digital only.
There will be no physical, unless you buy
a steel book version, or you buy a collector's edition,
which comes with a steel book,
which will have a physical copy of the game in it.
But there were copies of that.
No.
There were disc copies of Ragnarok.
Yeah, there were, but I'm saying.
But why can't they just fucking add that shit in?
So that was what?
That was 180-odd quid for that edition, right?
So if I wanted to have the God of War Ragnarok game
in the steel book, or in the steel case,
I would have to spend another 60, 70 quid
on the physical copy of the game
to then put that disc in that steel book.
Yeah, it takes a piece, doesn't it?
It takes the absolute piece.
You shouldn't have a collector's edition.
You shouldn't have any edition
other than the standard edition offering,
not offering the disc.
Especially if the price range goes above 90 quid,
then give me the fucking physical disc.
But I do agree that it's not necessarily an issue
for the baseline copy of a game
to not actually have a physical with it.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I feel like that's not the,
even the standard game case, like that Dead Island 2 case,
I keep referring to Dead Island 2
because it's the only fucking physical game that I bought.
There's nothing special about the case.
The artwork, there's nothing crazy about it.
But then isn't that crazy in itself
that there's that element of rarity
where you're expecting something.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it used to just be, that's just a game case.
You know what I mean?
It was that, was that.
And now because you don't get them,
when you do get them, you're like, oh, it's boring.
Yeah, you go, yeah, go, I want something to look cool.
I've got like an art card.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
And yet shit comes back around.
Like I think you've got people now that,
or even something like vinyl, it's just weird.
Like the idea that a CD and DVD makes you feel so old
that they're like, I haven't bought a fucking film on DVD.
The idea that there's people around now
that don't know what a cassette and a CD is.
Oh, I don't.
What a CD is.
Who the fuck doesn't know what a CD is?
If you're listening to this podcast now
and you don't know what a CD is, stop listening, please.
No, don't be like that.
It's just crazy.
How?
Embrace the young generation.
Yeah, that's crazy.
I don't think gaming will ever go backwards like that.
I don't think necessarily it will revisit.
Well then look at the-
But I suppose, no, that's, no,
no, let me take the back of that statement
because I feel like, yeah, I'm wrong in saying that
because I feel like there's a lot of older stuff
that was good but just wasn't good enough to last.
And I feel like with today's technology and advancements,
you can revisit a lot of old stuff
and majorly improve it to make it a hell of a lot better.
Well, even fucking looking at the
Tears of the Kingdom Edition Switch that you've got
that you won't open.
Even like when you had a look at it
to make sure that it was fucking working
because it had a fat dent in the box
right on the fucking corner of the actual console itself,
grim.
Personally, I would complain.
The quality of life improvements,
like with the kickstand and then the rubber feet.
The little rubber feet, I know.
It's little things like that
that you don't necessarily realize that you need
but when it is done, you go,
oh, fucking hell, that makes life so much easier.
Little revisits like that,
which I think have been done to a lot of stuff.
On the Switch itself, obviously they've got,
I believe it's only when you're
a member of Nintendo Switch Online,
but they have all the virtual consoles
and they've recently cracked out Game Boy Advance
and I think Game Boy original.
And when you're playing, so there's like
the usual, obviously not all of them had save game,
but you have that, you have suspension points,
but you're also in any game,
you just rewind it.
Just rewind it.
So if you fuck up, you don't necessarily have to die
and do all that shit, you can just rewind it.
You can just rewind it.
Yeah, I'll show you later.
That's cool.
Oh, that's cool, I like that.
Yeah, it's great.
I like that a lot.
It's great, so that is that kind of frustrating element
that was always with older games
where it is just like, game over, fuck it.
And that kind of thing.
How clever is that?
Yeah, you just rewind.
So rather than just having to restart the entire level
or something, you just go.
Rewind.
That's like Prince of Pearls, The Sands of Time,
when you could fucking rewind time with that one.
That's cool, I like that.
Yeah, and it's that, like,
there's that weird, I suppose, for me,
I guess maybe slightly different in the sense that
I cling onto everything, so I could literally fire up
a Game Boy Color and crack it out.
But I appreciate that a lot of people don't have that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you're like me,
and you don't keep onto anything.
Yeah, that must be even more of a sort of like, wow,
to just kind of, because I know,
I think you and I are kind of the same where
older games don't, it has to be like a certain game to me
to actually want to sit there and grind it out
like I used to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But just seeing it again and seeing it on a bigger screen
and colour and backlit.
This is prime example for that is World of Warcraft Classic.
Yeah.
Versus Retail.
I started playing Classic a little bit
just because of the nostalgia aspect of it,
because I remember that feeling of playing it
when it wasn't Classic and it was like Retail.
And yeah, I played it for about 10 hours
and thought this is really, really good.
But slowly you start to see the quality of life changes
that aren't implemented in the Classic version.
So you go, oh, this is, so even little things like
when you get a quest, now in Retail,
it gives you a map marker.
It tells you where to go.
It shows you on the map where you need to go.
And then it has dialogue that tells you
exactly what you need to do to fulfil this quest.
Whereas in Classic, there's none of that.
There's none of it.
You have to actually read the quest log
and try and figure out what it is that you need to do.
And obviously in Classic, you can put add-ons on it
that would tell you what to do and blah, blah, blah.
And a lot of people say that,
a lot of people that play Classic over Retail
will say, yeah, Classic's really good
if you put these certain add-ons on.
If you just make it a lot like the Retail.
Yeah, which I call it a lot.
And then you get people like myself,
and there are a lot of people like me who go,
yep, Classic's cool, but the nostalgia weren't the same
because you very quickly realised that that grind
that you loved has been made so much easier
and more accessible in Retail with quality of life
and the graphics and the way it plays
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So yeah, back to your point.
What was that, buying a car and then going, oh, walk.
Yeah, yeah, it's sometimes how things have adapted
and have become over time are just so much better
than it's Genesis.
And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing
to sort of like take the original something
and put it on a shelf and go, you did good.
Like you are the reason why this is how it is
because you took the first steps.
And I feel like with handheld gaming,
this is what Nintendo Switch has done.
This is what Steam Deck's doing.
This is what Asus is doing.
Asus is there because of Steam Deck.
And I feel like Steam Deck is heavily there because of Switch.
You always look to something to create something new.
And that competition and that understanding
is just really cool.
And I think, yeah, there are some people
that will always resonate with the old shit.
And then there's people like us that will go,
yeah, that stuff's cool,
but I'm not interested in it anymore because of that.
I've got all this stuff and I'm interested in this stuff.
It's like when you look at games like Pong or Arkanoid,
and that was crazy.
Even the Commodore 64 didn't even have a screen.
But that was crazy.
That was the newest.
It's like when people looking back at stuff
and yeah, to look at it now,
oh my God, I can't believe we all lost our minds over this.
We did because it was that, wasn't it?
You think even like Assassin's Creed 2.
Yeah, I wanna remember it how I remember it.
Yeah, and when you like,
or my one for me is Killzone,
which is PlayStation exclusive.
It's dead now.
I don't really know.
I think Call of Duty and Battlefield killed it off.
There just weren't enough people,
but I really, really liked Killzone.
Had a lot of fond memories playing those games.
And when I first started playing them,
I thought the graphics were incredible.
They were crazy.
And I haven't looked at what Killzone looks like now
because I don't wanna spoil it for myself
because I know it's not gonna look as good
as I really thought it was.
And that was the same with Assassin's Creed 2.
In my head, when I was playing it, when it was current,
I was like, yeah, this is fucking, this looks the tits.
And then you go back and you play it now,
because obviously that's what Mark was doing.
And talking to him about it, and he's like, yeah,
the graphics are, it's like they're shit.
He was like, they're not good.
I remember just like walking everywhere in Skyrim being like,
oh my God, it's like I'm here.
It's so real.
Like it was, it was so fucking crispy.
Like the sunset in Skyrim was like the beautiful,
best thing I've ever seen on a game.
And yeah, like, I mean, I appreciate she's still with us
in her various formats, dear Skyrim,
for fucking 60 quid on the eShop.
Oh, that's crazy.
Yeah, stop it.
Stop rinsing money.
Like, and I couldn't-
Give it away for free.
It was on sale the other day for like 15 quid.
And I was really thought about it.
It was like, I'm not paying another penny.
This game is like older than children
that are in year nine.
Like stop.
Yeah, we've been over this is the fucking mods
that are keeping that game alive.
Yeah.
But yeah, those experiences, I think stay with you,
especially if you're, you know, you're not a casual game.
You do genuinely like, it is such a huge part of your life.
Yeah, I've never, so like Neil,
has one of those like arcade gaming rigs,
like the full on.
And it's got like 10,000.
I think I showed you the PDF once
where he sent me over the PDF of all the games on it.
And it was like 60 odd pages of just fucking games.
And he absolutely loves that thing
and plays it all the fucking time.
And for me, if you give me something like that,
that has all the old Ratchet and Clank's on it,
all the Prince of Persia's,
all the old Assassin's Creed's, the Uncharted,
all hit and run, all the older games,
fucking Destroy All Humans.
I'm not interested in them.
They're cool and I like them,
but I know that I'll start playing them
and I will get bored quickly
because I know of the games that I've got now.
You see what I mean?
Yeah, but then did you not say
when you were getting the Steam Deck,
you were like, oh, I really wanna play
all the Prince of Persia's.
I do.
And then I watched Gameplay
and I was like, nah.
Because I just know.
I know that I'm not gonna be as interested
as I once was.
And I know this because I fucking loved Destroy All Humans.
I loved them all.
And they're on Game Pass.
And I bought them on PlayStation as well.
And playing them again,
current from years of not playing them,
they're just not as fun as I remembered them.
They're very empty space.
They're quite bland.
The story isn't great.
But at this time, fucking incredible.
It's not taking away anything from those games.
It's just now they don't hit the same markers.
It's like with old movies, old CGI and stuff like that,
or before CGI was a thing.
It takes you out of that immersion, doesn't it?
Perception and things like that.
Whereas now you watch a movie and you go fucking hell.
Like it's crazy.
It doesn't take away from anything that's older.
It's just I much prefer the shit that we've got now
to the point where the older stuff,
I'm not necessarily interested in investing time
into it anymore because it served its purpose.
Yeah, yeah.
But a lot of people do.
That's what I'm saying.
A lot of people still.
You know what I found?
Maybe it kind of goes hand in hand.
Like when my sisters were around a couple of weeks ago
and we were on the, it's called Virtual Console.
It has been for a long time.
Like, I don't actually know if it still is,
but it used to be called Virtual Console in Nintendo.
Because it's this concept of playing old shit
on a new console.
You can get it on 3DS, you can get it on the Wii, Wii U.
But now they're called, I don't know,
I can't remember what it's called.
Anyway, irrelevant.
And we sat and were playing,
and some of them weren't great.
Some of them were so confusing.
Because there's no instructions.
When you think, these games used to come with,
remember the thick ass manuals.
You had to do some reading before you actually start playing.
And obviously they're not there.
They're gone.
Yeah, fucking hell, yeah.
Like God of War where you'd have the booklet
and it would tell you the combos in the booklet
because they weren't on the fucking start menu or anything.
It's just like, oh my God, some of them are so fat.
So fat.
And yeah, but it was like that,
I think because those kinds of games
were games we used to play together.
Even games on SP, like there was,
I think it's like Treasure Planet.
And Charlotte and I would play it,
like we'd help each other,
or she'd have a go and I'd have a go,
sharing the same cartridge.
And yeah, so that element of it,
it was more fun playing it with her
than me sitting on my own having a go.
Maybe because it is kind of like that joint memory.
It was quite funny though.
You know the games that you progress,
but you progress with a password?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there was no like,
they were just ROM.
Yeah, yeah.
And I remember it was like,
just British little children and the password,
it was like a fancy T that kind of was like really curved.
And we got stuck on this level for ages
because we were typing in crumpet.
It was trumpet.
Oh.
Because they looked safe.
And it was like, oh my God, we're so English.
Like, oh, the password is crumpet.
It's crumpet.
But yeah, and that I think now,
how weird would that be where essentially,
you have no real customization in the game at all.
It's just you log on with this password
because you're at that level and you go.
Well, you think of the game.
It was so weird.
He's gonna kill me because I can't remember the name
of the game that Ash was on about
where you had to take, unplug the controller from one port
and put it into the next port for the game to continue.
Oh.
I can't remember.
He's spoken about, I'll do a quick Google.
But for the life of me, I can't,
and he's gonna fucking kill me.
I mean, I know when you used to have to do,
it was like over two disks, like Rage 1
is a double disker.
Where you have to change.
Which is so weird now.
Like, what the hell?
If I can get to the end of a disk,
and having to change over.
Oh yeah.
I fucking loved Rage 1 though.
I'm not gonna be able to find it, am I?
Did anybody else like Rage 1?
Am I on that?
I got it in a pre-owned game thing,
years after it came out.
Ash, when you listen to this, mate,
you'll have to fucking, you'll have to shine some light
on it because I really, it's in one of the episodes.
It's not that far back, but I can't remember it.
Okay.
I.
You didn't play it, did you?
What?
Rage 1.
No.
Rage was never my thing.
Didn't play the latest Rage either.
No, I didn't play the latest one, no.
I didn't like it.
Didn't like the look of it.
But no, Rage 1, it was like,
this is like stripping it down to its most basic level,
but it was like Skyrim in a different skin.
That's what I felt like.
Very, I think, mate, it's not at all.
Look at the Google images of Rage 1 so I can see.
It's like a desert wasteland vibe.
I thought it was great.
I thought it was really great.
I can't really remember.
It's just like, I don't know, I just thought it was cool.
I just thought it was cool.
Was that Rage 1, yeah?
Show me.
It don't look bad, does it?
I mean, yeah, I can't see.
Was that like Rage 1?
Yeah.
Yeah, they look like the evil things out of Valheim.
Yeah.
It was good.
It was all right.
I don't, maybe I'll, no, I'm not about to say
maybe I'll look at Rage 2
because that did get shit reviews.
Rage 3 is on Game Pass.
There's a third one?
Yeah.
Is there?
Is there a third one?
No.
I feel like there is. Is there?
Rage 3.
I suppose you're just Googling.
Oh.
Oh no, is it Rage, no, it is Rage 2.
Yeah, I don't remember there being a third one
mainly because I don't think anyone really bought
the second one.
Maybe it is just Rage 3.
Maybe Rage 2 is there.
Well, there's your little trip down memory lane.
I'm fucking starving.
Desperate for a week.
Jesus Christ.
Get me a car park.
Right.
We went out on the lash last night
and we did illegal activities by pissing in the car park
because there was no toilets around.
No, it was bad.
Breaking the law.
It was the best piss of my life.
It was a good night out.
It was fun, I had fun.
Catch us on the Patreon, I guess.
Patreon.com forward slash watch the buttons.
See you on the flip side.
Get yourself some new content.
We're gonna have some lunch
and then we're gonna record that, eh?
Yeah, what are we gonna talk about?
Fuck knows.
Do a teaser.
Do a teaser, what are we gonna talk about?
I don't know.
Oh, okay.
I'm gonna figure it out over lunch.
Very well.
Okay, well look out for that.
We're gonna go and have some crumpets.
Yes.
Right, speak to you all later, my little wormies.
Bye.
Metro.