# Episode 104 - Beneath the Morty & Video Game Awards

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2019-12-15  
**Duration:** 25m 15s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-104

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## Analysis

Dennis Solo-hosts Eclectic Gamers Episode 104 (Dec 15, 2019), covering Spooky Pinball's Rick and Morty underside playfield reveal and The Game Awards 2019 announcements. On pinball, he analyzes the mechanism details from Matt's Pinside annotations, discussing Scott Denise design tropes (dual displays, three flippers, single pop bumper), Italian bottom layout considerations, and playfield features like vertical kickers and RGB lighting. The bulk of the episode covers Game Awards winners (Sekiro GOTY, Disco Elysium multi-winner) and major announcements including Ghost of Tsushima gameplay, Godfall (first PS5 reveal), Hellblade 2 for Xbox Series X, and the Xbox Series X console hardware reveal.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Rick and Morty playfield features dual numeric displays similar to Total Nuclear Annihilation design — _Dennis analyzing Matt's Pinside annotations of underside photo; notes comparison to TNA's reactor display and ball save display between flippers_
- [HIGH] Scott Denise appears to have design tropes: dual playfield displays, three flippers, single pop bumper placement — _Dennis drawing parallels between TNA and Rick and Morty based on visible mechanics and prior TNA design knowledge_
- [HIGH] Italian bottom layout is about ball capture/trapping capability, not flipper symmetry; requires in-lanes and ball guides feeding to flippers — _Dennis citing designer Comic/Paragon and Internet Pinball Database writeup; explains Italian bottom concept in detail_
- [MEDIUM] Spooky only needs to sell 750 Rick and Morty units, so atypical layout won't alienate mainstream audience — _Dennis speculating on commercial viability despite potential niche appeal of non-standard playfield design_
- [HIGH] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice won Game of the Year at 2019 Game Awards, developed by FromSoftware — _Dennis reporting Game Awards results; confirms Dark Souls-style 'vibe' and widespread community perception of deserving winner_
- [MEDIUM] Xbox Series X will have two SKU models: one lower-powered, disc-drive-less, 2K-capable version for digital-only/non-4K audience — _Dennis citing 'rumor mill' reports; no official confirmation mentioned, presented as anticipated announcement_
- [LOW] Gary Stern supposedly mandates all Stern games include three pop bumpers regardless of design utility — _Dennis reporting secondhand claim; speculative reasoning about why Star Wars includes pops that aren't well-integrated_

### Notable Quotes

> "I would love to see a non-Italian layout from any pinball manufacturer. I don't think I would not and I don't think anyone quite frankly is really all that interested in seeing offset flippers ever again in pinball."
> — **Dennis**, ~17:00
> _Expresses strong community consensus against non-Italian layouts; indicates designer risk aversion_

> "If you're not going to take good use of pop bumpers why even stick them in there... I just don't see the point if they're not going to get a lot of interplay with them."
> — **Dennis**, ~21:00
> _Criticism of Star Wars pop bumper integration; frames pop bumper design as design philosophy concern_

> "There are too many people who post in it. So I only go back and check it when I see there's important news going on because most of the discussion or one line sentences of people saying stuff and I'd say 20% of it isn't really all that relevant either."
> — **Dennis**, ~10:00
> _Meta-commentary on Pinside Rick and Morty thread activity; indicates community engagement scale and forum management challenges_

> "They really emphasize [world premieres]. And then in between, there are a spattering of awards that are given out. Some awards are given out during the pre-show. That's how unimportant the awards are to the Game Awards."
> — **Dennis**, ~45:00
> _Clarifies Game Awards event structure; frames it as E3/Super Bowl hybrid focused on announcements over awards_

> "I think it's going to do very well for them [Spooky/Rick and Morty]. I continue to think so."
> — **Dennis**, ~23:00
> _Positive market sentiment on Rick and Morty commercial viability despite design uniqueness_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Spooky Pinball | company | Announced Rick and Morty pinball; released underside playfield photo for community analysis |
| Rick and Morty | game | Spooky Pinball machine in development; playfield photo reveals unconventional layout with dual displays, three flippers, single pop bumper, vertical kickers |
| Scott Denise | person | Designer of Total Nuclear Annihilation and Rick and Morty; exhibits consistent design patterns (dual displays, three flippers, RGB lighting, single pop bumper) |
| Total Nuclear Annihilation | game | Scott Denise's first design game; features dual numeric displays, three flippers, single pop bumper; used as precedent for Rick and Morty design analysis |
| Dennis | person | Host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; covers pinball and video game news; solo episode due to co-host Tony's illness |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; absent from Episode 104 due to illness |
| Roanoke Pinball Museum | organization | Episode sponsor; interactive pinball museum in Roanoke, Virginia; houses 65+ machines from 1932-2018 |
| Game Awards 2019 | event | Major video game industry awards and announcement show; described as cross between Super Bowl, Academy Awards, and E3 |
| Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | game | FromSoftware title; won Game of the Year, Action Adventure, and Best Game Direction at 2019 Game Awards |
| Disco Elysium | game | Won multiple 2019 Game Awards categories: Role Playing Game, Narrative, Independent Game, Fresh Indie Game |
| Xbox Series X | product | New console announced at Game Awards 2019; presented vertically; supports horizontal orientation; rumored two-SKU strategy (high-end 4K, lower-powered digital-only) |
| PlayStation 5 | product | Competing next-gen console; Godfall announced as first confirmed PS5 game; no official reveal imagery released as of Game Awards |
| Godfall | game | First confirmed PlayStation 5 game announced at Game Awards; third-person fantasy looter slasher by Gearbox with melee combat focus |
| Gary Stern | person | Reportedly mandates three pop bumpers on all Stern pinball games; mentioned as possible source of pop bumper design philosophy |
| The Wolf Among Us | game | Telltale adventure game sequel announced at Game Awards; based on Fables comic series; murder mystery point-and-click style |
| Ghost of Tsushima | game | PS4 exclusive; revealed four minutes of gameplay; summer 2020 release window |
| Hellblade 2 | game | Ninja Theory sequel announced for new Xbox; dark, creepy aesthetic; Ninja Theory recently acquired by Microsoft |
| Matt | person | Host of Slap Save Pinball podcast; annotated Pinside thread analyzing Rick and Morty playfield underside mechanics |
| Phil Spencer | person | Xbox division head at Microsoft; emphasized gaming focus and multi-platform strategy (console + PC) |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Rick and Morty playfield mechanics and design analysis, Scott Denise design tropes and patterns, Italian bottom layout definition and playfield philosophy, Game Awards 2019 winners and announcements
- **Secondary:** Xbox Series X console reveal and next-gen strategy, PlayStation 5 absence from official reveal, Pop bumper design philosophy in modern pinball
- **Mentioned:** Pinside forum activity and thread management

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Dennis expresses genuine enthusiasm for Rick and Morty commercial viability and Scott Denise's design approach; positive coverage of Game Awards announcements (Ghost of Tsushima, Hellblade 2, Xbox strategy). Mild criticism of pop bumper design execution on Star Wars but framed as design philosophy concern rather than personal attack. Solo format lacks humor/banter but maintains professional tone.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Xbox Series X two-SKU strategy: high-end 4K disc model and lower-powered digital-only 2K variant; Microsoft pursuing cross-platform (console + PC) strategy under Phil Spencer (confidence: medium) — Dennis citing 'rumor mill' reports of two models; notes Phil Spencer's PC inclusion strategy: 'they don't really care if you're playing on a PC or you're playing on a console'
- **[community_signal]** Pinside Rick and Morty thread characterized by high post volume and reduced signal-to-noise ratio (Dennis estimates 20% relevant content) (confidence: high) — Dennis states 'There are too many people who post in it' and only checks for important news updates; describes checking as 'a chore to read'
- **[design_philosophy]** Pop bumper integration concern across Stern releases; Star Wars cited as example of three pop bumpers without meaningful interplay or design purpose (confidence: medium) — Dennis questioning 'if you're not going to take good use of pop bumpers why even stick them in there' and 'I just don't see the point if they're not gonna get a lot of interplay with them'
- **[design_philosophy]** Scott Denise emerging design tropes: dual playfield displays, three-flipper configuration, single pop bumper placement, extensive RGB color-changing lighting, vertical kickers in upper playfield (confidence: high) — Dennis identifying pattern consistency between TNA and Rick and Morty; 'maybe he's a three flipper guy as well' and 'maybe he's a one pop person as well'; notes Denise's TNA pop bumper as 'excellent' and 'brutal'
- **[market_signal]** Rick and Morty commercial viability assessment: limited production run (750 units) allows for atypical/niche playfield layout without alienating mainstream demand (confidence: medium) — Dennis noting 'They only need to sell 750. So it's not necessarily the deepest reach of all time' in context of potential layout concerns
- **[personnel_signal]** Microsoft acquisition of Ninja Theory studio; positioning for next-gen Xbox exclusive content and competitive differentiation against PlayStation (confidence: high) — Dennis discussing 'massive buy-up of studios' strategy by Microsoft 'as part of their massive buy-up of studios to expand their first party offerings' under Phil Spencer leadership
- **[announcement]** Spooky Pinball Rick and Morty playfield underside photo release; detailed mechanical reveal through community crowdsourced analysis (confidence: high) — Dennis reviewing Matt's annotated Pinside post identifying specific mechanisms: dual displays, three flippers, single pop bumper, vertical kickers, orbit shots, RGB lighting

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## Transcript

 This episode of the Eclectic Gamers podcast is brought to you by the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke Pinball Museum is an interactive museum dedicated to the science and the history of pinball. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. The museum is open every day except Monday. It houses over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. Roman Oak Pinball Museum. Don't forget about it. Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is episode 104. It is Sunday, December 15th, 2019, and I am Dennis. Unfortunately, Tony is sick today, and rather than have him fight through the nausea and try and record remotely with me, I am going to do this solo. He'd warned me yesterday, in fact, that the kids were sick and he wasn't sure he was going to stay okay, so I'm taking it that he was starting to feel bad then. So don't worry, he didn't just take his campus queen and then decide to bail. He was still going to try and record this morning, and I was like, there's no reason to subject yourself to that. But we want to stay on schedule. I am still healthy, so the show must go on. There is not a lot of new news for us to discuss, mainly because this is now the third week in a row that we have released an EGP episode. I do want to go ahead and get started with pinball. I don't really have any updates to talk about since the last week. I've just been working, so let's get right into it. The big news is from Spooky Pinball, and that is regarding the Rick and Morty pinball machine that they announced that we covered last week. Since then, Spooky Pinball has released a photograph of the underside of the Rick and Morty playfield. So it looks like the pinball community has been going wild trying to analyze all the parts and determine what those things are up above the playfield that these mechs below represent. And all in all, it's not necessarily that hard of a guess. So some of the stuff is a little more difficult to analyze than others. I do have a link in the show notes to a Pinside post, but I'm not linking to the one from Spooky. Instead, Matt from the Slap Save Pinball podcast has one that he annotated with his attempt to identify what all these items represent above the play field. I think it's a lot more helpful starting point. If you want to disagree with any of his assessments, you can easily do so. So I've got a direct link to that one because I found it far more helpful for the purposes of to talk about this topic on this podcast. What do we have going on? It looks like from Matt's analysis that we do have a couple of displays, one near the flippers at the base of the playfield and then one closer towards the back of the playfield. This would be very similar to what was done with Total Nuclear Annihilation, which we know is Scott Danesi's first design game. He had a numeric display towards the back of the playfield that represented the critical state of the reactor, and he had another numeric display between the flippers that would tell you about the ball save. It could indicate if there was an extra ball. I don't know if these are those same exact displays or not, but there are displays in place, so it looks like at least a similar concept is going to be employed for Rick and Morty. Another major change up that we were hearing about, at least I was hearing about as of the latest head-to-head pinball podcast, was that the lower play field wasn't going to look traditional. Now, the issue that I've had is different people describe this in different ways. Here's what we see in the image. We see what appears to be a mech to control a slingshot for the right-hand side, and then for the left-hand side, it looks like there's a pop bumper instead. Okay, so that is pretty different. We don't see a lot of differentiation anymore. Usually the standard approach for a lower play field is to do two identical slingshots that mirror each other. That said, this does not mean that this is not an Italian bottom game. We don't know the answer to that, or at least I don't know the answer to that yet. An Italian bottom, and I've been thinking maybe I really should invest some time and actually write this up in a more coherent way. Different people, I suppose, will have different interpretations of what is meant by Italian bottom. So let me explain really quickly what I mean by it. An Italian bottom, and I'm going off of, I think it was the designer Comic who did it for Paragon and kind of spoke about it. And there's a write-up over at the Internet Pinball Database on Paragon if you'd like to read more. But it's really about the ability to trap up the ball that was seen as that Europeans, especially their Italian market at the time, was highly demanding in terms of wanting to be able to trap a ball easily so that they could take a break or talk or whatever. And because of that, there were design decisions made on Paragon to present that as a possibility. So the Italian bottom, the concept there isn't about the slingshots. It's not about identicalness. It's about the ability to capture the ball easily. And that idea manifests itself in terms of a ball guide. So there's some sort of lane guide. It can be wire form. It can be plastic. It doesn't matter what the material is. But the idea is there's something that the ball can easily be caught against that runs it to the flipper directly. So normally the way we see this is, and the way I interpret it is, if you have inlanes, you usually have an Italian bottom going on. So there's a way for the ball to feed down, and then it's guided to the flipper. And the fact that there's the guide is what allows it to trap up versus a game like Space Station, where you have the slingshots abutting the flippers. So there's no guide to lead the ball to the flippers. So it's much more difficult to capture the ball. So anyway sort of a long story but long story short of that is just because there a pop bumper instead of a slingshot at least in my assessment does not mean this won be an Italian bottom If there's still an in-lane and it's still got a guide and it still feeds to a flipper, I'd have to see it, of course, but it sounds like it's still going to be an Italian bottom if that is the case. I think there were some people who were concerned when they looked at the flipper placement of the two standard flippers and saw that the mechs aren't aligned perfectly and thought, oh, this is going to have offset flippers, don't worry about where the coils are placed. That's not unusual to have to have the coils moved around to accommodate the spacing. It's a question of where the actual placement of those flippers is. And it sounds like for people who look more closely than I, that they do look aligned. So I think it would be very, very, well, I would love to see a non-Italian layout from any pinball manufacturer. I don't think I would not and I don't think anyone quite frankly is really all that interested in seeing offset flippers ever again in pinball so I don't I don't think they're willing to take that sort of chance let's see what else is a Mr. Matt identified here it looks like there may be a vertical up kicker uh that goes from there's sort of a portal uh it's got a captive ball that and I guess the portal gun is something from the show that a lot of people are familiar with so that resides in the upper left of the playfield, but there does seem to be a vertical up kicker from there in some capacity lower down, much closer to the midpoint, lower midpoint, still on the left side. There's like a subway that goes from that portal area down back to this spot. And so there appears to be a vertical up kicker to get the ball back. There are stand-up targets. I don't see anything identified that is thought to be drop targets. So there are stand-up targets in the upper right and there are stand-up targets in the middle left and there is looks like an orbit shot going on there is another there is at least a third flipper looks like designed to do that portal shot it's all the way up sort of in the upper right portion of the playfield near the very back of it looks like there might be another vertical up kicker sort of in the middle of the play field in the very back as well. And I'm not quite sure. There's some other mechanisms that are near that display and Matt couldn't identify what they are, but I'm wondering if there may be something, you know, he had, he being Scott Danesi, he had a lot of play up in the upper section of total nuclear annihilation with, they weren't, you know, typical slings. They were just, or they were kicking rubbers. I wonder, maybe it's something like that. Maybe this thread's massive. I actually do not follow the Rick and Morty thread anymore because it's too productive. And maybe productive is not the right word. There are too many people who post in it. So I only go back and check it when I see there's important news going on because most of the discussion or one line sentences of people saying stuff and I'd say 20% of it isn't really all that relevant either. So it just gets to be a chore to read. So that said, this does look like I'm seeing some, maybe we can start to say there are some Scott Danesi tropes that exist. Like if he's going to be the guy who has to have two displays in the play field, if that's going to be a thing for him, maybe we can start identifying that as a hallmark or a trope of the designer. He did three flippers on total nuclear annihilation. So maybe he's a three flipper guy as well. Looks like that we're going to revisit that. he had a single pop on total nuclear annihilation and other than that pop in the lower portion of the play field where you normally have a sling i'm not sure that there's going to be any other pop bumpers so maybe he's a one pop person as well and that's going to be a thing i think the utilization of the pop bumper on tna was excellent it's brutal which is something that has been missing from a lot of pop layouts lately and for a long time quite frankly and as I've commented on with like the Stern Star Wars to me if you're not going to take good use of pop bumpers why even stick them in there there are some games especially from Stern where I don't understand why they bothered with three pops I guess Gary Stern supposedly mandates that all of his games have three pop bumpers put on them but I just don't see the point if they're not if you're not gonna get a lot of interplay with them, then are they really very useful? I expect we're going to see more and more news probably rapidly about Rick and Morty. There's a lot of assumptions that we're going to see this reveal before the new year. So it's faster than a drip feed, but Spooky is really playing this up, which makes sense. They need to try and sell as many of these up front as they can. I think it's going to do very well for them. I continue to think so. There may be some people that have been slightly off-put by looking at the underside of the playfield, but I don't think many would be. I think it's going to really come down to, in terms of if there's going to be people that lose interest, it will be after they actually see the physical layout. Because, well, this gives us a great number of clues, especially on the mechanism side of things. I mean, there are a ton of color-changing RGBs. We knew that Scott Danesi loves color-changing RGBs, so that's not a surprise either. Not to mention, that seems to be where a lot of the industry has been going anyway. Jersey Jack pinball and their color changing RGB setup has been well known for years now. I think that only an atypical layout might alienate some people. But again, they only need to sell 750. So it's not necessarily the deepest reach of all time. So let's see. What else do we have? Nothing in pinball. So we are moving on to video games. There's really only one major thing of note that's happened since, well, we didn't talk about video games last week when Nick Schell with the Roanoke Pinball Museum was on, but we didn't really have any video game news to cover. Since then, the Game Awards 2019 has happened. So what are the Game Awards? Well, okay, they're awards for the video game industry, obviously, hence the name. This was formed a few years ago. It's gotten, it's got a lot of support, but understand that It not like a typical it not like the Oscars I think some people sort of think of it as the Academy Awards for video games and it may try and bill itself like that But really the Game Awards almost like a mini E3, where it's about the commercials, though. So think of it as like a cross between the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards and E3. So you get new game announcements, a lot of trailers, and that's really why people are tuning into this. And in fact, the show revolves around that. A lot of world premieres, first time seeing things, they really emphasize it. And then in between, there are a spattering of awards that are given out. Some awards are given out during the pre-show. That's how unimportant the awards are to the Game Awards. And then the major awards are done during the event. But even some of those that get to be in the quote unquote prime time billing for the Game Awards are just read off and they don't even let the person come up to the stage. And others are actually done more like an Academy Award. People come up, they get a big trophy, they get to provide a speech, and so forth. So I have a link to an article in Polygon, but I want to run through really quick some of the notable categories, some of the major categories. Best VR or AR, which is virtual reality or augmented reality game, was Beat Saber. The Best Strategy Game winner was Fire Emblem Three Houses. The Sports Racing Game winner was Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled. The Role Playing Game winner was Disco Elysium. The Ongoing Game winner was Fortnite. The Narrative winner was Disco Elysium. The Multiplayer Game winner was Apex Legends. The mobile game winner was Call of Duty Mobile. The independent game winner was Disco Elysium. The Games for Impact winner was Gris. The game that won Best Game Direction was Death Stranding. A lot of people thought Death Stranding might end up cleaning up a lot here because the showrunner is really good friends with the designer of that game, But that actually did not, as you're hearing, did not really turn out this way. This was the biggest award that Death Stranding won, in my view. The Fresh Indie Game winner was Disco Elysium. That was the game, obviously, that was really cleaning up. Fighting Game winner was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Family Game winner was Luigi's Mansion 3. The Community Support winner was Destiny 2. Audio Design winner was Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Art Direction winner was Control. Soul. Action Adventure Game winner was Sekiro Shadows Die Twice. Action Game winner was Devil May Cry 5. Game of the Year winner was Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, which a lot of people, I've not played it, a lot of people felt that it was very deserving. I believe this is from software, so it's got a big Dark Souls vibe. Dark Souls, which is a game I love the aesthetic of and hated as a game. Maybe I should play one of these newer ones to see if they resolve some of the bugginess that really... Some of it was bugginess and some of it was the design on how they achieve their hardness that I did not like. I did win it. I had to in order to not be shamed and be able to make all these arguments and sound like at least I was good enough to know what I was talking about. All right, so those were the game winners. Now I'd like to turn to talking about some of the announcements. And it's like, okay, well, what are the biggest announcements? Some are really clear, some are not. I do have a link in the show notes to an article from The Verge where they provide their top 12 announcements. So I'm going to use that as a guide. So here are some of the things. A lot of these are games. And then we're going to end with the hardware announcement, which was, I think, in everyone's view, the big announcement of the event. So Fast and the Furious, they are going to get a heist game. So it's not a racer, but it's going to be some sort of a heist game. They did have Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel come out on stage to do one of the game reveals and do one of the award announcements. And so I'm guessing that they have at least some of that cast from the films to actually do voicing or something for this title. So there is that. Here's one I was excited about. The Wolf Among Us. This was a telltale game. I really liked it quite a bit. It explores what's called the Fables comic book series, which is almost an adult take on classic fairy tales. And The Wolf Among Us was a murder mystery. And so I didn't know whether or not there were – I guess there was another one in the works. I don't remember well enough about what All Telltale was doing. but it looks like at least this one of those canceled projects is back. Because the first one was so fun, I'm really hopeful that they do a really good job. And so if you kind of like the point-and-click adventure style, or it's a little more in-depth than a visual novel, but not by a lot. So we'll see how that goes. Let's see. Gears Tactics. We finally got a first look at that. We heard about that two E3s ago, and so it looks like it's going to be thematically, as you would expect, quite tied to the Gears universe. I think this is going to be, it'll be compared to XCOM. Is it as good as XCOM? I think that's really the question that people are going to be asking themselves about it. Let's see, other big announcements. Ah, the Ghost of Tsushima, we finally got to see. That's a PS4 exclusive, I believe. But we got four minutes of gameplay in a new trailer. So it also appears to be coming out in the summer. So that was nice to finally have at least a vague sense of a release date on it. I remember when I saw this at an E3, the trailer, and I thought it looked really, really good. So I think it's going to do quite well for Sony. Let's see. PUBG, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The studio that is releasing that has something else in the works, and it's not PUBG. So they call it Prologue, and I don't really know a whole lot about what it's going to be, other than it looks quite a bit different than PUBG looks So we have to stay tuned on that We did see an announcement for Godfall which I believe is the first confirmed PlayStation 5 game So the or at least it the first one I recall seeing a trailer for. So it's a third person fantasy looter slasher, and it's got a focus on melee combat. Graphics look stunning as you would expect from the PlayStation 4 or 5. so that uh and it's coming out through gearbox which is gearbox is known for looter shooters or what we used to call dungeon crawlers and that's their borderland series but this does not have that cel-shaded look so this is much sharper than that is bravely default 2 that was announced is coming out next year and so a lot of people square enix i guess i'm not familiar with bravely default but they did a lot of when the trailer was going there was a lot of comparison in relation to Octopath Traveler, which did very well on the Switch. So this is sort of a Final Fantasy style RPG. So if you liked the first one or you liked Octopath, you might like Bravely Default 2. Or if you like RPGs, you may want to go ahead and check it out because the world never has enough RPGs, apparently. Hellblade. We learned that that will be getting a sequel on the new Xbox. And that's from Ninja Theory. for those that don't recall Microsoft acquired Ninja Theory in the past year or 18 months or so as part of their massive buy-up of studios to expand their first party offerings so this is you know it's very dark the trailer was incredibly creepy I have not played Hellblade I know I had a lot of fans a lot of people were really excited when Microsoft announced Ninja Theory in that slate and that batch of studios. It's got some serious cachet. So a lot of people, I think, are pretty excited about it. And this looked really sharp because it is on the new Xbox, which that was the big announcement. And it was very early in the Game Awards show. The Xbox Series X is what they're calling it. And we saw the console. It was presented, and I was very concerned at first. In fact, a few of us, including Tony, were messaging each other and we're like, where are we supposed to put this? Because they show it vertical. And it was like, okay, I don't know if that's going to fit on my shelf anywhere. It has been confirmed. You can use it horizontally. You don't have to stand it upright, but that's how they presented it. There's a newly designed controller. Look very familiar to anyone who's seen the Xbox One controllers or the Xbox 360 controllers though. I do see there is a new button on the front. I believe that's their new share button that they've decided to go with because apparently that's becoming very popular and i guess even using the guide button was taking too many steps for people and so it's called the xbox series x and since they're calling it a series we've been hearing reports that there will be two skews uh so the thought is there will be two different models uh rumor mill is that there will be a lower powered model that won't have a disc drive won't have the blu-ray player and won't be 4k i think the rumors i were i've been hearing is that it might be like 2k capable or so basically a model designed for people that plan to just digitally download and don't have 4k tvs and just want something able to play everything and that's coming out for series x and be obviously at a lower price point we don't know the price points yet we do know that this will be coming out for the holiday season that was already essentially known but it's the first one we got to take a look at we haven't seen any official reveal imagery to my knowledge for Sony's PlayStation 5 yet. So Xbox, through Microsoft, is clearly trying to get out in front about getting the hype built so they can try and get these sold because Xbox has drastically lagged for a variety of reasons behind PlayStation during this generation, almost entirely due to errors made on Microsoft's part. But with Phil Spencer running the Xbox division now, there's been a major focus on gaming rather than trying to be the be-all, end-all, do-everything-in-your-living-room console that Xbox One was initially presented as. And so I think they're going to try and make it at least more competitive. There's no reason why, I don't want to say gamers are fickle, but by and large, gamers are willing to try, go with any console in any given generation and reset themselves. There's always core sets, but they're not wholly picky about these sort of things. And I say that because Xbox 360 was ahead of PlayStation 3 in a number of markets, including the US and I believe the UK. But that all changed because of the blunders they made on the Xbox One. There's no reason they can't change it back. And that's part of why there's been all these studio acquisitions is that's how Phil Spencer thinks you change this dynamic. Plus their approach is different than it used to be where it was an exclusive versus exclusive console versus console approach. Where, and Tony often talks about this, Microsoft is putting out all of their first-party stuff that they develop in their studios out on the PC as well. Because from their perspective, because they control Windows, they don't really care if you're playing on a PC or you're playing on a console. They just want you to play on a Microsoft product. So there's no reason to keep it isolated to console. And if that costs them console sales, ultimately it doesn't cost them as a company because they'd still like people to buy PCs too. So anyway, that's all the major announcements, in my opinion, from the Game Awards of 2019. And that really wraps up this episode. I'm sorry there was no fun humor. There's no one for me to play off of. There's just me talking into this microphone. So I think it's time for me to go ahead and call it and say we will be back. Hopefully Tony will be healthy by then and hopefully I will not be sick. We'll actually be back in two weeks like we normally would be, but we needed to maintain the current pacing schedule. We might finally have some finalized news about Rick and Morty by then. Who knows? There are a few other rumors and such floating around in pinball, but I don't really see the point in touching on them because I haven't seen solid confirmation or anything that would make me think that there's enough meat on that bone to really pick at right now. So I'd rather not do it. But until two weeks, I'm Dennis. Have a great weekend.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 21ae8b6b-af21-4bff-9b13-991dd60a8947*