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Episode 111 - A HEIST of Specs

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 17m·analyzed·Mar 21, 2020
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Analysis

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TL;DR

COVID impact on pinball, Hot Wheels and Heist game analysis, pricing complexity.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss pinball industry impacts from COVID-19 lockdowns, including venue closures and manufacturing disruptions. They cover two new games: American Pinball's Hot Wheels (mixed reception on design choices) and P3's Heist (modular game with innovative crane toy and third-flipper system). Pricing and licensing decisions are debated.

Key Claims

  • Spooky Pinball announced supply chain disruptions due to Chicago area outbreak impact, despite isolated manufacturing location

    high confidence · Spooky announcement Friday mentioned supply chain disruption from Chicago area despite Spooky's isolated community location

  • Stern, American Pinball, and Jersey Jack all build in or near Chicago area, creating major manufacturing vulnerability

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly states all three manufacturers are in Chicago area or moving there

  • Three main local pinball venues are closed or severely limited: two are takeout/delivery only with pinball machines turned off, 403 Club is completely closed

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony's personal venue experiences in their area

  • Hot Wheels game has an off-center screen to accommodate car artwork on right side

    high confidence · Tony identifies this immediately as standing out; Dennis confirms the accommodation choice

  • Hot Wheels spinning car toy never stops spinning during play and is not interactive (ball does not touch it)

    medium confidence · Dennis states 'that car never stops. It's always moving' based on information he had heard

  • Hot Wheels animation clips in game are sourced from a stop-motion show featuring Hot Wheels city fighting monsters and dinosaurs, not custom to the game

    medium confidence · Dennis found this through research; Tony was unaware of the show

  • P3's Heist uses modular system with third flipper option at $250 additional cost

    high confidence · Dennis cites This Week in Pinball deep dive as source

  • P3 pricing: single game $10,000, two-game bundle $13,000, three-game bundle $15,000

    high confidence · Dennis sources from This Week in Pinball write-up

Notable Quotes

  • “Symmetry looks better than asymmetry. Asymmetry is just more fun to play.”

    Dennis @ approx 12:00 — Design philosophy explaining trade-off between visual balance and gameplay interest, applied to Hot Wheels offset screen criticism

  • “If you're going to make a car game based off of a car movie at this point in time and you don't get the Fast and Furious license, it's just because you're cheap.”

    Tony @ approx 20:30 — Critique of American Pinball's Hot Wheels licensing choice, implying superior alternatives existed

  • “I don't think Stern Pinball is the only company that could get the Fast and Furious license if they wanted it.”

    Dennis @ approx 20:45 — Establishes Stern's dominant financial position for premium IP licensing

  • “The biggest toy people are going to notice when they look at it is going to be the crane.”

    Dennis @ approx 30:00 — Identifies Heist's headline feature: three-way movement crane with ball pickup and pitch/extension/sweep capabilities

  • “A heist is a really good theme just a general heist theme is really solid for a pinball machine because it lets you do modes for your prep of the heist and everything else.”

    Dennis @ approx 28:00 — Validates P3's theme choice as offering strong gameplay design opportunity independent of Ocean's Eleven-style plot

Entities

Roanoke Pinball MuseumorganizationDennispersonTonypersonAmerican PinballcompanyHot WheelsgameSpooky PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Hot Wheels off-center screen placement creates visual imbalance tension between gameplay optimization and aesthetic appeal

    high · Tony immediately identifies as problematic; both hosts acknowledge trade-off between fun asymmetrical gameplay and symmetrical visual appeal

  • ?

    licensing_signal: American Pinball's Hot Wheels choice criticized as suboptimal licensing decision; hosts suggest stronger license (Fast and Furious) would have justified feature reduction and pricing

    medium · Tony states 'I don't think Hot Wheels was a strong license to pick. I still don't think it's a strong license to pick'; both agree stronger license would have been better strategy

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball venue closures eliminating playability and revenue; operators in hospitality sector facing extended zero-revenue periods with ongoing financial obligations

    high · Two of three local venues converted to takeout-only with machines off; 403 Club completely closed; discussion of bridge loans for hospitality sector needed

  • $

    market_signal: P3's modular system creates complex pricing tiers ($10k single game, $13k two-game bundle, $15k three-game bundle) with optional modules adding additional costs ($250 third flipper)

    high · Dennis walks through full pricing structure sourced from This Week in Pinball deep dive

  • ?

    product_strategy: P3's Heist features significantly more sophisticated crane mechanics than prior crane toys (Batman 66/Dark Knight), with three-way movement, independent bash capability, and magnetic ball manipulation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.233

0:00
This episode of the Eclectic Gamers podcast is brought to you by the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. The Roanoke Pinball Museum is an interactive museum dedicated to the science and 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 and houses over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. Roanoke Pinball Museum. And now, the weather.
0:48
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, March 21st. This is episode... I didn't write it down. 111. 111. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. I am Tony. I'm Dennis. We're back just under two weeks like we said we'd be. Yeah. We're recording at a distance this time instead of our normal in-person recording. Yes, we are socially responsible. Cool. We are. What did they change? It was social distancing, and now they're wanting to call it physical distancing because they still want people to socialize. Oh, that's... Like on the internets and stuff. That's true. I actually had someone who works for an association that represents mental health facilities reach out to me professionally a few days ago asking if there were any resources that they could provide to help because they're very concerned about people having anxiety and depression due to all the – we were still using the term social distancing. But it's like, well, let me know, and I can help push those resources out. Yeah, well, I mean, it's an understandably difficult time for people and operators. And a lot of people are used to not being home all the time. So while people who want to be home or spend a lot of time at home are okay with it, for a lot of people, it's quite the change of pace. Yeah, I've seen a lot of speculation about there being a baby boom from all this stay at home. Oh, we had that conversation at work the other day. But let me ask you, because, of course, I want to look at the dark side of things. Do you think we'll see a spike in divorces? Oh, that's almost a guarantee. Okay. Yeah. It works both ways, people. It works both ways.
2:40
P3 (Multimorphic)
company
Heistgame
Steven Silverperson
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
This Week in Pinballorganization
Zach Minneyperson
403 Cluborganization
Arcade Heroesorganization
Lexi Lightspeedgame
Oktoberfestgame
Houdinigame
Fast and Furiousgame

high · Dennis details crane's pitch/extension/sweep capability; compares to Ghostbusters Slimer movement as analogy for multi-directional complexity

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Multiple pinball manufacturers (Stern, American Pinball, Jersey Jack) concentrated in Chicago area creating vulnerability to COVID-19 disruptions; Spooky's supply chain already impacted despite isolated manufacturing

    high · Dennis states all three major manufacturers build in/near Chicago; Spooky announced supply chain disruption Friday despite isolated community location

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Generic 'heist' theme rated as mechanically superior to Ocean's Eleven specific license, offering flexible mode design opportunities for prep/execution gameplay narrative

    medium · Dennis states general heist theme 'really solid for a pinball machine' and offers design flexibility independent of Ocean's Eleven connection

  • ?

    industry_signal: Hot Wheels' continuously spinning car toy positioned as non-interactive novelty with unclear gameplay integration or value proposition; described as 'nauseating' and 'insanity'

    medium · Both hosts express skepticism about spinning car; Tony found it 'almost nauseating'; Dennis calls it 'continuous spinning bit of insanity' with unclear gameplay purpose

    • Because Kansas has closed all schools physically for the remainder of the year, my kids are home for the rest of the year. My wife is working from home for at least the next two weeks as a minimum. because my job is classified as essential. I'm still working.
    3:00
    I'm still physically going into work, though we have started a rotation so that we've got people out for two weeks at a time rotating with other people. So do you work for GameStop?
    3:13
    No. No, I don't work for GameStop. Because I heard they were essential. Yeah. I've heard a lot of weird places, Irving. I heard when Illinois went into lockdown, I saw a report from a guy who said they just had an intern walking down the hall with a giant sheaf of papers, handing one to everybody, saying that they were essential and they had to come to work.
    3:35
    Yeah, I haven't quite settled on what my policy is. I need to get into the office to pay bills still. I'm not aware that I'm forgiven from paying a bunch of bills. I know there are steps that are being taken for individual citizens. So my current plan is to try and get into the office weekly and to continue to keep up on that. But otherwise, almost all of my meetings have had already shifted to virtual, at least through the end of this month. And I'm assuming most of the April ones will do so as well. I usually work from home anyway. And now with my big exception for the last few months had been I had to go in a lot because of the Kansas legislature. legislature and we were having some asks with them. And of course there were, there were pieces of legislation that my organization had positions on. The legislature is gone. They ended, uh, two days ago, basically they were out of here by Friday and they're like, see ya. They officially are coming back on April 27th, which is normally when they would come back. The difference is they've taken their spring break, uh, which runs about a month. They took it two weeks early. but they went ahead and passed a budget because they recognize that they may not be coming back at all. They want to, but all the recommendations right now are essentially we, as of March 15th, a lot of stuff is pushed out, shut down till mid-May, and in the case of the schools, till the end of May. So because of those reasons, it's like anything prior to June is not safe to assume will happen. Yeah, that seems to be the going thing right now. I read that the Georgia legislature is entirely out in quarantine due to infected members who had attended some of the daily sessions. Yeah, I'm not aware of any confirmed cases in Kansas of state legislators. I know our district representative in the U.S. Congress, she has self-quarantined because she came into contact with one of the confirmed cases out in Washington. Yeah. No symptoms that I last heard. So, yeah, obviously, our introductions are very coronavirus-oriented because that has been defining for, I know, you all must have gone through your coop, and that's why you're doing your continuity of operations, for those that don't know. Yes, I spent several days doing deep work on that and then doing things, plans that we'd laid out in the coop and stuff that had to be done. That's what about half my week in addition to my normal work. And most of my normal work got dropped, though I did go through and handle monthly payroll and stuff. It's at the end of the month. I went ahead and did it early just so that it's all through the system and will hit on the day it needs to hit just so I get it out of the way. But I work with probably longtime listeners. No, I work with health departments. So the issue there has been a lot of confusion, frustration, and information sharing in terms of how to approach this very quickly changing landscape of what the responses are. And in Kansas, as I believe in a plurality of states, it's a decentralized public health system. So there's a lot of authority that rests in the hands of local government, in our case in county government. But that doesn't mean they like to do it without guidance. And so because not every single health department's local health officer is an epidemiologist or trained in disease control methods, especially for something like this. So they look to the state and or the CDC for guidance and that guidance is coming. But the problem is it keeps changing. And then you have conflicts between what the feds are saying, what the state has said, maybe what the governor has ordered. And then perhaps if you are an expert or you know an expert in your community, what your community expert might say. And so a lot of this that I'm having to manage is just putting people in touch with the proper resources or they will ask for suggestions where they just want someone to back their play. Like they'll say, I don't agree with a state solution. I think we need to be more strict. What do you like? Dennis, what do you think? Well, I'm not an epidemiologist. You want my opinion? Be strict. I mean, that's my opinion, but you have a local health officer. They have the authority to implement their will in this situation. There's a reason why those powers are broad so you can use them. But, of course, there's political pressure, and a lot of these people in these positions aren't used to having their decisions second-guessed constantly. And then you have competing interests. Like, as we know, businesses are really suffering with all these closures that we have. In fact, tying it to our topics of pinball and video games, in the realm of pinball, the three main locations we go and play at, two of those are now takeout delivery of food only. The pinball machines are turned off, so you cannot go and play them. And the 403 Club, which is a bar, a pinball bar, it's completely closed. Yeah. And those businesses are I mean, the ones that are doing food delivery, I'm sure, are generating income at a reduced rate. 403 Club isn't making any money right now. And there's only so long that stuff can sustain. Yeah, there's only so much that you can do because while they're not making money, that doesn't mean that there's not still bills that have to be paid. There's not still loans and stuff that have to be taken care of. Yeah, I saw yesterday that Kansas finally announced their what they call their higher their higher fund. And it's for the hospitality industry. It's a series of short term bridge loans at zero percent. And it's a five million dollar pot of money. And so that's supposed to help the restaurants and bars be able to borrow funds without an interest rate on them to just try and float them through this next four to eight weeks. So hopefully that's helpful to people, but it's going to be really rough. We'll see what the – obviously, people who follow the news federally know they're trying to work out some massive sort of bailout plan, but that's going to probably be more debated than the emergency funding that already was approved was because there are going to be questions about big businesses taking advantage of that. That's where most of the money is going, of course, are things like the airlines. And I'm already seeing people saying, well, are they going to use it like they used the last bailout and just buy their stock back? Or is this actually going to help workers?
    10:20
    Why would they help workers? Well, if the law said they had to, that might be a reason. But I'm just saying. I'm just saying there's a way you can make them. You can make them. But speaking of making things, we should probably make our way into our topics because I'm sure most of the listeners have heard so much about coronavirus. They don't want to hear about it anymore. So unfortunately, I still have to mention a little bit about coronavirus in the pinball section because there were a number of shutdowns that happened. Obviously, we, in our intros, touched on our area location shutdowns. But what I was thinking of is more like our planned trip to the Texas Pinball Festival. Yeah. And the worst part about it is that my Facebook keeps popping up memories from previous TPS. And I'm all like, I don't get to go this year. Yes. I forgot. You know, I disabled all those memory pop-ups on Facebook. You can do that? Yeah. That's horrifying. Yeah, quite frankly, I looked it up when they kept showing pictures of my dead dog. And I was like, I'm done. Yeah, I can understand that. I'm done having that thrown in my face. So I went and looked it up. And, yeah, there's like a way to set it. So I don't remember how, though, because it was a one-time thing. But it's just like, yeah, no. No, thank you. So, yeah, that's unfortunate. That's the one show we were playing on. You and I had already been talking about looking at maybe something in the fall or a later show this year that we could do. Yeah, because we've been talking about adding a second show to our run. And now we're just talking about having a show in the run. Right. So in terms of the shutdowns, I'd say the big question at this point, and it looked like Spooky Pinball had an announcement about this yesterday, I believe, on Friday. but is how long will the manufacturers be able to continue to even build machines because of the social distancing mandates and their line workers? And it looks like that's already being felt. So it appears that the supply of new games is going to slow up because of the difficulties in being able to continue to build them. And part of the reason with Spooky is they're in a pretty isolated community. They might not have even had a problem keeping a six-foot spread between their employees for the 10-minute recommendations, but their supply chain is disrupted because of the outbreak's impact in the Chicago area. Right. And, of course, Stern builds in the Chicago area. American Pinball builds in the Chicago area. And Jersey Jack was in the process of moving to build in the Chicago area. So we'll just have to wait and see on all of that. But, I mean, just currently, standard-wise, I'm going to guess most of the new game sales going on are going to be games that have already been built. And I imagine most of those manufacturers are going to have to slow or stop their lines entirely. It seems inevitable at this point. They're not going to be seen as essential unless they retool those businesses to build something else that's related to the coronavirus response, in which case they still aren't building pinball machines. Right. But we do have a couple of new games to talk about since we last recorded. And the first one was one Tony and I were just discussing a little bit before going live, and that is Hot Wheels by American Pinball. We do have a link in the show notes to gameplay video that was provided on YouTube by Arcade Heroes is the name of the entity that supplied it. And apparently Hot Wheels showed up at a show. It was, I guess, a smaller show. It was unannounced, and there was the game. I remember speaking with Zach Minney, who I co-host the pinball show with over on the pinball network, and he had mentioned to me for quite a while he still didn't have any price. I know he does now, but he didn't have any pricing on the game yet. And so you've got a chance to see the video. I've had a chance to see the video.
    14:07
    The responses online have been mixed, but let's start with your thoughts, Tony. So what do you think? I have a fresh look on it. that there's not a lot on it toy-wise. The video didn't look super exciting, but we'll have to see what happens. It's going to depend upon code, like anything.
    14:34
    It could just be the little slightly OCD-ish thing in me, but that off-center screen is bothering me. That was the first thing that stood out to me, and I understand why they did it. It was to accommodate that art of that car to the right. Right, and that art's cool. The art is cool. I have no problems with it. It's just I don't know if I could have that in my house because every time I look at it, maybe you'd get used to it. But right now, every time I look at it, I'm always like, ah, it just feels wrong. Yeah, I mean, my initial reaction to it was I don't like it being offset, but it wouldn't stop me from buying the game if I thought the game was fun. Right. I mean, it's sort of like I talk a lot about asymmetry and play field design. Here's the general rule of thumb. Symmetry looks better than asymmetry. Asymmetry is just more fun to play. So that is why, like if I was looking at and I have a step up 1940s Genco playfield that I got from Tilt Cycle as a lit wall hanging. If I was doing wall art and wanted to hang a playfield like the one I picked, I would pick something symmetrical most likely because symmetry is more appealing to the eye. but when it comes to gameplay i think those asymmetrical designs are more interesting because the shots are different on different spots on the flippers so there's this there's a there's more to do i think that because otherwise what you've learned on the right works on the left in exactly the same placement so you basically cut your game in half when you go symmetrical so and but in the case of like the display it's just visually it looks off because it's like it's not balanced right what'd you think about the spinning car though that was balanced that was almost nauseating the way that thing was just going insane he was just spinning and screaming and yeah i don't know so far from not a a a selling point to me no i uh i didn't care for the spinning car my understanding is there is it's not an interactive toy in the sense that The ball does not touch the spinning car. It just spins. I believe the car's speed may vary based off of the RPMs or something that you've built up in the game. But when a player is playing, last I had heard, that car never stops. It's always moving. Wow. And so I thought that was... That's just a continuous spinning bit of insanity right in the middle of the play field. Mm-hmm. What did you think of the... You said you liked the car in the back box. What did you think of the art overall? The art overall, I didn't have any real issues with. It was very Hot Wheels-y art, so it was kind of what I thought and expected it to be. The video clips I saw that were kind of almost claymation-y, I really liked. Yes, and I guess that is from – this is actually more integrated into a plot-based license than I realized. So obviously it's called Hot Wheels. We know it's the Hot Wheels license. I didn't think Hot Wheels was a strong license to pick. I still don't think it's a strong license to pick. But one of my big complaints about Hot Wheels was it's a bunch of cars. There are no characters. So there's nothing like when you have nostalgia for a lot of things, it's you remember either playing with them, which, of course, Hot Wheels has and or the stronger ones are the ones where you remember the characters in the story. And that's why things like Ghostbusters work so well. But apparently there's a stop motion style show with like a Hot Wheels city and they fight monsters and dinosaurs and stuff. And that's what I think those clips are from that. I had no idea. I didn't until I read about it, so I don't think most of that animation is custom to the game. I think they got the rights to use what was done on the show. So that, though, people might know the show. At least kids might know the show. So that's more than just the brand of Hot Wheels. I'm assuming that show has some sort of plot. So there might be people that are like, oh, yeah, like Paw Patrol. It's like the Paw Patrol for Hot Wheels. The thing is, I think it's a newer show, so I could see maybe that would help it if it was in a family entertainment center, for example, which might be the angle they were going for. I don't remember the current pricing on what was announced for the game, but when it came out, there was a lot of discussion with the MSRP on Hot Wheels, which is perhaps not surprising given that there's less interactive toys than we saw with Oktoberfest and Houdini, but that it's cheaper than those games were. Which makes sense, I mean, at that point. And honestly for them this might be a very good thing having A a cheaper price and B a theme theme that is gonna more resonate with a younger and a wider crowd especially for operators when operators get to go back to being operators yes and uh like the overall i thought the art is very colorful i thought it integrated better than definitely better than oktoberfest i would probably even say the art package could be it's the same artist as the other games uh i think it's perhaps stronger than houdini as well i don't know i need to look again at houdini to know i liked houdini's art decently i did like houdini's art it was pretty good but uh especially on the play field but it's like yeah overall i i think that it looked pretty good clearly fan layout was the style and the design so i haven't played it yet i didn't you know i haven't seen a lot of video on it i it looks like it will probably shoot in a very familiar way. So, uh, Oktoberfest, I think was seen by a lot of people as an improvement on, on shot geometry versus the very challenging and frustrating for many people, uh, shot selection that you had on Houdini. And this will probably be even more forgiving because Oktoberfest still had things like that barrel lock shot, which were very, very hard. And this doesn't look like it has hard shots really. Uh, I'm not saying that the game won't have short ball times though but you know fan layouts are they're familiar people are comfortable with those so so i think that's probably a strong point but overall i just when i look at it especially if it's based on a more modern cartoony start stop motion thing and that it's hot wheels uh i just don't think it was the right license to go like i don't think they're going to see dramatically higher sales with this versus their other games it might be their best selling game But I don't think they're, say, going to sell 1,000 more games than they did off of their prior best game, which by all reports was Houdini. Yeah, no, I don't think they're going to see just some groundbreaking swell. It's not going to be some insanely new amount of sales. It's going to be decent, though. I think everything shows that it should be able to be pretty decent. Yeah, but I do want to try it because I've had fun with other car-based themed games. It's just I would have thought, you know, going for a license to up your sales, I think a stronger license would have been better. Right. And the question is just would a stronger license have also costed enough money to not be viable? And that could be the case. But, I mean, if they were able to knock down the MSRP, even though I believe it was very slight that they were able to reduce it with a license, I get it. They stripped out features, but they could have done that with a, you know, they could have stripped out features, kept their same old price and got a better license. That's how my brain tells me they should have done it. Yeah, no, I don't disagree. I mean, maybe, you know, that doesn't put them in the range of being able to, say, buy Star Wars, but they're something like the Italian job. And then that is a car theme instead. You know, still a little dated. See, that could be a lot of fun. But people, yeah, but people know it. And there are people who will be like, oh, yeah, I like the characters. I guess take your pick. You want the Marky Mark version or you want the old version? To be fair, though, if you're going to make a car game based off of a car movie at this point in time and you don't get the Fast and Furious license, it's just because you're cheap. Yes, but not necessarily. They might not give it out. No, no, no. That's entirely a possibility. No, I think you're right. And I think as things stand, Stern Pinball is the only company that could get the Fast and Furious license if they wanted it. Right. I don't know anyone else is in a financial position to do it.
    23:06
    But speaking of Fast and the Furious, you know, shows that were about stealing things as I remember them. I haven't seen them all. Let's move to our final pinball topic, which is another new game. We finally just recently saw the announcement drop for P3's newest game and module setup, which is a traditional pinball game called Heist. And I do have a link in the show notes to the deep dive that This Week in Pinball has, so people can go and read that. There's also a couple videos. One, which is the teaser video. So there's also a video in the Twip write-up which shows you the crane toy doing some stuff in one of the modes. For those that want to get a better look at that. So quickly, let me just run through some of the highlights. So this game has a third flipper. There is a side target module that the P3 has by default. And instead, you can get a third flipper module and pop that in. And you can keep that module in when you are playing other games. It just disables the flipper so that you can't do stuff you weren't supposed to be able to do on those other games. But you can move it in and play those other games instead of having the side target module.
    24:19
    Every single shot, when made at least, when shot properly, has an ability to either stop and or divert a ball. So depending on what the game wants to do, the shot might be a flow shot or it might be a stop and go shot. There is a police station toy, which is a shot on the game, and it has a jail door, a door with bars that raises and lowers. And so it kind of reminds me, though, obviously the movement is different to the porculus in Medieval Madness. So once you have the door up, you're actually able to shoot into the police station. So that's a toy. The biggest toy people are going to notice when they look at it is going to be the crane. So this has a crane. And yeah, we've seen a few cranes lately on games, but this one is quite a bit different. It has three-way movement. So the crane has the ability to change its pitch, to change how far it's extended, and to sweep around the playfield.
    25:19
    There is a target on the front of the crane so that when it's low enough to the playfield, you're actually able to bash it with a ball. The crane also, I'm assuming via a magnet, has an ability to pick up a ball. and so it can move a ball around the play field. It can lower it so that the ball is sitting there and the ball is the bash toy and you can knock the ball free. So it does a lot.
    25:41
    The game currently has four multi-ball modes in it and the plot is basically Ocean's Eleven. In fact, you are in Ocean City.
    25:52
    So now I understand what Jerry meant when he said that it was not a licensed theme but it would be very familiar to people. and I would now have said you know American Pinball getting the oceans like oceans 11 as a theme would have been a good idea but not now because we basically did it well a heist is a really good theme just a general heist theme is really solid for a pinball machine because it lets you do modes for your prep of the heist and everything else so that's there's a lot of fun things that could be done with that so I don't know if you've seen the deep dive. I know you've seen the teaser trailer for Heist. The way I would describe it in terms of the way the module looks with the buildings and it's like a little city. To me, what it reminds me of actually is Dirty Harry. Like how that play field looked with – Just in terms of the plastics on it. So it has a good sort of city feel. I suppose dialed in would be another analogy if you want an analogy. Obviously, crane toy, we have seen crane toys before, but not ones that could do as much as this one does. Obviously, Batman 66 has a crane toy, which was repurposed from Batman the Dark Knight.
    27:11
    In those cases, all the crane was is it functioned as a bash toy because it had a ball and suspension that you would be able to hit. this can do that, but this also has a spot on the front of it that if the crane's low enough, it itself is the physical bash toy, and then the movement kind of with the pitch extension and sweep kind of reminds me a bit of how the Ghostbusters Premium and LEs were with Slimer, where he would move around a lot more on the playfield. He would be up and down and go, though I don't think his extension changed. I'm not sure. I never played it. I don't think so. No, I think he was at the same distance. It just rotated and dropped up and down. So that definitely is the fancy pants toy in it.
    27:55
    So I guess based off of what you've seen so far, or I mean, I can, in terms of the modes, there is some basic information that is available about them. The design was done by someone named Steven Silver. I don't know if he did any other P3 games or not. I'd have to go back and check. Um, but the, the way that it's currently set up, they've got the, the goal, or I guess the plot is Ocean City has been taken over by, by a bad guy, uh, Mr. Big. And, and so he controls the whole town, including the police. And you're supposed to help the heroine, uh, recruit a crew and the crew runs various jobs. And so you're trying to teach Mr. Big a lesson. So as you go along, you have all these other main characters. You've got a cat burglar character. You've got a driver. You've got the safecracker. You've got a hacker. You've got a mastermind.
    28:53
    She's the heroine. And then you've got a demolition expert. And so there are character modes related to all of those. And then there are the – I mentioned there were four multiballs. So there's a jailbreak multiball, which is, according to Twip, is if some of your characters get put in jail by the police, you can run that multiball to bust them out. And so that's the opportunity to liberate your characters through that mode. Then there's a police multiball, which has got multiple phases to it and progressive jackpot scoring. And then there's a crane multiball where you fight against the crane. And there is a cat burglar escape multiball. And so in that one, I guess it's a two-ball multiball. And if you do the correct shots, it actually removes the extra ball from play and you're back into single ball. So it's basically a two-ball to try and do this escape. And your reward is actually going back into single ball play when you accomplish it. I like the look of this game. It looks interesting. I want to see more of it. Like any other game, who knows? You want to flip it and all that. But the very concept behind the game is fun. The kind of cartoony art is not bad.
    30:08
    Yeah. What do you think of the third flipper? I think I want to see how well it works and if it can be integrated into anything else they do. Especially because what was the mod? It was $250 for that assembly. Yeah. And maybe we should run through some of the pricing, because that's one of the things I think is a little, I don't know if confusing is the right word, but complicated. Buying a P3 is a little complicated because of this modular system with a variety of games available. So depending on what you want influences, for obvious reasons, how much you're going to pay. So the normally and currently, to my knowledge, the way it works is P3 with one game, which normally has been the Lexi Lightspeed game, was what most people – that's the only other traditional pinball game that's been available for P3. That's a $10,000 package. And so then they've got it, but currently, from what I read on Twip, they have a two-game bundle option. So it comes with a back box display and two games. That's $13,000. but that doesn't with Heist. If you were to add Heist, that would have been another $250 because $250 is what covers the upper flimper assembly.
    31:24
    And then P3 has a three-game bundle with the back box display, and that's $15,000. But they are running a special currently so that you can get P3 and the one game being Heist at just the $10,000, well, $9,995, but I'm rounding for obvious reasons. and that does include the upper flipper so basically you get the upper flipper assembly for free if you do it like that they also have a four game bundle which is all the game kits and it also includes all the mini games and that's $16,000 but normal rule of thumb if you already had a P3 currently it's game kit prices are heist is $2750 so that's $2500 which is their normal playfield module price plus the $250 upper flipper whereas Lexi and Cosmic Kart Racing are $2,500 a piece game kits. Cannon Lagoon's $1,500. It's a simpler game kit. And then the mini game costs normally run between nothing, they're free, or up to $400. So yeah, $250, I mean, I don't think that's, that doesn't seem to me like an exorbitant price to add a flipper as a module, which could be used for other stuff. So price-wise, I don't think it's a bad price, But obviously, currently, nothing else uses that. So this does put it, I mean, basically, you're getting close to $3,000 for a pinball game, which is a good deal compared to, you know, everything else is going to be over $5,000 that you're looking at, except possibly home pin. Right. But I do. What do you think? And I agree. I from the little video there was I didn't get any sort of I still don't have a good sense as to the shot selection and the use of the third flipper. So I don't know how fun the third flipper is. I mean, I'm curious to play it. I enjoyed Lexi. I thought Lexi played well. I didn't think Lexi was an amazing game, but I thought it was a good game. I think Lexi is a really solid game for showing the possibility of the P3. And this still has that integrated, like, the video that shows off the crane that I mentioned that's available on the Twip deep dive. It shows you where, like, you're trying to make these shots to do the, it reminds me of that, the first Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise where he's hanging from the rope. Yeah. And you can't touch the floor. so in that mode you're making these shots and you have to hit certain shots and there are spots on the floor which are motion detected and shown on the screen that you're playing on because you're playing on top of the screen if you hit those you sound the alarm if you hit the proper shots then the ball gets lowered down enough so that you can hit the ball and then knock the cat burglar or hacker whoever it is dangling there free so then they can do the next step in the game so So it's using that screen and that motion detection to be the do not shoot here or you fail while you're trying to hit some ramp shots or whatnot in the back and actually accomplish what she's trying to do while she's dangling from the rope. Yeah, and that seems like a pretty interesting concept. I like it all in all. I would say right now, not even having played this game, if you're going to buy a P3, if you're in the market for a P3, you get this P3. you get the special that comes with everything or that comes with heist and that upper flipper kit for the 10 K. Yeah. You know, that's interesting. It's interesting because my, my rule of thumb on new inbox would be, I'd want to have played it first, which means I would have leaned towards Lexi. And I do believe there was another announcement with earlier this week. And I don't have a link in the show notes. I wasn't prepared to speak about it, But I guess there was an update to Cosmic Kart Racing where there's a mode available with it now, kind of like there's a boss hunt mode with Lexi.
    35:16
    Now they have a Cosmic Kart mode, which is more traditional pinball style to the game rather than the multiplayer mode that it was designed to be. So obviously there can be flexibility on things like that. This as a concept, I think, is very interesting. Lexi as a concept was very interesting to me as well, but I think the crane is a more interesting toy than the ball lock carousel, which to me was the standout toy on Lexi.
    35:43
    So for that reason, I do lean towards agreeing with you that of all the major kits, all the main modules are cool.
    35:53
    I don't think that's ever been Multimorphic's problem. So that ball lock thing that they've got for Lexi is awesome. The ball lock thing for Cosmic Kart Racing is really awesome. That's really, really awesome. I love how cool that works. Just from an engineering standpoint, it's so awesome.
    36:09
    Gameplay-wise, I think the crane thing looks the most interesting. What I was going to say is the sad thing is I think when people hear that it's got a crane, they're going to think Batman, and they're going to think, oh, it's so derivative. But it doesn't work like that crane. Yeah, it's nothing like that crane. But it's way more advanced. But again, that's never been multimorphic, and the P3's problem is having cool engineering. Let me ask you the question, the $10,000 question for the case of the P3. Does this game dramatically impact the number of P3s they're able to sell? No.
    36:46
    Why not? I think that as much as there's a group out there that calls for it, The truth of the matter is most people don't want to go through doing the equipment, the module swaps, to put it up. So if they buy a P3, they'll get a P3 for this game and they will have this game. But I have a hard time seeing them buying other games that require them to do module swaps every time they want to play one of the other games. Also, this is the second real pinball game on the P3 And there's still just not a lot Because we've played all the other minigames And they're interesting for a little bit But there's not a whole lot there yet Yeah, that's true But we are in an environment where At least on the higher end, premium LE style games The pricing has been going up from the other manufacturers And so far, Multimorphic has essentially held the line on theirs. Yeah. And that is a very valid point. And their system has a lot of potential. And unlike before when it was just Lexi, I'm not going to say that I have no interest in one because I could see owning one. I just have a hard time spending that money on this.
    38:16
    Even with the flexibility at this time over getting like a Attack from Mars or a Jurassic Park or a Wonka even. Sure. Well, and there are, especially if you go with the not top tier models on all three of those games, there's still thousands of dollars of difference.
    38:39
    Correct. As well I mean you do when you look at this you see where that money goes You see the advanced toys You see the motion screen And of course if you were to do the long approach which is what Multimorphics always promoted about getting the other game kits you see where you can start to manifest those savings when you buy more and more of the games. But, yeah, this is probably the first game that they've put out since Lexi that I think gives them a shot. Yeah, I had I wondered on Cosmic Kart Racing, but I remember when we tried it and it was only about halfway through its code. And I I was very disappointed with how Cosmic Kart Racing was in the state that they showed it at that TPF, which was a couple of years ago. And my understanding is that it was greatly improved since then. But by then, you know, that first impression was difficult to shake when I couldn't just go and play it anywhere in this game. It's definitely to me the most interesting that they've released. and I really want to try it. And I think it's really unfortunate that they weren't able to show this off at TPF this year. I think that does hurt them greatly. That would have been, well, when else is he going to have a great opportunity to show it until the next TPF? That's always been the show for Multimorphic, and this would have been in a decent position to try and steal the show. But now, I mean, I get it. It wouldn't make sense to sit on this for another year. So he's pushed this out. I thought the reveal was handled really well. the way the video is. I think it's a good teaser. I think this is a good write-up. I think that he's doing all the right things. But yeah, I have to agree with you. I'm very skeptical that this is going to dramatically improve the number of units that are moved. And I think some of that's going to come down to just the price of a single game versus the price of another single game and people not considering the long tail. I don't know how much of people are really saying no because of a two-minute module swap. But as we've often noted, there is a big difference between a game that can become minigames and minigames, which multiple people can play simultaneously. Correct. Not a lot of people are going to want to go out there and buy multiple P3s to host all these different games at the same time. So that's always going to be an obstacle in that regard. Now, it is still a good choice if you're someone who has a very limited space, and especially once it gets to have several decent actual games like Heist and Lexi Lightspeed, actual pure pinball-style games. I can see where somebody who might only have room for one or two machines might want a P3 to be one of them just because it lets them change out. Oh, yeah. No, there are a lot of good reasons to want a game or module or system that works like this. But again, just in terms of thinking about – but that's always – that's existed for them from the get-go. So this hasn't introduced anything new other than there's yet another module to choose from.
    41:45
    But I think the bigger thing here is while the intellectual underpinnings of the concept are well known, this is also not a licensed theme so there's not going to be anyone for nostalgia reasons that will now be compelled to buy it and at this point i think that might move more units than anything else no matter how much amazing engineering is done going with a licensed theme that people care about would probably like that's what would be able to double the number of p3 platforms that are out there at this stage like that's the easiest way to do it i think would be to say here you go. Here is Ocean's Eleven.
    42:25
    Yeah. But that's a bridge they've not been willing to cross yet. So, well, that's all I have for pinball. So, you know, there's been some big news in video games, though, Tony. There's been a couple of things where we'll transition over here to video games, and we'll once again touch on the COVID crisis, because the Overwatch League announced that they were coming back with online play this weekend in California between the four teams that are currently in California.
    42:59
    And then California went on a mandatory lockdown, so then they had to announce that the event was going to be canceled. So there's still no Overwatch League. Yep. That's why we can record whenever we wanted to this weekend because there went my plans. Yeah. When I'd seen that they were doing Online play I was like yes the Overwatch League is back this will be great and then it's like And it's cancelled again Now we're like everyone else My dad emailed Me this week Well I ordered some board sets to work Like a board set William's board set to work on as a project He's like I don't have any baseball then I don't know what else to do You know that is a curious question I've not taken a look I wonder what the numbers on Twitch and stuff look like if viewership is up. Yeah, I have no idea. I'm going to guess yes, just because it's got to be. In fact, I was looking at maybe calling up my internet provider and upping the bandwidth a little bit. I'm at 50 down and up, which has been okay. But just in terms of all that, everyone trying to do things from home. and obviously streaming video games is social distancing. Yeah. But, yeah, because there's just a lot of people watch live events, and so many of them are canceled now. Outside of video games, there's just not a lot that can be done because almost all traditional sports violate the social distancing rules.
    44:33
    And that was one of the things, because there's so little in the way of sports back, I saw that ESPN is once again bringing back their weekend of the Ocho. where they will be doing all day of random. Let's see. The Johnsonville Cornhole Championships, World Axe Throwing League Championship, Spikeball College Championships, the Highland Games, Putt-Putt Championships.
    45:02
    So I think Overwatch League is tentatively still planning to do next weekend's games, though. Last I heard They hadn't been officially cancelled yet Okay Well they're probably all cancelled we'll find out Yeah because That will be Uh That's the first full Set of games in a long time All scheduled for online Um and most of them might be Able because they're spread out there's lots Of China teams Scheduled for play next week and a lot of Atlantic region teams also. So it's possible that next week we will get a full online league play. Granted, the play times are starting at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning. Yeah. 3 a.m., 5 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., 7 p.m., 9 p.m., 11 p.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m. So you're not going to watch everything.
    46:09
    I don't like you not believing in my abilities. I want to see the Hunters v. Spark. But I can watch Hunters v. Spark because I'm normally up before 5 in the morning. That's nothing. Nothing.
    46:25
    But in Overwatch news, they announced Hero 32, who is supposed to be the last pure Overwatch hero before Overwatch 2 comes out, supposedly.
    46:40
    So, Hero 32 is Echo. And if anybody remembers from the McCree short, Echo was the omnic robot flying girl lady that he was saving in that canister. She's also featured in the Overwatch 2 cinematic reveal trailer Yes she is And she's a DPS hero I guess people were surprised I was not Really? Based off of seeing what she did in that Overwatch 2 trailer I assumed she was going to be DPS Yeah, I mean it makes sense I was just more surprised that they rolled another DPS hero out When they haven't solved the DPS queue time problem yet They're working on it So We'll do a quick overview of her Of her abilities and then we will Talk about them Her primary fire is a Tri-shot it's a little triangular Pattern of shots that shoot out She has some sticky bombs That obviously Stick to a target and then detonate After a delay that she throws out She doesn't just throw out one she throws out Like a pattern of them The last video I saw She threw out like five or six of them But I'm sure that'll change when they Nerf her with a Nerf bat She can surge forward Quickly and then she freely flies For about three seconds But she doesn't have like Pharah's hover ability she can just kind of Freely move in flight And she can glide Kind of like Mercy does When she's coming down But she's designed so she will hit the ground before she gets to fly again. So it's not a continuous flight model.
    48:33
    Now, one of her more interesting abilities is she has a focusing beam. And she channels a beam of energy that does 50 DPS per second normally, but it does four times that damage on targets that are below half health, and that includes shields. so we're looking at 200 DPS shots on anything below half health which means any DPS target that she hits with that's already below half health and she hits with it is gone and it is definitely going to be an issue for the shield meta I'm sure that's probably going to get nerfed as well pretty much everything like all the new heroes they come out real strong and then they take the nerf bat a couple of times. But the biggest thing is going to be her ultimate. Her ultimate is called Duplicate. She targets an enemy hero,
    49:32
    and she becomes that hero. She gains the use of all of their abilities, and she can charge her ultimate in seconds. I've seen videos of her becoming Reinhardt, swing away throw a single fire strike and then earth shatter, I've seen videos where in one ultimate run she earth shattered three times I've heard that a full clip hit from Tracer will pull up pulse bombs, I've heard of them being able to drop four pulse bombs in the course of the ultimate so yeah Yeah, that's, um, there's no way that's going to remain that powerful. I could be completely wrong, but I don't see how they could possibly allow her to remain that powerful in general play. Well, I mean, I think a lot of those example tests were under scenarios where they're just fighting unmoving bots. No, I was actually watching gameplay where they were playing with other people. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, it wasn't bot play. I was watching, there are several streamers out there who have some play available, and she's on the PTR now, but they had some play from before she even hit the PTR where they were playing with devs and such.
    51:01
    The Overwatch team has stated that if you land all of her hits, she is the highest burst damage DPS in the game. And with her flight abilities, she is basically considered to be a long-range aerial flanker.
    51:20
    So I have a feeling that this is going to be the kind of character you see a lot of Genji players go to when they can't get as close as Genji would prefer combat to be.
    51:31
    She does only have 200 hit points. so that will give her a pretty easy to kill she's not tracer easy to kill but she's pretty easy to kill and from everything I've seen and the actual gameplay I saw the primary counter to her when she ults is like the primary counter to anybody else when they ult to crowd control her because she pretty much can't do anything before it runs out at that point yeah uh well you know most of these new characters when they introduce them it seems like they do err on the side of making them a little overpowered and right doing reductions from there so i do agree with you actually that i think that they'll they'll reduce uh on the ultimate either the duration or i think more like because i think the duration is 15 seconds by default and you can damage them her down and if she's damaged down she just reverts to herself so basically you'd have to kill her twice to kill her right i think that will stay i think what they'll probably do is adjust the rate of alt charge earn which i think currently is six times faster than the normal character would earn it so probably i wouldn't be surprised if that falls somewhere to the area maybe 5x or so yeah i think that's where it'll be they have to keep it significant otherwise her ultimate becomes stupid at some point so right because she if she can't charge it enough to at least use the other character's ultimate one time, then it's definitely going to lose a lot of its luster. I mean, another option they could do is hard cap it, where it's like, okay, and she cannot earn more than two ultimates in the period. That would make sense. They could do it like that, too. I've also heard some recommendations from people that just would think that maybe it'd be better if they reduced her ultimate growth to, about half of what it is currently. So call it 3% or 2%. But when she grabs somebody, she has her ultimate percentage set to what their starting percentage is. So what their percentage is at the time. So while she grows it less, it makes it a combative kind of counterplay type thing. Yeah. I remember, I thought maybe in an interview with Jeff Kaplan, that there was speculation that the way people might respond to her when she was felt to be at ult charge would be they'd switch characters to not good characters for her to become. I don't think that's ever happening, especially at the pro level. No one's going to give up their ult charges to try and deal with one Echo. Yeah, no, I don't see that. That's way too... No one's going to pick garbage characters because they're afraid of Echo.
    54:27
    The only other thing I really think would see dramatic change could be her focusing beam. It is this ability to just kind of – well, focus is the right word because the way it's structured to deal high damage to characters with less than half health. I could see that aspect in terms of the half health side being adjusted. I don't know, though, if they're going to nerf her ability to break shields. right and I can see leaving the ability I could see if they left it at four times on shields but reduced it to like double on people or maybe even triple on people in all of the gameplay video clips I saw I don't know that I ever saw her lose a fight with a Pharah in the air yeah because if she can land a tri-shot or sticky bombs which were not that hard to land on a Pharah then the lightest tap of the focusing beam was killing Farah. Even pocketed Farahs were being dropped. But given her flight abilities are Mercy-esque, characters like Soldier would be really strong counters. Hit-scan characters, of course, could take her out pretty easily. At high level play, Widowmakers are probably going to feed on these echoes. Yeah, I would think so. The other thing I can see is this will be perhaps a better option than Tracer for dives? Or even just added on? Maybe. She seems like a solid dive character. Yeah, her ability to flank is consistent with what you'd want in a dive build. She's just different. She has practically, I don't want to say she doesn't, she does have escape options. The way her flight works, And I saw examples of ways people could basically start the flight and then cancel it and use it to hop away really quickly with how her glide and everything can function. But all that said, she doesn't have the maneuverability of Tracer. Her Tracer strength and dive at high level play consists entirely of the fact that she has mechanical skills that are very difficult unless you're extremely precise to counter. So Tracer can get in and out far better than Echo can. even though Echo is better than a lot of other players. Again, like high-level Pharah players know how to use their concussion blasts and stuff to get away really, really quickly, and I don't think Echo's any better than that. It's just that Echo's got this burst damage capability that's different but really good.
    57:06
    Right. Yeah, I think she'll be decent. I don't think – like if I were to guess right now, I don't think she becomes Ashe where no one plays her at the high level. No, I don't think so. Even after a couple rounds of nerfing, I don't think she becomes Ashe.
    57:22
    I think they'll probably be tweaking almost assuredly on the ultimate. I think there will be tweaks on the focus beam, especially regarding what it does to weaker players. I wouldn't be too surprised if we see some tweaking on the sticky bombs.
    57:38
    Don't know about the rest of it. I actually wouldn't be surprised if they nerf a little bit of the focus beam and sticky bomb and increase the damage on the tri-shot. I could see that, to give it kind of a balance. For most DPSs, regular click, their left click, as people call it, isn't quite this, because it kind of works like Zen Orbs.
    57:59
    Because they do have the ability to headshot, but their non-headshot damage is not that impressive. And I kind of curious to see what the hitbox for her head is like considering just how large her head is if she going to be like like like some of the characters with a rather large uh headshot box but uh we will have to wait and see what the ultimate response to her is so far from the things i read it was fairly meh but yeah i've not seen anything i saw some initial thoughts but until, that's the thing, it's hard to gauge anything coming off the PTR, because sometimes everything coming off the PTR just is so completely different than what we actually see once the hits play. Yeah. And the fact that most general players or most players don't play on the PTR. Nope. Alright, well we'll leave Overwatch behind, and PlayStation finally released their hardware specs to go with Xbox's hardware specs that were released what, last week? I think so, yeah. So, I've got them in here in the notes. I've got both of their specs so we can run down them pretty much side by side. At least the ones where we have, because some of them they have different bits of information on it. So, I want to start with CPUs. The PlayStation 5 is going with an 8-core x86-64 AMD Reason Zen 2 cores, 16 threads, up to 3.5 GHz, and the CPU on the Xbox Series X, which is a terrible name, is 8 cores at 3.8 GHz on a custom Zen 2 CPU. They're basically using the exact same CPU. Yeah, they're both modeled on similar AMD chips. They're both using a custom chip type. Yep. I read a little bit more detail about the, you know, beyond the threads, some other aspects of what they're doing.
    60:10
    I mean, yeah, they're very, very similar chips, obviously. The Xbox CPU chip clearly is more powerful in all regards. Yeah, and the Xbox's GPU chip is as well. Yes, yes. but they're both using Radions aren't they? Yep they're both using Radions they're very similar we'd heard that in the rumor mill that these systems were going to be very similar I was a little surprised at just how many of them went with the same manufacturers for their various pieces it is the exact same that's the big difference let's see the PS5 is going to be doing 10.28 teraflops and the Xbox Series X is going to be doing 12 teraflops. And my understanding for, I guess, because I imagine listeners are confused. I was confused. I believe a teraflop is sort of a hypothetical workload scenario that is contemplated. It's sort of the way that they're measuring this performance now, because we're well beyond being able to say, well, it's an 8-bit system or a 16-bit system. Right. And, of course, CPU clock speed doesn't tell you hardly anything anymore. Because that used to be on PC. What we did is we talked about how many megahertz. Yes, before gigahertz, guys, we talked about how many megahertz our CPUs could do. And that was sort of the way you measured their capability. But that's still important, but it's not the end-all, be-all. So, yes, there's a slight GPU advantage on the Xbox Series X. But, again, the specs are pretty similar. And then they're both running 16 gigs of memory, though the bandwidth is slightly larger on the Xbox Series X, like you're going to see across the board. Everything on the Xbox Series X is just a little bit better than the PS5. Yeah, I thought there was an aspect, though, to the memory, like the type of chip, like the 256-bit aspect that was better for the PS5. Yeah, from everything I've seen and read, that they went with the one they went with because it actually works better. Okay.
    62:26
    Oh, for each one? Yeah. Okay. Yes, I was like, when I read it, I was like, well, it sounds like the actual type of RAM was slightly better on the PS5, but I didn't know what it meant. but again it was close all of this is close it's all close and i think i think the reality of the matter is you're not going to be able to tell the difference between the two right it's like on the memory bandwidth i think the ps5 as you noted on the specs they went with all 16 gigabits of theirs is going at 448 gigabits a second and the xbox series x 10 of their 16 is going at 560 gigabits a second, which is better, and then the other six is going at 336, which is worse. So, it's like, I don't know how to read it. And I think that's the thing. I think this is the point we're at, where if you are not like a PC expert or an engineer, most of these numbers are completely meaningless. Because the reality is, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between these two machines if they're playing side by side based upon the specs i could be completely wrong software will have a lot to do with it but i think the reality is going to be until we see a game that is on both machines played side by side i think even then you're not going to see very much at all yeah so i mean i guess for those that that do care about which is better at what If you were to average out the memory bandwidth issues, the Xbox Series X has a slightly overall average better gigabit per second rate, but it's not very much. Nope. So, let's see, what else did you have? Oh, internal storage. I was surprised that the, though I guess the solid state device that it's using is supposed to be very impressive, that the PS5 did not go with a terabyte. No, they're at 825. But they're using, and here I think this is going to be one of the biggest differences between the two of them, because the PlayStation 5 is going with a PCI 4.0 standard. It means that you will be able to expand the PS5's memory without using the proprietary solution. You'll just have to get an SSD that is certified and uses that PCI Express 4.0 standard to expand your storage. Where with the Xbox Series X, because of how they work their stuff in, because it's a completely customized, their expandable storage is you can add a second terabyte with an expansion card made by Xbox that you're going to have to purchase. You can't just go and buy. You know, they're not going to kick out, oh, there's not going to be a Seagate drive that'll work. If you want to expand... Right, because it has to match the original drive exactly to work. Correct. So, yes. Though both systems do support external storage devices as well. So you can do that, I believe, third-party, however you want. Because they both support USB external supports, yeah. So they're both running pretty much their same optical drive, same – everything else looks good. The input-output throughput on the PS5's internal drive is better than the Xbox's. It's like a 5.5 gigabits a second. So that would be related to load time. Right. Their internal drive was doing a 5.5 gigabits a second read speed, I believe, whereas Xbox was about half that. So in terms of load time, there may be one. I don't know how easy it is. This is still, compared to the current generation, a vast improvement. Right. And I've seen a lot of stuff. I've seen a lot of comments that the PS5 has no load screens. But we've heard stuff like that about new systems for years, that there's no load screens. Oh, the loading's hidden while you're doing something else and stuff like that. Sure. Well, lots of developers tried to hide load screens for a long time. Mm-hmm. Well, that's the way it's what you had to do because sometimes some of those load screens would run a minute and a half. I think it's going to be a real interesting time when it comes out. I think the biggest thing between the two of them right now, this early on, is the backwards compatibility issues. Oh. Because the current announcement out of Microsoft, the Xbox Series X, man, we're going to have to find a faster way to say that. it is supposed to have backwards compatibility with games from all generations of the Xbox, from the original Xbox to the 360 to the one to now. And it's supposed to have cross-generation multiplayer support. Okay. Well, I won't be too surprised with them having full Xbox One backwards compatibility because I believe the system was designed from the get-go to, you know, they've been so PC spec this gen. Right. That shouldn't be a challenge. I have assumed that Xbox 360 and Xbox One will be doing whatever they had to do on the Xbox One, which there has been broad Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. Original Xbox has been much more limited. There is backwards compatibility, but not all of them because they're having to run emulators. And I'm assuming they'll just run the same emulator. So it won't be like every single game, except I do believe it will be every single Xbox One game will play on the Xbox Series X. Yeah. Yeah, and they have said that they are going to, there's a new, I did not write the name of it down, but Xbox has a new thing coming out that is called, I don't remember now, but it's going to be, if you purchase a game, you can play it on your Xbox One or your Xbox Series X, and it'll play the version on that game that it's supposed to have, so you don't have to have one for each. Oh, yeah, yeah. You don't have to buy the better version when you do the upgrade. Right. It'll just play the better version. Yeah, you'll play the better version. Yeah, I remember that. I don't remember what they called it, but yeah. I remember that announcement.
    68:54
    Yeah, and then, so what's Sony? I haven't, because I don't have a current PlayStation, I haven't followed what their backwards compatibility has been. The compatibility with PS5 is that it will play the majority of PS4 games. Nothing farther back. Which isn't a surprise. No, because I don't think they really were doing that under this generation, were they? No, not really. There were a few older games that had been converted and re-released from PS2 days. But they were basically... Oh, like remasters. Remasters, yeah. Okay. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know how much that matters to people or not. It matters the most for the most recent generation in my theory, because that's what you're trying to get people to move away from. And if they know, they don't have to keep both. Like, I still have my Xbox 360 plugged into the TV, and I'm pretty much at the point where I should just disconnect it and throw it in the box under the stairs with the other old consoles. But I haven't yet. But I've been able to go back, and because a number of those 360 games, I actually, when I've wanted to, I can go back and play them on the Xbox One. So why would I turn on the old console? Right. I mean, exactly. And why would you pull it out? I mean, overall, as noted, the specs are really, really similar. So exclusivity will probably drive a lot of it. I guess what's different this go-around versus the last gen and the gen before at launch is, if it's taken as a whole, I suppose Microsoft can play up the fact that they do, broadly speaking, have the more powerful system. So they'll be able to point that out, though they don't win on every category. And where they do win and where they lose are pretty close. I think most gamers aren't going to dramatically notice significant differences. One thing I was reading about on a third-party site was the use of the variable frequency that PlayStation has gone with for their CPU. That will have to be exploited to take advantage of the variable frequency. So I guess the speculation will be third-party programmers probably won't bother doing it if they're planning to put the game on both systems because that's more work. So they'd rather just keep things consistent. And Xbox doesn't have a demand that you work around variable frequency. but playstation's exclusives will probably play up that variable frequency use to get even more you know get more power out of it when they're making it just for that one system right um so i imagine exclusivity uh our exclusives will will drive a lot of people's purchasing decisions and we don't really know a lot yet we know playstation's pedigree they have a very good stable of exclusive partners that are under their domain that put out some very good games Microsoft acquired a whole lot of companies to work on that. So we don't know everything that's coming out from those companies, but we know they're making a play to showcase on that. But all of that stuff is also available on PC because that's Microsoft's strategy. So there will be some people that will be like, well, you know, I can do that on PC and get a PlayStation. And so we might see some of that. The only other thing really that stands out to me is when you see things this similar, What are the prices going to be for the systems? Because that could be a big... That could be a huge deal. If the prices are very close, I mean, in all honesty, more likely than not, I will go with a PlayStation 5 because I'm already playing most of the Xbox games I want to play on my computer. Yeah. But at the same time, if the PlayStation 5 is massively more expensive than the Series X, then I would have a much harder time making that decision just because the Series X would be so much cheaper. Yeah. And I've seen rumors that the PlayStation 5 will be more than the Series X. I don't know what those are based off of. They may simply be based off of the fact that if Microsoft wanted to sell the Series X at a loss, for example, they are in a position to do it, and Sony as a company is not strong enough to do something like that at this point. They have to make money off the hardware. Right. But I get it from a corporate strength standpoint. But again, if Microsoft just wants people to do things on Microsoft products and they don't care if you play, as far as they're concerned, you playing on PC is just as good for them as you buying an Xbox Series X. So they feel they won either way. So they don't – why would they necessarily sell their hardware at a loss if it's like, well, you're going to buy their games anyway. So what? Like that's all they care about. Right. They don't – it's not about hardware sales for them anymore. It's just about are you playing our stuff? Yeah, and that's the other thing that where – well, I don't – I've not done it, though. I keep getting pressured to do it. to my knowledge, I don't know anyone who disagrees with Microsoft's Game Pass being the best deal in gaming. It is. Sony just doesn't have anything remotely that good.
    74:15
    Actually, I have the PC Game Pass. That's how I play a lot of the Xbox games on PC because I've got the PC Game Pass. And it's just – so for those that want to play a lot of games on a budget in particular, There's just Sony doesn't seem to have an answer to that. No, they don't. I have a hard time seeing them come up with a good answer to it. Short of just straight copying it, I just can't believe I'm doing it. Yeah, well, I mean, we've seen other publishers try and do similar passes, and their deals aren't remotely as good, and they have fewer game selection. They don't have the diversity because they're usually like, hey, we're EA, here are a bunch of sports games. Yeah.
    74:56
    Yay, sports games. Yeah. Hey, it's the only way you can experience sports anymore. That's true. I wonder what sports games are like on Twitch.
    75:07
    Well, I think we made it to the end of the show. We did make it to the end of the show. We were socially distant, but we still talked about very important things. Yeah, there was weird noises in the background from my puppy and my family. I barely heard that puppy. I barely heard it. I hope it's okay. I hope it doesn't eat all your shoes. Hopefully not. But it's puppies. Puppies are learning. Yes. So that's what it is. Let's see. What are we looking at? League of Legends, 204,000 viewers. Animal Crossing New Horizons, 165,000 viewers. Fortnite, 151,000 viewers. Counter-Strike, 142,000 viewers. Call of Duty, 140,000 viewers. We need to know daily Twitch viewer loads. Graft, that's what would be useful. I'm pretty sure there's a company. there's a website out there that does it. I'm just not sure what it is. 6,000 people watching poker.
    76:02
    Hmm. Yeah. That's probably normal. Probably. Well, if anyone wants to socially distantly talk to us, they can email us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or you can go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast and post a message there. Or on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram is eclectic underscore gamers. And, uh... Stop! Doom Eternal came out! Yeah, it came out today. Or yesterday, excuse me, with Animal Crossing. In fact, I think GameStop, as essential employees, were distributing it on Thursday to people. Yeah, I've played the first chapter. It's awesome. When I play more, I'll actually talk about it. Oh, you have it. Yeah, I forgot to mention, I played the much-maligned Crackdown 3 and won it. I actually could have mentioned that on the last episode. I was almost done with it on our last episode. But I actually finished it since then. So I'm back to Wolfenstein Youngbloods. I've been working on that. Youngblood! That's right. And then I think I'm going to play Resident Evil 2 because I need to fight another virus. You've got to fight the virus. Well, this isn't that virus. No, it's not. But, well, maybe it'll mutate. We'll see. Yeah. I think I'm okay if we can avoid that.
    77:17
    Well, we'll be back in two weeks not recapping TPF. Yeah, we're going to have to actually come up with a plan for two weeks from now. Yeah. So that sucks. Yeah, it is what it is. Well, until then, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. Bye.