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Episode 167 - Final Fantasy Pinball NFTs

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·46m 10s·analyzed·May 16, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Pinball market stabilizing while Square Enix pursues NFTs despite FFXIV success.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss pinball market pricing trends showing signs of stabilization after pandemic-era inflation, drawing parallels to the wristwatch market where prices are beginning to fall. They also cover video game industry news including Square Enix's sale of Western studios to Embracer and their pivot toward NFTs/blockchain, which they criticize as a poor strategic decision given Final Fantasy XIV's success sustaining the company.

Key Claims

  • Fathom remake from Haggis Pinball has started shipping to buyers, with first confirmed delivery to Australian customer

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss seeing Reddit posts of Fathom delivery; Tony notes Haggis had been collecting full payments around Texas Pinball Festival time

  • Secondary market pinball prices have stabilized at current levels over the past couple months rather than continuing to rise

    medium confidence · Tony observes from Facebook Marketplace and Pinside watch lists that prices feel stable rather than increasing, though still at 'stupid high level'

  • New in-box pinball prices will not fall due to ongoing manufacturing cost pressures (inflation, parts availability, shipping)

    high confidence · Dennis explains manufacturers face continued pressure from inflation and supply chain, making price reductions unlikely for new machines

  • Wristwatch market prices have fallen 6-8 weeks with declines under 10-20% for most models

    high confidence · Dennis reports real data analysis from watch price tracking sites scraping forum sales data showing consistent 6-8 week decline trend

  • Square Enix sold Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal studios to Embracer Group for approximately $300 million

    high confidence · Tony and Dennis reference IGN article documenting the sale; discuss licenses including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, Thief

  • Final Fantasy XIV was essentially the only thing keeping Square Enix profitable last year, generating over $50 million in profit

    high confidence · Dennis states FFXIV subscriber base and expansion release saved company from loss; Tony notes final profit was $51 million

  • Jersey Jack Pinball's Toy Story machine is rumored for June 2022 release

    medium confidence · Dennis presents this as his remaining conviction despite previous missed timelines; notes JJP claims two machines per year but hasn't consistently delivered

  • Genshin Impact has generated $3 billion in player spending on mobile versions since launch in fall 2020

Notable Quotes

  • “Make it and people will still buy it. It doesn't matter how poor a job you do. People would still buy it.”

    Dennis @ not specified — Expresses view that pinball market remains oversaturated with demand relative to supply, supporting continued price stability

  • “The only major difference I can point to between the pinball market and the wristwatch market that I think makes a notable difference is the supply chain side. The ability to get brand new wristwatches, that's caught up now. And that's not true for pinball.”

    Dennis @ not specified — Key distinction explaining why pinball secondary market will fall more slowly than watches—supply constraints keep prices elevated

  • “Final Fantasy XIV Kept Square Enix afloat...That's the only reason Square Enix didn't lose money last year.”

    Tony @ not specified — Highlights critical dependency on single product line, making Square Enix's NFT pivot strategy appear especially risky

  • “Why are you taking all that Final Fantasy XIV money, which saved you from what would have been nigh on destruction...and put out that Avengers game, and its response was what we just saw, yikes. But instead of investing the money in a new Tomb Raider, Blockchain.”

    Dennis @ not specified — Expresses frustration with Square Enix's strategic direction despite evidence of what works (FFXIV) and what doesn't (Avengers)

  • “You'd expect it. In fact, you'd probably be happy it was so low. So yeah, no. I just – but because of what's going on in the economy with the inflation, like I'm not going to, I got a raise this year. It ain't going to be as much as what inflation is for the year though.”

    Dennis @ not specified — Personal economic context explaining broader market pressures affecting discretionary spending on collectibles

  • “Just imagine all those idiots I'm going to use the word idiots who thought they were so smart because they were making money. It's easy to make money when everything goes up. Now is when your brain is put to the test. And most of these people are not very smart.”

    Dennis @ not specified — Commentary on speculation-driven market participants who profited during asset inflation but lack genuine market analysis skills

Entities

Haggis PinballcompanySquare EnixcompanyEmbracer GroupcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyFinal Fantasy XIVgameMarvel AvengersgameGenshin ImpactgameTonyperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Haggis Pinball now shipping Fathom remake units to customers after extended development period

    high · First confirmed customer delivery reported on Reddit; Tony notes Haggis collecting full payments around Texas Pinball Festival time

  • ?

    business_signal: Square Enix divested Western studios and IPs at potentially undervalued price point (~$300M) to focus on NFT/blockchain despite Final Fantasy XIV success

    high · Dennis and Tony discuss sale details; both question valuation and strategy; note Tomb Raider IP alone likely worth more than entire sale price

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Strong negative industry sentiment toward NFT/blockchain gaming despite billions in crypto market spending

    medium · Dennis and Tony's visceral negative reactions; extensive sarcasm about NFT use cases; comparison to failed speculation markets suggests broader skepticism

  • $

    market_signal: Speculation-driven collectible markets (watches, pinball) unsustainable when underlying economic conditions change; 'line goes up' mentality cannot persist

    medium · Dennis predicts used pinball prices will fall as financial pressures force discretionary spending cuts; compares to watch market where speculators built portfolios

  • $

    market_signal: Supply chain constraints in pinball manufacturing will prevent rapid price falls in used market compared to other collectibles

    high · Dennis identifies supply chain as key differentiator; argues new machines cannot be built cheaper due to inflation/parts costs; delays warrant used market premiums longer

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.139

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, May 15th. This is episode 167. I am Tony. I am Dennis. And we have a friend coming by in less than two hours. So we're going to turn through this because they're back from the before times. Yes. So we're going to turn and burn as fast as we can. Well, but we'll still give you a reasonably meaty show. And as our meaty shows must have stated. Yeah, it will be last episode. That was very short. That was not a particularly popular episode. Last I looked at the download numbers either. My solo efforts often are not. I think I had one person write in that said, you did a good job, Dennis, but it's better with time. I saw that email. So what's been going on since, well, gosh, it's been a month for you. I had COVID. I didn't tell anyone. I kept it secret. I kept it safe. Well, to be fair, when we recorded, I didn't know I had COVID yet because I hadn't taken my home test yet. Because we'd run out of home tests previously. And my next set of free ones hadn't arrived yet. And by this, it means the episode I recorded solo. Right. At that time, we did not know Tony had COVID. we knew Tony's throat hurt. Yeah, my throat hurt so much and I could barely talk so I begged off because I didn't think anybody just wanted to listen to tears and vocal fry because that's all you would have been getting out of me that day. And then the mail arrived and had our next set of free COVID tests that I'd ordered. So I took it and I was very positive very quickly. So I do have a slight lingering cough so sorry if you hear weird cuts or if I just loudly cough at you, that's what that is.
2:01
Otherwise, I spent most of a week down because of COVID, and most of my time since has been recovering and working on stuff, yard work. I did watch, I've watched a bunch of shows lately. I started watching a bunch of randomness on YouTube when I was sick because that's like a good way to cover things but I will mention I've mentioned many times on this show my love of Battletech and one of my favorite YouTube Battletech people has released their newest in-universe lore video and we'll include a link to that That's the Tex-Tox Battle-Tex lore video on the Warhammer. I was actually going to talk about that on the last episode because it released a week before the last episode came out. Oh, okay. So it's been out for three, four weeks now. But if you have any interest in that kind of universe, his lore videos I like because they are not just tightly packed on one thing. It goes wider and talks about like the wider universe and the politics that lead to the specific. In this case, he's talking specifically about the Warhammer Battlemech, which is one of my favorites. But it starts with a discussion of the politics and the state of the universe leading up to the design of it and lessons learned and military industrial procurement issues and stuff that lead to the creation of the specific variant.

high confidence · Tony cites this as public financial information, notes it represents roughly $1 billion per six months of revenue

  • “It works for Pinball. Don't you guys just buy theme? That's true. Square, get into Pinball. You'd have been fine.”

    Dennis @ not specified — Humorous but pointed observation that pinball market's theme-driven purchasing behavior would have solved Square Enix's Avengers problem

    • Dennis
    person
    Fathomgame
    Tomb Raidergame
    Deus Exgame
    Crystal Dynamicscompany
    Eidos Montrealcompany
  • $

    market_signal: Wristwatch market prices declining 6-8 weeks with falls under 10-20%, suggesting broader economic pressures affecting collectible markets

    high · Dennis presents detailed analysis of watch price trends from tracking sites; provides real data graphs and numbers; establishes pattern that may parallel pinball market lag

  • $

    market_signal: Secondary pinball market prices stabilizing after pandemic-era inflation, showing early signs of approaching normalization

    high · Tony reports prices on watch lists have remained stable for 'a couple months' rather than continuing upward trajectory; feels like stabilization point rather than continued rise

  • ?

    product_concern: Marvel Avengers game underperformed despite premium IP licensing, suggesting audience immunity to brand names in video games

    high · Square Enix financial reports show game failed to meet sales expectations; Tony notes 'this game sucked'; Dennis draws contrast with pinball's theme-driven purchasing

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack Pinball Toy Story release rumored for June 2022 timeframe

    medium · Dennis maintains conviction on June 2022 despite JJP's historical track record of missing two-per-year production claims

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Industry sentiment strongly negative regarding Square Enix's strategic pivot toward blockchain/NFTs after company saved by FFXIV

    high · Dennis expresses visceral anger: 'makes my tummy upset'; characterizes decision as illogical given successful monetization model with FFXIV

    • 3:43
    I enjoyed it. It was great. So that's what I got. Okay. Well, I have been just playing a video game called A Ground. it's like a resource gathering pixel art game i don't know it's one of the game with gold games microsoft had from who knows when that i just found around and then i have a as i've noted before i i rent a i have a housemate i rent one room out and he got covid actually he tested the day you tested positive and so actually i usually play in the living room but i was mostly staying to my room during that period of time to minimize my risk of being exposed. And I, you know, I did my five day out test and was still fine and I don't seem to have any symptoms. So we're now past that whole infectious period. So it looks like I got through it, but right. The cases are going up. So who knows? I'm trying, I got an audit tomorrow, so I need a time. Hopefully I don't get say, at least let me get into the office, do the field work with the auditors. And then I can be sick after that.
    4:49
    Anyway, so let's go into pinball because that's one of the things we like to talk about on this show. You had noted – maybe I don't follow this thread as much anymore, but you had noted you'd seen the post that someone had finally gotten their Fathom remake from Haggis. So those are starting to go out. I saw pictures of it on the Reddit, in the Reddit pinball forum. Somebody posted it. So congratulations. I knew – now, Haggis has been shipping games for a while now, but they've been all Celts. So this was the first report I've seen of Fathom actually arriving to a buyer. Yeah. But not too surprised because I knew – we knew around Texas time that they were starting to collect full payments. So good to see that moving forward. And it was an Australian buyer. Yes. So that would make sense why it appeared.
    5:40
    So there was that. And then we really only have a couple of discussion things. There's no real news. So Chris C. wrote in to us. News in pinball? Not lately. Well, we'll touch a little bit on possible news in Rumor Corner. So Chris C. wrote in to us, and he wanted to know what our thoughts are on the viability of particular video game elements being used in pinball. And he had two specifically. One was brutal difficulty games, and he was thinking akin to Dark Souls. And he also wondered with a more elaborate setup of continual progression and reward like a roguelite. And he was thinking like acknowledging Ranger in the Ruins, the P3 game that Nick Baldrige developed. That does that, but he's not aware of any others that do. So, Tony, what are your thoughts on roguelikes and hard, quote-unquote, hard pinball games and viability? I love roguelikes. I play a lot of them. So a way of putting that together in pinball would be interesting to me. Brutal difficulty. Aren't there already brutally difficult pinball games? I was a little surprised that he brought that up. So I guess let's dismiss that one really quickly. Yes, brutal difficulty are viable.
    7:03
    There's plenty of brutal games out there. I think a lot of people would argue like how when Rush came out, one of the big, I guess, complaints of people that were prefer a longer playing game like Godzilla, for example, say, well, Rush is really, really brutal. TNA is really brutal. there's and chris and his email noted like he knows like back with system 11s they were really brutal have they gotten less brutal over time yes obviously the em to solid state error going from five ball to three the length of the game was still to be about the same amount of time which was i believe roughly three minutes was the goal are they going past that at this point maybe i don't you know it just depends depends on what what you're saying but there's a market for brutal difficulty and I think that's still being made so I don't see any value really in discussing that. Roguelike of course the trick is the continued progression Right With things like Stern Insider connected, yes you could conceivably load your profile and then when you're playing on location continue the progress I don't think there's a big market for that That's a homeowner thing which is why Ranger and the Ruins I think works logically is because the P3 as a platform, in my view, is not set. Yes, I get that it can be a location device. That's not who they're selling to. They're selling to homeowners. Right. So, yeah, I could see demand for that growing. I just don't know that it grows enough that it actually moves the needle on pinball sales. So why invest your resources in developing roguelike elements to incorporate in a pinball machine if you're going to still sell the same number as if you didn't do it? because in a way, unlike Rogue Likes, I think of Pinball Mora as like Rogue, where it's like every time you start over, there's no progress. It's like you're always going straight. Wasn't that how the original Rogue was? I don't know. I didn't play it. But the idea is there is no continued progression. It's always death from the start button. Right. I mean, the big thing lately is games like that is what it is, is you unlock things that you can collect later. in the game that will make the game easier and let you get farther. I've been playing a lot of Nova Drift, which is a roguelike kind of Asteroid Z, Geometry War Z type game, but it's a roguelike. And as you level up, you have choices. You get to choose between bonuses and weapons and making stuff better. and I've been playing a lot of it and it's quite an enjoyable game. I really like it.
    9:52
    But as you get higher scores, you progress and progress and unlock more and more weapons, more and more bonuses, more and more things that you can collect during the game to modify how you play. So each individual run is still different.
    10:11
    I just don't think there's much demand in pinball for it. here's the thing. It's pinball. Make it and people will still buy it. It doesn't matter how poor a job you do. People would still buy it. Make a brutally difficult Dark Souls game that literally has a punching bag that comes out and punches you in the wiener when you drain the ball. People will still buy that game. Well, that does lead into the next discussion item that I had for us for our little pinball segment, and that is the market and pinball pricing.
    10:45
    So based off of your wiener attack comments, I'm getting the impression that you feel that we're still in an environment where basically anything that comes out is going to sell. I am. I think we're still there. I think we're getting closer to coming out of said environment, but it still seems like anything based upon like looking at sales on marketplace, nothing's listed for very long. The prices are still insane. And unless the, unless the prices are like just flat, dumb, I still seeing stuff going super quick like in minutes if not less than a day for sure Yes and I agree with your perspective that right now it's still as it was since the start of the pandemic. But I also think that there are more and more signs of light at the end of the horizon. And that's why I put in the – excuse me, that was Yanni.
    11:56
    That's why I put in that part of the discussion because. No, because I don't, I'm not a market trending type guy. My fans. Okay.
    12:08
    Well, I mean, it's not something I follow like closely, but it's one of those things. It's one of the few things I actually, I use Facebook for Facebook marketplace, podcast related stuff and the messenger. I don't look at it typically for anything else But from looking at like doing marketplace stuff I've noticed it feels like The price increases have Slowed down And kind of stabilized It seems like on my Weekly things that I do Get from Pennside on games That I have on my watch list It feels like those prices have stabilized I think they've stabilized At a stupid high level But it doesn't feel but I'm no longer feeling like their prices are still slowly going up. They feel like they've been about the same for a couple months. So it feels like things are starting to stall out. Yes, I think you're right. And, of course, the analogy that I'm going to draw is to wristwatches because it's the other hobby I follow. And I have been doing more market analysis of that lately because You're doing market trends on wristwatches? I am. But unlike market trends as the kind of branded title that people know and maybe love and probably don't in pinball, as on the few instances where I have done it in pinball, I do real analysis. Like I pull real numbers, put together real graphs and tell you real truth.
    13:41
    And so doing that, I can tell you for real risk watch prices are falling. Yeah. I've seen several of the videos you put out. Not every single watch, but most of them, especially those that got really high that I have examined, are going down now. How long have they gone down? It depends on the watch, but we're talking roughly six to eight weeks worth of downfall data at this point. I have noticed from your watch videos that there seems to be like there's a website out there that actually tracks trends and changes. Yeah, it scrapes private sales from some of the major forum. Reddit has a buy-sell trade. One of the major – I think PennCypher watches. It has a sell forum section. That's where it's pulling the data from. And it just – it averages it on all – so obviously, if you have a unit that moves a lot, so the really popular ones, you get lots of data points because people have been selling those watches. Right. What's interesting with the site I've been using there is, by and large, those are not venues that dealers use. So it's usually lower than what you might find from a used dealer, but the curves are the curves. So let's get – because people don't want to hear about watches on this podcast, let's get to the pinball aspect of it. To me, all the big – and by big, I mean just broad economic things that are happening in the world are going to impact all of these industries. So the thing I think it's important to separate is new in box and used. That's really like the pressures for the new. I don't think new in box prices are going down. All the pressures on the manufacturers of anything are just becoming more pronounced. Inflation's higher. It's getting more expensive to get all the parts they need to build a pinball machine. so there's no reason why you're going to like godzillas aren't going down nine hundred dollars to be last year's price for a led zeppelin right and shipping's more still all of that so all that new in box stuff is still in play same for watches on the u side though what happened is a lot of the things that made it real easy for people to buy including the speculation that they were going to make money as we've we've talked about off air about nfts and how the line goes up and goes up and everyone i've ranted about this several times and i i think i can call them rants on watches but it's like so many people got in the business of buying wristwatches and flipping them because you couldn't you couldn't lose for trying you made money no matter what because the line always went up and just imagine all those idiots i'm going to use the word idiots who thought they were so smart because they were making money. It's easy to make money when everything goes up. Now is when your brain is put to the test. And most of these people are not very smart.
    16:42
    We're going to see the same thing in pinball. The only major difference I can point to between the pinball market and the wristwatch market that I think makes a notable difference is the supply chain side. The ability to get brand new wristwatches, that's caught up now. And that's not true for pinball. That's very true. That's why I still think we're in an environment where if you buy a Rush, you're going to be able to sell it, your Rush Pro, more used than you paid for it for a little while longer at least because you're banking on that people don't want to have to wait maybe a year plus to get it from start. But that will resolve eventually. And in fact, I think it's going to resolve faster than maybe we all thought a year ago it would, because with inflation and everything else coming into play, even people with fairly large disposable income, if their income streams, be it their job or be it their market investments, are not performing like they used to, they are not going to buy as many toys. Right. And I think a lot of people are going to cut back on their purchases. Stern's going to be able to catch up with the backlog. all the industry makers are going to sell their pinball machines for the same pricing they have been but the used market is finally going to fall we're going to see normal stuff again and by normal I mean obviously prices are going to be higher than they were before the pandemic but in a normal environment Godzilla Pro is cheaper used than it is new outside of LEs there's no excuse for it right and that's what you're I think we're getting there The question is how many people who have played the line always goes up game are going to get burned because they dropped $7,000 on a Brom Stoker's Dracula that they thought would go up to $8,000. And now it's coming down to something like it should be. You know, that could be quite. I don't know if anybody's actually spent that. I don't know what Brom Stoker's going for. It's just the game that popped in my head. And this is – I don't think it's going to be that broad-based in terms of the number of people dramatically. I don't think this breaks people like it's going to break people in the watch. Watches are small. It was real easy for people to go around and buy. And again, I apologize because it's not going to make a lot of sense to a lot of people. But there are not very many people that went out and bought like 20 Brom Stoker Draculas. In watches, we have people that went out and bought 20 5711 Patek Nautiluses, which are down 30,000 a watch right now.
    19:17
    I mean, it's just a different environment. This is so wrong to say because pinball is so expensive, but pinball is a small dollar game comparatively.
    19:30
    So it's just – and the big other difference besides the dollar amounts is the size of the things. It's just hard to get that many – because you have to arrange the shipping. Right. When you think about the dollars of the games, when you're paying hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for shipping, unless you're picking them all up, it's harder to do. So outside of – I mean the biggest people that would probably get burned are dealers, distributors of used pinball games if they have a whole lot of stock.
    20:01
    Which at this point, I doubt any of them do. No. No, most of the time when I see people list, I'm, again, like doing the Pinball Show podcast with Zach Minney. You know, he takes games in on trade. It's not like he's got 20 of them, though. It's a small market. And even, especially if they're distributors that also sell new, the new pricing is not going to fall. So, no, I don't think we're going to see the damage. There are gray market, we call them gray market, dealers on the watch side that are going to go out of business. I'm convinced of it. I don't think we see that on the pinball side. just the quantities to deal in are just – there are not very many people, I think, who stockpiled a bunch of games thinking, oh, gosh, I got Brahms at 7,000. I'm going to sell them when they hit 10. Right.
    20:45
    It's just different. And if it's like the watches, by and large on the watches, the lines have not fallen off a cliff. We're talking in most cases declines that so far have been under 10%, definitely under 20%. It sucks to take – I mean think about it in normal times. Taking a loss on an asset – I was going to say an asset, but taking a loss on a car or something, it wasn't 10%, 20%. It's nothing. You'd expect it. In fact, you'd probably be happy it was so low. So yeah, no. I just – but because of what's going on in the economy with the inflation, like I don't know about all of our listeners, but I'm not going to, I got a raise this year. It ain't going to be as much as what inflation is for the year though. Yep. That's where I am. And that's the thing. And that's what it's going to be for a lot of people. And if you bought your pinball machines with dividend returns or sales out of your capital gains on your equity investments, if they're like my retirement funds, they're all down, they're actually down. So you don't have that. That's what I think. Those are the things that are going to drive down the use pricing. Yeah. And I think it's, and like you said, I mean, With the Way the economy is It's something that is going to affect everything It's not just pinball This is not a pinball thing Specifically where we were We just had to We spent money on car repairs That was high enough Recently that 10 years ago We probably would have just replaced the vehicle But because of the scarcity Of vehicles and how expensive Vehicles have gotten it changed the dynamic of what was the most cost effective.
    22:31
    And I think without, it's just, it affects everything in that way. So we'll see. I'm going to be very interested to see how all of this pricing and how the markets are looking in a year. Yes. And I don't, I just, the reason why I think the pricing will go, I obviously I can't say how much, The reason why I so confident that the pricing will fall is there nothing that I can see and I not an economist but there nothing I can see in how the economy is behaving that makes me think this is a blip and we going to quickly get out of whatever it is The Fed raising interest rates in the U It usually takes approximately 12 months
    23:14
    Their actions have an immediacy on the stock market, but the actual economic to the broad economy impacts of that adjustment, a year. It takes a year. So it's just not a fast thing.
    23:27
    Let's end the pinball segment with rumor corner. So I mentioned we talked a little bit about production. The rumor is that Toy Story, Jersey Jack Pinball's next game, is the rumor, which I still remain completely convinced of, June. That it will be sometime in June.
    23:43
    Let's see. June of 2022. Their last game came out in 20? Was it 20 or was it 21? I thought it was late 20. Oh wait no it'd have to be Yeah no 21 was Was last year Yeah must have been 20 Okay We'll see We'll They're within their time zone That I would expect Jersey Jack To put out a pinball machine Yes I agree There is a reason We will see I don't expect to see another one from them for a while Well they're saying two a year They've been saying two a year since I got into the hobby So I'll believe it When I see it Alright so let's go ahead and go over To video games Tony What do we got? We got a lot of stuff There's a fair amount of stuff Chris C wrote in to us About Square Enix Selling off a bunch of their studios To the Embracer group This was a pretty big thing just after the last episode? Yeah, I know the email came in a while ago. Yeah, it was. I just remember catching it initially while I was sick. I saw something about it, so I just kind of saved it to the side. I'm like, I'll look at this later because I'm too sick to care right now. But, yeah, no, Square Enix has sold Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal to Embracer, and they have sold most of their, what you would consider Western titles and Western licenses.
    25:30
    So Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, Thief, all that kind of stuff was sold off to it. Their report is that they are wanting to focus more on NFTs, blockchains, and the metaverse. Why did those things make me angry, Tony? Because it's just raw anger It's just raw, distilled anger It's like It makes my tummy upset That's what's upsetting my tummy That's what's upsetting your It's Here's the thing Square Enix Earlier this week Released their financials for the last year And Final Fantasy XIV Kept Square Enix afloat between all of the people, the new subs, and everybody who joined in the summer, and the new expansion release for it.
    26:32
    That's the only reason Square Enix didn't lose money last year. Well, I knew Avengers was bad. I knew it was bad for them. Right. And they didn't really have anything come out last year that sold like they thought it was going to. Even their stuff that sold well and reviewed well didn't sell like they assumed it would.
    26:57
    So that put them in a real bad place. So they sold off these companies to Embracer. for a surprisingly low amount of money. Yeah, it was what, 300 and some million? Yeah, it was like 300 million, 300 million and change. We'll have a link to an IGN article about the sale in the show notes for folks. But considering the sales of, I mean, I understand they're smaller groups, but still considering what seems to be the going price for a developed studio, especially with the IPs like Deus Ex or Tomb Raider as part of it honestly I would think the Tomb Raider IP by itself is worth more than 300 million I mean that's what I would think it's got multiple movies out of it multiple video games even the worst Tomb Raider video games were still popular so it's a surprise to me. It was a surprise to me how low the price was.
    28:06
    They did make an announcement that they, now that Square has consolidated and brought themselves in, they're more fixated on Japan and their Asian side of things, having gotten rid of all the Western studios. They are planning on establishing new studios and acquiring others to support their midterm plans, which is their focus on blockchain and NFT.
    28:36
    Really, the big thing is Final Fantasy 16 is supposedly well underway. Yeah, I've read some stuff. And it's not supposed to be far out. And it sounds like it might be make or break for Square. Well, I mean, maybe. it's very good for them to have something as nice as Final Fantasy, I mean they have a gravy chain Final Fantasy XIV and I would assume for the first I don't know of any, we used to talk about WoW killers, now we have to talk about the Final Fantasy XIV killer and I don't think there is one but their investments you know what this reminds me of? you don't, but you will as soon as I say it this reminds me of Epic and after that all that crazy Fortnite money, and everyone was like, why are you opening up a Steam competitor with all that money? But this, I think, makes even less sense. Why are you taking all that Final Fantasy XIV money, which saved you from what would have been nigh on destruction, had you only had, if you didn't have an MMO and you put out that Avengers game, and its response was what we just saw, yikes. But instead of investing the money in a new Tomb Raider, Blockchain.
    29:56
    Blockchain. Tony, blockchain. I don't understand. Tony, Web3. I have no idea. Tony, Board Chocobo Yacht Club, Tony. I hear I'm supposed to diamond hand stuff. Got a diamond hand. I hear I'm supposed to buy the dip. Work coin. Based upon where we are when we're recording this, the dip is quite low as all that stuff seems to be going into free fall. Am I the only one when I hear dip I think like skulls chewing tobacco or whatever it's called?
    30:27
    Okay. Anyway. See, every time someone says that, I get that old song in my head. It's like, put your hand upon my hip. When I dip, you dip, we dip. Da-da-da-da-da. There we go. There's the singing. Is there any other things we've got to check mark off of this? I haven't done any. We've got marketing trends. I haven't done any voices. We've got singing. We need voices.
    30:48
    We're getting there. Speaking of money, on the financial reveals, it did end up that Square made $51 million in profit last year. I think it was what their total profit was. Well, I mean, even after the colossal failure of Avengers, that's some serious. That's still some serious, but that's the thing. Literally, all of the Final Fantasy XIV stuff was well more than $50-some-odd million. That's why Final Fantasy XIV is basically what Boogie got. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I guess this has to be how Disney felt when no one went and saw the Solo movie.
    31:31
    It was like, it was Star Wars. How could it fail? Right. And that must be what they're like, it's Marvel. How could the Avengers game not do well? This game sucked. Yeah. You guys aren't supposed to care what it is, good or bad. You're supposed to spend the money. It works for Battlefield. Oh, wait. No, it didn't. It works for Pinball. Don't you guys just buy theme? That's true. Square, get into Pinball. It does. So Square, get into Pinball. You'd have been fine. Yeah, it works for Pinball. But it's a much smaller market. Look at how popular Avengers from Stern is with that freaking hamburger helper glove toy they had.
    32:08
    Much smaller market. Hey, at this point, maybe they need to capitalize on that. Instead of thinking they're going to put out Cool I'm trying to think of a cool cabs play with a square Property that they still own Cool clouds We need cool clouds Put out a new Nier game 10,000 computer generated artistic Differences of cloudo That we can put in our They need a new Nier Automata game The last one did very well It was very enjoyable Speaking of enjoyable So Genshin Impact. I don't play it, but I know people who love it. Yeah, my daughter loves it. She's heartbroken because she just missed getting one of the limited time. You can only get very special event characters, and now she has to wait until they come back in a special event. She doesn't know when it is, and she's saving everything she can for it, even though it could be a year or more. Could be forever. She loves her. Don't tell her that.
    33:11
    She loves herself some Genshin Impact. They have reportedly hit $3 billion in player spending just on the mobile versions since launch. That's true because you can play it on all sorts of platforms. Yes. My daughter plays on computer.
    33:29
    I don't play, so I don't really know. From watching her play, it looks a lot like Breath of the Wild. Yeah, that's the vibe I've gotten from it. It looks fun. It just didn't seem like my type of game Yeah It's interesting because That game launched In late 2020 Like fall of 2020 Like September or October Which to hit 3 billion at this point Means that's like a billion dollars Every six months So It's very popular It's taken off and the company That put it out has a new game coming out or that they are working on. I didn't see a date. It'll be interesting. I guess when you make $3 billion in less than a year and a half, you've got plenty of seed money to buy blockchain by NFTs. You know what we're going to see is they going to have Moogles that have different weird colors That what it is It going to cost us to purchase a very special picture of a Moogle My Mog house will be on the chain, and then someone will invade my Mog wallet and take it, and then I'll have no recourse because you can't fix things on blockchain. Yeah. Unless you break off the chain and create a, then there'll be separate square chains because different people will disagree. Square chain and the Enix chain. Square chain classic. And a bike. So Because it is that time of year EA also had their financial Briefing And there was a flurry of announcements coming out of that I think one of the biggest ones coming out of that Is that they Did as we've talked about in the past When it last came up They dropped FIFA Smart Billion dollars Yeah It was crazy FIFA wanted so much money for their name It makes sense from everything I've seen and everything I've read they lose absolutely nothing except for they don't get to call it FIFA they're going to call it EA Sports FC it's in the game except for FIFA but the thing is because of the way the licensing deals work with FIFA and everything literally they can't use the word world they can't use the phrase World Cup and they can't use FIFA because all of the football clubs they had to do separate deals with. Right. That's so they had next to no clout on this. I think they, I think they assumed a lot. I think they assumed a lot and, and they lost and now they're, they're struggling.
    36:24
    They, FIFA has already come out saying that, Oh, I don't remember it exactly. And I didn't write it down, but it's basically only the real best top quality games will have the FIFA title. And they are currently working with manufacturers to put out a new FIFA game.
    36:48
    Nobody's going to put, I mean, it's EA. It doesn't matter what they call it. They can call it freaking EA soccer, whatever the year is, and people are going to buy it. So it's fine. It's just like we're going to be sitting here and we'll be pulled out of our cryo freeze in a thousand years. And they're going to be putting out, you know, Madden 30, 24.
    37:16
    Nobody will even remember who Madden was. That's just the name of the game at this point. I think most of the players don't know where that name comes from. Probably not. I mean, he's been dead for several years now. I don't remember when he died. He was out of the eye for so long. People don't know. The Madden game series goes back to the 90s. I mean, that's a long time ago. I don't even remember the last. I don't know. Maybe he still voiced games up until.
    37:46
    Because I know his voice was in the earlier games. It's probably just Patton Oswalt. You go catch the football. And once you catch the football, you run and you score the football. and you need the points to win the game. Thank you, John.
    38:04
    But they've also put out big news, huge news, New Lord of the Rings game. War of the Ring, a lot of fun. Shadow of Mordor, a lot of fun. Nemesis system. The Nemesis system is awesome. So they're putting out a New Lord of the Rings game. since everybody has cell phones it's a mobile game page right out of Activision's playbook sure why not well I probably won't be playing it I won't be either but they get to try what they want to try and they also have four unannounced games that they said is to be slated for arrival in the first quarter of 2023 it was unannounced because nothing had a firm date yet and they didn't want to announce stuff and then have stuff be pushed out of the first quarter. Right, right, right. The rumors are it's supposed to be one major IP, a remake, a sports title, and a partner title. So the rumors are that the major IP is going to be the Fallen Order sequel. Oh, the Jedi one. Which is supposed to be called or is supposedly going to be called Jedi Survivor. Mm-hmm.
    39:19
    And then And the remake is believed to be the Dead Space remake. Oh, okay. Very popular game. For the sports title, I've heard three rumors. Who knows what they really are. The one that I've heard the most is a return of EA's version of college football. But there's also rumors about, like, a UFC game.
    39:45
    So, not sure on that. And then the partner title is something from one of the other people they own, and I have no idea what that would be.
    39:53
    They also announced that they are completely rethinking the development process for the Battlefield games, and they are reinventing that process from the ground up. they are committed to making Battlefield 2040 whatever it is a success and they are still working on addressing the issues with the game but they are looking at a complete change to how they do and plan Battlefield games going forward because that game came out in October Yes, I believe so. It's under 1,000 concurrent users. I haven't played it since, I don't think, November. Yeah. It is a complete failure. I mean, it was a complete AAA flop. Yeah, it was very disappointing.
    40:50
    Battlefield games being buggy is not unusual, but just how bad the game, like, there were decisions made that don't make sense to me. I've ranted about that before on the show, so I won't do it again. But yeah, no, that's the, they are starting fresh. Okay. Good.
    41:09
    Good. Do it. Yeah. Do it. Wait, no, that's not what they said. Flip it. I miss that game. Back when burnout games were good. Now the only flipping we see are pinball machines.
    41:24
    Both playing and selling. Bethesda, Tony, what's going on with Bethesda? I heard some maybe, I mean, I don't want to say this is bad news because I'm glad that they acknowledged that things might not be as ready as we had hoped. Yeah, they did announce they're pushing Starfield and Redfall. Redfall is that. I see. I didn't remember Redfall. Redfall, if I remember correctly, that's that like vampire game. Oh, okay. I remember the trailer then. It's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah. They've been pushed. They were scheduled for holiday 22, and they've pushed them into the first half of 23.
    42:10
    Everything's getting pushed anymore, and if Starfield is as big as what they're claiming it's going to be, it's not a surprise to me to get it to be pushed. Yeah, I mean, Bethesda, much like Battlefield games, Bethesda is a studio So fairly renowned for really buggy games of their open world, but they're very popular. Right. Well, and the thing is, Bethesda is very renowned for don't buy the game when it first comes out. Give it three to six months, and then the worst of the bugs will be fixed. And the games are very enjoyable. You just have to get past the issues from initial launch. And that's probably just a quality control thing So we'll see how this works Once, I think once These games, especially Starfield get out Is when we'll start hearing real news about The new Elder Scrolls Because there hasn't been an Elder Scrolls since Skyrim I know they released Skyrim For like my microphone And this bottle of water Beside me But they're supposed They Teased that they know people want Elder Scrolls 6 And I'm assuming They're working on it But they've never really said anything about it So Because it always felt like the one teaser they did At the 1E3 several years ago Where they mentioned it It was very much just a, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we remember. You guys would like a sequel to Skyrim. You don't want us just to keep putting Skyrim out on your big toe. It's fine. So.
    44:02
    Yes. And the last thing I have is John Romero. Di Catana fame. Di Catana fame, one of the original Doom creators. A lot of people would call him one of the original rock stars Of first person gaming And by a lot of people I mean John Romero would call himself that Yes, yes He would He is releasing a memoir It's going to come out next February Titled Doom Guy life in first person being John Romero since this book is designed to come out in February of 2023 I expect it by December of 2030 poor John Romero I was going to say being a memoir by John Romero I expect John Carmack to write it oh man burn Unless there's like, who are these people?
    45:17
    In the last page, it's John Romero's head on a spike. Fitting. Well, we did it. We got through the episode. We got through it in good time. Pretty good time. That was pretty quick. People can contact us by emailing us at collectogamerspodcast.gmail.com. They can also go to Facebook.com slash Collectic Gamers Podcast and use the Messenger tool to send us messages. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as the Collectic underscore Gamers. And we should be back in two weeks. But until then, my name is Dennis. And I am Tony.
    45:57
    Thank you. We won't make you our... Wait, I'm cutting that. Leave it. No. Leave it. It'll be beeped. There. Compromise. Goodbye, everybody. Compromised. you