The Besties - Our big video game predictions 2024 [Resties]

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

It's that special time of year when the Resties make bold prophecies about the future of video games. Sometimes they come true! Other times... not so much. In this week's episode, Frushtick and Plante revisit their 2023 predictions and declare a winner of their annual bet. And in the back half, they make fresh predictions for 2024 -- with a big twist! See a list of all of the Resties predictions at besties.fan! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

my name is christopher thomas my name is ross farshtech and welcome to the resties where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest we are back it is a new year 2024 the year of joy and happiness nothing's going to go wrong this year as long as you're here listening with us talking about cool video games, which is what we're going to do. We're going to talk about our predictions, both from last year where somebody may have gotten more predictions right than somebody else. And we'll be talking about our predictions for this year, along with a little bit of a twist on how the rules work that I think is going to make for a much more exciting premise. But before that, speaking of somebody winning, we have not tallied the votes. Let me be clear. But I feel pretty confident that I won last year's prediction.

So I'm wondering if you've been maybe like looking at some art that you're going to get me. if you've been maybe like looking at some art that you're going to get me? I think maybe some chickens haven't quite hatched yet. Yeah? I think it's closer than you think it is. Okay, okay, okay. Well, I've not taken a single look at art because I have been way too confident going into the end of the year but i think that's fair

i mean maybe we should just get right to it because we have a lot to talk about in this episode we do we do uh we will take a quick break and then we'll dive into how everyone fared with our 2023 predictions and then second half of the show big two four predictions coming at you And then second half of the show, big two, four predictions coming at you. Okay, we're back. So to start things off, we're going to go through 2023's predictions. We're going to go back and forth, keep the tension up, and see who got the most right. And for people who are new to this, these predictions, they're meant to be difficult. These are not meant to be slam dunk predictions.

We both held each other accountable that there was some risk to this. And then the winner will receive a beautiful piece of video game artwork from the other Rusty. That's basically how it works. Do you want to start off with your first prediction? Sure. rusty that's basically how it works do you want to start off with your first prediction sure my first prediction did not happen which was sony announcing their intent to buy square enix i still think there is a possibility that this might happen this year but yeah uh i feel like this will

show up in our our predictions for this year a version of this. Yeah, I think I just jumped the gun maybe a little bit, but it might not happen. They might, you know, might remain independent as much as Square Enix is independent. But yeah, no, that definitely didn't happen. What about your first prediction? Mine also didn't happen. Nintendo announces the Nintendo Switch 2

with its official name and branding i felt really comfortable about this one um and now i'm like hoping for this to be in february march but i have no idea at this point how they're going to roll this thing out yeah i think we're going to see like an april may announcement for a fall release if i had to guess but honestly i've also been like predicting the release of this thing for years so who who knows it's nintendo yeah it is nintendo you really can't assume anything uh we have another very clear-cut loss or at least wrong prediction from me which was despite being an epic game store exclusive on pc fortnite will be released on steam deck i in this case i meant natively on steam deck so granted you can play for fortnite

on steam deck requires installing windows into the whole rigmarole or playing over the cloud uh but yeah no didn't come natively to steam deck tim sweeney for what it's worth has commented and said he would love to bring fortnite to steam deck he just finds the 30 cut that valve takes to be a little oppressive which is also a little bit funny because that's the same cut that the consoles are all taking but whatever this year epic did win its court case with google in terms of how store distribution works so i i think that we will continue to hear more about where epic games appear um in the coming year yeah but again not this year um my next one was a youtuber takes a popular video game and adapts it into a video that gets over 100 million views. And as far as I can tell, this didn't happen.

But one YouTuber and streamer is making a horror movie. And Five Nights at Freddy's was huge. And I don't think I get a point. I do not think you get a point. And I don't think I get a point. I do not think you get a point. I certainly think that we were talking about a native, you know, video designed for YouTube to go up. And, you know, the creator would have been like at the center of it, not like a producer.

So, yeah, I don't feel good about this one. And yeah, I thought, you know, certainly I expected like a Mr. Beast type to jump in there with a, I don't know, recreation of fucking Mario for whatever reason. So, yeah, I didn't think it was totally off base, but didn't happen. It was not in the cards. Okay, now we have some close ones coming up. Well, I have one. Oh, yeah, we do. Actually, these are these are some ones that like at least this one was one I got half right, but I appreciate that I did not get it fully, and I will take the loss.

This was The Last of Us, HBO TV series, will include the giraffe scene. Everyone is familiar with it who has played the game and now who has seen the show, but not the hospital ending scene, also a very notable scene. but not the hospital ending scene also a very uh notable scene and as it turns out hbo's show ended up following the exact plot almost shot for shot of the game um including both the draft scene and the ending hospital scene my rationale was that i don't know they kind of you know by including the hospital scene even though it is like a very important impactful scene i thought they were gonna like try to stretch that first game out into two seasons which obviously they did not um so uh yeah i mean uh pretty pretty crazy i'm not shocked that it went the way it did,

but I am kind of a little bit shocked that they jammed all the events of the first game into one season. Okay, I'm putting this one in the W column. I said, at least five AAA games will appear in Metacritic's top 10 of 2024 after we remove redundancies. And we have, I believe, six.

It's Tears of the Kingdom, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Street Fighter 6, Asgard's Wrath 2. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. I will give you the win for this. It makes total sense. I certainly wasn't expecting things like street fighter 6 or asgard's wrath or even xenoblade chronicles to like make the cut of the top 10

this year they certainly weren't in my top 10 but uh i guess metacritic uh does its thing and works its magic the top 10 is bizarre to be clear like the two indies that made it were against the storm and turbo overkill and nothing against those games but i would i don't think you'll find them in the top 10 on most personal i didn't play them i like i don't think i've heard like i don't think until i'd seen this list i had heard of either of those games which i guess is a big mistake on my part uh overkill for people who like um kind of boomer shooters is is really solid i played a little bit of that over the break and i think people will like it yeah why did you not include boulders gate 3 in this i didn't i honestly i i didn't know if you were gonna say that like

that's technically indie because they're in oh no i wouldn't know i'm not i'm not a jerk okay no i understand that they are technically an indie studio but yeah i'll give you the win on that one next up for you i have an easy one that was doomed it never even got off the ground it so to speak uh yeah this is tom cruise appearing in fortnight uh i think this was a a repeat or certainly a familiar mention, uh, from the previous year. But in this case, I was, I guess, expecting a, uh, mission impossible showing from old Tommy.

This will be the last time I predict anything about Tom Cruise in video games, let alone Fortnite. Uh, so enjoy it while you can, but yeah, no, sadly, or I guess happily, depending on how you feel about Tom Cruise didn't happen. Here's one where we just got too specific again i said uh that rockstar would announce gta6 which is right and that they would show gameplay and a release date which was right but i said the release date would be 2024 which was wrong it is 2025 so i lost the the only thing i'll quibble about is whether they showed gameplay or not because they did show in-engine footage but i certainly wouldn't call

that gameplay and that'll be relevant i think in some of our uh predictions coming up uh for 2024 as how we define gameplay because i do think yeah showing how the game actually plays uh is an important facet you can't just show cut scenes and call that yeah i mean i would say that that's still i would count that because it is what the game looks like rather than like oh we contracted a cg studio all right yeah i understand i i think i would define that as in-engine footage. In-engine. Okay. Rather than gameplay. I like that. I think that'll be helpful for next year's prediction. For sure.

Okay. Okay. So that was a loss because they didn't mention the 2024. Yes. Okay. Here's where things get a little interesting. Uh-huh. You're going to try to do this.

Go ahead. I'm going to try to do this. Okay. So Tears of the Kingdom. I'll give you the prediction. Tears of the kingdom will have a playable character that isn't link which right now everyone listening says wrong that was that didn't happen and and those people haven't thoroughly investigated the length and breadth of what tears the kingdom has to offer chris plan are you familiar with the ancient heroes

aspect uh-huh what what do you know about it i mean we'll go on the ancient heroes aspect is a uh item that you can get if you find all of the uh shrines within tears of the kingdom spoiler alert uh it's a very cool surprise as as we all know i was playing it without guides and so when you finally unlock it you equip this item and you transform into what appears to be a uh basically the like original link if you will the the uh beginning of the bloodline of these ancient heroes that have come forth to fight evil, etc. It has a major impact on the plot of this game. And this is an item that you can get.

How do we feel, Chris Plant? Well, the great thing is you actually answered this for me. You transform into the original link i'm sorry well not the i'm just saying the bloodline no it's like transforming into it's like transforming into my great grandpa that's a different person the heart of the rumor is that we play as link there are many links in zelda games and you would play as somebody who is not a link and you are still playing as a link i mean i just said there was a bloodline thing you know what here's what i'm gonna do for your sake point no because i'm gonna i'm gonna put this point aside and say you

know what i won't even argue the ancient heroes aspect because you could say it's like a glamour or a cosmetic overlay on what is essentially Link. There's another character in Tears of the Kingdom, and that character's name is Minoru. Are you familiar with Minoru? Okay, yes. Okay, so Minoru... For the audience, do you want to say a little bit more? Sure.

Minoru, spoiler alert, is one of the companions that you find. It's the fifth companion. And Minoru, the whole spirit here is that as you're playing through the game, you are collecting these different companions that follow you around, and they have different abilities. So the first guy you collect, generally speaking, is the bird guy, and he'll give you like a burst of air. Now, I would not say, because he's following you around to give you a burst of air, I would not say that you are playing as the bird guy.

Totally reasonable. That would be crazy. Minoru, as you may or may not recall, is a robot that is summoned and will follow you around. Once again, not claiming that when Minoru is following you around, you are playing as Minoru. But here's the hook.

There are times, really at any time you want, when you can jump on the back of Minoru and run around, not as as link but as minoru minoru is the other playable character in zelda tears of the kingdom so when you say that grand theft auto has thousands of playable characters and they're called cars oh come on so no i mean i think that's interesting i think it's wild that uh so many games have had they've been so avant-garde um it's really i mean i would count bumblebee as a playable character i i like your grit i am i am prepared to give you half a point

because it was just a fun ride. But I think we can all agree, when you made the prediction, this is not what you were suggesting. I mean, it certainly wasn't a fucking sentient robot. You're right. It was something like the princess or some new character that you would actually play as. You do actually play as this character. You're riding on a robot. You know what's what i'm gonna do i'm not gonna take the half point because i know the half point is going to be the deciding factor so i'm not going to take it here's what i'm going to do i think we need to throw it up that the audience has heard the argument i think that's

a great idea i think we should put it to the audience. I'm not including the Ancient Heroes aspect as the argument. I'm saying, is Minoru another playable character in Salted Tears of the Kingdom? I think that's a great idea. And everyone vote with truth. Vote with truth. Okay, next up for me. I have a YouTuber Twitch streamer will publish a hit game. And I whiffed on this.

And it's like so obvious why I would whiff on this that I'm kind of mad I even picked this to begin with. Because the rise of YouTubers getting into video game publishing was last year, 2022. Or I guess two years ago now, because we're technically in 2024. And video games take a long time to make. So yes, while we had seen some YouTubers publish things before that, we're not yet at the kind of like release point for a lot of these very new publishing arms. of like release point for a lot of these very new publishing arms um we will see animal well in theory from uh donkeys video game donkeys publisher big mode um at some point this year also uh there's a piece that bloomberg published that i will link in our newsletter that showed that a lot of these are probably not going to make it to market ever um so no i'm i i missed

this one um yeah i i i forget how we're going to define hit game oh i think it was like top 10 on sales for steam or something yeah i think it needed to be like quite popular yeah um well Yeah. Well, yeah, a miss, but I will say when Donkey announced the Animal Well thing, I was definitely, I had some pause, and I'm glad that it got pushed to this year. Because I think that game, I mentioned it in our most anticipated list episode that we just ran. So, yeah, glad it didn't happen. What else do you have? Oh okay okay okay one more with feeling okay go ahead uh my prediction was where was it uh yoshi will be in the post-credit scene of the mario movie we're gonna have to put two poles in the news we we are frankly we are um i think the language that i used was yoshi yoshi as a character would be introduced in the post-credit scene of the mario movie yes um yoshi as we all know because we've all seen the movie, Yoshi does appear as in a post-credits scene of the Mario movie, star of the post-credits scene, pushing up on the egg of Yoshi, which is now hatching.

And you hear the name echoed throughout the heavens. Yoshi! Which, that's fucking Yoshi. Now, I'm going to speak for chris plant here and you could feel free to jump in if you want i would love to hear what i'm going to say chris plant is of the opinion and and this is i understand where he's coming from that yoshi's introduction was not that scene it was a relatively subtle in the back actually so subtle that I didn't even see it in the background appearance of a green Yoshi style egg at the wedding of Bowser and Peach. That's kind of my opinion.

Okay. Kind of. So there are many Yoshi that is like animal species that appear throughout the movie. Right. Right. Yoshi that is like animal species that appear throughout the movie. Right. Right.

And we and we did actually discuss that. We specified that like this now would be Yoshi with a capital Y. Yoshi. Yes. The problem for you is twofold. One, if you are saying that this this specific egg, Yoshi, is introduced, it does appear much earlier in the movie. I believe a toad brings the Yoshi egg as a present to Bowser and Peach's wedding. I'm sorry, spoilers. So there's that. But two, and perhaps most importantly, in the post-credit scene, it's just the egg. We never get to see if it is the Yoshi inside of that egg.

Hitherto, we've seen plenty of Yoshis. Could it be that Yoshi? Yeah. Oh, most definitely. I think it could. But is it that Yoshi? Do we know it's that Yoshi? In the words of my son just this past weekend, that is not Yoshi.

So did I tell him to say that did i do one of those like twitter things where i'm like my five-year-old says the wildest things yeah i did but he did say it out loud did he think it was boshi he did that's that that are if you're pinning your hopes on the argument that yoshi was not introduced as a post-credits character because of that, because we didn't see his face. That is an egg. That is not a character reveal. That would be like saying that like, oh, Thor was introduced in this Marvel movie because

we saw his hammer. I'm not just including that. I'm also including the fact that Thor had a fucking line in the movie that you're describing. Because Yoshi says, Yoshi, that's a line from, like, that you're describing because yoshi says yoshi that's a line from like if you were looking at the script of the mario movie there would be yoshi colon space space space whatever final draft does yoshi that could have just been like mario goofing okay there are so many things that that could be other than a yoshi we have we don't we don't know where the words come from.

I think here's what we're going to do. We're going to put user polls for both of these. You're going to need to win both of them. I agree. Just to tie. I agree. I think you have a shot at Yoshi. I think there's no way in hell

with Tears of the Kingdom. My faith in law and order will be destroyed. A character that isn't link that you will control and explore the world that's all i'm gonna say just keep that in your head uh-huh okay okay um let's do my final one we will see at least two competitors release new Steam Deck style hardware and Valve will release an upgraded Steam Deck. This one makes me so fucking angry because it was so spot on accurate that it drives me up a wall. All of our over specificity paid off here because I nailed it i nailed it yeah um i'm very impressed thank you thank you so then you you pushed me to make it super specific i think so that i would not

nail it well i'll tell you here's here's my thinking i i thought two competitors was possible if i recall correctly i'm trying to remember back a year ago, thought that was possible. I did not expect Valve to not only announce but also release an upgraded Steam Deck, which they did in the Steam Deck OLED, which we're all familiar with and we're all big fans of. In that span, I was genuinely shocked. And honestly, a lot of this came from the community that like loves to obsess over code behind the Steam Deck OS and whether it's indicating new upgrades. Even that community that was literally digging through the absolute nitty gritty was like, maybe there will be like a new Wi-Fi chip added to the Steam Deck. And that was the closest they came to anything maybe happening. But, you know, there was a ton of reporting about Valve saying things that, granted, did not explicitly rule out the possibility,

but certainly diminished the possibility of there being an upgraded Steam Deck until at least this year or next year. So, again, well done. And we also saw the I guess the Asus what is that, the ROG Ally is from Asus. Yes, and the Lenovo Go.

Right, and the Lenovo Go. So well done. Good work. It's honestly exciting because both of us love handheld hardware, and it's great to see it getting so much love. getting so much love um my very small retro gaming handheld uh company miyu uh is apparently releasing a form factor that will be in the style of the game boy sp game boy advance sp which is to say with the clamshell design and that is the like handheld that i am keeping an eye on because uh that is my preferred handheld uh format so uh we'll see about that but um well done chris plant i will say this i will grant that like someone might see it one way or

the other in terms of my two wins uh yours were pretty clear cut so well done for that thank you i appreciate that i look forward to seeing if i won or if we tied yeah and we'll just have to figure out where things go from there we will um want to talk about some 2024 predictions after the break let's do it okay so we're back uh we've got a interesting twist to the predictions format uh this year as we all know uh we stole the predictions format from friends of the show triple click podcast who had been doing it for quite some time before we started doing it um i think someone a reader suggested a uh new or i guess a listener suggested a new twist on this format which i actually really like. And here's the twist.

The idea is instead of both of us coming to the table with completely disparate lists that neither of us have seen before, we've instead come up with a list. I think we have about 10 or 15 potential things that could happen. And Plant and I will take turns drafting options from this big list of what we think is most likely so uh round one someone will go they'll pick what they think is like the most likely of these 10 and then we'll just go back

and forth yeah i i i think it is going to make it much more likely for us to do things that will happen. Yes. I feel like the lesson we've learned from the past two years is that we made it too hard for ourselves. Yeah, and it's also really hard to make equivalences between, you know, one person's list versus another person's list. Whereas this will be much's list. Uh, whereas this will be much more fair. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, and for the commenter on besties.fan who had this very good idea, I'm sorry. I have lost track of that comment. Please leave a little comment on this week's episode and we'll make sure to give you a shout out next time because this, uh, is a great idea,

but we'll only give you a shout out if you vote for me in the two polls. Oh my God. It doesn't matter, I still win. So the first one I have here is we haven't even heard the name of 2024's Game of the Year yet. And this means that whatever most game publications

award Game of the Year at the end of 2024 has yet to be formally announced. Or if it is public, it's like maybe the developer at the end of 2024 has yet to be formally announced. Or if it is public, it's like maybe the developer is tweeting photos of it. It is not widely known by most people. We probably do not know about it. There is some risk here. I think there are some games that are announced, like the new game from the Persona team, that have a real shot at at this but i i still think it's an interesting um prediction the question i have for you is would you include a game that is currently in early

access hits 1.0 but while it's in early access it's like not as exposed i think so i think it would have to be like we'd have to try to figure out how to track this. I'll give you, I'll give you a suggestion. It needs to be under, I don't know how we track this under 1000 reviews on steam. I think there's a way for us to track this. I can,

if it comes down to that, I will reach out to friend of the show, Simon Carlos, who does a lot of data tracking on steam and i think we could figure that out if it was like at the time we recorded this if it was relatively unknown okay but it can't be like fucking balder's gate obviously no no it can't be it can't be anything like that okay okay so that's your first one. Good prediction. That is exciting because it means that it's going to be a kind of out of nowhere game of the year, potentially, if you're right. Yeah, I hope.

Okay. Or it could be just the fucking Mario 3D game that comes out, right? That would count. But that's okay. I know you were thinking about it. Okay, so I'm going to go with, as my first one, again, I feel pretty confident about this. I know Valve has aspirations

for growing SteamOS beyond just Steam Decks, specifically in other forms of hardware. And I think this year we will see a handheld produced by another company that is not valve that launches with native steam os support on it i i like this one i i think it's pretty straightforward. Yeah, and Valve has been pretty blunt about their desire to do this. I don't have any doubt that Valve would be trying to incentivize this. I think I'm more curious what partners would be into it. But yeah, I can see it happening.

I think the other challenge is, like, can a partner make something better than the steam deck right like i feel like that's the risk of using steam os is you're going to be immediately compared to this incredible device that's true that is definitely true i i do wonder i think a lot of people want to leverage the support for the like steam deck certified but in other ways um so that'll be the challenge is like how does valve account for hey we launched this this handheld with steam os um how do we indicate to people that hey it runs these games great yeah i feel like the the path will either be maybe somebody makes something even more powerful but that doesn't seem likely i feel like the path will either be maybe somebody makes something even more powerful, but that doesn't seem likely. I feel like if that was easier, Valve would be doing it.

But I could see somebody making something less powerful. Yeah, smaller, like a lighter, smaller form factor. I could definitely see that. Yeah, yeah. That, you know, doesn't play a lot of 3D games, maybe, but it's going to, you know, play Stardew Valley really well for you. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool um cool uh next up for me i have oh which one do i want to do i have that bobby

is gonna have a new executive job before the end of the year and it's as simple as that he's he's out at activision i think by the end of the year, he is back in an executive role. I'm torn on how complicated to make this or how difficult. I don't think. Should it be a video game job or should it be any executive job? Okay, does an executive count as just a board member? No, I think it needs to be like he's an actual executive at a company. Okay.

That's the real challenge because obviously from a golden parachute standpoint, there's nothing dreamier than having like seven or eight board suite jobs, which I think he already has a number of them. Yeah. And just kind of kicking back rather than having to run a company. But I could 100% see him just falling into the next thing i think people are desperate for uh someone who let's say uh is willing to make some pretty uh let's say yeah i think i think we know what you're thinking okay make some tough choices i don't want to get sued but uh yeah i don't think we're big fans of Bobby here. Yeah. I think it's also that I feel like people like him. They can't stop. You know, there have been so many better exit points along the way.

And he didn't take any of them, which makes me think that, yeah, he probably will. As I was looking through this list, i did actually look up his age and he's 61 which is still pretty young as it comes to like yeah you know billionaire that's so young that's a capitalist god so yeah i i would not shock me if he shifted into something but then there's the reggies of the world who like stop and and don't shift into like a new gig they more or less like kind of do smaller projects that makes me feel even more confident yeah there are yeah two very different people in bobby kadek and reggie that's for sure uh what do you got next okay uh i'm gonna go with fortnite will drop one more standalone mode akin to for those who are not not aware, Fortnite just launched three, like, very different modes from anything that existed within Fortnite. The Lego mode, Lego Fortnite.

Rocket Racing, which is like a racing mode produced by the folks who did the Psyonix game, who did Rocket League. And Fortnite Festival, which was produced by basically team members of Harmonix, all of whom are owned by Epic. So my thinking is there will be one more equivalent to this before the end of the year. I would say it won't be, and I'm not counting like experiences. They've done this a few times. Alan Wake, for example, before Alan Wake 2 came out, there was like a quote experience where you could like replay the events of Alan Wake 1 within the Fortnite engine and you finish it in 45 minutes or half hour, whatever, however long it was. And then you're done and there's not really a reason to play again. I am talking about like its own very discrete mode. And this would be developed by epic or a studio that epic owns and it would come out this year i think you should make it at least two

and here here's why i think that part of the reason that epic is doing this is epic is in the video game engine business with unreal and unreal is a great tool for making very very very uh high-end games you can make indie games on it too but it was associated with triple a um and then uh fortnight they have been really interested in user-created stuff obviously trying to like get uh into that roblox market to mixed effect this to me feels like a bit of a middle ground um where it's not your that you're making games in unreal but you're not using the fortnite level generator there are these kind of in the fortnite universe games that a developer could could potentially use their tools to create and i wouldn't be surprised if they're doing this to kind of almost create like a roster of these i don't know if it's

like oh sure anybody can do this but i think that they right now they're using their internal studios to make games in the universe of fortnite i wouldn't be surprised if we see two or three epic releases that are in the universe of Fortnite every year. Does that make sense? It does, but I think two in the coming year, given the fact that they just launched three, is too ambitious. Okay.

I'm fine with it. I think it will definitely happen. I think there's basically no world in which it doesn't happen. I guess that's why I feel like it needs to be two is because... I will tell no world in which it doesn't happen i guess that's why i feel like it needs to be two is because i will tell you the possibility where it doesn't happen is because the huge success that lego fortnite saw at launch to the point of it was eclipsing the player count of battle royale and still has a pretty significant player count i think they will see that as a holy shit moment where they shift resources to support that

which they have a history of doing which they are not afraid to like dump entire projects to put all their eggs into the basket that's making the cash right that being said i do think there's a possibility of it and i think if it happens it's probably fall guys like figuring out some sort of way to get fall guys into fortnight but yeah i didn't want to i think two is two is too much because i i think they don't want to spread their uh jam too uh thin cool i like that their epic jam um okay here's one that that I think is more of a long shot, but I just am so curious about. One of the five major Japanese publishers will be acquired. And this is building off of yours from last year that was, I think, just too specific, and it wouldn't have happened either way.

But between Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, Bandai Namco, and sega i think one will be acquired this is extremely tricky for many many reasons one of those reasons is companies like konami are part of much larger companies that do everything from like i think vacuums to like property holdings yeah so getting you know really what would probably be happening is they'd be divesting themselves of their games division same with sega to some degree it's part of a much larger company um the ones that are likely here um to me are like capcom because it's at its peak so if somebody had the money they would want to But it would have to be like, honestly, Sony or Microsoft. And I don't think Microsoft is after all those legal battles in a position to do that. So it seems unlikely.

And then Square Enix, which feels to me the most likely of all of these. Square has, despite colossal success with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and some other series, has also had a number of struggles. Really, I don't know, for like 10 or 15 years with a number of different properties. Tomb Raider, I mean, there's a bunch of the Western projects like the European studios and the american studios did not go well yeah i mean that was a while ago but it feels like they've still just been keeping their head above water for a long time um uh in terms of that stuff so they still have plenty of reason for people to want to acquire them there's also just the reality of the economy and that we're seeing massive consolidation across most industries um so i think that there's a chance, but I am definitely doing this more out of my own curiosity than I am out of like, oh, I think it will definitely happen.

And for what it's worth, I would certainly include, as I'm sure you would, if it's like not a Microsoft or a Sony, but a private equity group doing it. Sure. Yeah. Any acquisition. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. of microsoft or sony but a private equity group doing it sure yeah any any acquisition yeah yeah agreed um which yeah that is much more likely because again that's kind of like what happened to sega right is some other larger japanese holding company or japanese media company comes and buys them up and provides kind of some umbrage. Yeah. Cool. Okay, so that's three for you.

And here comes my third. I'm going to say Nintendo will make some public reference to the durability of the Switch 2 analog sticks in either marketing materials or in an official press release. If, you know, someone interviews someone over there about the durability, that does not count so it needs to actually be part of the marketing materials or in a press release um something along the lines of our enhanced analog sticks ensure gaming for years on end kind of thing as obviously this is in reference to the fact that the switch one still plagued with pretty

horrendous uh stick drift as it's called with the analog sticks uh you know there there's been class action lawsuits and all sorts of mess around it um it's certainly a talking point it's really just a question of whether nintendo will very directly address that talking point. I'm happy for you to do this because I don't think it'll happen. I just can't remember another time where Nintendo acknowledged a mistake like that. It seems very unlike them, especially in marketing materials. I don't think they will acknowledge the past mistake i think they will hype up how great these are as a way to subtly yeah yeah yeah i think it's i like that one it's an interesting one i don't think it's like a slam dunk but it's certainly

not a slam dunk yeah um cool yeah i like that i think we should definitely keep that one um i also want to just say earlier i said umbridge when i meant an umbrella before you rushed the commons i didn't even hear it oh man the second it came out of my mouth i was like what was the sentence do you remember oh that that that a holding company could provide umbridge which would be like it's providing a fence. I don't know. Yeah. It's not good. That made more sense than umbrella, certainly.

It's just one of those days. It is. Okay. I have another one that's Nintendo related. Okay. I think Switch goes for two. And what I mean by that is the Nintendo Switch 2 is going to get announced and it's going to come out. And definitely one iconic IP is going to be there at launch.

But I think within the first three months, we'll see a second one. I don't think it's very unlikely that they would both be launch titles. But i think similar to how um zelda uh breath of the wild and mario odyssey came out relatively close to each other i believe um it's been a while um i think that we will see something like metroid at launch and then a new mario three months later yeah i yeah No, I think that's certainly likely in the first three months. Yeah, that seems likely. I mean, you know, I keep predicting,

and again, this is like wishful thinking more than anything else, that it's going to be the 3D Mario and Metroid Prime 4, but you're saying that would not count. We would need another IP in its first three months. So like a Star Fox. Yeah, so it could be like we get

one of those and then maybe the other one comes out too or something else. Yeah. Okay. And how about you for number, your fourth pick? Yeah, I think. Yeah, this is the fourth pick. I'm going to take something that you wrote down which I think was a good one.

It should be fun. The Borderlands movie will have a rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, and at least one outlet will question Hollywood's rush to adapt video games. I mean, the second part is just fun. I think it's assumed if it is rotten, someone will definitely be a grump because movie critics love to dunk on video games when given the opportunity uh but uh yeah mostly it's just about that the borderlands movie will have a rotten on rotten tomatoes uh yeah yeah i i think this is good because honestly i have no idea we're living in a time of poptimism and maybe it will be beloved did you just say optimism yeah is that a thing yeah it's like a music criticism thing it applies elsewhere too i'm gonna take one of yours too um uh you i

mean we'll obviously we'll draft these later but you uh wait i thought we were drafting. Oh, we're drafting? I thought we've been drafting. Oh, no, no, you say them all and then you draft. Oh. I guess, you know, we've read all these already. I feel pretty good with what I have so far. Me too. Do you feel good with what you have so far? Yeah, I'm happy with what we have so far. Okay. Okay, then I'm going to take one of yours. Okay, go for it. So, yeah, I guess

we're in the drafting process now. We are. And we have been this whole time without me being aware um uh i'm gonna take um hades 2 will have a horde mode um and it is like you said uh instead of going room to room you have to survive against waves this could be like vampire survivors but it could also be i think like a traditional horde mode yeah um and yeah i i think that seems very likely and also a hades too with a like fun little vampire survivors mode would be just awesome yeah no i i yeah i would be super super that. And I'm extremely excited about Hades 2 whenever that actually ends up dropping. Okay, so that was your fourth, correct?

Was that my fourth or fifth? Maybe. Is that the last one? One, two, three, four. I think that's four. I think you definitely have one. Oh, no, that is five. Okay.

So that was five for you. So I have one more pick to make from our list of options. Okay. Man. Yeah. So the rest of these are definitely going to be tougher. I think there's some doable ones here there's some doable ones uh for sure we'll share all of them we'll read the rest after after you're okay i'm gonna go

with one uh again a wishful thinking one that i included on this list uh hollow knight silk song will come out a risky bet to be honest at this point. And you will be able to play as a character other than Hornet. So if you've not played the original Hollow Knight, Hornet is a side character. We know that Hornet is the main character of Silksong. The bet is there will be another playable character apart from Hornet. Yes.

And if Hornet, for example, rides a robot, that would count. No, no, no, no. I'm going to say yes to this, but the character has to be really playable and not like a rideable or a like, you know, two second side character. Okay, I'm going to explain how this might be presented in a reasonable way. Hornet cannot be near the other playable characters. So for example, if there's like a, either at the beginning,

you're like, okay, I'm going to play as X instead of Hornet. And you play a whole run as them. Or if there's a place in the world where you're like, you walk up as Hornet, talk to this person, and then you're playing as that person.

Yes. And then you go off. I, I, I think that's fair. I, I, I person, and then you're playing as that person? Yes. And then you go off. I think that's fair. I'm game for that. I understand the hesitance, even though I am confident that truth will prevail on the reader votes. Cool. Let's read through the ones that we didn't take really quick. Oh, yeah, sure.

Um, uh, let's read through the ones that we didn't take really quick. Oh yeah, sure. Um, uh, return of the classics. That's at three franchises that haven't had a mainline entry in at least five years will return. Their publishers will announce new titles. So this would have excluded also games already announced like Metroid and Prince of Persia. I think that one is likely to happen. I think it probably will.

The reason I didn't pick it is because it's complicated and I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, so I thought it was more simple to go another direction. I think that's a good choice. What else did we have? We also had Xbox will show its hand. We will see gameplay. We talked about gameplay earlier. Gameplay of at least two of these five

Borderline Vaporwave titles. Everwild, Contraband, Perfect Dark, Avowed, and south of midnight at least one of them will launch before the end of the year uh i definitely yeah two of the this seems pretty likely as well two of five is pretty low and i definitely think that one of these will come out this year um but it it's very weird what uh what's been going on with Xbox and their release schedule, specifically with Game Pass stuff. It's so, things that always seem obvious with Xbox stuff,

you just never know. Yeah. Up next was Silent Hill will be relevant again. Either Silent Hill 2 or the new Silent Hill will release and score above 80 on Metacritic. Yeah, I mean, that feels to me like an easy one just because I think Silent Hill 2 definitely will. Silent Hill, the new one, kind of a TBD

because Konami, who even fucking knows at this point what they're capable of doing. Yeah, the Metacritic thing is the risk because if you mess up Silent Hill 2 remake, even a little, I think you get shredded. Yeah, I think the problem I have now with Metacritic, and we saw this with Starfield, saw this with um with starfield i think their companies are getting very smart about sending copies to friendly organizations and getting their metacritic score as high as possible and kind of locking that in and then we've seen if you look at uh if you've been tracking starfield's metacritic score over the last let's say three months four months uh we've seen it slowly decline so uh but yeah no we didn't pick that so that's fine

yeah what did we have after that oh yeah this is a good one uh i don't think it's going to happen actually but uh this is a good one this is control of remedy epic sony or microsoft will acquire remedy cool yeah uh i think the reason i don't think it will happen is because i think remedy loves being independent they love having full control of what they're doing i know they've had a really close relationship with microsoft in the past um but i think i mean it really just depends on what their financial situation is at the moment and if they can ride out this a pretty rough wave of economics they will do whatever they can to remain uh independent is my feeling yeah i think that's right unless yeah epic

shows up at the door with a fucking insane amount of cash and it's just like because honestly epic my understanding was not like telling them yes or no on stuff that was in ellenway too even though epic published it i think they were just happy to like let them do whatever the fuck they wanted which i imagine was a bit different than their experience with microsoft i'm sure that's true yeah um uh next up a saudi investment fund will acquire a popular established video game studio in a continued effort to rehabilitate its image through global entertainment a fund from saudi arabia will push into games in a big way that will cause tremendous controversy and calls for boycotts honestly i'd be surprised if this doesn't happen yeah i think this is almost guaranteed at this point yeah i

the reason i didn't pick it is i think i would have just had too much trouble figuring out like what meets the definition of a popular established video game studio um but i look especially at embracer that is having trouble right now yeah and it certainly that would that would be my guess yeah um you had another one on here this is youtube enters the gaming space youtube adds games people can publish games directly onto youtube either through streaming or browser play bonus it will feature easy streaming functionality i don't think this will happen but i could be wrong yeah it it's a matter of how much uh are all the different corners of google separate from each other basically would google try to do Google Stadia again inside of YouTube?

Yeah, I think they are a little gun shy at the moment. I think that's right. That said, we do see, you know, streamers like Netflix getting into the gaming space. We see lots of people in general pushing into the gaming space. And I could see that here. I also think in hindsight, wow, this should have just been what stadia was yeah like why was he had not just youtube games yeah um so many more people would have been aware of it uh it just it's kind of actually baffling that that's not the route that it took um so yeah those are those are all of them i feel pretty good about those picks. I will make sure that in besties.fan, we include all of the picks that you and I made as they're assigned.

So we have this for firm documentation for, I guess, early next year. And I will approve the language of the poll that you put up about my two potentials. Okay, that sounds good. I appreciate it. Thank you. Hey, we are kind of at the end of the episode. Do you have any honorable mentions? Yeah, I do want to shout out,

I just started playing this game, but I thought it was really cool and it might be worth like a full episode. The game is called Sanabi. It's extremely my shit. It's a 2D action, pixelated action game. Kind of reminds me of, what is that samurai zero game i forget the full name of it but uh gorgeous gorgeous pixel art came out november when everyone

else was buried with releases uh i'm pretty early into it but um definitely worth checking out i think it's on a little bit of a sale right now yeah this looks very very cool um uh mine is i saw a thief the other night oh i've seen that for the first time i know i know we had we talked about it and i had like it's one of those movies i feel like i had seen in pieces um but i realized i as i was watching it wow i'd never seen this this from just beginning to end, let alone in a theater. And holy moly, talk about a movie that builds. The first half is quite slow. And then it just goes so hard.

And you realize that so many movies that you probably love have borrowed, if we're being nice, stolen stolen if we're not being nice directly from it um drive especially is yeah definitely everything from the action to the score that tangerine dream does in thief uh drive is really gunning for um so yeah if you have not seen michael man's thief now's a great time to do it james conn in peak masculine i don't know man james conn in like absolute like he's wearing uh like uh tank top cutting through steel with a giant flaming stick yes it's he is it's just guys being dudes and you gotta love it uh anything anything else no i think we do a show we did a show that's great well hey we just want to thank you all remember that you can find more of our stuff at besties.fan uh the besties is here every Friday. The Resties is here every other Tuesday. And next Resties, we have a game

that I don't know if we're talking about it yet, but I'll make sure that we put it in the newsletter so that you can play along because this is a video game book club and just by listening you're a member. That's it for the Resties. I'm Christopher Thomas Plant. I'm Russ Frustick. You have to say the tagline again because you just said it. You's it for the Resties. I'm Christopher Thomas Plant. I'm Russ Frushtick.

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