Pretty Dece

Rumors abound about new Switch Hardware coming mid-2020... could this finally be the long-rumored Switch Pro?

Pretty Dece returns after a short hiatus to discuss the trailers for Wonder Woman 1984, Ghostbusters Afterlife, and Free Guy!

Pretty Dece rolls into November with a great episode covering all the news (and controversy!) surrounding the Blizzcon convention, including the announcements of Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV. Additionally, we talk about Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse 2, and the mass departure of all of Deadspin's writing staff.

Pretty Dece is chock-full of entertainment news this week! We cover the newly announced Analogue Pocket, the high-end handheld gaming hardware that plays your retro Game Boy games, Legends of Runeterra, the upcoming card game based on League of Legends, the debut of Twitch watch parties, and Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, taking over all of Marvel creative.

This week Blizzard faced some massive fan backlash after enacting some harsh punishment on a player, and the PlayStation 5 is officially announced, and will be coming next holiday season!

On this week's episode of Pretty Dece, I give my review of the new Joker film, we discuss the improving value proposition that is PlayStation Now, we marvel at the ridiculous work that went into the Wendy's RPG, and we gaze from afar as corporations engage in a streaming media turf war.

This week on weekly Pretty Dece we talk about Nintendo's new attempt at fitness gaming Ring Fit Adventure, the disappointment that is Mario Kart Tour, the impending Pokemon Go competitor Minecraft Earth, and we all rejoice at getting Spidey back in the MCU.

The Area 51 raid is over, and we still don't know if aliens are real... but this episode of Pretty Dece is as real as it gets!

Weekly Pretty Dece rolls on with discussion of Apple Arcade, the Nintendo Switch Lite, the Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro, and Steam being forced to allow users to resell games by a French court judgement.

Today on the show we discuss:

Welcome to season 2 of Pretty Dece, the start of WEEKLY episodes!

On the show this week, we discuss:

Rumor has it that next year, in a comic event, DC will be replacing Bruce Wayne as Batman with an as-yet-unnamed black character.

Nintendo continues their foray into free-to-play mobile gaming on September 25th with Mario Kart Tour.

The game will feature strange vertical gameplay and one-handed touch controls. However, the most concerning thing about the game, as with previous Nintendo mobile games, might be the microtransaction monetization strategy in place. We dive into what that is rumored to be on today's episode of Pretty Dece.

Marvel Studios and Sony have reportedly not been able to reach an agreeable joint deal to produce future Spider-Man movies, leaving his place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in jeopardy.

Sony holds the movie rights to Spider-Man and has been producing their own Spider-Man films, such as Into the Spider-Verse, while also sharing Spider-Man and allowing him to become a member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now however, Sony is rejecting Marvel Studio's request for a new revenue split, and it appears the two companies are at a standstill. Have we seen the last of Spidey in the MCU?

Members of the Apex Legends development team are fighting back against gamers unhappy with the game's monetization strategy, calling them "free-loaders", "asshats" and other derogatory terms.

Players have been flooding Reddit and other game discussion forums recently with memes and other discussion revolving around Apex Legends monetization strategy, which primary revolves around free-to-play microtransactions. Players have begun to feel that the game isn't fair and is over-prioritizing money. The developers are clearly frustrated with this opinion,  because recently, in an apology thread to the community, the Respawn community manager and the Apex Legends product lead dove into the comment section, bickering and namecalling with the playerbase.

Frankly, this is embarrassing, and not a good look for all of Respawn. On today's episode of Pretty Dece, we discuss exactly how we got to this point in gaming, and whether the free-to-play microtransaction trend will be continuing.

The world's most popular streamer Ninja recently announced he was leaving the world's most popular streaming website Twitch. Twitch has not taken it well. 

Ninja will be moving to MIcrosoft's Mixer, a much smaller competing service. Meanwhile, Twitch has been promoting other streamers on Ninja's now offline Twitch page... leading to Twitch accidentally promoting a channel streaming porn! The offending channel was quickly removed, but Ninja was justifiably  very upset about the possibility that children or anyone else visiting his page would have seen that.

This pettiness from Twitch surrounding the departure of Ninja is just one in a long line of things that Twitch has done recently to make people somewhat uneasy about Twitch as a platform holder. In some cases they're behaving more as petulant children than as a website owned by one of the world's biggest companies, Amazon.

Control is one of the games I picked up at Gen Con 2019. It's a short, easy-to-learn, fast-paced card game for 2-4 players, made by Keymaster Games. Control is inspired by the classic game Cuttle, and in my opinion blends the simplicity of a traditional card game with the addictive head-to-head competition and evolving strategy of a collectible card game.

It's small enough to pack anywhere, and games rounds only take around 5 minutes. If you're like me and have friends that are competitive but don't have the attention span or desire to be taught a game that takes hours to learn, or hours to play, Control might be for you.

This past week I attended the best 4 days in gaming, Gen Con! Gen Con is the largest tabletop and board game convention in the country, and it happens to take place in my backyard! This episode of Pretty Dece is a recap of my time at Gen Con 2019, running down all of the events I attended, things I saw, and all the awesome stuff going down.

Team Fortress 2 has had loot crates for over a decade, and built into Steam support for selling the items you get out of those crates for real money. However, a glitch today has thrown that economy into complete disarray! Join me on Pretty Dece today to discuss what happened with the glitch, how exactly the glitch has affected the economy, and what Valve is doing to fix the issue.

Nintendo recently announced the entirely new, entirely handheld Nintendo Switch Lite, and now, have announced that the original Switch will see a minor hardware revision giving it a few hours of additional battery life.  Are these new Switch offerings tempting to the uninitiated? Will existing Switch owners pony up for new hardware? Signs point to yes!

Valve is adding a new section to Steam called Steam Labs, which is a collection of tools designed to improve game discovery on their platform. Ranging from auto-playing gif trailers to daily automated video shows, Valve is looking to solve the game discovery problem on Steam through the use of machine learning, a stark contrast to the editorial approach that companies like Apple take. Is Steam barking up the wrong tree, or will these Steam Labs improvements help you find new games on Steam?

WarnerMedia fully  unveiled their new streaming service today, now officially dubbed "HBO Max". Among original programming, it will be the home for all of HBO's shows, and the exclusive streaming platform for The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Pretty Little Liars, and Friends.

Losing both Friends to HBO Max and The Office to the upcoming NBCUniversal streaming service will be a huge blow to Netflix, and needing to sign up for multiple streaming services to see the same shows you enjoyed previously on a single streaming service is pretty awful for consumers. Will the average viewer end up with multiple subscriptions, or will they simply do without? Only time will tell.

Spider-Man Far From Home is finally here, and on this episode of Pretty Dece I bring you a spoiler-filled review of the film!

Nintendo continues their foray into the world of free-to-play mobile games with the upcoming Dr. Mario World. We got a new trailer focusing on the multiplayer that the game will have to offer, and... I have some concerns.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was quite the surprise, but I had no idea how they were going to pull off a sequel. Well, it turns out all they need to do is have Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson do a 2 hour Danny DeVito impression, and I'm sold.

Holey Moley is a new putt-putt golf show executive produced by Steph Curry, and somehow that doesn't even begin to describe how weird and wonderfully bizarre this show is. Join me on today's episode of Pretty Dece to break down exactly why you should turn off your brain and check out the "golfstacle course" that is Holey Moley.

Marvel announced this week that famed director J.J. Abrams will be teaming up with his son Henry to write an upcoming Spider-Man miniseries! Simply titled "Spider-Man", it will focus on a new villain named Cadaverous, feature art from Sara Pichelli, and be out in September!

Square Enix showed off their upcoming Avengers game during E3, and the reception has been fairly mixed. Join me on today's show to break down what we know about the game, and decide if Avengers a game worth getting excited about!

Nintendo had some exciting things to talk about during this E3, including a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, some more details about this year's Zelda game, Link's Awakening, a name and release date for the next Animal Crossing, and even a never-before-released-stateside Secret of Mana remake.

E3 Week is underway, and we kick off our week of E3 news with some exciting Microsoft announcements, including the inclusion of Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077, the acquisition of Double Fine to the Xbox Game Studios, and the official announcement of Project Scarlett, the next generation Xbox console coming Holiday 2020.

Google outlined the specific details of Google Stadia this week, and it will require a monthly subscription in addition to purchasing games. A free version is coming in 2020, but is it worth it before then?

Nintendo gave us new information about Pokemon Sword & Shield during a short Nintendo Direct this week! It was short, but packed a ton of information about the upcoming games, including release date, mechanics, and a handful of pokemon reveals! We break it all down today on Pretty Dece!

Netflix has announced an animated series based on Magic the Gathering from The Avengers directing-duo the Russo brothers! The Russos have brought me some of my favorite movies of all time, and Magic is, in my opinion, the best game in the world. So clearly, I'm anxiously awaiting this series, and hopefully it can live up to my lofty expectations.

 Activision is bringing Call of Duty back to the Modern Warfare roots with this year's installment, and they certainly have me interested. Just calling it Modern Warfare has a lot of weight to it, but thus far Activision is talking the talk, saying that the game will feature no annual pass and a rich single-player campaign. Can this bring Call of Duty back to the top of the multiplayer shooter crop? 

The Pokemon Company unveiled some news today, including a followup to Detective Pikachu coming to the Switch. It's not clear if this is a sequel, an expanded port, or something else entirely, but it makes a lot of sense to cash in on the Detective Pikachu movie hype.

They also announced some mobile Pokemon games and a Pokemon utility, listen this episode for the full details!

Sony has created a new division called PlayStation Productions that will focus on producing films and television based on PlayStation game franchises. They say they're looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe for inspiration. Do you think this could produce good movies and tv, or is it just a waste of time? Let's discuss!

Microsoft and Sony announced today that they'd be teaming up and working together on cloud streaming technologies going forward. There's not much indication yet what this might look like, but it is certainly an unprecedented move for these two competitors to work so closely together. While it is likely good news for all of gaming, I speculate that the impending release of Google Stadia is one of the main reasons for this partnership.

Hot on the heels of DC's Detective Comics #1000 and Action Comics #1000, Marvel is putting out an anniversary anthology issue as well! Marvel Comics #1000 will celebrate 80 years of Marvel Comics history, featuring 80 different creative teams, each writing a single page of the milestone book. Included among the comic industry veterans working on the project are some celebrity guests as well, including basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller.

A new narrative Star Wars VR experience is coming for the Oculus Quest, the soon-to-be-released standalone VR headset. You play a smuggler looking to help Darth Vader find an artifact that will allow him to live forever.

Riot Games employees have staged a walk out this week over concerns and frustrations with the company's policy on forced arbitration for sexual harassment cases. Employees are upset that they had to waive their right to a jury trial against the company when they started with Riot. Further, Some Riot employees are frustrated that so little progress has been made on improving the culture of Riot Games, following a Kotaku investigation 8 months ago that found the general company culture to be sexist and toxic.

Epic Games continues their quest of taking over PC gaming by picking up the Rocket League development studio Psyonix! It appears that once this acquisition takes place, Rocket League will become an Epic Games Store exclusive. Is this the leg up that Epic needs to push their storefront over the edge?

After 10 years and over 20 films, the ultimate story of Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to a close. It's been a wild ride. Join me on this episode of Pretty Dece as we dive into a spoiler-filled discussion of the Avengers End Game film, and speculate about what's next for the Marvel movies.

The internet is a strange place filled with strange, awesome people, and a large number of those people are diehard Sonic the Hedgehog fans. Despite it being regarded as the worst game in the series, the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is currently being remade by a small group of extremely dedicated fans, and they just released a demo of the game, which can be found here:

Microsoft announced a new version of the Xbox One S today that will be a digital-only console, missing the optical disc drive that allows the other iterations of the Xbox One to play physical games. This comes at a time where Xbox Game Pass now allows a Netflix-like experience with digital games, but is a $50 savings enough to entice people into this all-digital future?

A Russian company wants to expand the world of advertising to the last untapped frontier... the sky above you. Join me on today's episode of Pretty Dece to discuss this new dystopian future we live in, where the KFC logo can hang menacingly above the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Geico gecko can glare at you from over the Eiffel Tower.

Netflix is starting a print magazine called Wide. This is weird. Let's talk about it.

This past weekend was Wrestlemania, which is a perfect time for me to take a minute or twenty and break down everything about wrestling that makes me love it so much, using Wrestlemania 35 as the backdrop.

If you don't understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to wrestling, or don't understand how someone could like it, this episode is for you!