Discord Is Going Public

Gregory (00:01.331)
Welcome back to the GZ Chop Shop gaming podcast. Our first episode of 2026. We took a break before the holiday. So hopefully you guys were able to catch up on our past episodes because we are starting off strong this week with discords move to go in public raising, introducing their own gamer AI called Ava and more. But first, before we dive in, make sure to subscribe to the GZ Chop Shop press play newsletter to get the latest gaming news, monthly game release dates and promo codes for our shop.

right in your inbox. So without further ado, let's dive in. OK, so a lot has happened within the last few months. The Game Awards was a while ago. We ended 2025 at the Game Awards. And we saw a slew of games coming out. And that's what we were originally going to talk about was games we're looking forward to. And then Daniel comes in to the chat, and he's like,

Hey, have you guys heard that Discord's going public? And I hadn't heard about it at first. I was like, what? I was like, hold on. You mean the same Discord that told Microsoft in 2021, screw off, we're not selling, is now going public? So before we get into the nitty gritty and the facts and everything we know so far, I want to know what your guys' opinion is.

Uly (01:12.098)
Yeah.

Gregory (01:28.181)
on Discord going public? What do you think they're doing it for? What do you think changes are gonna be coming over the horizon? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it little of both? Like, what do you guys think?

Daniel (01:38.862)
This score nitro is about to be $70 a month.

Gregory (01:42.889)
That was like my first thought. I'm not going to lie. I was like, are we looking at a price increase and more ads?

Daniel (01:48.66)
It was inevitable. It was going to happen eventually, them going public. I think most of us saw it coming after they told Microsoft to more or less F off. It just sucks because we all know what's going to happen with shareholders when they get their filthy paws and everything and start getting all greedy. And then we have to deal with it.

Gregory (02:00.145)
Yeah.

Uly (02:14.747)
I've of been getting greedy. They've kind of been getting greedy with every time like you go into Discord on your PC, it tells you like, here's some orbs for watching this ad. They've been kind of been pushing it a little bit. It's gonna be.

Daniel (02:23.691)
Yeah, they've already started getting kind of which their their model has allegedly always been instead of us getting ads. It's been like microtransactions pay to play kind of kind of situation. But

Gregory (02:37.865)
Yeah.

Uly (02:38.135)
Now you're going to get an ad every time you want to join a chat. All right, before you join this chat, here's the 30 second ad. Clash Royale.

Daniel (02:42.997)
Yeah, it's like, pick your poison. Do you want to pay to not have ads, or do you want to pay to use the application every little feature? And honestly, like $5, $10 a month, their features are fun, I guess. I feel like they've gotten a little exploitive.

Uly (03:01.615)
One thing I hope is that they grandfather prices in

Gregory (03:06.677)
Yeah, that was the first thing I thought I said. OK, well, first, they're going up. They're more likely going to do that. They're going to have to do that because if they don't want to alienate the subscribers they currently have, they have to offer an incentive to keep them. And the reason I strongly think they're going to grandfather current Nitro subscribers in at the same price point for at least a year or two is because they have to because they're not a shoe in to go public yet. They still have to prove to shareholders that they can continually

guarantee growth every month. So to suddenly raise the price on their current subscribers would have the opposite effect. They would lose their pretty much there a huge portion of their subscriber base, which would not look good to shareholders, which would make the deal fall through and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So they're going to pretty much have to grandfather current subscribers in they're going to have to make a

probably a new tier that's more appealing to people who are like still using it, but completely for free, like myself, like I am like on again, off again with Nitro. So they're probably going to come up with something to pull in new subscribers. And I hate to say it because I, I like, I knew that at some point Microsoft was going to get their hand on Discord in some way. I would not be surprised if you see them bundle Nitro.

with Game Pass to get those subscribers in. Because even though Game Pass has raised its price like twice in a year, they still have millions of subscribers. Even with all the people that unsubscribed, how many of them resubscribed not long after because they were like, crap, 90 % of my gaming library was Game Pass. Screw it, I'll bite the bullet and resubscribe. you know, Microsoft still is hanging in there.

So I wouldn't be surprised to see Discord start pitching partnerships with other subscription services and be like, get Discord Nitro and Game Pass at one for this price of $10 a month. That's gonna be something to pull people in. Then they're gonna show that to shareholders and be like, look, we were able to increase our subscriber numbers by X amount this month, X amount the next month, leading up to March because March is the projected date that they plan to go public and...

Gregory (05:34.161)
If the shareholders are like, okay, we like this, we can work with this, then boom, Discord goes public and pretty much it, we, you know, see what happens from there.

Daniel (05:46.381)
Imagine that that bundle rabbit hole where, oh, you want to use a discord on more than one platform, extra $3 a month.

Gregory (05:57.363)
Yeah. Yeah.

Uly (06:01.123)
Or you want to send your friend a video? Ten cents per second.

Daniel (06:05.025)
Well, they already started charging a while back with the, you wanted to upload a simple clip. Yeah. Which, which I was, I was fine with because I do, I understand like servers have size limits before they start, you know, needing to, like they can only, have to like, the more you use a server and the more gigabytes that are used on that said server, the more money you have to put into it to expand that server. So it makes sense to have to,

Uly (06:08.399)
Oh yeah, if it's larger than 5 megabytes or something like that, yeah.

Daniel (06:34.861)
ask the consumer to pay something to help maintain that. I get that, but it did start getting a little ridiculous. Like at some point it's like, do you really need $10 a month from everybody to upload a 30 second clip? Or a few pictures, you know?

Gregory (06:49.95)
Right.

Uly (06:52.975)
I had a problem with that when I was in Japan last year where I tried to upload like my one minute video of the Gundam unicorn unicorn Gundam transforming at the mall Couldn't send it because it was too too large of a file. It was a gig because Samsung I said it's a full HD and it was a gig and like yeah, that makes sense Yeah, I took a 4k video. dude. It's a fucking Gundam. I'm Sorry

Daniel (07:13.581)
4k videos

Uly (07:22.159)
I know Greg gets mad when I cuss now.

Gregory (07:23.634)
What?

Daniel (07:25.709)
To the corner, the room of shame, corner of shame. Did you see? Did you see the shame in his eyes? He looked like he was about to get fired! What have you said to this man?

Uly (07:26.799)
The corn to the corner we were talking about Gundam. got me Yeah, okay. Anyway, it was a gig. It was a

Gregory (07:28.084)
I was like, were going on your thing? ahead.

Uly (07:38.735)
You

Gregory (07:39.636)
I didn't say anything!

Uly (07:43.031)
He censored me, he neutered me,

Daniel (07:44.459)
Yuli, Yuli, use the Charmander and show us where he touched you.

Uly (07:48.911)
Hahaha!

No, we have this discussion where I use a lot of sentence enhancers a little bit too much

Gregory (08:02.461)
I was just like, I was just like, you know, just tone it down a little bit. Cause you know, we're,

Uly (08:07.459)
Well, I mean if I'm saying a cuss word every other word, yeah, I need to it down As I forgot I forgot I forgot it's been two months since we did this anyway

Daniel (08:10.379)
His life ended, that pause, that

Gregory (08:17.493)
You

Daniel (08:18.765)
Greg should be proud of me for saying F instead of full blown going off. See, that's, that's... That's why I took a break. I was working on myself, buddy.

Uly (08:26.819)
you

Gregory (08:27.978)
I appreciate both of you. do. appreciate both of you.

Uly (08:30.991)
So anyway, it was a full Gundam. I'm gonna take a 4K video of it and I'm gonna send it to you guys on Discord. But it's like, well, you need Nitro. And I'm like, well, yeah, I'll pay the 70 bucks for the month. And I sent you guys the full gig Nitro video. And it's only a minute long video of the Gundam transforming. I was like, yeah, that's worth it. That was worth it. So in the future, they...

Daniel (08:33.424)
yeah, what was you saying?

Daniel (08:50.637)
That's pretty dope though.

I got a guns I might need to work on. It's a little one though, it's nothing crazy, but I do need to put it together.

Uly (08:59.351)
No, you can see above my head, all the ones that I've been currently working on right now, right there.

Daniel (09:04.861)
I hang on. Let me let me get my flashlight.

Gregory (09:07.765)
You guys can't see anything in my eye I have no models currently but I plan to change that in the future. Yep.

Uly (09:08.719)
I

Daniel (09:09.963)
as I gaze into the abyss that is your room.

Uly (09:14.921)
no. In March, when we, when, when I meet him in Japan, I'm dragging him to the Gundam base. We're going to, we're going to spend our life savings on it.

Gregory (09:20.437)
Yep. Yeah, I figured.

Daniel (09:22.337)
I'm really, really jealous that you guys are going to Japan. I miss Japan.

Uly (09:25.513)
It was it was a random coincidence that we're going at the same time

Gregory (09:30.131)
And then it just became GZ in Japan, so there we have it.

Daniel (09:34.345)
I gotta say though, knowing the two of you getting together in another country, I just...

I look forward to the stories because there's no way that this isn't going to be very interesting.

Gregory (09:45.747)
You

Uly (09:46.475)
Ha ha ha ha!

Gregory (09:48.916)
it's yeah, like it's it's it's gonna be a great time. Like 100 % it's gonna be a great time. But yeah, I know one of my concerns with the discord is going to be what a lot of people have been talking about. They're going to have to aggressively monetize more. Every chat based platform that pretty much has come around since we've been around.

Uly (09:53.657)
Duh, dude.

Gregory (10:17.683)
has had to change their approach. Messenger did it, Snapchat did it, Skype did it. And there's a few others, like eight that have, you know, when they went public, their whole layout changed. And for the most part, everything becomes more streamlined because they have more access, they have more fun, so they can do more. And...

Uly (10:24.643)
Did Skype do it?

Gregory (10:45.753)
I think the issue Discord's running into that they were trying to hopefully, you know, when you have subscribers, that's basically crowdfunding. They were hoping the crowdfunding would be enough, but it isn't is AI. And this is just my opinion. This is not fact. This is just my opinion. I think the strong push for AI from major corporations like, you know, Microsoft and Amazon and all of that, who have been making this huge push for AI.

have indirectly affected things like Discord. And for Microsoft, this is a win because they've wanted Discord for a long time. Now they have a guaranteed way to get a piece of Discord that Discord had denied them because with this huge push for AI, the cost of RAM has gone up. Well, computers need RAM. These AI centers are sucking up all of RAM. That increases the cost across the board for everybody.

not just your regular consumer, but other companies as well. And Discord being that they pretty much run their own servers, we were paying for that. And that's why they were able to keep everything in house. Well, if the cost of RAM is skyrocketing, then their costs are going up. And what they're making, and subscribers, they're fickle. One month you subscribe, one month you don't. One month you subscribe, one month you don't. So it's not a guarantee, consistent source of revenue the way

shareholding is, that's a consistent investment they can rely on to keep things up and running. And if the costs are going up and you've got a fickle subscriber base, eventually something's got to give you're going to have to restrict how many servers people can join. You're to have to restrict how much stuff they can do in servers. And you're talking servers that are sometimes are like as old as discord. And then if you start changing things that they've gotten accustomed to, how many bots they can have, how many people can be in their servers.

that's going to have the opposite effect that you want for a platform like Discord. So they pretty much had to bite the bullet. They didn't sell, but they were like, okay, well we need funding to keep it going. Our only option is to go public.

Daniel (12:55.691)
I'm, I gotta say, I'm very surprised. Not that it wouldn't have been a terrible move, but you know, up until now, if you want to make a Discord channel and let people join it, it doesn't cost anything.

There's nothing keeping them now from charging people for creating Discord accounts or Discord channels. And then when people join, there's a revenue-based system. And then they get a cut of that revenue for the channel you created and the people joining. And if you haven't already created a channel,

I wouldn't be surprised if they sort of grandfather people in that already have channels and then start a system somewhere down the line where they start doing that.

Gregory (13:43.583)
They probably are going to, I, yeah, and I hope I'm wrong about this as well.

Daniel (13:45.099)
I hope I'm wrong, but seems like a move that would be made, agreed, agreed move that would be made.

Gregory (13:50.485)
What

Uly (13:51.216)
But the bright side of that it would benefit the creator of the server they get some of that revenue into them Because then I'm people need to make you know, you create a popular server. They're the reason they're coming to discord You know

Daniel (13:55.821)
True, true it is revenue.

Gregory (13:56.425)
Yeah.

Gregory (14:05.013)
The problem though that'll be with that is it's going to start alienating the more niche community smaller servers because if they implement it where you can only create a server if you're on Nitro. So server creation gets limited to being a subscriber. A lot of niche servers are going to be shut down or they're going to have a time limit before they're no longer provided services and they just die out. That community just starts spreading out.

It's going to suck because the larger servers, they'll thrive, but you're going to start losing the smaller servers, which is probably honestly more than half of what Discord servers are. Not every server's got 10,000 to a million people.

Daniel (14:55.469)
Don't get me wrong. I'm not, I'm not trying to like, you know, fear monger here with, with like, they're gonna, they're gonna start charging us all this money. Like I'm just, I'm just speculating like possibilities because of the amount of shitty things that like, let's say, I don't know, Twitch, Microsoft, Sony and 10 all Skype, like all these different companies across the board.

Gregory (15:01.685)
Yeah, it's all speculation. This is all speculation.

Gregory (15:16.617)
Yeah, shareholders.

Daniel (15:23.373)
have been doing over the past several years and it's just been getting worse. And every time a subscription-based service comes into play and shareholders get involved, it just escalates. I hope I'm wrong. I hope Discord continues to keep its model and not start getting too crazy, but let's be honest.

Gregory (15:36.617)
Now I would

Gregory (15:42.234)
Yeah, I don't see anything changing too fast. They're not they can't that would just be Counterproductive to what they need So we probably have at least a good year to two before we start seeing changes implemented that actually would make people go Hmm. don't know if I want to stick around anymore, know, they've they got to test the waters They've got to offer something to rope people in keep them invested for the long term

However, and this is me being pessimistic, but I'm just looking at Skype as an example, things that go public, especially in the social system, they wind up on a clock that never turns off. And it's kind of like, I guess you could think of it like a game timer, like when you're in a racing game, you've got X amount of time to hit a checkpoint to replenish the clock. If you miss that checkpoint, your time runs out, you lose the race.

Skype wound out, Skype ran out of time. There was nothing more that could be done with Skype. Skype was fine when it was private, it went public, it had a good run, and then it fizzled out. Microsoft was like, we got nothing else. Discord going public could put them now on that constant racetrack clock, that if they can't consistently come up with something to make the shareholders happy, because shareholders,

Daniel (16:53.814)
Thanks.

Gregory (17:08.949)
They say, I give you $5,000, I want 10,000 back. I give you $10,000, I want 20,000. And the shareholders are hungry. They're constantly hungry. They're bottomless. So Discord is going to infinitely have to come up with ways to keep evolving the system to keep shareholders happy. And the moment they can no longer do that, that's it. That's the end of Discord. That's why we've seen Twitch change so much.

while they're like fine alienating the user base that made them popular, what they decided to accept has made shareholders happy because it's made them money. So that's why they've been turning the other cheek. So I would just say, don't be surprised if Discord five years from now is not the Discord we all remember.

Daniel (17:56.28)
Did Microsoft own Skype? Was that a Microsoft? Because Microsoft Teams, when did Microsoft Teams start? Because Microsoft Teams has dominated the, like,

Uly (18:00.016)
Yep.

Uly (18:04.579)
when Skype died.

Uly (18:09.963)
It, it's that it's the Skype model just rebranded.

Gregory (18:14.613)
They pretty much, yeah.

Daniel (18:16.181)
Is that okay? So that's what that was Skype rebranded more or less to Microsoft Teams because Microsoft Teams is what's used for like work environments and stuff.

Uly (18:21.795)
They basically killed.

Gregory (18:24.597)
But remember how Skype was Skype was what what messenger basically is. It was basically to connect with friends, family. wasn't work focused.

Daniel (18:35.689)
Skype was already up against Discord at the time though, so anyone who wasn't using Skype for business purposes, work meetings, everyone else was on Discord.

Gregory (18:47.881)
Yeah, and now you're going to probably see that with this court. And what's going to probably happen is there's going to be a new competitor comes up because there was a there was a competitor.

Daniel (18:55.277)
You imagine me at work and they're like, all right guys, today we're going to use discord. And I'm like, I don't think that's a good idea. And then it's like, I get on the work meeting and then it's like, warners. I'm like, you asked for this.

Gregory (18:58.837)
We're going to get on a Discord business call.

Uly (19:03.87)
my god.

Uly (19:07.555)
Not even worse, it gives you the names that your friends have of you. Especially the ones I give you guys.

Gregory (19:11.159)
man.

Daniel (19:14.187)
my, my, my, my, my, what is it? Your status under your name pops up, your daily status for whatever reason today, I changed it to go, go gooner gadget or something.

Uly (19:19.94)
No.

Uly (19:25.799)
dude, my statuses are always amazing. Like, why are explaining to manager, like why is that guy's status definitely not watching furry porn?

Daniel (19:28.043)
I have to explain to my manager that...

Gregory (19:37.181)
Why, you forget like in a moment of just being like defiant, you change your status, they could know when you didn't have to end in there like, all right, everyone pull up your status. And it says under under Warners debating gooning at work.

Daniel (19:37.345)
Go, go, Cooner Gadget!

Daniel (19:45.513)
man.

Uly (19:50.105)
Ha ha ha ha.

Daniel (19:52.237)
I'll have to infinitely, infinitely stay invisible.

Gregory (19:55.765)
You

Uly (19:55.918)
No, no, it just says really want to punch my boss right now And then your boss just looks at their status and then stares at you and you're just staring back at him like yeah, bitch

Gregory (19:58.898)
Really want to punch my boss right

Daniel (19:59.245)
Yeah.

Gregory (20:04.021)
Just the blank stare.

Daniel (20:07.029)
I'm not changing my profile pic, it is forever Einzel Ghosn.

Gregory (20:11.045)
You know, like I said, I think we've got at least a good five years before we see really major changes with Discord. like just to remind people, it's not to scare everyone, but I would say this is the time if you're not into investing and you want to be able to have a say. If you're a shareholder in a company, you do have a say. It doesn't matter if you don't own hundreds of shares.

you do have a say as long as you're invested in that company, you can take part. So if you want Discord to stay Discord, this is your chance to get your foot in the door as a shareholder to have voting power on directions Discord takes. The people can outvote the over, you know, it's a majority thing. I think a lot of people don't realize that as like if you're a shareholder of even one share, you have a say.

in how things go. But like I said, it's supposed to happen in March, but they still have to prove to shareholders, the initial investors, that they can guarantee a return on investment. you know, they might...

Uly (21:25.199)
There's also the negative side of that where if it doesn't take over they will probably increase the price of everything just the make Yeah, so it's a double-bladed sword that if it goes public it can be great for a few years Or if it stays private it can go great for a few years Either way, we're gonna be paying a higher price. It's Just depends how aggressive they get with it

Gregory (21:30.889)
Yeah, they would just naturally increase prices.

Gregory (21:49.917)
Yeah, it'll be it'll be incremental increases in aggression. But if it's not crazy overnight.

Daniel (21:57.055)
guys, I just came up with the perfect discord work alias. So I come up on there and I'm like, right? I I pop up like this. I'm like, and it's just a picture of me like this. And underneath it, says Gooner Gary.

Gregory (22:13.305)
You're terrible!

Uly (22:14.361)
Hahaha!

Gregory (22:18.346)
my goodness, wasn't there like a study that some streamer found that she basically was like, it was proven that gooning keeps the video game industry alive. Like it's been proven like it keeps the video game industry alive. Like she's not wrong. The numbers don't lie. She's not wrong.

Daniel (22:19.821)
That's not me!

Daniel (22:28.173)
Of course it does!

Uly (22:31.587)
When has it not?

Daniel (22:37.813)
Light gooing, everything in moderation, people. Light gooing is OK. Just don't be obnoxious about it, Uly.

Gregory (22:45.492)
Speaking of Gooning, that's actually perfect segue to the next topic, Razor's AI.

Daniel (22:51.469)
right right right, I hadn't heard anything about this.

Uly (22:53.705)
yeah, that thing.

Gregory (22:54.584)
Ava. So, So here here's the thing. Here's the thing, right? AI is basically hurting the gaming industry. We've got Nvidia saying, hey, yeah, we're going to just start focusing on AI. Screw you guys, even though you've basically made us who we are. And everybody's saying, yeah, we're going to actually send our ramp to AI data centers.

Daniel (22:58.219)
Even a goo name. Let's go.

Uly (23:00.971)
It's in a jar too.

Gregory (23:23.856)
sucks to be you guys for your PC, you know, builds and your console gaming systems, they're going to go up in price because AI. And then here comes Razer out of left field for no reason and going, hey, guys, by the way, we know you can't afford a new computer or probably console, but we're going to create this AI gaming companion. Probably console. We created this AI

Daniel (23:45.965)
Or probably. Or probably a console. Sorry.

Gregory (23:53.535)
Gaming companion for you called Ava and actually Ava is just the base model. They've divided it I didn't know this there's Ava Kira Zane Faker like the eSport athlete Faker and Sal and They're pretty much 3d hologram AI

Uly (24:07.666)
It will get the out of here

Daniel (24:12.159)
Okay, pause. they?

They're not all just female, like they're all different.

Gregory (24:19.25)
Yeah, there's two females, two males, and then one non-gender.

Uly (24:19.374)
Yes.

Daniel (24:21.205)
You know what? Good for them. Good for them for not just straight up sexualizing one gender and sexualizing just everyone.

Gregory (24:27.824)
including an esport athlete.

Daniel (24:30.125)
Yeah, just they just across the board like equal.

Uly (24:34.959)
Everybody wants they want their own version of Jarvis just in their head, you know as also you know what that's gonna be scary cuz you Imagine how lonely you kind of have to feel to want that like to have someone I can talk to you while gaming

Gregory (24:40.09)
I you know

Daniel (24:41.823)
if Jarvis wanted to sit on your lap and tell you you were doing a good job.

Cheers.

Daniel (24:52.759)
I don't want to talk to anyone else besides you or my wonderful girlfriend. What is the point of this? What are they trying to do with Ava?

Gregory (25:02.152)
So here's what I can answer for you straight from Razer themselves. What can Ava do beyond gaming? Project Ava is a friend for life that organizes your daily life, consults on personal tasks and guides you to victory in every game. She acts as a personal organizer for schedules, dinner plans while serving as a professional AI consultant capable of creative brainstorming and complex data analysis. And then is Ava considered cheating?

Uly (25:17.049)
Called it.

Gregory (25:32.422)
in competitive games. Project Ava is strictly designed as a coach and trainer, not a tool for automated play. Razor works to ensure all features comply with game developers terms of service, focusing on helping players learn and master new mechanics rather than providing an unfair competitive advantage, which let's be honest, gamers will gamers find a

Uly (25:34.539)
I would say yes.

Daniel (25:34.604)
Whoa, is it?

Daniel (25:50.752)
What am I going to be running down the battlefield and Ava is going to be like you have an enemy behind the wall in your left ear or around the left.

Gregory (25:54.408)
Jarvis in your ear.

Uly (25:57.454)
Yeah, you're probably gonna be playing battlefield. It's like they're taking point each probably go for point C since they're all over there It's like that it's still somewhat of a cheat. I would say

Gregory (26:06.44)
Yeah, 100%. Like, lot of competitive, tournament-based competitive games are probably going to see a drop in natural skill, because if Ava actually takes it to the market and...

Uly (26:22.563)
Daniel, why are you leaning like that? You look like a hobo.

Gregory (26:25.46)
damn!

Daniel (26:27.383)
Sorry, my entire body shut down in disbelief at the idiocy behind what is now becoming AI. AI was supposed to be this thing, this tool that like aided us in the world and improved our lives. And instead it's taking away our ability to think, create art and do things naturally, organically.

Gregory (26:35.955)
Yeah.

Daniel (26:56.105)
What are people even going to do anymore if we have AI just doing and thinking everything for us?

Uly (26:58.829)
I'm like,

Gregory (27:02.792)
For us, we're heading into Wally territory. We're heading into Wally territory. Yeah. We were just missing the AI and now we have it. We're literally living Wally. And if you guys have not seen that movie, you might as well go watch it because it's becoming a history lesson.

Uly (27:04.619)
Ever seen Wally? Yep, Wally.

Daniel (27:08.759)
We're just all gonna be a bunch of fat dumb bastards.

Uly (27:12.087)
We already are a bunch of fat dumb bastards, I mean...

Yeah.

Daniel (27:25.485)
I deserve an exosuit. It is 2026. I deserve to go down the street. Isn't that a thing in China, by the way? Pretty sure I saw a few videos like what and I can't walk down the street and go buy an exosuit.

Uly (27:35.991)
It's thing everywhere. It's a thing everywhere. Exosuits are a thing everywhere.

Gregory (27:35.998)
Probably.

Uly (27:44.951)
No, you can't. They're still under development, but exosuits are a thing.

Gregory (27:50.214)
I want them to work out the kinks yet, okay?

Daniel (27:50.338)
I feel like I should, that's what I'm saying. I feel like I should be able to walk down the street. I should be able to go and like down the store to an exo suit store. Okay. And be like, I want that. And then I put it on and I'm like, do, do, do, do, do, jumping 10 feet. Yeah. I'm telling you, I saw videos.

Uly (28:01.775)
don't know if you want the first version of an exosuit because like it could like imagine you try to like throw a ball and it throws your arm with it because it's just so strong like your arm isn't gonna like it's attached to your arm is still gonna throw it

Gregory (28:03.572)
I was, yeah.

Daniel (28:10.029)
But it's a tech... I'm telling you right now, in China you can just walk around and buy exosuits.

Gregory (28:11.485)
I was just thinking of what-

Gregory (28:20.338)
You know what they're not going to tell you? How many two, how many people have suffered? What was it? Iron Man 2 when everyone was trying to replicate the suit and the. He turned his whole body and the guy's like he survived. He survived.

Uly (28:28.333)
All that dude that like completely turned himself around.

Daniel (28:33.929)
What? See? Yes, China makes exoskeletons publicly available for tourism and rehabilitation, robotic legs, yada, yada, yada for approximately a thousand dollars.

Uly (28:34.244)
me.

Uly (28:45.241)
That I don't buy it. I wouldn't trust it. I would not trust it

Gregory (28:46.585)
Mm-mm. I don't think that's ready for public.

Daniel (28:49.545)
AI power, lightweight, flexible power used for healthcare industry, consumer markets, and then the military.

Uly (28:52.343)
No, no. I would understand like a light powered one to help people like rehabilitate, like to walk or to put, you know, force on them.

Daniel (29:00.757)
I would wear one for work, dude, lifting patients and moving stuff all the time.

Gregory (29:05.768)
That, okay, now that makes sense.

Uly (29:06.863)
Hold up to be fair. You live in a we live in America where patients are above, you 300 pounds most of most of God

Gregory (29:11.912)
That is also true. That is also true.

Daniel (29:13.517)
Someone comes into the hospital and their tone is all wrong. Right? Threatening people, but I have an exosuit. Like, see what I'm like? Fuck you.

Gregory (29:24.724)
Okay, so what do do?

Uly (29:25.735)
Why would you get- why would you- why would you want to get close to someone losing their- their- their mind and put yourself at risk when you can only- you can just taze them from far away? Dude, you're- you're putting yourself in danger for no reason.

Daniel (29:32.673)
to test the exosuit.

Gregory (29:34.792)
So what do you do when someone has to mandatorily wear an Exosuit that's already over 300 pounds, they have to wear an Exosuit to offset their weight, the Exosuit's gonna add like another 300 pounds.

Daniel (29:37.869)
you

Daniel (29:46.145)
They're light. They're light. They're like 20, 30 pounds.

Uly (29:49.165)
No, they have to, they still have to carry their own weight and on top of adjust you. only exosuits I would willingly wear are the ones from advanced warfare.

Gregory (29:59.699)
yeah, I remember those. Yeah.

Uly (30:01.251)
Those were amazing.

Daniel (30:02.437)
The ones I'm seeing, like they remove the excess tension on your joints. Like when you're running and picking things up, it's not like wearing like a really heavy one where you can lift really heavy things. It's more about removing all that extra weight and tension from your joints and ligaments. So you can do more longer and faster without hurting yourself.

Gregory (30:25.684)
Can I just, and I know this is not even gaming. We were talking about Razer.

Daniel (30:28.109)
Sorry, we were talking about Razer and then I... AI and AI exosuits, I got excited. Welcome to the GZ Chop Shop.

Uly (30:34.319)
Well, this is, mean, this still just is part of it because what if they run on razor razor programming, razor GPUs, whatever.

Gregory (30:41.084)
I mean, yeah, eventually all these their ambitions are not going to stop at simply Ava. They want to take it to market and then these things will become commercialized going beyond gamers. Look at like coming back in Discord. Discord was was all gamers and then COVID hit and everyone discovered Discord. Like to this day, Discord is used by churches and businesses and people were using Discord over Zoom because Zoom had that

Uly (31:03.567)
Which is good. It's good.

Gregory (31:10.9)
stupid time limit thing and discord was like we don't care knock yourself out chat as long as you want so it's only a matter of time so yuli has a point like you know if ava takes off it's only a matter of time before other people are like well why can't i have ava just to have an ava

Uly (31:30.315)
It's going to be one of those things where they just want to Jarvis in their head. And I think, I don't think that's the smart thing to do to give everyone a, a companion that thinks for them in a sense.

Gregory (31:40.468)
And Ava's gonna be, and already can see people being a little iffy with Ava because Ava runs on Grok.

Uly (31:48.944)
I didn't know that part. That's Grok. The ex. Yeah. I had fun with Grok when I paid for a month. I was like, let me, let me mess with Grok and I got Grok to say some heinous stuff up until they fixed them.

Daniel (31:51.809)
It runs on what?

Gregory (31:52.882)
rock, the grok engine.

Daniel (31:55.359)
OK. Yeah.

Gregory (31:58.004)
So.

Gregory (32:06.482)
Now, I will say I know a lot of people are like super angry about Ava and I I feel like I use AI for what intended purposes are like I don't. Project Ava looks like, yeah, it's a holographic pretty image with professional animation like. It's pretty sick.

Daniel (32:18.765)
Oh, that's sick. Sorry, finished that thought. No, no, no, no, I'm looking at Project Ava like I'm looking at what it looks like.

Uly (32:21.869)
He's still on Nexo Suits, isn't he?

Uly (32:27.599)
Daniel (32:31.021)
It is pretty sick. Like I'm not like

Uly (32:33.028)
Yeah.

Gregory (32:35.314)
And I'm not going to lie, depending on the price, I would want to get one to use as a gaming companion, you know, put it in the living room and see what it's, it's capable of. Like I am, I am not for all these companies leaning into AI and hurting them, rest of the industry like they are, but I'm not against the commercial AI that is meant to improve your life, like help you stay on a schedule, help you remember

Daniel (32:35.713)
That's pretty cool. I see them.

Gregory (33:04.606)
dates help you come up with ideas and brainstorm some things that

Uly (33:10.334)
Whatever happened to just writing it down?

Gregory (33:13.362)
I mean, you can as someone who does creative work, a lot of the times, the stuff I write down, I want to beam off of someone else. But I don't have someone at the time I can beam that idea off of or can comprehend what I'm trying to say in the moment, be it my friends or at work or, you know, my girlfriend's busy. And I'm like, OK, I need I need to get this out and talk it out loud now.

So I'll talk to, you know, my Amazon device and I'm like, okay, this is stupid, but here's an idea. Yada, yada, yada. Where, how can I expand on this? And she'll spit back some things I didn't even think of. And I'm like, oh, okay, I can proceed forward in this direction, elaborate more. What do I need to do? You know, like for the business, what direction can I take for A? And then she'll be like, here's this. And I'm like, wait, this part you just said.

Uly (33:48.303)
You

Daniel (34:12.407)
Well, I hope it works better than Siri, because when you ask Siri to do anything, she just fucking pisses herself and stops working.

Gregory (34:12.732)
elaborate things like that.

Gregory (34:18.868)
serious very well to clarify I have Alexa Plus which recently came out it's the new updated supposed to be more conversation from yeah so she's it it's prime if you have prime it's included

Uly (34:31.407)
How much is that a month?

How much is that a month? Is that like a subscription? I'm using Google AI just to test it out and like I can see the benefits of it.

Daniel (34:43.053)
See my problem with Alexa is her attitude.

Gregory (34:46.334)
She is sassy. She's pretty sassy. Yeah, she's pretty sassy.

Uly (34:49.315)
Nothing wrong with a little sass. least she gives you the answer.

Daniel (34:52.673)
Like there's been times I've, I'm like, you, I, threatened her last time. was like, you talk to me like that again. I'm going to unplug you. It's been like a year and a half.

Gregory (35:03.23)
So.

Daniel (35:03.533)
I don't play.

Gregory (35:05.864)
But I think Ava is an interesting concept. It's the next step to holographic AI literally being in your house. You say the name and then an image appears. That seems to be what Razer's going for. They're trying to take that next step forward. And like I said, it looks cool.

Daniel (35:06.977)
Follow through is important.

Uly (35:25.251)
God damn it.

Uly (35:30.007)
I like how you said holographic AI my mind just immediately went to like all right Sydney Sweeney shut That touches my mind immediately. It's like there's someone that's gonna just put a famous person on it like all right Gordon Ramsay Tell me how to make this egg Like that's gonna

Gregory (35:34.388)
See? I told you.

Gregory (35:42.17)
Yep. 100%.

Daniel (35:45.346)
I can't believe they left the comments on for all these, like the AVA video and the comments are on across the board for like YouTube and everything. And I'm like, y'all really left the comments on. That's.

Uly (35:52.334)
Yeah, of course.

Daniel (36:02.477)
Courageous.

Gregory (36:03.392)
Yeah. Which also YouTube snuck in their AI, which is basically Google. But I didn't know that YouTube was going to sneak in their own AI. So if you're a YouTube creator, you probably noticed AI settings popped up at the top of their page. And you can get the AI to break down where your views are coming from and what you should focus on. And pretty much what other sites were charging you for, YouTube is trying to implement on their site.

Daniel (36:32.428)
Huh.

Gregory (36:33.256)
for free. So we're gonna start seeing competition there. I think when there's so much AI flooding the market more than there is now, like once it doubles that bubble will finally pop. And that's when we might see the tech market finally smooth out.

Uly (36:48.473)
Dude, speaking of YouTube AI, they had one for their music app, because I pay for YouTube premium. Yeah, I pay for it. Anyway, they had this feature where like in the middle of like you're listening to music in the middle of songs, they'll give you two AI voices. They'll say this next song has this history and it's two different voices telling you the history of the song that's coming up. And I'm like, this is pretty interesting. I do like the radio kind of voice.

Like having that radio talk in between songs. I hate that. It's predictable. As soon as you hear the AI voice, it's like, it's going to give you a fact. That's like, all right. Yeah. I already, yeah, this fact. Yeah. And then let me guess the other one's going to ask surprised. look at that. I turned it off after a week. I'm like, yeah, this is annoying.

Gregory (37:28.34)
That's it.

Gregory (37:32.691)
Yeah, people are starting to get wise to knowing AI videos now and AI voices. When I went to the Flow concert in October, I believe it was, granted, they're a Japanese band. So their English is pretty limited. So I was wondering who they were going to have to introduce them and everything. And it was an AI announcer. And they said, I am your AI host for tonight. And the audience was like, brrr.

Like everyone lost it and I'm like, I get it, you know, because they could have probably hired someone that speaks English and Japanese to, you know, at least introduce them. They only needed that introduction.

Uly (38:15.951)
It's hard. It's hard because AI doesn't have that charisma that someone who does have that charisma when they introduce someone it actually electrifies it. brings the mood up.

Gregory (38:26.878)
Right, because the AI was like, they were like, let's get a round of applause. And everyone was like, it was like, I can't hear you.

Daniel (38:33.855)
I can't wait to use AI to introduce myself and communicate and interact with my patients and explain to them, hey, guys, I don't really have much of a personality. But if you let my AI assistant join us, your experience today will be much better.

Gregory (38:51.238)
It's I'm very just I guess my biggest concern with AI is it's going to. Well, it's already killing the the human experience, human interaction, the need to learn and hone a craft because, OK, AI is already trying to take away needing to learn how to draw, learn how to write. Heck, even, you know.

Uly (38:56.175)
Once they start taking over drones and they invade us. That Terminator 2 status. Yeah.

Daniel (39:00.886)
You

Gregory (39:21.108)
Reading because if you're really lazy you could turn on an AI screen reader if you really if you're like, oh this game doesn't have a voiceover screen read it to me and now For gaming and the one thing that kept gamers, know They said, know people that play video games are less likely to get dementia because we're constantly keeping our brain active or problem-solving, you know, we're memorization pattern so it

playing video games actually is healthy for keeping dementia at bay. And now you're gonna have a gaming companion who can literally probably do the work for you.

Uly (40:03.585)
And then the dementia is going to come back.

Gregory (40:06.75)
Cause it's like, you don't have to think anymore. You run into a puzzle and instead of sitting there and figuring out or turning off the game and letting it soak in for a bit and coming back and trying again, you just go, Ava, I'm stuck. How do I solve it?

Daniel (40:20.093)
I just pictured someone like me old with dementia playing a video game and Ava's like giving me information and I'm just like, what was that? Ava who? Point what? Point B.

Uly (40:20.942)
No.

Gregory (40:29.835)
You

Uly (40:33.367)
I'm gonna miss the days when I'm watching someone play a game and they're like, hold on. Hold on Let me pause it right here Let me write this down real quick cuz I'm probably gonna need this later have that little little like stack of postcard post notes and all that shit. My god, those are I still do that for him though. I still do that right now It's like every time I'm playing a mystery game. like, alright, let me write that down real quick That's something probably gonna come back later

Daniel (40:42.507)
Where am I?

Gregory (40:47.358)
Those are the days.

Daniel (40:53.614)
That's a fun part of games though, like getting the right stuff down and...

Uly (40:56.227)
Yeah, now you'd be like Ava remember that. That's it. I'm like, that's not fun no more.

Gregory (41:01.332)
Yeah, that's not that's not fun. But it's a different generation of gamers coming up. So I don't know. I guess it just we'll just have to see how things go. know, Ava could flop and then all of us have a brick in the future.

Daniel (41:19.241)
I don't know, it depends. What is Ava wearing?

Gregory (41:21.876)
Ava's not gonna flop. No, Ava's not gonna flop. And Razor knows, they know their, they know their audience.

Uly (41:22.255)
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think Ava's gonna flop. Maybe the others, maybe the others, but not Ava.

Daniel (41:34.935)
Didn't Ray have like glasses or something a while back? I'm trying to, they had, they've come out with some interesting shit. They had masks.

Uly (41:39.725)
I think they did.

Uly (41:44.481)
All the Razor man, the COVID mask. remember that as the art, the, no, you should have, that would have been perfect.

Daniel (41:47.307)
That's what I swear to God. I almost got one just for the fucking plot. Go up into work with that.

Gregory (41:56.649)
But I'm not going to pretend that I'm not going to, like I said, depending on how much they charge for it, like if it's the same price as a console, forget it. Not worth it. But I'm not opposed to giving it a try to see what it's about. I don't think they have a release date for it. Yeah, it just says.

Daniel (41:56.802)
Good lord. That was something.

Uly (42:05.869)
I just don't trust these clankers.

Uly (42:22.544)
Not that I remember.

Gregory (42:25.03)
You can join now and I guess get on the list for when they release it. They'll tell you.

Daniel (42:31.021)
Coming out somewhere between Discord going public and PS6 being pushed back 40 years.

Gregory (42:37.428)
So you can make a $20 deposit right now, which is fully refundable. $20 probably on like $300. That's just so they could get as many deposits. No, I think, what? I think it won't be more than $200 though. Being that.

Daniel (42:41.165)
$20 deposit?

Daniel (42:46.869)
Yeah, I'm like, seems cheap.

Daniel (42:57.015)
Underneath it, it says, now accepting Klarna.

Gregory (42:59.878)
Jeez, put your AI on a payment plan.

Uly (43:00.691)
my god, dude, that whole model. You know what I realized is how many people actually put door dash orders on Klarna.

Gregory (43:10.618)
Hey, to be fair, DoorDash has gotten ridiculous.

Uly (43:12.485)
No, no, no, no, there's no like if you can't afford door dashed figure something you shouldn't you shouldn't be using door dash.

Gregory (43:17.468)
You really shouldn't. Yeah. You really shouldn't be getting it. Yeah.

Daniel (43:21.513)
I deleted that stuff off my phone a while ago. I couldn't take it anymore.

Gregory (43:26.632)
but those fees DoorDash tax on do get out of hand. I've started entire orders and then by the time I'm like, it's only gonna be $30. And then the DoorDash fees come in and it's almost like $50. And I'm like, nope, nevermind, I'm good.

Uly (43:26.832)
site.

Uly (43:30.733)
my god it is.

Daniel (43:38.369)
Yeah, I.

Uly (43:39.344)
You have to be like, do I really want sometimes I'll be like I really want fuzz. So yeah

Daniel (43:42.88)
Not, not to get off this topic too much. just, I, after everything that's happened over the, recently and all the, the, some of the whistleblowers and how much their prices are over the years, Uber is such a grimy piece of human garbage company.

Uly (43:58.257)
Uber still around. You know, all up real quick story about my Uber driver when I was in Seattle, I ordered Uber because I was, I was too drunk and I couldn't take public transportation because I wouldn't know where to go. So I got this Ethiopian dude, right?

Gregory (44:00.754)
Uber's still around. Uber still exists.

Uly (44:16.352)
And I was in the backseat sitting and he's like trying to talk to me and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I just came in. I'm here to see that concert that we just like, yeah. And then this dude's like, so from Ethiopia, just completely turns around on me, talking to me, not focusing on the road. Exactly. He almost ran over some girl and her dog. I'm like, what the f*** am I doing here? I told him, hey, my hotel is right there. You can drop me off right here. I'll walk the rest of the way.

Gregory (44:28.125)
mid drive?

Daniel (44:36.909)
I

Daniel (44:40.57)
I more so meant how they treat their consumers and their employees in general, but that's also really funny.

Uly (44:48.848)
was like, no, no, ain't doing that. Look at the room. No, this wasn't like a Tesla or a car that can self drive. This is like a Scion or something. It was an old car.

Daniel (44:50.743)
Please sir, look at the road. Can you bring up Ava or something?

Gregory (44:53.746)
Can get Ava drive?

Daniel (44:56.171)
Jesus Christ.

Daniel (45:00.078)
This is just an old regular vehicle.

Uly (45:07.107)
I was so scared for my life. I'm like, dude, the road.

Gregory (45:12.277)
I was very curious. So I started looking at the pre pre order page. I guess you could call it for for Ava. Yeah, they're like, yeah, just for like twenty dollars. But I'm like, OK, but you're not giving me a price. You're being real steam about it right now. Like.

Daniel (45:21.153)
For Ava?

Uly (45:32.282)
You know, what's gonna happen is this is just like the first step to Pleasure Bots being a thing from Razer.

Gregory (45:38.365)
I for Ray. OK, from Ray's, was about to say, isn't that like already a thing in China as well?

Uly (45:41.86)
No, it's already a thing, but like Razor's gonna be like the new Ava pleasure bot.

Daniel (45:43.693)
What would that look like? Because I picture, I picture a alleged pleasure box, for lack of a better word, with lots of lights. Razor, you know how Razor likes their lights on everything?

Uly (45:54.673)
Can you imagine your neighbors know when you're using your pleasure bot because they can see it's like a club from your window?

Gregory (45:58.868)
I hear RGB like going in rhythm.

Daniel (46:00.078)
Like why does every, why does every razor product have to be like you're in a scene from Blade? Like.

Gregory (46:08.469)
colorful

Uly (46:09.584)
colorful right there. The future is looking weird. I'm all for it but at the same time, can we go back another 20 years, just for another year?

Gregory (46:23.549)
Right. Yeah, can we take like a step back guys like slow it down a bit? But yeah, that's pretty much what's what's what's happening with with gaming.

Uly (46:33.424)
Oh, GTA six might be delayed again. That's a big deal. Might be. saw dude there's, there's a leak set. Oh my God. There's a leak saying that they're pushing the game. Like they're trying to get it done. Like a lot of it isn't most of it is somewhat done, but most of it is also not done. So it's like, we might have to push it back to 2027. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.

Gregory (46:36.4)
is that? Yeah, who saw that coming?

Daniel (46:36.468)
who saw that coming? Don't get me started, dude. I a billion dollars for a game.

Gregory (46:53.173)
Is GTA 6 becoming the star citizen for con-

Daniel (46:55.865)
They're not gonna get...

Uly (46:59.012)
Well, wasn't... Hold up, I remember Red Dead being delayed like four times before it came out. Red Dead 2.

Daniel (47:05.325)
Okay, but not for that long. And not... Okay, but it's been years for GTA 6 and a billion dollar game.

Gregory (47:07.699)
I mean, how long ago was GTA 6 announced? Yeah.

Uly (47:07.969)
It was like it was like a two year. It was like a two year delay.

Uly (47:17.752)
And make sure it's perfect. Like you're putting in a billion dollars. You get no, you go do once they release GTA six online, once they release GTA six online, they're going to make that money back. then some.

Gregory (47:18.751)
GTA 5.

Daniel (47:20.855)
They're not gonna make that money back.

They would have to sell full copies.

Daniel (47:30.157)
They're gonna have to sell full copies and not do game pass crap. And they're gonna have to literally sell nothing but micro transactions up the ass for years. It's gonna, no, it's gonna have to be. There's no way they're gonna make that money back without insane prices.

Uly (47:37.462)
I predict it's going to be the first hundred dollar game. This is going to be the first base hundred dollar game.

Gregory (47:46.838)
The thing is they know that they can. What they're doing is they're dragging out the hype over the years. They're waiting for the market to get to a point where they can justify selling a $100 game and the market's not quite there yet. It's close, but it's not there. They want the base to be $100 because they want that premium to be $200. They can't do that right now.

Uly (48:03.152)
And you know what's gonna suck?

Uly (48:09.712)
No, what's going to suck is that they're going to be like, oh yeah, the minimum recommendations of 50, 90. Nobody can afford that.

Gregory (48:16.681)
Dude, nobody's gonna. But you know, this is my final thought too, for this episode. I'm glad you brought that up. Like the minimum is like a 50 90. And I was telling you guys, and I know Daniel, we were talking about it. Like when you were asking, what is the point of GeForce now? We were like, this is like the stupidest streaming service. didn't make any sense. And then I gave it a try and I was like, okay, I could see this being for people who don't know how to build a PC, but want to play PC games and people who

Uly (48:18.33)
is like.

Hehehe

Daniel (48:43.083)
Mm-hmm.

Gregory (48:44.723)
have a Steam Deck, it's actually really good because you can still stream your intensive PC games at their intended quality on your Steam Deck without playing a Steam Deck modded version of it, you know, or having to tinker with your settings at all. So I said, G-Force now makes sense in that regard, but we're getting to a point where people are no longer being able to afford a custom built PC.

and call me conspiracy theorists, I don't care, but all of these companies, talk, they act like they're in competition, but they're really not. They all come up with a plan to make it seem like they're competing and we all get sucked into the, this brand is better than this brand, but they all work together and we get sucked into their ecosystem without even realizing how it all interconnects because like, Yuli brought up a really good point. By the time GTA 6 finally drops, they're gonna say the minimum you can have is a 50-90.

Most people are not gonna be able to afford a 5090. Most people can't afford a RAM right now. And unless you are living under a rock, you're not going to cram a 5090 into an eight gigabyte DDR3 i5 computer.

Daniel (49:54.637)
Mm-mm.

But we've, we've, we've talked about this. Yeah, we've, we've talked about this a million times before. You know, I've been pretty verbal about it. The lie that the gaming industry and streamers have been especially bad about this, over the years on Twitch, the lie that has been sold, that if you do not have the newest series GPU, then you can't play games at the highest settings or good settings or FPS. And it's just not true.

Uly (49:59.779)
All right. Now with that attitude, watch me.

Uly (50:23.237)
that.

I got an example for you. Our good friend Ladybird, she's running my old rig with like a 2060 super and she's still playing black ops 7 and she's still doing great. And she's able and she's able to stream it while playing that game. Like you don't need top of the line. You just need decent. That's a difference. That's a huge difference when it comes to PCs. Exactly. So my old rig was balanced out.

Daniel (50:37.131)
Yeah, I have a 2070 Super.

Daniel (50:42.07)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel (50:46.177)
Yep. Your parts have to be balanced out.

Gregory (50:49.683)
Nope. Yeah, my current reading. Did I run this?

Daniel (50:52.535)
But they've, they've, they've sold everyone this lie that if you don't have a $2,000 GPU newest, biggest bad GPU then, and, you know what the messed up part is, is they, they get these companies like best buy a Walmart to sell PCs out there on the shelves with the 50 series and an I three or I five, but it's that's so grimy.

Uly (51:14.958)
No, no, I would say that's a good deal because not only do you get your 5090 that you want, you get an i3 that you could just use as a second computer when you get a GPU worth that i3.

Daniel (51:27.521)
but buy a computer with the parts you want and swap out the... But yeah, but who... But no one's gonna do that. Like, if you can barely afford one PC, like, you're not gonna...

Uly (51:31.918)
Yeah, exactly. It's cheaper. It's cheaper than buying the five and 50 90 like right off the bat. Just fresh new one was cheaper. Yeah.

Gregory (51:38.677)
What was cheaper was cheaper. RAM is RAM is screwing that up across the board for all PC builds right now because everybody needs RAM like you could get by with a GPU. Yeah, so but.

Uly (51:50.616)
around this up there.

Daniel (51:53.374)
That's not to say my GPU is not getting old. I will have to replace this soon enough, but it's also been like six, seven years.

Gregory (51:59.67)
And

Uly (52:00.497)
But also you're not playing the most intense games on the highest quality. Like you don't need to see the beat of sweat coming down into player for some reason.

Gregory (52:03.227)
Exactly.

Gregory (52:08.351)
blades of grass reflecting the sun.

Uly (52:09.902)
the point.

Daniel (52:09.983)
I don't think I think most it feels like most people who stream games, like I understand that they want their stuff to look good, but they've been sold this lie that if they don't spend all that money to look the best on their streams, then they're not going to make it. And then in turn, because they believe that lie, they turn around and they tell

everyone, all their viewers the same stuff, or they show them the same stuff, or they insinuate it. It's this cycle of lies.

Uly (52:43.6)
It's a weird cycle, but I would say look at the majority of VTubers and PNG tubers out there A lot of them just got a shitty hand-drawn picture and they're doing great. It's like, know, you don't have to yeah

Daniel (52:52.169)
yeah, yeah, I'm not saying all, I'm just saying enough, enough to like promote the idea and keep it alive.

Gregory (52:59.795)
Yeah.

Uly (53:00.016)
That's uh, it's the same thing about um, what were we talking about? When uh, we know games can run on these older older pcs, but they just choose not to What was the what's the word we're thinking about? What was that word that we said? I forgot it. It's in my mind Yeah, exactly. Well, you know god damn it optimization fuck yeah They can they can optimize these games to run on these old models to look at the somewhat decently well like if you can run it at 1080p at like 60 frames that is

Gregory (53:18.941)
Yeah, yeah

Uly (53:30.188)
perfect for most for the majority of people. I don't know where they

Gregory (53:33.282)
And Indie Devs proved that. Indie Devs have been proving that, which is why they've been dominating in the market is because they've optimized their games to run on older rigs, proving that, you know, it can be done on a tight budget. And you've got AAA studios that are like, yeah, we can't do that. You have more resources available to you, more funding. What do you mean you can't do it? It's just they don't want to do it because every like I said earlier, everyone's working in cahoots.

We make a game that can't run on an older rig. You're going to force some of the market to go buy that graphics card that you are a shareholder in. You owe. We need people to buy the 5090. Hey, Capcom, just start with Capcom as an example. I'm not saying they are, but hey, Capcom, you have 500 shares in our business. You're a 10 % shareholder. Help us push these 5090s. How do we do that? We not optimize our game on PC.

Uly (54:21.924)
but they're crap at optimizing their games.

Daniel (54:28.768)
I-

Gregory (54:31.517)
and tell them that it's the GPU.

Daniel (54:32.225)
think one of the reasons it was so easy for them to drop the 50 series was because they didn't sell as many as they actually were thinking they were going to. Because they came out with that 50 series way too fast after the 40 and the 40 dropped way too fast after the 30.

Uly (54:32.228)
No. There's shit at it.

Gregory (54:39.359)
thought.

Uly (54:47.344)
It was like a year after a year of just like a new, like they were releasing the like games.

Daniel (54:52.909)
Because the 20 series, the 2016 and 70 series still hold up very well. It was considered a very good graphics card at that time, way ahead of what any other graphics card was. And then when that 30 series dropped, it was like, oh, that's cool. Like, yeah, we probably needed a new one. And then 40, 50, just right back to back. people, I think enough people realize they don't need all these new graphics cards every few years. This is ridiculous.

Gregory (55:20.469)
I also think that I also think that Nvidia has been trying to clear out warehouse stock because they knew the moment AI. And I think that's intentional. I don't think that it's a loss for them. I think they've been clearing out their warehouse because they adapted to AI way too quickly. So they knew years ago they wanted to shift focus and they needed to clear out.

Daniel (55:21.037)
And I don't think they sold as many as they were intending to.

Daniel (55:30.249)
Those price drops have been insane since it dropped.

Gregory (55:49.45)
their warehouses of GPU cards that they had already started making. So they knew what they were going to do. And for the most part, yes, people have realized, I don't need it. But it was too little too late because the video is pretty much still going to make that money. People are buying them on the sale. And they said, hey, OK, cool. We're shifting to AI anyway. But if you want to still play your games, because here's what people haven't realized and everyone's hoping that AMD is going to be their savior.

They're not. They're going to be able to corner the market and charge whatever they want. But that's like a company coming up now saying, we'll still make Blu-rays in a time that no one's buying Blu-ray because everything's digital. So the videos created GeForce now, which should have been the first red flag of what their plan was. Why would you need that when you provide the graphics card for everyone to play these games on their computer anyway?

They create the streaming service because as soon as they clear out their backlog, they're not making GPUs anymore. That's not their priority. So where are people going to be able to play the newest games that demand something above a 50 90 when nothing exists above the 50 90 or is affordable to your average consumer? You're going to have to pay a subscription fee to play those games. That's infinite revenue that then goes to their AI program. AMD

Daniel (57:04.001)
Right.

Gregory (57:18.483)
could come up with a graphics card. But if Nvidia tells the developers, hey, don't support that, make it say it can only work with our graphics cards that is not affordable to your average consumer, that's what they're gonna do. You come in and they say.

Daniel (57:33.921)
That's that's shooting themselves in the foot long term though because indie games are already proving that they can do better in a shorter amount of time on a budget and they don't have to listen to anybody.

Uly (57:44.752)
Also they don't have to charge 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 dollars per game.

Gregory (57:49.27)
True, but what happens when one of them takes off and they get cut a deal? We've seen it time and time again. I mean, small developers, we love them, but every indie developers, I won't say every, but a good portion of indie developers' goals is to become a mainstream studio. And once they get that funding, once they get that deal,

Uly (58:01.57)
Everybody falls for greed.

Gregory (58:15.721)
they can only hold out so long before they have to play ball.

And if there's no graphics cards being made and being pushed to the market, you're once again, we're on a clock. Eventually the 5090s are gonna be outdated. As a matter of fact, they're technically already out of date. As soon as it hits the shelf, it's out of date. We're getting stuff past its due date. Consoles, PCs, parts, it doesn't matter. That stuff is already out of date.

Daniel (58:41.963)
And this is where Ava comes in when you're stressed out between all these products, can't afford all this stuff. And you're like, Ava, I need something. And she's like, I can give you a hand job. You're like, you know what? Thanks. Thanks, Ava.

Gregory (58:53.653)
I can give you the digital digital robe. But I and you know, I just I just want to put this out there for and I know not everyone you don't have to agree with this. This is hypothetical. I'm thinking outside of the box here. You know, I know some people they get it all the time in the video. They're like, that's fine. I'm like, that's fine. You're in allowed your opinion just as we're allowed hours. This is just

Uly (58:54.746)
There you go, pleasure by the way.

Gregory (59:23.195)
my pessimistic possibility. I am very pessimistic and I don't regret being pessimistic because if you expect the worst to happen and it does happen then you're not caught off guard. You're like it sucks it happened but I saw it coming so it's not as bad as compared to trying to live in this bubble where your world is perfect and nothing can go wrong because positive energy and then when

Daniel (59:25.931)
And you are pessimistic.

Gregory (59:52.937)
shit happens, you're like, why did it happen to me?

Daniel (59:57.07)
Speaking of pessimism, I don't think we're that far off right now with the explosion of AI from AGI, which if you guys don't know what that is, it's artificial general intelligence, which is the next stage. It's very theoretical right now. I'm sure they're already working on it. There's no way they're not already working on it. But what it is, is it's human level cognitive intelligence.

Uly (01:00:24.898)
Isn't there a stage called actual intelligence? instead of being artificial, it's now just actual intelligence?

Daniel (01:00:27.691)
which is.

It's, well, it's AGI, yeah, AGI, artificial general intelligence, and it's human level cognitive ability to communicate, figure out problems, and basically it's us.

Uly (01:00:32.522)
That's what it is?

Uly (01:00:42.778)
But who's the human they're going to base it off on? Like that's another thing is like, who's the human they're going to base it off on? We all think differently and see things in a different way. If we're trying to develop this thing that is based off of people's thoughts and reasons and how they work. There's a lot of people out there and there's a lot of crazy people. There's even more crazy people out there online. That's where it's going to get its like information from. So are you going to get like a crazy Karen AGI?

Daniel (01:01:06.925)
Yeah, I imagine like...

Daniel (01:01:12.459)
Well, I just want to say, think right now, artists and voice actors, et cetera, they're worried, they're pissed, rightfully so, about basically the copy and paste of their products. Because right now, all AI can do is it can learn from what you give it. It can learn algorithms, and it can copy voices and actions and stuff like that, and then put it together and create things. AGI.

will just replace a person entirely, their entire thought process, because it on some level almost is that same intelligence.

Gregory (01:01:52.413)
And there you have it,

Daniel (01:01:52.813)
Did I just ruin y'all's, ruin y'all's day? Sorry.

Uly (01:01:56.846)
We got to destroy Skynet. That's the only thing we got to go to the corporate center and destroy Skynet.

Daniel (01:01:59.18)
My bad.

Gregory (01:02:00.661)
And then on an apocalyptic note, good job, borders. But that's all the time we have. That whole AI, as you can see, AI could be an entirely different episode. Maybe in a future episode, we'll break it down in a little bit more with the progress. We'll see where Ava's standing. We'll see what else comes down the AI pipeline in the future.

Daniel (01:02:04.514)
I didn't mean it.

Gregory (01:02:25.109)
but we'd love to hear your thoughts. So leave a comment under the YouTube video. If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you click that subscribe button, turn on notifications. So, you know, when more episodes are coming, like I said, it's 2026. We got a whole lot of episodes planned for you guys. So make sure to check it out. And if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast and platform, make sure to follow. We really appreciate it. And don't forget to visit GZ Chop Shop gaming podcast site so that you can join the Press Play newsletter.

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