407: Massive Entertainment And GameStop Shenanigans

Morgan (0:20)

Welcome to the Baunfire Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Morgan, aka Baundiesel. This is episode 407, and this week, we'll be talking about used PS5 Pros going for $1,300, Massive Entertainment's big reveal, Gears of War E-Day appears to be a hit, and much more. Be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or iTunes, and subscribe to the Baundiesel YouTube channel to get all of my videos, including this podcast. Thank you to everyone who supports as YouTube members or Twitch subscribers, and be sure to check out the links in the description of the episode for my other content and other ways to support.

Okay, we're going to kick it off with GameStop doing some weird stuff, just as a preface here. This episode is late, and my next episode won't be on time either. So I'll talk about that at the end and the kind of content updates, but there's nothing wrong, everything's all good, just busy, got family stuff going on, not bad things even, just busy, and that's okay. So GameStop, some leaks came out, there's people I think on some of the various forums and game leaks and whatever on Reddit.

There was an internal email that got posted from GameStop, I assume like a store manager or someone pulled it up, that claimed that they were going to start selling their used PS5 Pros for $1300 or $1400. And the reaction to it was kind of funny because no one, you could tell people were like, oh come on, like that's insane. Like the new ones are what? I think they're $900 now, and then you need like the $80 disk if you want a disk drive. So they're close to a thousand bucks, but surely they won't sell them for that much more than the brand new one, right? Because it's used, they should be less. And that does not appear to be the case. So as of today, I'm recording this on the 6th of October. It looks like they have listed used PS5 Pros for, I think it's like $13.99 or something, and they appear to be in stock. So I think there's a few factors happening here. I think the main factor, and this is just my personal opinion, GameStop has become kind of like a meme company. It's like literally still exists in some part because it became like a meme stock. It literally became like a joke stock for people to try to pump up and make money on. And that action and the things that people were doing with that, it looks like it kind of saved the company because when it happened, it was in pretty bad shape and it looked like it was going to shut down. It seems that it did garner enough interest in the brand that it kind of revived them in some capacity. They also shut down a bunch of stores. So, not all good news. It doesn't seem. But what's interesting about it is that they have kind of persisted, right? And another factor here is that I'm under the impression that PS5 Pros are basically impossible to find right now. That they are not in stock in most places, especially to just go pick up. Maybe you can get them on the Amazon or something. I don't think so, though. And so, this looks like a play by GameStop to be like, hey, like we don't have them in stock. We know that most people don't. So, we're going to take used ones and charge a exorbitant fee for them. And I think the main reason they're doing that is because of Grand Theft Auto 6, which comes out in, I believe, less than a month at this point. And there was so much hype over the last couple of years, basically since the Pro was announced, of this is going to be the best way to play Grand Theft Auto because Grand Theft Auto is only coming out on consoles to start. It'll come to PC eventually, but it could be a year or two. And the whole idea was, well, the PS5 Pro is more powerful than the PS5 or the Series X, so it's going to be the best case to play.

What's funny about that is that it doesn't seem like that is really going to be the case, or it technically will be. So it's very likely that the PS5 Pro will have a higher resolution presentation of Grand Theft Auto 6 But the anticipation, and I believe it's been announced, but tell me I'm wrong if I am, it appears that it's still just going to be a 30 FPS cap. It's just going to do probably a smoother 30 FPS, a more consistent 30 FPS, and likely a higher base resolution than the PS5 or the Series X. And so it's this weird thing where the fact that people were getting the Pro for Grand Theft Auto 6 in general has not really panned out, because it will be a more pleasant experience. But I don't know if a smoother 30 FPS is going to seem worth the $200 or $300 upcharge that people have paid even when they released for the PS5 Pro. Heaven forbid you pay $1,300 for one.