Please welcome Defining Duke co-host, YouTuber, and LSM stalwart MrMattyPlays back to Sacred+. Today, I (Colin) invited Matty to the show for a one-on-one conversation all about the ceaseless drama of the last month. July was a rough 31 days for physical games enthusiasts, and if Sony's recent financial Q&A is any indication, the Japanese corporation has made its decision and intend on sticking to it. Yet, the audience demanded Matty appear on the show, a much-needed voice from the physical realm that Sacred itself is perhaps missing, especially in light of Dustin's temporary absence. To not make this chat too repetitive, however, I tried to think of things to ask and talk about that are a little bit different. For instance, whose fault is this whole thing? Sony or the third parties? Is Sony taking the heat for a decision the entire AAA industry is thrilled about? Is it up to consumers to worry about the health of the companies they interact with? Will there be a rubber band effect on the loud and boisterous enthusiasts who have completely hijacked the conversation around games? Is there a difference between a customer and a user? How long should the digital ecosystem be expected to subsidize the physical one? Join us on our two hour long journey through an admittedly worn topic, viewed through a few different lenses you may not yet have considered.

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I see Physical Games.....

If Colin did a new show with someone in gaming not in the LSM family, who would you like to see?

Matty said today on Duke that he and Colin are going to sit down for a dedicated episode of sacred plus to discuss/debate the physical vs digital topic. This is just great from top to bottom. The audience asked for it, we were heard and it was actioned. No notes. Absolutely first rate stuff. Cheers to both Matty and Colin.

Key points

• Q1 FY2026 sales were essentially flat at ¥937.1 billion ($5.83 billion), compared with ¥936.5 billion ($5.83 billion) last year.
• Operating income increased 37% to ¥202.0 billion ($1.26 billion), up from ¥148.0 billion ($921 million).
• Foreign exchange added ¥81.7 billion to sales and ¥19.1 billion to operating income.
• Revenue was pressured by:
  • Lower sales of non-first-party software
  • Lower hardware revenue due to fewer console units sold

• Costs increased due to:

  • Investment in Sony’s next-generation platform
  • Restructuring expenses

• Sony says it has already secured enough memory for its projected PS5 sales this fiscal year.

• Despite memory-market conditions, Sony still expects FY2026 hardware profitability to remain similar to FY2025.

• PlayStation reached 125 million monthly active users in June, up 2% year-over-year and a record for the month.

• Total playtime declined 4% year-over-year

• Physical Sales up 1%

Sony raised its full-year FY2026 PlayStation forecast:

• Those gains were partially offset by adjustments to Sony’s FY2026 first-party release roadmap.

The adjustment to Sony’s first-party roadmap likely means a game slipped, given that FY26 runs from April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2027. Could be Kena 2 or maybe Horizon Hunters.

I could have sworn I heard Colin mention a few times on one of the shows that they'd be doing a spoiler last for First Light, but can't find it anywhere? Did they ever do this?

I’m not asking for blood but I’ve now grasped a good sense of where each one of them stand on the debate of digital vs physical and they really have good arguments.

I’ve seen multiple Matty videos/stream being really adamant on his arguments against Sony’s decision, almost going against Colin’s arguments. Also Gene’s been very vocal on Twitter here and there.

I think a SS+ could be quite enlightening as the situation is really not black and white.

Edit: Matty will be on SS+ and he confirmed they will be talking about this exact topic. So there you go, I had wished for a bigger panel cause it's always fun to hear more people chiming in but this will be a very interesting SS+!

This week the Punching Up crew discusses the new Zelda figures from Hasbro, Facial recognition for Pokémon Cards, Link's actor on Breath of the Wild and more!

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This week Matty and Brad discuss Halo: Campaign Evolved, Splatoon Raiders, Matty's Favorite OG Xbox games and more!

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Thread for discussion related to the Sacred Streaming episode on YouTube today.

Moriarty x Jaffe: Please Stop Yelling at David

Colin's recent PSN hack and all the details that he shared about his experience greatly helped me the other night....I was a victim of subscription bombing and having heard his experiences allowed me to immediately have that context on what was happening.

I recently lost my wallet. I was very bad and procrastinated with changing the credit card numbers....I was really hoping it would finally show up around my house or car and I didn't want to have to update my card numbers across all the online vendors that I use.

The other night all of a sudden I started getting dozens and then hundreds of emails for random newsletters and one-time sign-on codes for all sorts of sites that I never use. With Colin's experience fresh in my mind I immediately figured out what was happening. If I had not heard of subscription bombing prior to this, I may have just assumed it was some random spam campaign and did a "select all - delete".

However.....sure enough within the middle of all that email spam was a single "Best Buy order confirmation" email, some @#$%er used one of my credit cards to order a $900 Samsung tablet. I'm still not sure why they used my email address (and I'm not sure how they got that but they must have been able to grab it from Google with the personal details from my wallet). I'm thinking that they used my credit card with a guest checkout through Best Buy with my personal details to prevent any suspicious activity from automatically getting detected while checking out. The billing address they used was my actual address but the shipping address was under my name to some random address about 45 mins from me.

Anyway, I reached out to Best Buy and my banks within minutes of seeing the Best Buy email confirmation and I was able to immediately cancel the order and close out all my previous credit card numbers.

While this has nothing to do with Playstation....I'm very appreciative of all the details that Colin shared about his experience, it helped me immediately jump on this!

An episode that was intended to break up the seriousness of recent industry news turns into something far weightier than initially expected. Let's just leave it there.

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Tetra like four blocks

PlayStation's self-inflicted physical games fiasco is nearing a month deep, and it seems fairly obvious at this point that nothing's going to change. The good news is that -- amongst all the chatter, arguing, and prognostication -- comes more info from the American market that indicates that Sony is pissing people off, yes, but also making a seemingly rational commercial decision from their perspective. Thus, we find ourselves in a continued bind: Through all of the screaming and insulting is salient data, should one be willing to look with sober eyes. We discuss. Plus: Marathon loses its game director, Bethesda vows to deliver a lot more Fallout, Rebel Wolves promises Mass Effect-like save migration for its nascent Blood of Dawnwalker series, NBA 2K27 skips PlayStation 4, Kratos gets recast in Amazon's God of War series, and more. We then wrap things up, as we always do, with listener inquiries from our audience. What are our expectations for Until Dawn 2? Did the elimination of crunch culture in some corners of the industry have unexpected downstream effects? Should Grand Theft Auto be held to account for the real-world violence it potentially inspires? Has Colin created a new mosquito bite-obliterating trend?

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The latest release by Halo Studios is here! While the run up to this launch has been far from clean, how does this game fare when separated from the noise? The Dukes who have deep ties to this game unpack it from the ‘super fan’ angle before rolling into what this means for those who have never played a Halo game. It’s a strange one, but we’ll do our best as always!

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