It’s that most wonderful time of the year! It’s the XboxEra Podcast Episode 294 – “The 6th Annual Grubbsmas Shpeshaltacular” – featuring Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb!
As per tradition, Nick is joined by the lovely Jeff Grubb for the last episode of the year. Nick tells the story of Grubbsmas, and how it came to be, and then it’s all about the video games. From Metroid Prime 4, Fallout, new Halo books and the Analog 3D and of course the sad loss of the legendary Vince Zampella.
We also take your community questions, and there might even be a rumourmill – we haven’t seen one of those in a while! If you love what we do, there’s one way you can support us directly…
Support Our Team
XboxEra is a community-first, community funded publication. If you value what we do, and want to have a direct say in what we cover, consider supporting us directly on Patreon.
All you need to do is head on over to patreon.com/xboxera and for less than a cup of coffee a month, you’ll help keep this publication alive. As a bonus, you’ll find that we create more content than many other Patreon supported publications, and we give more back in return.
So go on, do something awesome.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Going live
00:13:57 – Intro
00:15:45 – Hi everyone and MERRY GRUBBSMAS!
00:17:00 – Nick tells the story of Grubbsmas
00:18:35 – How’s Jeff been?
00:20:00 – How’s XboxEra going?
00:23:11 – What have we been playing? Jeff and Nick discuss Metroid Prime 4
00:34:00 – The Outfoxies
00:37:45 – Analog 3D
00:40:00 – Jesse has been playing Returnal and Fallout 4 as well as reading a new Halo Book!
00:42:40 – Fallout TV Show tangent
00:43:50 – Big Hops
00:46:35 – RIP to Vince Zampella
00:49:15 – Superchat about Obsidian and Fallout
00:53:50 – Superchat about Jeff’s hair
00:55:05 – 007 First Light has been delayed to May 27th 2026
00:58:53 – Activision Blizzard Media site says they’re at the forefront of where gaming is going
01:04:30 – Sony patents AI censorship in games
01:07:25 – Rainbow 6 Siege hacked in a major way
01:13:00 – Help us out at XboxEra by making Nick eat a bean!
01:14:50 – Superchat about Norwegian Forest Cats
01:16:15 – Super tip about VGHF bringing back the Sega Channel content
01:19:50 – THE RUMOURMILL IS BACK!
01:22:10 – Rumour about the next mainline Zelda game
01:30:10 – Nintendo is not done with amiibos
01:32:00 – We should be getting a Luigi’s Mansion amiibo
01:33:05 – Is Square Enix going to be at the Xbox Dev Direct?
01:41:55 – Patron Shout
01:44:55 – Community Question #1: Lazar Wolf – What’s the craziest rumour you’ve hear that ended up false?
01:50:47 – Community Question #2: itzFinn – What are you looking forward to and scared of for 2026?
02:03:45 – Community Question #3: J_F0LEY – Should MS focus on the FSE or Games on the Windows Store for 2026?
02:08:10 – Community Question #4: PoderickPayne – Questions about Nolan’s Odyssey
02:14:30 – Community Question #5: Hytham G – New Year’s Resolutions and MCC on Switch
02:19:10 – Community Question #6: DidactBRHU3 – Xbox predictions for 2026?
02:26:45 – Community Question #7: Good Old Collingwood – Will Switch 2 meet Nintendo’s sales expectations?
02:37:00 – Wrapping up
02:42:10 – Ciao for now and MERRY GRUBBSMAS!
