In this episode of the Day One Patch Podcast, Matt dives deep into Call of Duty’s strangest era with a Video Game Fun Fact all about the cancelled Black Ops 4 campaign, how it compares to the experimental Black Ops 7 campaign, and how Black Ops 4’s early take on battle royale helped pave the way for what eventually became Warzone.

We also break down a massive round of hardware news from Valve, including the reveal of the next-gen Steam Machine—promising over 6x the power of the Steam Deck—alongside a brand-new Steam Controller built to replace your mouse right from the couch. With 2026 hardware on the horizon, we talk specs, design changes, and whether Valve has finally learned from the failures of the original 2015 Steam Machine lineup.

Plus, we react to the latest Game Informer 10/10 scores and chat about what we’ve been playing this week.