[Music] [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] m [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] now [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] a e [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a [Music] [Music] okay [Music] all right welcome welcome welcome one and all to a returning after one week off Xbox 2 podcast I am one of your host Rand thor9 the man with the million I want to make sure I need to double check to uh see that nothing there's no music playing uh like there was during the beginning of uh of Xbox 2 plus one so what's going on everybody thank you for being here we have a lot to cover and I couldn't do this without my co-host we have jez Cordon from Windows Central in the house what's going on hello man uh whoa it's the first time we've had a week off in a long time I feel like and uh you had the flu didn't you yeah yeah I I woke up that day to like get ready for the show and I was just I was out of it bro I had body chills I had headaches I had uh you know I had like a fever I was run into fever so I like I took some you know some tests to see if I had the CW and I didn't did so I was just like I'm just I just wasn't in a position to really do the show so I was like all right we'll try for Monday and then Monday happened and I was I still wasn't feeling good so I was like all right we're just going to not do the show but then we did do Xbox 2 plus one with Paul tassy on Tuesday which I thought was uh I thought was a really interesting conversation with Paul so yeah Paul's an insightful guy very you know smart dude so that was a really cool show really cool to get Paul on yeah and discuss it with him that's up on patreon now but it's going to go public in a couple of days next sometime next week yes upon my Channel at J.C so sure to check that out um either on patreon or for free next week yeah um but you know in the meantime since we missed the week we got a lot to talk about because I mean there wasn't like too much the week before but like now you combine everything that happened this past week where you know the game awards drama and everything that happened with you know Jeff Keeley and the Oscars of gaming as they call it and then you know the uh what everybody what was trending on Twitter Xbox tax the Xbox tax uh and that and that became a dominant sort of conversation what is Xbox tax is it real is it make believe those sort of things those sort of discussions and uh you know everybody had a has a strong opinion about it some people say it's completely the made up the Fanboys are just you know coping that Xbox doesn't do better some people will been like no it's absolutely real look at these examples uh so you know people are making videos that you know it's just like is it real is it not what has it entailed what does it mean uh I figured we'll obviously talk about everything that's happened recently so if you guys could do us a huge favor make sure you hit that uh like button helps out a lot we're almost at 102,000 uh so please also hit the Subscribe button if you haven't already and um you know thanksgiving's this uh upcoming week jez it's on Thursday so I figured I'd ask you yeah you know at least Thanksgiving in the US I mean we're still going to do a show on Friday right see it's it's funny right because Thanksgiving for for you guys is celebration but for me it's the worst time of year is it CU it's Black Friday yes Black Friday is the next day and that means we have to do a podcast though that day yeah we yeah we have to do a podcast but I also have to do deal [ __ ] shifts writing millions of deal articles that's why you just got to get Sam Tolbert and Jen to do those you know what I mean just being like all right Jen time to do it's time to do some uh some deals some Amazon deals um the for us it's Black Friday month like back in the day it was like oh yeah Black Friday is just one day and then it was like oh no now the Cyber Monday and now it's Black Friday weekend I know Black Friday deal is already started like it's literally like Black Friday do you have any Friday month bro do you have any um things you want to get for Black Friday week I guess I'd ask you you but what do you get the man that has everything you know what do you what do you get jez the man who who has you know I'm saving money right now I'm saving money I'm I'm probably not going to buy anything but there are some pretty nifty deals if you if you ask if you or you know someone who's interested in buying Xbox series s or series X you might want to hold off yeah what what are their deals it's like $50 off the series X and S although series X has some other a lot of uh like other deals as well I saw I think controllers are discounted um there's a whole like Xbox has this whole Xbox wire thing about things to you know that that are happening uh yeah around it there might be some um there might be some retailers as well that go off script and try and do their own special deals so like keep keep an eye on retailers that you wouldn't expect for Xbox stuff like Dell the Dell store often has really good Xbox deals Walmart as well so yeah I'll be covering all that stuff while you're stuff in your face full of turkey or whatever it is that you eat yeah what so ask you since we're doing the show after Thanksgiving I was kind of curious what are you thankful for jazz what what Jaz Cordon thankful for I'm thankful for the acquisition of Blizzard this year not not Activision you're you're just you're thankful for the acquisition of Blizzard yeah yeah I I don't care about that Activision bit um yeah game Bobby cotic exit stage left yeah he's getting loads of money but if that's what it takes to save my beloved blizzard so be it that's what I'm thankful for this year oh and I suppose all the rest of it you know having Health all that secondary stuff stuff matters it's all about blizard good friends great Community like uh everybody in the Xbox 2 Community you know yes the awesome Xbox 2 Community I think it's I think it's great that the first thing you're thankful for is Blizzard you know it's like yeah I'm thankful for I'm just riding high right now man I'm I'm still I'm still coming down off blon man honestly I did um I did a guest podcast with the with a the World of Warcraft podcast yesterday on Shackled Fury if you are into blizzard stuff go and check that out it's a small it's a small little podcast but really cool cool guy on shackle Fury um um awesome show he's a really really cool dude and um we were just getting into it talking about BL kind of stuff so it's still it's still fresh in my mind man it's still fresh in my mind the whole stuff surrounded that and the future and yeah I'm pretty I'm pretty happy we we were sort of we were talking about how like it was sort of re almost like a recap of like just covering the the the news cycle about the acquisition the regulatory drama and I just I it's it made me realize how happy I am that it's all over you know even if it like hadn't gone through it was just it was getting so tiresome covering the back and forth about all that stuff so glad it's over and yeah I suppose that's what I'm thankful for I saw somebody in chat saying man uh not thankful for uh Rand I see Jazz that's what jotus says I did notice that I kind of got uh kind of got the short drift on this you know definitely not thankful for R definitely yeah definitely not definitely not not thankful jez not thankful for Rand of course oh man we have nothing like Thanksgiving giving in England you take what you can get you I mean we got we got Thanksgiving we got the holiday where we decimated the British um when did that happen I mean July 4th 1776 bro celebration you know of of America's Independence because we just decimated yeah we showed those Brits what's up they lost that war bro because I think I think Brit Britain let Britain let America win I think remember remember when the British Empire was like almost the entire world and now it's just a tiny Island yeah yeah but anyways we do have a lot to talk about so we are gonna transition to some uh you know the the housekeeping bits where uh you away from history yeah um but we do have a uh wonderful sponsor for the show as usual right jez yes we do and it's the illustrious manscaped and Rand we have a festive adre for manscaped because we are getting closer and closer to that special time where you might be considering buying gifts for yourself or loved ones in your life so what better gift to get them than the gift of shaved balls indeed it's Merry balsas from our friends over at manscaped the holidays are approaching but what if I told you that the celebrations are starting a little early this year it turns out that the perfect gift does exist and who else to bring it down your chimney than the leaders in below the waist grooming manscaped keep calm and let your balls jingle this season with manscapes brand new 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thanks to manscape for sponsoring this video yes Rand manscaped has a new performance package 5.0 with a brand new uh 5.0 lawn mower their Flagship product all about shaving those naughty bits the naughty naughty bits and they I also got an email from them that uh it's black Friday's on for them too right now so you get a whole bunch of savings double savings and more with the code xb2 yeah great gifts you know it's a fun gift it's a bit quirky and a bit different so yeah definitely give it a you know look in and uh supports us as well so big thanks to manscaped as always but also we have the wonderful people at patreon.com SL xb2 who support uh what we do we have some shout outs here we have holy Dark Death Steve Stompy Peter B James wiso tricks are for trade the grandest of grandest of bip battered hadock Army dude 52c Ryan kipple foreign object Mythic Marty moronic donkey 99 mailla Rand Thor 19 silus Eric Gregory Elijah Vasquez James Moore Fantastical Halo is the goat K trox bright tunder one ey of five cats Justin duel Frank Mariano Shan Kramer PB broking actine Madison untiy Tim Grizzy mofo OG Governor Grim DZ huffin werman achievement the Scarecrow run 21 Darren tropy Prof JJJ Ghost Face Killer and wolf Kang kpz thank you guys uh for all your support throughout the year since we started doing the show uh jez you were talking about uh doing a you know because because this show is about the game awards drama and what we think about all the sort of stuff that's that's going on there but also you had an idea that you wanted to do an Xbox 2 game awards show but basically have the votes be from all the patreon members right yes indeed and that also includes the free members because now on patreon you can follow the patreon without paying any money you can just follow the patreon and you can get like some of our updates it's a good way to get updates if you're not on Twitter and stuff so even if you don't even if you don't want to you know drop drop any money that's completely fine you can just download the app and follow patreon.com xb2 without spending any money and so one of the things I was going to do is that for people who sign up and maybe like through the Discord as well I was going to like um make a do a survey I'm going to survey the whole Xbox 2 audience for what their top I don't know eight games of the year were like what what what's the game Word six six or yeah it's like it's like most categories are five unless there's a tie and there's a sixth but the game of the year is six uh places yes right okay so we'll we'll do it like the game or wiard we'll have six we'll let people vote for their six games the year and then what we'll do is we'll tally them all up and then we'll announce them in a very special Xbox 2 Ultimate Game of the Year uh Edition on uh my channel and on patreon so yes we're going to do that in the future and uh it will be very enlightening and interesting to see if to see if like the the audience matches up with you know the the theame pro and I think you said we're at least planning on doing that on the 28th right so before the game awards before the game awards yeah and uh I'll probably get the surveys out this weekend either on Discord or on patreon we'll we'll figure it out we're going to be reaching out to some some Xbox 2 plus one guests uh as well we're going to try to get a couple more because you know the holidays are coming and people are busy and stuff but we're going to at least try to get uh two more uh in before the end of the end of the year essentially and then it's 2024 baby it's almost here and uh who knows what that brings so uh thank you to all the patreons thank you to manscape for supporting the show and uh yeah so get into it yeah I mean there is a lot here we can talk about um but we do have just a couple super chats so this won't take very long so I I'll get through these really quickly super ched up yeah we got Supernova saying in what dimension Rand will play Pokemon I believe in all Di mentions in every possible infinite Multiverse there is not a single one where ran enjoys or plays Pokemon well that's not true he may have to play Pokemon because I did it here but he certainly didn't enjoy willing willing willing there is no Universe no Multiverse out there where Randle thor9 is willingly playing and enjoying Pokemon it's just not happening so I'm sorry I'm sorry to disappoint you on that one we got uh face 23 bky says Spider-Man 2 number one for October um NPD and number four bestselling game of 2023 beating Mario Wonder Starfield and multiplats only on one platform why are people surprised Spider-Man 2 would be a game of the year nominee critical and Commercial Success uh I mean I don't think anybody were people surprised about that I don't think so I mean Spider-Man you I remember predicting that I mean Spider-Man 2 was the easiest prediction for game of the year as well as uh something that was going to be commercially successful the first game from 2018 sold like 20 plus million and so you knew this one was going to sell uh you know we don't know how much it will sell in total but we knew it was going to sell a lot and it was like well of course it's also going to be nominated for game of the year uh I mean that that was I mean I said that last year I was like Spider-Man 2 comes out in 2023 you know it's going to be nominated uh and I said Zelda 2 and I think I I think I picked four of the six games last year before uh because it's super easy it's kind of super easy to predict game of the year uh contenders and then you know the nominees it's not it's not very difficult I'm not sure Commercial Success has anything really to do with like nominations it's more you know how well it's received and how many people play it which I mean I guess how many people play it is commercial success but not in the way you would think because it's just more critics playing it um but yeah there's no no surprise there I mean everybody knew Spider-Man 2 was going to sell extremely well and it has although it seems to have lost the title of best-selling PlayStation first party game though uh Sony was very quick to point out that it sold 2.5 million in one day saying it was the fastest selling first party game but then the other comparisons were different days and different amounts and now it's sold like 5 million in 11 um but God of War Ragnarok sold 5.1 in five days so it seemed to have seemed to have lost its fastest selling but then again God War Ragnarok was also on more platforms it was on PlayStation 4 where Spider-Man 2 was only on the PlayStation 5 so I guess there's some of that but either way uh we got Sith Lord me I'm curious about something around and maybe you don't maybe you don't know the answer to this how does MP how can MPD know how much Diablo is sold when it wasn't even on Steam initially because blizzard tells them do they yes do then well there you go you answer my question thank you that's the thing so like they um you so like when you look at the it's not MPD and it's called like s like cic a I think they're Rebrand I think they rebranded but the is is like the retailers I believe share the information with them about how much they've sold so like the gam spots the Walmarts and stuff like that right they're part of the panel but then digital sales which is why when people always bring up the UK stuff and the physical charts it's always like a laugh because it's like oh the physicals uh you know this game did this but it's only the physical it's like yeah well that's not a good indicator of anything you need you need digital and the only way the only per you know people people who have digital sales are you know the manufacturers console manufacturers who would share that with you know uh their Partners but so they do share digital information with s except for Nintendo Nintendo doesn't share digital sales with s so nobody knows except for Nintendo how how many digital copies of Super Mario Wonder was sold so yeah like intriguing yeah so there are and that's one of the things Allen wake 2 uh for this past month was not on the top 20 for MPD at all it just was like it wasn't listed and that's because one it has no physical retail copies so none of so it's not sold at Amazon or any of these places and two epic doesn't share digital information with NPD so it just seems like Allen wake 2 didn't sell anything um which we know is obviously not true because it h because they do but yeah so yeah there's a whole bunch of stuff about that uh Sith Lord M for nine months says says I'm thankful for Randon jez making my Fridays better thankful for jez and all of his tweets and articles Randon his videos and podcast thank you guys yeah jez has a lot of Articles thank you so much man lot lot of articles I haven't written that much this week actually I've been doing like a lot of admin stuff a lot of admin stuff in the new year I might be taking on a new role which lets me go back to writing more content so we'll see what happens in January I don't actually know what's happening with that yet but we'll see but thank you so much really appreciate it my um my Series S article did a ridiculous let's talk about that really quickly I totally forgot about that actually because I think was 50,000 you cuz you had mentioned to me the day before you're like I'm going to piss off some people I love it when jez he'll just DM me he's like I'm writing an article and I'm aiming to piss people off I'm like oh like what what are we talking about what what are we doing here dog to piss people off and uh just know that it's going to happen sometimes when you talk about certain things so um I don't think people were pissed off by it though I didn't I didn't get any angry messages or comments a lot of people were like fair enough you know I was surprised actually but yeah I thought I thought it might be controversial so you basically you said that you were wrong about the series s and one of the one of the catalysts for you writing this article was you know the information that uh B laran said that the series s they're deving for the series s basically uh they were so I I guess I'll let you explain so what exactly do you mean when you said you were wrong about the series s and all the sort of stuff like what was your what was your talking points well I wrote an article a few a few months ago ago which was like well well it was not a few months ago it was like well it was a few months ago God time flies doesn't it it was like in August when when laran first discussed the fact that they couldn't get these features working on the series s and it just kind of like it was it sort of catalyzed a sort of a range of um issues with Xbox Hardware that I thought was represented maybe a misfiring or or a a sort sort of I don't know how to describe it like the strategy you know it was sort of like a review of Xbox's Hardware strategy I wrote this article that was it was quite popular too and you know caused a lot of controversy in its own right um but the the gist of it was like there it was it was structured into multiple sections one of the sections was about Xbox sacrificing the Xbox series X hardware for the cloud which we now you know which uh Cloud probably isn't going to pan out you know as as we we'd like and we'd hope at least not right now um at least not right now um and then another part of it was you know Xbox sort of divided again their Dev base so like a you've got less Xbox series x's in the wild because of the cloud and then B um you've got less Xbox series x's in the wild to to for developers to Target because you've split your user base in half which is similar to what like it's similar to the reason why uh Call of Duty and other Shooters sto doing map map packs right you split your user base by input or by their you know by what map packs they've got so like they split the developer user base in half which I know a lot of developers maybe like laran or or mediumsized businesses and stuff like that they're probably looking at the platform and just being like head scratching and thinking about the risk involved in developing for two platforms when neither one by itself is very big so it was kind of like it was kind of like a criticism of that whole kind of strategy right yeah um but then like lar and sort of came back around and they were like we found like massive performance Gams as a result of our work optimizing this for the series s and there was like a but and it wasn't just that though in really article was more talking about how popular the steam deck has been because the the steam deck is also making PC developers really rethink their approach to optimization because obviously steam deck isn't the most powerful device in the world but it serves a specific purpose and so does a series s it sort of Changed My Philosophy because the you know people are celebrating the steam deck in a way that I kind of wish people would celebrate the series s in a away because it serves a specific purpose and I think like the Ser the steam deck gets away with it a little bit more because it is fully portable with the screen and I think the series s would too if it was fully portable with the screen and yeah it people are using it as a portable console it's got that clip on screen which is really cool and stuff like that and Microsoft has to be looking at would hope they're looking at that and thinking man we really need to rethink our approach to what this you know platform could potentially be and maybe with new technology and you know people always talk about this dream of like the ser Ser Series S handheld you know and I've been told by Dev previously that it wasn't possible with the way they've set things up and you know the Xbox operating system is got a lot of overhead you know it runs hyper runs hypervisor and and all this stuff and and that kind of makes it difficult and one of the one in the the documents that Microsoft leaked from 2020 they were talking about this concept of not having a thin OS you know a thin which basically was them saying we don't have like a lightweight gaming operating system for you know for making these kind of devices like a handheld or something like that you know like we we need a lot of overhead to to make this work um so it was sort of like an admission that I was probably dooming and glooming a bit too much Jazz dooming and gloin never never never seen it ever in the history of this podcast or on Twitter or anything jez never Dooms and glooms he's never pessimistic is he come on yeah well well yeah okay so I thought I'll hold my hands up and like come back around because I have I have got my hands on as well um the carbon black Xbox series s which is you know it's a very nice little console and yeah it's not portable and it doesn't have a screen and it doesn't do the stuff the steam deck does steam deck's a little bit more expensive though and has some performance compromises that the series s doesn't so they kind of exist in the same space as this sort of companion console almost um although I I do expect that there are a lot of people who are using both devices as their primary device and I was kind of thinking like I'm being kind of selfish by talking about how I kind of wished Microsoft had just gone all in on the series X this gen and like they' not done cloud and they not done a series s and they' sort of focused on delivering the experience that I personally want but instead Microsoft did probably the noble thing which was trying to bring more people to the platform in ways that might be preferable for them and everyone's kind of punished them for it like the Press has punished them for it you know arguably Gamers have punished them for it you know lot clearly Sony had the better Hardware strategy this gen I would think again and part of that is you know the fact that it's PlayStation and they're sort of entrenched but you know we had all the stock issues with the series X and Microsoft struggled to catch up and all that kind of stuff and we don't know the full picture of the full picture on why some of this stuff happened but I do think like I just felt like cutting the series as some slack and clearly when a game is made with a series s in mind good performance can be extracted out of it and I think devices like the steam deck will probably help in a weird way the series s and maybe even the Nintendo switch to get more value of these kind of experiences so yeah it was a it was a really popular article it got 150,000 readers which is a lot a lot you know if you think think in terms of a YouTube video like that's that's a lot of readers so um thanks to anyone who supported that or you know sent a nice comment about it really appreciate it but that's the thing like I I think it's important to evolve your position based on new information and it's tough because I'm not a Dev you're not a Dev most of people watching this aren't a Dev so you know there's a lot of people fill in the blanks with their information with second secondhand knowledge a lot of the time and um you know when new information comes to light maybe your position should change and that's kind of what that was you know so yeah I'll be kind to the series s and um I'm actually using it the series S as my Diablo machine right now I've got it hooked I've got it I've got it I've got a really weird setup I've got like I've got my second PC monitor with the HDMI switch so I can like switch it off my pc and switch it onto the series s when my girlfriend wants to watch the TV so now I can have the series s running on my second PC monitor instead of going straight up to the TV where the series X is hooked up with my capture card recording footage for podcast or for videos and stuff like that so it's the most convoluted setup in the world but it works really well for Diablo so I do wish that Mandel though boy I really wish they would yeah I know you do I know you do jez was tell me earlier how he wants like Xbox to make a PlayStation portal like thing for him uh he just wants like a a handheld from Xbox essentially yeah I I don't necessarily want a portal I just said if they did make one I'd buy it like because I'm addicted to buying random Tech do I need one probably not but yeah we'll see where it goes yeah so that was that was last week jez jez you know kind of relenting on some of his Doom and Gloom around the series s and stuff which is always fun to see uh but also last week maybe the biggest announcement I mean maybe the biggest announcement of the year maybe the last two years definitely the biggest tweet gaming tweet ever but uh Rockstar came out and basically said they're going to uh show a brand new trailer of Grand Theft Auto in the uh early December so they came out and they you know essentially uh what did they say uh destroyed the internet and on November 8th they said next month month marks the 25th anniversary of Rockstar Games thanks to the incredible support of the players worldwide we've had the opportunity to create games we are truly passionate about and then eventually they said we are very excited to let you know that in early December we will release the very first trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto we look forward to many more years sharing these experiences with all of you thank thank you uh Sam Hower so I mean people want nuts even though there's been so many leaks about Grand Theft Auto even though they've sort of talked about it in their financial you know calls or what have you even though there's there's rumors going around that I I saw a rumor recently that Grand Theft Auto 6 cost a billion dollars to make or some ridiculous amount of money where did that come from I don't know just people speculating that it's costing a lot I've seen people speculate that it's going to cost a 100 bucks on release like not like the normal 70 right now uh that uh Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost 100 which you know I don't know I sort of feel like if there is a game that could get away with it it would be Grand Theft Auto they could get away with pricing it above the current market conditions and they're probably the only game that could really do that if you know like I would I am morbidly curious to see what would but then there's a part of me that's like well but like the longevity and the money that they're going to make a grand Grand Theft Auto is all going to be based around the multiplayer but do you want to make access to the multiplayer extremely high but then it doesn't matter if you're going to sell 100 million units you know what I mean cuz it because it would be it would be a dastardly experiment I mean how do you think people react I put it in chat put it in chat put put a vote poll in chat I want to know how the people would feel about 100 $100 base price would hold on would you you got to think about i' phrase this yeah I say would you would you buy GTA 6 if the starting price was 100 us cuz you know that means it's really a lot more expensive in Canada it's a lot more expensive in you know where special Nick lives and timbuk two um you know what I mean uh it' be interesting to see because if there's one franchise that could do it it's this one right yeah I think so but normally the common you know Common logic would lead you to believe that you want access to multiplayer to be as cheap as possible which is why a lot of games games are free to play right but if you're essentially saying oh Grand Theft Auto is 100 bucks and that's the access to it does that affect their you know Revenue projections and things like that I mean I don't think it's going to come out at 100 but I'm just seeing I've seen people talk about it like oh it's going to come out at 80 or 90 or 100 I think it is possible that they could do was um was it wasn't it based on feedback survey or something I'm not sure what it was what it was based on but I think I think take two cent out a feedback survey asking people how much they'd pay for for a game or something and I think people extrapolated from that I think here's here's what I think might happen and I I I've seen a lot of games do this recently even more you know Xbox been doing it for a while but I've seen a lot of games like RoboCop just did it uh but the Early Access stuff I could easily see regular edition Grand Theft Auto 70 5day Early Access for Grand Theft Auto 120 something like that where like it's aund the $100 version but it's comes with Early Access and everybody in their mother's going to buy it you know it even though like Grand Theft Auto online probably won't work because you remember when when it launched on the 360 uh and the PlayStation 3 God what is it 10 years ago in like September of 2020 no September of 2013 Grand Theft Auto online didn't launch with the game you remember it was just the campaign and the online launched like a month later and even when the online launched a month later it didn't really work right they had a lot of problems right so I would imagine you know in a lot of multiplayer releases especially ones like this that are going to be really jam-packed I don't know if it'll work right but I could easily see them adopting what the industry seems to be moving towards of hey here's the regular price game but if you want to play it early give us a 100 bucks cuz the definitely seems that's the way a lot of these a lot of games are moving cuz essentially kind of raises the price the standard price it's like well you play it early but you got to give us 120 bucks and I think a lot of people would pay that I I you know what I agree I might would I might pay that oh no you're destroying gaming I might never seen me buy mic transaction like I like Mortal Kombat one but I was I don't like it enough to pay 100 cuz that was $120 to play that five days Z plus you get like all the DLC and stuff so at least you do get stuff for it and with Starfield it was $100 although it was $35 if you had Game Pass and you got the first expansion and some pre-order stuff so you actually do get stuff normally when you buy these things early you get extra things you know GTA could do the same thing and say all right you get access to something or whatever maybe maybe they maybe they throw you a a a a shark card hey get grft Auto 6 5 days early and a $100,000 shark card for 120 bucks right oh my God but I mean like the Diablo horse horse horse armor so yeah I could totally see that happening and you know what I want to play Grand Theft Auto six so like yeah I might I might I might buy the $120 version I don't know oh man I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm ruing gaming but really know who's really ruing gaming Jess Cordon cuz he bought the $65 horse armor from Diablo 4 yes he did I L I literally did not I literally did not man this this slander has to stop but I I tell you Rand if the horse looked cool maybe I would have done but it doesn't it doesn't look cool it looks lame so yeah I mean it's weird that they put like $70 prize tag on a horse that didn't even look that good but uh but yeah this gaming has gotten it's kind of funny you know because there was do you remember there was this huge push back against the gambling mechanics the loot boxes and stuff like that back in the day but and and then all the all the devs were like okay we'll get R loot boxes you win I kind of feel like it's gotten worse at the loot box do you do you think because I feel like before like with with loot boxes they get a lot of whales who would like they would spend way more money to get less stuff you know but they but they didn't care because they had lots of money to spend right mhm but now that we don't have the gambling aspect of it they're just pricing everything ridiculously high to get those whales who previously would have gambled but now there's no gambling left I feel like it's gotten worse like genuinely but maybe I'm maybe I'm you know off base dude the fact that that that Diablo horse armor was 65 bucks was and it's like basically the price of the game The Game's like 70y with it it's like and I know you get currency with it but it's just the idea that come on like it's it's it's basically the price of the entire game and it's not even a cool looking horse armor set yeah it's w the there was funny because there was a I can't remember if it was an interview or a the blizzard developer talking on their personal Channel or something like that but a comment came to light recently I can't even I maybe it's not even a new comment I can't remember exactly where I saw it but it was trending around so maybe someone in the chat knows but someone from blizzard was saying that um uh when they they did the first microtransaction for World of Warcraft because originally World of Warcraft was just subscription there was no store but then they added very controversially a horse armor store for for Wow as well um it doesn't have a lot of stuff in there to be honest but it does exist and um uh the the blizzard developer was saying that the first horse armor they added to that store made more money than the the Starcraft uh expansion Starcraft 2 expansion which is insane right just a single a singular art asset made more money than an entire expansion for Starcraft 2 which kind of gives you an idea of why there isn't a Starcraft 3 yet right but but yeah it's um we only have ourselves to blame or especially Rand who's going to buy Grand Theft a for $100 I mean thanks Rand for destroying gaming only if it comes with Early Access because otherwise you know it's like whatever you're giving them ideas man they're going to do they already know what they're going to do like fun speculation our buddy MAV and chat says most games of the service games have a currency bundle like that Rand they do and I'm I'm more poking fun at the idea that it's like the whole thing is like the price of the game essentially and also that jez wants to buy it really bad cuz you know he he he just loves Diablo so much um but but staying on the the blizzard train uh this is also from last week we have um we have uh Mike your bar talking about you know what it would be like to work under Xbox did you see this Jazz I didn't see the whole thing but I saw some Choice comments like one of the things he said was people have service game players have no patience right well it was that it was more yeah like they want everything right away and blah you know I did see that he's not wrong he's not necessarily wrong and you can't give everything you know right away things take time to make and you need to have a strateg drip of content but he was talking about the impact of the deal and what it would be like what would blizzard be like under Xbox and Yara said that I think the way uh Xbox boss Phil Spencer approaches building teams and focusing on culture and enabling creative freedom is going to give blizzard a lot more of that sense of being independent Studio than ever before which is I'm sure music to your ears or music to anybody who has been a big fan of Blizzard because a lot of fans have sort of felt that the the decline of Blizzard coincides with Activision Activision shareholders and Bobby cotic demanding certain things and blizzard kind of losing the uh their you know autonomy essentially and now under ex you know that's not going to be the case sure they might be Activision Blizzard but they might be able to do more things uh independent then so you know Yar says that's what I really mean when I talk about a new era of possibilities of empowerment of serving players better than we ever have um so yeah he even talked about the idea of you know maybe bringing back Starcraft but not in the way that people expect possibly you know and people were like oh my God you know like is is that is that going to be Starcraft shooter you know Starcraft ghost yeah well that's why like I I drunkenly said over the summer that they were going to bring back Starcraft right but then I walked it back cuz a lot of people were like you know I said Starcraft 3 but then I realized like I was never actually I never actually told I was Starcraft 3 so I wanted to walk that back in case it was a mobile game or something but I don't think Mike could be out here teasing a mobile game personally especially since like um uh they just released a mobile strategy game so I kind of feel like if they did it cannibalize Warcraft Rumble so hopefully it's a core game hopefully it's a shooter because I think starcraft's probably perfect for a shooter and I hope it's gritty and 18 rated as hell because I kind of feel like they need a bit of that you know you got OverWatch which is cut see and Pixar and it's not really very dark and honestly these days Warcraft isn't very dark either you got Diablo which is dark as hell and I suppose you know sci-fi horror would be a good counterbalance with Starcraft I really hope I really hope they do it man but we'll see uh I see uh Cordo Bravos in the chat he's saying what was his comment here he said uh he basically said are people uh I missed it oh no he says he's basically said are people like can't resist the lure of microtransactions and some people can't for sure uh I can easily uh because we even just you're out here talking about paying for Early Access it's a market transaction but no no no it's not no it's not that's totally no it's not it's absolutely not you're paying you're paying a microtransaction for a service it's literally a microtransaction no yeah he said are are some people just completely powerless in their inab their ability to resist microtransactions and I think I I don't think I've ever purchased a microtransaction because I don't care about customization I don't care about the color of my gun I don't care about what my my character looks like when I play Mass Effect I use the default character right so some people when they hear that they're like what I'm like yeah and it's not be and it's like yeah I am I am cheap okay I but Rand Rand Rand Rand you don't season your food you don't that's what does that got to do with anything your food what do that got to do with anything of course you don't care about customization bro you eat like plain fries plain pasta so so of course you were not the target audience for customization or microtransaction if they if they were going to Target you with the microtransaction they'd somehow have to do it via the medium of a book oh how about this how about this really e EA book publishers right you have to pay for every page of the book you get you get the you get the cover of the book book and the first chapter but every page after that is a microtransaction how would you feel if the next Wheel of Time book there is no more Wheel of Time there's not going to be anymore why not because they're I well I mean the original author is dead Brandon Sanderson said he's not doing it anymore so they would yeah so that's thought he was the brand Brandon s his son right Brandon sanderson's got his own things but they sort of decided like Harriet Robert Jordan's what you know Widow basically doesn't is not going to do anymore but either way well just just just imagine in a parallel Dimension that eii was published in the next book okay you you would buy it bro you you would pay micro transactions for every damn page every damn P I mean they did I mean John RI rello who made that comment about like oh we're going to be able to charge uh Gamers uh for clips of bullets it's going to be great you remember those comments back in 2009 he like and then he went on to Unity to ruin that and then he got Ed from that is probably now his career is over baby right no no he's not career is not over he's going to he's going to run PlayStation that's who they're going to pick for their CEO next you want to get somebody in on the games of the service get Phil Harrison or John Rell they're coming in baby oh no Ran's putting that energy out there man why why not why not if that if that happens man PlayStation fans are going to they're going to blame you for putting that energy into let me ask you this serious question about Diablo 4 I'm assuming you're playing it right now I'm not I'm playing I'm playing World of Warcraft you're playing World of how much money have you spent in Diablo for oh give me give me a rough estimate of how much money you've spent on it I'm well let's not talk about this oh so you you know you can roast me about Randal Bland right we can roast me about not putting seasoning on my chicken or whatever but if I ask you a simple question to give me an estimate of the amount of money that you spent on Diablo 4 game that you love a game that you also got for free but then also bought the Ultimate Edition for and also like a 16 all 19 in of Lilith I just want to know I just want to know if if you want to continue to roast me I want to know tell me the truth how much have you spent on Diablo I how much have you spent on World of Warcraft how much have you spent OverWatch 2 or OverWatch it's a lot of money how much lot of money give us give us give get everybody myself and everybody in chat cuz we want to know cuz uh people are saying jez caught in 4k right now give us an estimate cuz you talk about me ruining the video game industry cuz maybe I want to play Grand Theft Auto 6 early and maybe I would pay $120 for the Early Access right maybe I don't know it depends but let's talk about who's really ruining the video game in it let's talk about these microtrans how much jez have you spent in microtransactions well it just does does not include the statue then all the books no no doesn't include the statue doesn't include I'm talking strictly microtransactions or loot box version I bought the game twice I bought the ultimate edition which I haven't even opened yet and I bought the PC version and I got the Xbox version um but just microtransactions then yeah tell me maybe about $200 on each $200 on Diablo 200 like so is that total for all the games that's just Diablo 4 just just in Diablo 4 okay so you spent you know it's funny because I have a friend of mine who spent like $5,000 on never winter nights I believe it was I've spent well I've been playing World of Warcraft for 20 years right so how much have you spent on World of Warcraft in 20 years it's it's thousands of dollars thousands of dollars it's it's got to be cuz and it's it's like the subscription the race changes because I can never decide what race I want to be and I I changed my race like this month like I went I went to an orc and I was like I don't really want to be an orc so I went to a goblin that cost $15 every time you want to change race and um server transfers like a lot of the the server server things are microtransactions and then in burning Crusade I did the worst thing ever I bought gold man I was buying gold by I was addicted man I buying gold by the truckload I was working a 9 to5 job and I couldn't afford the time to grind so I used to pay for the gold and that was real that was a problematic time I think I spent like $1,000 on gold when I was like 22 maybe and I had no money that was like a really bad time so you were spending money that you didn't have yeah I was spending I was spending money I didn't have I had a credit card it was a bad time but that wasn't even going to Blizzard that was going to some random third party gold farming website but H yeah it's a lot of money it's a lot of money man and then OverWatch probably I haven't actually spent that much in OverWatch it's probably similar to Diablo even though like it's been out for much longer but the the irony is that like I've never actually bought a battle pass for Diablo or OverWatch because you can get them for free with Microsoft rewards weird in which they seem to be consistently uh they are pulling that in that back used to get like 50 50 Microsoft points or whatever it was for one achievement in a Game Pass game and I think it's like five now or whatever yeah they they're like I think they've realized that people are actually using it for things that aren't related to Bing because the whole point of Microsoft rewards was for Microsoft to get more data for Bing but then more people using it for gaming and not for being so Microsoft was like hang on a sec hey this is this is completely defe in the point yes breaking news oh God Sam Alton Sam Altman has been ousted as open AI CEO no [ __ ] way yep yep it's on the Twitter spaces right now Brad Sam says may be over reading over reading the post by open AI but it seems like they may not be happy with their relationship with Microsoft so I mean I know one of the conver ation we were going to have was about Ai and we'll probably talk about that later but I did want where are you seeing this I need to make sure that team the team's covering it uh Tech crunch I saw Brad Sam's retweet uh Tech crunch's post from like nine minutes ago or Brad Sam's tweet or whatever and and they've implicated Microsoft in that I don't know I'm just saying I just see Brad Sam's tweet where he's he's quote retweeting Tech crunch where it says that you know Sam alman's been ousted as CEO of mic holy crap yeah I don't know is Microsoft doing a hostile takeover chairman of the board stepping down as well I don't know bro what's going on you need to get the team on it everyone's AFK this is insane okay so yeah sorry about that guys I just had to I have to go and check what's going on cuz that that is huge breaking news like Sam those are know Sam Alman you know created chat GPT you know and his team did and then Microsoft spent they invested billions and billions of dollars to effectively get control of open AI Microsoft has exclusive rights to generative AI built on chat open ai's stuff and open AI is not very open anymore because of it um so microft has exclusive access to to this stuff to commercialize it but Microsoft like I suppose this might have something to do with this past week round because there was a Microsoft Event this week called Microsoft ignite which is all about developers and stuff like that so like we didn't really cover it I was a little bit about gaming AI during that event but um not much interesting really for us but during that event Microsoft basically said like every single product we've got now has a co-pilot didn't didn't they just reveal like I don't really pay attention to the stuff Microsoft's doing I only care about Xbox but didn't like they just reveal some new chips or something yeah they're doing they're doing their own server chips their own server chips and they say that it's like better than any chips from any other competitor for cloud and Ai and there's speculation that maybe those are the chips they might use and for the next Xbox cuz remember the next Xbox leak had them moving to yeah uh instead of using AMD they were going to use chips AR you know arm chips or whatever and arm chips sorry I always call it armm when it's it's just arm but yeah it's uh it's um that is that is crazy [ __ ] man and hilariously there is no one online to cover it right now so you better get going because Tom Warren already tweeted and wrote an article about 40 minutes ago bro he's on Rich H someone someone's got it someone's got it it's okay it's okay Tom Warren's on the ball yeah well I'm podcasting with the guy who doesn't season his chips right now I'm podcasting with the guy that spends $5,000 in microtransactions well that's that's huge CU I kind of feel like is Microsoft pulling a hostile take over do Microsoft owns a significant portion of open I I think I think they do umist in open AI I think it might even be 49% um yes Microsoft controls Microsoft controls 49% of open AI St o two more percentage points baby or actually you know not even a full 2% all they got to do is 50 plus one and then yeah so 2% Sam if Sam alman's out who's getting that stock because that might my is Microsoft doing a hostile takeover of open AI oh my God man why do this have to happen during the show but that is hilarious well we will be talking about the AI stuff later in the show let me get to some of these super chats cuz you know we got a lot to talk about we got silus saying ren do you let jez play games during the two plus one episodes podcast I love the chat with Paul but jez seems to go quiet for extended periods of time yeah so I was there's there's a reason why I was playing the game last week and that's because I didn't have any footage downloaded to support in the Stream I was playing Diablo live during that show but also I did notice that I was going quiet and I it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention it's just that I kind of felt like they were having a good discussion without me so I three is a crowd man I I really even in real life like when there's three people I struggle to speak up it's it's a me thing you know why like Xbox 2 works really well as as a two because if you've ever heard me on a podcast with more than a couple of people I need to be drunk to function in that situation it's a me thing and I'll try and get better at it well it's also a me thing it's also a me thing because um like I when I when I talk to you know like people like Paul I'm thinking of questions as they're talking like okay what am I going to ask him next what I want to talk about next and sometimes I forget that jez is there because I want the conversation to flow instead of like all right he Paul a finish answering the question and I'm gonna wait for jez to come up with the question so it's like I'll just say something to keep keep it going you know what I mean because that's how it works like je jez will always be like bro you're really good at this and it's just because like in my head as as like Paul's saying something I'll just come up with another another thing to say ask him or another comment to say you know I don't do that and that's why I'm terrible at interviewing people like I'm really bad at it cuz I don't think of the next question I just I my brain starts thinking again after they've stopped talking is you know I I don't know but yeah we we we we still new to this sort of three-way interview format so we'll get better at it and I appre I do appreciate the feedback yeah uh JJ saan says do you think remakes like gr Resident Evil 4 should be game of the year I know this has definitely been a very hot topic about remakes and their position in the market and especially their position in end of the year game awards right uh because they do people will say it's not fair because Resident Evil is basically you know Resident Evil 4 is is a game built on the Legacy and the building Brocks of a already amazing game from you know 2006 or whatever year it was 2005 2004 so and and they feel like it takes um you know a position away from something new right and people are been like Resident Evil 4 shouldn't have been nominated I will say however uh because we're going to have this greater discussion about the game awards in a little bit um I didn't really see this outrage about remakes when Resident Evil 2 got nominated for Game of the Year in 2019 or when Final Fantasy 7 remake got nominated in 2020 although I guess you can make the argument that Resident Evil 2 is a big Bigg ger remake than Resident Evil 4 because Resident Evil 2 much older is much older with like a much different sort of camera style whereas like Resident Evil 4 was you know fully 3D even though there's a lot of changes in Resident Evil 4 and the devs worked really hard to make that an amazing experience um people feel like it's a slap in the face for it to get nominated over all the other brand new games games or all the other new IPS that come out and that's the other thing I do see a lot of people [ __ ] about not only like people like us or people in the chat but I also see a lot of people in the games media the San Fran cabal as I like to call them um that [ __ ] about how come there's no new IPS where are the new IPS and yet every single time it happens the games that get nominated for the prestigious awards are sequels and so it's like so they'll write articles and they'll talk about oh gaming it's just sequels after sequels like where's the new fresh stuff but then like when it comes down to like give the awards for the best games it's just sequels so I mean like you I say like your actions always speak you know your words so their words are saying one thing but the actions aren't you know uh are saying something different right and maybe you could even say that for gamers cuz gamers too are out there all the time we want new IP we want new IP we want new IP and then when a new IP comes out they don't support it and they don't buy it and it flops and you know the latest sequel gets all the money right I mean yeah Nostalgia is a huge selling point you know you kind of like when you've got a Nostalgia play you don't have to market the game really I mean to some degree you don't have to introduce people to it you don't have to figure out how to position it and I think cyberpunk 2077 suffered from this to some degree because I think a lot of people were expecting cyberpunk 2077 to be Grand Theft Auto and when it wasn't Grand Theft Auto because I feel like the marketing kind of hinted that it was going to be in that kind of context um when it wasn't that I think a lot of people felt blindsided by it you know um amongst other things of course I'm not saying that's the only issue with the game of course not but I don't think like but also SEO you know if we're talking about like for me for example Google controls our website they 100% all of control Windows Central and what we cover and if like it's a new IP and I'm sure it's the same for other other game journalist Outlets as well and and YouTubers and anyone who's a slave to the algorithm which is pretty much like you know most of us and which is one of the reasons why I like doing this podcast so much because we don't have to care so much about the algorithm to the same degree as um you know like a a journalist website or a YouTuber who TP does about a specific thing you know um but if you've got a game that's like a sequel you've already got your SEO juice ready but if it's a new IP like Mortals of Aven for example there's no there's no search traffic for that you know there's no no one searching for that but Resident Evil that's established people are searching for that so it's becomes this sort of vicious cycle of um nobody talking about it because nobody talking about it you know and then the only way you can sort of cut through that is to have a massive ridiculous marketing budget the on the size of cyber Punk or whatever and of course there are exceptions to this rule um you know there are games that just go completely viral like Among Us of course and and stuff like that and you know Boulders Gate 3 didn't have a typical marketing campaign but again the lot of nostalgia for is gate and also there's a huge established fan base of you know D and D which is the universe that it draws its you know content from so yeah it's new IP is really hard and I think Phil's Phil himself has spoken about this a bunch of times but I mean hell uh there was just you know one of the thing that always happens I mean layoffs right and I think when we were doing the Xbox 2 plus one with Paul Tassie it came out that uh you know the parent company behind a publisher like 505 games was laying off a bunch of people and one of the things they said was that they were going to focus on the recognizable IPS and sequels because there's been like selective purchasing of new IP since the post pandemic or something um and I I do sort of feel like the $10 uh price increase to 70 bucks does hurt new IPS because like with someone like Resident Evil 4 it's like it's Resident Evil you have a feeling it's going to be good your money is well spent or at least you think it will be because you know it's a a franchise that you love but then you see something brand new like Immortals of a or any of these other brand new new IPS that come out and they're 70 you're you're less inclined to want to to give them that much money because games are expensive I guess that's where Game Pass comes in I was literally going to say that where Game Pass like okay well you can just download it check it out um you know whether you continue on with it or not at least you're not removes that oh do I want to spend this type of money on this game or not uh it removes that from the equation but yeah Microsoft should like do some kind of special rate for new IP you know yeah on Game Pass I think that that that could be an interesting V people people have talked about like how do you change the game awards and we'll get to this more in depth but people have talked about adding a new category next year for like new IP that should definitely happen right I the W the window Central game awards which is great by the way and so so much better than any other game awards of course it is um I think we actually have this category uh or we've have in the past and we've also got like most anticipated upcoming game which again you know gives some view to new IP and stuff but I do think best new IP absolutely needs to happen for sure yeah if you guys are doesn't seem that open to it doesn't seem that open to changing it up sometimes I feel like well if you guys are enjoying the show make sure you hit the like button uh share this out let people know that we are Live on YouTube right now and this will be up on iTunes and Spotify probably tomorrow like J usually when je posts it and then uh yeah hit the Subscribe button if you're new uh we have Corey who says jez some of us have been in your your comment section for two years telling you no game has been optimized for the series consol's dx12 features um man I honestly I don't know much about that stuff when it comes to dx12 and I know that a lot of even on PC like it doesn't feel like dx12 adoption has been that strong I don't know why that is you know I don't know if it's like dx11 is just easier to work with more entrenched or something like that but um I kind of feel like dx12 is just overlooked in general not just on Console but that's some Microsoft to fix man so I'll try and do some I'll try and educate myself on where Microsoft is in that sphere and see if I can give some more meaningful commentary on it we got Joe Munger saying needing extra development work is never a good thing especially as a small install base just look at the switch and how so many AAA games have skipped it despite its massive install base yeah but I think AA games skip the switch because it those games literally can't run on the switch despite any extra amount of Dev time you could have on it although I'm I am interested in seeing how a switch two in the market that can run all the AAA games that PS5 and Xbox has like does that significantly alter the gaming Market because both n both PlayStation and Xbox don't look at Nintendo as competition right we've seen from C documents I mean how PlayStation was out there telling Regulators you can't you can't include Nintendo with Xbox and us uh we're the high console Market or whatever high performance console market right you you you Nintendo's not a part of that it'd be super interesting though what happens if Nintendo in the switch 2 comes out with a machine that was powerful enough that could run the AAA games and now people have a choice about oh well you know what I could buy Allen wig 2 on Playstation Xbox or switch 2 where am I going to buy it at who's going to that's why it's so funny that Microsoft was like oh yeah we'll bring we'll bring it to the switch Yeah it's like yeah of it's going to happen anyway when the switch Yeah so I'm just I'm just curious do will we see all of a sudden a shift in PlayStation and Xbox being like looking at Nintendo as more of competition because if they start eating up more of those AAA game sales that means that's less money going to PlayStation less money go to Microsoft I guess you could say who would who would be hurt by a switch that was uh that could run all the AAA games more would PlayStation be hurt more or would Xbox be hurt more and I guess maybe I mean I don't know maybe PlayStation just because there's more to hurt I guess or more people po or Playstation because it's more it's it's it's because it's the console that everybody gets so it's like the default console that also means it's the Casual console that someone may just get it for Madden or or FIFA or Battlefield or whatever but now if those people also have a switch too you don't necessarily need to get that game on PlayStation you could just get it on the switch so now it's like yeah does that hurt it's why exclusives are so important you know and I think like even in that Universe people still buy switch for their exclusives people still buy PlayStation for the exclusives but like Xbox is still in this sort of Bizarro world where people just don't you know I mean that there will be like the forza fans and the Halo die hards who buy buy buy it but like the match casual audience like you're talking about um how many people out there are sort of EX as excited for Halo as they're excited for Spider-Man excited for Zelda excited for Mario whatever um but that could change with Activision being on board you know could um you know imagine if Diablo 5 imagine if that was exclusive if they ever do it I mean they could 10 10 years was a long time if us usually between Diablo games so that would be 2033 Xbox could Xbox could be the leader of the market at least they Pro remember according to the leak documents they project themselves to be the leader of the gaming industry by 2030 at least Revenue rise so at that point if they are it's kind of like well they're doing they're thinking about that from a diversification standpoint I think I think like they they knew that the European Union was going to force Apple to open up the store which means like they needed they needed content to take advantage of that fact they lined that up extremely well and they they nailed it so a lot of this we're going to be the industry leader he's not because of console I feel like but heyy who knows what could happen baby you know you know got new Elder Scrolls we got a new Fallout you know who makes the most money in gaming 10 cent when's the last time he bought a 10- cent console good good point Rand good point when when's the last time everybody went out there and bought that uh 10-cent console to play all those 10-cent games oh yeah they make more money than PlayStation does although I wonder if you added an apple into that stuff how much would would Apple be number one like all the money they make on iOS uh for their for their game related things when they don't even really do much but yeah I think um I think even even then 10 cents first because of the the Chinese market man mic and all that kind of stuff it's um and Western companies have a a lot of difficulty operating in China like sat Sati Nadella was literally talking about it this past week where he's saying like you know it's becoming increasingly unviable for Microsoft to operate freely in China because of you know not just regulatory pressure from within China but also from the United States government because um the United States government doesn't want China you know getting access to high-end chip technology because that will make China way more competitive in the high-tech Industries which is United States brenn and but right um so for M for the US it's a national security issue in a way which is why they've restricted um companies that do business in the UK um the UK in the US from uh trading certain chip Technologies with China you know and that obviously impacts Microsoft to some degree um but yeah it's a it's weird landscape at the end of the day and I want to I want to believe that there's room for three consoles in the industry you know but I'm still I'm still not optimistic about Xbox's chances in the long term but am I ever optimistic round in regards to you know Ever Getting above third place in the console industry I mean they won't but it BEC a question of is that enough for Microsoft does I don't think that matters yeah I don't think it matters they won't they won't go past third place because their consoles don't sell in you know Europe and Japan so you know they they'll never they'll never get enough to out sell any of the other two consoles but I don't necessarily think that that matters you know I don't I don't you know they Xbox well like when you add an Activision Blizzard and all that sort of stuff they'll you know Xbox will be making more money than Nintendo maybe they won't make more profit than Nintendo cuz who does but they'll make more money but I mean does it's like you know is it is it based on the number of consoles sold you know yeah but I just wonder like I just wonder how are they going to are they just going to sub subsidize Xbox forever are they are are they okay well who knows but the thing is who knows how long consoles will exist for right I mean I've said at the beginning of of this generation I said there's two gens of Hardware left the upcoming one which is the one we're in and then the one after it right so and then I I didn't I don't I don't know after that because then you're getting into so you know this one started in 2020 next gen supposedly starts in 2028 and then if you at if you go for S eight years you're looking at 2035 2036 that's 12 you know 13 years from now I don't know who knows how how anything's pretty people I know that have been using an Nvidia GeForce say it's amazing maybe maybe that Tech becomes so good that you don't even know that it's cloud gaming and somebody makes the shift to it who knows where the game gaming landscapes in 13 years from now I mean just think back 13 years ago from right now like what gaming was in what would it be uh 2013 no like 20 2010 and how gaming has evolved since 2010 and then at another 13 years who knows it's it's it's tough to say I I will do I I do think we will definitely have another generation of of Hardware from Xbox and PlayStation and switch but after that like when you get to 2035 I don't know maybe you keep on doing it because maybe people don't switch over I I don't to to streaming or whatever and maybe it never really takes off but I mean 13 years from now I'm not I'm not worried about it at this point and I'm not worried about XO and are they going to step out of the market you know CU I have seen some of that talk because you know the sales for October came in and you know Xbox was in like I think second for dollars but third for units and I think it was like down or whatever their sale like the percentage and it's like oh they're going to go third party like all the PlayStation fans are like they're going third party they're going third party but they don't like they don't realize what's really going on and they're just like suddenly you know mic Micosoft spending all this money you know to just to just leave the industry or just to go third party it does doesn't really make a lot of sense to me but I I I think that's a lot of just hopium you know so like to me I think Xbox will always keep they always have some console even if the console is not going to be the most important thing simply because the console's also where I think you know the the user that spends the most money is going to live and it'll be an important part I mean even their leaked documents that weren't supposed to be seen by anybody says the the you know our game business is built on the foundation of console right so even even that you know that's not supposed to be seen by any money it's like that's where the foundation of their entire business is and they want to obviously grow past that they want to make all the money on PC right because they see that's a huge growth opportunity look at what steam's doing you have mobile call yeah I know Phil's calling me but yeah so I'm I'm not I'm not too concerned so when people people like oh my God the the nobody's buying the Xbox consoles and it's like Yeah and I don't necessarily think it's good that you know they're trailing behind the Xbox One at this stage in the generation I mean it's scary but there is there is some you know extraneous circumstances like the PC stuff didn't really kick into high gear with the Xbox one until later in the generation and you know the mobile push and all that stuff Xbox does everything it can to basically kind of sell you on not buying a console because you don't have to get a console you don't you don't need to if you want to play their games right and then you look at their their earnings report and the revenue and stuff and people are starting to be like oh yeah like I saw Benji I saw all the sales analyst started with this last quarter that were just like oh yeah I'm starting to see the vision even though Hardware's down their revenue is like way up and it's going to happen this next one when they add in all the Activision stuff there you know maybe their Hardware is down again again but the revenue is going to be the most I've ever done and people are going to be like oh yeah I guess that's fine I mean do do you always need you know like Hardware incre I mean I'm sure you always would rather have it increase of course because you increased Hardware you get more people into it and I still think Microsoft can do a better job of you know selling consoles to people uh but is it as important as PlayStation whose entire business model is the console and if the console's not growing or they're not selling it then their business isn't doing good but you look at like Sony and you look at what they're doing and you look at the money they bring in and it's like yeah we're doing great like uh this past uh thing they they they had they brought in the most money uh in quarter 2 history for PlayStation the most ever but then if you you know sort it by revenue or sort it by profit it was like the six best because Sony's margins are so incredibly slim at this point and you know that's an issue and they got got their own problems with the live service stuff going on because they're delaying six of the 12 games of the service and you can't just like well we need new games and it's not like the 360 gen where you could turn one out in two years [ __ ] takes a long time to make so like that might be an issue that might rear its ugly head next year year after the year after that where it's like well all these delays really you know stockpiled and backed us up but yeah I mean there's just there's a lot of minutia in all this stuff so that was a very interesting and insightful segment no it wasn't no it wasn't I want to give you I want to give you a round of applause but I can't because I don't have a s Port open um but you're right you know it's there it's the backbone of Xbox is right now the microtransactions they get through the Xbox ecosystem but that's going to evolve over time as you know they start selling those Market transactions you know controlling blizzard and Call of Duty and stuff like that but at the same time you know it's difficult to predict where Call of Duty's future lies you know and as we're going to talk about in a bit with this socalled Xbox tax um is there a universe where people just stop caring about Call of Duty they all stop caring about Call of Duty if something bigger and better comes along or if Call of Duty just becomes so goddamn awful that people people disengage from it right and I I don't know could something bigger and better come along maybe uh that's certainly a possibility could Battlefield re reemerge and steal some people back could something brand new like the finals come out of nowhere and be like all right this is it I'm sure fortnite has stole some of their users but then you know Call of Duty has their own has war zone which is in that same vein um I know there's a lot of talk about it because this year's Call of Duty is you know let me talk about this year's Call of Duty because I did play it okay right let I I did play a couple games uh I haven't played anything in a week because I was sick I didn't feel like getting on my Xbox and then I was catching up on some reading but I'm about to go head back on the console because I got some games to play cyberpunk playthroughs coming up in December I'm so excited to play cyberpunk finally um but I did play RoboCop and and what a delightful game that was jez I think I said it it last week that I wasn't too sure on the game uh but I finished it and my thoughts on it have changed like in the beginning when I played it I wasn't like too high on it it was like well if you wanted to play a game where you're an armor tank walking through corridors shooting Galleries and popping people's heads off then they made the game for you they captured that aspect of Robocop flawlessly but I wasn't really enjoying the beginning of the game maybe because like I didn't know what to expect and the game does try to actually have a story and some dialogue and some side quest and stuff and it was cheesy and I was kind of like ah this isn't really interesting but then I kind of went along with it in the vein of the movie and I think the way I upgraded RoboCop was wrong because you earn skill points after each Mission or every time you earn 1,000 XP and you can upgrade RoboCop so you can have these different abilities uh you know that are to like your d-pads or your bumpers where like you can kind of uh send out a blast from your arm to kill people around you or have a more armor or Dash forward so like I originally had upgraded RoboCop to this thing where I saw oh get 30% more XP and in games when I see that that's usually the first thing I go for because I want more XP or I want to get more XP so I can buy more things and I think by doing that by maxing that out first I sort of made maybe made a mistake by you could add these different like attacks that you would get actual abilities the actual abilities that make the game at least somewhat more engaging because the game really is like you go down uh you know Corridor and you just pop people's heads and and it's and it's it's it's great uh so in my second time like sitting down to play it I really enjoyed myself I was kind of vibing with the cheesiness of the dialogue and the quests because they're very reminiscent of the movie I started to get more abilities uh they introduced more enemies the game actually looks good I was like man this is actually kind of a lot of fun and yeah my opinion on it changed like it's still not a great game but it's definitely a game where where it's like oh okay they essentially uh exceeded exceeded expectations like this is a good Robocop game actually it's a great Robocop game because the that power fantasy of you being a walking tank and just murdering people left and right and watching heads explodes is so satisfying um I just think it's maybe a bit overpriced at 70 uh I think it's 70 bucks or 60 bucks but I I I definitely feel like if you're a fan of the movies that you probably should play this they did get uh the original uh voice actor for RoboCop to come at come back and play it play the role that's so cool I kind of feel like that this studio is like passion they do I think their previous game was like the Terminator one so they they definitely are seems to be fans of like 80s franchises so I ended up joining their weight yeah punching above their weights a good way to describe it it it it was fun now Modern Warfare 3 I played Modern Warfare 3 before Robocop and as everybody in this podcast knows that listens to it I'm weirdo I play Call of Duty for the campaign and I played all the campaigns except for Vanguard and Black Ops 3 but I've played all the rest of them right I have it's like a it's like a ritual every single November you come and you just play through the campaign so I was like all right well it's a sequel to Modern Warfare 2 which wasn't that good I I I didn't really care for the campaign this much and jez I started this game at 10 p.m. and I rolled credits it was 2:30 and I didn't I didn't take a break so it's like 4 hours long four and a half hours long I was like holy [ __ ] like how short this was and it's just not it's just not it's just not good it's it's essentially the worst Call of Duty campaign I've ever played right it is really DLC it's like DLC that they're charging 70 bucks for and I'm only talking about the campaign because I didn't play zombies and I didn't I don't play the multiplayer so I don't know how those are but the campaign felt like they just didn't have any time to string anything together and this was something that was demanded of them which came to be true because as we've seen Jason ster said that they had less than a year and a half to make this game and when you put in the context of that I almost feel like damn you made this in a year and a half that's sort of impressive I mean I wouldn't give this game more than a six but I wouldn't rate it less than a five I don't think I don't think it's a four but I do think it's in that 56 area where it is sort of it's just like lazy um even like so like the game's the campaign situated in the two there's like 13 missions but you have like seven missions that are your typical Call of Duty linear Affairs that Dove has some set pieces that have their story moments and everything's bookended by cutcenes and the story of okay marov he's broken out of prison and he's still doing his bad stuff and we got to stop him so so you get Task Force 141 you know ghost and everybody and price and soap we got to stop them right so you have the regular Call of Duty missions that are interspersed between these new things called open combat missions and the open combat missions are literally just parts of the war zone map repurposed as campaign levels so like you you you parachute in and you're in this like not I want to say big area but you're in an area from like war zone and what they did all they did was really like hey they put something on your map and like go here you need to destroy this helicopter or you need to diffuse this bomb and you go over there and do it and then the objectives will change and they throw all the war zone crates on the map so you can get the different weapons with their attachments and they just Place some ai ai around some uh the areas and then they call the day and those things are just so like the word I wanted to use is low effort but then like I realized they just didn't have any time to make this game it's it's it's it's low effort because they didn't I'm not even yeah they just had no time to build a proper game it was like we got a year and a half to do it [ __ ] how are we going to do this I don't know bro pulling some war zone maps that's already made and like We'll add some object it it was very disappointing um to me as someone who plays all the Cod campaigns you know I mean yeah you can always say gun plays tight because yeah I mean the gun play is always great in Call of Duty games or it looks good because the Call of Duty games always look good but like I thought the story was very disjointed in the levels like the open combat missions have the things where you have the armor the armor plates that you put in uh you know right so like you you put those in but then like the regular missions don't have those which is odd and the regular straight up linear Call of Duty levels aren't really that good either uh they're really short like I said it beat the game in like 4 hours and that's really not you know I'm not saying like the Call of Duty campaigns are like the greatest things in gaming but I really was not engaged At All by this like I enjoyed RoboCop more like I had more fun with RoboCop than I did with Call of Duty and that's not something I would have thought you know I would say a year ago honestly and it's one of the things that we talk about with Paul tassy and one of the things that we've talked about on this podcast about what do you do with Call of Duty because I'm not sure you can do this again I'm not sure you can go to sledgehammer and be like make us something in a year and a half cuz it happened with Vanguard and Vanguard was awful and it lost all these players and they did it again you know with this release and I don't know how Call of Duty is doing because they haven't announced like any sales figur like they normally do but is that because they're with Microsoft now we're never going to get that again or did it not really do well I don't know does it matter if the campaign's not good because it's all about multiplayer anyways and I have seen you know at least people who play Call of Duty like say the campaign the multiplayers as best has been in a long time so maybe that's all that really matters I don't know but like I don't you don't want like a game like this to get you know reviewed and maybe reviews don't even matter for Call of Duty I know reviews don't matter for Madden I know reviews don't matter for NBA 2K they're sort of insulated from any sort of critical uh you know um uh critical uh I I don't know what's the word I'm looking for but they're they're sort of insulated from any reviews because it's like people just buy the Madden every year and they just it's just what they do and I sort of feel like maybe that's the same with Call of Duty that even if it doesn't outsell last year's maybe if they just sell the same amount or slightly less they'll be fine with it because it's going to bring in money it's going to bring in all this Revenue yeah I did not I did not have fun with that campaign Jaz it was over way too quickly the story and the story should have ended but nope it's continued so I'm sure Infinity Ward is going to be doing Modern Warfare 4 in two years got to keep the story going for whatever and it's it really comes down to this idea of like we needed to get it done in a year and a half because maybe if they had another year and a half you probably could have had more engaging levels you probably could have gotten rid of some the open combat missions cuz those are just they're so disjointed within the campaigns themselves and and they just you're just playing him like this seems lazy and I hate using that word because obviously the devs did everything they could do to get this game out on time but it's just like you just took I don't know like I did I didn't care for it I was like I was really interested in hearing your thoughts cuz like I I I have Modern Warfare 3 they did send me a code I but I've been so busy with non Xbox work at work that I haven't even had time to have a look at it in fact I don't even think I've installed it yet and um yes and I should mention that uh Activision sent me a code for the game yeah I should like against the backdrop of the Xbox tax yeah trending drama you know um which we're going to talk about in a bit and I suppose it kind this kind of this whole situation kind of dovetails into it in a way um but against that backdrop it kind of like I was really curious about your thoughts cuz I wanted to know are the reviews taking it too far are they being extra are they being like you know is it the Xbox tax you know but it sounds like from what you're telling me that it did genuinely deserve some of those low scores well I don't know I don't know about fours right I think um part of this is that partially like backlash who the fact that it has been high quality previously and that Modern Warfare Modern Warfare 3 has got a legacy to live up to and that we have had a year with so many triaa bangers that it kind of feels like Activision should be more capable than this I mean yeah I mean they have how many people do they say working on Call of Duty games 3,000 right they have like 2,000 or 3,000 people working on all the Call of Duty games at any given point in time and it does feel like for a game that brings in so much money or whatever that you would expect you know uh something better from it but yeah I mean I know people were upset with the IGN review they gave it a four I don't agree with that I don't agree that's a four as much as I didn't like the campaign like I said I don't think I'd rate it lower than five and like a five is just you know five is not good right um as you know you start getting into like step like that and I I don't I I don't know I think maybe it's the the it's a $70 DLC because at the time it was just the campaign came out first right so people like pay $70 for this even though like zombies and the multiplayer came with it um yeah it sort of feels like they were going to skip a year or this year was just going to be multiplayer DLC and then at some point they decided we can't do that cuz it's sort of it sort of screwed up their death cycle because you look at you look at um 2019 was the reboot of modern warfare with infinity War dead 2020 was Treyarch they did Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War 2021 was Vanguard right so you had Infinity Ward you had Treyarch and then you had Sledgehammer Sledgehammer did Vanguard but Vanguard was awful cuz I guess they only had a year and a half to make that too cuz maybe I'm trying to figure I'm trying to remember who did the 2018 C but I'm not sure and then 2022 was Infinity Ward with Modern Warfare 2 so they did it in a three-year cycle so you figure Treyarch would have been next on a typical three-year cycle because their last game was 2020 but it wasn't and all of a sudden it's Modern Warfare 3 but it's by Sledgehammer but they just released the game two years ago and I remember saying on Xbox 2 for like leading up to I remember I I think I told you do this I'm like I I expect this game to be in the 60s it's Metacritic cuz everything about it said is like they just had no time you just had remastered maps from Modern Warfare 2 you had zombies which is basically DMZ from war zone but replaced with zombies right and then you had a campaign that you half of it reuses stuff from war zone anyways because it just didn't have any time to do it so it seems like maybe Treyarch couldn't get their game done for this year or something and then like we need we need to push it a year so TR game comes out next year right even though their last game was 2020 so maybe at some point they were like we're not going to be done and then they're like they told Sledgehammer you need to get this [ __ ] done in a year and a half and you end up here so I mean does that bode well for Treyarch next year because they would essentially have four years on their next Call of Duty which nobody has had since like they started doing this back in 2007 like I think like if you are if you are building special Call of Duty that maybe they're doing something they're going further than the game's ever been and you know going to revitalize the franchise or whatever and and and all this sign of stuff and they're thinking like we really have a opportunity to really nail this and take Call of Duty to the next level I suppose it would make sense to send out something something to cash flow the operation cuz they this is about cash flow at the end of the day they need some $70 thing for people to buy as part of the ritual to pay for all those devs and that's why this you know exists and clearly at some point they were like this can't just be a DLC we can't do a $70 DLC um it's not going to work we have to position this as something more so here throw Camp throw some sort of campaign at this let's R in Modern Warfare 3 or whatever and at some point the decision was made to send this out to die and I think like you're probably right that maybe the fact that treyo had four years probably does bod well I would hope but who knows who really knows you know maybe Jason sh knows but maybe Tom Henderson knows right yeah I mean but then again we saw this with Vanguard people played Vanguard they hated it Microsoft even mentioned in their court documents with the case that 50 million people abandoned Cod because of Vanguard or whatever it was but those people all came back because of Modern Warfare 2 the following year so even though Modern Warfare 3 is I don't know how it's doing I I have seen people say the multiplayer is great and maybe that's the only thing that really matters and in you know for the in the grand scope of things um so maybe next year's try game comes out and it's really Call of Duty is really good again or at least you know critically well received again who knows and but I I do feel like what about the Xbox tax well I don't think I don't think them I don't think the any of the reviews for Modern War Warfare have anything to do with the the Xbox tax I just think I just think it's a very mediocre experience that they're charging full price for and and I think Call of Duty has been better and should be better and so when you get get something like this even though I I will say the fact that they made it in a year and a half is and they got this out of it is like that's kind of impressive to me to a certain degree like I didn't have that much fun with it and there's you know but it was like they they did it in such a short time frame that I was like man sort of Wonder like what would happen if they had the fulltime it's like kind of impressive to me but whatever and there was that whole thing about their Advanced Warfare pitch being yeah God I really wanted that really I mean I people talk about advaned Warfare being like the last bad CoD game or whatever but it's like I know a lot of people didn't like it cuz that's the one with Kevin spy but like Advanced Warfare was a lot of fun and then infinite Warfare was great I'm trying to think what was 2018s was that World War II I think that was World War II yeah I think some s told but just drove by in chat yeah so like no wonder dude Sledgehammer Games must hate it because no no Samuel TOA 2018 was Black Ops 4 from try out okay and then was so wait did I get the timing messed up then I don't know was Call of Duty CU so Call of Duty 2020 had to been no that was Black Ops cold war that wasn't Vanguard so like Treyarch pulled out a two well then but oh Black Ops 4 was also from memory trying to Black Ops 4 was the one that didn't launch with the campaign that only launched with multiplayer uh the the Battle Royale mode and zombies I think they didn't launch with the campaign and I was like I didn't play that one because it was like no campaign I ain't playing it so we'll see I don't know how Microsoft's going to approach this do they need to constantly have a new Cod every single year or can they you know Skip a year and make the experience better I I I guess we'll eventually find out what their plans are with it but um we we have me puppet 007 says jez if you're not aware they have a portable that attaches to the series s for 200 bucks yeah I amum it's the upsc gaming screen right I'm I'm actually in touch with them and I'll be maybe writing about it in December if I ever get chance to write anything ever again but yeah we'll see it's the those if if you are referring to the attachable screen that is um there there has been some cool attachments for the the series s like I I I don't think Microsoft expected that screen to be created but the the fact that it's like it's it's a it's you know a perfect rectangular cuboid kind of shape it lends itself well to attachments I don't know if they did that on purpose but it's like a happy accident you know and um I think it's it it's quite interesting they could build up a whole ecosystem if they had that kind of mentality about it um but was we'll see where they take the next one if they do do a split um affordable and uh premium console next gen be interesting uh Nintendo daku says GTA 6 could sell single player online and RP separately for $70 each and people would still eat it up BT Maverick says would like to see someone that denies the Xbox tax but explain read Metro's review of high FR Rush also affect Metacritic and get to vote for Game of the Year jez we did bring that up to Paul tassi and he said that's just Metro being idiots so yeah that is Metro being idiot if you know Metro's history you know who they are and what they're about who they're owned by thing know what people will say Jazz if it's one person doing it who's say it's not more if there one person that just is so casually would put it out in a review that you know what we can't review high-fi Rush that high because of Xbox's release Cadence in the previous years who you got understand daily maale group Man daily maale group is different it's the Daily Mail is the most R English website on Earth because it is just clickbait outrage [ __ ] they have mastered the art of the outrage Bay the entertaining outrage bait they are the masters of it and that's why you know they they're so big and Metro is part of the daily male group you know so what they that's what they do it's their business model it's not journalism it's in infotainment I guess you could call infotainment interesting okay infotainment there are the there are the companies that do this Fox News is an obvious one and um you know other outlets that sensationalize thing and blur the lines between entertainment and news and stuff like that it's just big in America but Britain in Britain there's like there's rules about what you can do on TV but there's less rules about what you can do in newspaper that's like why they do that stuff more in our newspapers here than on TV generally it's it's weird man but yeah Metro's a toilet paper it's C trash and that's why it's kind of shocking that they are part of metac Crick and they are part of the the game awards stuff and it is because it's because of who they're own by they're owned by The Daily Mail which is one of the most if not the most influential Outlet on Earth you know they are a terrifying company so if you want to get slandered and want to like you know lose a load of influence you piss them off you know so I uh if if the daily mail came knocking to to to some you know to someone and they were like let us be on metac or whatever or we'll write HIIT piece about your outlet you know I'm not saying they they did do that I'm not saying that's why they're on there but it's it's kind of like this they're a hugely influential sort of company and they can do what they want basically yeah read about the daily bar they are scary uh for PA say Jaz with how much Xbox invested in zenax zenmax online and machine games got a new studio what kind of investment do you expect for uh bgs with one of the most major sequels of all time in development uh well it's kind of interesting to think about it cuz you know but there's the game studios you know I suppose you're referring to Elder Scrolls right yeah Elder Scrolls has to be you know exactly what fans want it to be but also Elder Scrolls kind of has this Legacy of taking the Bethesda formula to the next level and I I don't really think Starfield did that you know and as much as I enjoyed Starfield I think like there are some design mistakes they made with the game and I do think their engine sort of compromised their Vision a little bit in some ways you know like the the fre the abundance of loading screens and the way that the space combat tied into the wider game I think like that was like a reality of the engine not really fully supporting what they were trying to do with the game um but the engine is designed for the Alder Scrolls and it's designed you know for for that sort of more tight you know typical the experience and I think like even without a huge amount of investment I think the the game should flow a little bit better than Starfield you know but there's other things about Starfield that sort of highlighted the need for more investment I think and one of that is like technology that improves the perform performance of their NPCs and part of this was the fact that it was coming out at roughly the same time as cyber punks the um uh cyber Punk expansion and also Boulders gate which obviously a very different kind of game but also still has NPCs that are giving you RPG quests in you know firstperson perspective it's hard to ignore how much better the motion capture a motion capture presentation is in those games when you're next to Starfield and yeah Starfield is is potentially a much bigger game which broader game and and that's what Bethesda games are known for but I kind of feel like some of this stuff could be solved with technology investment and all that kind of stuff so do I think Microsoft will invest in grow in that studio to really really capitalize on this sort of vision of the ultimate Bethesda game I think so yes I think they will invest I think they will grow the studio and I think like they'll they'll be all hands on deck to sort of really put their mark on the first Bethesda game studios game that really was Microsoft from you know the whole time because sta was in development before Microsoft got involved and um you know the game was pretty much delayed because Microsoft was like we can do more with this you know it probably would have released in a even worse State you know had it not been delayed um so yeah I do think that get investment how much investment I don't know but there's only so many devs out there at any one time yeah especially like when you consider the locality of the studio and stuff like that but um we'll see we'll see I'm I'm pretty optimistic about that uh Nation says open AI put a statement they said he's not been candid with his Communications with the board so that's like talking about you know the guy that we mentioned earlier with open AI getting removed uh Supernova says jez what can we expect from the developer Direct in January AOW hellblade new Doom project Odyssey question mark uh I mean we don't we don't know if there's he wants to know what can we expect from the developer Direct in January I mean you're assuming there is one in January I haven't heard there's a developer Direct in January I mean but I suspect after last year's League they probably work a little bit harder to keep it under wraps um yeah just just because they did one in January last year doesn't mean you're going to see one in January every year you know yeah that might they might do one I I I I think they will do one uh who knows it if it be in January maybe it's in February because if it's in January they're probably they probably would have to start filming that soon right yeah you think so or talking about it at least internally uh lurkin with my gkin says how many more console Generations do you think will have I see Xbox having one more Sony 2 and Nintendo making the switch until they're purchased I mean I sort of mentioned that earlier there's at least one more generation for Sony and play for us or for for XBox and and PlayStation Nintendo maybe they always do it I just don't know 13 years from now like how much technology could change and you know one of the things that I think Sony even mentioned uh with their margins and stuff is like you know the losing money on the consoles uh Xbox losing money on consoles you know I yeah I just don't I just don't think anybody's ready for a hardcore switch to all right now consoles are just streaming I don't think any body's ready for that and I thought it would take like people it it would this gen would be like people getting prepared for it and then next Generation to get people to sort of accept it but I'm not even sure this gen even got people ready for it or prepared for it because it's it really hasn't been a thing so but I don't know it's too hard I'm be I'm gonna be more optimistic than you I think there's at least two more Xbox generation I mean and by that point you're 20 2035 to then 20 you're in your 2040s bro that's like you know yeah and the reason for that is I think they'll I think they'll use the server runtime for AI rather than Cloud streaming yeah uh we got Jus saying okay I'm not defending Cod but was it a four out of 10 level bad on the level of unplayable no I don't think it was a four out of 10 at the lowest I'd give it a five highest i' give it a six but it definitely was the worst Call of Duty campaign I've ever played by far with without a doubt did you play ghosts yes and ghost was better W cuz people didn't like that one right uh yeah I mean people always don't like certain ones Alvin says it's not ideal but in the long run it's worth the 14-month Cod rush job to get away from the Sony contract a year quicker yeah but I'm not sure that's the reason Activision did that though um you know I don't think they would care about getting rid of that earlier I think it was just more like oh well maybe we should do this maybe the deal's not going through uh and if that's the case then our stock price will tank I don't know the reasons why but I doubt it's for that reason maybe that's benefits Microsoft because maybe now they can have marketing next year with the Treyarch game that has an extra long development cycle and you know next so next year's next year's CoD game when you think about it probably will be the biggest Xbox release of all time yeah guess so you think about it I mean you could probably say this this game this Modern Warfare 3 was the biggest Xbox release ever um yeah you know they've only they they only had acquired them you know a couple weeks beforehand so Juan says what are you eating raner with the Cra Class uh I had some like like four chocolate chip cookies I was eating and know I thought I thought Jazz was going to I thought Jazz was going to talk a little bit longer so I muted my mic and I was eating it and then I I had to say yeah but I I was like kind of was like all right and I was like finishing chewing yeah I had some I had some cookies because you know this is long podcast and it was like I need to need to refuel I haven't had in it yet so uh Joshua says Xbox enters the critical status in the game metor convo when their quality control and content impost is finally aart with the other big two recovering from one and growth has halted their focus there in my opinion okay that's a good yeah that they do have Focus issues I think sometimes um I want to say the end we're going to end this poll here that we started an hour ago uh would you buy Grand Theft Auto 6 for you know if the starting price was 100 bucks 78 78% said no and 32% said yes right that's a lot of people who said yes and I suspect some of those people no we we should wait to have that and when the fomo kicks in when the game's actually out see it and then it's like all right am I not really playing it yeah so let's talk talk about let's talk about the game awards right the game talk about the drama with the game awards uh so I guess I don't even know how you want to even talk about this because I guess overall how do you feel about the game awards is there any any like big snubs that come to mind anything things that you would change how would you change the game awards um jez well man it's kind of like I'm over the Game Awards as being a sort of a Bastion of Truth within the the gaming industry and it you know I suppose it was ridiculous to ever think of it as that and I wasn't really aware of the game awards that much until I started doing you know the whole uh the uh the whole journalism thing so like and I wasn't aware of like how they pick the jury members or how the jury operates and all that kind of stuff so like now that I'm more sort of um clued up about it and know that it is just basically you know not a particularly great represent not a particularly great pool of representation um frankly of the the opinions that are out there you know and there there are like the game but the it's like you know Paul tassy was talking about this as well on our on our Xbox 2 plus one and I agree with him and his take was essentially that like you know it's similar with the Oscars you get these like these specific games that are kind um these specific movies that are sort of award bait and you know are more well known and they've got a lot of hype around them but then there might be like this Indie movie that was really really good and no one's really heard of it because it just didn't have that um hype cycle around it and but with gaming it's even it goes to another level because there are so many games out there that are so played and so popular but we never hear about them we never talk about them and these are like your mobile games that are huge in different countries and and other kinds of stuff like do they deserve some kind of representation you know they they're making huge amounts of money and giving people a lot of fun they deserve some representation and um you know I was saying on Twitter that it was a joke that you know Diablo wasn't nominated for art Direction because I kind of feel like Diablo 4 probably had the best cinematics in gaming history and I kind of felt like they deserve some recognition for that over some of the other nominations and I kind of feel like you know it's clear that a lot of the the journalists who were picking this stuff they're just not that into Diablo and that's that's why it was forgotten and I kind of feel like if i' sat there and you know if I'd had a chance myself to pitch to the jury and be like look this is what you're overlooking here I kind of feel like I would have sway some people you know but it's not a big deal it's we're here for the trailers at least I am yeah that's the thing for me the game rewards is literally a marketing event it's all it is right it's it's and I I don't know why people get so up in arms about you know games missing or games not missing or whatever because essentially at its core it's just a way to sell you the next product and get a you know excited for the next game that's all it is right it's not I mean I know it's presented as a celebration of gaming and I do like the fact that Jeff is doing it um but at the end of the day it's a marketing event for him and for the game studios because the only reason people watch this is for the worldwide reveals the new new trailers like nobody's really watching it to see who wins the awards right um because that's not important in fact you know during the awards ceremony itself sometimes they'll just be like and the winner of this was you know they they'll they'll do Award winners off screen you hate that don't you I I I do because when you're talk because because they compare themselves to the they're the Oscars for gaming and I think that's [ __ ] because when the Oscars you know the Prestige movie um show the people who vote on the Oscars are the people in The Academy it's the directors it's the writers it's the actors it's the producers it's people involved in the the film industry right there is a show that is critics based in film and TV It's called The critic's Choice Awards that's what this is the game awards is not the Oscars for the video games the game awards is the critic Choice Awards but somehow it's morphed into this is this is the Oscars for for gaming no it's the critic Choice Awards because the people choosing who wins are the critics just like the Critics Choice Awards but you you know who talks about the Critics Choice Awards nobody because nobody cares about the critic's choices nobody even really cares about the people's choices the only everybody only talks about the Oscars because they're the one that are voted on by the people within the industry so like the G the Oscars for gaming would be the dice Awards and you know I've talked to a few devs and those are the awards that they want to win they want to win the dice Awards because it's voted on by their peers whereas the game awards is just a marketing hype it's just it's just marketing that's all it is and it's it's it has more in common with the critic's choice awards but because there are no events on the scale it gets this over importance uh to it where everybody attack you know everybody's just like whatever and so I mean you look at like here like let we'll just mention one best IND game Dave the diver how how how is Dave the diver an indie game and I know that's it's like what is an indie game or whatever but really because this kind of goes to this idea of like I don't really think the San Fran cabal I don't really think a lot of the people on the panels really play a lot of these games I think they play like the most popular ones but I think for the most part they're not really involved with voting on some of these quote unquote would be lesser categories right like you look at like strategy and Sim and I've seen people who actually Freelancers who do the reviews for these websites are like yeah nobody at these these websites are actually playing any of these games that's why it's like you know something like City skylines 2 is nominated when the reviews for that aren't that positive you know what I mean an actual like really good strategy games and stuff aren't on that list or if you get the ongoing stuff it's just you know the biggest stuff imaginable it's genin impacts it's your Apex Legends it's your fortnites right it's just because that's just like the big name um and that sort of ties into what I was going to talk about with Xbox um but yeah there's some weird things with the game awards because if you look at it for example best RPG right it's like Starfield it's sea of stars it's Final Fantasy 16 which should not be in the RPG category Final Fantasy 16 is not an RPG it is an action game what it doing in our best RPG I don't know did anybody actually play that game uh I guess not because I have no clue how that's in the best RPG category but either way and then finally balers Gate 3 and I'm sitting there and I'm like wait a minute how is that that category is already W because balers Gate 3 is nominated for game of the year but it's also in the best RPG category along with other games that are not nominated for game of the year so how is it possible for any of those other games to beat balers Gate 3 it's not so it's like sort of a farce you know how is Cia star supposed to beat balers gate when it's not nominated for game of the year so you already know the outcome of that one it's it's and not only that but best action adventure four of the six game of the year contenders are in that category right Allan Wick 2 Spider-Man 2 Legend of Zelda um I'm forgetting one and Star Wars Jedi uh Survivor right but the thing is if Allen wake 2 wins best action adventure over Spider-Man 2 and over Legends of Zelda and whatever the other game I'm missing how can Spider-Man 2 Then win game of the year if it couldn't even beat Allen Wick 2 for action adventure you know what I mean how does the Oscars do it the Oscars don't have those sort of things if Oscars has best picture and they have like Best Director they have best actor best actress they don't have like best genre picture right that's the sort of thing here like you have these categories for the games that are all made up and then they they kind of merge into best game but like those games are also nominated in each indiv idual categories so it's like well you know yeah if Allen W 2 wins best action adventure then any of those other four games in that category can't win game of the year if you're if you're if it's being voted on in the correct manner I would I would I would guess I guess it's possible it wouldn't be but you know I I that's one of the things I see like how could Zelda win if if how could Zelda win game of the year if it didn't win best action adventure game right like how's that possible um so there are there are weird things there is some some drama with the Esports stuff where like some guy was nominated for best Esports coach and he was like I didn't even coach this year dog you know what I mean and it kind of raises like okay well how do you get that wrong right um you know as far as like game of the year would I remove anything or am I upset that Starfield didn't make it no I didn't think Starfield would make it and we did our predictions for what would get in there and I think I've been saying for a while I didn't expect Starfield to get nominated I think I've been saying the one that had a better chance of getting in for Xbox was high-fi rush and high-fi Rush did get five nominations to starfields one and I think Forza Motorsports 2 or whatever it was and Diablo's 2 um because when you you look at you did you did I think we both said we didn't expect when you look at who is on the panel and you look at like how they rated Starfield you knew there was just wasn't wasn't going to make it on the list um you know am I upset that it didn't make it I mean like but here's the thing like it doesn't really matter to me who wins the kees because I have my own personal uh like personal opinion of what like my favorite game of the year right because like balers Gate 3 is probably going to win and I haven't played it so to me my game of the year is Allen Wick too you now I guess this the part of these Awards is if I was voting on it like imagine the Xbox 2 was on the panel and we got to vote on Game of the Year would it be fair if I voted on it because I wouldn't have played three of the six games right I I haven't played balers gate and I haven't played Super Mario wonder and I haven't played Zelda so if I was voting on it I'd vote Allen Wick too but I haven't played half the games so is is that is that like fair for for me to vote on it when I haven't played half that stuff because that's what happens in the Oscars you have like a whole bunch of these nominees and it's and it's been reported that most Academy Members Only Watch like three three or four of the movies they don't watch all the all all the nominees they're they're only watching like a few so like you know is that does that matter should you know I mean it's it's I mean it' be tough to play every single game that deserves an Accolade you know yeah but that's where like IGN and like IGN's like a whole group of people and you know kind of funny is a whole group of people right it's not like one per yeah but like in the academy it's one person or whatever but does that does that say about like hey well does that that's not right if you're not playing everything if you haven't played all six games then you shouldn't be voting on it you know I mean yeah I mean in a perfect world in a perfect world that' be given out codes and saying like are these are the these are the nominations go away and play them you know but it's also kind of like can you expect people to put that much into it when they're probably not being paid for it and you know as the goblins and Warcraft say time is money friend and it's kind of like do I personally wouldn't have time to play six games within like however long a month two months three months even yeah but I mean if you well that's Rec bias like uh Super Mario Wonder Allen wik 2 and and Spider-Man 2 all came out within like a couple weeks of the nominations ending but then there's also the cutof date Josh Sawyer called him out on Twitter being like Oh how is the cutof date November 17th but the announcements for the games in it are November 13th right cuz pentant had come out had like you know what I mean like pentam had released on whatever it was so he was like that's kind of weird and it is it is weird and there was some kind of I remember people saying like well Forza I made that I made all that drama that year about Forza about Forza Horizon and like how like it wasn't on the ballots or whatever people had to like write when they all decided they hated me was because of that yeah they they did or um you know on ongoing game and this ties in more into like the Xbox text thing because to come out of this people people a lot a lot of Xbox fans were really upset because Starfield or highi Rush didn't get nominated and I do feel Hi-Fi Rush probably deserves it more than Starfield um and if you were to say which one would you would you remove oh and I remember the one that was in action adventure it was Resident Evil 4 uh was supposed to was in that category so it was like Spider-Man 2 Allen Wick 2 Resident Evil 4 and um they don't have a horror no they don't have a best horror game but a lot of few people feel like Resident Evil 4 shouldn't be there because it's clogging uh it's like clogging uh a spot and I guess you could you can make that argument because if you look at the like the best P the best pictures by category like the most nominated games you have eight nominations for Allen Wick 2 and balers Gate 3 you have seven nominations for Spider-Man 2 and you have five nominations for high fire Rush Super Mario wonder and Zelda guess what those are all the game of the year contenders except for high-fi Rush right Allen wake 2 balers Gate 3 Spider-Man 2 Super Mario wonder and Legend of Zelda three so what is that 1 two three four one two three four five five of the six games are also the most nominated except for high-fi Rush and it's like okay well what's the next most nominated four nominations for cyberpunk 2 77 which got ongoing which some people weren't happy with cuz like how could you give that ongoing game I mean it didn't say multiplayer so I guess they're okay you know that you know whatever Final Fantasy 16 got four and then three nominations for Resident Evil 4 and Street Fighter 6 now I was confident that Resident Evil 4 was going to get a game of year nomination because the reviews were really high the people on the panel loved Resident Evil 4 and because they just have a hard on for Resident Evil Resident Evil 2 was nominated in 2019 for Game of the Year and Resident Evil Village was nominated in 2021 so in my mind I knew Resident Evil 4 was getting in right but if you look at this list and it's like you know what I think the game that got snubbed that should have been in there that maybe Resident Evil 4 pushed out is high-fi rush it got five nominations the same number as one Super Mario wonder and Zelda I think high-fi Rush is like if if if you got to see what the rest of the nominate like the one through 10 right where the top six get the nominations I bet you HiFi Rush is probably number seven I agree or I don't I don't think Starfield I don't think Starfield starfields got one so people are like how could Starfield not get a best score or whatever um you know and and then of course there's the Hogwarts drama Hogwarts like the bestselling game of the year no representation for anything you even have people suggesting that you know Outlets didn't vote for it because they don't they don't want to be involved in any of the drama that that game brings right it's so it's so annoying because JK ring like yeah she created the IP but like regardless of you know the drama she was not involved in this game in any way shape or form and the the game was hundreds of diverse voices built that game and they sort of like I don't know it's really it's just just not fair frankly I mean it's like but do you think about it like what what would it have been nominated for let me ask you this if if you like Hogwarts Legacy I don't think would it's action adventure right well that's the thing it that's the thing it it we we I would say to you it's not Game of the Year worthy or at least I wouldn't vote for it so you'd say best action adventure but guess what it's not beating out Allen Lake 2 it's not beating out Spider-Man 2 it's not beating out Resident Evil 4 and it's not beating out um Zelda so like and the only one the other one in there is Star Wars Jedi Survivor Which is higher rated so it's like okay it's not it's not beating out any of those other games for action adventure should should should Hogwarts be an RPG if Final Fantasy 16 could be in the RPG category why not why not why not hogwart's legacy right even though it really doesn't fit got those quote unquote RPG mechanics yeah but so it's like maybe if you did it there I don't know but I sort of feel like I don't know where Hogwarts would have gotten a nomination at but I do feel that people didn't want to vote for it because they didn't want to uh they didn't want any of that the the the drama to follow but then it's like well if you're not voting for games because of one thing because of this does that also mean you're not going to vote for other games because of other reasons as well because opens up a whole can of worms if you're admitting that you're not voting for something for one particular reason does that mean that you might not vote for something for another particular reason right I mean there that precludes the quality of the game that precludes the quality of the game um so is there any more like Oddities from from the game Wars we want to talk about really uh n i mean I did see a super chat from Collingwood who said jez what is your negative article about the game awards going to be this year I'm not going to write one because it's just not that important to me you know it's I think like well first of all it's on a midnight in Europe I think or 1 in the morning for me so I ain't going to be watching it unless my sleep patterns really screwed up that week and it probably won't be screwed up because I've got a I've got shipped for Black Friday to do so it's really not on my mind at the moment um but I think I don't think there's much more I can add that hasn't already been said kayy hasn't really evolved the the format of the show at all and I think like he doesn't need to because it's growing year over year uh exponentially and people are showing up because it's another E3 it's the E3 of winter now regardless of the quality of the awards and stuff like that and honestly I think the the the the drama and the controversy around who got snubbed and nominations and all this kind of stuff the fact that we've been talking about it for like half an hour that that much it's maybe like approaching 20 minutes well even well even still it's like we've the the controversy controversy the controversy about the game awards has um generated a lot of discussion which markets the game awards which is ultimately what they want they want eyeballs on those trailers so I think it kind of the sort of weird format they've got going for it really serves the purpose of creating spectacle which is really what it's about it's about spectacle it's about the trailers it's about uh you know weird stuff happening you know like the Oscars you know even though like you know that you could you could call some of the stuff that happened last year like a security lapse which isn't which in hindsight maybe you think oh that's kind of funny but it it could very well have not been kind of funny you know if if something bad had happen so yeah but again it serves a purpose of creating drama spectacle and driving people to go and watch it yeah I'm Jeff's loving all this bro because all this is it's just it's just it's just it's marketing for the show you're talking about this stuff we're talking about it it's it's yeah he loves it I mean he even six hours in he's like how we all feeling about the awards he loves that stuff because it keeps it keeps the game awards on the tips of everybody's tongue uh even Joe Munger in chat Super Chat he says Dave the diver and Indie makes sense every Indie as a publisher on that list that's where it fits it's 20 bucks yeah but like there's Indie Publishers like annaa or devolver digital and then there's Dave the diver who's owned by HZ Nikon isn't it Nikon I think so yeah so like Nikon's a massive massive tech company you know they they make Hardware I've got a I've got a email from the main box right now talking about a new Xbox controller they made so and I think the the real kicker is that even the devs and even Nikon said it wasn't it wasn't an indie it was like a they said like it's like an India it's a smaller project but we don't consider it an India because obviously it's not an India you know yeah and it's they're like there are true independent devs who are like you know doing it solo who probably deserved a bit more recognition than Dave the DOA which uh oh yeah sorry Nexon not Nikon I got mixed up everyone in chat thanks for the correction uh you could see why I made that mistake right yeah next on the the they make the career and MMOs and stuff like that but yeah huge company um and stuff and uh it's kind of uh yeah just is what it is I guess it's probably but again like no explanation offered no sort of like you know acknowledgment of the drama because again it serves its purpose well I I I saw like Greg Miller say so can we just say imagine if naughty dog you know had a a team splint Splinter off 10 10 person team to make a really small indie game could we nominate that for indie game even though they're part of naughty dog which is a part of Sony PlayStation it's like of course not pent you know does that mean pent was nominated for indie game you know was pentant be nominated for new game was uh did P how did P was pentant nominated for anything last year I can't remember but like it's it's the same argument right should it be nominated for indie game cuz is a splint it was a splinter group of obsidian which is a subsidiary of Microsoft anybody in chat know was was did pentant was it nominated for any awards last year or was it because of the cut off because I know Josh Sher was complaining about that on Twitter I'm trying to remember if pentant was nominated for anything um I don't think it was but I don't think it was because it was highly rated like pent I think it's like an 87 or an 86 so we have Supernova saying no that it wasn't and Zack Riley says no pent it missed the cut so yeah NC says no it was ignor so there you go but I guess you know by the Dave the diver argument then or even the argument that Greg is making then pentan should have been nominated for best Indie because it's a splinter group of obsidian uh and uh you know they're obviously part of uh Microsoft so yeah um we also have a super chat here from hono Reckless saying ran you keep saying San Fran cabal and balers Gate 3 will probably win but those same cabals haven't gotten past act one but they 100% have beaten Allen Wick 2 well it's because Allen Wick 2 is the type of game they probably enjoy it's funny me and Rand were were talking about um we were talking about like you know how we'd solve it and I was saying like you should diversify the panel and maybe add you know more people people have' got different opinions but then I had to concede I probably would have voted bers Gate 3 as well cuz it's that damn good but um you know I I I think a different panel probably would have given you know if there was more voices on the panel you know maybe voices from you know more Xbox leaning Outlets you know and I'm not saying window Central I I wouldn't I don't care to be on the panel or whatever but you know Xbox in YouTubers or podcasters or whatever um what if they they might have voted in HiFi rush you know if it was a little bit more balanced well so this is this is this is where the the Xbox tax discussion comes in right you mentioned high-fi rush I mentioned that I think high-fi Rush is like number seven or number eight on the game of the year list like just missed out on it but some people will say this is the Xbox tax that like and there's a whole bunch that goes into it so I'll just mention a few things that people have told me that if Hi-Fi Rush was published by Nintendo or PlayStation that Not only would it be higher rated it would be nominated for game of the year right and you can make the same argument for Starfield they say if Starfield was nominated uh if Starfield was published by PlayStation or multiplat and Bethesda was never purchased then it would be higher rated and also game of thee Contender uh obviously the Call of Duty modern Warfare 3 that it's the Xbox tax cuz now it's owned by Xbox so now it's open season on review scores on on the game right despite the game not being that good in the first place and obviously you know we've brought this up with Paul he vly disagrees um you know there was that one review from Metro that said he couldn't rate high-fi Rush that high because of you know the lack of quality exclusives that Xbox was having right which is something ridiculous when on face value and it's a reason never to read Metro ever again or never to at least read anything by that reviewer again if you're putting um the like the release schedule or you know the exclusives on a platform and somehow factoring in it to a game like that's just seems so wrong to me on every level of how I would you know think about a game but you know like it's that controversy yeah what they do what the D people say that hey you know best ongoing support should have had Halo infinite seeing this resurge and even Paul tassi agreed with us Paul tassi said absolutely Halo infinite should have been in there and you know sea of Thieves I saw SE of Thieves even sort of trolling the game awards with some of their tweets being like one day we'll get in right how and popular sea of Thieves is in but has never been once nominated for the game awards right never once for ongoing ongoing things so now bear with me here Jazz okay don't because I I have a I have a lot to say I'm bar I'm Baron the Xbox tax is it real does it exist I think the answer is yes but not in the way you think okay I'm sitting forward now I think it exist let hear it in in this way because I think it's the box tax is essentially the people in The Press not caring about the platform enough to have enough people who play on the platform who play the games which is why you don't see a game like Halo infinite or see a thieves receiving nominations for ongoing games because quite frankly people in the industry don't play on Xbox they don't play Halo infinite and they don't play sea of Thieves so they can't receive any nominations when you look at multiplatform reviews of games that come out the vast vast majority of reviews are on PlayStation and that's not a problem but that's part of what I'm talking about it's because Xbox is a secondary console to I think a lot of people and it's not thought about and it's not played Enough by them so by default you know Starfield and Hi-Fi Rush don't have the Champions within those companies that could be like I really love Hi-Fi rush and then all the other people would say me too we're putting it on there it's maybe just one person or two where everybody else plays on Nintendo and they play on playstation so you have a whole bunch of people that like Zelda yes Zelda of course I agree Mario Wonder absolutely and you know PlayStation with Spider-Man 2 so like to me the tax is the disproportionate amount of H of the of how the media doesn't really play on the system which you can say is Xbox's big problem their biggest problem since you know Xbox One where the platform was viewed as a joke right now I say this because also the reinforc my one of the reasons reinforce my idea about this is because I don't know if you saw this article yesterday or the other day Jaz but it was from polygon right um and it was everyone slept on Quantum break but you don't have to and I was thinking to myself man this is fitting that suddenly after Allen wake 2 which everybody loves it now people are like man Quantum break 2 did never got the the Kudos it deserved and I was somebody that said Quantum break was a better game to control it had a better story it had better Powers it had better actors like everything about Quantum break was better than control but control reviewed higher and was also nominated for for game of the year right so I was reading this article and it starts off here and this is the Xbox tax that I'm really talking about here it says article starts off I don't particularly blame anyone for missing remedy 2016 TV show action game hybrid Quantum break there were frankly a dozen reasons to be perplexed by it like the fact that it was a TV show action game hybrid or that it was incept in except inex uh inextricably tied up in Microsoft's failed effort to make the Xbox one and all entertainment platform I was like why what but it really what does that factor into the quality of the game but it really gets going here jez when Quantum brick was released remedy wasn't the story the Xbox one was Microsoft positioned every new exclusive as a potential system seller that would rival Sony's first party stable and most critics evaluated it on that basis I read this like first two paragraph an admission that's my whole point is I'm trying to say here is that PlayStation and Nintendo are like the default consoles everybody in these like websites and that's where the majority where they play on they have their Champions or whatever Xbox is a third place console right Xbox was looked at a joke in 20 you know last generation right you can talk about oh does somebody have I'm like a a bias where they say review a game and it's like well this game would normally be a nine but I'd rate it a seven because Xbox normally I would say no because I don't review games like that I can't imagine somebody else doing it so I would say no maybe they have an unconscious bu unconscious bias even though we have someone from Metro admitting basically that like I couldn't review this game that High because of Xbox's release score and I'm like that's the dumbest thing ever like you judge the game based on the game but then polygon's out here saying that oh well people didn't play Quantum break and and it's really because of Microsoft's failed investment or the failed you know effort of Xbox One and that it was quantum break was reviewed you know basically you know it it was a evaluation of the of the platform rather than the game itself and I'm like that's the dumbest thing I've heard but that's like almost in line with sort of what the Metro reviewer was saying to a certain extent right when Quantum break was released remedy was in the story the Xbox one was Microsoft positioned every new exclusive as a potential system seller that will rival Sony's first-party stable and most critics evaluated it on that basis what first off let's let's get rid of the uh this notion here this revisionist history that somehow the beginning of the Xbox One PlayStation generation ation that Sony was releasing bangers every single year cuz that's far from the truth that is so wrong it's not even funny but it's it's interesting to see it positioned here that hey Sony's first part like Sony's first party games by the time Quantum break came out were what it was launch titles of Killzone shadowfall and Knack right you had early the the following year in 2014 you had INF Second Son which which did well um and I I'm I don't even think they had anything else that year 2015 was bloodborne which people loved and also like the Uncharted collection I guess you could also say The Last of Us remaster I think was 2014 you like you even had critics saying oh PlayStation doesn't have a lot of a lot of uh releases this year and this is and this that's why it's genius and it's genius or whatever what it was talking about I remember that they didn't have anything so when Quantum break came out in 2016 you know Xbox actually had a better exclusive lineup for those years up until that point like PlayStation didn't have or at least PlayStation's first party wasn't the the huge 800lb gorilla that people think of it as now until later in the generation so it's interesting to read the revisionist history here by qu by qu uh by polygon saying you know that would rival Sony's first party stable which whatever but the idea of but the idea of evaluating a game based on the platform and the position the platform was in is this idea that I don't agree with and I think is [ __ ] but then polygon straight up admitting it in this article and we've so to me it's like I think that's what the Xbox tax is it's incidental this what you're say it's it's it's because Xbox has is not the primary console that the people in within the websites or whatever are covering it maybe aren't necessarily giving the games a full Shake they're doing exactly what Quant what exactly what polygon said they were doing Quantum break is that it's an evaluation of the ecosystem not the game itself so how often was it touted beforehand with Starfield that Starfield needed to be the game of the generation for Xbox that it needed to be an 11 out of 10 that it needed to do this that it needed to save Xbox these were common things said by a bunch of different Outlets before um Starfield to come out did that sort of talking point lead them to then play the game and review it differently uh than they would have because I just think of quantum break as Quantum break and I was like is the game good based on its own merits but I mean here you have a website admitting that that wasn't necessarily the case so I wonder you know I wonder wonder if the backlash Xbox has the generalized backlash you know the so the the Xbox tax in in the in the way we're describing it here right now I wonder if this is kind of similar to the way people are backlashing now about the abundance of different streaming services out there almost like it's a a resentment that there has to be three platforms you know and that people would maybe prefer less platforms less fomo and less feeling like oh well if I want to play this game I have to get an Xbox you know and the sort of you know and and sort of extrapolating that into their work essentially because you know to to work in this industry you kind of have to be a gamer you know and every gamer sort of feels a certain way about things I kind of I have a weird position in this industry and I think the reason that I'm I'm able to have this position that I have is because of the Xbox tax because there isn't enough people in journalism who give Xbox a fair Shake I don't think I would have such like I don't think I would have had the audience that I would have had if XBox was being fairly represented in the wider gaming press and that was kind of like the whole one of The Inspirations for me even starting a blog in the first Pace was that I felt like people weren't representing this stuff properly like I gave Quantum break a 9 out of 10 when I reviewed that I loved I absolutely loved it and I was on the record of loving it and you know and I I remember feeling weird about you know control and the way you know everyone seemed to give that game so so many flowers when they ignored Quantum break which was a better game overall for sure it was you know and you you don't want to think like about conspiracy theories and that like people are trying to intentionally undermine Xbox cuz I honestly doubt that's the case but I think it is just like you say it's all incidental people have a platform preference and like the same people that the same game journalists who you know calling me a Microsoft lap dog and stuff they just sort of hired their platform preference behind being a multiplatform site that still at its core considers Xbox to be an afterthought so so this is this is what I mean so this this is what I kind of mean is like I think if Hi-Fi rush I think if Xbox was the dominant platform like PlayStation is if more people played on Xbox than PlayStation I think because of that highi Rush is nominated for game of the year because there'd be more critics that would essentially play on the system that's what I think the Xbox tax is really fact they didn't even they probably hadn't even known it you know I mean they probably knew it existed but they probably that's why you don't see that's why you don't see Halo infinite nominated for ongoing game or see thieves because the people who vote on the Awards don't play an Xbox like that and they certainly don't play those games how are they going to vote for it right I at least that's what I think of Xbox tax when I think of it it's it's basically Microsoft system is it's you know it's the third place system less people play on it less critics play on it and for those reasons things don't essenti like Dave Ramos says in the Super Chat s Sony's console market dominance equals more people play games on PlayStation than Xbox it's reasonable the same is true for critics that's the Xbox sa and you know I I would push back on like oh I'm intentionally rating a game lower for this reason like even though we have someone from Metro saying it because it just doesn't jive with how I think about video games but then I read something from polygon and I'm just I read this and I'm just like is is this how critics review games they actually reviewing the platform when they're talking about the game itself and not the game and I don't know it's just it's just so casually just thrown out there that was like well maybe this is how and you know what I any of you out there as old as me who's maybe was surfing around like the the the days of neoaf if anybody here remembers neoaf exists doesn't it well it still exists but nobody really uses it right everybody everybody migrated over to reset era but I remember a time where during the Wii U era where you had the the Blackboard does anybody here remember the Blackboard where fans of the platform would say xgame would save the Wii U and it would be every exclusive that would be coming out for the Wii U and when it released they would draw like a line through it and the same thing happened with the PS3 there was also a PS3 Blackboard and every single thing every single game every single price drop every single you know slim they would oh Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to save PlayStation then like it didn't and then boom and then it was like the next game and then the next game and they kept on having to cross it out right um and I still think we're in this era where like I I think some critics and some fans don't know whether or not Xbox is a monopoly or Xbox is about to leave the industry or become a third party publisher right I I still think there's people out there who talk about this idea that Xbox needs to be saved and I think some people might view the platform might view the game might view the games that they're reviewing through that lens so like Quantum break was a victim of it because it wasn't about the game it was about Xbox one and it needing to be saved and could it do it and it was like no it didn't right I still think maybe there's uh some of that going on here um at least I don't know that's my at least my my position on it essentially yeah anyways yeah it's it's weird cuz like I rarely get the perspectives of game journalists because I just don't know that many game journalists in the industry um they don't care to know me and I kind of feel like that's my Xbox tax I cover Xbox so I'm not a real journalist and I kind of felt that kind of exclusionary hostility from day Zero before I'd said things that pissed everyone off um but it's it's but it's fine you know I I would love to know more about the thought processes that goes into you know multiplatform stuff because I cover Xbox from a completely different angle I cover it as a we're a tech site first and we're tech journalist first and we think about think about it as part of the the Microsoft ecosystem because we are a Microsoft ecosystem blog and a lot of people are interested in Microsoft General news because Microsoft has a lot of shareholders so they they want to know what what's going on in the world of Microsoft that's always been our business model since since we were called Windows Phone Central and then we had to Pivot because look what happened you know um but when I that's why like I don't when I review a game I don't think of it in terms of like this needs to save the Xbox platform because that's all we cover you know and and I kind of feel like as a result we have maybe a different perspective on things things aren't so desperate I don't need Starfield to be flawlessly perfect for me to sort of give it its flowers or celebrate what it did well or what it did wrong and I think my other writers feel the same way about it as well because they are Xbox fans and they are you know in that ecosystem and they're invested in that ecosystem um I think that's why like you know it's so weird sometimes you know when when you talking to other people in the industry and they are multiplatform oh well whatever I don't know if you saw this but uh Last of Us Part Two remastered is leaked uh cover art box art Playstation PSN descriptions even the trailer is that was already known no it was known it was coming but now it's official the trailer is leaked it's uh it's releasing on January 19th 2024 um yeah uh like they got all the PSN information for this there's a new Rog likee survival mode that is also coming with the game I wonder if this is going to be a free upgrade or a $10 upgrade or if they're going to be selling this for 70 bucks it's also a remaster for a game that is um came out in 2020 uh June 2020 I think it was so not even four years later the official Tri yeah so there's that going on there so yeah I'm going get GTA 6 if it's free but they charge per hour play time right right to further clarify the thought I don't want to be in position where I rush through games trying not to hit the next payment tier um yeah so true the game awards will uh obviously we have a we'll be doing an Xbox show like right after that right like Xbox 2 the game rewards is on the looking at the calendar it's on the 7th and we have obviously Xbox 2 on the eth do we think we're going to see anything from Xbox Jaz uh well yes I pretty much know that Xbox is there oh so is this a leak I will yeah it's a leak oh it's a leak so just cour but hang on I'm caveat in this because last time this caveat [ __ ] let's go where's Tom Henderson I want Tom Henderson and his keyboard I want the post up on Insider gaming within the minute jez Cordon of Windows Central on jez's podcast says that R 419 I'm adding caveats here because the last time I teased a stuff coming for a show everyone was mad at me and they like oh J wasn't good enough man you know the bcec wasn't good enough and everyone was mad at me so I ain't teasing nothing so I'm not telling you if it's going to be good or not Xbox is going to be at the show but hey maybe maybe it's with Candy Crush maybe there's a Candy Crush Gears of War crossover coming and you're going to be shooting uh candy out of a chainsaw Lancer or it's and it's a mobile game and it's paid to win so yeah I'm not I'm not saying if it's going to be good or not so yeah that's that's that's my that's that's where I'm going with that one don't expect it to be good you people you mean people Rand so I'm not telling you a damn thing so but but we got Jess Cordon confirming that Xbox will be at the game awards with something but who knows what that something is going to be so where's where's my Tom it might be bad but it might be bad but Jess Cordon is confirming that they will be there with something because last year they weren't there they weren't there yeah but they will be this year you've got a theory you've got a theory about what might be happening in the game of WS I do yeah well I don't know people people say like oh it'll be um it'll be hellblade 2 or whatever I there's a part of me that says this would be the third time I just don't see no no I wasn't referring to that what what what were you referring to you've always said about Boulders gate the Xbox version oh yeah yeah yeah so uh laran did announce that uh Xbox the Xbox version of the game is coming in in December and that they will reveal the date at the game awards I said that I've been saying that since like God before the game even lach launched I was like they're going to yeah it's going to it's going to release after they win game of the year of course it is yeah it's always nice to be right I don't know when it's going to release like maybe it's like they win and then like the game releases that next week or something but they also announced like the ultimate edition which is like the three disc physical stuff right so um yeah so I don't know like as far as what Xbox could show at the game rewards your guess is as good as mine maybe they do perfect Arc I I just would find it weird if hellblade 3 hellblade 2 showed up there for a third time I'm trying to think of a game that showed up three times at the game awards and I'm struggling to think of something there time for everything right I guess there is yeah I don't know I just like if they were going to show hellblade like you you'd presume it was going to be you know it's it was going to be a meteor sort of thing it wasn't just going to be another cutscene or another it was going to be more like this is how the game actually plays cuz we don't really know know that yet you know and if if hellblade was launching before E3 you know not saying it is but if it was this is probably one of the last places to really get eyeballs on what could end up being your biggest game of the year right no I'm a wrong yeah I mean there's also now people think that you know hellblade 2 may not be coming until like later in the the year for 2024 even though we thought it was sort of cuz like Matt Bo was on a podcast and he sort of talked about some things and I'll just run these down really quickly that recently Matt booty spent time at the Coalition and it software to check up on those projects see the studios um that uh it's important to Matt that all these Studios connect to each other and one of the main goals for Xbox Studios is to create a diverse games lineup from small games like pentant to Big aaa's like Starfield and everything in between not just fol focusing on some selected genres uh creativity at Xbox Studios shouldn't be a possib just be a possibility it should be an inevitability um he says that we have schedules and budgets and all these things but ultimately it's about the pursuit pursue the craft of our Studios and make sure that other stuff doesn't stand in the way that they're on track for four big games by first party per year plus other things in between um we have schedules and budgets oh I already read that uh the project a studio takes next isn't about what we need but what the studio is passionate about and he sort of like named the games and he was you know he said like Forza and then he said like R history Untold and Tower borne and flight Sim and then like hellblade 2 so people thought he was sort of mentioning like the release Cadence of the games which seemed like if that was the case then maybe hellblade 2 was further away but then again if he's saying they're on track for you know one big game a quarter you know I'm not sure anybody would really say Tower born's a big game so I'm not so like I don't know what Xbox is big game for the first quarter of next year would be you know I think Xbox would consider Tower B and to be to be that I I well then they have different different expectations of what every what what everybody else considers a big game because I do not think I I think if we chat do you think Tower born is a big is a is a big game on the level of hellblade AOW and perfect Arc and stuff or is it more like on the level of the smaller stuff that Xbox and Matt talks about here because I certainly don't think in my but then again I might be biased because I haven't played Tower born but to me I haveed Tower born is not a big game at least not at least not on the level of the other ones I I think you're going to be real teror maybe I am basically iorn is kind of like the dream like online service version of Streets of Rage basically I think the game is going to be bigger than people think well you T agrees with you says we don't think it's big but Xbox does I guess that's possible yeah why you think it's big personally I think you're mean I maybe I am I just I just don't I just don't think so but we'll see maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised so because that that was the thing like to me it was like well if we're on track for a big game every quarter what's the big game for January February March you know I do expect toborn to launch in that time frame but it's not something I would say big but I guess maybe Xbox would but then it's like all right what's uh what's the big game for April May and June Microsoft Flight Sim I don't know maybe who knows man maybe it's C maybe it's Candy Crush uh third person shoer all right um announc of the gameward what else uh we got Xbox and AI Jaz dude dude what let let's let's park the AI stuff let's park the well we should just mention that Xbox Xbox is partnering if if we get into and then we got two two rounds of questions I just want midnight right now I just want cuz midnight bro it's in the title I just want to mention Xbox Partners we maybe we'll talk about this next week in depth right because it deserves a bigger discussion and we do we we do got about an hour left and we got double the patreon questions to get through but just for those that don't know we'll talk about this more next week but Xbox is partnering with inworld to build AI game dialogue and narrative tools at scale and a lot of people are really upset about this and there's a lot of nuance there's a lot of discussion to be had about AI so we'll shove this to next week because there was just too much for us to cover dude we we'll be we'll be here all night and it's mid I know you have I know you have thoughts about I do have I do have thoughts about Ai and I've been talking to people at Microsoft about it to get their take as well so I do have it does deserve a little bit more more more um maybe so yeah we'll talk about that next week uh cotor apparently is dead at least that's according to the Jeffrey grubster the grub grub uh he basically said on his show that uh because the CEO of embracer didn't want to talk about that game and Grub said in a show that essentially no studio is working on that game now in any way shape or form so it sounds like cotor might be completely dead maybe some other Studio picks it up and but yeah it's nobody's working on it right now so who knows no who knows when's it coming so there's the stuff about Co tour there's also been some Xbox leadership promotions because Matt booty got promoted to like I'm in charge of Bethesda and Xbox game studios they needed somebody to run Xbox game studios and Alan Hartman from turn 10 is now the head of Xbox game studios and Dan Greenwalt is now head of turn 10 what do you think about that did they make the right call there intriging I I'm not super familiar with with either of those dudes which is weird right cuz been covering Xbox for a really long time where I've never really been on the fora be I've always had someone else to do that for me cuz I'm not I'm not into racing game my uh my co-managing editor Windows Central Richard dine is a is a huge racing guy and he's got a racing license IRL so I kind of feel like he's the guy who really should be the forza correspondent and also Zachary Bird's also deals with that Forza stuff so I'm not really flued up on on like whether some of this stuff is a good move or not but it does sound like Matt booty was you know in a position where you needed as much you know Hands-On people like paying attention to what's going on as possible because you know that redfall stuff slipping through the CL cracks like you did I don't think that should have happened hey they they had another redfall update and it brought a single sniper with it so yeah watch out watch out red Fall's getting better one gun at a time yeah yeah so if you guys are enjoying the show make sure you hit the like button please and subscribe if you haven't to the channel um we got double patreon questions so we're going to start jez and we're going to try to keep our our answers brief because we only have an hour we might have to actually read some of these questions next week too but we we got about an hour left because I gotta because yesterday I I didn't I didn't well jez knows but yesterday I spent six hours at the hospital uh yes you did and I there is some other things I have to do tonight and don't worry I'm perfectly fine I didn't I was there because my dad had to have somebody drive him home uh because he was being put under for a procedure and they don't let people like take the procedure if they don't someone to drive them home and was I was only supposed to be there for two hours I ended up being there for like six or seven hours lot of fun good thing I brought a book with me to read otherwise I would have been pulling the hair out of my head so jez let's go ready remember brief yeah brief brief brief let's do this we got Billy the Brewer this is from last week appreciate all the uh patreons love you guys love everybody watching hope you're enjoying the show uh Billy de Brewer says with news of Rockstar beginning to to announce GTA 6 to the world this week do we see it on stage at the game awards do you expect GTA 6 to be the fastest selling game in history yeah I do expect it to be the fastest selling game in history actually I do yeah definitely as far at the game awards the game awards though I don't think it's going to be there I guess it's could I did look on The Advisory board for the game awards and Rockstar is a part of The Advisory board but um there was uh yeah Rockstar doesn't need the game awards Rockstar can just drop the trailer whenever and honestly if Rockstar did drop the the the trailer during the game awards it would overshadow literally everything from the show show nobody would care about anything maybe they don't want it there yeah yeah so I mean no I'm sure Jeff would want it there because the ratings and the viewers would be ridiculous but maybe no one else wants it to be there yeah but I can imagine like everybody else is like no so I would say no I don't think it'll be at the game awards it'll probably be the following week I would imagine that's that's my guess uh syas says happy Veterans Day week on jents have you guys thought of having an Xbox 2 end of the year game award show we we are we we sort of announced it today you could have Taylor Made A Unique category such as hipster Game of the Year blandest food in Starfield best game to distract from playing Persona five best scale bound Easter egg and redfall those are some good good oh categories yeah speaking of which Rand I'm gonna have to concede yeah I don't think persona's happening the sh I get my Victor yeah that means uh that means you can't play Diablo OverWatch 2 or World of Warcraft all of 2024 I'm also not going to do follow that so just deal with it what are you going to do sue me okay sue me send me a bill get a lawyer okay fair enough Omen says Bethesda Finally Revealed a test bill for Starfield that includes DLS however there's one issue it isn't available for Game Pass owners only steam this isn't the first time this happened either 343 released their beta builds only on Steam as well so my question is is Microsoft ever going to fix the beta build functionality on the window store that sounds like a question for you jez that's a really great question and I think I'll what I'll do is I'll follow up with um I'll follow up with Microsoft about that because you can download the Xbox deider Hub on Windows and you can get betas through that like you can actually get download the beta test for the the app for example through that um so I suppose it's just what it is really it's a case of them being like um we'll get more data if we put it on Steam I think but I'll I'll uh I'll inquire about it and you know let people know let people higher up know that there is a desire to get that kind of functionality yeah uh not Skywalker says Hey JZ Rand I know we spoke about this very briefly on Discord but I'd be curious to hear you expound on what you understand regarding Xbox intentions for bringing traditionally PC orientated titles to console in the future why was Age of Mythology retold only announced for PC when the past couple Age games have had clever Gamepad Integrations why has Xbox not said a word about our coming to console will World of Warcraft to console ever be a reality and you know that was the kind of a thing that they that the blizzard had mentioned they do want to bring it to console right jez recently and like after like the interviews and stuff they said that they've thought about it right so yeah I mean they used to they used to be very much no no no no it's not going to happen it's never going to happen now it seems like yeah it does seem like it's going to happen yeah a little bit different now continues on and so on they've done more on this front than most Publishers but I can't s the feeling they could do more or at least communicate better with us cheers Aiden yeah I think um the with ARA I think it's just a case of the dev not being big enough you know and they they're working on one platform at a time and honestly I would feel the same way about Age of Empires I don't think Microsoft is investing in that studio being a multiplat multiplatform targeting in studio out of the gate um I think that's more of a case of them just being like we'll Target PC first and get it right there because that's where the audience is and then we'll do Xbox later I think like aspirationally they probably do want to get to a point where someday they can do simultaneous releases um if I had to guess but these are like quite Niche kind of games and you know we talked earlier in the show about how a horse armor for World of Warcraft outsold the Starcraft expansion which is kind of depressing when you think about it um so we'll see where it goes you know um I'll uh I'll again I'll inquire and see what they think about I think I think it's you nailed on the head it's like the development is just like PC and I do think they want to have PC releases to grow PC game pass and then eventually they'll put them on Console like our history Untold PC only and then maybe a year later comes to comes the console just like Age of Empires 4 and Age of Empires 2 um probably the same thing with Age of Mythology we told maybe it's just too much to do development of both versions at the same time they'll just do yeah the one uh Nate Miller says with the Microsoft being out on the Cod annual strategy and whether it's able to continue do you hope or think this Microsoft will move onto analyze sports games the only one that annually gets reviews is my beloved MLB the show and has plenty of annual problems as well I mean people have been talking that for a while about why is there a new NBA 2K why is there a new Madden why is there new MLB the Show couldn't it just be an update but then again they sell millions of copies every single year at 70 bucks now so it's one of those things where they don't want to do that they don't want to give up all that Matt like you know so people buy people buy it that's the the reason why it keeps happening is because people buys it yeah but but the Microsoft has been on that for a while it's not like it's like people people suddenly are like what people have been saying that for years about the analy sports games achievement says do you think Xbox top PR are reevaluating not investing in remedy and giving back the Allen wake IP seems like a huge Miss they probably didn't see coming I doubt it well I don't think so I doubt it and man I doubt it because I I don't think Alan wake's going to sell super well to be quite honest with you I don't think it will it's not on it's not on Steam it's never going to be on Steam going to be epic owns it not on it's not a retail it's never going to be at retail probably so I think like the margin I mean it's it's given some Prestige to epic games and I you know props epic games for actually doing it but is that game no microtransactions no steam launch no retail version that game going to break even I mean if have they if they've said that it's breaking even I have I haven't heard heard whether it is or not they haven't announced any sales figures as far as I know yeah so I mean it's a great game and I love that it exists but is it the kind of game that Microsoft really you know would lose sleepover I'm not sure but could be wrong yeah no I mean I don't um I don't think they're reevaluating it like it seems like remedy just also moved their free-to-play Co-op shooter into a premium game as well um their their relationship I also think like they were doing their relationship during a time where their business the business was different maybe it'd be completely different if like Quantum break and Allen wake happened now with Under The Game Pass and under Phill and everything versus when it was under matrick and under all like the you know the failure of the Xbox one when you had Quantum break reviewed as a b reviewed because on the platform rather than the game right like polygon mentioned and also I don't know if you remember but everybody bashed Quantum break for its reconstruction technique to cuz the game was like 720p reconstructed to like 1440p or whatever it was and people destroyed that game for that I remember that but Allen wake 2 does a similar thing where it's like 900p reconstructed to whatever it is and people call it like a technical achievement a Marvel and I sort of feel like that's kind of the Xbox tax in a way when the game did it in the past it was like you know oh my God 720p blah blah blah but then like the game does it again but now because it's multiplatform and it's sort of you know been like oh my god look how look how amazing it is it's I I if you go back and remember if anybody's been around this long long you remember that whole Quantum break 720p reconstruction debacle but you didn't you don't you didn't hear anything about Allen wake being reconstructed from whatever resolution it was uh Governor Grim uh jez you went back and forth on if blizzard needed to be acquired in order to get itself back in shape so with that said now that they've restructured blizzard management so blizzard is no longer answering to Activision I don't know if that's true that's not true is it jez blizzard no longer answers Activision I mean it's not it's it's implied that maybe that's going to be the case right yeah I I don't know if it's true right now but I've kind of been hinted at that it might be the case early next year so the proof will be in the pudding you know because a lot of Blizzard games have a lot of problems OverWatch has problems World of Warcraft still has problems even though it's in a good State overall um and uh you know Diablo certainly has problems so it remains to be seen if you know what impact changing Activision and getting rid of Activision as the sort of the Arbiter of what they do it remains me seeing what kind of impact that will actually have in real terms um but it can't be worse it's probably like the the best way of putting it um I think we've already we've already seen I think things have already improved at Blizzard after like um I think at some point Activision kind of realized we can't just keep asset stripping blizzard forever and you know all the cultural problems they had and it was kind of like a wake up call it was like we bought this studio we bought these IPS and we kind of wasting it by not giving it giving them the respect that they they deserved or the Legacy or whatever um I do think Activision already had a wake up call about blizzard because it does feel like the Investments there now where it wasn't before for a long time but yeah I I'm interested cuz Phil did say at BlizzCon we want to make blizzard is the best it can be and like what what does that mean Phil I want to know what that means it sounds nice and it sounds flowery but what does that mean in real terms oh yeah I'm optimistic though and most most blizzard people that I've spoken to are also optimistic I saw a meme about you uh people people were talking about like you saying that Xbox will have some of the game awards but you know the moment momento thing where it's like a Polaroid picture of guy and then it's like don't believe his lies people like have a p so it's a picture of you in the Polaroid and it's like don't believe his lies that's funny that's funny that's good um okay we got CJ saying happy Friday Jens following up from my question the other week about Microsoft rewards it seemed jez was right that the good times wouldn't last with the achievement points Quest points being slashed my question is I've seen a fair amount of backlash to the change do you think it will be enough for Microsoft to revert it back to 50 points seen a lot of sentiment that the new amount has made people think the quest just aren't worth it anymore no that they're only interested in what what um value it can bring to Bing at the end of the day it's it's never been a charity the whole point of it was Bing make beinging better get beinging more data and you know has it achieved that um in some ways it has and but the I think the the balance for them is like we're giving way too much away on Xbox right now when really this is supposed to be about Bing guys um so yeah we'll see I I don't I don't think that it'll get better I only think it's going to get worse and I think eventually it'll go away [Music] honestly uh let's see what else we got here we got Ryan kipple saying hey guys what is your interest in the shadow of the tree Elden ring DLC I'm personally really hyped for it game awards trailer maybe yeah I mean that could be a good position for the game awards trailer supposed to come out next year I think um I'm not that interested in DLC in general uh I haven't I haven't done the separate ways DLC for Resident Evil 4 yet although I I think I should I think I will I mean I love delen ring would I play this DLC I guess it depends on what's whatever whatever else is coming out around that time J did you see that um Dragon dogas 2 is coming out in March like 22nd yeah I did and there's a big presentation coming from Dragon Dogma 2 I I really like I love Capcom and I love monsun but Dragon's Dogma kind of passed me by and like I went back and started playing it recently like this year actually because of Dragons Dogma 2 and the game has like such a fandom and it kind of like it looks like the kind of game I'd like um and I've been playing it and it is really really cool it's it's really strange um but um I think that game's going to be massive I think it's going to be really massive like it's coming out a good point in time yeah so uh sierra1 Kevin hey guys this week was the oneye anniversary of Forge Mode being added to Halo infinite it continues to evolve and is become the backbone of the game or a backbone do you feel games the service games lean enough into tools like Forge it seems like a good way for developers to lower risk to adapt new game Trends with such long development Cycles also leverage Community creativity to perhaps find a new trend almost like a mod Community thoughts I mean they do I mean fortnite has the has their own Forge and apparently that's one of the reasons for the downturn in Revenue in fortnite so I yeah I mean I could say Apex Legends doesn't have that or Rainbow Six Siege but I think the ones that have that sandbox do so I mean does it make sense to have a forge like mode in Rainbow Six Siege probably not and maybe not for Apex but it makes sense in fortnite it makes sense in Halo the ones I think so I think the games that can do it are doing it um it's just I don't you know Roblox the whole Roblox is is you know make own content right so I honestly think in in si makes a lot of sense make your own yeah I think so make your own map or something maybe yeah make your own Maps like un real tournament yeah I I'm just sort of going back to my Unreal Tournament days like we barely play it on the standard maps in a world tournament you know the there was so many like custom maps with custom stuff in it like when I was a kid I remember there there was this map called I think it was called beta funnel and it was just like it was just like a COR a single Corridor with no cover and everyone had the Redeemer infinite ammo it was ridiculous you know so you just spawn in and die and spawn in and die it was just incredible it was so hilarious um but you know those those kind of memories and being able to break the game is kind of like compelling and I think like I think it worked really well in that actually but who knows if they'll do it well plus like those sort of uh that sort of content is also great to kind of bridge the gaps between officially released content like oh the community is going to make stuff while we're actually working on official stuff right so it uh fills it it fills the gaps there tricks are for trace says hey guys hope you're having a good day this is one for jez my wife wants to go to Ireland and the England next year I need something to distract me during the flight so new steam deck or rag Ally I have epic game pass and steam accounts man it's it's kind of tough I haven't tried the new OLED steam deck but I did have a regular steam deck and the the specs are basically the same I think like you get a little bit more slightly more juice out of than new OLED they did change some internals but most mostly it's the same system but um the the thing about the steam deck is it's got a much better experience overall because the operating system is designed to be run on handheld you know so actually using it and navigating around is a lot easier than it is on the Ally which is a full PC you know it's a full-blown PC and using Windows with touch is a pain it's a real pain in the ass especially if like if there's a game where you have to type something for example it's a nightmare to open the touch keyboard and try and you know key in stuff because whereas on the steam deck it will pop up with the keyboard because it knows it's expecting a text input but on the Ally the the key the touch keyboard will open up behind the game you know for example so the Ally can be irritating but the Ally is just it is way more powerful so if you're on a flight or something and you can plug it in you will get way more performance and better visuals and all that kind of stuff and also it's a lot lighter than the steam deck and less bulky so I find it easy to travel with I personally prefer the Ally just because it's not a pain to get PC game pass on it but um if you got a lot of Steam games you play and you don't want to play like the super high-end stuff you don't mind compromising Planet 720p steam deck's a really great option and it's significantly cheaper so okay um yeah I recommend both of them they're both great systems yeah and for anybody that doesn't know steam just announced the OLED version which I think sold out so yeah Johnny 6 says Hey Randon Jaz do we know of the physical Xbox Live one month and 3month cards will be replaced at retailers with Game Pass core cards I can't remember if it's a one to one conversion I actually don't know jez do you know anything about that if honestly don't know I'm afraid yeah I don't know um yeah I'm not sure I have no idea uh good old I'm sure maybe somebody in chat might know uh good old KW says happy birthday to the series console on his third anniversary how do you feel the series consoles are going are they living up to the promise or they still ground to make up I guess I mean are we talking about performance- wise I mean I guess it depends on what you expected from performance did you expect it to do better than every PlayStation game then if you did then no it's not living up to that um are you talking about sales uh is it living up to what you thought it should do with X and S I would say probably not considering they have a an expensive version and like a cheap version and it's behind the you know Xbox One at this point so I would say no I expected more consoles sold but then for whatever reason last year you could could get a series X and they also had the you know the the stock problems you know for the first year so I say performance-wise for me it's lived up to expectations for the most part um most every game it plays at 60 frames outside of a couple handful games look great you know games run great and you know vrr and the TV that I have you know makes it so you don't really see any the dips as far as like sales-wise I would say I wasn't expecting it to sell less than the Xbox One I guess Lazar wolf says hey guys what's your favorite cut of steak uh mine's medium rare jez oh he I thought he want a cut I mean I I don't know is that a cut I don't know oh uh I don't know that's how you cook it yeah well cooking it medium rare cut rump baby give me some R I like TR tip I remember I had tri tip for the first time and I loved it trying to think of the one I always I've never had that I'm trying to think of the one I always have or one we always get like uh I forget the name of it though beef tenderloin maybe is it beef tenderloin tenderloin of cod tenderloin is really good yeah uh rimus Cisco says hello uh I hope both are having a good day I have a hot take consoles have become so powerful that most devs don't have to worry about optimizing a lot and because of that we barely see new tech being used and graphics performance have basically stayed the same even in some cases performance has gone down like Jedi Survivor in most games we're hitting 30 even with somewhat similar Graphics to previous gen in some cases like the 1X if I recall correctly even alen Wick 2's official Target was 30 FPS but they were able to optimize it in time just mentioning this because of what happened to bg3 thanks to the need of optimization on the series s do you guys think that that's the case or do you think a good amount of games this gen have been released as optimized as they could have been in other gen not talking about bugs but about performance an optimization that's that's an interesting question um and that's more along the do I think games have been optim I mean I guess you can make the argument that they haven't been as optimized as they should have been because they been a lot of games that have come out sort of broken to especially on PC so maybe it's the PC versions that haven't been as optimized as they should be um yeah PC's like all almost the vast majority of games pretty much all games they developed on PCS first you know and then ported around um and I think like as PCS have you know evolved over time this we've gotten to a point where developers have find it hard to you know optimize for all the different specs out there obviously developers are artists and they want their games to look as good as humanly possible you know and they have the the capabilities to do it with the tech that's out there and stuff but there's a hell of a lot of people who don't have an RTX 49 can't run like path Trace cyber Punk and stuff like that um or don't have the resources to fully optimize their games across all the different stuff and you know City skylines is is a pretty recent good example of a game that isn't optimized very well I've got an RTX 270 and you know 32 gigs of ram my laptop's getting pretty old now I can't remember the process or number of top M was the 2020 the 2020 Intel chips or whatever and uh yeah C skylines I I was getting a solid 20 frames per second on C skylines something like that um it was stable you know but it kind of It kind of reminded me of going back to my teens you know and playing games at 15 FPS cuz I you know couldn't afford a better a computer but uh but yeah I there's a lot of there's a lot of sort of I don't know facets to optimization and it's hard to fully comment on the reasons why games would or wouldn't be optimized because I'm not a Dev but it depends on like so many factors art style resources that the devs have you know and and all that kind of stuff and I don't know man I don't I want to say it'll get better over time but I feel like it hasn't it's gotten worse you know I need to we should get um we should get like a technical expert on one Xbox 2 plus one sometime to really go through some of these questions and answer them Tom Warren just tweeted out you know the open air situation is a Shockwave when Microsoft is issuing full CEO statements a statement from Microsoft chairman and CEO sa Nadella what's going on andz dude it's bad the Microsoft share price has crashed as well um oh really yeah so this you can tell this is what shareholders really care about of course so what is it because Microsoft's at fault is it because well it's something it's some Sam ultman is a weird character you know um he's been accused of of stuff and you know and and all kinds of things over the is and you know he says controversial things and he's you know he's he's been criticized quite a lot from a lot of different angles and it sounds like the board of directors are um not happy with him and they said that he was not being forthcoming with um some of you know stuff that he should have been telling him about or something it sounds like a big dramatic M now they're they're stock pricing down that much I mean it closed at 370 and aftermarket it's down to 366.50 so I mean it's down down I mean it's down six it's down 1.6% it's not a big deal yeah it's it's not not a big deal but it's like after being you know the investors are reacting to it is my point um well yeah of course they are either way but we got more questions Jazz remember short concise because we're almost done with last week so we got to go to the this week's and we got to get it done before we before I get out of here Don itaku the itaku says uh Nintendo the goat is so op that band damco is building two Studios to work exclusively on first-party Nintendo games Nintendo's essentially acquired two Studios without lifting a finger and mostly if not entirely funded by a big AAA third party publisher as far as I know this isn't heard of of the industry now that I'm done bragging about how great the number one publisher and console manufacturer Nintendo is if XBox was to enter a similar agreement like this the third party publisher who would be the best fit for this probably Sega yeah probably Sega Sega once again was like oh we're flattered by all the attentions and we've had a lot there's a lot of people interested but we're not selling because once again they were asked about it and it's like well yeah what else do you expect them to say but again they're a publicly traded company so if somebody does come in with with an offer they do have a f fiduciary responsibility to the real owners of Sega which is the stockholders to actually you know address that uh you know price so D so I think it would be Sega or maybe a smaller third party one maybe it would be embracer I don't know embracer is going through some problems maybe it would be uh I don't know I would love to see them I mean they're kind of in bed with 11 bit already but yeah I was I was thinking of 11 bit Yeah 11 bit is such an up comma right now they they did just delay thge and I actually I'm actually excited about that because I think like th like I played the thge demo and the atmosphere is absolutely on point but you know it definitely has some issues and I kind of feel like there's a there's a lot more potential that could be had in that game if they did you know give it more time to Bay right um so under under this week questions jez right we got uh Mikey Rivers hey Randon jez what game wins your award for best game without a single nomination any character at the tga's yes jez even if you didn't beat anything you can still participate yes ran this might be hard to answer for 2023 is trendiest gamer love the Pod excuse me excuse me beat best game without a single nomination in any category nominated for anything yes Diablo's got two Noms um I mean I would say hogwart's Legacy probably hogo Legacy didn't get a single hogy got nothing I mean would have said Star Wars did I Survivor but that got two uh cocoon was nominated twice so um so off the top of my head it's probably Hogwarts it's probably the best game that didn't get a single nomination I didn't really play it so we know you don't really play a lot of games jez you don't really do a lot of stuff I got like five I've got 500 hours in DIA uhhuh anything other than DIA yes uh um syus says Hey jez and healthy althor what genre and gaming do you guys think has the most room for growth and evolution not so much in quantity but dramatically bringing new gameplay or features to the genre Indie if you can consider Indie a genre I think indie games are the ones that do bring in a lot of new gameplay features and stuff you don't really get a lot of that from Big triple stuff because they're just scared of doing anything Innovative because games are so expensive these days so I expect like the innovations that come from the Indie section but I'm not sure if that's a genre but I'll just for for the sake of this discussion that I'm going to classify it as do you have a a guest Jaz or uh anything or do you agree with Indie sorry I was I was distracted there by the Sumer woman stuff but um do you agree with Indie is the will have the most room for growth and evolution bringing new game play look he says what what what genre and gaming do you guys think will have the most room for growth and evolution not so much in quantity but dramatically bringing new gameplay or features to the genre I said Indie and I know it's not a genre but I'm going to classify it as a genre for this I'm going to say well if if rans say in Indie which is not a genre technically I'm going to say use generate content but also use generate content that leverages AI okay which we'll talk more about next week Halo is the goat says it's being reported the Wonder Woman game is going the games is a service route does this lessen your interest in the game yeah there was the whole thing about Warner Brothers and how they wanted to transform their big releases into these big you know live service games with microtransactions and yeah there's a report that Wonder Woman has maybe some of that in there does it lessen my interest in the game depends on what it is I guess cuz I did watch The Suicide Squad stuff they did a 20 minute demo drop for that and what do you think about that some people seem quite positive about it uh the traversal looks really fun the Gunplay I'm a little bit concerned about cuz it didn't look great um but then again I was never really too concerned about the games as a service aspect because what was it going to be new Cosmetics that I don't give a flying F about you know me I don't care about Cosmetics y so to me it's about ask for Cosmetics yeah it's about like how's the story how long is it you know and it looked it kind of looked like a lot like Sunset Overdrive meets Crackdown 3 in a way where like getting around the city looks super cool and could be a lot of fun but the combat seemed to I don't know lack that sort of impact but I I won't know I mean I'm going to play it comes out February 2nd uh but yeah it it did see at least is Showcase a little bit better than the first the last time it did but for Wonder Woman I guess it depends on what it is I mean if basically it's like you can you could get a red lasso or purple lasso or costumes or whatever that won't matter to me you know but we need to see what Wonder Woman's all about it probably be a bits too I'm not interested in it because superheroes are cringe yeah I know I know yeah Ryan kipple he says hey guys what's your interest level in the sh oh he already said this from last week uh but yeah we already answered it I'm I mean I'm you know I'm not really interested in DLC but I do love Elden ring so I will I'll probably check it out depending on what is coming out I still need to finish the Bas game so uh I'm interested it from a a scientific point of view but for myself I need to finish the base game first someday Omen says redfall and cod currently have the exact same Metacritic of 56 do you think the latest Cod is as bad as redfall um good question for you R well I did finish Cod I didn't finish redfall because redfall was pretty bad although I haven't gone back to redfall since the 60fps patch and I'm not sure I ever will because I'm not interested in playing redf fall so that should tell you how I feel um I guess part of it's because cod's only four hours long um that's tough to say because I also from the five or six hours I played redf fall I wasn't really I wasn't enjoying it so I'm not like I said I'm not surprised by the score Cod has because I like I said the highest I'd give it is a six so I guess yeah I guess the answer to that question is yeah because I I think I did say redfall would be like mid fives for me so yeah uh Chapman says do you think Game Pass saw an increase with the closure of stadia have you heard anything about how stadia closing affected the cloud Market uh no I don't think it I I doubt stadia was even like blip yeah on anyone's radar stadia was Tiny it was so tiny like it was just it was beyond irrelevant you know I think there was like I don't know 20,000 Destiny stadia players of ever you know that's that's pathetic Stadium might as well have not existed I hate to say it but it's true i' also mentioned Xbox's big new partnership because we forgot to talk about it but I'll just mention it now Nvidia GeForce and Xbox are partnering up jez yeah so what's what's that all about you can sign up for infinia GeForce and get Game Pass alongside of it or something yeah so if you there they're doing a temporary ultimate bundle that's a pretty good bundle where you get GeForce now and PC game pass uh which is pretty cool I think gForce now is excellent works really really well SK scarily well it actually feels like witchcraft it's almost like um you know uh the whole deal with Activision Blizzard cuz doesn't this have some of that like where they had the agreements and it was like oh you'll get some of the Xbox games this is kind of like a something that came out of the Activision Blizzard uh regulatory stuff right potentially but I kind of feel like it serves Microsoft purpose anyway of course it does but still yeah I mean it's a pretty good deal it's I think that's a big partnership yeah potentially I mean the the fact of the matter is this Market is not going to grow without these guys cooperating and I think this is why this is why like Cloud I believe is more more will more likely succeed than VR because Zuckerberg wants to control all of VR and he won't cooperate with all the platforms you know and you know share share the wealth kind of you know and similarly um you know neither does Val you know so they're kind of like treating each other with hostility to some degree um and well I don't think valves are interested in it and you know and then you've got like Sony as well um you know you got three isolated platforms here whereas like in the cloud Market you've got the biggest players actually cooperating to actually create a market first you know so yeah I don't know we'll see how it goes it might just be the laws of physics prevent it from becoming a thing ever the speed of light only travels so fast it only travels so fast yeah Johnny 6 says Hey Randon Jazz I was uh so used to using my Turtle Beach headset that plugged into the RCA jacks with my 360 that when I use my Xbox One for the first time I was blown away with hearing the game Sound by plugging into to the controller what console feature impressed you over the last two gens last two gens that's interesting I really really liked the bloody connect man and I I'm sorry I will die I will die hard on this hill but the first time I got home from work and I was going to say school then but I was a little bit older um when I got home from work and I you know I had connect all hooked up and IR Blaster with my TV and all that kind of stuff I was like Xbox on you know and it everything turned on it was before I had an Alexa and it was all that stuff I was so impressed it was so cool and futuristic and you know that Meme with the Batman you know the the Batman meme like the dudes in the backat cave and stuff it was like that I loved it I thought it was great um I feel like the the current Xbox is not as interesting you know it's it does its job really well but it's not as it's not like the Xbox one was like something unique and interesting and special in a way with the connect was garbage uh yeah I I know that's I know that's your take right my take literally the Market's reaction to it as well so well the market stupid they also but you know what would be my choice for this I think it's the vrr implementation on the console remember cuz Microsoft started doing it with the Xbox one all right uh cuz the TV manufacturer started doing it and I think that's probably the best feature cuz you can have it implemented and never see a frame drop and never have any uh you know screen tearing and it's all because of the TV and the console working together and pretty it's pretty goddamn awesome especially when you're coming from like the 360 you know where you would have frame drops or you would have screen tearing up the Wazoo on Xbox One games or whatever to basically have it non-existent now is is pretty pretty damn awesome uh good old Colin wood says hello Rand and jez I hope you're better Rand I am doing better jez while doing some searches about the jury for the game awards I found out that the intestinal journ Journal of news Metro UK is one of the media Outlets that determine the winners of the game awards my question have you ever met a journalist from a Gaming website such as Metro UK Euro gamer or PC Gamer and if you have what did you talk about if not what would you like to ask him or her yeah never worked for any any game journalism site I've only worked for Tech sites well I've only worked for Windows Central really um I've uh but I do speak to people who you know because future is a big publish show and we own we own PC Gamer we own Games Radar um you know I think like I don't know I don't speak to a lot of game jist like I say you know um generally speaking and the ones that I I have wanted to speak to I've been looking enough to speak to them you know like we we just did a a show with Paul tassi and you know Paul Tass is awesome and you know so someone you know as close to legit as you can be in in this business I think um and working covering the beat of Forbes and you know and stuff like that I don't know what I'd want to ask someone cuz one one of my weird things about the way I approach work is I I don't want to be influenced by others you know so I kind of like try and work in isolation I don't read other people's reviews and stuff like that maybe that's a mistake I don't know but um I generally just keep to myself and don't really get involved you know I'm a Loner I'm all alone forever alone forever alone um okay we got uh Luke spook says Hey Jens so if you guys were to run a game awards show how would you do it who judges who what are the categories how are games judged Metacritic sales numbers playing time jud's opinion or public vote I think I think the best way is to have industry figures really um we're doing it on a voluntary basis I mean in a perfect world you'd be able to get them to play all the games too and and do that stuff but it's so it'd be so time consuming like could you could you really imagine like sitting down um you know anyone really who's not into Souls likes games and saying to them okay in order to discuss whether or not Elder Rings eligible for Game of the Year you have to put 150 hours into this genre that you don't like I think that this the issue really with with any any of these award shows is like they're always going to be imperfect in some way and I suppose like you have to sort of try and just approach it in the best possible way but clearly like from our discussion earlier about the game awards there's a lot of issues with the game awards and you know like the fact that they've got overlapping categories and you know the fact that like all the The Game of the Year winners share a category with like one game that isn't nominated for Game of the Year and stuff like that those are you'd think those are be easy fixes but I think like the issue is that it's not about the game awards and you know making them fair or making them good it's about the trailers and the game the game awards themselves are just kind of incidental so I think at the very start you need to actually the point of the awards would have to actually be the awards and not the trailers you know but how do you fund that then and it's it becomes a big kettle of fish um wait that's not can of worms Kettle fish what does that mean I don't know I'm getting sleepy now man it's one in the morning we're almost done fish I mean maybe you should have like 5050 between critics and players but I L like the idea of maybe the dice Awards being in like growing because that's like the community of game developers and stuff and that would be more uh one to one to you know the Oscars so but no one wants to watch that I know no one does so that's why Jeff does it and it's why it's peppered with trailers because that's what Gamers want to see you know it's also how he funds it you know yeah I know you know to with you know respect to Jeff like without the ads the show wouldn't make any money which in which case it couldn't exist and people like the show because that year after year more and more people watch it so it is pretty popular uh Governor Grim says Hey guys to question uh question number two uh The Gaming Community wants bigger more polished and expensive experiences but doesn't want the increasing cost that are show with the increased scope Xbox using AI is bad crunch is bad increas in costs are bad longer development times are bad we've had Mr Laden Phil Spencer and others talk about the increas in cost and UNS sustainability of the current AAA model what options do you guys see as viable Solutions well I mean I think a tough question standalones are an option you know like the um like what naughty dog did with like the last of us or you Uncharted Legacy Lost Legacy where it's a sequel but it's a standalone but it's not nearly as big as the the the the other game it's almost like DLC coord you know positioned as a full release and I sort of think that's what Shawn Laden was talking about uh more experiences like that um because yeah there definitely is a problem uh and how do you fix that problem but Gamers want more more more more more they want better looking games they want longer games they want more more and more but then you're right they you know scoff at the idea of paying 80 bucks but then also the companies are making more Revenue uh and profit than they've ever had so and but they're still laying people off I don't know what the answer is uh I guess it would be to cut development time so basically Al releasing shorter tighter games I don't know I maybe like I'm I'm intrigued to know like how well Assassin's Creed Mirage did CU that is that right yeah well I mean experience an MPD it was like number four or number three I think obviously I don't think it sold as well as Valla but I mean the budgets are probably completely different well actually from what I remember reading that game started as DLC for Valla and then they just made it into its full release you know can AI help with that and reduce costs on some of the stuff maybe uh but yeah and then you think about how much how much the servers are going to cost you know for AI like the the problem is capitalism the the really you know this that's the true answer is Perpetual everyone wants more everyone wants more money everyone wants more quality everyone wants more convenience everyone wants more more more more more and you know that's the conflict it's is like how do you make make all of that work together and reconcile the different forces that are pulling in different directions CU that's that's where we're at ultimately but yeah it's a big discussion guess got three more questions J and we got 10 minutes less than 10 minutes so we got save scum Goblin hey Jen Ren hopefully you're feeling better I am thank you I want to ask has there been any updates on the Achievement System lately if not hopefully one of you could ask someone over at Xbox about unattainable achievements with Fable 4 in I wanted to 100% the previous titles but there is an achievement and Fable one that unlocks using the Xbox Smart Glass that is no longer supported yeah like you know when games have achievements for multiplayer but the servers are down so you can't get that he's saying there's an achievement in one of the Fable games that require Smart Glass but obviously smart Gass doesn't exist anymore so it's impossible to get that achievement yeah I don't I don't think that they're ever going to fix that being completely honest with you it's not it's not a priority and it doesn't help achievements don't help Xbox grow you know by themselves and I think like personally I think like cool features like achievements do help Xbox grow but the way corporations operate is like how can I represent that in a spreadsheet you know and if if if it can't be represented in a spreadsheet and reported on then this current Microsoft that we're in right now um sadly it's not a priority for them and I think that's a shame because I think a lot of the innovation that we used to get from Xbox um you know and I've written about this that I feel like Xbox relies way too much on data and Telemetry and not enough on human intuition and and I think like developing the achievement system is is a victim of telemetry because they probably got Telemetry that says people don't really care about achievements you know but I think like I think people actually do care about achievements it just doesn't show up well on a a spreadsheet that's my gut instinct but a resp respons responsible corporations got to you know have a report for everything you know it's um yeah it's it's another big discussion I guess but if you want to get more achievements everyone just needs to campaign for it you know everyone everyone here watching this right now you want more achievements the only thing that's going to make Microsoft add achievements is if everyone work together to force them to do it because otherwise they just they're just never going to do it you know because to them nobody not enough people care about it that's that's their thought process is that not enough people care about it yeah we got Don taku saying do you ever see in Exile obsidian getting a chance to work on a AAA Wasteland 4 pillows eternity 3 after the success of balers Gate 3 also wasand 3 got snubbed and overlooked in 2020 the game should have at least should have got at least H half the praise and Renown that bg3 has gotten or is getting it's still one of the best crpgs out there and 75% of what BG three did without Early Access uh I don't no I don't see them working on a wasteland four pillars especially a AAA version I know Josh Sher was like yeah give me aund $200 million to work on pillars of fraternity three I don't think that's happen yeah I think I personally think like I do think they are going to do W 4 and I do think it'll have a bigger budget um will it will it be like you know on the same sort of the breadth of Bull's gay probably not but I do think like they consider that to be a pillar franchise and I do think they'll do more of them and I do think it'll have a bigger budget but maybe not like a huge crazy budget um but hey who knows could be wrong and we got I really like Wasteland s jdub hey fellas glad to hear you're feeling better and thank you I have a quick yes or no question for jez you don't have to leak or hype it like the blizzard show uh while Xbox teally showed up last year's game awards with a couple Game Pass commercials while Xbox shows something in the game awards other than a Game Pass commercial um man I kind of answered that during the show and yeah Xbox is going to be there but I don't I don't want to I don't want to really go too late you've been yeah but people people will people will blame me if it's not amazing or AAA Banger so I'm just going to say have no expectations but you know of course I mean yeah they are going to be there don't know what they're showing or I don't know if you you'll like what they're showing but there you go I CH and with that that's all the questions we got we got them all Jaz with a couple minutes to spare so we're we'll talk about the Xbox AI thing next week in more depth um we're working on uh you know we're going to have the Xbox 2 game awards we'll we'll be doing not next week but the week after Xbox ultimate working on guests for December for Xbox 2 plus one we want to have like one before the game Awards and then one after so we're trying to we're trying to get some guests line up for that and you can always sign up at patreon.com xb2 to you know sign up to get you know shout outs or just want to support the show or get access to the podcast and stuff uh we appreciate anybody that does everybody you know listening who you know just wants to have a chill podcast to listen to whether it's here on YouTube or later on the podcast apps uh it's what we're about but yeah thank you guys so much for being here make sure you hit the like button subscribe if you're new to the show we'll be back on Friday next week with another Xbox 2 episode 392 because I think this week was 391 getting up there1 291 yeah 300 292 291 and with that I hope you guys have a great beginning of the weekend it's already Pitch Black by me and it's like 6 p.m. I love it so much I love it when it's dark like this I am weird I'm very weird you know season your food you like winter Darkness what I do so love you guys and uh see you next week keep it gaming than care everybody later check out manscape.com
