[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] t [Applause] [Music] m [Music] oh [Music] [Music] okay [Music] hello welcome welcome welcome to what shall be the last episode of the Xbox 2 for the year 20123 we are live and we are ready to go uh I'm one of your host Randle thor9 the man with the million with me who's kind of taking a break this week from so and other stuff we have J cord managing at her Windows Central in the house what's going on buddy hey baby but yeah I've been taking a short ble from all things work related which has been lovely haven't been writing haven't been editing haven't been using social media very much and just kind of enjoying relaxing which is something I realized that I really should try and do a little bit more often but yes it's the the end of the year now and 2024 is coming to view going back to work on Monday and uh what better way to get oriented and ease back into the the rat race than hanging out my buddy Rand and remembering all the cool stuff that's on the horizon for Xbox and gaming in general yeah indeed and we need to celebrate or more you know specifically you need to celebrate today is the final day of the Bobby cotic Empire his last day at Activision Blizzard and he's probably gone by now three it's well maybe not now but either way by the by the end of the day he's gone uh basically don't let the door hit you on the way the way out and um as as someone you know you being someone who loves your blizzard games and loves activ how does it feel that Bobby KK the evil empire is IS F finally gone I mean it's kind of weird you know cuz for the longest time and I've been writing articles about this since 2016 one of the first articles the first rants that I wrote for window Central actually rant was about cotic devouring blizzard because World of Warcraft was going downhill free four they were starting out doing all this weird stuff microtransactions you know a nick nickel and Diamond the G it felt like uh Corner cutting you know it felt like all the blizzard games were enduring this sort of period of corner cutting and you know cheaping out on stuff you know rather than investment and that was Activision shareholder culture and it reminded me of gsop hero what they did to that reminded me of what they done to you know even back then people complaining about Call of Duty going down that route so it's kind of like it's lovely he got it's it's really really really lovely and I'm kind of I'm optimistic for what the future holds for blizzard but also like I don't know there's there's there is an there is a sort of a sense of nervousness almost because there's um there's just a lot of change going on and you know like how's Microsoft going to handle it is Microsoft going to nickel and dime as well CU they're going to you know make their money back you know there's a lot of unanswered questions as suppose so yeah it's cautious optimism I think would be the way I described that but yeah it be interesting to say how it all goes down in the end I'm I'm yeah cautiously optimistic cautiously optic yeah do you have any I me about it I don't really have any strong opinions about him running ABK I I I I guess I guess for me I used to like Activision way more in the past when they actually used to do more things than just Call of Duty and I would like to see them get back to that under Xbox uh release more you know Standalone games uh maybe loosen up some of the Studios from the Call of Duty machine like I get why they essentially put everything into Call of Duty because it was the thing that made them the most money etc etc etc but it kind of got rid of some of the other things that made Activision uh you know a pretty good publisher um so we'll we'll see how that happens I know Tom Henderson's out here basically saying like hey they have Call of Duty games stacked up to 2027 and you know I know people were hoping that you know they would essentially dismantle the the Cod machine Mach which I always thought was unrealistic but I thought they could do it in in different ways like I didn't expect them to be like well now you know we only have these two Studios working on COD I think they can maybe slip out a couple of them and or do whatever but it does seem like one of those things where it takes a long time to turn the ship and you need you need to have your your your your you know your your plan so when Microsoft was acquiring them they knew what was going on that's one of the reasons Activision Blizzard was acquired in the first place cuz B they knew they sort of [ __ ] up right they they sort of knew they had backed themselves in the corner by putting everything all in Call of Duty and it was like oh man we don't really have anything else so when Microsoft came calling because their stock price had fallen it was like yeah you know this is probably the best for us and you know I'm very curious to see how it goes under Xbox like I'm very curious to see see how blizzard flourishes because all we've heard over the past you know years is that blizzard was sort of kind of uh what's the right word I'm looking for here Jazz they were I don't want to say like handicapped but they were they I think that's a good way I put it they were handicapped I do think so yeah I mean yeah I really feel that they there were sort of of you know there's Al all this kind of talk about how you know Starcraft was making less money than horse armor in World of Warcraft was and and DLC and all this kind of stuff whereas like Microsoft's kind of shown that they will do Niche stuff you know whereas cotic was like oh Niche stuff nah let's kill that let's kill it's not making us a billion dollars no we're not doing it right oh oh we want an OverWatch 2 in an era where no nobody does sequels to multiplayer games cuz everything's a live service now let's do an OverWatch 2 for no particular reason whatsoever right I'll cotic decisions so yeah they were handicapped so so them being split off and blizzard essentially you know answering to just Matt booty it'd be really interesting to see what come because at one point at one point you could point to Blizzard and be like they were top five studio in the world at one point right um just like you could point to Bower and you could say BioWare was at one point one of the top five best studios in the entire world and obviously like we've seen what happened to BioWare but I feel like blizzard I'm not too confident BioWare can come back from what happened but I do feel that blizzard can make that Resurgence and basically you know show again why they were one of the most beloved developers in the history of video games you know maybe you just needed to get out from underneath K and be and have somebody who would believe in you and let you do what you you know you felt you should have been able to do so it'd be interesting how blizzard evolves during this course uh these these next five years these next 10 years um I think we'll see I think we'll see huge things from blizzard personally and the thing is like I don't even know if I'll even care that much about it because I'm not like the I'm not really the biggest blizzard fan like I thought DIA 4 was just okay I guess I'm just maybe not a fan of the gameplay Loop and I I I didn't really care that much for OverWatch 2 so to me even though I'm looking forward to seeing how blizzard um uh what they do with this opportunity and what type of stuff they make I'm almost kind of sure it be won't be stuff I will be very particularly interested in but I'm sure a lot of people will like the survival game that they're working on Odyssey right yeah how many times if I said I don't I hate survival mechanics in games it's one of like my biggest I'm one of my biggest pet peeves in gaming is survival mechanics and it's already it's already we have the next Blizzard game starting off on a wrong foot for me personally but I know survival games are very popular so it's like oh blizzard doing a survival game that is absolutely going to be huge but not for Rand you know what I mean but not for me yeah I yeah we'll see I mean there's a rumors of about star Starcraft single player game you know and all kinds of stuff but the just there's so much potential that just wouldn't have happened under cotic you know so like even if like not necessarily blizzard games but I kind of feel like Microsoft has an opportunity to use some of that IP and discuss how to use the IP with blizzard and yeah we'll see where it goes pous optimism is the name of the game here I think it yeah and then Microsoft still fighting the still fighting the deal I mean the FTC is still trying to do whatever they're trying to do and I saw something that Sony's even not even done with it even though they've signed signed the agreement for Call of Duty they're still they're still kind of like doing some things or something it's like can of let this be over already Jesus Christ you know like it's never ending right so that that's why I haven't lost a bet because it's not over yet uh Lan Master says ran hates grounded I actually didn't hate grounded because when we played it I played it with Colt and think we turned it on like the easiest difficulty so survival mechanics don't matter and it was quite enjoyable so I didn't have to worry about eating and drinking so much you know I I just I just crafting is another thing in games I don't really care for I don't really care for crafting I don't care for survival mechanics it's like you're making me eat and drink like no I don't want to do this I don't know that's just my personal thing but yeah so KK's gone we'll we'll we'll have to wait and see what uh happens under Xbox but I mean they're set up for I think they're set up for major success um Activision Blizzard King and all of Xbox in general you know we we'll we'll talk about that of what the Outlook looks like in 2024 um I think it's going to be a pretty pretty big year um we also going to be talking about you know some of the other things that went on this week the Starfield success story on Steam but also so the crazy hate that is going on with Starfield that I am not sure I've ever seen ever happen with any other game yo dude I just spent 150 hours playing Starfield four out of 10 excuse me excuse me what are you talking about dude I I have to I have to like admit bro like I totally played Starfield for like 600 hours and uh I wouldn't recommend it like why the the hell were you did you play for 600 hours then like who plays a game they don't like for 100 plus hours like what are we doing here like it is this weird I don't even know how to describe it it's like I've never seen it happen with another game where you play a game so much he like Yeah by the end of it I just didn't like it it's like well why didn't you stop playing it earlier if you didn't like it like if I'm not like a game like St tro for example five hours in I cut I was like I'm done you know what I mean redfall 5 hours in I was like this game is pretty bad I'm not wasting my time cuz my time is important I could be doing so many more things you're not going to well I know I played redfall for 100 hours and uh it it you know it was four of 10 like why why didn't you stop playing it with I don't know we'll talk about that a little bit later on um so guys do us a huge favor make sure you hit the like button if you uh enjoy the show and subscribe if you're new um share this out let everybody know that the Xbox 2 podcast is live on its normal day and time I think was the last two shows that we did kind of late I know last week was a very weird one because you originally told me you weren't going to be able to do the show so then I got Nick and got Cognito and then all of a sudden you were like I'm here but we started it like 3 hours later than normal and uh I think it was it even the week before we started a little bit later too I forget but either way we're here we're uh starting in a normal time yeah so we got we we do have a lot of bit to talk about last episode of the uh of the year and um yeah so we do have some uh let's see some some some shout outs for the patreon peeps thank you all the patreon people for supporting the show we should you know we we'll we'll we were we we we we were going to do an Xbox 2 ultimate show this week but we just couldn't fit it in like my internet was out the day we were going to do it and jez was pretty much busy the whole week uh or at least unplugged but hey it's the New Year next week so we'll try to get one done next week and then we got some guests we uh lined up for all that good stuff so and if you're uh you you know if you support us at the tier for questions you can I think the thread's up now cuz jez I mean you basically took the whole week off and you I think you just posted the questions on patreon so if you haven't put a question in there make sure make sure you do so and we will get to that at the end of the show but we got some shout outs here and you can uh join the patreon patreon.com xb2 which is uh in the description we have thorus holy Dark Death Steve Stompy Peter B James wiso trickster for tray the Gran of bip battered hadock Army dude 52c Ryan Kiel foreign object Mythic Marty moronic donkey 99 Milla Randle thor9 silus Eric Gregory Elijah Vasquez James Moore Fant testicles Halo is the goat krox bright tunder 1 dcarter Caboose Justin duel Frank Mariano Sean Kramer PB broking AC and Madison Grizzy mofo OG Governor Grim DZ huffin wagerman achievement the Scarecrow 121 Darren tropy Prof JJJ Ghost Face Killer and wolf Kang KPC thank you guys so much for supporting the show so um yeah so how was your week Jazz was all right how was how was Christmas did you get anything interesting any any any good gifts for Christmas I got a lovely bottle of ROM for Christmas Chad what did you what did let let me know what was the one gift that you really surprised you this Christmas uh if you if you got anything so you got a bottle of rum which sounds like a they they know you they know you right yeah I'm pretty happy with that yeah um but yeah I'm too old for gifts man I just yeah to all for gifts M you know I I ask people for like stuff I can I ask for people for edible stuff these days because I don't I got enough stuff like Edibles Edibles like like drugs Edibles I wish but uh but no like mushrooms Baby Al yeah alcohol or you know or cheese always buy me cheese cheese but um yeah chees cheese I remember the one year you sent me some some Christmas goodies some some UK chocolate I believe it was which excellent you know I think yours might have been the last gift I've gotten I can't even remember the last time I've actually gotten a Christmas gift jez honestly oh well it's probably been since like with that with that age man with that age where you're kind of lucky to get a gift yeah I bought lots of gifts for other people um and uh my my gifts from my girlfriend I haven't got yet cuz I haven't been in I haven't been in Germany we're going we're going to do we're going to do a a late Christmas o celebration when I go back to Germany but but yeah uh I want my parents a TV because their TV is old terrible what you get um I got I got a 2023 qid Samsung what size what was the size on that on that 50 in bro you need your own 50 incher and you you get one for your parents but not you yeah I did but how small man you know 50 in was the biggest I could get for for that for their space Did you everything turn off motion smoothing make sure it was it was all done proper nice and proper yeah yeah yeah it's it's all good took took took quite a while actually wouldn't connect to the Wi-Fi which is always fun but we got it sorted in the end right um I kind of want to try I kind of want to try hooking my Xbox up to it because it's you know it's way better than my TV but I can't get a bigger TV in here so I don't know it is is what it is but yeah my my biggest gift was to myself taking a break no window Central no no writing no no social media BS you know taking a nice little break so I'm pretty pretty happy with that man pretty happy with that yeah my uh honestly my Christmas is just like any other day of the of the Year essentially um it's like no no different than any other day uh you know I think we had we had brunch and that was it and that's pretty much how it always is you know nobody nobody really exchange gifts with each other we don't really do that and I don't really know why this just kind of the way it is so it's whatever it's fine you know don't expect anything you know it's perfectly acceptable like nobody expects to get anything so you don't get them anything so it's just whatever um hanging out with families or is the best thing about Christmas it's it can be the best thing but it also can be the worst thing what is that well when certain topics come up all right you know and then you're just like just you just kind of want to like leave and just go somewhere else and you're just [Music] like yeah like I don't know about this you know the the political discourse kind of stuff don't don't really have that issue in Britain really people people know not to bring up certain things I think I don't know maybe some families but yeah Americans love their ICS man it's it's really funny because I've played on both um European and American servers for World of Warcraft and other online games and you look in trade chat World of Warcraft In America it's all politics politics politics politics or non-stop 24/7 arguing about politics you go on Europe servers no politics at all lovely just meme spam and and [ __ ] I think I I did get I did get my nephews a Christmas gift but even still they live they live they live all the way in Maine so it's hard to really like send them anything so and the only thing they want is Roblox money rob so I literally went on Amazon on Christmas Day and I bought them both $200 worth of Roblox money and I then I texted my brother with the picture of the pin number I was like you know tell tell tell the boys Merry Christmas that was it you know that's it that's that they loved it because like they love Roblox and they spent you know they they played all the time and I mean when they were here this when they were here this summer like seriously I think I must have spent like two $300 on them and then they would literally spend they would give him like $100 at a time and he would spend the hundred bucks in like 10 minutes just buying things for his character or whatever yeah roblo Roblox is definitely a thing so that's funny yeah but um we got some super chats here and we get through we got Joshua B have a happy New Year Xbox 2 here's the cotic leaving Activision blizz bandr Bros getting another lifeline and Bethesda getting a kick in the pants to make Elder Scrolls 6 an even better game still love your Starfield so yeah I don't know if you saw this jez but apparently there is a banjo game in development did did did you Happ this Nate the hate Nate Drake yeah basically said um what' he say he said that uh someone asked him cuz he and mvg had come out and said that they had heard there was a banjo game in development I want to say that was last year the year before and you know banjo hasn't shown up yet the banjo Bros are waiting salivating like please give us a banjo game even though it's probably disaster in the in the in the making nobody's going to play it but um anyways you know you got to do it uh and he said uh someone asked him what happened to the banjo game canceled and Nate said it's still an active project but it didn't get the green light until early last year there is a lot to do and development can change a lot like abandoned ideas internal reboots Etc so sounds like you know it's not hasn't been in development that long so yeah uh sounds like we'll see it eventually and I'll be really happy for my banjo Bros to get their banjo games so we can stop hearing about banjo every year that's really the Christmas gift that keeps on giving right I mean Phil Phil very heavily hinted at it yeah yeah I mean he he said it in the interview he did with you yes right and he says like his teases usually happen but they they may have happen on the timeline you want them to happen on but they end up do happening so yeah I think it makes you wonder it's a face clear confirmation it it does it does make you wonder why they didn't do a banjo game when they knew banjo was going to be in Smash and kind of and kind of um at least get some momentum off of that uh that announcement instead if we assume a typical release I'm not saying like banjo remake or banjo 3E is going to be a AAA production so it's going to take four five six years let's just say it's a three-year cycle let's just say they remake the first one and only takes him three years maybe we see it in 2025 you know yeah and when did when did it come to smash at that point in 2025 it came to smash when like I don't even know when it came to smash but it definitely been years from that point right but yeah but my my question about banjo is who's making it man that is the question who would be making a banjo game that is the question and I don't know I mean you had platonic and I don't know if they're busy with anything I mean those are ex rare people right people who did like ukulele and stuff but I don't you figured they'd be we know rare is not going to be doing it uh who would be making a banjo game you know my my my uh my choice for a developer Jazz was always why don't you have Nintendo make it and then released it on on Nintendo switch and Xbox but developed by Nintendo you know like yeah I mean would Nintendo want to do that I it's not something never done before probably not it was just it was just a thought I had like why don't you have Nintendo make banjo and then you can just release it on the switch and on on Xbox and have it be a big game you know and actually have it also be a really good game cuz you know as much as as much crap as I give Nintendo even though some of it for for theatrical purposes yeah they do make pretty good Platformers you know so we'll see we'll see what happens with banjo uh werman he says happy healthy and prosperous New Year to two of the best how do you think Xbox will handle the summer showcase next year with Xbox ABK Bethesda and direct they could have a week worths of events yeah that's one of the things we were going to talk about was like Xbox in 2024 and what to expect and and things of that nature so we'll definitely be talking about that because they do have a lot under their belt right you have they do they have everything essentially do you keep do you keep it all like the same do I mean obviously they've had Bethesda for a while and they still do Quake con uh they just did BlizzCon and I don't think they'll be getting rid of BlizzCon I still think Xbox wants those Studios to retain their cultural relevancy their cultural identity so I can't imagine there being like oh we're not doing BlizzCon anymore I think that'll still happen and I know in recent years for a while actually the Call of Duty games are always revealed late in a year because it's not really that important to like reveal Call of Duty at a at a summer showcase anymore so it's like what do you do what do you do to tie the ABK brand to the Xbox brand does Microsoft even want to tie the brands together you know if ABK do like what is are ABK games are they all going to be multiplat are there going to be some exclusives if they're all multiplat do you want that tied to Xbox I don't know there's there's a questions there and we'll we'll talk about that um a little later because I don't know there's a lot of things you could do but I one of the things I will say I don't think they'll do uh a week worth of events personally no I I can't I it'll be like one thing and one it'll be probably just like every other summer showcase or E3 where it's just a hour and a half two hour show and that's it but then they have more shows throughout the year but we'll talk about that later uh lanot says love you guys and found about game pass through this channel but Starfield seems a bit about mid for me a good game but I was hyped hey man it's not for you it's not for you not every game is going to be for for everybody right there's plenty of great games out there that I don't like just because of the type of game it is so don't feel bad about it there's plenty of other games in in game pass out there well this this is the thing about Starfield criticism it's like if you played it and you thought this isn't for me fair enough but if you played it for like 800 hours and then go and leave a negative steam review saying I played this for 800 hours it's trash that's just weird man it is weird or or you see some of those Steam Reviews that are like giving it uh giving a thumbs down just doing my part you know what I mean like nothing really sad no critiques just just I'm just here to to pile on you know yeah and it kind of It kind of does make you wonder like what about the game has made it like all the negative reviews to start rolling in because nothing in the game's changed from when the game really first launched they've only you know added more things you know more more options only thing I can think of is that there are some big YouTubers who did exposes on it recently you know really big YouTubers to make videos about it and basically saying like it's no good or they didn't like it which you know then you essentially have you know the fans of those being like yeah I didn't like it too even though I played it for 200 hours it was a piece of [ __ ] you know what do we call them Lemmings I think sheep can't have an OP can't have an opinion of their own yeah you know afraid to say they like something something when other people you know say they don't that type of stuff uh the Liz 22 says a few years ago there was a rumor Xbox would make Xbox Live online multiplayer free when there was enough Game Pass sub conversions do you know if this is still on the table and does Game Pass numbers matter with abk's Revenue I mean it was never a rumor it was kind of like it was an extrapolation because they said in interviews like Phil sort of conceded that paying for multiplayer felt uh outdated yeah yeah and then we I think content creators like us too like I think we'd we'd sort of we'd sort of commented on that and been like yeah we think we'll get they'll get rid of it eventually um but it was always within the context of they need something to replace that Revenue because it's a lot of money you know Game Pass core which you know is now Xbox Live Gold sorry choking there for some reason um Game Pass core which is uh Xbox Live Gold rebranded basically um brings in a hell of a lot of money you know to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that's not something you can just you know just take away because that they use that money to subsidize making games and making content making Hardware so they can't just like get rid of it and it's not it's not like them getting rid of Xbox Live Gold would suddenly lead to a huge amount of uptake in other aspects of the platform you know so it's not like all of a sudden everyone had ditch their PlayStation 5es and switch they wouldn't so all it all it would do would be to serve to make them less competitive because you'd have PlayStation still earning revenue on a live multiplayer whereas Xbox wouldn't be just to say that they've just to say that they don't have it so yeah it's it's it's a problem you know and I think like maybe there is a future where both Sony and Microsoft get rid of it um because of something you know they're replacing Revenue with something else and stuff like that but I think as long as one has it the other will have it get rid of it I mean PlayStation just raised the price of it by 20 bucks yeah year exactly you know I mean something would have to replace that Revenue to justify it and the fact that like both platforms are now moving towards AI which has additional server costs you know it kind of kind of furthers this idea that you know they're not going to get rid of it you know I suppose but you do see Xbox kind of was in some hot water um this past week because they had they had like a a season's greeting greetings card with an AI thing and people were upset ai ai card or whatever it was yeah I saw Kaku wrote that up and it's like the biggest it was the biggest non- news I've ever seen in my life like people Tak an offense because you know Microsoft wanted to just someone who had control of the ID Xbox account just took five minutes out of their day to create a little fun little image macro from Bing and then slap it up onto the onto the web just to bring something nice to the timeline in a in what is otherwise a completely hellscape shitfest that his modern Twitter you know Twitter was always bad but it seems like it's worse than ever recently and kataku wrote that up as like a like a a hit piece Kaku what do you expect yeah but then it was also like a load of like fake outrage from a lot of people like oh pay an Artis to to make tweet that you're going to see for 30 seconds seriously you know it's it was the biggest non non non story I've ever seen in my life you know the big most false outrage you know and then people were piling on against AI art and II generated stuff and it's like bro it's Christmas man get some mold wine and chill for a yeah I mean the thing about Xbox Live is I felt I felt Game Pass would actually increase faster than it did um and I thought it would reach higher highs sooner and I was like well I know that they they they view Xbox Live Gold is an archaic thing of the past and I sort of felt like oh I bet you they want more and more people playing instead of being like all right stuck behind this pay wall and if XBox Live and if Xbox Gold reaches a certain threshold they'd get rid of Xbox live gold and well they did but they just renamed it so it's like yes Xbox Live Gold is gone and even Tim Stewart in his little comments were like oh yeah paying for multiplayer is Antiquated or whatever he said and it's like so we we changed the Xbox game pass core which you still have to play multiplayer on which doesn't make any sense right because they just changed the name and it was like all right so it it sort of feels like if there was ever a time you were going to get rid of it maybe that time is now gone right because now PlayStation has raised the price of its multiplayer access from I want to say it was like 60 bucks to 80 bucks a year right because they they raised the price of each one of their three tiers and for a long time ever since like the 360 era paying for online was always kind of a battlefield between them right uh early PS3 was free it was free online and 360 was paid for and I remember specifically if you've been around as long as I have uh a long and it is a long time but there were a lot of Sony devs out there that were making those games like whether it was like the Insomniac multiplayer games with resistance and some of the other ones that would basically say oh imagine pain for multiplayer right because they were trying to extol the V virtues of the PlayStation platform being like why would you play for multiplayer you can get you you know it's free over here you oh you have to pay $60 a year and multiply that by six years you're actually playing an extra $360 but you're not like if you remember there was a lot of a lot of um mudslinging back then between PlayStation 3 developers doing multiplayer games and the 360 when you had to pay for it and then obviously that all changed when PlayStation started to change charge for it and everything was on equal footing it was 60 bucks uh Nintendo came in with Nintendo online and they're charging for it but people were somewhat okay with it cuz it was $20 and we people all always thought like well why isn't Xbox why doesn't someone just get rid of it because if you got rid of it you could really um you could you could you could Market it being like play online for free here on Xbox or play online for free here with PlayStation and you'd have a huge advantage over your competitor but you know what I think happened I think free-to-play games showed up where like you could play for free and Xbox was forced to remove the free to-play games from underneath their pay wall and now the biggest game games now the biggest multiplayer games out there are free to play regardless and you don't need a multiplayer subscription so it almost feels like that push to get rid of Xbox Live Gold multiplayer and PlayStation plus multiplayer is gone because the biggest games are already free they're already free to play online you know everything else everything else is like okay so we'll just have this little corner for and they always add all these perks like oh you'll get free games oh you'll get discounts they they try to make the the subscription a little bit more enticing rather just multiplayer access um and even now like with Xbox Live uh with Xbox game pass core or yeah with Xbox game pass core actually being cheaper for multiplayer access than PlayStation you don't really see anybody talking about it you don't see anybody saying multiplayer access is $20 more expensive on PlayStation now nobody talks about it that's true where where if it was during the PS4 4 gen or the PS3 360 gen that would have been a huge talking point about how multiplayer was more expensive on the other platform but right now it's just it I don't it's like that fight's over it's done with all the biggest games are free 20 bucks is 20 bucks you know what I mean I I think we're I think I I think we're past that point I think it's something they'll always hold on to because then they know people will pay it so and it's a revenue stream that you can basically count on every single month every single year uh you know and I I don't think it's going away anymore I used to think it would go away but not anymore yeah um we have William karuna saying do you know why Asus Falls want the PlayStation I mean not the publishing agreement publishing agreement expired similar to look's tail you know um yeah that's basically what I was told similar to Li tail okay well that's a good answer similar to Lucky style all right our buddy Sim Vendetta says happy Friday Randon jez thank you both for the great 2023 it's been awesome to get listen to you both over the last six years and look forward to 2024 that's right I I said the jazz on Christmas is like bro you realize that in April we'll be going on our seventh year of Xbox 2 at that isn't that crazy like this is we doing it for six years we're almost approaching episode 300 300 episodes like I don't know when we first started this did you think we would get this far did you think we'd be hitting an episode 300 did you think we'd be having sponsors like manscaped and and everything else that you know like does that something that entered into your mind back in 2017 that we'd be here no no no no not at all and still still mind-blowing you know I constantly thinking about like how we can do more you know and trying toig figure out what what's next you know it's something I think about a lot you know yeah no yeah so way can you do I mean PE people in chat I mean we got we want to do the camera stuff eventually um but I do think a lot about you know growing even further now and what could we do to push the next level and all that kind of stuff but we'll see the next level whatever that is kpp and debt says who do you guys think might stand a chance for uh VGA for best performance in instead of Molina Jurgens I think she's a lock thanks for all your shows you do um I mean for next year it's too tough to it's too really too early to say because we don't even know like all the games I do feel like hellblade 2 and meliss Molina is probably a lock at least to be nominated I think she won for hellblade 1 and I she's probably doing more in this game honestly it seems like at least so she's probably a lock to be nominated again if not to win but like we don't really know the rest of the games for the rest of the year um maybe the actor for Ichibon for like the new Yakuza game uh yungi no no no no no well does yungi do him I thought Yung did him for like the other Yakuza games I I Don't Know But like everyone was mad at that guy for the way that he did that I don't I don't know why personally there was drama about that that that I was Vaguely Familiar with but um yeah I don't know we'll see yeah I we'll see we we need to we need to see what the games come out next year and actually play them to determine who is going to be nominated for best performance uh Quicksilver says there's a small late Christmas gift for you Rand Merry Christmas love quick silver and Aisha silver thank you very much for the for the Christmas gift we got face 23 pky um with a very generous Super Chat $100 says in my opinion the console space for Xbox is not going to change they will keep it around like they do with the surface device even though it doesn't sell well Microsoft play as Game Pass PC mobile Sony wants to expand on except for the game pass model PlayStation Plus everywhere next um I mean I don't think the console's going anywhere at least not what do we say jezz two more generations of console and then and who knows or at least one more generation two more Generations I think there's at least two more generations to go you know I mean who knows what the future looks like because you got to remember servers cost a lot cloud services have a lot of overheads and problems of Their Own you know and people think like oh yeah we'll we'll we're gonna have like you know nonstop uh cloud in the future and it's it's kind of like are we are we really and I kind of feel like Microsoft designed their Cloud specifically so they'd always be able to sell local hardware because it's it's identical to local hardware so like why wouldn't you just if you've got to develop a version of that game anyway why not just sell why not just sell local hardware for people to use and then you don't have to spend your own money on bandwidth you know though in that scenario the Home console is a local Cloud Server kind of so for me I kind of feel like as long as console gaming exists you know as long as cloud gaming exists console gaming exist you know maybe everything eventually becomes PC based or something I don't know but I just can't I yeah I just I don't know I mean the the the C the younger Generations they're all in on PC you know it's kind of it's it's it's interesting how console game is kind of seen as like almost like a boomer kind of thing to younger people so I some younger people you saw some of the some of the videos where kids were crying getting their their Xboxes and their PlayStations and stuff it's not like uh it's not like a thing where it's like consoles are still seen as a boomer thing at all by the younger generation there's plenty of people that you know a lot I think a lot I think a lot do man really do I don't know I don't know about that and not just those viral videos like even before then I saw that and it's kind of been suggested to me by people in the industry well I'm not saying kids aren't going to PC earlier than they have been because I think they are because I think they're influenced by their their favorite influencers they see like shroud playing on it or ninja or whoever else and they want to be like their favorite person they watch they want to get a PC like I think kids are moving to PC f faster than they ever have been but you know I don't think the console's been too affected by that I think people still love uh the consoles and it looks like you know it's still the console Market doesn't seem like it's growing it's always the same amount of people uh problem like if that that's exactly it though it's like where where's the growth of console manufacturers you know they might as well just go go harder into PC you know probably from a lot of their perspective but we'll see how it goes well Xbox is going pretty hard into PC yeah they P go hard into PC bro well I mean you know face says ps+ everywhere next now if you were to bring PlayStation Plus to PC face that means you got to have a whole bunch of PlayStation games on PC to be able to time to with does that mean PlayStation uh day one on PC sooner rather than later maybe especially if you're abandoning your games as a service push or delaying your games as a service push you know I I think like once they'll probably do it like hell divers 2 is coming out and I think that's going to be day and date on PC and maybe once they see the results and they see like it doesn't really impact console sales too much for them or too badly they be like yeah whatever like hey someone's got to pay for this 400 $400 million budget for Spider-Man 3 right if if if play if the PlayStation console business isn't growing or if we're just transitioning PS4 users to PS five users like jez suggested in the last episode where are you going to get the where you going to get the extra people to buy your game and it's like well there is one huge Market you're completely ignoring and that's PC so yeah and mobile you're kind of a norg mobile too but that'll all eventually come now I mean as far as Xbox consoles like you know is it selling well now I mean I would say probably not uh if you're behind the Xbox One to me that's that's not where you want to be is that something that could change in the future I think so I think if you I think if you spend the rest of the generation releasing high quality content I think that could potentially change the narrative around Xbox and especially if you're got the marketing for Call of Duty um and maybe even if you break the cycle of always launching your console alongside you know the more popular one who knows maybe that box launches in 2026 they got Call of Duty they can Market they got all these games from first party that are good launching as well you you never know I mean I'm not saying it'll they'll I don't I'm not saying I don't think Xbox will ever sell 100 million consoles but I'm saying like they could I think they could sell better than they are now 100% yeah um what do we got here we have Justin duel he says Merry Christmas and happy New Year looking forward to more of Xbox 2 in 2024 thank you and uh we're looking forward to uh a big year in 2024 hopefully fingers crossed uh Commander Shephard member for 42 months says have you heard any rumors updates for the Indiana Jones video game this is my favorite podcast on the Citadel haven't heard anything about Indiana Jones I think the last thing the last thing we heard well it's not even like heard as in like behind the scenes but we uh Todd Howard did talk about this was like around when Starfield time about how the game was like halfway through development and then we even heard um about the pitch well not not about the pitch but we we did get that axos article about why they decided to switch the exclusivity from Indiana Jones from multiplatform to exclusive and one of the things that they did say was that the pitch they had for Indiana Jones was amazing and that kind of seems to fall in line with the blade pitch because they also said the blade pitch was incredible you know so it seems like machine games went to Disney with a pitch for Indiana Jones which apparently is Todd Howard's like favorite thing in the world like his favorite franchise or whatever and Disney loved it and was like let's do an Indiana Jones game and you know eventually Arcane went to blade or Arcane came to them with the blade pitch that they love they're like okay yeah do blade I don't think I I think people I think people don't really understand how those things work because it's like CU some people I see talk about like oh well they probably asked them what other franchises they have and then they're like oh we'll take that one I don't think that's how that [ __ ] Works you're not just going to go up to them and be like well uh do you guys have um do you guys have Mando available like oh but yes but by indeed George we do have Mandalorian available would you like to make Mandalorian uh G goly whiz thank you Disney sir we would love to make Mando um we don't have a studio to make it now but we'll we'll we'll take the Mando license or whatever that's not how those things work you know what I mean uh because I don't know if you saw going around this week Jazz was the rumor about ID software working on a Mandalorian game yeah I did see that I mean would be interesting actually I don't think it would be interesting Do You Want It software to work on a Star Wars game actually think about that would you want ID to work on a I mean I hold on let me let me let me kind of set this up star an exclusive Star Wars game would be amazing right uh for the Xbox brand for Game Pass just in the same way that exclusive Marvel game is however I think it needs to fit the developer and I'm not sure I would want ID the masters of Doom and Quake and everything else to work within the constrains of the Star Wars license making something that may not fit them you know what I mean well yes and no I mean on the one on the want to Playing devil's advocate right um do we I mean do you want another Doom game again you know would you rather they be working on that would you rather them you know Branch out not saying I don't want another Doom game eventually but I would I think it'd be pretty cool to play as a Mandalorian in a game like on the same quality level as uh what reor was putting out with Jedi sure no I mean I would say if kind of intrigued would say if ID actually pitched that they wanted to do a Mando game and that was what the studio wanted to do then I'd be 100% behind it because I'll be behind whatever ID wants to do right right but I think this rumor has just been floating around for so long that people are grasping at straws trying to make it seem like it is true like oh it is working on this um do I think it's working on Mandalorian no I don't absolutely not I I do not think whatsoever that it is working on Commando game not saying that there isn't a Star Wars game in development at Xbox somewhere but you know I mean the zenax online game could easily be a Star Wars MMO maybe there's crossed wires or whatever but if I were to put money down right now and and I mean maybe I would lose my money but if I was like betting with you like if you were so sure was Mando and I was so sure it wasn't I would make a bet with you I don't think it I don't think it's Mando you know I think it's I think it's whatever ever they want to do it's probably a quake game to be honest with you it's probably a quake reboot and you mean and you mean to tell me you wouldn't like a quake reboot a modern reboot of the Quake franchise hell yeah give I think there's reasons why they did Quake one and Quake two remasters you know yeah I I think Quake is way more likely and you know even hexon I think like the fact you know Phil Phil in the interview with me U he was one of the things he was saying was um he was saying uh my teas is aren't just to tease people you know the dude specifically wore a hex and t-shirt you know and that kind of that hint for me hinted heavily at this idea that there would be a new hexon game at some point um personally so but again then he sort of said you know maybe not on the timelines people would um expect to hope for so maybe like they do Quake first and then hex and next and maybe that's what they got lined up and maybe they're working on prob at the same time maybe they've grown the studio something Beth the road map did have them quote unquote working on a doom year zero but wasn't that proven to be not happening I mean how could anything been proven because we we we don't know they haven't announced what they're working on but we have heard that it's they aren't working on Doom or at least not Doom year zero there are people that with with good track records who have said us so as much you know right now I guess you could say would you rather have them working on Doom uer or Mandalorian game as in like the Doom games aren't amazing but I guess you're implying you're basically saying that like three Doom games in a row would be Overkill and not as like oh another just oh it's another Doom game you know what I mean like ah another one I don't know I guess I guess it all depends like I know there are there are a lot of people that love the idea of of Arcane making blade right love that but then there are some people I have seen be like that they AR aren't totally on board for that cuz they're like ah I don't want Arcane to be become a Marvel Studio because that's the fear now right they see what happened with Insomniac Insomniac used to make all these different type of games now they only make one type of game and they're essentially a Marvel studio and they look like they're going to be a Marvel Studio to the end of time because that's what sells so you have some people who really appreciate the creativeness and the original ideas that Arcane Leon makes you know e even you may not enjoy death Loop you might actually appreciate what they were trying to do with death Loop right um or the world they built with Dishonored and some people don't want to see if like blade becomes the big success Arcane Leon being relegated to the blade Factory or you know another Marvel studio right um and you know some people say the same thing with ID one of the best developers out there and it's like do you want them just making another Marvel Star Wars property is that what this industry is turning into is just like well it's just we're just making a Marvel or Star Wars game you know what I mean or I I kind of feel that way too CU I you know you know I don't really care for Marvel I know you don't and while like yeah and I would much rather they be working on Dishonored or you know maybe they take over prey or something like that you know I love me some prey and it doesn't look like um it doesn't look like uh we're probably going to get pre over again because apparently the first game didn't sell or whatever but um I mean I get that and I kind of I do feel some sense of Disney fatigue even though I haven't really been paying attention to Marvel and I haven't really paid much attention to Star Wars just just knowing how much there is out there is enough to give me fatigue you know but at the same time I think like if it became a good if it was a really good game if blade and you know any sort of Mandalorian game from ID was actually really good game and maybe it could have the opposite effect maybe it could have me you know rekindle my interest in that stuff because I haven't I haven't even watched the last latest season of Mandalorian because I'm still sort of burned out after watching the book of Boba Fett and that was ages ago I haven't watched um Andor either even though supposed to I watch I watched Mando season one and season two but I didn't watch Boba Fett or Mando Mando season 3 I think Mando season 3 came out but I did watch Andor and Andor is fantastic yeah everyone fantastic yeah I need to watch that but I don't know like I was when I was watching the Mando I felt like the end of season two was like it kind of was like felt like a series finale to me almost in a way and like I don't know I wasn't really interested in Boba Fett or whatever and I do feel like it is a mised opportunity that there isn't a Mandalorian game out there like third person Bounty Hunter set in the star Wars Universe like it feels like that is a game that should already been been someone should have been working on already you know it's kind of what USU working on with Outlaws in a way it's not Mandalorian it's like the Bounty Hunter fantasy I guess or the smug The Smuggler The Smuggler fantasy you know if I guess I guess I'll just I'll just say like I want them to work on whatever they want to work on so if ID if ID put a pitch in to work on Mandalorian and they're 100% behind it like machine games was Indiana Jones and arcanes behind blade then I'll be totally into it too because it's like all right I just want you that if that's if that's what you want then then I then that's what I want too but I just I don't know I don't think they're working on I just don't think they're working on a mandal game I think they're working on something unique to them whether it's a quake reboot or something else personally yeah yeah I mean it's about what the devs want you know and when the devs are passionate then you get project like seeing seeing the passion of dinga on stage at the VMAs you know you're just like yeah dude I totally want them to nail this Blade game this seems like the game they've always wanted to make and it's like yeah dude awesome like I want that like I love seeing passion for people regardless of whether it's video games or it's movies or TV shows or it's YouTube videos or it's books I love seeing unbridled passion for something a project that an individual is doing or or like a team is doing it's really infectious you know yeah uh let's see we got uh cheesy mcsqueezy he says hey Jazz have you heard anything since the tweet from The Insider milliea from October of 2021 oh man it's two years ago at this point who claimed quote Xbox have secured some sort of exclusivity on a big third party title I mean I remember I remember this person I did not remember that I do I remember it it was just one of those things where it was like is this person actually an Insider what do they really know and it's kind of vague enough where it's like it could be anything you know what I mean like I don't yeah I don't think that's we haven't seen or heard anything from from whatever that claim is and there's always of course things change you know blah blah blah blah blah but no uh humr says um hrug dog says beat balers Gate 3 and watched BR 2049 feels so empty bu jez what he says he beat bg3 and watched BR 2049 and he feels so empty Bo Jaz what is that what does that mean JZ a br Blade Runner 2049 yeah Blade Runner 2049 is awesome yeah but he says he feels empty oh is the empty because you just watch something incredible and you know you won't have it again or you just you finish balers Gate 3 and you watch Blade Runner and now you're like my life has no purpose and no meaning anymore I mean bu do I mean Blade Runner kind of does give you that feeling especially when you factor in that there probably won't be another one it didn't do very well which is crime it's a crime it's a crime that Avatar does well right but uh BL Runner didn't that's that's a crime that's a crime against uh life itself so dude Blade Runner was was amazing you know it was amazing who was amazing Ryan Gosling and oh okay Ryan Gosling and I just I just watched Barbie the other day and Ryan Gosling is the best thing about that movie he he completely Nails every single scene he's in dude should be nominated for an Oscar like he's such he's like such a good dramatic actor but dude he might be an incredible comedic actor like when whenever he's on screen that it was so funny like I was like oh Ryan Gosling you absolutely nailed this role bro congrats that's awesome I also did watch Oppenheimer as well have you have you uh got a chance to watch opy Heimer I did I saw it in the movie theater actually I found the goty around to watching and like oh my Lord what a masterpiece that's all right what do you excuse me it's it's all right not as good as Alien Resurrection shut up nobody nobody even even remembers Alien Resurrection what podcast was on we talking about that I thought it was I thought it was our podcast oh I don't know I was on some podcast talking about um yeah there was ours cuz you were talking about James Cameron and his movies and how the abyss was like the only good one or whatever and we were like hell are you talking about everyone's mad yeah it's true though abys is the only good Jam camera Mo n actually Terminator 2 do you make Terminator 2 right Terminator 2 Terminator 2 is fantastic yeah and Aliens 2 is okay but Abyss is is great I mean I will agree with you Abyss is great but a lot of James Kramer movies are great though uh a a vananta says good to no not not the first one good to catch it live again I hope the 2026 next gen rumor is true like Nintendo time for Xbox to do its own thing I mean if the 2026 rumor is true Dez we're getting close to you know finding out I mean how early did you get the the information about lockart and anaconda and Scarlet was it was it two years ahead was it a year ahead I forget when did when did all that stuff break for you like you and Brad Sams had had that it was like E3 one year wasn't it was it like E3 2018 where like you guys were like oh breaking news project scarlet and like all like the info about the next Chan plans came out it was like two years before wasn't it yeah well I have to credit Zack Bowen on window Central actually because he was the very first one and I think he had the first scraps of De about lockart all the way back like three years before it was announced um so Z Zach is Zach's really like our Hardware dude and he just leaked a bunch of surface stuff as well window Central this week Microsoft's going hard on AI hardware for its next Generation stuff which kind of gives you hints about the next Xbox right but um yeah I I don't know hopefully we'll get something soonish on what does AI Hardware even look like what does that even what does it even do I don't even I don't understand what does it do well the the the idea is that you have a you have a AI co-processor which sort of it does some of the AI processing locally so it doesn't explode Microsoft's servers I guess too much um I think that's that's the idea behind it um if it works out that way in practice remains to be seen I guess but uh we'll see right did you did you see the news about New York Times suing open AI in Microsoft I did say that what do you think about that what do you think about the idea of like dating give them permission to train their models on their stuff and how do you think that's going to play out I think it's going to play out uh out of court oh yeah I think it's going to be settled okay yeah I think Microsoft would just be like pay them a shitload of money to make it go away um and hope that other people don't Sue I mean we've my company's got huge grounds to to explore litigation on this because um it's not even like New York Times that's really feeding this model you know it's also like all the guides rewrite and there are there are articles that we write that no other website has written with regards to you know really obscure issues on how to fix on Windows but now Bing chat and Google and all these other services just come along and stolen all that and not giving us any compensation whatsoever so yeah I hope New York Times sues the pants off them and uh and they get loads of money because uh that'll be fun because I think it is egregious I think it is egregious that these companies just stole all this copyright material and and then they were just like we'll deal with it later you know they'll deal with it later because they've got the you know the back the backing of Microsoft to get away with it you know I think that is egregious so yeah we'll see what happens with all that yeah chees cheesy mcy says you can't predict everything Rand look at our cane in the leak there was mentioned of Dishonor 3 yet they're working on blade instead yeah that's true well I mean yeah I mean it could change you know could have been Arcane Leon working on dishonor 3 that's true we don't know and that was just the plans as of 2020 so maybe someone's maybe maybe you know Dishonored 3 is on there I don't know we we don't we don't know uh Mr opinionated says Xbox Studios shouldn't stay one note and they they won't I mean there's plenty of variety within Xbox game studios uh L said what says people afraid Arcane would become a Marvel Studio wouldn't make sense concerning Xbox current philosophy they let devs do what they want I'm just saying what people are afraid of I'm not saying it makes sense of what people are afraid of just that you know some people don't didn't want arane to be working on a a licensed IP you know yeah uh Bean says petition for jazz to stop hating on Persona 5 has you you never hated on Persona 5 no I mean didn't finish it the only thing I said about Persona was that it was too easy but then I realized that the game has difficulty levels and maybe to my own fault that I'm find it too easy so if I play it again and I I'm supposed to because the bet I'll crank the difficulty up and maybe I'll feel more engaged for we'll see yeah um all right so let's talk about the Starfield stuff jez sure shall we got Starfield playing in the background right now I felt it was appropriate and part of the title is the Starfield success and hate right now we we know what it did on on MPD in its launch month it was I think it was number one it's like the ninth bestselling game of the year maybe the 10th best selling game of the year so far it's on Game Pass we know the accolades that Satia said caused the you know most signups and and Game Pass History Day One signups and all the engagement and we didn't talk about last week because we were talking about the Insomniac hack and all the wonderful well depending on where your stance all the all the very interesting information that came out from the Insomniac hacks yes you remember those jez yes uh we were talking about we were talking about all the the the websites that took a moral stand and we were talking about like some of the some of the numbers that came out from the the leak about tripa gaming and the budgets and all that sort of stuff and all those sort of things but one of the things we didn't really mention because there just wasn't time cuz there was four of us was the numbers that uh Starfield Bethesda put out in regards to uh like player numbers and and things of that nature engagement engagement numbers for Starfield and um they said they have 13 million players which is quite a bit um you know I think they hit 10 million really fast and then it sort of seemed to slow down a little bit so they have 13 million players 22 m284 331 days played 26 M 27,825 hours building ships a almost two billion planets visited 4.5 million Outpost settlers which not me cuz I had do any Outpost settling but 40 hours average playtime per player right which for a game very high yeah it's very high especially for game on Game Pass because what game pass does is reduces the friction where it's like okay I bought this game and I need to get my money's worth so I'm going to keep on playing it versus like Game Pass where it's like well I'm paying for the service I'm going to play Starfield oh I don't like Starfield and two hours in and I just delete it right we have seen that with games on Game Pass where because the friction of actually playing the game uh people people will drop games they don't like instantly because there's no you don't got any skin in the game right yep yep yep um so that was that about the numbers which I thought 40 40 hours play time is pretty high for game and game pass it's on PC I was like that's that's that's pretty good may not be as high as like Skyrim or what have you but I was like damn that you know people are getting their their their time's worth and then articles started coming out about hey Starfield is going to end the year as a mixed rating on Steam yes yes because you can't really see user reviews totality on like the Xbox store even though they are there you can see the the the numbers and you can see the star rating it does get but nobody ever writes articles about that people write art articles about Steam Reviews and steam player counts and so like it was like the most recent one was was what like was like 7,000 recent reviews and they were mostly negative for like mixed overall but there was like the total number of reviews was like really high but it was mixed and obviously a lot of lot of websites wrote about it and it just kind of C it's the culmination of of Starfield being the most talked about Game of the entire year right yeah there was the article that uh from gamesindustry.biz that came out a couple weeks ago or maybe maybe two weeks ago at this time where it was like the most covered games of the year and I remember I posted I posted it in response to someone that said like man nobody talks about Starfield anymore and I'm like sure sure dude what are you talking about it's literally most talked about Game of the whole year where was the most covered games with Starfield number one Starfield with 53,000 articles right number two was Diablo I 51 51,000 and then you had to go number three was Zelda with 39,000 fortnite was number four Spider-Man was number six right and even the most covered company Jaz Xbox was the most covered company with 308,000 articles which was 16 which was down 16% year-over-year PlayStation was number two at 268 Nintendo was number three at 244 um Activision Blizzard was up 172% at 880,000 so I I saw this as like man how is Xbox the most talked about company most covered company when like it sort of seems that a lot of people just don't like Xbox in general like in the media that they don't really cover it but it but they do but then there's Starfield the most covered game and I'm just like man for a game that a lot of people seem to didn't didn't enjoy or at least say it's like so mid and for a company that everybody says is irrelevant they're doing pretty good getting covered aren't they yeah they are it's it's paradoxical it's I suppose you could say paradoxical right but yeah but in regards to the steam situation I see people POS and stuff like yo I played this game for1 15 hours and it's trash and I just have to sit there and I'm thinking like you played a game you didn't like for 150 hours what is wrong with you seriously like or I see people that say yo I played the game for like 180 hours dude but and I was totally enjoying myself like I was vibing vibing and then once I finished the game I look back on my experience and it was just so empty bro I have to give it a four out of 10 and I'm just sitting there reading these reviews of people that put exorbitance amounts of time in the Starfield where they literally say they like the game that they were playing only then at the end being like but I hated it I was like I don't understand help me understand jez what is going on how could this be how are people playing a game so long admitting they liked it while they played it and at the very end being like but actually when I looked back of my time it was pretty [ __ ] it is really strange like I've never I've been you know before doing this professionally you know i' obviously I've always been in the discourse right remember being a little kid arguing about whether F fancy or Zelda was the better RPG style in the in the playground right so there's always these kind of discussions and stuff I don't know in my lengthy time time covering games and following games and talking about games where like a non-service game cuz like if it's a service game and an update makes it worse then yeah that makes sense but nothing has changed in the game since launch I've never known a game sort of launch out the gay be you know to quite broad critical Acclaim but then some reviews you know including my own rightfully calling out certain aspects of the game that aren't so strong like the exploration and but then mostly being like well actually there's there's so much cool stuff about it and then the the sentiment of the game gradually going downhill over time it's so strange I've never known anything like it before and I think there's a few reasons for it I think like I think uh F the first thing is that like people kind of I don't know are backlash a little bit okay the way Beth the way Bethesda responded to some of the reviews cuz they were like people were criticizing things like the exploration and then Bethesda Community managers came in and were like well actually um your experience is incorrect because planets are like this in real life yeah I don't that I wasn't the biggest fan I mean I get why you would respond to steam reviews but telling people like yeah you your your experience is wrong is never really the way to go you know no so I think there's that aspect of it but even before they did that the backlash had already be gone I kind of feel like people I mean there were responding to that Meme in the first place that the exploration is bad and the exploration is bad you know I kind of feel like that was a mistake on the developers part to sort of you know not decide whether they wanted to make an RPG or make a true exploration simulation game with procedural generation you know they they really sort of they didn't know which direction they wanted to go in and there aren't enough points of interest there's not enough variety of points of interest to make the procedur generation work in my opinion and also there's loads of oddities like not having vehicles you know and and stuff like that there's there ni problems no no one in their right mind would deny that I kind of feel like however you know the game also has a lot of things going for it like the main quests are awesome and they're all awesome and they're all variant and they offer they all offer something different and there's also a loads of different ways to tackle those quests um the the the cities that are sort of not procedurally generated are very very welld designed and memorable and awesome and they look really cool and I also think the the combat's quite good you know I think the itemization is not very good but this is a problem that all creation engine games have had and I think like I think that is also part of the backlash round I think another part of the backlash is that players longtime players of Bethesda games uh from Skyrim to fallout Fallout 76 even feel like their criticism Fallout 4 were not heard correctly as well because I know like a lot of the mistakes that Starfield makes with its itemization with its combat even these are mistakes that Fallout for made you know the pro the procedurally generated loot in Starfield is trash like it's trash in other Bethesda creation engine games and they've never really address that fact you know and I think people feel like they didn't address The Uncanny creepy NPCs as well in fact you could argue that starfields NPCs are even creepier than foret NPCs you know um even even without the ghouls and stuff like that so I think like some of the backlash is that Bethesda seems to not want to address some of the longstanding issues with its engine right and whether it's whether it's combat whether it's automization whether it's NPCs whatever but again there's people have to remember that you know we for some reason we accepted those shortcomings with Skyrim and and Fallout 4 and you know found enjoyment anyway because there's still a lot of stuff to enjoy even with those shortcomings and I think a lot of people kind of just want Bethesda to sort of I don't know push to a Next Level instead of kind of uh doing similar kind of thing over and over again and sort of seeing how far they can push their their engine you know without sort of adding new aspects to it like the fact there's no ground Vehicles is just weird you know and that's the kind of that's the kind of technical investment I think people would have liked to have seen from advancing the game so I think there's some backlash against that that that that they haven't really addressed some of that stuff but also I think a lot of the backlash is just just just silly and some of it's like people are Hive minding they don't even know why they're really mad they don't even like long-term Bethesda fans or Bethesda game players and they just saw like their favorite YouTuber or whatever talk trash about the game and now they're like yeah I'm going to talk trash about the game as well because that's what everyone else is doing and I think like there is that aspect of it as well I think it would be I think it would be naive to not suggest that there is there is a bit of a Highline going on and also like we see it a lot from you know and and like the you know you get sort of YouTube creators feeding that and then sort of um a journalists see that that that is a trending way to get clicks and and they sort of echo that and then the audience Echo it and mirror it and it sort of becomes like an echo chamber bouncing backwards and forwards and and often times like when you see like a a hater especially like someone on Twitter who's got like you know a branded a branded YouTube account and they got like you know you know the they've got like a god of War profile picture or something like that you ask them like so what did you actually think of Starfield they can't really tell you because they're just on the bandwagon right so I think I think it's like a three-pronged attack I think there is legitimate things that Bethesda should take stock of and try and address and they kind of hinted that they do want to address this stuff they kind of hinted that there will be vehicles coming they said there'll be new ways to travel in in updates and stuff like that so they they're kind of hinted at some of that stuff and I kind of get the sense that it would benefit them to be a little bit more trans parent about what these updates will have I mean especially seeing as how the difference between how uh blizzard you know as as a company that I follow a lot as a gamer the the difference in how like blizzard is being transparent and how bethesda's being untransparent is quite Stark like Blizzard's given us like these huge monthlong road maps for its games and yeah they are service games but like you know if if you're out here in interviews talking about like you want you want people to play Starfield for the next 10 years you have to treat it like a service game I know it's not multiplayer but you kind of hinted that you do want to update it in perpetuity and you do want to add more content to it give people a road map you know why aren't you giving people a road map and is that a Microsoft thing does Microsoft want to save it for a marketing beat or something like that or is Bethesda just like really stuck in their ways and precious about how they do things and they don't want to give a road map I kind of think like in today's a era of uh social media commentary and and creators and stuff sort of making fud about things I think it would benefit them a lot to give people a road map and get people excited and sort of offset some of this negativity um you know so there's that aspect too I don't know man I sort of like I think I think history will be kind to Starfield you know I think this this is sort of like a temporary thing and you know down the line um I don't think you know I was going to say it'll have its Redemption story but it doesn't even need a Redemption story The Game's solid already you know this you know the game G has bugs and quirks but it's it's still the most polished game bethesda's ever shipped I kind of feel like and the the story Quest was solid and it was a feature complete game which is you know kind of rare in this day and AG tripa gaming right um but I do think I do think history would be a lot kinder to Starfield than some people are being right now but I do think Bethesda aren't doing themselves any favors they could be more transparent with the audience and and give people a better idea of what the road map looks like I think the community marriages aren't doing themselves any favors with the way they they're talking on Steam to you know the today's entitled Youth and and stuff like that but um I think overall I think the game will be fine and I think yeah it's just one of them things oh Mr opinion said uh in the Super Chat he says I think some content creators are influencing some negative opinions there's some big content creators that have made some exposed videos about Starfield but even still with all the negativity that surrounds the game it still was in steam's Platinum tiers for Revenue one of the one of the highest uh Revenue earning games of the whole year on Steam and even in like time played and other scenarios so like as much [ __ ] is being talked about the game whether rightly or wrongly people playing the game for 300 hours but suddenly deciding to hate the game for whatever reason uh people played Starfield a whole [ __ ] ton and Starfield made a whole bunch of money on Steam and it drew a whole bunch of Game Pass subscribers on Game Pass and made a whole bunch of money there you know and yeah I don't think I've ever seen a reaction to a game like this even so much so where you get people comparing it to cyberp punk they're like oh cyberp Punk but they're comparing it to cyberpunk now 3 years later with the big update versus like Starfield what just came out I think was like you're talking about like arguing in bad faith where it's like why don't you compare to cyber Punk that came out in 2020 you know the game that was removed from PlayStation store the game that every if you wanted a refund no matter how long you played it you get a refund because of how crappy and buggy it was right yeah but no let's compare it to this to the Cyber Punk that had three years of updates you know like why don't we then why don't we go back and then compare Starfield in 3 years in 2026 and see what that game's going to be like and how improved it may or may not be very I mean very very weird Behavior very weird yeah for sure and I think like I think there's some aspects where it's like some people just rooting for it to fail because it's Xbox right so it's Xbox and play there are PlayStation Centric creators PlayStation Centric fans and Playstation Centric journalists probably who who are room for it to fail you know because they root for Xbox to fail how dare you skip PlayStation yeah kind of kind of stuff you know and and also Microsoft bad Microsoft big bad they're big mean Corporation and and they they stole Bethesda from us so we're going to we're going to retroactively convince ourselves that we hated Bethesda all along you know and I actually personally know people whove gone through this cognitive bias where like you know the the five stages of grief where they're they're a PlayStation person but they're also a big Bethesda fan right they love Fallout they love their Fallout they love their sky room they can't stand the idea of Microsoft owning those properties and the idea that they'll have to buy on PC get it on cloud or get it on Xbox or whatever I can't stand this idea so now they've sort of begun retroactively convincing and these These are friends of mine that I know personally I'm sure there some of this generally as well it's not you unique to my my friend um but they they've retroactively started to convince themselves that they don't they don't like they never like but there the games in the first place man they never lik in the first place of course um so you know it's it's it's kind of one of them you know it's it's it's going to be tough for Microsoft to ever sort of cut through some of this negativity I kind of feel like they've got like a ton of bad press on the Microsoft corporate side that that's sort of historical and Legacy you know there's people out there just hate Microsoft because of Microsoft and they've been around for so long and they've done they've done a lot of annoying and bad bad stuff frankly and I'm not very happy with them either the way they they're sort of handling this AI stuff and stealing the copyright and all that kind of stuff you know blowing up uh energy use and using up all the water to power data centers so people can generate memes more effectively I kind of I do think Microsoft is this is at its core a corporation and while there are individuals at Microsoft who really do care and try and do their best to sort of um you know limit the the potential damage of the company you know um I do kind of feel like they uh as a as an entity overall Microsoft could do a lot better no doubt about it you know but you also have to sort of you know try and take things on balance they're not all evil you know they're not this sort of at the end of the day they're still made up by people who do want to make games that are fun and nobody at Bethesda was like yeah we're going to include ground Vehicles just so just so this this specific content creator gets screwed over or or the these specific fans feel slighted and you know and all this kind of stuff it's it's just sort of weird how people just have to you know just can't let let things go sometimes in some ways and uh yeah I don't know I think they'll be putting up with this kind of food food life for quite a while I kind of feel like um but what what are you going to do what you going to do he there's not much you can do about it you know our buddy uh Paris Lily of gamer Tech radio and uh kind of funny xcast Paris he had a tweet right after thanks right after uh Christmas that said Starfield is the engagement MVP for 2023 regardless of how you felt no game got as much and continues to get as much engagement as Starfield in 2023 he is absolutely 100% right it's true how many articles was written this year about Starfield uh even even before the release talking about like how it needs to save Xbox and needs to be this like 10 out of 10 game or comparing it to like oh well Starfield is not like Mass effects like all those PC Gamer articles that had came out where it was like they use Starfield and everything and and afterwards talking about Starfield all the time like if you wanted engagement you put Starfield in that title and you compared it to some other game or some other thing and it worked yeah people people Roo people are rooting for it to fail no doubt about it and that's reflected in the clicks that's reflected in the engagement you know people people on both sides are are talking about it you know I couldn't like I couldn't write an article about I don't know some game no one cares about and expect to get clicks out of it because you know why would people click on it they don't care about it but the thing about Starfield is people on both sides quote unquote care about it like PE people who are Bethesda fans long time you know even if they're not console Waring maybe they feel slighted because of Fallout 76 they have there's still a lot of negative energy about Fallout 76 like and this idea that Bethesda betrayed people betrayed Fallout fans by instead of making Fallout five they would have made Fallout 76 which which is a sort of um it was a cash grab you know and that there's there you know you can buy some micro transactions for days and and all that kind of stuff but at the same time kind of like Bethesda was in a sort of bad place and they needed to find something that could be a cash cow in an era where everyone's got their fortnite Minecraft and Call of Duty game subsidizing the more creative stuff you want to do so like Fallout 76 was a great business decision at the end of the day and I think a lot of people still resent them for making a business decision on Fallout 76 rather than a creative one um you know and and Fallout 76 is by far in a way the most successful Fallout game in terms of Revenue ever you know there's no there's no there's no way to to beat around that bush the fact that it's got microtransaction It's Always online is always going to produce better margins than um an offly in single player game yeah but so there's there's a lot people have a lot of of people have a stake in this race like whether they're a scorned PC Bethesda fan of the old Bethesda or whether they're PlayStation fan who hates Xbox or whether they're you know an Xbox fan who wants to see the game succeed or you know or just someone who's curious about this game that everyone's talking about it's a viral game you know but I do think Bethesda could handle it better and Bethesda could probably explore ways to adjust to this era they now find themselves in which you know they've earned for themselves in some ways with things like Fallout 76 with things like the way they reacted to to the reviews on the thing and um and the and the way that Bethesda and Xbox don't seem to be fully on the same page in some ways you know like um the fact that you know blade didn't have Xbox logos in the trailer and it was unclear if it's exclusive and that kind of stuff because Bethesda wants to do things their way there's nothing wrong with that but the these are the kind of confusing messages that are going to produce these kinds of I don't know gaps in the narrative that can be exploited by Bad actors I suppose you could say if I'm talking about it from like the perspective of a PR dude who wants to manage um how people feel sentiment wise about these platforms um but it's it's an interesting discussion I think history will be tied to Starfield eventually and I think Bethesda will find its footing and and its place this Brave New World of of social media fud and sheep who cont for themselves I'm just looking I'm looking forward to shatter space I'm looking forward to the expansion hopefully I would imagine we get that DLC probably in the year anniversary September next 2024 here's shattered space hopefully it's nice and Meaty but I I I do I do agree with you I think a road map would be much appreciated when to expect you know a lot of the live service games have that like oh what to expect in in this season or in this season and this season this season and sometimes they they get delayed a week or two but I think it would be cool to see what's coming to Starfield because they did say they're planning on updates every six weeks um for Stuff it'd be it'd be interesting to see what what is coming to the game and I don't know I've just I've just never seen the reactions to games where it's like I played it for 200 hours and I just hated every second of it it's like why' you play for 200 hours and I don't understand it ISD like I played I play yeah it's like I if I don't like a game I'm done I'm like a couple hours in that's it and I I hate hearing from people well just play it for 20 hours then it gets good you know like what do you hear from Final Fantasy 13 or whatever where you have to play it a certain amount of time it's like dude I don't got time like that there's so many other things I could be doing with my time it's like I just don't got 20 hours to burn you know on something to see it's so weird you mention Final Fantasy 13 cuz I was literally I literally buy into that I'm so and like I saw I can't remember what it was I saw a meme about Final Fantasy 13 and I was like should I give it another go should I try and get to that that 30h hour mark to when it gets CAU kind of thing because I really want I really hate that I don't like that game because the last I like Final Fantasy 13 I liked it quite a bit I didn't play the sequels but I ended up I ended up really liking Final Fantasy 13 yeah I'm I'm curious I'm morbidly curious about it yeah we got a super chat here from Joshua B that says the reason the time suit is significant is that they historically sue for legal precedent not settlements love Xbox but Microsoft needs accountability well we'll see how that all goes down a dead Planet says outside of Elder Scrolls Call of Duty um which announced Xbox game do you each think will have the biggest Zeitgeist oh my God I need an Xbox now impact um good question I would say I'll just throw a game out there because like I could say hellblade too because it's my most anticipated but I think people know what hellblade is and I I think like hellblade could have that Ze I moment if like you wake up one day and see the Metacritic score and hellblade 2 is a 93 not saying it will be a 93 but kind of similar to what happened with Elden ring you remember when Elden ring came out and the reviews were like a 96 and suddenly people were like oh my God I need to play Elden ring even though a lot of the people who played alen ring clearly never played a Dark Souls game in their life but they saw that the reviews for the game and they were like I need to play this right where it's like if hellblade 2 reaches that level I think when you get into that rarified error then that becomes like oh my God I need to play this right but I I won't I I won't mention hellblade I'll mention a different game um and it's it's obviously really easy to say a new IP oh new IP but it's like whatever I'll just say perfect dark Perfect Dark yeah mainly because we don't know we don't know what it looks like we don't know really what it's going to play like so I think when that game finally gets revealed the gameplay and everything I think and I I do believe Crystal Dynamic is a great developer they've made incredible games I think that could you could see that and you'd be like oh [ __ ] okay okay okay Xbox I see you you know what I mean I don't know there's there's just throwing a game out there what about for you gears o gears okay I I think gear gears is kind of known and I think people have Nostalgia for it and I think the next gears is really going to push to a new level and uh it's going to pull in people that have never played gears before and I think it's going to be that game where people like damn I actually need this this is probably this is really good and I think it's going to be I think yeah I think it's going to be an event well speaking gears I'm glad that you brought that brought this up speaking of Gears because there's been a lot of talk recently about them showing something gears related next year because uh the Gears of War account tweeted out happy holiday gears right and then I think it was like the lead level designer Benjamin haou on Twitter said see you in 20124 with the fist bump and he said hash gears famam so a lot of people are saying that this is 100% confirmation that gears something gears related will be shown cuz why else would this guy said see you in 2024 right did he delete the tweet I don't think he deleted the tweet I think it's still up there but I mean obviously could mean anything could just mean like hey see you guys in 2024 right because it's a new year CU it's a new year but we've been waiting for a while for the new reveal of the new gears game um it could be this year right like you would gear six it's been a while man 20209 and that marks like five years and we haven't seen or heard anything from the Coalition since then I mean they dropped the Matrix um The Matrix demo uh for Unreal Engine I'm sure they're they're hard at work trying to get the Unreal Engine under control and making it the best that can be outside of Epic themselves but what if what if I what if I Flo an idea to you and I said to you what if gear 6 is the launch title for the next Xbox H what if what if they reveal it this year 2024 right which I think it's possible and I you know it's like okay well if we're doing gears and we got a gears collection coming but you know the rumors about a new Xbox coming in 2026 they seem like it could be real right but like what if you launch the next Xbox with gear the next gears even though it would be cross gen but like you launched because it's like oh even if you revealed gears in 20124 probably not come until 2025 and you know things take a bit maybe it gets delayed but how would you feel feel if gear 6 was a launch title for the next Xbox next in 2026 how how would you how would you feel about that I'm absolutely completely down for that you're down for that you're down for that down for I'm down I'm down ready bro bring it on baby I mean how do you feel about like the idea of Xbox breaking out from the cycle of always launching new hardware against PlayStation and kind of doing it switch style doing their own March to to be their own drummer and launching earlier than expected cutting this gen short like how like how do you feel about that I think I'm I'm I'm good with it I think like if if Microsoft's talking about there're in interviews talking about they can't beat PlayStation then why why why keep keep following that beat just go and do Your Own Thing Man I mean the next Xbox is probably going to be quite unique you know they're going to have this rumored AI co-processor which is going to like potentially let you do things like automatically create intricate Minecraft maps and intricate you know maybe Forge Forge uh uh maps for Halo maybe even mods for Starfield maybe you'll be able to just say to your Xbox create me a mod that actually does add full dismemberment to the game and AI will make it happen you know that's the kind that's the kind of um the the kind of direction that they want to go in for AI where it's like you with no with no programming knowledge you can make maps create modes and do all kinds of weird stuff using you know an AI That's on board maybe offloads some comput to the cloud and knows how to produce those results based on what you prompt it basically um and I think the obviously there's also you know graphic stuff that they'll do that on line as well Machine learning um uh with um AMD you know postprocessing Graphics super resolution maybe frame generation who knows you know there's going to be a lot of cool stuff they can do and it's potentially going to be stuff that Sony won't be able to do at least to the same level um unless Sony like partners with some other company for a large language model you know maybe they partner with Facebook maybe they partner with Amazon or Google or someone I don't know maybe Sony just does it themselves I mean there's there's no reason why Sony potentially couldn't do that as well I mean it' be interesting if they did do it I'd have be intrigued to see what that looks like if they did do it um but uh but yeah I I don't see any reason why Microsoft needs to keep going up against Sony directly I think it' serve them really well if they didn't you know to be honest give them complete spot in the Limelight especially if like they can line up all the games and stuff like you know um like stuff like gear six yeah I'm down for that do you have any other thoughts on that well I chat think as well what do you think chat what does chat think yeah what does chat think what what how do you feel about like gears being a launch title for nextg or even next gen coming in 2026 I know we we briefly talked about this a couple couple episodes ago but you know maybe it seems like it's it could be a possibility and we know Xbox has a ton of games in development are you okay with Microsoft shorting this gen are you okay with this gen and the Xbox series X ands Hardware never really reaching its full potential I mean that's something that you you know would have to be discussed about like well well this is the this is the thing man it's like we've kind of moved away from the concept of generations anyway it's kind of we're kind of more like phones now where everything's backwards and forwards compatible you know you've got you've got your Xbox One S and X still getting games you know and it's not like the games launching there are broken or anything Call of Duty fortnite Minecraft and FIFA all still get updated released and updated on the Xbox One S for God's sake so in that sort of universe where they're still updating the the older consoles it sort of doesn't make sense to think of it like a cut off anymore and I think a lot of us do think of it as a cut off because we're nostalgic about that cut off and Sony even played into that in some of its commentary like oh we believe in generations and then well you didn't actually believe in Generations at all did you because everything was cross gen like like you know like Microsoft did um and I think everything will still be cross gem for a long time because x86 architecture kind of affords for that reality yeah but no I mean we'll just have to see how it all plays out I you know I wouldn't I wouldn't be against the idea right I'm I'm really interested in seeing what gear six looks like and I do think we will see it this year I I do think well next year right I still I'm still under like am like already thinking it's 2024 you know I think this is going to be a huge year for for Xbox not only like game-wise but reveal wise I think they're all set up I think I know this past E3 was probably like one of the highest rated Xbox showcases especially if you look at the ke's it was definitely in the a uh a category but you know comparable with say like 2018 but I think they just got so much more now to show I think they're they're about to hit their not their Crescendo but like everything's about to finally be able to come out and that you know with the with Bethesda obviously and ABK there's a ton of stuff and I think it's like you're really at that moment where it's like G to come become apparent to everybody soon that like oh yeah uh Xbox is about here to be about about to like release like six games a year for the foreseeable future you know what I mean cuz I still think there's a little bit of doubt in that side uh especially a lot in the main the mainstream media where they're like oh what is Xbox really going to do what is what you know like they kind of him and they Haw and they say Xbox it's funny XBox doesn't have any games or whatever and then they one of the guys I follow was like really been critical of Xbox and like how they don't have an identity and they don't really release anything but gave Hi-Fi Rush his his game of the year it's like huh H interesting okay interesting but he doesn't really he doesn't consider an Xbox game you know but you know they don't have an identity oh just because reasons reasons that's why just reasons you know but I think it'll finally start to click for him because you're going to have I think you're they're going to have a whole bunch of games this year and then they're going to they're going to reveal a whole bunch of stuff at E3 and then like there's gonna be a whole bunch of games come out in 2025 and they'll reveal even more and it's just going to be this onslaught of of stuff probably that should have happened earlier but because of covid and other things a lot of game delays happen because of that stuff so uh it's going to be it's going to be fun uh Mr you know what I really want Xbox to make what I think Xbox needs more uncanny social experiences kind of like SE a thieves they need more SE games like sea of Thieves where they sort of create these viral social uh events that can be highly memed because I think that's what a lot of younger Gamers kind of want they want these kind of social games and that I think that's why lethal company's blowing up so hard right now did you ever get R to playing that by the way but here's the thing with here's the thing with Le lethal company we played it for 4 hours and we we basically saw that you can see and beat the game and none of us have any desire to ever play it play it again until more content comes out out of imagine it's imagine lethal company with gigantic Microsoft budget though okay that's a kind of it's a kind of game that they need to make I kind of feel like well I I'm trying to I'm struggling to even visualize a lethal company made by a team of 100 considering that game was made by one dude and maybe and I sort of feel like that's the charm though I sort of feel like the charm is how it looks and it's a game made by one guy very much like vampire survivors right remember vampire survivors was the all the rage last year right created that genre and since then we've had a whole bunch of games copy vampire survivors that look better and maybe play better than vampire survivors but nobody talks about them no because I think part of the appeal too you know there's been loads of clones of Among Us and they've all kind of flopped yeah because part of the appeal is like that originality I the originality but also like hey it's dude was it's made by one or two people you know what I mean yeah maybe and you lose that if it's like a whole AAA production 100 million or 100 people working on it lethal company I feel like you lose the charm of and not only do you lose the charm but I think people they they look at lethal company and they just like oh this is fun it's one guy and it's a social thing and it's five bucks or whatever it is on Steam but if it was a big AAA production and it's $50 you start critiquing it more you know versus you kind of let things slide a little bit and the you know how it currently is but I yeah I I'm kind of in two minds about that I kind of Wonder like what what would it look like if Microsoft brought back one versus 100 you know like people have been asking them to do that for a million years and I kind of feel like in today's era that game like that work really really well and it's weird that they haven't done it you know um who knows who knows what the future hold Microsoft surely knows better than me I would hope yeah um Champagne Supernova says last day for jazz to finish Persona 5 or no World of Warcraft till 2027 oh dear yeah it's not happening I'm afraid well now Jazz has got all of next year to finish Persona five and he did agree but he won't finish it and I won't make come not play World of Warcraft so I will finish it yeah we'll see Champagne Supernova he says Sony counting portals is console sales it makes the number arbitrary the only real measure is unique users life today and on nextg consoles thanks for a great year guys farewell Bobby the bull well it's not Sony that's counting portals as console sales that's NPD and that's it it's like they're counting it as Hardware um so that doesn't necessarily mean it it counts towards like PS5 numbers uh but Sony themselves obviously aren't caring portals as PS5 sales there own they they they its own thing that's just for whatever reason that's just that's just NPD or or what are they called now cir cira I don't know that's that's what they kind of are doing uh Abdi says 2026 n Shen is fine but one SK please I feel like I feel like a lot of people want the handheld though yeah and and I will say right here now if the next gen Xbox ends up being just a handheld I'm done iton I am done it won't it I it won't be but I'm just saying I I don't want that I would be like all right PlayStation here I come like I am not down with the handheld Revolution no it won't it won't be handheld and honestly I think like I think what I could see Microsoft doing more is just leaning into the the oems for H HS I think like I think I think we'll see eventually a black Asus Rog Ally with Xbox branding but it it'll be it it'll be an Isis Rog Ally with an Xbox logo on it I can see them doing something like that because they did that with the Razer Kishi there's a Razer Kishi Pro with Xbox logos on it um there's also um a game sir Pro with Xbox logos on it you know made that made for Xbox program they've got going on I think think they'll do that I don't think they'll make their own held personally yeah um I think the the Xbox console will be familiar and entertainment center friendly personally I know a lot of people out there would be very disappointed if XBox didn't do their own handheld like everborn Saga and other people I don't think that will but I don't think it makes sense for them too they'll just rely on the other handheld people to make them and they'll support them as best they can uh Mr two opinion says content is King give me a reason for new hardware indeed Danny passion official says what are your top three Game Pass games of 2013 2013 I'm assuming me 2023 top three Game Pass games cocoon number one well cocoon would just be cocoon Starfield and planet of Lana there you go what do you think about those three Jazz and they good picks yeah pretty good picks what about you what would your top three my top three of 2023 Diablo is probably at the top um it's not Game Pass oh right yeah Game Pass game Game Pass Game Pass Game Pass Game Pass Game Pass then oh that's kind of harder I would say month on Rise um the first time I played it and I know I know it wasn't launch for I know it wasn't a launch thing for um for uh it was it launched on the Nintendo switch right um but I thought it was awesome that that went straight into Game Pass and so that's probably one of my picks and then oh highi Rush probably not for me I would I would replace highi Rush with with planet ofana or planet of lanaa with high fire rush I would [Music] probably it's kind of tough because I mean Remnant 2 I play Play That's that didn't launch into game pass but no but I mean he didn't say he didn't say launch just that it was in Game Pass so it is in Game Pass now so I I I would choose Remnant 2 then and then probably also another game I've been playing a lot of recently um purely via Game Pass is a game called War Tales have you heard of that I have heard of it yes so War Tales is like it's like a medieval war bands simulation kind of game it's weirdly comp in I'm really really enjoying it so I'm going to give that a shout you know isn't uh you speaking of Remnant too isn't the dev gunfire games aren't they owned by embracer yes R maybe Xbox should go in and save them you know I think they should I think Remnant would be a great uh gire would be a great G just go get per go get uh Idol Montreal go get Crystal Dynamics and go get on Fire Games boom job done job done yeah put them job done baby just do that uh the da aaku he says Xbox series xns 2020 Xbox series xns 2 2026 Xbox series X ns3 2031 and phase out the series X ands uh the Xbox series X S4 2038 and phase out the Xbox series S2 Etc so I I guess that's his Hardware plan uh just James says M for two months he says happy New Year guys here's to another successful year of Xbox what do you guys want to happen that's unlikely mine is pixel remasters on Xbox so the Final Fantasy games I actually think that's more likely than you think I think that's likely at some point yes yeah I think that's likely I don't think that's unlikely um pixel re Masters is probably one that I put really high as is being likely one that I put as unlikely as Final Fantasy 7 remake what I think it will come event what but before you well so you've you've changed your opinion on this one again no I I just I think it's going to I let me finish I think it's going to happen but not not next year okay I mean I'd agree with you on that yeah it's going to happen but not next year [Music] um I mean let's see unlikely what would I want to happen but is unlikely to happen um I'm trying to think of of of something I mean I'm I'm for a mid gen refresh to to go up against the PS5 Pro I don't think that's I think that's unlikely to happen I guess that' be mine I guess you know yeah that'd be mine I do uh let's see oh yeah this this this this game I think mean you might have mentioned this but hellblade 2 is now the most important XBox exclusive jez yeah yeah this discourse fun discourse discourse it's it's always the next game it's always the next one Starfield was it uh you know originally it was like Halo then it was Starfield and now it's now it's all in hell La shoulders uh can senua senua carry the load and this comes uh because of an article a preview over at VGC where they said hellblade 2 could be Xbox's most important exclusive for Microsoft all eyes and ears will be on Ninja Theory in 2024 um and I sort of hate how this is always the case it's it's if anybody remembers back in the back back in the days of neoaf back during the PS3 and Wii U uh time frames I think I may have mentioned this before but every single game was always heralded as the next as the game to save the Wii U or the game to save PS3 whatever releas it was lir then it was like uh Heavenly sword right and they'd have like a chalkboard and they'd they'd write these games on on there like the the game that will save the PS3 and lir would come out and it didn't so they cross it out and then it would be you know Heavenly sword to cross that out and then it was like every single release was the most important release for the PS3 and the Wii U and I sort of feel like the media is sort of doing the same thing with Xbox that they did with those consoles where like every release is the most important game every release is you know this game has to hit right like every single one they and I and I hate this because it it creates unrealistic expectations for the titles to live up to you know where it's like hellblade 2 um is going in my opinion I think it's going to be an amazing game you know but I'm biased because I love the first one but I would never come out and say it's you know the Xbox's most important exclusive you know what's important for Xbox is to release high quality games at a consistent rate basically consistency that's the most important thing Xbox can do it's not one game it's a collection of a whole bunch of games so this idea of always placing one game on on a pedestal and being like this is the most important one so then you can write articles about like how it failed and how it didn't it didn't you know sell the consoles and Game Pass whatever didn't go up and then you just do it to the next game now AOW is the next important game and then once it's AOW then it's perfect AR is the most important Xbox game and then with perfect AR Fable is the most important XBox exclusive and it just rinse and repeat ad nauseum and is anybody else tired of this every single every single year every single time there's a big game it's always labeled as the most important exclusive for Xbox cuz I am because I see through this [ __ ] yeah it's it's irritating to say the least but what are you going to do it's like we're talking about earlier it's it's the it's the world Microsoft find itself in where they they you know everyone's over scrutinized and everything they do um for better or worse I don't know I don't know when I honestly don't know when stuff like this will end will will it it does it end with what the game gets a nomination for the ke's game of the year and then does that mean what what is I guess like defined as like what would make it be a success oh it it was nominated for Game of the Year therefore it's a success and and now we can stop talking about it is that what this is about oh it won game of the year so now like Xbox is saved it has a game of the year winner and now everybody's going to flock to Xbox to to play their game of the year what is that what this is about is it about sales is about critical reception is it about I me that's sort of the thing like starfields experiencing was there's a lot of expectations around this game some of them put on him by Xbox sarahan did say one of the most important RPGs to come out right I mean so it's like yeah okay you you sort of put some of that on yourself but then everybody started talking about this game being the game of the generation which is I don't know necessarily where that came from I know people started talking about it and the Starfield wasn't you know it I think because the expectations were so high for some people on Starfield the fact that it's only like an 84 or an 85 or whatever it is feels like it's worse than it actually is cu it was supposed to be some people I remember when people were doing predictions on Twitter people had it at like 95 and I remember playing the game Jazz we were playing the game and I were sending you people's threads like these people think Starfield is going to be an 8 and 97 and I'm just like oh boy are people's expectations about this game a little bit off and I'm playing it I'm like yikes like ain't gonna be in the 90s that's for sure you know yeah um but it's just it's just kind of just kind of a lazy take the whole this sort of concept of this game needs to be this uh uh not not that but this game is Xbox's most important game and it's kind of like well what why is it man haven't we kind of moved past this now where it's like you know Starfield came out it it didn't it didn't blow up like a m Minecraft or Call of Duty and does that mean Xbox is dead now if if Starfield was his most important game and and he didn't win game of the year or whatever Milestone they they've set for it to be so important then why is hellblade now being treated like that and like why will aour probably be treated like that and all the all the next games be treated like that you know it's just it's just really it's it's exhausting the way everything that Xbox does is framed in the context of winning and losing you know nobody talks about like how I don't know like apple is doomed because they've only got 12% of the PC market you know no one no talks about that no one talks about Apple's doomed because Android completely dominates iOS globally and that iOS is only popular in America and Europe you know nobody really talks about that um but why is Xbox not given the same courtesy or leeway I don't know I don't know and I think some of it's wrapped up in weird video game tribalism that's kind of existed since forever probably um but yeah I don't know hey even VC's preview of AOW their T their title is can AOW out Bethesda Bethesda again well I think I think that's that's an interesting take because you got to be I think that's that's a call back to Fallout New Vegas right which a lot of people do or is it is it a call back to Outer worlds versus Fallout but it's probably yeah it's probably more more it's more of a it's more of a New Vegas thing I think and I think that that's a Fair that's kind of a fair thing to say because I do think that obsidian has a better grasp of what a branching narrative should look like than modern Bethesda does I think Bethesda I think some of the stuff you can do in outter worlds um is pretty great and there are those moments in Starfield but they're not as abundant as perhaps I would like like it to be like a New Vegas would be and maybe that's just maybe that's just symptomatic modern game development you know but yeah it does seem like bethesda's a a punching back you know they're a punching back Bethesda is a punching back and I don't know part of it's they've earned that through Fallout 76 disconnecting from their fans a little bit and I don't know but yeah people can't just you know move on they've got to like they've got a bro beat they've got a bro beat the game to submission it's like OverWatch being the worst rated game on Steam of all time I don't think it deserves that you know and it's it's not like there aren't other games on Steam like valve even you know the if we're talking about greed and stuff like that then why does no one talk about like the the Skins you can get in in some of the valves games that cost like a million million dollars and it's because like players set the value right whereas like Blizzard's setting the value of of those games and if but it's like well if blizzard let people trade skins and set their own value they'd be mad at blizzard for that as well you know so it's it's just weird the way sentiment works like how do you how do you sort of fix it you know you know it's it's weird like I wouldn't want to be a PR person a Bethesda or Blizzard or Xbox even trying to figure out what they can do to get the same kind of clout that a company like steam has or whatever and people feel people feel real passionate about Steam for example and they have they have a lot of Goodwill because they give so much you know the steam sales are crazy you know all the memes about people buying games on the steam sales because the games are so cheap and um never actually playing them you because there there's just so much I think like one of one of the steam Awards is like the mo or uh not the steam Awards but I saw a meme recently where it was like the most backlogged games of all time Witcher two is one of them and like halflife 2 is another one of them and Paul no I think it was Paul 2 actually but it's just it's just funny you know yeah sentiment is a funny thing yeah I don't know what you do to fix it I don't know I just the idea I'm I'm not saying hellblade's not important I mean it is the game that they revealed with the Xbox right series X it's been in development for a while I just I don't know the idea of like every single game is the most important game just irks me and I know why they do it like it makes a good headline you know like oh hellway 2 is the most important Xbox game and then like it'll be fables the most important one and then rinse and repeat and then you want to read it right but I think that also sets the expectations so high that it possibly can't reach it but maybe it will maybe this one does I don't know like I don't know I I see what you're doing because it's something that the that the industry has done to other consoles in the past and they all it's always like the next game the next game the next game rinse and repeat and you you put all these like super high expectations on it that it can't possibly live up to and it's like oh well it failed again because Xbox is a failure even though it's not but they like to present it is because they like the old model of just being like well look here console sales and console sales say this and that's not really what the business is anymore but Xbox could fix that too by being more transparent but they won't do that either well yeah that is true that is true D DB Cooper in the Super Chat says you guys see that the Xbox series X is still 349 and 299 some places even after the Christmas is over let me let me go let me go check and see what is at Best Buy right now best I'm gonna go check the ukcom best buy.com we have Xbox series Xbox series X is 360 in the UK that which is off so right now the Xbox series X is399 at um Best Buy so is that down what's down right I mean that's $100 off it's $4.99 and it's 100 quid off on Amazon UK uh we'll we we'll see if they keep those prices as standard going into next year I don't know maybe they will I I did sort of feel and say that I think they h I feel like they have to I feel like you know what the market values Xbox as at versus what it values PlayStation at and that might anger some people but too [ __ ] bad the PlayStation is the more popular device that people buy that people are willing to spend $499 on I think the Xbox I think Xbox has Tapped Out the audience that is willing to pay $499 for the Xbox series X and you need to move it lower I agree and you know they can make that money back with Call of Duty microtransactions I mean if I go on Amazon bestsellers list right now in PC and video games number one bestseller is A1 pound Playstation store gift card but then number two and three uh Xbox controllers number four is Super Mario Brothers Wonder number five and six are Roblox and Nintendo eShop gift cards but number seven is the Xbox series X and the next console on that list is really far down I don't know like all the stocks sold out of everything else oh no PlayStation 5 is there so down at number 42 is PlayStation that is really intriguing is that the first PlayStation model on the list yeah it is it is the first PlayStation model on the list is down at 42 whereas Xbox series X is number seven um so maybe a lot of people are buying their second consoles right now and um where is play PlayStation's 42 and Xbox series s is 48 the series s right now is 209 quid which is absurdly cheap that's like cheaper than one of the the cloud gaming hand out um but this is interesting Ren number 43 best selling in PC video games is ever clean clumping cat litter lavender Des scented for long for longl lasting freshness maximum OD elimination 10 liter I don't know why that's listed under console game so wait wait is that best is that selling better than the PS5 right now or one spot worse oh let's it's it's one spot wor so the PlayStation PlayStation is beating the kitty litter the kitty litter you know speaking of speaking of animals did you see the video of the dog that as the girl was unwrapping a present it was the PS5 the dog just took a Hu huge steaming PT of [ __ ] right next to it oh God I that girl was like so stunned she didn't know what to do she was like what what what is this real right now I kind of feel like she was wondering if she was dreaming yeah it's like so bad well I would have been gagging that I would me throw I hate that you can tell that the dog did not like the PlayStation as a gift it was an Xbox Fanboy yeah yeah Xbox Fanboy this just this just too funny this is too funny um Tom drum says you forgot vgcs can of out Al Bethesda Bethesda I mentioned that yeah Danny passion official I meant 2023 great picks guys here's my top three list mines are Remnant 2 high-fi rush and Liza P I didn't say Liza P because I didn't I haven't played it yet so so w long and lies of P at two games like quite high on my backlog that I want to playh but like my my backlog has become this sort of monster now where it's like I just sort of I just sort of look in my backlog and like I can't I get Choice paralysis and then I just got back so much to choose from but you don't know so much you just don't know what to choose yeah yeah pretty much but let's talk about um XBox in 2024 Jazz right we're we're we're about to approach Xbox uh next year and I kind of just wanted to maybe lay out like their events and the games that might come out where they might land or whatever obviously like sloth if you're listening don't tweet this out because this is nothing but just random we're just going to throw random stuff at the wall right this isn't like oh my God things are leaked because we don't do that right and obviously there'll be stuff here that's wrong and there'll be probably stuff that's right but who knows what'll be what but I think Xbox starts the year off with another developer Direct in January I think they do it again um like late January early February because Xbox really needs [Music] to they really need to like give give people the uh release Cadence for the year we don't know we know of the games announced for 2024 but we don't know when anything's launching and you see a lot of companies already setting like the early parts of the Year up uh for their games so I think we'll see a developer direct that will that will showcase probably roughly a similar amount of games to the last one five five games um so I think at at the developer direct we'll see stuff like Tower born which I believe will be launching first I think Tower born is the first game to launch and you know what jez I sort of feel like Xbox is going to pull what they did last year and I know it's not necessarily a shadow drop but I could easily see them bying away toborn you can play it right now yeah I could see that you know like hey it's available to play right now and if and they don't do that I think I think comes like February or March I think Tower born's the first game to come out so I think we see Tower born again I think we see hellblade and they date it I'm just going to say hellblade comes out in like April I know like people are like oh no well they didn't give it a date at the VGA so that means it's got to be later in the year and maybe it is but I don't know like I sort of feel like why go through all the trouble of having the concert and the new TR trailer at the VGA only to like not have not to release the game for another 10 months 11 months so maybe this is my own uh my own like wish like wishfulness here like I want it to be true but I think cow blade comes like in April and then I think we also see flight Sim and I think that comes out in like June the June June summer time frame very similar to when the first flight Sim came out um and then I think we get a surprise I think we get surprise a look at South of midnight in June no no no I think we get a look at South of Midnight at the direct ah and we see the game and then they and then they date it for like 2024 and then eventually I think it comes out in like September and I think that yeah I don't know that's kind of just I'm trying to like think of like fun things exciting things maybe uh maybe it won't happen that way but I I I do like feel like in my gut I feel like yeah you know what I think south of midnight could be this year I or next year rather really I really think it could be and towards later in the year but wouldn't it be cool if you're not expecting something at the developer direct and it's like boom yeah here's a look at a game uh you know we haven't seen what it looks like but here's the first look at uh south of midnight and it's coming in 2024 and maybe they can even give a launch trailer at the U at the E3 you know what I mean or the summer showcase um and then you know may maybe we see something else from AOW and if not AOW maybe they it's like or or maybe if you you don't want to do south of midnight it's like boom here's the gears collection and Je screams no special dick no yeah so so I think we'll see I think we'll see uh that developer Direct in January early February I'm going to say I'm going to say it's probably like the same time frame as as last year's and we'll get the release Cadence for the first half of the year which I think will be like I said Tower born how blade and and Microsoft flights him right and then we'll have the we'll have the Showcase in June same time as always and I think they branded the Xbox and Activision Blizzard showcase where years previous they branded it the Xbox and Bethesda two years in a row this past year was just the Xbox show and remember because people thought well does that mean bethesda's not going to be there if there's not branded Bethesda even though did we see anything from Bethesda this past year E3 I'm I'm trying to remember or was it just your typical Elder Scrolls and uh and Fallout 76 stuff I don't think we did maybe someone in chat can correct us but I think they they branded the Xbox and Activision Blizzard showcase just so they can kind of tie the companies in together a little bit and then you know you have a whole rundown of a whole bunch of stuff Odyssey gets revealed ID new game gets revealed uh perfect AR gets gameplay play Fable gets gameplay you know Indiana Jones gets you know a new trailer well we don't even I don't even know the first trailer you saw of Indiana Jones would would whatever maybe that you get a cinematic trailer or something but there's a lot of things that they could show already had one of those what do you mean I mean we already had like a CGI teaser that can't do that twice what Indian for Indiana Jones yeah I would I wouldn't call that a CGI trailer I mean that was just what T scrolling yeah I guess I mean you could have a two-minute trailer that's CGI kind of like blade I don't know may may maybe you can't but I mean that tra that first trailer was just an announcement trailer of like we're working on Indiana Jones but there's a lot of games that they can they can announce and they can they can date and I still think you do Quon but I don't think you hold its game for Quon CU I do feel like we we'll get its game this year or at least revealed I think it's going to be like um and you know what I think for the first time in a while I think actually think you get Call of Duty re revealed at the Xbox show I think they'll break I think they'll break precedent specifically for this one they'll have a trailer for it and it won't really show much and then it'll be like you know later in the year blah blah blah right like they'll go in in depth but I think they will show Call of Duty off at the Xbox show and I think so too and I think this year's Call of Duty will be particularly special it's been really long in development that Modern Warfare 3 wasn't received that well and that kind of it'll be good for Microsoft to put like even though Microsoft had nothing to do with it you know people will if it's bad people consciously associate it with Microsoft making bad Call of Duties I don't know or people will fud it that way right so I kind of feel like if this is going to be like a really good Call of Duty then you probably want to put your branding on it I imagine but um we don't do we know when PlayStation's marketing deal extends for Call of Duty to I want to say I want to say uh last year's was the was the final one but I think the deal probably extended from a a year from that release right so I think Xbox should have the marketing rights to this new Call of Duty Call of Duty Black Ops golf War you know the triarch game first one in development for four years yeah so I think it'll be special yeah that's why I'm saying like Okay you want to you want to Brand the two entities together call it the Xbox and Activision Blizzard showcase reveal Odyssey whether that's exclusive or not is anybody's guess right probably have update trailers for OverWatch 2 the new trailer for for the news the new like expansion for Diablo that's coming out the end of the year right Diablo 4 so you have we know there's a new uh expansion coming out for that reveal Odyssey reveal Duty World of Warcraft you could yeah reveal you know the Call of Duty game um because obviously you're probably going to have a lot of time because it's not like you're going to have a a huge breakdown on on Starfield which is going to take up 45 minutes so you can have the show as long as you need and um you know there'll still be a Quon and maybe they show more of uh you know Doom's uh its game there there uh and I think you still do BlizzCon they they usually do BlizzCon every year right it's not like a every other year type thing they stopped for the pandemic but but the thing I worry about BC con is it makes no money it costs it costs millions of dollars and it's unprofitable and everyone was complaining about how much it cost last year and I I know from speaking to people that um it did not make money again even though it costs like a a load of money but why don't they just they not just classify that as a marketing budget a marketing thing that's you know yeah I mean they I mean they should classify as a marketing budget I just don't know if Microsoft would see it that way I would hope so um we'll see you don't you don't know you don't know what Microsoft thinks yeah Microsoft works in mysterious ways this is what this is what like I was talking about earlier like my whole sort of cautious optimism about Microsoft because I I kind of like maybe Microsoft doesn't want to bliz kind maybe they shut it down you know and and that kind of stuff I worry I'm nervous about that kind of stuff because they spent a lot of money and I don't know what it looks like when a company spends that much money you know I don't know what it looks like bro so I am a little bit nervous right well I mean so then 2024 release schedule you know like I said Tower borne early in the year could be a surprise drop in January but maybe it's February I think hellblade is like April time frame flight Sim I think is like June uh then you're getting into later half of the year and I want to say you have south of midnight in September you have our history Untold in October you have a vow in October you have obviously Call of Duty uh Black Ops golf war in November and I'm trying to think if there's anything else I'm just going to say this just because whatever uh gears collection September as well I don't and no I don't think Forza rizon 6 is this is next year I think they will hold on to it for 2025 and maybe they release it like maybe in March of 2025 so that's kind of what I'm looking at I mean this is always tough to do because I don't know I'm just throwing stuff at a wall but that's sort of what I think at least the year is going to look like maybe Xbox has other stuff I mean it obviously doesn't include things like stalker 2 which is an exclusive but we don't know how long for I mean the court documents said 3 months but maybe it's longer and I think that's supposed to be quarter 1 2024 probably March um and whatever sort of other game pass Deals they have for for this year or any other games um but I I think they'll probably get out like six or seven games uh next year I don't know I think 2024 looks I think 2024 looks really good it's going to be a absurd amount of games next year from Xbox and I think like activity from third parties won't be as crazy as it was this year um so Xbox might have like a really sort of good canvas to sort of make its Mark next year they don't have to compete maybe as much with others be interesting because do we know what Sony's road map is for next year I don't I think we don't right they put out they put out an article talking about what's coming let me see if I can find it Playstation blog uh of what's coming from PlayStation in 2024 PlayStation hold on Play Station 2024 see if it gives me the blog yeah here we go one day ago PlayStation in 2024 highlights so this is what PlayStation um okay would you load your interet down I hope not no I don't think my internet's down I just don't think this is loading too many too many podcasts were in it right now weird is it not loading just not loading they banned your IP from the blog yeah the the blog the blog is just not loading for me they've block they've blocked your IP bro yeah like the whole blog is just not loading at all oh here we go finally loaded oh man January monthly games they're giving away plagu tale recum and evil West well it's one good game PL sale rec room was fantastic but that was a day one game pass game West all right evil West is okay PlayStation in 2024 highlights here we go I don't know why it took so long to load uh they go note this is a top level article highlighting specific launches are not meant to be comprehensive right cuz they talk about you know know like Tekken 8 being there and stuff which is an exclusive right so they start off like Tekken 8 and then the deep Earth collection for PS5 accessories what yeah red uh red controller blue controller gray or silver controller with um you know like the little panels for your PS5 so the Deep the deep Earth collection so that's part of like what's coming in 2024 so you got Tekken 8 you have new accessories for PlayStation controllers and the and the console you have hell divers 2 uh coming in February 8th you have the Pulse Elite wireless headset in February 21st so like two accessory things and I guess that's hardware Final Fantasy 7 rebirth which is going to probably carry the whole year for them final that's uh February 29th foam Stars just a 2024 title right no no date or anything but foam Stars R rise of the Ronin which is in March 22nd and the way they kind of have this listed it's all descending order from the date like Tekken is January 26 and the next one is uh like February 8th then February 21st and February 29th and then just foam stars but then rise of the Ronin on March 22nd so it's almost they're almost giving you the release date of foam stars in this article like where it would be placed in between the games right and then Stellar blade just 2024 and then Destiny 2 the final shape June 4th 2024 and that's it so yeah and that could presumably they'll have some other stuff well will they I mean they only had they only had they only had Spider-Man 2 this year you I mean you you sure they'll have more I'm not too sure free Rog likee mode for Spider-Man 2 maybe I mean I don't know I don't I'm not sure they will they I mean people thought Wolverine was some people thought Wolverine was going to be 2024 a lot of people thought it was going to be 20125 and we know that game's 2026 we know that they delayed a whole bunch of their live service stuff pushed a lot of it further out I mean Concord was announced for 2024 this past this past showcase but it's not mentioned here in this article so has Concord been delayed to 2025 and Beyond I mean it's very odd for Sony not to have like if they had a huge game for for 2024 I feel like that game would already be announced you know what I mean and yeah maybe and I feel like because it's not maybe they don't know yet I mean I death stranding to I guess could be possible but that really seems like the only one that maybe could make it but either way um yeah so we'll see how the 2024's stack up uh yeah between but I don't I think it's going to be a I think it's I think it's going to be a pretty good year for Xbox I think in general I don't think 2024 is going to live up to 2023 I mean how could it 20123 was incredible right so I think this almost too incredible almost to incredible je says yeah my backlog is looking awful you know your backlog is looking awful yeah it's it's a shot it's a complete shambles man complete shbl uh what else did I want to talk about before we get to patreon questions uh if you guys are enjoying the show make sure you hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't already uh true achievements counted up all the uh Game Pass titles for this year Jazz and they gave out worth they gave out $9,000 worth of games this year that's crazy yeah when people when people joke about it being the best deal in gaming it really is the best deal in gaming yeah all like all the games that are added basically $9,000 worth of games which is I think it wasn't just the amount it was the quality you know War long monst on to rise Li of P for me was the best Game Pass Edition like I would love it if Microsoft enters into some kind of long-term partnership with that Studio cuz I think they're absolutely magic and that lies of PE is by far and way the most credible Souls like that isn't from software like like every every every sort of souls like that's similar to Dark Souls or whatever there's always like something kind of holding it back in a way lies of P was so close to evoking that feeling of Dark Souls that um I think that's going to be a really special studio and it wasn't that wasn't that their first Magic game I believe it was yeah yeah so yeah very special studio and then you know Remnant 2 came eventually which is also high quality just SE of stars as well lots of high quality lots of variety and then of course you've got all the Xbox exclusives that hit there like you know you Starfield and stuff so yeah it's probably the best year ever for Game Pass and um it's hard to imagine that they're going to top it but I guess they are going to top it next year because they they got loads of their own games launching into there um there's for me like next year is like obviously you talked about all the games so I won't go over that again I mean I kind of agree with a lot of them I don't think I'm not sure if torn a shadow drop personally yeah it's just a fun little thing you know what I mean yeah fun little I mean yeah I'm just I'm just sort of like yeah I'm just I'm just wondering but I would like it it's a kind of game that I think would benefit from being Shadow dropped because that verality and that sort of like oh my God new game you know let's go check it out because it is it is a service game it's aides scrolling it's a service based sidescrolling monst like it really did give me monst Vibes on a sides scrolling axis but the thing that really struck me about Tower Bor was how tight the combat felt because I played it last summer for those those who don't know I played it last summer and um man the combat feels so tight and I've since discovered that the reason the combat feels so tight is because the developers who made killer instinct's combat system made ter born's combat system so it's basically a beat up by the creators of Killer Instincts combat system um and you can you can really feel it the Precision the the the hit boxes and the weightiness of the different weapons and stuff like that because every weapon gives you like a different feel kind of like monsun very very cool game I think torn would be a bit of a sleeper hit I think it'd be very popular like in in the sort of cast Castle Crashes kind of way um but like for me what what's interesting about next year round is platform stuff you know cuz I'm I know the games are going to be good and there's loads of games I want to play and you know um this's backlog stuff I want to play too like I'm kind of I'm kind of really mad at Diablo right now because I can't kill Uber Lilith because I think it's the worst boss design in the history of gaming um you basically have to use a broken build um to to kill Uber Lilith which is really really making me mad there's just these spikes man that oneshot you and if and the hit box is ridiculous and if one little pixel touches you you insta die it's not it's not like it's not like hits you it does some damage to you it just one shot kills you even if it just scratches your arm which is ridiculous I'm standing there tanking tanking Lilith literally carving me in half with her claws and I can't take a tiny little prick from a spike clipping the side of my armor makes no sense terrible design right there's my rant about that um but the there's so many cool games that are slate for next year yeah is Dragon's Dogma next year or is that 2025 Dragon dogma's Mar March I believe or is it May so dragon's dog no it's March March March 22nd 23rd or whatever I think Dragon Dogma is going to be massive I think it's going to be absolutely massive I think it's going to be the Elden ring of next year I think it's going to be huge that's bold that's bold yeah I'm throwing that out there it's going to be the Elder ring of 2024 mark it in all right Dragons Dogma 2's what is what is Suicide Squad going to be um suicide squad's going to be the Marvel of Avengers of 202 oh that's not what you want to be that's not not what you going to be it's going to it's going to ship it's people people hardcore fans are going to play it and then it's going to die and be shut down um no I don't know I I want to I want to be optimistic because I do like rock steady um and you know it's it's not like it's not like this is a cynical cash grab where where it was like the publisher forced the studio to make it um because we know we know that Rockstar has a legacy of of building passionate games based on the DC Universe you know or the Arkham verse as as as it's become known to be so I want I'm really rooting for that game but I just Suicide Squad seems like a cursed brand it seems like a cursed brand man and some of the the leag game frame from the recent beta test was not particularly encouraging exciting but anyway um so like for me beyond the games and you talked about the games some of the platform stuff's really interesting so like we're going to see Xbox's mobile game mobile game store hit next year um and I know this is not of interest to you or maybe the guys in the chat but the reason this is important is because if the mobile game store does well it will subsidize the console you know um as long as they've got a will to do so so like they'll make 30% extra money by not having to pay Apple and Google anything and also potentially they'll also reach out to mobile game developers like hoo verse maybe and say they'll say to they'll say to hoe bring genin impact on honai Star rail to our Mobile store we'll give you a a 10% a 90% cut sorry rather than the 70% that Apple gives you so you get more of the money and also uh we throw in Game Pass perks as well to incentivize people to play the game on their phone via our store but also will you bring the game to Xbox console so I think like there'll be there'll be Halo benefits if this mobile gaming store does take off for Xbox there'll be there'll be a Halo of benefits for people playing on the Xbox ecosystem on console and also on PC as well so like even though I don't think anyone here is particularly excited about genin impact coming to Xbox it's a huge game it's an absolutely huge game and the fact that it's not on Xbox hurts the Xbox platform so and and also Phil kind of hinted that there could be an achievement rework next year well not next year but he said that that it was in the road map for achievements to have a makeover so I kind of like having achievements being made over and maybe getting some more investment in the Xbox uh feature set I think would be interesting um you know Cu uh people always ask me about achievement all the time and um I don't know if I don't know if people in chat care so much about achievements I know Rand you're not that much of achievement on her anymore I still care but yeah yeah a lot of people love achievements and they love they love doing the Platinum you know getting the the 100% but then you don't get a platinum like you do on PlayStation and people people want that people want to showcase how many games they're fully completed and I think that's that's a cool metric to be able to Showcase and hopefully that's something that Microsoft emulates so there's that potentially to look forward to next year um there's also like you know Windows 12 stuff which will enhance further the experience of Xbox gaming on Windows and that's like you know PC game pass again with Halo benefits for console and then who knows what else man I mean they they're going hard on this AI stuff and co-pilot we could see the first AI features come to Minecraft and Halo which could create a level of virality that Xbox kind of needs to bring in those casual gamers or those younger Gamers you know they see like oh I can generate AI generate I can exclusively AI generate things using Game Pass for example I can see right Rand Microsoft making AI generation in Halo and Starfield and Minecraft A Game Pass exclusive feature because that stuff costs money right so it's kind of like you don't want everyone on Minecraft blowing up your servers by generating in pictures and stuff right so maybe you make it Game Pass exclusive and it's it's like maybe you you use that to help grow Game Pass subscriptions where it's like you get the AI gener generative AI features if you subscribe to Game Pass ultimate you know maybe they do it that way because like you know right now I think you get three months of Minecraft realms with Game Pass ultimate so that's kind of an on-ramp too and as we were talking about earlier growing Game Pass helps the console and also could potentially lead to them dropping the pwf for multiplayer in the next million years I don't know but um giving you a nice a nice time frame for that but yeah yeah it's a good good time frame but you know the this is all it's all important platform stuff which like I say will should have a kind of and 2024 will be the year you beat Persona 5 yes indeed yes yes indeed yes indeed uh shout out to fun speculation MAV in the Super Chat thank you buddy he says I think Suicide Squad will be a good fun game just not what people expected from rock steady mean I haven't played it so I don't know I mean I'm going to I'm probably going to get it day one but then I said the same thing about Avatar but then I watched the gameplay of Avatar and I'm like yeah no and and col I was talking to Colt last night he's like so over Avatar they do the thing where like the levels are like you have to be or they like recommended level to play play this mission is like level 18 and Co was saying he was like level 15 and it was like impossible for him and even put it on easy and the only way to like raise your levels is to go find better gear like just doing missions doesn't raise your level you have to find better equipment he's like I'm done with this game and I'm like y Mr two opinion says shout out to my homie perfect Shogun uh Fantastical M for 38 months says do you remember when dealer predicted the PS5 would launch $100 cheaper than the series X due to the power Gap man so glad that didn't happen yeah me and dealer used to have a have a um we had a debate on that he was he was pretty sure that the uh PS5 PS5 couldn't launch at the same price as a series X because the series X is more powerful and I was just like bro they'll be the same price what are you talking about um but yeah anyways let's um let's head over to the patreon questions we do have a lot to read we got two two weeks worth of questions from the patreons um you can also submit your questions to patreon.com xp2 and uh we thank you for all the support if you guys are enjoying the show hit the like button and uh please subscribe if you're new so this is last week's we're starting with we got um Andrew MC McGregor saying what game that Xbox releases next year from a first- party perspective do you think will be the biggest hit well not like what's going to release first or even review the best what's going to be the biggest hit uh Call of Duty Black Ops golf 4 did I get it right sorry can you repeat that what game that Xbox releases next year from a first-party perspective do you think will be the biggest hit and I said Call of Duty Black Ops C war or golf War clearly uh but that's too easy right that's just that's way too easy yeah let's not count that I say h yeah I'm trying to think I'm trying to think yeah I I think it would be hellblade too as well I could you know I could see it being the gears collection if the gears Collection comes out with all the multiplayer and everything I could actually see that doing really well on both Steam and on Xbox you know if it's actually real but yeah I'll go with hellblade Billy the Brewer says happy holidays to the entire Xbox 2 Community Randon jez do you have any fun holiday gaming memories I think back to the Christmas I got my Dreamcast or the three to four days in 2014 the lizard Squad ruined Christmas break for everyone I wish everyone safe travels and good times I mean yeah I um Christmas was always the time I got my my my gaming gifts uh my grandparents used to come in so we'd have we'd have Christmas at our house and my grandparents would come and their car would just be full of gifts and it would take them like 20 minutes to unpack the car and our our living room our TV room would just be filled to the brim with presents and that's when I would get my Sega Genesis and my Sega Genesis games you know or PlayStation or whatever so yeah like I have a lot of fun memories of I remember one year I was so disappointed CU I would look at all the gifts and I would and I would see the names on them and there was nothing that resembled like you know like a box for for video game and I'm like am I not really getting any games and I remember before even open up the presents I was so upset I'm like I'm not getting right like all I got here is just a bunch of clo boxes like you know what a clo box you look at the you're like am I really getting clothes they tricked me jez they tricked me right oh no so I opened up one of the clothes boxes and inside was three Genesis games a so like they hit him within the Box yeah and I was I was so happy but yeah that's awesome those are some of my memories of uh gaming Christmas what about you you got anything special I I for some reason I always remember getting silent the hill too for Christmas um I was like one year I was really really sick and I'd done something really dumb I drank water out of a fountain in the middle of town okay um which you know had pigeons swimming in it and the water was filthy you know and for some reason on a I don't think anyone even dared me to do it I was just acting like a fool and I've been watching way too much jackass so I drank this water which was probably swimming with all kinds of nasty [ __ ] right and um I could have contracted Legionnaire's Disease or something probably but I was really really ill I'd never had an illness like that in my life before since I lost my sense of taste and smell my all my glands went into overdrive I was like spitting up you know flam and stuff like that but I was like people in chat said I've told this story before so I'll cut it short of but um I was off sick and I think my parents because I was sick they gave me one gift early and it was son 2 so I just I was just laying in bed sick as hell and vaguely Delirious playing silent ill 2 and like the I I kind of feel like the illness accelerat ated the the effect the game had had on me because it was just like you know it was trippy being having being a little bit feverish but also experiencing this absolutely insane game so it was like it was like a weirdly fonded memory for me I had like three weeks off school and just playing solent Hill it was awesome that sounds that sounds fun uh we got CJ he says hey jent no questions this week just wanted to wish you both in the Xbox 2 Community a Merry Christmas well hope you guys had a Merry Christmas hope everybody got what they wanted hope you had a great time with your friends and family uh Lazar wolf Merry Christmas guys jez you are right I already have friends talking about getting an Xbox just to play GTA 6 instead of waiting for PC well you know that's going to happen you know people are going to be like I they won't be able to to stop the fomo a lot of those PC players will definitely have to play it on console and then they'll buy it again on PC a year later uh Nate Miller says Merry Christmas grateful for this community the past year and looking forward to next year what do you think next year holds for gaming any cool Tech you're looking forward to um no not me I'm not really looking there's no there's not any Tech that's on the horizon and I'm looking forward to is there any for you jez like any cool Tech um V cool Tech um well I don't know off the top of my head but CES is around the corner so the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas Windows Central will be out there but one thing I have had recently which isn't next year but I've got it right now I've got these these X I'm writing a review of them right now they're called xreal augmented reality glasses right and they're kind of like if you remember ages ago there was a VR augmented reality headset that box was working on called project fora I think it was called okay and they kind of look like that they look just like regular sunglasses so it's not like a big headset they're just regular sunglasses and when you put them on you get like a full-blown 4K display in your eye and you can like set it off to the side and stuff it's kind of cool so like you could play Xbox while having a YouTube video in the corner kind so uh so that's kind of one Cool Tech I'm reviewing right now but as for other stuff I don't know I'm kind of interested like in the new new processes arm processes that are coming out what that'll do for PC gaming um I mean how they how they'll perform for PC gaming because they've talked about how like they' they' they're better for gaming and they're going to be coming for PC like they designed for PC you know arm stuff so um yeah I suppose that'll be it I don't know I don't know be on that I need to look into it but yeah check out our coverage of CES in the coming weeks okay we got a monkey versus tramps Merry Christmas fellas here's my question what is the biggest animal that the following people could defeat in hand-to-hand combat Cody Eastwood Phil Spencer and Dreamcast guy the biggest animal that fallowing people could defeat so what's the biggest animal that c could beat cult could be um CT's quite tall yeah but you know his his his dog constantly beat him up so I'm going to say I'm going to say like his his little poofy dog right Phil Spencer I mean Phil can take on a on a polar bear right no no problems yeah well Phil you know Phil snowboards yeah yeah yeah he probably Phil Phil's probably got experience wrestling yeah he probably he probably ran into uh to bear on the slopes right yeah and probably have to fight it yeah and can fight dream Dreamcast guy um I don't know maybe like nice R what actually Dreamcast guy works out you know he's always he's always posting pictures of him you know lifting and and so maybe Dreamcast guy could you know take on something bigger than you'd expect I'm gonna say Dreamcast guy Dreamcast guy can take on he can take on an ostrich an ostrich okay that's a good one I like that the ostr or or a kangaroo ooh dude those kangaroos can be pretty beefy too you know yeah so I I imagine a scenario where Nick Nick oh Nick would get destroyed by by a kangaroo well yeah this is this is my story so Nick Nick from Xbox era he's fighting a kangaroo and unexpectedly to his surprise Dreamcast guy comes and saves the day and then Nick and Dreamcast guy become the best of friends because they both hate Xbox that's very true yeah very very true uh we got Sonic SVT Focus says Randon JZ happy holidays and merry Christmas to you and all the Xbox 2 Community there's been so much talk this year about the business end of Xbox but with the holidays Upon Us I'd love to hear some of your favorite gaming moments of 2023 what games had a specific story or gameplay moment that you remember enjoying the most this year thank you for all you do for the Xbox community found best moments favorite gaming moments I mean for me it's I'm I'm going to come back to Diablo again but like I I didn't expect Diablo's story to be as strong as it was I thought it to have that classic addictive gameplay Loop like Diablo I had and Diablo I had but I didn't expect Diablo's story to be as good as it was and as as like as powerful as it was like I cared about the characters the me even though it's like this isometric perspective you're not like down on the floor seeing them very often like there are few Cuts scenes where you're sort of down on the ground and it's more like a more personal P personable perspective I was surprised how how effective they were at telling a story from that isometric camera perspective the music was amazing and some of the I think I think the people who've played it will know what I'm talking about but the there's a climactic pre-rendered cinematic CGI cinematic in the towards the end of Diablo I which I personally think is probably the best CGI cinematic in gaming history so um yeah Diablo for totally gets my personal pick what about your R um I mean best gaming moments I got a few of them uh playing Allen W 2 and like sitting in there and playing it in the beginning when you're like you start playing and it's just big big you're just big fat guy that's naked and it's like what is this but then like you you start getting into it and you get to that chapter where it's with the uh chapter four of Allen's it's called we sing and it has the musical number and it just blew my mind CU I didn't expect anything like that and I wasn't spoiled on it like the whole playthrough of Allen W 2 was just incredible for me um I would say getting to review Starfield I was not something I was expecting and then I got the code and I was like oh my God and then some of some of the the main missions really were exciting for me um like I had a huge smile on my face playing uh some of those the main the main the main levels and like the the actual ending like I was I was just so happy CU I enjoyed it so much especially considering it started off very very poor I was not enjoying myself when I was playing Starfield in the beginning but it ended on a high note for me um getting that shadow drop of of Hi-Fi Rush right where you where you're sitting there watching it on stream and you're like dude look how cool that game is and then all of a sudden by the way you can play it now and you download it and it's better than you ever thought it could be from a from a studio known for making horror games and they make a bright colorful uh you know beat him up uh you know and it's just like holy crap and it's like dude you got new mask new Xbox Mas cots you got 808 the cat you know you just have a whole collection of new cool Xbox characters um those are probably my three favorite right there um just that that off the top of my head but I mean there's so many others like playing Hogwarts Legacy having a really good time with that that game or loading up Star Wars Jedi Survivor and really enjoying that um cocoon like figuring out some of those late stage puzzles that really make you think there's some really really cool moments for 2023 uh Governor Grim says happy holidays guys with Spider-Man Wolverine X-Men and blade being made what untapped IP would you like to see explored more ran since you like to read what book IP would you like like to see that isn't Wheel of Time oh jez since you don't read books what movie would you like to see adapted to a game that hasn't already made its way to the Video Game World interesting I kind of like I've talked about Judge Dread before yeah you've mentioned Judge Dread yep Judge Dread is like the the least the worst utilized IP in history and I don't what Rebellion thinks they're doing by letting that lie um that is so strange to me that they' they'd rather just crank out Sniper Elite games rather than make a Judge Dread game are they insane I I don't understand that at all um but also spawn I Spa's always made a splash when it comes to Mortal Kombat and I kind of feel like spawn is a recognizable enough character especially with people of a certain age where it would work really well as a violent sort of open world prototype kind of game maybe I don't know um there's quite a lot of those Comic Book Heroes that I think would translate well to being in game form and you know rocksteady's proven that it can be done you know Rocksteady provided the template and now you know insomniacs doing it as well you want to believe that maybe more of these sort of games could uh TR you know translate across um also like there's a lot of um yeah JB chat says Sniper Elite 5 is great yeah Sniper Elite is great I'm not saying it's bad but like you know do we need another Sniper Elite Sniper Elite 6 7 8 9 10 why not just make something new you know how many times can you kill Hitler right yeah exactly you know um they seem to alternate between zombie army games and Sniper Elite games when they've got Judge Dread sitting there Gathering dust you know it's crazy to me um yeah that's going to be my picture Dre otherwise we'll be all night going around hit me hit me baby I mean out of untapped IP I mean I still would want a Superman game like you do Spider-Man game and an X-Men game a blade and Wolverine and there's a black panther and an Iron Man one like where's my Superman game you know what I mean or my Justice League game it's like that just seems like to be a a no-brainer that somebody should be doing but if you want to talk about like other comic book IPS what about what about Coalition making a Punisher game you've said that before I know I've said that before and I'm just think like I don't know anything about punish show so like but yeah the Punisher could so work from them as for like books I still think like Dresden Files could be a really cool modern-day Harry Potter game right CU he's a wizard and you have like you know werewolves and vampires and all these sort of things in a modern-day Chicago I think that could make for a very interesting video game um I mean I I know tried to make Game of Thrones as a video game but I think it's like they picked the wrong developer um the sun eater I think could really work as a cool video game uh the Sci-Fi series but I don't know uh I don't know if we'll ever see any of that Miss born by Brandon Sanderson I think could actually be a really cool game it's got all the powers you could have like an open world and you can basically basically fly in that game because you could push yourself off metals and so you you can pull people toward you and you can fly towards people or lift your like the to be crazy movement and things you could do in in the misbourne world for anybody that's read the books you know exactly what I'm talking about I think I think I think that would be really cool um achievement says jez I just got a ra eyy recently I was wondering if there are any accessories you'd recommend for it I already got a hard shell case and a screen protector um the so one thing I'd recommend is probably a dock doc um a do yeah but you need to get one specifically for the rag Ally because the steam deck has slightly different specs and um if you don't if you get one that doesn't support the 65 watt charging then you end up not being able to fully get the 30 WT performance out of it so um we do have some recommendations up on window Central um I've got I can't remember what brand doc I've got but um if you DM me on Twitter I I'll let you know my docs doesn't do it goes up 25 watt I think but the difference is probably negligible overall but yeah doc a dock is really cool you slap it you know instantly plug it into your TV and then you you know plug your controller in and then boom you got like basically a gaming PC anywhere you want it's awesome all right we uh let's see what else we got we have man beond hey guys merry Christmas which game comes out first Fable or Horizon Forza Horizon 6 bonus question could Wolverine be cancel due to the leak playable build no I don't think Wolverine canel due to the leak playable build definitely not and I think forizon 6 comes out first I agree yeah think fors rizon 6 comes out first it's quite small but smells like a big one howdy jents just wondering do you feel there are any games in 2023 that deserve a special mention or recommendation games that flew under the radar but deserve more attenion than they got it's a good question you you uh oxen free 2 for me I didn't really see a lot of people talking about oxen free 2 yeah maybe it's because like maybe the mystery because of the first game a lot of people played but honestly like oxen free 2 came and I didn't really feel like anybody talked about it and it's I wouldn't say it's as good as a game as the first one because a lot of the first game is carried by the mystery of what's going on and you sort of know obviously you know if you're playing the sequel what the mystery is but it was still very good and I didn't really see a lot of people talking about it so off the top of my head that would be one I would say is oxen free 2o what about you any anything that stands out to you um off the top of my head it's kind of hard I guess um I did kind of enjoy Age of Wonders um was it four I think it was I did enjoy a wonders 4 which kind of flew under the radar it's kind of like save Meats um fantasy I guess with dragons and stuff like that but uh I top my head that's kind of hard um H I think I got feel like sea of stars maybe deserved a bit more I mean SE of stars are quite popular overall but I kind of feel like it it probably deserves a bit more that game is really good I've only played a little bit of it but it is really really good it's a really good game really evokes those classic final fantasy kind of feelings um you know that Square Enix is abandoned so I'd like as many people to play that as possible person uh we got sick and tired Xbox bought a few unheralded Studios initially who have been quietly making their new games with X resources Microsoft affords do you think these Studios specifically will have a large jump in quality from their previous efforts prior to their purchase like compulsion with south of midnight inxile with Clockwork Revolution and Undead Labs with State of Decay 3 what's your prediction on each of these will actually hit could they surprise I mean I think that little surp I think compulsion especially I think compulsion especially will step up to another level I think one of the reasons that a lot of these games kind of um oh actually I just want to shout out mag Magnum Westwood blasphemers 2 went way under the red all yeah yeah definitely Blasphemous 2 definitely went under radar um but uh but yeah south of midnight like I think compulsion one of the things compulsion kind of lacked was maybe like some key key roles within their team which Microsoft was able to fund and fill kind of reminds me of like blueba team right blubber team basically made Walkin simulators because they didn't have a combat designer in their team you know for the longest time and now they do so like I'm expecting blubber teams games to take on a whole new dimension and it's similar to compulsion you know they probably like lacked the expertise to pull some of the elements together that they were trying to work with when they made we happppy few and um I think southern midnight would be a lot more focused game with a lot more expertise in that team um you know that have hired some incredibly noteworthy people to uh take advantage of Microsoft's money so in Exile compulsion and under Labs will all I think all Step Up in different ways um but I also think like even some of the existing Studios like um the Coalition and even though like there were never like you know a small Studio like compulsion was I kind of feel like they potentially suffered during the my and years in terms of what they could invest in and the fact that they got they got the the level of quality out of their games that they did with the resources that Xbox had at the time is really impressive but now we've got an Xbox in a different Universe where um they kind of got a lot more budget and the fact that the fact that the Coalition has been so quiet for so long kind of suggests to me that they're doing something quite special you know I would be really shocked if the next gears just looks like a typical gears game on the same Engine with the same animations we're used to because um that's what the Coalition that's how the Coalition basically was able to extract gears four and five for Xbox quite rapidly is because they already had a lot of those assets made you know but I kind of feel like the next gears is kind of going to take a lot a big leap because it does feel like they they've had a lot of investment so yeah I think um I think all the studios that Microsoft has will surprise in the the postm era of of limited budgets and um it's really exciting man really exciting yeah on9 c m says Hey guys thank you for an amazing year it's been great listening listening to you two top gents what has been your favorite game of moment 23 and what has been your proudest gaming moment of 2023 Merry Christmas well I I think we mentioned we already talked about our favorite gaming moments mine was like Allen wi to we we we mentioned about our what our favorites were proudest though hm what would what do you think what would be your proudest gaming moment of 2023 anything that you you beat like really difficult or prce game moment kind of tough nothing really I think made me prideful this year I I got one I got one go on then I mean is this kind of tangent tangental right but tent 100,000 subscribers on YouTube oh yeah he's kind of gaming related to a little bit Yeah otherwise I'm not sure is any game made me feel like Pride um that I was very very prideful about hitting 100K but that that would be my answer yeah well that in that vein then I'm going to say interviewing Phil Spencer and Sarah bun this year there you go yeah uh good old cinwood says happy holidays random Jazz changing my question with the great discussion today seeing what was revealed in the Insomniac leak what would you suggest should be Xbox's way forward in the future the ballooning budget of AAA games and a sustainable financing in these games was discussed is there anything that Xbox and Phil Spencer can learn from this well you have to you have to expect that Phil already knows all all these kind of facts and figures you know yeah and it's it's kind of it's kind of not been a secret that you know lots of people have been ringing this alarm Bell that AAA gaming is unsustainable the fact that like they have to invest all this money and then not expect to turn a profit on the sales of that game for the next year or or even two years I think to have it revealed so starkly kind of makes you realize that these people weren't speaking with hyperbole this is like actually a genuine problem so I don't know man I don't know what the solution is and when we talked about last week how like um how would you feel about $100 games and you know we did a poll I think we did a poll on it do yeah and it was like 90 10 or whatever 90 against essentially yeah 90 against saying they wouldn't pay $100 for a game um you know even though like um Sony's like thinking in order to make these games we have to get this much upsell and there's there's lots of um there's a lot of um overheads with that you know and there's a lot of there's a lot of retailers that are taking cuts and you know and and those sort of sales figures get wed down I think more it's like Sony has to it's less the Xbox has to learn it's more like Sony has to learn you know it's Sony has to sort of bite the bullet and put its ego aside and admit that in order to maximize the marketing Budget on a game they've got to ship it day and day on PC you've spent your marketing budget to Market a game and then you're only shipping it on PlayStation and then you ship it a year later on PC without the marketing budget it's kind of to be expected that it's not going to do as well but if you ship it across both platforms simultaneously while using that same marketing budget to maximize the Returns on the virality then you'll make a lot more money you know I kind of think it's it's Sony really that needs to learn that kind of stuff not so much Xbox but yeah I think Phil had that big letter that Kotaku really went in on about like how Publishers were using licensed IPS to sort of cover the costs of how expensive games were making and and those sort of things which you know it's proven proven Phil to be you know what he was saying was true right you have Spider-Man 2 costing $315 million and they're expecting like X-Men game in a you know seven years to cost $500 million that's not a sustainable business model right so like I think Xbox is doing it the right like Xbox it's it seems like they got to Sony's what's what Sony wanted to do like Sony wanted to do their live service stuff to supplement their their income so they weren't under dis immense pressure from the budgets of their single player games and Xbox just just went out and bought all the like the the biggest like live service games right like they just went out and grabbed them it's like we we got Cod now so they're basically doing that to support what they already doing with Game Pass and everything so I I feel like the only thing that's going to really show them is stuff that they already knew they already knew that AAA gaming is expensive which is why not every one of Xbox's projects are AAA you notice that Xbox has a lot more ivity and the type of games they make and the scale games they make versus uh versus PlayStation so I mean this is I I think this is the vision that they foresaw and Phil always did say the ABK getting ABK was just a what an accelerant to their plans yeah right that so it's just like they're just further along than they thought they would be at this point but I I think they saw this coming and it was just like yeah we you can't spend $400 million on a game and you you can't keep on doing that maybe it's it's it's works for Wolverine but does it work for a brand new IP absolutely not right um and that's the advantage of using an IP like if you use like if you're creating a new IP like clockwork Revolution for example it's part of your marketing effort you have to explain what Clockwork Revolution is you know but like Spider-Man everyone knows what to expect from a Spider-Man game you know what Spider-Man does he slings the web and he beats bad guys up Beats bad guys up yeah yeah uh silus says happy holidays Randon jez I'm surprised with the discourse this week regarding gaming sites reporting on the Insomniac league would you agree with me that it's much more games media than traditional news outlets to me these channels are more of a marketing arm the news media their content is primarily built on reporting press releases from Studios marketing previews marketing reviews marketing and the odd interview usually timed around a product to Market you have a few traditional reporters like Jason shrier and Rebecca Valentine but along with the leak rumor folks like grub um I've always thought these sites are glorified marketers well I mean I think some of those sites would even say they're not journalists they're entertainers right um yeah I mean it's if you're a blog site that's just reporting on press releases and you're doing previews reviews and the odd interview you're probably not making any money you know so really the money comes from original reporting or editorialized opinion pieces right um so there's there's no money to be made from covering press releases doing previews reviews and interviews So when you say like they're just a an AR a marketing arm honestly they're not making any money doing that you know um the the reason you do previews reviews and press releases is to build up SEO to Target Google you know um because if you don't do that stuff then Google's going to look at your Al your algorithm priorities and just be like well these Outlets covered this new new story but this one didn't so these these guys work harder so they deserve it you know so like a lot of those a lot of that content that you see is like and and people think like this is in for the game Studio no it's it's pandering to Google it's Google's algorithm because this is the game that Google has set out that we all have to play in order to make this stupid business model work unfortunately because nobody wants to pay for Content everyone uses ad blockers and you know nobody wants to buy any of the news or reporting they do so like when when people are sort of snarky about like oh there's only a few traditional reporters yeah why do you think there's only a few traditional reporters is because nobody makes any money you know there's there's no money in this business to do the traditional reporting because nobody wants to pay for traditional reporting you know and like Jason shrier works for an outlet Bloomberg which is one of the few outlets on Earth which can command people to pay for access to that content but most people can't you know um and you know IGN IGN can do it because they're the biggest they're the biggest in the world world so of course they can do it you know um a lot of the original reporting that I've done is just you know purely through sheer force of will luck and sleepless nights but like I wouldn't expect most people to to go through some of that stuff I've made myself ill you know doing this job some some years when it's been really really tough and sometimes I just think like you know why am I doing this I could I could have done something something more you know some less mentally taxing while also probably making more money it's because I didn't go to school frankly so like I do sort of I do push back on this sort of idea that you know the games media um does this stuff on purpose or they're pandering to Publishers because they want review codes no it's about Google and it's about keeping the lights on and keep and keeping people people feeding their families the end of the day you know yeah they they push a lot of opinions that people don't like but at the end of the day Google rewards there because nobody wants to pay for anything you know so it's like this vicious cycle nobody wants to pay not everyone uses ad blockers so that affects the quality of the output you know it's just the way it is okay uh James wio says no question this week but wishing you the happiest the holidays and to thank you for an amazing year podcasting I'll be back home in January so we'll be able to tune in live again soon uh Raj says do you think the game journalist refusing to cover the contents of the Insomniac hack was hypocritical when the accident release unredacted court documents from Microsoft Bethesda were covered without hesitation I don't I mean one was like you said an accident um and it wasn't part of a crime so I'm not surprised everybody covered it because it was like oopsie we made a mistake and here's all the information where like the Insomniac thing was literally a criminal act right it was a group of people that hacked Insomniac and took all their stuff um I don't really think anybody that covered the Insomniac stuff that didn't cover the Insomniac stuff and but did Cover the Xbox stuff is hypocritical I think if you covered the Insomniac stuff and then covered the Capcom stuff and the Rockstar stuff then yeah you're hypocritical but you got to be ha I mean if this is like the new normal moving forward if now it's like well we're not going to cover leaks anymore then I don't want you if that's what what it's going to be then don't cover leaks anymore uh period you know what I mean so uh ramus Cisco says hello guys happy holidays I was thinking about the rumor of the next gen Xbox and concluded that at this point a midgen refresh and a new gen are too similar because of back and Pat I think Xbox should make it a normal thing for them and it would be in line with what Phil said about maybe be going like phone upgrades the only group that would most likely be against this is some developers but console games are not as optimized as they used to be anyway so it could be more like PC what do you guys think well yeah I think we talked about that a little bit earlier yeah I I really do think the concept of generations is just oldfashioned thinking yeah we've got backwards and forwards compatibility now probably forever I imagine as long as the system site x86 will always have 360 Xbox One Xbox series X Games playable across the whole generation of stuff it's like more like your smartphone now like I can use an app that's designed for Android 8 on my Android 14 phone or whatever version it is now and that's a good thing I think that is a good thing that that content that digital content which you can't sell stays with stays with you forever you know um you know in a perfect world we would be able to sell a digital content you know and maybe one day we will be able to maybe the EU will create some legislation that forces forces them to let us sell digital content and actually give us true ownership of digital content because right now we don't we don't really own anything that we buy like even if you buy a disc a dis based game that just gives you a license to a copy of the game it doesn't give you rights to the game or ownership of the game you own the license to the game which you can then transfer via sale but like as we saw in Sony's terms of service they reserve the right to give you per permission to resell those games and while they say today you do have permission to sell those discs you know uh they reserve the right to maybe one day take away that right with a digital Rights Management System similar to what Microsoft got in trouble for in 2013 with the Xbox one so there's there's a kind of you know there's a the whole topic of ownership is this sort of interesting debate or whatever but um I do think like we said earlier I do think Microsoft should just forget the the whole concept of generation and just go all in do their own thing release the console when they feel it's best to do so and not worry so much about what Sony's doing and just like you know support the Xbox ecosystem and the customers because if neither user base is growing and neither user base can sort of an Xbox can't steal from play Playstation and Playstation can't steal from Xbox because everyone's digitally locked in what's the point of trying to keep that you know stuff going you know the only thing that matters at the end of the day is content and I think you can you can get people to buy both consoles I think the fact that the Xbox series X right now is out selling the PS5 on Amazon UK I think that's just people buying a second console you know I don't think that's necessarily Xbox stealing market share and I don't think that's new to Xbox customers I think it's people like people coming back to Xbox because they've already got a PS5 because maybe the PS5 Market it's somewhat saturated in the UK now um they're both in stock but the Xbox series X has got a serious discount right now be really interesting to see what MPD looks like or what sales figures look like next month but yeah they should do the thing Uh sierra11 Kevin happy holidays guys thinking back on Console gaming by the decades '90s brought 3D gaming 2000s brought online mainstream and 20110 brought the digital era when we look back at the 2020s in gaming what do you think will be the significant development remember I'm thinking either accessibility played different ways or perhaps a change in the scale of game development terranium ballooning cost and development time what are your thoughts it'll be AI probably AI yeah it's early days now but by the end of the decade I do think AI will have a significant role in game development and also gaming features or you could say like 2020s since he's saying the 2010s is the digital era 2020s could just be like the live service era yeah the live service era the subscription you know the live service era started like what would you say the live service era started like late like 2018 is 2017 is really well I mean there's been live service games for a long time but it sort of it it was since really Minecraft and fortnite blew up where every publisher sort of decided we need to have yeah well fortnite would have been what 2018 2017 around there I mean because like Rainbow Six Siege was 2015 and OverWatch is 2016 so I mean yeah that is digital but it's also live service so maybe it's like 2020 is to be live service in AI but yeah uh so those were just last week's questions so we got we got this week's questions jez you ready we got a little bit of time left so let's uh we don't we don't need jez to go on tangents super long you know we don't want to be here all night you know what I mean cuz I'm hungry um tired we have Lee Sanders first up thanks for everything you guys have done this year and hope your families have a great holiday period I asked a question last week that didn't make much attempt so attempt to with the game of the year discussions happening across the industry can you pick three games each from this year that I should be looking to download in the next week to enjoy over the FES of holidays um high-fi Rush Allen W 2 and Resident Evil Resident Evil 4 no see of stars well I mean I'm giving my three well you can you can all right see of stars there you go so that that's our mind and jazzes Allen wake 2 high five rush and SE of Stars play those and he also says what's the best thing I about Christmas Day for you and what type of traditions do you do I don't really have any traditions for Christmas day like I said I couldn't remember last time I got a gift um best thing about Christmas Day what do you what do you do nothing really it's just another day you know what I mean oh man you family just not that big on Christmas uh not really we um what we've started recently like watching movies as a family something we never really did before but my my Christmas tradition is my mom makes uh amazing mac and cheese oh mac and cheese is good with meat it's like mac and cheese bise it's so good so good so unhealthy so we only have it once a year uh Silas says greetings hope you chaps had a good holiday weekend jez if you got into a row with your girlfriend and she deleted your Battle.net account and all your War progress went away would you restart the game or find another gaming addiction I'd start over start over yikes that's far oh man oh that's that's true addiction right there Nate says no no why no good modern Lord of the Rings games someone fixed this oh I mean I think embracer was going to pump out a bunch of them I I know the most recent one was a big big flop that like Minds a morio game or whatever did they did they make Gollum no they didn't make Gollum I know that I know they were planning on making a bunch of Lord of the Rings games I don't know how much that PL plan changed with them basically falling apart yeah it's been a long time uh there was a whole bunch of games that coincide with the movies which I think were done by EA and then there was the Shadow of Mordor games which were pretty good but yeah there's really I mean maybe they should bring that back now that I think about it somebody asked earlier about like an IP that's underutilized and like Lord of the Rings is underutilized in gaming I think for sure yeah true it is true but I think the Lord of the Rings IP the franchise is just kind of abused now yeah could kind of feels like the TL in aate is just letting anyone do whatever they want with the IP the can you imagine Disney like modern Disney allowing a game like Gollum to ship for one of their IPs I don't yeah that wouldn't happen I mean they're they were they apparently didn't like the Knights of republic or I don't know maybe it was Sony that didn't like it but one of them didn't like it you know or both of them didn't like it uh Chasm says what is both of your's most anticipated games for 2024 also keep up the great work with the podcast and I wish you both a Happy New Year I mean mine's hellblade 2 been saying that forever hellblade 2 whenever it comes out in 2024 so what's hellblade 2 Jazz what's your most anticipa the war within World of Warcraft expansion world Warcraft surprise surprise also Dragon Dogma Dragon Dog Dragon Dogma there you go yeah but also um I you in Chronicles 100 Heroes comes out next year all right I've been waiting a long time for that uh Tommy says happy holidays and happy New Year's fellas thank you for the amazing content all year long two questions Mr babbit mentioned Fable is one of the most anticipated games of 2024 in the trophy room is that rumored to be coming I figured that would be late 2025 or mid 2026 second is any potential announcement for a new Elite controller thank you again I mean there's been some talk about a new Elite controller I did see Brad Sams make a video about it I do think there will be an eventually a new Elite controller probably based off of like I guess we got to find if that new controller with the haptics is real right first because if there is one they're probably making Elite of that so I do think there'll be a new Elite controller variant in the future just not sure when as for fable I have Fable Peg is a 2025 game I don't think Fable is 2024 at all um what about what do you think jez um I don't think F's 2024 I think you might have misheard or maybe just hopeful you know yeah maybe just hopeful I hly don't know I think I think Fable is 2025 uh monkey versus tramps hey guys I like to ask you both dumb questions and you'll see a theme going forward but who would win in a face off Solid Snake or John Wick they can use what gets the job done well interesting question Solid Snake or John Wick H well I mean like you would say Solid Snake because he would just sneak up on you and take you out and John wouldn't even know right John John Wick and Su snake both basically use CQC yeah but one's like I I figure in like a hand toand I fig I figured Jon's better so he'd win hand to hand so solid snake's only option is to be sneaky and that's what he is so I feel like he if he could get the drop on JN without Jon knowing it he's he'll win but if it gets into like a one-on-one gun Bal yeah John wins that's an interesting question man why isn't there like a a John Wick game you know like a real John Wick game like not I'm not talking about that one I'm talking about a real one you know somebody should make a real Triple A John Wick game oh you know who should make that who remedy and they'd be pretty good at that you know who' be my choice slow slow cap what did that make sefue oh yeah yeah just add some guns in there and you got John Wick baby I was thinking max pay he's basically John Wick almost uh Randall jezz 19 hello Jens I have a question mostly for jezz regarding Call of Duty and Activision do you know why skill-based matchmaking and engagement optimized matchmaking is so strong in the newer Cod me and my friends are really enjoying Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer but some of my friends don't want to play with me anymore because of how insanely sweaty my matches become when I join why is it so bad and will Xbox makes changes when it comes to Call of Duty and their bad communication like they did with Halo which is amazing right now happy holidays and thanks for making this amazing podcast Rand and Jaz yeah I mean honestly they've always used engagement optimized matchmaking and that's why cod got so popular in the first place a lot of people never sort of realized this but the the Call of Duty matchmaking algorithm this goes back as far as Call of Duty 4 was always sort of designed to sort of set you up for feast or famine right but then like they did the skill-based matchmaking which sort of ends up making games way more sweaty you know and I think Rand you've talked about how like you can't play Halo with your friends because they're yeah they're too they put you in sweaty matches because of the skill-based matching um I think like the fact that more and more people are talking about this and Shining a spotlight on it I do think eventually they will sort of have to crawl down and maybe offer the option of playlists that don't have it and um but you know there's pros and cons to both you know I kind of feel like if if you got ranked mode then it should be skill B based matchmaking but like if you're playing like casually I don't know why that has to have skill-based matchmaking I think engagement based matchmaking is enough you know maybe like if you have a streak of bad matches that can throw you a match with complete morons or something to help you get killed I swear when I when I was younger I kind of I kind of could tell that like sometimes like you just end up in a game with morons you know you just kind of felt like oh yeah call of dut's kind of throwing me a bone here and it's um you know I think the goal with that stuff is to get everyone at least to an even kill death ratio but I don't know they must have engagement metrics which suggests that skill-based matchmaking does lead to more engagement but the fact that so many people are aware of it now and discussing it then um you know maybe they will do changes but I imagine it'll be optional Chief says do you think Disney's struggling financially in the past few and blade being a more obscure character that Bethesda got a really good deal on licensing the IP I they probably just got a deal based on the strength of the character it's it's obvious I don't think it's going to be as high as Wolverine or X-Men so like the whole like oh you need to sell six million copies in a year or else we take it back they that's not going to be that high I could see it being half like 3 million or something I I doubt they're just like giving up like good deals is because like Disney itself wasn't is struggling financially it's like whatever whatever the IP is worth and is the mar and is is blade IP worth a lot you would probably say no in comparison to Spider-Man or Wolverine or X-Men right yeah it's blade isn't very well known but it is valuable to Disney because they are Reviving the IP right there's a movie coming out or TV series or something there's a there's a movie coming out yeah reboot movie yeah so I suppose like for them it's marketing for the movie and to remind people that IP exists and stuff well I mean Jeff grub did say on Xbox air that it's targeting a 2027 launch 2027 which you know we're almost at 2024 so you're talking about three years and do we know if the new blade movie is gonna be R-rated I think it will be I'm not sure but I mean hey could be blade be blade would be a nice nextg game right yeah you know cross gen game but yeah uh CJ says Happy New Year to you Jens and the H Xbox 2 Community thank you Simon B says hi guys hope you had a great Christmas just wondering with 2023 bringing us a fresh look at Fable which announced game games do you think will finally appear in 2024 ever wild Perfect Dark maybe I think Perfect Dark will see that for sure out of the out of like the two that you mentioned we talked a little bit about what to expect but yeah Perfect Dark shows up I don't think ever wild does and I don't think State of Decay 3 does that's just yeah I think my opin I agree I think State of Decay 3 is really pushing for something big ever wild I think you know is smaller scale but also you know the reported reboots and reworks and stuff like that I think ever wild could be further out I want to know when we're going to see Contraband again where the hell is you would think we would see Contraband this year I mean you did reach out to somebody and they did tell you that the game's still in development so wasn't cancelled at least not yet yeah still exists and we I mean we you know we haven't yeah I mean this would be what 2021 be three years I I think I think there's a good chance we see Contraband again if not I'd be like whoa something's up with that game you know what I mean we don't see it this year yep uh Ryan kipple says any New Year's Eve plans for you guys hope it's a great one for both of you nope New Year's Eve is just like any other day for me essentially I am going to get drunk with my uncle and my cousin and her boyfriend oh that sounds like a plan all right uh good old colinwood hello Randon jez here's my second question jez it's the end of the year what was the story or article that wrote that you wrote this year that you are most proud of besides the interview with Phil Spencer H that's a good question honestly my memory is so bad that I don't remember I mean I did write a bunch of um editorials that I thought were kind of strong this year well okay let me ask you because you can probably look this up what is your highest viewed article of 2023 okay let's look this up let's look this up right now what's I'll get to the next question thus because we don't have a lot of time thus do you think Final Fantasy online which is coming the Xbox summer 2024 could be a good test for Xbox putting wow on consoles since that subscription service to play the game thank you for everything and happy New Year I'm not sure it would be a test considering uh Final Fantasy online 14 has been on Playstation forever so I'm not I don't really think that that's really a test for World of Warcraft specifically uh but okay so you have do you have your uh they are testing something with Final Fantasy 14 though because one of the reasons it couldn't come before was because Xbox didn't allow for third part content uh content delivery mechanisms so like Square Enix has its own system for updating Final Fantasy 14 on Playstation they don't use Playstation system but everything has to go through Xbox on Xbox like that they want to validate everything and that was a Microsoft store policy so they are kind of testing new stuff out and I do wonder if like there will be some there might actually be some mechan mechanisms that do benefit World of Warcraft coming to console I do think World of Warcraft is going to come to console but I just don't know how it's going to look um but Rand I can tell you now okay what my highest traffic my highest traffic Aro this year and you won't believe what it is okay just tell me let's see what is it it was an editorial I wrote at the well this is the last 12 months so this includes December of 20122 the failure of Amazon's Alexa shows Microsoft was right to kill C okay my highest traic article of the year um my next one was my next one was exclusive read the internal memo Starfield director Todd how just shared with Microsoft Xbox and Bethesda um and my I think the article that I'm probably most proud of for the last year is and this is also one of my highest of the year it's time to admit that Microsoft was right about the Xbox series s and that was kind of me coming to terms with the fact that I previously ly criticized the series s and maybe mused upon the fact that maybe they needed to have a single skew but then sort of coming around to the fact that do they really though do they need to have a single skew and since we live in a world with like a plethora of Xbox consoles all existing in the same ecosystem 1 s 1X Series S series X and they're all update they all get the games updated they all get the latest games and there's no one no one crying that the PS4 or Xbox One S is holding the gem back kind of made me sort of cast off that bubble and sort of so I'm I'm Pat myself on the back for coming around to that um but yeah there was quite a few articles I did that I was pretty proud of in the last year but um those were the biggest ones I did all right um we gota we got to go fast jez S1 Kevin Hey guys there was a video floating around with the kid upset he got a console for console instead of a PC for Christmas was thinking as a parent getting a PC could be intimidating are confusing with PC gaming being a growth area for Game Pass what do you think Microsoft could do for an improved onboarding experience personally the thought of game requirements drivers Etc is a huge deterrent for me I don't think much I mean it is it is true that PC gaming is a learning curve you know a PC in general is a learning curve and PC is intimidating for people who aren't used to it I suppose but there are you know when I was a little kid um my parents didn't know about PC gaming but I wanted a gameing PC and I got a gameing PC but some some kids are just willing to learn by going to YouTube and tinkering and stuff like that and others aren't and I think like a lot of kids who do end up wanting a gaming PC they either are willing to Tinker and stuff or they usually they might get a pre-built with some kind of service provision from that vendor like a Dell or something like that or even a gaming laptop like you know the updating drivers and stuff is is not as hard and complex as it used to be back in the day um and uh it's it's not as bad as it used to be but I do think Microsoft could do things to make it more accessible should we say right but uh Logan Meyer hey guys hope the holidays are treating you well was curious about your thoughts on Undead Labs hypothetically having a Survivor horror project to go alongside State K3 think they could do a more story and combat for FOC a survival horror type game in the State of Decay Universe think it'd be awesome if they could is that a rumor going around jez that they have two projects they're working on I've not heard that myself um I think like one of the things I did hear about State of Decay 3 is that it is going to double down on narrative and story delivery so I think like State of Decay 3 could be that game that you're looking for that has more of a a more of a you know a more meaty story experience rather than the emerging gameplay stuff creating the story for you um they really want to they really want to flesh out the characters you get and how they interact um and stuff like that so hopefully state of the K3 ends up being that game anyway yeah uh Don taku says do you guys see any currently announced 2024 Xbox games being delayed in 2025 if any what would have a possibility of replacing it that hasn't been dated yet I'm not sure they like oh well this game's delayed so let's replace it with this I think it's just a matter of like what game's ready but I mean like anything could get delayed um if I had to pick one maybe a vow gets delayed yeah I think AOW would be my pick for game that most likely could get delayed yeah if we're going to pick like yeah most likely to get delayed I would just say AOW I don't know yeah um I'm not sure anything would replace it but if it needs more time it needs more time and that's something that Xbox offers like hey you need the time the make the game better yeah Omen jez if XBox creates if Microsoft creates an Xbox Android store what will that mean for Android apps on Windows will they offer the Xbox Android store in addition to the Amazon app store sounds very confusing I that's a really good question I would think that I would hope that they'd offer their own store on Windows 2 because the Amazon app store on Windows is garbage for the Amazon Android App Store it's terrible so I would want to hope that this this them doing this is a way of just being like okay this Amazon stuff's not working let's see if we can expand it out you know but there's not a lot of apps on Android that I think to myself God I wish this was on Windows you know I suppose some people might want Snapchat or Tinder on Windows or something like that but a lot of the these apps have web web versions these days it's not like back in the day where you had to use the app to use Instagram everything's got a web version these days um could be interesting to see how that plays out but we'll see we'll see yeah and you know what those are uh all the questions we got another Super Chat uh from purple Hayes you think games need to stop being more cinematic and more on the gameplay some could be cinematic and some can't since the prices are rising for games I mean everything gets to be more expensive Gamers demand better looking games so you got to hire people that need to work longer to you know cuz we've all seen it when a game doesn't look good people are like look at that that looks like [ __ ] it's like so you need to hire people to to do it because because Gamers have high expectations but yes cinematics are expensive as well everything's expensive that's the whole point you know and you need to have a good business plan to help you know deflate those costs or help support those Studios that make those experiences and that's why life service is so important because it's just money money money money money I mean how long is Minecraft basically supported Xbox's first party Studios with how much money Minecraft brings in right probably a lot I I would almost shuddered to think what would X would Xbox even be around if they never bought Minecraft I don't even know if like you know what I mean like if Minecraft wasn't bought by Xbox like you never know like Phil may not never have convinced Saia to do what Saia did because at least you could point to like look what we did with Minecraft or whatever I don't know anyways that's the show episode 297 in the books um end of the year last episode um I think we had a had a great year jez 2023 was great for gaming but also great for the Xbox 2 or as jez calls it on rebranded it on podcast apps the Xbox the xb2 and Xbox podcast yes uh copyright reasons guess so um yeah we will be back next week Friday with another episode of Xbox 2 xb2 and Xbox podcast and we're going to be trying to do a uh an Xbox 2 ultimate show this week so look out for that on Tuesday and we'll start rolling out some of the um you know guest shows January uh let us know who would you like to see us uh talk to in 2024 and um yeah hope you guys have a great rest of the weekend can't speak great rest of the weekend have a wonderful New Year's and we will see you back again here on Friday for another edition of the Xbox 2 hit the like button subscribe love you guys keep it gaming later yeah and have a great west of the Rend as R says later
