Xbox 20th | Halo Infinite Campaign Preview | Phil Spencer Talks Xbox Game Pass - The Xbox Two 194

all right i believe we are live the button has been hit what is going on everybody this is randall thor 19 the man with the million back again with another xbox 2 podcast episode and with me as always is the one the only jess gordon of windows central what's going on buddy hey pal sorry coughing there straight away professional podcasting yes i'm not bad how are you doing i'm doing good man i'm doing i mean how's uh cause uh you you had another doctor's appointment today you're doing good yeah apparently there's nothing wrong with me um so it says so says all the tests a blood test done and i said the gallstones aren't big enough to be causing any of my symptoms and blood's fine liver kidneys everything's fine so apparently i'm imagining that i'm ill yeah now he wants me to he wants me to go on this they call it um low fodmaps diet which means i can't eat any bread and all these other foods that are nice and i got to do that for a few weeks and see if it see if it improves things but i don't know i'm just i'm just tired of it at this point but let's not talk about health around because okay let's talk about video games those good old video games that never steer us rowing in the darker times we do it we do actually have quite a bit to talk about this week jazz because it was somebody's anniversary it was whose anniversary was it rand actually was a two people's anniversary technically two peoples nice halos halos and xboxes so i mean looking at the topic list here uh we got a lot here to talk about but i'm sure as most people saw today campaign previews for halo went out not only did i play it but so has mr jez corden he has also played halo infinite's campaign and you know i kind of want to pick his brain about it because we know how just feels about halo you know it's it's it's certainly his favorite series of all time and he loves it so much right so um yeah it's definitely we're gonna go in depth on the halo stuff um but there's there's a lot more here that we need to get to uh and i want to give a shout out to flame he's been a member for six months man six months that's a long time he says rand i hear if you say mayo and the bathroom mirror three times lights go out and you can hear an english voice say ooh is this true yeah that's that's usually how it works they usually usually it's how it works um normally i would have like gameplay of halo infinite's campaign in the background i had recorded a ton of stuff but the embargo stuff was pretty strict on what you can and can't show especially for live streaming so i was kind of like yeah i'm not gonna risk getting in trouble so we have some classic gears uh high busters footage here um i'll have more campaign stuff like probably when uh the game is actually plus i didn't really want to spoil it for people you know i know there's a lot of people out there that don't want to see the halo infinite campaign until they actually play it which is why i tried keeping my video today uh spoiler free as possible i didn't want to show i only really wanted to show combat scenarios and i didn't want to like show too many cutscenes and talk too much about the story so yeah um artemis says yo random jazz jazz is famous g4 tv x-play just referenced your article mr violence oh oh god you're on g4 tv now jess what is this did you know about this no oh i got i got a feeling that we're very nice about it you don't think so i mean come on anybody who knows you knows you're just a lovable dude how could this just a lovable dude man that's me yeah that's me yeah i i had no idea that happened but as well as as long as i can provide content to people i guess uh trey duke says with kyle rittenhouse being found not guilty do you think there's a chance scam bond can make a comeback well that's the interesting question after the beginning um the scale bonds actually a topic today and uh we'll talk about later but no i don't think there's a chance scalebound is coming back uh jacquin says gentlemen another week another rundown on rand's weekly reads also thoughts on the show i actually haven't read anything this week you know usually i gotta be in a mood to read a book and i've been in that mood a lot recently but this past week i haven't been in the mood to read so i haven't read anything but i did jazz i did watch all three episodes of the wheel of time last night wheel of time what's that never heard of it never heard of it you know it's that book series that i named my uh gamer tag and channel after the main character uh you know it's a series i started reading when i was 15 uh 16 and it's finally debuted on amazon prime video and i watched all three videos long time ago yeah definitely definitely was a long time ago i watched all three episodes last night uh first episode was definitely very fast they had the pacing was all over the place because they have to introduce all these characters so the first episode definitely wasn't the best but i think as it went on by episode three it was starting to kind of find its footing and um it started to get pretty good there's definitely some major deviations from the book major deviations but i'm okay with it because i've i'm one of those people that always accepts the book is the book the show is the show or the movie's the movie there are things you can do in a book that you can't do in a show so i understand that things were going to be changed and i'm perfectly okay uh with you know the show being its own thing so we'll see how the rest of the season progresses um nomad says are you too surprised that all the phil confirmed exclusivity for elder scrolls six we all knew was exclusive but why confirm it now seemed random um he was responding to an interview question somebody somebody asked him and phil replied um it wasn't in the axios interviews it was an interview question phil just didn't randomly confirm it they asked him to confirm it basically so but um but the the you know websites you know frame it differently in the headlines i guess but um yeah phil was just being upfront and honest you know uh confirming that what we or all of us here already knew that you don't spend that kind of money to make the game you know available on every console platform especially when you've got a subscription service which can be accessed on any device and especially when that is your key performance indicator now as well so yeah it was it was just responding to an interview question but it's kind of it's kind of nice rand to put the debate to bed i guess in a way it is it is um and nathaniel says patiently waiting for activision's fall yeah there's definitely a topic i know i know uh jazz is a is a huge fanboy of bobby katic and activision so i'll be interested to get your more of your thoughts on this matter as it seems hasn't this been ongoing for months now this whole activision blizzard nonsense yeah it's tied off at the end of the summer it's uh yeah it's pretty pretty pretty crazy really it is um blue alt says hey guys hope you hope you got my comment on your battlefield good company achievement thanks for all your fellers do jez have you ever tried kardashians and mayo oh jeez kardashians and mayo the two things that should never go together um but yeah uh before we get into everything what he just wants to know if you've ever tried kardashians and mayo at the same time presumably presumably i i don't know if that might be that might be too much too much for my arteries man that's too much too much man right uh before we get into everything um once again the xbox 2 podcast is uh powered and sponsored by manscaped and i guess this is my turn to do the intro so ho ho ho gentlemen the holidays have come early this year is manscaped has the gift that keeps on trimming you like that trimming santa's beard isn't so appealing when it's coming out of your trousers and that's why manscape the leaders and below the waist grooming have you covered this holiday season now available in your in your country join the 4 million men worldwide who trust manscape to keep their trees trimmed and ornaments polished go to manscape.com and use code xb2 for 20 off and free shipping there you go how's that how's that jazz i did good that dude okay is it as epic as is as epic as uh as your reads on that come on i don't know it's pretty good i give it a solid seven maybe eight out of ten i'll try i try to do better i'll try to do better next time you could you could try try british british accent next oh no definitely not they'll be upset if i do a british i can't i can't really i can do hey hey mate you get me get that manscape mate i don't know it's not it's not really a good one no you you can't do it no no sure i can't do it i can't i could like you could watch some like youtube videos it's cheating for me man because in britain we grow up we grow up on american tv you can't escape it american music american tv so like my bro my brother literally has an american accent because you know he's got he suffers from autism you know and um he grew up on barney the dinosaur barney the dinosaur was the only tv show we could use to engage him so now my brother who's full full-blooded british has an american accent you know now he's in his 30s and you know he's overcome most of his most of his mannerisms should we say but he has an american accent because because of your tv so i think everyone everyone in britain is capable of some level of american accent i think yeah the easy way one easy way to do it around is say a british without the t can you do that british british british british british no t no no you even put the t in there again british brit british uh i said it right and then in it something like that i don't know yeah i am butchering i'm butchering the queen's the queen's english um unsettled madness says phil's an absolute chad for calling out activision blizzard on the mess they got going on yeah phil doesn't uh if he's based a based chad lord i did see some tweeters like phil's the best executive that we need or whatever like that based chad based chad lord uh max chad stan caesar says anyone still asking about scalebound must be trolling probably i would hope so uh blue all says i just ordered my manscape package using code xb2 there you go man there you go hope you enjoy it hope your girlfriend or boyfriend uh enjoys it as well um so yeah people are saying they like your american version better that's what the pong soul says in chat i see we got james shields in here i love everybody showing up for the show matt burns xbone reviews polish crack and flame uh all the channel members gun star uh i see everybody here thank you guys for tuning in hustle and motivate what's going on brother hope you're well hope everyone's having a great start to the weekend i love doing the show on fridays love it so much better than doing it on saturdays um and i don't have to step on game on dailies and i'm doing game on daily show tomorrow with guys and colts and stuff like that so that'll be fun because i wasn't sure because i think we mentioned last week we might do the show a little bit hour uh later than normal but you are all good to go so we're here on friday and this is when i like to do the show uh danaro says i know you guys can't fully talk about halo yet but can you at least say if you see any characters from previous games um i don't think i don't think we can well not i haven't seen any well in the the the four like we can talk about the first four levels in the open world that we played and i will say in those not the opening but not the opening not the opening cut scene so i can't talk about the opening cut scene i can talk about the first four levels i will say to my recollection there was nobody from previous games in the first four levels yes but i mean that's like the first four hours so but oh man what a first like jazz well i know we're gonna get into it a little bit later on but how incredibly strong was those first four levels for halo infinite it it's a strong opening man like you said earlier i'm not a big hello guy but i couldn't put it down in fact i couldn't put it down so hard that i went past the four slide levels and went straight through to the end yes jess has actually beaten the campaign uh cause the preview build is essentially the full game uh so he's beaten it but yeah i was watching um i was watching other people's previews jeff grubb called it like uh halo's breath of the wild moment jeff gertzman he called it thrilling it seemed like the vast vast majority of previews were like yo 343 might have actually nailed this and like i said in my video if the quality keeps up from the first four levels and continues throughout the rest of the campaign like we're we're in for something truly special yeah uh we'll get into greater detail a little bit but just wanted to say i just i just wanna i just wanna add by the way don't don't super chat questions that have asked us to give high-low spoilers we're not going to give any halo spoilers on this show whatsoever and if you super chat and you want to know how the spoilers can't give them won't give them yes uh we can't talk about anything past episode level four anyway but um you know uh just it's just for people who don't they want to go in blind right and that's completely fine we're only going to talk about the very intro the very start of the game that you guys will experience in very sort of in sort of you know in terms that isn't gonna ruin your experience we're just gonna we're just gonna stay thoroughly on that um i'm i'm not gonna talk about anything but past level four because obviously i have completed the game i'm one of the few people that probably has completed the game outside of microsoft but i'm not talking about anything past that level four because therein lies the embargo card can't talk about the length of game can't talk about anything like that but the you know there will be reviews so we'll obviously me and rand will come back to give our final thoughts during the review period which is close to launch so yes um yeah like but i mean you guys gotta also remember you know this is just gordon we're talking about this is the guy that's been riding the halo is dead and halos of lego games since like i started with that we started this podcast how long ago four years ago 2017 we're approaching our 200th episode and jazz has been on that train since day one we've been doing this and the fact that he couldn't put down the game and ended up beating it to tell you all we really know about how good the campaign is if someone like jez just no life's it when he didn't have to should tell you all you need to know about how excellent the campaign is yeah i'm not even i'm not even reviewing it for windows central like i'm brendan lowry who's our halo expert he's doing the full review so i i just i i one thing i will say i couldn't put it down i really couldn't put it down i really just wanted to get through and play and it's so easy to play it's so fun to play but i did i just burned through it but but yeah yeah uh ghost world says rand i've been listening and watching your content since your days on the gamer score podcast with stallion83 way back in 2011 keep up the great work guys man that is a long time that's 10 years 10 years i've been podcasting in some sort jazz that was a podcast i used to do uh with my buddy stanley 83 he used to be number one in the world for gamer score uh my buddy silva uh my buddy pikamis prime who still does the achievement grind i know he's listening he's this is the only podcast he listens to shout out to you pig i think pig is on his way to three million gamer score i think he's like 2.5 million or 2.6 million uh and he he's still loving gamer score like like i did you know uh all those years ago uh so yeah i i still have some fond memories of doing that podcast uh all the way back then uh polish kraken says please buy and support dr squatch halo soap and get them to sponsor you guys i've never heard of dr squatch halo soap have you jazz no i have not i have not what what even is that i don't i don't even know uh you're a malice uh shout out to you man i always see you in the uh reset era and xbox i think the xbox air discord if i'm not mistaken uh high busters huh would you like gear six to be more like high buster's dlc i think it could be a nice addition to gears up without deviating too much yes i would very much like hive buster or gear 6 to be more in the vein of high busters i do think they sort of need to change up the formula a little bit and high busters did a really good job of that so i would 100 percent be on board with uh i'm bored with that eagles fan says can you predict that the game will score in the 90s uh i can't really talk about my metascore prediction um i i think the game was going to score really well if the quality keeps up of you know the levels i played so yeah uh sin vendetta says so jazz halo infinite campaign 10 out of 10 right i emojis you're gonna have to wait just like you're gonna have to wait you're gonna have to wait yeah he uh he's not even doing the review for windows central so uh gas says can you give me halo spoilers is master chief a ghost guys come on what are you doing here buddy we can't give you spoilers we can't but yes i think he's pretty fair to say that he's not a ghost that that's some like i don't know take sense kind of [ __ ] yeah and gaz has become the newest member of the channel alongside neon black thank you guys for all the support enjoyed the emotes uh we uh we love you both we love all the channel members here well we love everybody here regardless of whether you're typing up a storm in the chat or you're just sitting back lurking or you're listening later on on podcast services all me and jazz really want is for people to enjoy the show and and enjoy it at their own leisure so we appreciate everybody for being here um yeah so if you guys could do us a favor make sure you hit that like button subscribe if it's your first time here and share this out on you know all the social media platforms because youtube does a terrible job sometimes of notifying people like i had to make sure to be tell people in my video today jazz be like please share this out because for whatever reason microsoft has decided that their embargo times recently are midnight like 2 a.m central 3 a.m pacif uh you know eastern and it's like yo that's a horrible time to release videos nobody's up then like my audience is asleep you know what i mean i actually um when i when i came to schedule in our preview i'd scheduled it for midday uk time thinking it was like midday and then then i looked at it again it was like no it's 12 o'clock in the morning and i was like wait what that's a really strange time but yeah whatever whatever i mean whatever whenever the embargo's up is when the embargo is up but it's like man i wish it was more like 6 a.m or 8 a.m at least like people are starting to get up instead of like people are sleeping uh lydia says this halo infinite feature in the keeley's 2022 uh i mean cyber cyberpunk is in the game of the year uh nominees i think it's nominated best rpg i believe right should be nominated game of the year i think [Music] [Laughter] now that's now that's one spicy tag i don't have the boss to write off yeah you know i mean i know i know you did love uh cyberpunk you played it on pc i love it i loved it taiwan man and there's definitely some people out there that are like if you loved cyberpunk you must have been given a yellow chair you know the yellow chair yeah the yellow chair like the influencers got that yellow chair and that was like supposed to be like if you got a yellow chair your opinion on cyberpunk is invalid you know what i mean that type of style i uh yeah i actually do i actually do have a chair from that company i'm using it right now actually who's the company's secret labs secret lab yeah do you like their chair i have the max maxnomic chair the xbox maximum maturing at first i didn't really like it but i've actually grown into it and i i do i do care for it or i do like it a lot although i for my next chair i probably will get a secret labs they're expensive though bro they are expensive and you know i will say about secret love like i um since i've lost weight i've actually i actually find them less comfortable since i've lost weight so i had to buy like a lumbar pillow for it um but generally yeah quality is really great that lasts a long time i've had them for years like so but i didn't get the yellow one so my opinion cyberpunk is completely valid i also i did get a warcraft one from them though um but i [ __ ] on warcraft 24 7. so it turns out that the chairs don't actually affect your opinion of games as much as people might like to think i don't know uh flame says does does chief kiss the weapon jazz does chief have relationship with the new ai i can't i can't i'm not not at liberty to describe anything yes things at the moment and look who's look who's lurking gaming fortes lurking while gamestop selling pokemon to people whoa what a hero what a what is the new pokemon game pokemon pearl pokemon [ __ ] or something [Music] pokemon pearl and pokemon diamond you philistine wait aren't those older pokemon games i could have switched their remakes man they're right oh they're remix okay and they're they're full remakes not like the grand theft auto or whatever oh yeah oh yeah full-blown remakes with 3d graphics and all that all that lovely stuff um but yeah i've been playing that this week today all day actually been playing pokemon pokemon pearl so if anyone pokemon diamond wants to trade some pokemons hit me up uh slow-mo says stormlight archives is greater than the wheel of time i i mean i haven't read starlight archives slo-mo i actually own all the books because i will be reading it soon but man the way the wheel time ended i mean it ended so strong i don't know if so have you finished the wheel of time slow-mo because i mean i don't know how you could stay stormlight archives is better it's four books out of a playing ten it's not even the series ain't going to be finished for another 15 years i don't see how four books could eclipse 15 but we'll see josh tarpley said rand funny moment on the spawncast last week when someone asked you if you were playing halo that is true so last week uh i was invited on spawncast uh um you know like rgt was there dreamcast guy and nate the hate who originally put out the leak that halo's multiplayer was going to come out on monday remember jazz we talked about it he's on the show and someone i think zabit who actually just sent us a super super chat now he asked hey rand are you playing halo infinite like paris is and like i had read the embargo notes and it was just like you can't talk about it so i was just like no i was like no i'm not playing halo infinite i had to lie because i couldn't say yes and then i was like but you know then i said something like if uh if i had halo infinite right now do you really think i'd be on the spawncast doing this show instead of playing the game you know i was trying to throw people off descent but like you know because because i try to respect the embargoes like i'm very fortunate that xbox lets me review these games and they let me into these previews to play stuff and like i don't want to like you know it's like you agree to these things when they send them to you so it's like if they say don't mention it that you're playing it until you know the embargo lifts and i'm not going to but people knew people knew so some people just can't they have to tease on social media that they're playing something wink wink uh you know they they they want to you know to feel special eat like and then says i'm just not gonna do that i don't really tweet that much anyways but like there was definitely some people that made it they didn't come right out and say they're playing halo infinite's campaign but reading between the lines you could definitely tell uh you know it was there they were like i'm playing halo infinite you know what i mean i did i didn't see much of that i um i did my preview really quick i like i just like i burned through the first four levels and then wrote the preview like the same weekend so and then i like went off and completed the game as well because we had about a week right yeah we've had the game since uh friday uh last year so oh wow okay so i finished my preview by sunday so it didn't um i didn't really give it much brilliant space at all i just was like yep done i've written now onto the next job yeah i don't know what the next job is black friday oh joy joy yeah zabba says if anyone wants colt's halo preview i downloaded it before he took it down i'll post it on ebay yeah colts video was really good so post it is an nft posted as the nft uh the best spot the one and only kids move says sup brandon jazz loving the show so happy to see halo infinite campaign halo and forza has absorbed all my gaming this month yeah it has bro and i remember like people questioning xbox this year right they're 20 21 how bad it was going to be but it ended up being like maybe one of their best years ever i mean psychonauts 2 game of the year candidate death loop game of the year candidate uh flight sim reviewed very well age of empires 4 uh reviewed quite well on the pc and i think that's coming to xbox next year forza rising i mean like should have been a game of the year candidate and we'll get into that because jess wrote a scathing article about the game rewards you know 10 million players in a week those are reserved that's reserved for call of duty like you only really hear about like call of duty doing 10 million in a week forza is doing it and now halo infinite everybody's loving the multiplayer except for the battle pass progression and now all these previews are out for halo infinite and people are super pumped about it they think it's really good it's like wow like xbox did that 180. you know it took some time but here we are and you know it's it's pretty damn good to see isn't it isn't it uh everybody isn't it kid's move like isn't it great to see i mean i i i think it's i think it's totally awesome um let's see what else we got here uh neon black says i've been a lurker for more than a year now usually don't catch it live great to finally join the channel and show my support well thank you uh for for you know like look if you're lurking and you like to lurk and you don't like the to chat with people that's perfectly fine but you know we got a pretty welcoming community here for the most part if you don't want to do the and i would say outside of like people that want to come in here and do the console war uh people don't react well to that but you know say hi and i'm sure there'll be either myself or jazz will welcome you or and the great mods and the channel members here will do the same i mean it's uh you know as jeff says he loves the community that we've built on the xbox too so um but i understand i lurk a lot for a lot of different shows sometimes you just want to chill and you don't want to interact uh frison says jazz are you able to say how long it took to get through the campaign and i think jazz already said nope can't talk about that sorry mom can't talk about that at all uh jacqueline said in the phone with you though yes gents so apparently embracer is looking to acquire 32 more studios next year what is the end goal here and should xbox play defense yeah did you see that jazz 32 more studios yeah i have no idea what that play is like is it cloud is it a subscription service it has to be right it has to be a subscription service but i don't know this wild right now it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but maybe it will maybe it will soon maybe they'll just be like yeah we'll we'll sell a whole lot of this to amazon and you'll instantly have a huge gaming staple stable for amazon luna or something there's got to be some kind of end goal in mind they can't just be buying studios for the sake of it but i don't know i mean xbox is also very specific with their targets i yeah honestly i don't think anybody that embracer is looking at xbox would really covet although i i you know i think xbox didn't want gearbox if they could get rid of randy pitchford but that wasn't really gonna happen so yeah most of the studios that embracer acquires are kind of you know they're not on xbox's radar i would i would think unless all of a sudden they're going to change and start buying the bungees and the warner brothers and you know all these other companies that maybe microsoft is looking you know at so oh there ryan goes again with his predict were these predictions not predictions oh yeah you called me you you called me clairvoyant on twitter i've won it's good word i like that word i don't get to use it often why do you think i was clairvoyant well what did i well wasn't it you who's first suggested that it could be launching you know your your quote-unquote prediction that it was that they would shadow drop it i don't know well one seemed pretty clairvoyant to me pal when did i tell you how long ago did i tell you that i was hearing that halo's infinite like that was like mid-october right yeah it's about a month ago i was like you know jazz i'm i'm i was like jazz i'm hearing that the halo infinite campaign is gonna drop on th on the anniversary and jazz was like hmm with the kind of thinking emoji you know and it's like yeah i hear a lot of stuff this one really came for some good sources i know jazz you had your own sources that were telling you that you know that it seemed like it was going to be true right yeah i you know i i spoke i spoke to some sorts and though they're a bit coy about it and i just i just thought well if they'd reacted in another way it probably wouldn't be true but nah yeah but brand new random no no see the thing is like i don't know for sure about anything really it was just like i mean how could i you know and uh so i was just like that's why i would tease some of the stuff here i don't come out right and say it i know i know kids move and forte and a lot of guys i talk to uh in parties they they they tell me i they say i have a tell that i do something specific and some some of the something i do uh the way i say something or how i say it or something that there's a tell i do when people when when i'm actually giving a prediction that i don't know and when i'm giving a quote-unquote prediction of something that i do know or i've heard about and they say they have a there's a tell and that they're always they can always you know see what it is and i've asked them what is the tell like tell me and they're like nope nope nope nope and i'm like even if you did tell me i wouldn't be able to change it you know it's kind of a subconscious thing but apparently if you've been listening to me long enough i guess there's a certain way i say something that i don't know i i don't it's not now i'm thinking about it and i you know i gotta change i gotta change it up jess you know interesting um so joe lilly says having a really bad week boys and that british accent still made me laugh always love listening you two talk [ __ ] shite he says shite thank you well i hope you're i hope your week gets better and uh we're glad that you are here joe appreciate you very much uh d.o games says how should starfield avoid the fours of fate the tgas now that's interesting jazz cause forza came out on the ninth had early access on the fifth i had a review code a week before so like october 29th or whatever i did have the preview even a month before that now star feels releasing on 11 11. presumably the nominations are gonna be similar to next year where it's like hey the game has to be out by the certain time is starfield gonna run into the same fate as forza potentially where not enough people actually get to play through all starfield before putting in their nominations so could we see starfield miss out on potential nominations because uh they didn't get the game in time and they didn't have enough time to play through it is that something that could happen well should we just get into the topic of the game awards since yeah since uh since someone asked well it's funny because i wrote that article about the game awards and forza and whatever and i sort of like i don't know i didn't really honestly i didn't really think about it too much i just ranted into the article and then hit publish i didn't even send it to an editor first which is what i should have done which is what what our rules are but i broke the rules because i was you know just ranting off about it and sent it off to die basically and then um and it's funny because i ruffled some feathers because you suggested that yeah i i like i kind of suggested that the reason forza wasn't nominated was because it didn't fit specific criteria that game journalists look for when determining what deserves game of the year and my sort of my feeling on this which is you know i've shared it with you guys on the show is that game journalist given i don't know i'd say an unfair an unfair sort of advantage to games that are cinematic action games and um you know it's it's not just game awards either it's like review scores too like if a game the game doesn't have like a specific type of narrative like it won't even score well in on metacritic and stuff so i sort of like i uh i basically put that into an article saying that it's not it's been it's been snobbed because it's a racing game and why that why i think that's unfair and it's because like you know games are more than movies and if a game is you know technically brilliant like forza is and it nails on all of its you know promises as a game they should be at least nominated and that's not to say the games that were nominated didn't deserve it necessarily although i would have chosen forza over some of them but i just kind of felt i just kind of felt that way about it you know but then i got some emails from a few people who are on the jury panel now the jury panel is the game awards sort of i don't know what you call it it's like it's like a 100 it's over 100 outlets i think it's 103 to be exact 103 outlets youtubers and press and they vote their their outlets collectively vote on which game they want to nominate for game of the year um or they they pick they pick a few games or whatever um and i got sent some emails that the gamer would send out to people um so i can back myself up you know i like my documents around you know yeah we know we know you like your documents we know that um yeah i got i gotta look at i gotta look at some of the emails the grammar would send out to the jury to get an inkling of how the process works um then nobody in the game awards is necessarily under nda but they are asked not to share things i guess um but anyway i digress so um in essence i was sort of like i was going through all this information and the jury were basically saying to me we didn't have enough time with forza um we couldn't give it a fair shake because our nominations had to be in on the fourth and um obviously forza early access didn't start until the fifth so i added that as an update that some jury members have reached out to me and said the reason forza wasn't nominated was because it didn't have we didn't have enough time with it and um you know which kind of contradicted what jeff keeley said on twitter when he said he replied to someone in the community who who asked him was forza eligible and he said yes forza is eligible lucky to be nominated for these other awards um but my my sources were saying that they felt they didn't have enough time with the game and also they weren't aware that you could change your nomination up to the 11th because that information was sort of like in a footnote or in a separate email or something it wasn't sort of like it wasn't common knowledge to them that they could change their nomination after they'd had some time with forza so for me that's sort of like it called into question some of some of the things that i wrote my opinions that it wasn't given a fair shake because of the fact it was a racing game but some jury members were coming back to me and saying that's not true we just didn't have enough time with it but then someone from the game awards messaged me and said the people on the jury had access for a whole month before the nominations were due to be in so now i'm just sitting there like i wish i just never got involved in this i i had no idea that this was going to blow up like it did and i didn't want to piss anyone off essentially i was just basically basically turning what i said last week in the podcast into an article and then just you know i didn't expect anyone to read that or hold any interest but you know well responsibility with great power comes great responsibility apparently and sometimes i forget how big windows central's platform actually is i'm surprised window central's not a part of the game awards you guys review a bunch of stuff so i i honestly i don't think windows central i would not be confident in windows central being part of the jury or at least myself being part of the jury because i don't get to play that many games in the year you know i've been i've barely played forza to be fair you know um i i but i i've played it enough now to know that he should have been nominated but by at the foot by like the 11th there's no way i would have played forza enough to think it was game of the immaterial personally you know i would have been um you know deferring probably but that but that's the thing i window central's team is very small we only focus on xbox games because that's where our seo growth is and whatever we don't have a big enough platform that i think to really give an informed opinion we can contribute maybe but i don't i don't know i personally i really don't play that many games out of the year because i just don't have time and we're more of a tech tech blog anyway but um i do think one of the things i wrote in the article was game developers should be on the panel yes because game developers make the games and like maybe it'd be yeah to be a bit weird if a game was potentially voting for their own games but like you could have game developers who'd moved into other fields you could have game developers who weren't necessarily involved with game development directly anymore you know it'd be weird if like an ea developer or some someone who's currently working on battlefield if they were if they were on the panel that might be a bit weird but then again uh hideo kojima is listed as a game awards founder on the website and yet death stranding won a whole bunch of awards one year you know so i don't know i s someone suggested to me that that i'd taken the whole game awards thing too seriously and that like all award shows are like this whether there are like politics and timing politics and timing can affect your chances of uh uh you know getting an award and stuff and um all award shows are like this like the oscars apparently like this the game was like this but i like i don't watch the oscars and i don't know about the golden globes or whatever they're called i just sort of like that article is partially inspired by a game dev who i was speaking to is like you know what can we possibly do to to get forza considered in the running for game of the year like we we've perfected ever we've perfected in our view perfected i'm paraphrasing as well but he's perfected what you know the the open world racing genre to as far as they can and then they're thinking like well what what the hell more do we need to do to even be considered for a nomination and then you look back and think well maybe it was the timing as some jury members were suggesting to me but like i don't know it's just it just feels wrong to me to summarize it you know i i have uh i have something to add to this conversation but i we do have to i need to get these super chats before they disappeared jess so yeah i do have an interesting take on this uh flame says i'll take i'll take as a yes jazz i need a weapon wink uh hargett says halo co-op is no is now delayed as expected to at least mid-year 2022 bearing any more important things need to be done is it possible i think likely that co-op has dropped together um no i don't think it's gonna be dropped together joseph satan just had an interview where he talked about it's like fully playable at 343. um so i just think they're i think they were kind of crunching well maybe crunching is the wrong word but they were all hands on deck to get this game launched multiplayer of the campaign and co-op was one of those things that was just like perhaps ray tracing and forge mode were just things they could focus on later and now that you know season one has been extended uh co-ops coming a little bit later i they promised that it would be there so i think a hundred percent will come at some point um right jazz you don't think they're gonna drop co-op altogether right no they're not gonna drop co-op yeah they've got like they've got some kind of service ambition for this game like they they want it to be they want it to be a game that you come back and play with your friends over and over and stuff then definitely not going to drop car i would like you know i'll throw that out there and put my put my reputation on the line they're definitely not going to drop cover it'll be interesting to see how the game plays in co-op because i can't admit and i i i think because i've said this to a few people um i think four-player co-op wouldn't work in this halo but then they were telling me that oh they already announced that it's two-player co-op uh which i can see working but four-player co-op i'm not sure like the because you can go yeah in the beginning it's you're kind of locked on the island but it'd be weird if somebody was someone was doing the keep somebody was doing an optional like high value target somebody was rescuing a spartan and then the main and then somebody was actually doing the main mission right that'd be kind of awkward so i wonder if they'll keep it the two anyways the one and only tim dog is here uh my buddy he says saw your video ran and was super happy to hear how excited you were you you were down on halo 4 and 5 so it's nice to see i definitely was down on halo 5. uh i did not like that campaign well halo 4 has got a really good story uh halo 5 i just did not enjoy uh red13 wants to know if i started watching wheel of time yes i talked about that in the beginning of the show i watched the first three episodes like what i've seen so far there are some major changes i'm sure some fans are upset but i can always you know i understand things need to be changed for show victor wants to know uh say jazz were you teasing power rangers i don't power rangers i think it means because i said there was one thing i was really looking forward to from the the show a bunch of people asked me what i'd been teasing the thing i was looking forward to is max payne i'm a huge max playing fan and the fact that they they brought the entire franchise to xbox with you know modern consoles was was it was the last backwards compatible franchise i've really really wanted i wanted fair as well but i wanted max payne even more and i'm really glad that i bought it that was like that was the last thing i wanted out of that yeah uh and i got it tim dawg my buddy left a super chat and says hearing xbox is doing amazing on all accounts but biggest issue is supply and no relief in sight yeah imagine what xbox would be doing if you could easily get a series x i know you can pretty easily get a series s but those series x's are still really hard to come by you know sony's having issues uh even like nintendo's having some small issues with the oled i mean steam deck was delayed to next year there's talk that like the semiconductor shortage won't uh like will still be a thing next year yeah like issue is going to be a problem and it's like the demand is totally there like the demand is there unlike i've seen in a long time like people are behind xbox they love what they're doing game pass is killing it forza's forza is doing insane number like nobody you know if we had predicted this jazz i would never even come close to 10 million in a week i would have said maybe five or six million but they did another four million beyond that and then who knows what halo's doing day one on steam and a surprise announcement it hit like 270 000 concurrent players right which is that is essentially like the third highest free-to-play launch ever on steam right i know i know the numbers have i know the numbers have kind of gone down every day since but i think the weekend will be a lot you know people are going to get on and play a lot this weekend especially with some of the battle pass changes and stuff like that so yeah it's just unfortunate they're not able to get those series x's and store shelves you know yeah um it's it's well like i i'm completely hooked on halo's multiplayer but man it makes me so salty compared to like some of the games that i play like when i play call of duty i'm just like yeah whatever if i die but in this i'm like raging and stuff i think it's like really apparent in hello when you get out played versus call of duty where you die usually because someone spawned behind you or something like that yeah tom leg says you can tell the process is messed up when anything released before the 19th is eligible but the nominees were announced on the 17th kind of crap yeah something when you have a game when you have a game released like later in november you're kind of like screwed like star wars jedi fallen order ran into that problem last year where like not enough people had played it and it was just right on that deadline and it couldn't get in and then i don't think it was nominated for anything this year and it was just like just kind of fell by the wayside it sucks it bugs me because it's like it's like jeff wants um wants the game industry to work around his nomination timings which is just i think kind of messed up you know i mean people do that there are there are aspects of that with the oscars like to win an oscar they know like they kind of know some things what they have to do with regards to timing and things like that and they there are ways that can game it and like one of the jury one of the sources on the jury who spoke to me said that some some game publishers marketing departments have become sort of savvy to the way it all works and if they if they value the game awards and what marketing it can potentially bring to the brand they try and like work with the game publisher to sort of get the get the release timing to be in a good good place and make sure everyone on the team has access to the game and stuff like that it's just kind of like it just reminds me of the oscars where peop where they're trying game and stuff i don't know yeah but maybe these kind of shows just aren't ever going to be fair and like maybe it was stupid of me to even assume that they could be fair or that they should even be fair i don't know it's ultimately i just really do wish that i just never got involved because everyone got really really mad and you know sony never releases any of their games around november um i think because i think they value the game rewards so a lot of their game and like that's the thing like you knew horizon wasn't coming out in september or wasn't coming out at all like they're not going to release their games during that uh october november december period because it would be overlooked for the game awards or whatever so um faizal says one of the channels voted from the jury uh one of the channels from voted from the jury uh from the middle east have never played any of the voting games who select those jerry and what is the criteria um [Music] i think jeff keeley selects the jury i don't know what the criteria is maybe it's on their website uh but i don't know what the criteria is yeah i have no idea how how they pick or whatever but like it's it's hard man like i really do want to like you know think about the fact that i do appreciate what jeff's trying to do and that no system is probably going to be perfect and no system is going to be without flaws i do think it's worth putting that out there that you know he's not trying to do something that's you know subversive or mean or whatever and um i don't condone anyone who's attacking him on twitter i think that's completely out of order as well um but you know that being said i do think it can be approved like very obviously definitely improved especially when it comes to when you're picking the nominations if they have access or not if the people who are doing the nominations have even played the games as like someone in chat just suggested you know it's it's um i don't know do does he want a fair awards does it even matter i don't know is it just a business at the end of the day and that none of it actually matters it's amazing we all overthink it's like you said it's like you said in your article it's a marketing event because what is everybody looking forward to they're not really looking forward to who's winning in the game rewards everybody's looking forward to new reveals what's gonna what what's what trailers are gonna be at the show are we gonna see hellblade 2 and avowed what is sony going to show like what are the true next-gen games because everything that jeff's teases on twitter is about oh the future of of gaming is so bright look at these things that i've seen it's it's about the hype is about uh the new reveals of new games that were yet to see the hype's not about who wins the awards because let's be honest most of the time jeff and this isn't this isn't i like jeff keeley a lot let me get that right out of the front like i like what he does i like the game awards um it's just that the way the show is structured you can tell it's not really about the game awards overall like the main focus of the show is the exclusive world premiere exclusive right like that sort of stuff like that is the main focus of the show um because exclusive because they'll give away they'll because they've given away awards during commercial breaks they've given away three awards at once where they don't the people who won don't even get to like say anything so the awards are just secondary what it really is all about is the marketing to have xbox playstation activision you know ubisoft all these other developers showcase their new wares to get people really excited that's what it's about um and that's coming from somebody who actually really likes what jeff keeley's doing um uh dave ramos says strong element of this is bs and it's part emotional best game on metacritic universal praise and no nod hard to understand looking to place blame yeah uh chaosante says salute to the dynamic duo of gaming discourse jazz you're putting a voice to frustrations many of us have it's not just forza it's the whole system yeah see yeah it really is the whole system like when when you when you step back and look away from the game awards the whole system of game criticism is flawed like and you know to be fair to games journalists game serialists are never given enough time to really truly properly assess a game they're given a week some of these games have 100 hours you know and i know i know from speaking from my own experience sometimes i have to be doing other things while also reviewing that game because i'm not paid to play a hundred hours worth of game i'm paid for the article at the end of it so like i have to be lucky sometimes and like if if the game if the embargoes and stuff line up with a weekend then that's great because it means i can play all weekend but then great i don't have i don't have a weekend anymore and yeah it's playing a game but it's also playing a game for work so you're like taking notes and analyzing it it's a different experience when you're playing a game for reviews and you're playing a game for fun and yeah at the same time it's still the easiest job in the world it really is and i'm not saying i'm not lucky to be a game writer or anything it is the easiest job in the world and i'm every day wake up feeling privileged to be in this position but it's sort of like the games me the game's media has to sort of fight against the publisher to get access to the games and nothing ever gets really criticized to scrutinized properly i suppose is what i'm trying to say and that's that seems to have extended to the game awards if what my sources say is right and that they didn't get full-blown access to the games you know in advance that they felt they needed to then you know it just it's that whole thing again of not having enough time to actually look at and review the games properly um but yeah i don't know yeah but that's why that's why games journalism is the state it's in you know and it's it's not seen as as respectable as a movie crick or a foo even food crick like food critics are like worshiped and they're celebrities on tv and stuff they don't see a game critic being a celebrity ever you know well that's because that's because video games are still seen as um children's um as a children's thing like movies are you know like art right uh video games is just for kids video games is for adults who are losers essentially unless you have a job in it like that's why the most people think like you know when when my sister brings friends over or whatever and they're like you know my sister's very proud of of what i've accomplished on youtube but like i can tell like when people ask her like you know your brother does youtube and they get really excited and my sister will be like yeah but he talks about video games and it's just like you can just oh you know like it's not really i don't know it's just i think people just there's that misconception or people just have this thought and then they're if you're talking about video games in your 30s or your 40s or maybe even even your 20s like you're just you just never grew up and you're just a big loser whereas like you can you can you can review the marvel movies the the artistic expression of eternals and you know you know what i'm saying like it's just it's it's two totally separate things i i don't know if anybody else feels like that but like i i definitely feel that people look down like if you're 40 and you're 30 and you're you meet a girl and you're on a date and she says what do you do for hobby and you're like i play xbox she'd probably just walk right out right there you know like you're you don't know you don't have your life in order if you're playing games at that point in time or whatever right yeah um yeah lanzo says uh the stinger is forza was nominated for best racing game this year so it can't be nominated for game of the year next year forza horizon 5 was shafted oh you mean forza horizon 5 was nominated in the category that they specifically made for forza horizon so it can win because there's no other game that's going to win in that sports racing genre it's like it's like a category that was specifically made for forza rising to win so it couldn't be nominated for game of the year it's it's really odd um let's see what else we got here uh man there's a lot here um uh rubber knobs as i've noticed this cut off data on the fourth of november is also sony's game's release cut off uh dark sia who's been a member for a staggering 28 months says like the festival the cans all the juries are directors ga need to judge be your father need game dev not need game dev how not competing come and embrace the moment chris r says i wish forge was coming earlier but it sounds like it's so big that people can basically make custom campaigns hope it's worth the wait i hope so too paul says who would you want as a playable character in halo infinite um like for multiplayer the campaign like i'm i'm all chief all the time bro like for the campaign that's what i want that's what at least for the first four levels that's what it's uh looking like uh jacqueline says hypothetical activision has a fire sale and you guys are on xbox do you buy any teams or and and or ip interesting question jazz would you buy activision blizzard if they're because you see their stock prices tumbled by like 40 percent uh year over year it's it's it's in a it's in a it's in a downfall yeah if your xbox your playstation do you buy activision to get call of duty in the blizzard properties or like what would you do i mean yeah yeah yeah totally i mean man you get quite a lot of great stuff there if you buy blizzard but what if it comes with it though uh no you shoot him into space mate should you send him up with the elon musk and blast him to mars but um but now like yeah i mean by buy all of activision blizzard you get like tons of great stuff you get like loads of games that have sort of not been treated well right now because they're being underfunded and there's all sorts of turmoil and all that kind of stuff they're losing devs left right and center because nobody wants to work for kotek you fixed all that by putting phil in charge so you know you could have world of warcraft finding its feet again you might even like i don't know hell put you know warcraft 4 in development with world's edge and man there's a lot you could do there there is a lot it's quite an exciting thing but at the same time it costs a hell of a lot of money because there's a hell of a lot of there's a hell of a lot of potential in those ips many of which are sort of dead and dying right now because of activision's complete fail mismanagement and their inability to function properly as a company in 2021 so i don't know it's interesting to think about but will it ever happen probably not yeah space doverkin says but then you have a game like that stranding that launches 11 819 and received around 10 nominations but of course it was from kojima uh sin vendetta says ranges honestly you're celebrities to us well man me and jazz are big time celebrities oh man how can i how come i don't feel like a celebrity i feel like i have imposter syndrome it's like sometimes and you know you wake up and you're like people actually listen to like i'm playing halo infinite early and people are looking forward to what i have to say to hear about it like oh my god i'm such an imposter i know you've talked about having imposter syndrome sometimes oh yeah 24 7. like you're not it's qualified enough or whatever right it's literally my state of being impartial syndrome is my state of being you know i dropped out of high school worked minimum wage as a tit take it to school now you know i'm here it's it's you know something you have to be grateful for constantly grateful for because you know if you get arrogant then bad things happen yeah wolf of darkness says hello randy jess i have a question off topic what happened to konami is the company dying do you think it's a good idea if microsoft acquired them thank you rand great articles jazz phil spencer is awesome what happened to konami well they named the subject of an entire documentary probably yeah uh i think they decided they could like the video games that they make weren't making enough money so they sort of stopped making them and they they pivoted towards pachinko right like gambling machines and they actually make a ton of money doing that so i don't really think the company's dying it's just that they they sort of changed how they do business but it looks like they want to get back into gaming a little bit do i think it's a good idea if microsoft acquired them probably not because all that konami really has is ip they don't even really have any developers because they you know they they shut a lot of that stuff down so i don't really think it'd be a good idea if if they acquired them personally uh because even though people talk about silent hill silent hills not that big of an ip uh metal gear is awesome but only if metal gear is done by kojima right so in castlevania i love castlevania but castlevania hasn't been big in a long time so i know those those franchises are huge with core gamers but you would need really good developers to make them and if you bought konami you don't really get any of that so it's i i don't think they're worth it personally i don't think konami's worth buying for those reasons two you have to remember that like a lot of the get a lot of the work that konami is doing right now is basically just trying to squeeze juice out of ip before they're completely and completely totally forgotten i don't like stuff like you know putting pyramid head and dead by daylight and stuff like that you know they have no intention to be in a big gaming company ever again they're just gonna prostitute out you know castlevania to netflix and and stuff like that on on the on the basis of squeezing a little bit of juice out of that you know that that lemon i like that you processed they prostituted themselves i like that that's a good word that's a good word jess i like that um what they do man that's what they do it's konami in a nutshell and um it sucks for us because you know as qui as cool gamers you know we like us we like our silent hills we like we like our you know castlevanias and we like our metal gear solids but alas those ips are pretty much dead i don't think you can i don't think you i think it's fair to just expect that those those games will never be be a big deal ever again i don't think probably not uh the glitch doctor who's been a member for 14 months man that's that's quite a long time says i am trying to get into a new relationship and the stigma around gaming is a real issue every time i mention gaming i never hear from the girl again i feel you man i'm sorry you'll eventually find the one the one who maybe just need to find a girl gamer i guess one who's actually i think you have to think of it this way right it could it could on the one hand you can think of it like oh wow like no no girls like me because i like games but you could also think of it this way it's a great filter if a girl if a girl judges you on the basis of you whether or not you like a game she probably wasn't worth knowing anyway mate yo bro is are we starting like the xbox two dating advice now is this is this what we're gonna tune into the xbox two to hear some dating advice from a couple gamers well you know i went for this for my girlfriend right when i when i first got to know my girlfriend i'm i made sure that i like i basically non-stop said to her you know i'm a gamer right i just want you to know that i'm a gamer and i'm a massive anime nerd i look look at the kind of things i watch i watch these kind of tv shows are you sure you still want to talk to me she did you know she doesn't like any of that stuff she doesn't have a nerd bone in her body well i suppose like she likes harry potter but that's about it she doesn't like any games i've tried i've tried everything i've even tried mobile games tried to ge i tried to get applied pokemon go for god's sake she just doesn't have a game of bone bone in the body except for mine you know i was thinking about saying that to you as a joke but then you did the joke anyway so props to you yeah guys we're turning the xbox tune into a dating advice show uh you get some quality insights on quality insights on the the the modern dating from two gamers you know jazz has uh has a girlfriend he's been with a long time and you definitely love my dating advice because you know i'm nice and single so danny passion official says stopping by to say hello and now i'm a halo fan thank you for the support uh i see miles don pas in chat he says great to hang with everybody on friday where we can play halo infinite you know miles asked me to be on chatter days this week and i'm like yeah sure no problem love miles love chatter days like miles is the freaking best right and then he gets back to me he's like actually i had a bigger guest say they want to do the show so um yeah i don't need you on saturday and i'm like damn miles like what is going on like wow so he's like can you come on the following saturday because we got i got a big guest coming on and you know i'd rather have them than you and i'm like damn miles out here really hurting a dude you know like he he wanted to guest talk about halo and i'm there ready to roll and then he just he just stabs me man he stabs me in in the back but through the heart it says like i got someone better and bigger and i'm like oh geez miles ah you know to think we even had him on a you know guest episode of xbox 2 you know and this is this is how he repays us evergray says if kojima makes a racing game i swear to god jeff keeley will find a way to get it nominated for game of the year even if it launched in december moller x says if the last two months of the year are not counted then game of the year award is meaningless should be done in february like the oscars um what else we got here um target says we hear the tj's are early december for marketing do you think that is valid since this past black friday cyber monday how much does it help if it was a little bit later like december 20th would that work um it's a marketing event because of all the freaking trailers that all these companies give to jeff keely like i said like when he hypes it up on twitter it's not about the awards it's about look at all these exclusive reveals that are coming you know it almost seems like the awards themselves are secondary to you know uh the new trailers and stuff and the new games um zenkozo says in my case can't suffer from a pasta syndrome when you're really an imposter hello from the dominican republic hello thank you for all the uh support uh you guys are showing us today we really appreciate it uh i wanted to see if miles actually responded in chat but i don't know if he's here anymore he might he might have missed it no anyways uh i think i think he just i think he just went off because he had better things to do he probably did he was probably drinking champagne in the adventure b adventure b green room or something the thing the thing about the game awards and i'll just say this quickly is we all knew forza horizon wasn't gonna be nominated i did not no we i mean i knew it i knew it because it's not a game that these journalists really covet or value sure they'll point out that it's the best in the racing genre but let's be honest here like there's a few genres and a few category categories of games that will never be nominated for the game of the year racing sports mobile strategy and sim right because the people that vote on these awards like they don't appreciate really fully those type of experiences what they like are the big aaa cinematic games which have come to dominate the game awards so forza rising people say it's niche right even though 10 million players in a week says it's not and especially and it for the rising's niche then what is every other single game that's nominated like none of those games are going to have as many players as forza so the niche argument you throw away uh i've seen some people say well it can't be nominated because it's just like forza horizon 4. it does nothing new it does nothing creative and it does nothing you know new uh you know inventive right but it's just like resident evil 8's on that list it's the eighth in the franchise maybe like the 10th or 12th resident evil game it really doesn't do anything new right doesn't really do anything creative ratchet and clanks on that list it's like what the 10th ratchet and clank game it's virtually the same as it was when it debuted on the ps2 so i don't want to hear that it's forza rising can't be nominated because it's not new enough because there are definitely games nominated that are virtually similar to their predecessors you know resident evil a could have been a big fat dlc for resident evil 7. the engine is barely changing so here's the thing so the question then becomes how does forza horizon how does forza rise in six get nominated for game of the year and this is the only way that it can forza horizon 6 needs a cinematic experience it needs to have a story where you're a dad down on his luck who needs to race in these events because your kid back home is dying need some diabetes medicine or something and you're just racing because you need to earn money for your kid and if you don't race then he's gonna die it needs that triple a cinematic sad dad experience that a lot of games get nominated for game of the year on and you need to put that in forza right so anybody from playground games anybody from xbox is listening you need to have that in forza horizon 6. we need to be able to play as a dad down on their luck racing because if we don't then our family member is going to die that's how you win game of the year that's how you make these these journalists cry and feel something get emotionally attached to driving these cars you got to have got to have the kid's life on the line you know what i mean oh man man man just thinking about that i got something in my man something in my eye i know right i actually kind of actually kind of like the idea that i actually kind of want to play that game um so so out of the game six nominations for game of the year we have def loop we have psychonauts two we have metroid dread we have ratchet and clank um we have it takes two and what is the last one i'm kind of blanking on the last one metroid did you say metroid yeah so we got metroid ratchet and clank it takes two death loop uh but anyways the question i was going to ask was out of all those give me your prediction right now which game out of those six wins game of the year i out of those six i think psychonauts deserves to win personally i think psychonauts was by far the most unique out of those games and you know told the best story out of those games it's not my personal game of the year that's resident evil okay um but i think you know if i was if i was saying what i think deserves it out of those i would pick psychonauts what would you pick random out of those six i would also probably pick psychonauts um and honestly if it wasn't psychonauts i would pick it takes two a lot of creativity and it takes two um i do really like resident evil 8 i also do really like death loop but i feel psychonauts 2 tells more of a um there's like it tells more of an adult mature story than those other ones and it takes two was just such a creative game so i would vote for either one of those but i think the question is who do we think the jury is going to vote for right it's let's i do think psychonauts does stand a chance there's a part of me that thinks death loop is going to win as well um i i think it's a three-way i think it's a three-way wait the three-way race i think it's between psychonauts death loop and ratchet and clank i was surprised what turtle didn't get nominated because i think returnal is better than um than ratchet and clank i thought the wrong playstation game got nominated but you know ratchet and clank i'm not the biggest fan of the game's okay when i played it at no point in time did i think to myself this is a game of the year candidate but obviously people felt differently um so i think it's between those three and it's i don't know who that jury's gonna vote for because they all basically received this similar metacritic scores they're all like 88.87 so i guess it's a toss-up maybe death loop is more recently in people's minds so maybe that one has the advantage and it was nice to see you you recall a few years ago jaz when phil was on the stage with jeff keely and he was like yeah this wasn't our best year but we'll do better right remember that where he literally came on said that here we are a couple years later and xbox bethesda has the most nominations and we talked about how great their 2021 has been and they turned it around pretty quickly didn't they they did they sure did they did phil's just constantly in the state of delivering yeah phil phil should be a postman dude he should be a male man phil the postman he delivers he delivers uh stephen stephen boxy says joining late predictions for game of the year winner uh we just we just gave that so hopefully you're still here to hear it uh jc says that's not woke enough has to be a woman driver i saw a woman driver in forza i guess to win game of the year um achievement who's been a member for three months says so caught up in in the infinite multiplayer forgot to stop fyi i want psychonauts to win but i think resident evil will win another reason xbox should get capcom i know jez has been on that train for a long time he wants that he wants capcom so bad um and chinook guy says i'm actually surprised where turtle didn't get nominated i was too i i really really liked fraternal but didn't make the cut maybe because a lot a lot of people played it who really knows oh [ __ ] so sorry oh is everything all right yeah i just i i didn't know there's a big hole in that and i'm playing halo there's a big hole in the map you play are you playing the multiplayer are you playing the campaign i'm playing big ten bow oh that you love multiplayer well i just killed a guy and i was trying to slide slide over a ridge but the ridge led into a big [ __ ] hole in the map when i died um so like oh oh there's a hole there okay um let's talk about the 20th anniversary shall we xbox 20th anniversary uh what'd you think of the event 30 minutes long uh did you enjoy it did you like the announcements what was your overall impressions jazz um i uh i thought it was i thought it was okay i i was kind of like i'm kind of cheating because i knew what to expect because i had an embargo um i had sort of an nda i knew it wasn't going to be like this huge sort of you know e3 level thing or whatever but i thought it was a good a good little a good it was a good celebration of the brand and there was like some really great news for fans of backwards compatibility max payne and loads of games so a lot of people are really excited about um otogi that franchise coming back um even though i never heard of it before but apparently it's got like a lot of big fans so that was cool c and then like some of the other like little snippets about some of the stuff i was not so compelling i suppose but um it was a good it was a good event overall i thought like what what's your take on it i mean i saw some people were disappointed but yes they kind of try and limit people's expectations on what to expect um apparently i missed a couple super chats let me get to them quick hargett says i was replaced by jeff grubb yes yes i know miles he told me jeff grubb was taking my spot and jeff grubb jeff grubb is definitely bigger than me so and i do i do like jeff grub grub a lot so you know yeah why not bump me you know i'm not as important so get the grub uh flash gordon says kojima is the thief for walking sim 2019 so flash gordon didn't like that uh radham says all this talk about game of the year but how is sea of thieves not in the best ongoing category especially this year with the pirates link yeah that's right how did that not get in the best ongoing game jazz it's kind of uh no idea it's kind of absurd um and stephen says early predictions for 2022 game of the year i mean got a war star field horizon zero dawn alden ring you could make probably a case for any of those breath of the wild two if it comes out next year next next year's gonna be packed with with contenders and people are people already loving elden ring so there's always chance as well so i thought the 20th anniversary was was pretty good i thought they said exactly i thought they set expectations right um even though like aaron greenberg was like this isn't a news beat or whatever but like they literally announced a documentary power on which i actually really want to watch a six-part documentary on the history of the xbox brand and i hopefully they go in depth on like the bad things because it's easy to talk about your successes it's easy to talk about well i know but like i know they'll talk about red ring of death because that is the cloud that hangs over the 360 generation but i also want to hear about the decisions that led them to the xbox one and why they wanted to do drm and what made them want to bundle the connect in when the wii was dying and sony was moving away from the move like i want to hear the decisions that made them make those choices and how the team had to respond like those like it's easy to talk about your successes it's harder to talk about your failures and i would love to see them talk more openly about their failures in greater detail uh that would be super interesting to me so i definitely want to watch that they had the trailer for the master chief or the halo the halo series coming paramount plus next year um really short and short and sweet so it's actually coming next year i'm interested in seeing that um special nick says huh they saw where the market was going yeah the market was all yeah but nick if you remember at the time the market had already turned away from the wii like the wii was dead by the time the the like everything was gearing up for the push into the xbox one jet the wii the wii was dead people had moved away from motion controls it should have been very apparent to microsoft that people were going to feel the same about connect you said that but connect one was the fastest selling it was it was accessory it was the whole time no i understand that but look at the canary in the coal mine the nintendo wii the one that started the whole thing like by 2009 2010 the wii was dead it was dying people had moved on those people those grandmas and everyone who got into the motion control gaming was into cell phone gaming at that time and even playstation was smart enough to look at the move and be like yeah motion gaming like has no future but xbox doubled down precisely because of the success they saw with connect so you know oh nick's not referring to motion controls well oh smart speakers in every home google and apple but yeah but it took them years and years later it wasn't like it wasn't immediately after 2013 it took a long time either way uh sorry to get sidetracked by special nick hey nick how was it uh to have your buddy uh john stick a mechanical be able to play halo when you gave him your forza horizon 5 code for a review you didn't even get to play it you gave it to him and he played it early and then he gets to play the halo infinite campaign early like who are you like you got to tell jon that you're the one bringing in the viewers for xbox error people are tuning in to hear your rumor rumor mills whether or not you're right or wrong you know like how could john do that to you he just takes he takes everything does he ever give nick does he ever give back you know what i mean wow um uh so what was i talking about oh yeah the 20th anniversary so i'm interested in the power on doc i want to see that uh the halo tv show super interested uh the uh i thought back-and-for were great 76 games uh as the last harajaz are you surprised that these are the last backwards compatible games uh that xbox is doing are you surprised by that at all um yes and no i guess especially given that phil spencer literally in an interview said then the industry needs to do more emulation there's a hell of a hell of a lot of games that still aren't there that could be emulated i do think that i do think that like if ea or some other company comes to them and they're like we've got the source code for this it runs on xbox one we'd like to put on the microsoft stores back as compatible tile i think they'll still do it i don't think they're just gonna suddenly i don't think they would refuse those opportunities if they came along but i think they just like before that a whole team dedicated to this dedicated to pushing that i had a whole team dedicated to it um and uh a lot of that team the engineers they all they all went on to work on xcloud now and a lot of the the the legal the the legal teams that do um that did backwards compatibility they all went on to work on xcloud and you know obtain your licenses for the cloud streaming stuff which is gonna launch properly next year so um i think it's just like from their end they're not gonna be pushing it as hard but i do think that we might still see the odd backwards compatible title if a company gets in touch and they're like yeah we want to we want to do this but i don't know could be wrong so sub sub zx says the the backwards compatible team is moving to the x cloud and that's why they're not doing any more work so will we not see any more fps boost titles like is that initiative finished with two because it wasn't very apparent from i think they're still gonna do that too i think they're still gonna do fps boost some of that stuff's uh you know relatively simple especially given that fps boost is now part of xcloud i know if you call that little bit of news i did see that yeah i thought that was that was quite an interesting thing to think about um like uh i don't know if that's gonna work does that just mean like games that were 30 fps before now have the the capability of being fps boosted i don't know i don't know but i don't think they're going to stop doing those okay especially once they've branded it there was no jet set radio future there was no alpha protocol uh i know a lot of people were looking forward to that but we did get max payne uh trilogy on back and pat the time splitters games were there um so there there was a there was there was some good games added to that list so um yeah i mean i'm as you know like i'm i don't play any back and pat stuff i appreciate their efforts for people that do own those titles and that want to continue on um it's just not something that personally i'm uh really ever gonna take um uh advantage of i will say though i did i did find one of the fps boost scenarios funny as dead space 2 and dead space 3 got 60 fps uh boost on on the xbox series x and it's like wait a minute what happened to death space 1 and then i realized oh yeah eas are making that game at 60 frames so they don't want to give you the 60 frames fps boost for the first game because they're going to sell it to you uh so you know we'll give them you know the other ones right um so yeah achievement says worst mistakes one connect two red ring of death three drm four scale bound connection of state and accessory like playstation vr yeah i 100 agree a supernova says jazz you should punish jeff keely by changing your accent to american man maybe maybe i'll just try and work on a jeff jeff keeley impression and special nick with this super chat who says i'm a very generous person who makes the necessary sacrifices for the greater good of my staff wow letting john play halo early even though he's actually working for 343 for the ford stuff what is what a sacrifice you better you better do the review what do you do have you done many reviews for xbox there you just you're just sitting there as like the overlord like i think he's just i think he's just letting everyone else work while he while he reaps the fat profits yeah and then he's going to sell xbacteria to that company that resara recently sold to he's he's getting big on twitter he he wants to be able to someone someone called nick a random like you really believe this random who's got four thousand followers and now nick has more followers on twitter than that person so nick's being like nick uh i'm not gonna say his name obviously but like now he's like well who's the random now who's got less followers you know so that's funny yeah that is i'll tell you i'll tell you after year i'll tell you who who said that but drop drop your twitter handle nick you should follow nick nick's a good guy yeah for an australian for an australian but the uh the big part of the show was the end where you know joe staton came out and once you knew you were at 343 and you saw joseph state and you saw all 343 behind him you knew they were gonna shadow drop the multiplayer they set it up like that he handed the mic over to tom french he's like hey your spartan journey begins today right and they they launch the multiplayer beta on monday everything carries over blah blah blah blah and the internet exploded i will i mean my question to you jazz is do you wish this didn't leak how big of a shock and a surprise would it have been outside of like okay the store listings kind of hinted at it the pringles countdown there are some things outside of their control but like if nobody had said anything how big of a reaction would that have gotten that would have been a pr it would be pretty cool um i think i think there's a possibility more people tuned in because it did leak so maybe less people would have seen it um but it would have been pretty awesome if it hadn't leaked like a lot of things that leak i guess yeah says says that notoriously and yeah says the notorious leaker says the notorious sleeker yeah uh radham who's been a member for 14 months has just noticed i've been a member for one year one month in one day not a flex i just enjoy that one one one awesome so yeah everybody got on the halo infinite multiplayer you've been playing it a lot what are your what are your thoughts i mean i know from the the tech flight we both loved it but now you can actually play against real people all the maps and modes are there uh give me your highs and lows about it um i'm sort of i'm still sort of i don't know deciding how i feel about it in a way i'm like i'm a weird case because i've seen a lot of people who are like uh the the this or the halo did this better and stuff i've never really gotten into a halo online i played the first halo to death locally with friends but i never really got into the xbox live versions of halo i don't know why like i think it was the world of warcraft era for me then but this is the first this is the first halo that i've really tried to get into online so my frame of reference is probably a bit different to some other people i've heard also it's that i've never bothered engaging with a battle pass before this is my first battle pass that i've purchased ever so again a lot of people are saying like oh the battle pass sucks in this it's not fast enough but it's i don't have a good frame of reference like a fortnight battle pass or however one of the games have a battle pass actually that's a lie i have the battle pass in pokemon unite oh my god of course that's the only battle pass i've got man i want i really want the gengar skin from that bypass okay but anyway um so for me i don't really care so much about what people are saying about the battle pass all i know is like i really love the gameplay the gunplay super tight i got mvp earlier what during the podcast by the way i've never got mvp before um in halo so that was fun i uh you know learning the weapons i've turned off i just turned off vibrations by the way i find like do you play with vibration on or off um i usually play with i usually play with with it on yeah i should probably turn it off but i'm not like it plays a lot better without them i can imagine but i'm just not that super competitive anymore like i used to be in my 20s you know fair enough it's like but i fee i don't know it feels like somehow easier to aim with them turned off um i have i have had bouts of salt when i've been killed by someone who blindly has a mouse because they've like done a 180 turn like instantly and then you know you think you're getting the drop on someone and then it's like boom 180 degree turn because they're using the mouse and whatever and then then i get mad but and there is i think there is a question about how cross play could impact the game i saw some of the first halo infinite hacks already come out recently um tracking through walls and stuff like that uh exploiting the autov system or something um i assume microsoft's gonna look into all that stuff but i'm just loving it so far like i really just it just feels good and just feels really good to play it's not like call of duty where you get killed by someone half the time it's because they're spawning behind you half the time it's because of the weird lag that happens on the servers because they don't use dedicated servers like fully and stuff like so clean so responsive no lag just feels great it's sort of it's gonna be my overwatch i think for a while until um overwatch two comes out if overwatch ever comes out i mean i remember you saying how vanguard and battlefield were glitchy and buggy but here's halo infinite and it seems super polished right yeah like like you know i'm a battlefield guy i've i've said it here before multiple times i've always been a battlefield guy since battlefield bad company two i played every battlefield and loved them but man i don't know they're really screwed up with the new battlefield really badly it's got like the lowest metacritic user score uh it's getting hammered on steam reviews as well at the moment there's a lot of blood broken stuff in that game ui locking up and not working properly um a lot of people are mad that they remove specialists which i agree with those really suck and the progression's terrible there's not many many guns there's not very many maps there's not very many attachments it just feels and there's no campaign you're paying the same amount of money and you're getting less product essentially and um i don't know that's it's part it feels like par for the course and like this is sort of like we're still in the midst of the i don't know i don't know what you call it the sort of the covid era maybe of game development there's going to be like a massive kink in game development where all the games are sort of rushed out and they're not finished and they're unpolished and stuff like that and it's because of in in the middle of their development the studios have to transition to work from home which is a completely different you know way of working and for a lot of studios they haven't transitioned they haven't made that transition very well and it's been a real struggle for them so um i think battlefield is definitely a product of that and so is call of duty vanguard which is also the lowest selling call of duty since pull of duty 4 i think i read yeah have you seen that they're already free to play this weekend uh vanguard's free to play the multiplayer like two weeks after the game's been out already free to play uh you know the uk reports from the physical and digital is that the sales for vanguard were down 40 percent which is a lot it just it just goes to show you that like i there was no hype behind vanguard at all and you know terrible and people were excited for battlefield 4 2042 but like i know you mentioned some of the issues like it's funny because i actually played quite a bit of battlefield 2042 this past week before the halo infinite stuff before i got halo infinite for preview and the multiplayer came out and like my group of friends so gopher and magic and maca we were actually having a ton of fun playing that extraction mode um i don't know if you got a chance the extraction mode is so it's it's it's eight squads of four and there's a enemy ai on the map and it's uh one life you're dead so if you go down uh you're basically out for the match but you can get called back in so like the whole thing of the whole point of the game is there are these data pads that you need to get that are falling from satellites from the sky there's eight squads of four that are all vying for these for these data pads some of them are guarded by enemy ai so once you grab data pads and you can hold up to three for each character the more data pads you get the more money you get at the end of the match um after a certain amount of time an extraction will appear on the map and a timer will count down for a plane to come in and land and then you actually have to extract right so but everybody knows where the extraction is going to be so teams end up going there to try to kill other teams that have the data pads and the data pads are all are visible to uh people that have like uh i forget what it's called datapad viewers so if you're walking around with some data pads uh people could scan you and find out exactly where you're at so it's this thing of like you need to kill some enemies to get the data pads and then extra it's it's actually a lot of fun from what we we played of it but then halo infinite multiplayer came out and everybody's like oh well time to drop battlefield which you kind of got to feel a little bit bad for ea in battlefield like vanguard was like okay like they screwed up nobody cares about it uh and okay battlefield 24 2 is going to take over but all the problems and then here's this halo dropping in there fully polished like jezz is saying uh plays great like the only real complaints people have uh some people might have some complaints about the ranked uh how rank plays and but most of the complaints are about the battle press progression but other than that people are loving halo infinite it's just like here you are you're partners with battlefield you're partners with ea xbox is marketing the game and battlefield drops on monday and battlefield's not even fully out and it's like are people going to buy battlefield it's like do i need to buy battlefield because i have my halo because we all thought halo's multiplayer wouldn't be out until december december 8th and that there would be some you know some separation between between them and now there isn't so i do wonder how much of that is going to impact at least battlefield on um on xbox so it's interesting i did like the extraction mode i don't know if you've tried that mode out at all i know people are really into the portal mode but we found ourselves playing the extraction mode over and over again this is the thing like i i only play the game by myself because i have no friends oh yeah i i never played like any other sort of squad based modes because i i won't have a squad and play with random sucks so what i do i just play like i play i tend to play um what do they call it in battlefield 2042 it's like their rush mode i can't remember what it's called now i think it's called breakthrough it's like um the map's sort of linear and it's sort of like an attack defend format you have to capture two points and then you you capture that section of the map so that's that's what i always play in battlefield is it used to be called rush but now it's called breakthrough or whatever now for some reason and um generally i really enjoy it but again they'll they'll there'll be there'll be times where i lose a 1v1 because of a dude with a mouse and it's the way a person with a mouse moves is completely different to a person with a controller but you have to sort of like you have to make that extra step to analyze if the person you're fighting against is a mouse player or a gamepad player you have to engage differently maybe i just need to get used to it or whatever but i shouldn't have to man it's a play console to play against console players not pc players you know some some pc players will say they're at a disadvantage playing against console players because of the auto aim battlefield oh battlefield okay yeah i was more talking about halo but yeah i i do see that excuse from uh pc players like oh you could win blah blah but i just think they're bad pc players if they have that excuse me there isn't a scenario yeah there isn't a scenario that exists that a person with a mouse and get an and keyboard should lose to some of the gamepad if everyone knows what they're doing um you know sure if you're playing with the mouse and keyboard for like the first time ever then maybe and you're playing against someone who's experienced but the fact that like someone with someone with a mouse and keyboard can just turn faster you know they can turn faster without sacrificing the momentum of their aiming you know with with a you know you can set up a controller to sort of and adjust the dead zones in a way that gives you like a bit more control over precision without sacrificing turning speed and stuff like that you can do it and there are controllers which let you do it as well like the uh the razer v2 wolverine for example like it's got um it's got a really good sort of uh sensitivity clutch on it where um if you hold down one of the pedals it adjusts the sensitivity on the stick so you can move you can move from an instant to like fast turning back into like sort of more standard aiming sort of thing so you can aim better and stuff it's a really cool controller actually for that to take some good practice getting used to but you know there is that you can do um but again i don't have to do that i just want to play the standard xbox controller but then maybe you can argue that you shouldn't be so competitive then if you're not using the tools you want to use but i don't know man i don't really care for the mixed input stuff and um but it's not such a big deal that it bothers me like you know i'm not gonna lose sleep over here or whatever right but um i did like battlefield what i played of it but the bugs kind of ruin it and i don't know i just sort of i kind of feel like now that halo's here my my recourse of action just seems like i'm just gonna wait until i fix it and play hello instead you know battlefield like i saw i saw a tweet the other day someone was like oh man ea must be livid that battlefield's come out um that halo's come out just the same the same launch window as um as a halo but i think that ea's glad because it gives them a chance to polish and polish the game and maybe like do a soft relaunch of it later on because right now battlefields are not in a good state and it's made they've made a lot of a lot of changes people aren't happy with and that kind of thing i don't know yeah uh sasuke says okay hear me out just kick out kick out katic and his board members phil gets the okay to buy them we get a starcraft ghost revival under the coalition hmm um that seems that's that'd be amazing yeah but achievement says capcom or sega who fits xbox's holes better um probably sega because they xbox really wants to focus on pc gaming and the sega has a lot of pc developers although it's hard to argue against capcom they got a lot of great franchises that would help out uh game passes tremendously recently announced that they're they're gonna consider pc their lead platform now though um oh yeah i did see that that is true um pc pcs uh you know it's only growing and growing getting bigger and bigger uh atheil says uh your gyro aiming would solve keyboard and mouse and game gamepad debate and david says did you know that you can change the color on the menu button in steam settings only on the elite 2 and any chance that xbox will change it on xbox they should because i have seen pictures of the uh halo elite series 2 with like a yellow uh xbox like led xbox nexus button i think that would be super cool um but so i played a little bit of the multiplayer like i played a bunch in the the tech test and i mean it it feels like i know they're calling this a beta but it really does feel like version one like the final release i was playing with my friends we did a lot of big team battle i got my ass handed to me because i wasn't like i'm playing with some really good players casual j who's james shields magic who's incredible at shooters maca like and like i every time i try to kill somebody they already killed him so like my kd is pretty horrible right now and i haven't really been able to like dedicate a lot of time to playing the multiplayer but i've loved what i play so far and i can't wait to play more um one of the things here's the thing i don't know i don't know if i'm the only one who feels like this but like as someone who doesn't care about the battle pass at all like all my friends bought the battle pass they all bought the premium thing they all jumped 25 levels you know and they're all complaining in the party about the the freaking the the challenges they have to do right like and i have some thoughts about the battle pass situation as someone who doesn't care for battle pass as someone who doesn't care for the cosmetics there isn't really anything for me to actually quote unquote grind towards when i play halo right jazz we've talked about it before and i was recently on defining duke with our buddies lord cognito and mr maddie plays we recorded it on wednesday um they called me randall cheap those bastards they called me randall cheap because i was telling them how i don't care about cosmetics how i don't i've never bought a battle pass right and i played warzone for 200 hours didn't spend a dime i played pub g for 900 hours didn't spend a dime i paid apex legends for 100 hours didn't spend a dime and they're all like you know i played rainbow six siege for 200 hours didn't spend any money on that and so like maddie called me all your your randall cheap huh and i'm like i'm not saying i'm cheap i'm just i just don't care about cosmetics i'm not going to spend 20 bucks on some armor because i don't really care right i just don't care at all so i see the battle pass stuff and it doesn't grab me because i don't care about the cosmetics so i'm not spending uh 15 or whatever for the battle pass so okay fine like you then there you know there should be some overall progress i'm working towards right um like think about it like when you kill somebody in the game you get 100 points but like and at the end of the game you get a tally of all the xp in the game right jazz but it doesn't count towards anything there is no level progress you could go in a game and get 50 kills get like five overkills three triple kills uh capture the flag two or three times all this stuff and if you didn't do specific things specific challenges for your battle pass you essentially don't get any progress towards anything um which i think is not good whatsoever so for someone like me who doesn't give a rat's ass about the battle pass there's no like what am i i know i understand i'm playing the game for fun and that should be enough but for a lot of people it's 2021 just playing something for fun isn't enough they want something to work towards they want something to get rewarded for like when i was playing warzone i completed the battle pass in war zone simply by playing warzone and getting kills and winning games that won't happen in halo infinite i know they changed it where you get 50 xp for completing a match or whatever but i don't really think that's enough i don't like the challenges either because like they're usually weapon related and i find any sort of challenges that change player behavior like get kills with a certain amount of weapon i i find those off to be off-putting and awful i hated those when they were achievements in multiplayer games where it's like it wasn't just hey win a game or whatever it's get like 30 kills with this weapon or you know like some ridiculous requirement like i've never liked that i understand that they're looking at it and this battle pass does last six months and they don't want people to essentially like blow through it um but you know i don't know like maybe i'm just i don't know does how does everybody in chat feel about battle pad do you care about the battle pass did you buy it are you constantly going for the challenges am i just a weirdo here am i just someone who's just like completely crazy for not caring about the battle pass and the cosmetics jazz am i crazy do you care about that stuff i don't really care about them in in halo man honestly i don't really care about them in any game i play like i played a whole lot of overwatch and i have bought loot box in overwatch because there is every now and then there's been a skin that i thought yeah i quite like that skin i want it for my character or whatever but it's not really something that has been such a huge deal for me and you know this is why publishers prefer pay to win because they know pay to win is way more compelling than the skin for everyone um uh if you if you're progressing and gaining power then you know that's more compelling than uh getting just like a skin or a shader or a color or something and i haven't really looked into it that much because like i say i don't really care that much about the battle pass and like if you just play here and there by six months you should probably max out anyway um i'm just looking at i'm just having a quick look at it now the battle pass um just to see what's actually in there because i i went ahead and bought it because i thought oh well that's what you meant to do with the battle pass right uh-huh but look in here it's like visors boosts and yeah and mostly you just swap challenges there wasn't anything i mean the stuff that's cool at the end of the battle pass like the flaming shult shoulder pads or the flaming like helmet or whatever are cool and the jakester says in chat the battle pass isn't that interesting but the tenra event however uh that one does look much more interesting that's the one that gives you the samurai armor and all that stuff uh that event starts next week that one seems to be way cooler than any of the stuff they're offering right now in the battle pass so um it's it's awesome to see 343 like they're on it like they saw they heard the complaints about the progression they're changing it for the better they're monitoring the situation so they are listening to fans so if you have any any complaints they're definitely like paying attention so it's cool to see them fix these things in real time really quickly as they approach like the final release of the game uh on december 8th uh gaming forte has been a member for 14 months says love the preview for the campaign at 3 a.m in the morning but was happy to hear your excitement 343 industries might have turned the corner but time will tell yeah uh 3am in the morning tonight like did not want to put that video out then but that's when uh that's when the embargo was up and that's what everybody's videos were going up so you uh you gotta do the same thing you know uh criminal logic says gruesome twosome caught ya caught you live awesome show spit it out jazz we need some juicy leeks everybody wants some leeks do you have any more interesting stuff are you fresh out i'm fresh at leaks not my leaks no more leaks for now right no more leaks for now for now maybe maybe next year maybe next year after the after the holidays we'll get back to someone leaking only on xbox says mr krabs and randall thor the same person yeah they were they were giving me some crap on defining duke about being randall cheap but i don't know maybe i'm just weird i just don't care about cosmetics and i'm just not gonna spend money on it and i know people are saying in chat like i should throw the devs some some money but like hey they made the game free to play and i'm gonna play it and there's nothing that like i'm i look at those like halo championship series armors that really do look cool but then i'm like those things are like 10 15 bucks like i don't care enough to spend 10 15 bucks on it i don't know i don't i don't know maybe i'm just weird like that like i know people but spend all the money on fortnite skins but i wouldn't buy anything in fortnite i don't know and it's not like i it's not like i'm like it's not like i like have no money to spend it's just like i'd rather spend my money on something else i i don't know uh oh we got colt eastwood in the chat hope you're doing well buddy enjoyed your video and cole east was just so good at making videos like i spent which we're about to talk about here at the campaign a preview in a minute me and jess both played it i spent a good i don't know three to four hours on my video yesterday and then i watched colts and i'm just like i suck at youtube coach is so good at what he does i'm always i'm always impressed by like colton dealer and the production values they put into their into their videos you know practice man watch more people do and trying to rip them off you know so just rip them off just rip them off yeah michael g says i wish it was still red versus blue it's hard to tell the enemies now yeah i see some people complaining about that that they don't like um you know they don't like uh the outlines or they're too hard to see but hey when you're doing cosmetics something that you kind of have to do and uh shakespeare's really going uh going crazy upstairs right now uh our rd says plot twists miles bigger guest is jazz no definitely his guest is jeff grubb who's definitely bigger than me um the good stocker says never bought a battle pass i think they should add a tier for xbox game pass ultimate members to give them a benefit over the free-to-play players they definitely said they were gonna offer some xbox game pass ultimate perks we haven't really heard or seen what they could be yet i thought it would be cool if you're a game pass ultimate subscriber if you got the battle pass for free but you kind of knew they were going to sell those things separately you know jazz you can actually i've seen people actually complete the battle pass already by spending 200 like if you spend 200 uh you could complete the battle pass and get everything so they do let you spend money to buy levels in the game and the battle pass isn't that high to win wow well it's all cosmetics so what do you you're not really paying to win anything and uh coat eastwood the five dollar super chat halo and forza dominating 2021 who knew who knew indeed i mean we knew forza would dominate we just didn't know would dominate to this extent i mean nobody thought 10 million players in a week nobody thought the biggest xbox launch in history jazz the biggest xbox launch in history that means bigger than halo 3 which you would imagine is probably the biggest ever for xbox right now i don't know if that just means is that does that just mean in xbox game studios history or are they literal when they say the biggest launch in xbox history like bigger than any of the call of duties you know what i mean because it was kind like if you look at the tweet they mean biggest 10 xbox game studios surely well i mean may you would think but usually pr is pretty specific about those things uh yeah maybe i don't know i could ask someone um that's interesting could it seriously be the biggest out of even call of duty but then again they're also factoring pc in there right true true they must i must be talking about game studios well i mean when you look when you look at their tweet right um thank you to the more than 10 million forza rising fans for the biggest first week in xbox history and xbox game pass ever and the the the image says biggest launch in xbox history and over 10 million players doesn't specify xbox game studios history it literally says biggest launch in xbox history now am i wrong to construe that as potentially like bigger than a third party game or are you or should we just say it's the biggest first party launch i think i think it's probably the main biggest first party launch but i don't know i could i could reach out and ask how how many was it 10 million how many days uh biggest it says more more than 10 million fans for the biggest first week in xbox history and game pass ever so it's it's a pretty vaguely worded statement thinking about it i could ask exactly what they mean by that i guess but i mean it's pretty it's pretty that's pretty huge so forza dominating we knew it would dominate but not to this extent and halo i really want to know let me ask you guys here in chat do you think halo infinite's first week will be less than forza ryzen 5 or more so essentially do you think halo can do 10 million players in a week because i kind of feel like that's that's a tall order for halo isn't it but i know it's free to play where forza is not like yeah it was on game pass but this multiplayer is free to play and there's no campaign yet so i'm very interested like we got that first day stat from phil like hey forza horizon did 4.5 million and you can easily check the leaderboards to see what the numbers are for for forza but there's no way there's no way to check for halo so i'm just kind of i'm very interested like what is gonna be the bigger game uh week one forza rising five or halo infinite i i'm super interested if we get numbers next week like on a tuesday or wednesday where xbox just comes out and is like halo infinite it's the biggest launch in xbox could you imagine if they had two back-to-back weeks jazz where they broke xbox history forza horizon breaks it at 10 million and then the following week halo infinite breaks it at like 12 million or something wouldn't that be just like absurd it would be upset it would be absurd i've had a big year man like when you when you zoom out and look at age of empires being like your biggest launch in franchise history and then you know bloody uh what what they've done with halo and what you've got with forza and you know all the other third parties uh not third party all the smaller game studio stuff that has happened like uh psychonauts and wasteland had dlc next week is two beat well no this week two big launches for minecraft minecraft dungeons is getting a massive dlc and also minecraft itself is getting caves and cliffs part two dlc or whatever and we've also got uh grounded had a massive dlc i i'm curious how grounded it's doing these days although they're not really marketing it at all um it's just been a huge year absolutely massive year and uh next year is going to be even more crazy because you're going to have star field red fall and you know um x cloud's probably going to leave by a properly next year and start being marketed actually marketed um i've also got like hints possibly maybe no xbox hardware as well next year wait wait what say that again wait wait wait say that again because anybody listening who writes for a website did you just hear what jess said possibly new xbox hardware look at that well maybe maybe i've heard that microsoft's going ahead with um actually this is uh this is going back to a brad sam's leak from years ago where he said microsoft was working on a streaming device for xbox well i've got information that they may actually be going ahead with that um well is it next year is it the year after i'm not sure on that right now it's very early days i think but yeah we are getting uh not not just a diskless xbox we're moving to a fully fully cloud-based xbox possibly could be that it never gets launched could be it's just prototype stuff like that but i personally believe that it's coming a sort of answer to google's chromecast the steady still exists by the way just had its two-year anniversary yesterday stevia is still around oh my god they exist yeah um so microsoft's gonna have a chromecast answer apple tv answer uh probably next year or the year after possibly um [Music] they're not slowing down man they've got so much stuff they're trying to work through with all these all the games and the platform stuff and you know it's crazy it really is crazy like it's hard to keep up with hmm no i don't know if anybody's gonna write articles about the streaming thing like when you send new hardware i'm sure people are like what a new xbox series x more powerful flaps no no but not everything's in the cloud you can have infinite tire flaps technically but not new hardware in the way that you know us hardcore want new hardware but yeah it makes sense like you have a streaming stick potentially a game pass app on your smart tvs like that's the whole play um atticus says anyone else annoyed with the grenades holy crap man maybe nerf them a little yeah you know grenade spam is definitely a thing for halo it happens all the time i uh i actually thought that the grenades weren't powerful enough i like hit people with a grenade and it just takes their shield off it doesn't kill them and i'm like come on that should have killed them surely yeah well i i don't know i thought the grenades are okay grenades are a huge part of the tactical mind games in high lock surely everyone's eyes gorilla suggests no more leaks also jazz stick [Laughter] because earlier today in the podcast you're like i got no more leaks and now you're just like here's a leak i got for you guys oh jess is writing up an article right now windows central no no anyways uh but yeah go ahead xbox tv i don't know it's just it's just fun man it's just fun i feel excited about xbox like i felt excited about xbox for a while but like we started to see it in the flesh now it's not it's not just promises anymore it's not just faith we're not just taking everything on faith we're starting to see it we've seen the hardware nailed we're starting to see the games get nailed like the whole the whole cloud thing which by the way windows central leaked the microsoft was working on cloud gaming back in 2013 that was that was a windows phone central exclusive xbox is working on a cloud gaming platform and i've got it here in my hands not on a windows phone sadly which uh of what it was originally being built for but you know i do have it i do have my cloud gaming so i don't know it's really cool have you actually tried the cloud gaming on xbox yet like it's available on xbox one now so now you can play xbox series x games on an xbox one and everyone with an xbox one isn't being left behind as long as they've got super interesting because you can essentially play star field and redfall next year you can play the medium although i don't think microsoft flight sims in the cloud yet um so yeah i've even seen some people say like hey you know i have an xbox series or xbox one s that has now basically been turned into a series s because they're playing the one but they're so they're playing like halo through the cloud but like yeah on the 1s it plays at 30 frames but if you play it through the cloud it plays at 60 frames right so it's like a better way to play the game which is super interesting uh adam says i'm with you rand i don't care for cosmetics either yes another one who's just like me but apparently we're the we're the minority uh neon black says now i want an 800 all-exclusive all-inclusive xbox series x2 next year jazz hashtag shut up and take my money uh i think there'll be a lot of people who'd probably enjoy another xbox coming out really soon but let's talk about the halo campaign jazz i definitely have a lot to say i haven't really talked to you much about the the campaign so give me your quick thoughts about the campaign i know you wrote the article for windows central which you guys should go check out uh go to windows central check out jazz's thing and while you're there hit up manscape.com and put in code xb2 and buy some things right for the holidays for your friends um so your yes for your friends balls uh so how are you feeling about halo infinite campaign right now i mean we talked to we talked at length about the concern right like people we were like uh you know like not sure if 343 can do this how's the open world gonna like so many times now we played the campaign how are you feeling like i i am sold on the on the sort of i don't know the design the layout of what they're trying what they propose i'm on board i'm on board now i wasn't on board before and like i wrote my preview i just come in from writing a review of far cry 6 which i hated you know i hated reviewing that game i was not i mean i just did not enjoy it i thought it was like just not fun grinding all those outposts every single time in a ubisoft game i'm really tired of the formula and i did write there in the art in my review that if you're not tired of the formula great you know that's fine but i am super tired and because i'm tired there's nothing new here for me so i was dreading it i was dreading it i was like going into halo thinking man is this just going to be far cry thank god that it isn't it isn't far cry and it's not assassin's creed and it's not all of other ubisoft's games that are open world without posts it is basically halo combat evolved evolved to its most logical conclusion it's sort of when i like playing it i like that jazz i like that that's that's a good that's a good way to describe it yeah yeah i should have written my review my preview probably but i've only just thought of it just now damn it but um yeah it feels like halo combat evolved evolved um in the sense that it reminds me of those sort of those um those sort of classic those classic halo levels like uh in halo combo evolve where you first land on the halo ring and then you know you're driving around the warthog and there's like these unsc forces battling the covenant in the distance and you can get involved with them if you feel like it or you can just you can just drive past them and go back straight to the objective like that's that is how it feels it feels like how a combo evolved to me like the the sort of the path you cut through the halo ring in in the first halo game that's how it feels it feels like just that kind of gameplay the outposts are there if you want to engage with them you can go and do that and they're fun to do because you've got the the really cool grappling hook and you can do all crazy [ __ ] you can uh you know you really can you when you've got all the upgrades for the grappling grappling hook i've got some hilarious footage um and this obviously this isn't this is this is actually not part of the preview because i don't think it's possible to unlock the full grappling hook in the preview but i will say that by the end of the game when i've unlocked all the upgrades for the grappling hook you can basically it lowers the cooldown of it so you can basically be spider-man yeah yeah spider-man i did have that upgrade where it reduces the cooldown by 40 and you can pretty much like use it all the time it's so awesome it's hilarious like i was literally like the recording clips of me just sort of seeing how long i could stay up in the air swinging around trees and stuff like that it's really really cool really great design um and then like if you look at uh some of the other features in the campaign like um i really quite like how they implemented the high value targets because it sort of it sort of gave me a sort of shades of monster on top almost where it was like this is your target and this is what they can do some of them have unique abilities or they have like super versions of existing halo weapons like one had a one had a sniper rifle that like you know had an extra exploding effect on it and stuff like that like it just felt like they were worth doing because once you once you kill them you unlock their weapons and then you could use their weapons in the open world or in the campaign i'm gamepl embargo slightly here but i don't think they'll mind there was one there was and i'm this isn't a spoiler either by the way there's one boss one optional boss a high value target which was incredibly tough it was like it's like two dudes tons of armor and i was i'm sitting there thinking man how how is this meant to be possible i don't think you should talk about that well i'm gonna do it anyway no you guys know what i don't wanna i don't want you to get me in trouble but okay i'm not i'm not getting in trouble man trust me like this this this is very this is vague enough to not get in trouble i think but i was kind of like man how am i gonna i'm gonna take this on and stuff and then because like as you as you do level up through the campaigns you do like unlock more features for your outposts which is in the preview brand you can unlock upgrades for your outposts and you get more like marines and stuff like that for the outposts and you in the preview i unlock the razorback which is a variant of the warthog which has lots of seats in the back so to take on this bus i just like and this this is an optional bus it's not part of the story or anything take on this bus i just loaded up a razorback with marines carrying rocket launchers and i just went in there blowing [ __ ] up man i was like yeah screw this i'm just gonna blaze through it the marines killed each other with the rocket launchers of course they did of course they did of course they did but um it was they did enough damage that i could like just about take on these these like this double boss fight um and it just it just felt none of it felt required i think like that's that's the thing that really separated it from far cry or assassin's creed or something none of it felt really require required of me the game wasn't saying you have to kill this many outposts to progress the story none of it was required so i didn't i never felt like i was grinding or i was just going through the motions it didn't it didn't overstate welcome i think like when i was uh going through and then like when i when you do get bored of doing outposts or whatever then you can progress a story and do something unique in like one of the sort of more dungeony set-piece designed kind of areas jeff grubb compared it to breath of the wild i haven't played breath for a while so i can't make that comparison myself but loads of people seem to agree that's a really good comparison for it in terms of like the the open world not being forced on you it's just like a fun sandbox world never like forced to engage with it the sandbox it's almost like the sandbox isn't the point the sandbox is just a feature of the wider game and that's how it felt in how combat evolved when it was like those those sort of levels where um you are driving around the tank you can you can get out of the tank and you can just go on foot if you want you can do whatever you want like it's a like it's a sandbox it's not so much of a you know an outposty open world kind of drudgery repetitive sort of thing and that's how i felt about it all the way through not just a preview but like all the way through i never felt like it was i never felt like i was grinding i felt like i was just having a load of fun with the crazy guns and the the grappling hook and seeing what kind of what kind of tricks i could pull off with all these tools that the game was giving me and um that's it you know it's a great sandbox game and it doesn't sort of you're never sort of forced to do it engage with any of the activities all right yeah um i'll give my thoughts after i hit up a couple of these super chats antonio he gives us five dollars and the message is retracted so i don't know what he's saying there's thank you for the support george says chances comey and microsoft work again does half doesn't have to be uh scalebound i don't think they'll work together again um adam says i can't find a series x so i played the medium on xbox one over cloud tried riff breaker too surprised how good much i've enjoyed it ps you guys rock thank you so much uh for the compliment uh kendrick star says when is the first xbox exclusive coming in 2022 um that would probably be stalker that we know of i know it's at least exclusive for three months that's coming in april 28th assuming it doesn't get delayed otherwise red fall is probably september forza motorsport is most likely october and then starfield is uh november uh they might crossfire x might be sometime early in the first half of next year exo mecca sometime early next year scorn tunic there's a lot of games that were supposed to come out this year that got delayed so they'll be spread out throughout 2022 for sure and uh raidenblade who's been a member for six months says i wish if xbox i wish if xbox would bring back the cinema app where you invite your friends to watch a movie or comedy it would bring more people to game pass um yeah like the netflix thing that i i do wish that netflix thing was still around and dub who's been a member for five months says it was great waking up today and seeing the positivity about the campaign the turnaround that 343i is made from that e3 demo should be commended yeah yeah i mean ever well the thing with the e3 demo was i pointed out how i liked how the game played it was that like the game doesn't look good like there's a lot of pop in a lot of texture loads in um hello well from the campaign demo from 2020 last year like how about like the whole craig meme so i guess i'll start off by saying this about the campaign uh since we're on the graphics thing it definitely looks like an xbox one title and it's it's there are some times where it doesn't look particularly the greatest but i've never really been the biggest stickler for the graphics thing that's not my area right like you know it is just a little weird coming from forza horizon 5 which is like one of the best looking games ever to playing halo and you realize that you know a lot of their you know sacrifices to do the open world at 60 frames definitely took a hit from like how graphically impressive the game might be you know so i did notice that so there's an opening cutscene which we can't even talk about which was just type so hype just thinking about it now just thinking about it now just makes me smile um that's the thing about halo like even though i'm not the biggest halo fan in the world there were multiple times throughout the game that i had goosebumps yes it's been a long damn time it's been a long long time since the game has given me goosebumps like even like just going on the menu the main menu and hearing the music you know the the chorus the you know the you know i'm not going to sing it because that would be really embarrassing but you know you know exactly what i'm talking about yes um the music is just amazing throughout and the there's just some scenes in it too that are just sort of like oh my god i can't believe this no gay i haven't felt like that from again for a really long time and i don't know if that's a me thing me problem or whatever but halo has that impact the characters and the backstory and the legacy has just ha it carries a certain way that i think maybe sometimes um microsoft has potentially undervalued over the years maybe well it's almost like halo infinite it's like a nostalgia play almost right a little bit it feels like you you get those chills because it's like it's chief right and like oh my god there's cortana cortana in a like a flashback like you get those moments where it's like you're a kid again experiencing halo 1 or however old you were where a lot of xbox's franchise don't really lean heavily on nostalgia in that in that way but halo can halo's one of the few that's been around that long that can rely on it so i think most of you know the game starts off with you know the the pilot waking up seeing master chief floating in space brings them in uh basically tells master chief that everybody lost unsc is gone they're dead and immediately you're thrust into the action you're boarding a brute ship and right away right from minute one of the gameplay you have the grapple hook and i never stopped using it because it is so much freaking fun to use jazz isn't it yeah it is i almost i almost feel like it's a bit overpowered like it's so it's so versatile as a tool that you just like you just never kind of really need to ever stop using it whatever situation sorry or like never switch to any like in in the the the preview that we played you also get a threat sensor i think all the equipment from the multiplayer is in the game i didn't get to experience like the thruster or the drop wall which we've seen in the campaign overviews but i did have the the the grapple hook and the threat sensor and switching between them is kind of awkward you got to like press like down on the d-pad and then really quickly you'd have to like remember where they are so and you're right like the grapple hook is so good in every single like every single way like it gets you up uh you know the vertical cliffs in the open world uh you know you can grab onto enemies and if you upgrade it uh electricity will kind of shock them they'll stay in place you can use it to get behind enemies um i use it all the time to grab plasma coils to then throw them at enemies because they're almost like one-hit kills and because there's so many plasma coils everywhere it almost becomes like an extra weapon you know you have your typical two weapon halo your typical two weapons that you have in halo right but it with all the plasma coils everywhere it definitely sounds it definitely feels like they gave you a third weapon when you combine it with the grapple hook it's like oh let me grab this plasma coil and throw it at this brute and kill him right um but yeah i found myself even when i got the threat sensor being like i don't really need to use the threat sensor to see where the enemies are so like why why am i why would i want to switch out from using the grapple hook because it's so much fun to use and like right away like you just feel it like the the assault rifle the pistol they're all great to use it has that classic halo you know 30 seconds of fun melee grenades assault rifle you're introduced to the antagonist of the game estrom who um i think i think he's actually a really good antagonist uh he's a extra room is incredible yes man i have i have a slightly different perspective on ezra because i've you know finished the game but ashram is one of my favorite characters in hilo of all time like i'm straight up i say that right now aaron de paul the voice actor he's absolutely tremendous estrogen is a great character story arc i think everyone's going to love ishram and he'll be remembered as a classic hero i think yeah classic not hero character i guess i think you're thinking of it in like moba terms because i was comparing him to in my head because darren de paul does the voice acting i was like um uh in in well he's a bunch of characters in world of warcraft and like but i didn't know because he sounds completely different the dude is so versatile and i was like shocked i was like oh my god he's he's in the zoth in world of warcraft that was nothing like him but um it was really cool man really great character uh rachel says but what about skillup thinking he's a saturday morning villain i mean i don't know i haven't experienced the full game so i don't know how his progression is done but like i know i like the idea of like here's this villain who respects you a lot but also is pleased that he can fight you to essentially beat you because it would mean like so much i don't know i really enjoyed eskram uh from from the brief glimpses we've seen i'm telling i'm telling you now like i like scale up a lot but man eshroom is not a side no money villain you're gonna you're gonna especially by the end like he's a really cool villain um just a really cool character yeah sure so the first level is basically uh tight ship ship corridor combat second level opens up a little bit more uh you get into like a four runner installation and that's where the halo art really shines like i love the foreign forerunner stuff because it's so alien it's so cool looking it it always seems like when you're going to these things like you're about to like learn some huge secret um and you beat the new a your new ai companion the weapon and right away like when she she starts talking i was like that's jen taylor's voice who does cortana like you can hear cortana in her voice but she's a young naive ai she doesn't really know what's going on and i thought it would be grating at first but i i found it refreshing especially in contrast to the pilot who is very anxious who doesn't want any part of any of this he's actually kind of angry like he just wants to run away and hide so like you can you you contrast it with this ai who is super young and naive with master chiefs like mission of like we have to save the world and do our duty and you get to sense that master chief is hiding some secrets because that's the main mystery that's uh flows throughout the game that is pushing the narrative is one what are the banished doing on the ring what are they looking for right and two what happened to cortana because it's not clear because as uh the ai said uh she was supposed to infiltrate and basically lock down cortana master chief was supposed to take cortana and then to back to the infinity for deletion and then the ai weapon would have delete been deleted right yeah um but the way a weapon's still around so does that mean cortana's still around and that is like the two core mysteries [Music] basically uh that's basically the two core mysteries that are basically pushing the narrative is what are these two things and how is the information going to be doled out so i don't know anything more than i don't know like what happens any of that stuff i know jez does but i i personally don't um and i find those mysteries to be really engaging and i want to learn more which is why when i started playing it i couldn't stop i couldn't stop because i was engaged by the mystery i couldn't stop because like jess says it is just so much fun to play through like i thought the open world aspect would kind of be a hindrance to the overall halo gameplay style but like you get across the open world pretty fast whether you're running or whether through the vehicles and there's so many different uh combat engagements uh whether you're saving marines or whether you're doing the optional fights like there was this one high-value target jazz i don't know if you remember where it was an elite uh with a uh energy sword but it was cloaked right and it was kind of hard to get a bearing of where he was at and especially on heroic difficulty like i died a few times before i figured out like those high value targets they really actually add a really good combat challenge so you have all these different combat scenarios like all over the map you have all these different weapons hidden somewhere different ways you can engage each one of these battles like the ransom keep the big keep jazz i i don't know how you went about about it in your playthrough like i don't know if you went and you scaled up a cliff and you started shooting people with the sniper rifle you know what i did i took a ghost from another part of the map drove it to the keep and just killed everybody in the keep with the ghost yeah but like it's all player choice like because i could have went into the keep and just went through the front gate with you know my guns and just started killing everybody or sniping everybody from afar instead i took a i took a vehicle in there and killed everybody like i love that sort of uh opportunity that uh the open world presents alongside the grapple hook so you can get many different vantage points like i think that's super cool right um so yeah like the open world is not as big as i thought either because it's segmented it's sectioned off so there's only so many things you can do side mission wise before you're sort of corralled back to the main story like you can't go and explore like you can in far cry where you could explore everything before you actually do the main story like this one's like yeah you might be able to save a couple marina marines you might be able to do the keep and like a high value target but you know what you're gonna have to go do uh the mission because all the other islands you can't access right away so i i thought that was that was really smart design because it does make it feel like what you said like it's halo combat evolve but evolved where it's just like a section where there's a lot of different things you can do but you're always being funneled toward the ultimate goal which is the completion of the story right yeah i mean it's it's that's that's fundamentally it it just feels like it just doesn't feel like it's that your typical open world kind of game like like what i've come to expect and some some in some ways dread of these kind of games and um the story just like you say the mystery with master chief what the hell happened after hell of five that drove me forward that really did drive me really hard forward i couldn't put it down i literally couldn't put it down like like i said i'm not reviewing it but i played it i had to play it for fun it's not often that i play games for fun these days or even have time to play games for fun so i appreciate halo giving me the opportunity i guess yeah so i i i haven't had this much fun playing through a halo campaign in the first four levels four hours in a long time maybe since halo reach and i definitely like it way better than halo 5. i was not a fan like everything feels so cohesive um so if the quality keeps up from what what i've played then this will easily be 343's best uh halo campaign and who knows where it would sit in the pantheon of like you know other halo campaigns uh it's certainly much better than i expected like you know with them with halo 5 i was kind of like oh man this they got away from what made halo halo i didn't really care for lock master chief wasn't in it that much the story wasn't that interesting but with this one it's just like okay we're back to chief this is his story this is his journey there's a lot of cool mysteries that are going on like i really need to know what what happened with cortana i want to know if the flutter in the game right uh what the hell is the banish up to is atrax gonna show up like all these questions that are driving me and the game at its core still feels after all this time incredible to play so i i mean what i want to do this weekend is just finish finish the game i just want to complete the campaign but then i know like well when i make my review later in the you know next month i'm probably going to have to complete the camp campaign again because i like it fresh in my mind like when i'm talking about something when i'm making my videos so we'll see um but yeah i i it almost is like 343 nailed it they they killed it with the multiplayer everybody loves it they're listening to the battle pass progression stuff we had questions about the single player and honestly it's like they might have completely nailed this out of the park thank god for that year delay who knows what version of halo we would have gotten if it launched with the console um i would think about yeah i know right like what would we have gotten so um yeah i mean i guess um we'll have more to talk about halo infinite when we actually review the game which we can't tell you when yeah but it'll be close to release uh kendrick star says what do you think of the wheel time show uh so far i really like it first episode was the weakest uh two and three got a lot better and i'm looking to see how it continues to grow from there uh j-dub is a shill says hey jez i still haven't gotten that bone cream xbox i would ask for your help though that would be a pause moment bone cream um so yeah um what else we got here um [Music] phil spencer jazz really talked about a lot of stuff uh with 20th anniversary uh we mentioned before he reconfirmed elder scrolls exclusivity which i don't know about you i don't know about anybody else in chat like can we please not stop talking about the bethesda exclusivity we know the games are exclusive it's not a story anymore like i understand that maybe some people don't like i really it's just we talked to death about it it came out you know it feels like these games will be where game pass lives and even still then people you had people being like well maybe they could still come to playstation well star field might come to playstation after year possibly because they need playstation customers no xbox doesn't need playstation customers you know like the only way you'll play those games is if you know game pass comes to playstation so will it i don't really know but here we are again confirming elder scrolls exclusivity whatever like i'm sure this will get worse as we get closer to starfield launch where people be like wow starfield looks really good that's coming to playstation right and then you're gonna have to say no it's not it's actually xbox what do you mean it's only okay the the exclusivity discussion i'm sick of i don't know if you're sick of jez i'm sick of talking about it are you like yeah i mean it'd be it'd be great if microsoft could just come come out and explain in plain terms what is and what isn't going to be exclusive because some games aren't going to be exclusive like if they do an expansion for fallout 76 if it's a huge expansion whatever that's not going to be exclusive we're going to we're going to see fallout 76 they're gonna be support on playstation elder scrolls online still gonna be supported on playstation so you know and whatever whatever game maybe there's maybe there's a game in development we don't even know that's under contract to come to playstation and some kind of contract that they couldn't get out of maybe that could come to playstation and maybe that could like you know give us an overview a transparent overview of what is and what isn't common so people would stop talking about it but it's it's probably beneficial in a marketing way to sort of be a little bit coy about it you know be sort of like yeah maybe maybe well maybe and do it on a case-by-case basis because it keeps xbox in the conversation it keeps people guessing it keeps people thinking man maybe i really should pay attention to this whole xbox thing if you know i'm not going to be able to get my bethesda fix fallout 5 it's not coming to playstation and i'm the man biggest fallout fan in the world you know uh that's that's the reality that it's gonna be for a lot of people who've you know resigned themselves to one platform um for whatever reason and i do think there is you know a chance that you know some games could still come to playstation like i say but the vast majority of these single-player games they're going to be they're going to be for game they're going to be four game pass they are game pass games for game pass and if a platform doesn't have xbox game pass it's not getting these games it's going to be on android it's going to be an ios going to be on you on your playstation web browser potentially but it's not going to be native because this is all about game pass and you don't drive game pass sales by selling games at retail on playstation platform that's not how you do it so you know that's the reality of that whole discussion and let's never talk about it again i do wonder i do wonder with forza horizon 5 and 10 million in a week how many new subscribers that drove for game pass yeah i think game pass is going to be a big deal this year you know if i was microsoft i'd be like i'd be looking to do some kind of i don't know some kind of uh some kind of holiday gift deal or something for game pass like give the gift of game pass to this this christmas and it's like you know you get like a little box with a little golden ticket in it and it's your it's your special pass to game pass because i saw i saw a tweet the other day and it was really interesting that it was like in in the era of of dvds and cds and physical games basically being dead what the hell do you buy people for christmas anymore what do you buy people everyone everyone wants to be digital now like i think like microsoft could like make make gifting game pass fun somehow but they probably should have thought about that a few months ago it's probably a bit late now yeah probably yeah i will probably i'll give the gift of game pass this christmas um to to people probably but um you're also going to give the gift of manscaped xb2 that's right um target uh cheney becomes the newest member of the channel appreciate the support enjoy the the emotes and all that good stuff d i d i almighty spartan god has been a member for 16 months appreciate you brother hope you're having a good one uh dean brown says to me legacy games only ever meant elder scrolls online and fallout 76 from the moment phil said that indiana jones the only possible exception i can see and i agree with that um i don't know about indiana jones there's some rumors going around that it's exclusive we'll have to wait and see on that one don't really know hargett also says did forza and halo finally prove that xbox microsoft don't need playstation why does this keep on coming up it sounds like some media are salty i think they're just like well it's not fair to remove the bethesda games from playstation you spent all that money you need to get the money back so you have to sell the games on there but that's not what they're gonna do so it's about growing game pass and getting people in the xbox ecosystem and you don't do that by putting your games on playstation unless playstation allows game pass so you can grow it there but that's probably not going to happen if ever right and face says what's your thoughts on rockstar's apology for the gta trilogy yes i saw that happen today jess what did you think about that them apologizing for for the state of grand theft auto trilogy or whatever i think it's i thought it was pretty cringe because um [Music] they don't care they say they do care and that gta is special to them they don't care i don't think they care anymore i don't think i don't think politic i mean the developers obviously do care but i don't think the publisher cares at all um and it's it's hilarious to me because that's i can't remember his name is it strauss zelnick or something he criticized cd projekt red for not giving cyberpunk enough time in the oven so like that that that whole narrative that he put out there aged very very badly the past year he could have delayed it he could have put it out in a sort of a better state he could have like they could have looked into what modders had been doing with the game and models have been doing a really great job of remastering and upgrading the pc versions of the game but they removed those versions of the game from from access on the the stupid rockstar launcher which literally nobody asked for i don't think they care about the game i think the publisher only cares about money big shock horror and you know i don't think they can fix it beyond like what it kind of is i think that they should have they should have treated it better done a full-blown remake um if they were gonna do one at all i think it's super lazy it's a cat it's a cash grab for the quarter because they've got nothing else and i think rockstar is pretty much dead without without don hauser i think with without dan hause's political clout there they're just it's going to be a it's going to be a studio known for coinch cutting corners moving forward and they've got a lot to prove unless they're unless they want to go down the activision rabbit hole you know or should i say the sinkhole really um the sinkhole i like that i got no faith i got no faith in the down houseless uh take two frankly but you know i want to be wrong i am i do i am someone who airs on the air on the side of cynicism as uh everyone listening to this will know well the thing the thing about the gta is that out of all the companies out there that could put a lot of money into a remaster for their history right like grand theft auto the trilogy is super important to rockstar's legacy it's rockstar i mean they make billions of dollars every year on shark cards for grand theft auto 5. and if you wanted to celebrate your legacy you're the one company that could spend a lot of money on the remaster and everybody would buy the games because a lot of people have that nostalgic is for those nostalgic itch the nostalgic itch for the trilogy right but it definitely seems like they just randall cheaped it right they randall cheaped it they like we're like well people are gonna buy this anyways what's the point of spending a lot of money uh here's the developer maybe they even pushed maybe it wasn't even supposed to come out the next year maybe they pushed it to this holiday because you know grand theft auto 5 slipped um i don't know how much is of this is on the developer they hired i think grove street games uh for doing the port maybe they did it wrong i don't know like how much is on rockstar but like obviously people are upset and you know they say the customer's always right even if they aren't the customer feels like bamboozled where it's like you know i spent this money i expect a certain level of quality for a product and i didn't get it from you um yeah i mean the only recourse they have is to apologize to people who bought the game um but i don't know what they're gonna do to fix it it's like sorry we'll do better but oh well we got your money already you know right i don't know they are really kind of screwing up they're like because rockstar was always that company was just like whatever they put out people are going to just gobble up but i think a lot of but after cyberpunk uh you know without with people not seeing games on other the other consoles and now with like them holding the footage of gta trilogy until like the day before i think people aren't going to give the ultimate that big pass anymore to rockstar after this you know so man i don't know what's going on with some of these big publishers lately they just seem to have given up caring in some ways it really does feel like that and it's it's weird to say or even think about but you know did none of them care anymore have they all just stopped caring i i don't know i don't know how to put it into words like there was a time where blizzard could do no wrong there was a time where call of duty was always seen year in year out as the cutting edge and now now even call of duty's seen its sales decline you know even p people are waking up to the fact that even call of duty's cut and pace job every year in year out like if you look at if you look at like if you look at call of duty black ops cold war and then look straight at vanguard like hard to tell the difference it really is like the ui is all the same cut and pasted stuff like that and you know do they just not care anymore have some pride in your work for god's sake yeah i guess it's like it's it's scary it's scary to me that it's indies who seem to put out the most polished games now what the hell like indies like these smaller companies who don't have access to massive qa departments and all that kind of stuff they're the ones who seem to be putting out the most polished games now well you know what i think it is i think it's i think some of it has to do with the ideology of put the game out we can fix it later we can we can patch it later whereas before during previous generations and even up to like the 360 early xbox one like what you put out you know mattered we're now like you your vanguard comes out or battlefield comes out and it's broken or whatever it's like oh we can we just need to get the game out and we can fix it and we've seen examples of games come out that like weren't great but you know through time became really good and i think that does factor in to a lot of this like some people are like we'll just leave the game out and we'll fix it later and some people fix it and some people don't you know i think like there probably needs to be some kind of government regulation here because it seems to if that is the case if that's if that's the play now put out half finished products and then fix it later and then the customer doesn't know what their intentions are i think that's that's misleading and probably needs some kind of government intervention you know i i don't other companies won't be able to get away with that like if if apple put out a laptop or a phone and we're like oh we we're gonna we're gonna add the the wi-fi capabilities later but then like not reveal it until after the fact or or play it down or something i don't know it's kind of misleading and design designing products with that mindset sucks and um but hopefully you know the backlash starts to make them think differently take two's sh stock is down today activision stock is plummeted for a variety of reasons but let's not forget that activision has nuked their goodwill with um with gamers for games like warcraft 3 which are unfinished and are still unfinished and uh world of warcraft which is on its last legs running running on fumes basically at this point because of the budget cuts they've they've leveraged at these games and um you know people are starting to sit up and pay attention like when i look at why what final fantasy 11 sorry final fantasy 14 well look at what final fantasy 14 is doing what their dev team is doing for final fantasy 14 and compare that to world of warcraft there's no difference and these these are games that cost the same amount of money you know it's like you could you can just see which company has more money flowing into it or reinvestment in the fans and stuff but luckily it looks like the audiences are starting to wake up and be like okay well i'm not going to get cod this year i'm not going to get fifa this year you know i'm going to stop subscribing to world of warcraft and all that kind of stuff it does seem to be that quality has a big issue more recently and hopefully something changes in the future but will it will it really i don't know uh hunter smith says legit our discord chats voice lobbies always turn into a game pass ad since everything we play together is in game pass maybe that's exactly what microsoft wanted hunter also says imagine a gta clone from a from a third playground games team that utilizes the forza driving tech with the third person adventure gameplay learn from fable now that could be interesting maybe maybe playground games could make the gta killer huh um that'd be interesting i i do i am super curious like what um playground games at first like sort of a third person action game is going to look like like fable yeah what is what is fable going to look like i'm i'm super interested uh i'm curious how is he going to feel like how is it gonna how's the combat gonna feel is it gonna feel polished or is it gonna feel kind of janky like state of decay words you know like i love state decay but you got it you gotta admit even if you love a game like state of decay that there's there's a there's an aspect of jank to it i don't know yeah um el paul says mr rdx says something weird is going on with take two i find this heinous any thoughts gentlemen um i mean i don't know do you have any insight in the take two jazz i know there's rumors that xbox was looking into him but like i think xbox looks into everybody honestly i yeah i had heard that i had heard that take two was looking for a buyer last year i heard this so you know i wouldn't be surprised if that's still the case and if that is factoring into them just sort of not being too asked lately you know i don't know maybe that maybe that's maybe that's what it's all about really i don't know who knows maybe i don't know for sure yeah maybe 10 cent will require minority stake in it um and scott says his halo edition series x doesn't work i mean that's awful hopefully uh microsoft will replace that for you uh imagine buying like get the halo 550 bucks you'll plug it in it doesn't work so they'll definitely fix it for you but yeah what else did phil talk about legal emulation he wants uh the industry to support that which is super awesome he basically also said nfts are more about ex exploitive than about an entertainment and we've we've talked recently on the podcast about how like it seems ubisoft and ea are all like nfts are the future but we don't really know how and and here's phil being like yeah i don't know about that um but the big thing i want to talk to you about was game pass because you've had this conversation on twitter you know like you you've talked to other people on the other side of this fence that said game pass isn't making them any money they're burning money you're like no no i know that it's sustainable that they're you know blah blah blah and here's phil basically coming out and saying that it's sustainable so i'll read his quote um he says uh i mean you could do the math on game pass i guess you don't know how many subscribers we have or how much each subscriber is paying but you can make some fairly informed decisions and literally just do the math on what we think game pass could eventually be you can do that on any part of the business but absolutely game pass is sustainable it's not the only thing that's growing in xbox it's not the only focus of the organization and it as a standalone thing is very sustainable as it sits today it's sustainable i know there are a lot of people that like to write that we're burning cash right now for some future pot of gold at the end no game pass is very very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow so any thoughts on this jazz i'm basically phil phil uh telling all these people that they're not it's not sustainable all the concerned trolls basically throwing it in their faces and be like now you don't know [ __ ] you know it's funny because like the information that i had about game pass basically directly echoes what phil said it's like that you know do the math and and stuff like this it is making money and it is sustainable and they're growing it in a very sort of they could they could throw tons of money at this marketing it to hell ads plaster all over the place like they could blank they could do like a blanket marketing approach and you see mobile games do this a lot where like they'll they'll just take right look at right shadow legends for god's sake right shader legends is an example of a blanket marketing campaign where you just you literally can't get away from it every youtuber's talking about raid bloody shadow legends every single one and it's because they're they're sinking a million bajillion trillion dollars into marketing that thing right microsoft could easily go ahead and do that the reason they're not is because they want to grow game pass in a sort of sustainable way and they they take this approach with a lot of their businesses like surface 2. like surface marketing is not you know the most insane marketing i've ever seen they try to grow it sort of organically where it sort of earns its place via word of mouth to some degree you know you do see some service marketing very sort of basic surface level kind of stuff but they don't they don't go like all out marketing services and they don't go all out marketing game pass they really could um but the fact they're not says to me that they do they're trying to like grow it more sustainably through word of mouth and stuff like that they are gradually ramping up the marketing but this is the thing about organic growth it's like as game pass grows you will start to see more marketing you will start to see more of these deals like outriders that we got this year we'll start to see like just a general the service growing quality as they as they sort of grow it organically because microsoft didn't become the most you know the highest value company in the world by you know just blowing all their money away they they have they have done that in the past you know who said we've seen windows phone get blown up and we've seen we've seen them spend billions of dollars on bing and it took like 10 years or more for bing to become profitable but um that's not satya nadella's approach it hasn't been since he joined the company really they haven't really they haven't really took a an approach yet while satya nadella's been at the helm where they've been like let's just throw money at this until people accept it you know they haven't done that at all so far um and i haven't done it with game pass either so all the all the all the deals we've seen for game pass and stuff all that indicates to me that they've um it's all been as a result of the growth of game pass it's not microsoft throwing money into it it's not microsoft like you know [Music] trying to artificially grow it by throwing their wallet around they usually could do that but they're not they're trying to grow organically so all those deals like outright and stuff that was all as a result of the um the profits they've been having and stuff like that oh well you know the revenue i shouldn't say profits and yeah it probably isn't doing a huge amount of profits right now because they are in a growth phase or whatever but it's definitely not losing money as like some people love to suggest and you see that you see these like fanboy fanboy channels and these fanboy arguments on forums saying well microsoft's only doing this because they can throw all their money at it no it's like it's a thing people actually want this is actually working and it's uh it's called c it's really cool to see yeah i just i think there's if you want to criticize game pass there's better ways to go about it than the whole it doesn't make money or it isn't sustainable like i know when you talk about that you're not really being serious because you really don't have an argument right people will be like well if you they're copying netflix but netflix is they're in debt it's like yeah like that that's the business model but netflix is no longer in debt like like i don't know like unless you're saying like phil's lying about this like he yeah he's very much saying that like game pass is sustainable as it is i know people will like well sean laden said that you needed 500 million subscribers to get it work and that spotify never made any money or whatever all this stuff and it's like yeah well spotify also is a subscription service like xbox also sells retail games on top of everything there's micro transactions there's dlcs like someone's could subscribe to forza game pass to play forza and then spend 50 on dlc that's not like a model that spotify or netflix even have it's completely different and that's probably the reason why it works the way it works and it works well um i don't know i think there's also a group of people that don't want to see it succeed because if game pass succeeds than xbox succeeds and they don't want xbox succeeding especially in a way that is completely different from playstation playstation succeeding in the traditional model xbox is like we're going to do something completely different it's kind of a mishmash of everything like we have this wide open ecosystem where all our games are on pc we got this um you know a game pass subscription service where all our games are super cheap we're gonna have so many people play where our competitor is also like they're going about it the old way and if more people gravitate towards xbox's model that means less people might gravitate towards playstations and they see it as a threat so they view game pass as a threat to their uh preferred platform and it really shouldn't be a threat or they shouldn't view it as a threat now if i were to make criticism of of game pass i wouldn't start with the sustainability thing i'd be like is the lineup that game pass has going to grow it into this the behemoth it needs to be like are people really subscribing for the ascent and 12 minutes and the medium and stuff like that do what is that what people want or do people really need the big aaa games does microsoft need to do more to get the call of duties on there the battlefields like games that people want the games that like go throughout uh the the the zeitgeist of the culture right and to grow it like those are things you could ask like is game pass like is the library good enough um and stuff like that instead of instead of falling back on this stupid oh well doesn't make any money like how would you know you're just some dude on twitter you're just some dude on youtube you don't know nothing you're you're not a part of a trillion-dollar business you're not doing their books you're not the cfo of a trillion-dollar company you're just as clueless as everybody else right so what would you know about any of this why should anybody believe you you know what i mean like and yet people do and i don't like to me it's like all right well satya if satya didn't believe in it he would have cut the xbox division already he doesn't like the chaff he gets rid of that stuff he runs the lean mean machine that's the one of the reasons why xbox or microsoft's like valuation is as high as it is i mean you compare it to when balmer was in charge to win when satya was like he has a vision and if xbox didn't fit what he wanted it'd be gone and if game pass and xbox were just burning money with no sight of some sort of growth they wouldn't be investing and they have but like like phil said the math works they they have all you know they have all the the economics worked out and all that stuff so it's like i'll trust their judgment on these things rather than some twitter warrior uh who's trying to defend you know uh playstation and stuff like that so you know this is all this is great at pissing money up the wall that's like it's almost what he was known for you know i i as much as i love windows phone it was a huge huge money vacuum you know competing with android and ios that is very very established huge amount of engineering work huge amount of marketing huge amount of dev reach out trying to beg you know that that to pay facebook for the facebook app that to pay spotify that to actually make the apps for some companies you know to get the apps on their platform they made their own youtube app for god's sake google blocked it hilarious i like that satya nadella definitely wouldn't entertain something that wasn't going to be doing well and they believe in xcloud and game pass so much it's now the the literal it's the literal way they earn their bonuses it's their key performance indicator you know it's it's um it's absolutely central to the xbox mission you know and all the other stuff is like secondary the hardware and the the games like all that secondary to how how well game pass performs but thankfully you can't have game pass perform well if you don't have the hardware if you don't have the marketing if you don't have the games because game pass obviously needs the games so like game pass sort of anchors xbox in the in the world of reality like if game pass is the the way they're gonna grow they're gonna have to make sure all those other things that are necessary for growth perform as well and um you know if they thought this was the wrong direction to go in they wouldn't do it that's why they killed mixer so so easily because they were like well we can we can keep trying to plug away at mixer and investing money into it to try and beat twitch but it looks like we're not seeing that organic growth we're not seeing that organic growth and like mix has struggled to um mix a struggle to actually get any attention during the pandemic which is a huge red flag well while youtube facebook and twitch all saw growth during the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home mixer didn't it didn't see any organic growth and that is like the ultimate red flag so if game pass wasn't seeing any organic growth you can you know that's that would be the red flag too but it's not it is seeing organic growth and i bet it's seeing a ton of organic growth on the back of this q4 yeah i'm sure we'll hear about numbers soon yeah mixer is a good point because i thought they were going to keep that going for a while i thought they're going to be like if we just spend a bit more we just keep it going uh you know it might turn into something but they were just like nope not working we're done we're pulling out like yeah like i said like satya like it's stuff not working they're not gonna support it you need to work and uh they all view like xbox as a high potential high growth like they think you know there's a chance that xbox could dominate gaming in 10 to 15 years if you know cloud the cloud and everything takes off they're in a position to like essentially uh reap all the rewards right so yeah yeah um the other thing that phil talked about uh as well as jim ryan was they wrote internal emails basically condemning activision and bobby kotick for a lot of stuff that happened recently um what are you what are your thoughts on the whole bobby kotek and and phil and and jim ryan putting pressure and evaluating their their partnerships and stuff like what do you think's going to go on with all that well i saw some of the emails too i saw emails on my kibara our old pal from xbox i saw the emails he sent internally at blizzard um yeah the other day i also heard that um people were like people were calling for phil and sarah bond to uh reevaluate their relationship and stuff with activision on the back of all this stuff and you know that that to address it they have to address it because in fact it affects a lot of people it affects their colleagues essentially or the devs devs that used to work at xbox so we're now you know their friends and their work at blizzard i know a ton of people who used to work at xbox who now work at blizzard and they're like they feel trapped in this situation you know they just want blizzard to be good ultimately and it just feels increasingly like that is not possible with bobby kotec running the show because he's proven time and time again that he will protect people as long as they're making him money you know he's in he's in epstein's black book for god's sake so you can tell you can sort of you can infer from you know the kind of company that he used to keep what kind of person he is and he's that kind of person that will go after profits no matter what you can look at just the way he handles all the games right like even if you if you disregard all of the other stuff if you describe the fact that he himself is accused let's just let's just put that to one side for a minute disregard that and just look at the way he's been running all the games you know you can tell from all from the corners cut and the way he treats call of duty the way he treated guitar hero for god's sake they hollered out guitar hero guitar hero was massive absolutely massive franchise but they over saturated it they released like they released a guitar hero like every bloody year like they did with call of duty and everyone got sick of it they over monetized it to the point where like people were just like man i don't i don't want to spend money on this stuff and yeah there were other complications but there was a time where guitar hero was just massive and um skylanders too like they them they did that to death and they completely overdid it and instead of focusing on quality they just sort of what they do is they sort of they get as much as they can out of it almost like asset stripping and then they just park it and give up and they did that with a bunch of their franchises and now i'm scared they're doing it with world of warcraft and they're sort of like they're doing the bare minimum with world of warcraft where it's like that can still trick people into spending money while spending the least amount of money possible to the point where we're going to get a situation where eventually it just dies and then we never hear from the warcraft ip again because they're deciding yeah we've made as much money as we can out of this let's get rid of it before we start losing money that's how activision plays right and because of that because of that mentality like money at all costs you can sort of see how like he would let people get away with the things they were getting away with as according to the wall street journal he stopped people from being fired after they were proven to be harassers by activision's own investigations activision's own hr department recommended some certain people should be fired and kotik intervened because he knew it would hurt the bottom line that's all he cared about and uh you know i think if xbox and other companies really really want to show that they you know against and want against this stuff and want to show that they change the industry for the better they need to stand up and be like make a stand and be like yeah we're not going to do business with activision as long as bobby cote's still there there needs to be some sort of serious change there and bobby kotec is not shown to be a person who he's just not the right guy to run blizzard right now activision blizzard yeah i just he shouldn't be there by activision's own investigation like you know what was it um uh the tryout guy yeah well i think it was like there was like no zero zero tolerance policy for that stuff and then he was found to broke it but it doesn't apply to him you have all these employees signing these like 1300 people that signed a petition to get him removed but like i guess the only ones that have come out are like one percent of the stockholders or people that hold one percent of the stock and bobby katic is like the majority holder so the question is like will this do anything is phil and jim ryan two of their biggest activists biggest partners like that yeah sure you can write the email and be like we don't think you've done enough but like is that enough like it like can xbox and playstation legally just be like you know what we're removing activisions games from the store until you're gone is that like could is that something they could do or is that going too far like it's really hard because i often see this this argument on twitter all the time like um if you boycott the games you're you're only hurting the devs at the end of the day because they're the ones who get laid off like you say bobby kotick's the majority shareholder or whatever he you know he's a millionaire he doesn't care it's not going to affect him at all his money's like in some offshore tax haven and he's not it's not going to affect him but you would think the shareholders who are seeing their you know the stock price of the company that they're invested in just plummet you would think they'd be like yeah like we need to stop this immediately like you need to like pick a successor put them in place and you need to just retire and have your golden parachute and get out and because we need to we need to get our value back right because if this keeps on going on and the stock price keeps on dropping but it's like weird the company's just standing by them even though like i don't know it's just it's it's it's crazy to see what's going on there that's just the thing the fact the company's standing by him says to says to me what what dirt does kotik have on there you know yeah he knows he knows where the dead bodies are buried basically yeah like if if i'm sure there's a there's a scenario where it's like coat is thinking like if if i'm gonna take everybody down with me if they take if they take me down i'm gonna take all of them down so they're standing behind him which is is really strange behavior like there's no like there's no company that i know of that wouldn't wouldn't have ousted him by now there's something really really strange going on here i think and um it's just funny like how much stuff seems to have come out the woodwork since com since journalists like uh jason shree and stuff and the wall street journal since they've started really looking into activision what what they're about and what they've been doing they've been finding all kinds of things hidden in the woodwork and god i bet i bet there's tournament stuff that that like we don't even know about that could come out as a result of this you know and uh the board of directors probably knows that and they're probably they're probably complicit the fact that won't get rid of bobby kozak implies complicity in my view but you know it's it's a mess it's an absolute mess i just care about the devs and them getting you know the treatment they deserve because blizzard have had a horrible few years they've like they've seen they use a base shrink year over year for the last three years i think off the top made they've seen their user base shrink they've had like a load of really bad launches like diablo 2 is like the only one that really did well like they've had two expansions that were poorly received by players for world of warcraft they had warcraft 3 which is like the most legendary rts of all time worst remake i've ever seen in my life um man they've had a horrible few years and a lot of it is because of activision cutting corners you know and for their peace of mind it's it's really funny i saw a meme the other day around i saw a meme where the uh the the director of cd projekt red um like a few years ago he said my goal for cd projekt red is to be as as legendary as rockstar and blizzard now look look at cd projekt red rockstar and blizzard look where they are in this year you wouldn't you would never have expected it it's crazy no you definitely you definitely never would expected it so you know i think that's that's a good spot to end the show but as always we'll take some questions before we head on out so if you guys are enjoying the show if you did make sure you hit the like button and uh subscribe if it was your first time uh me and jazz would greatly appreciate it um yeah and i know jez will have this up uh probably tomorrow morning on all the podcast apps spotify google play uh what else we on apple apple podcast we're pretty much on everything right yeah we're on everything apple podcast any podcast app just search xbox 2 podcast you should find it and uh you know as if you if you want smoother balls xb2 on manscape.com get smoother balls baby yeah um there was also an article that came out today that platinum has apologized to xbox for scale bombs did you see this kamiya has apologized um that's interesting i wouldn't have thought that he'd need to apologize for that well did you see him did you see what he said um yeah i read it he was basically said like they were working on unreal which they never used before and um well here's the thing rand well here's what i said that's him being really humble because i've heard that unreal was forced on them by someone who's no longer at microsoft so i i i feel bad for cameo saying that that they were they were using unreal because i'd heard they were they'd had them reinforced on them by someone at xbox publishing who's no longer there anymore and um and they were completely unfamiliar with it and it was apparent they were completely unfamiliar with it but still they plowed ahead with yeah this needs to be unreal it needs to be unreal whatever um so i i felt bad for him reading that knowing that i'd at least you know that i've heard that they microsoft had mandated unreal so maybe it was just like they'd agreed to it because they because he says in the art he says in the piece that he they wanted uh they wanted to be you know more graphically impressive than than their their in-house engine or whatever well here's what he said was wrong he says we were working in an environment we weren't used to we were developing on the unreal engine we also lacked this necessary how to build a game based on online features the hurdles we had to overcome were very big we weren't experienced enough and couldn't get over that wall leading to what happened in the end i'm sorry to the players to look forward to it and moreover i'm sorry to microsoft who had placed their trust in us as a business partner i wanted to apologize both as a creator and as a member of platinum games so that makes me sad i'm sad bring scarborough and back brings let's start let's start petition guys bring scale bound back thanks hashtag we'll forever get questions about on the podcast uh chennai says still want to know when xbox series consoles start to use those unused features they have also known as velocity architecture yeah i mean you know isn't it being used i don't don't think it's being used right now i could be wrong i don't know much on the tech side uh but yeah the whole rdna 2 feature set and all that stuff that microsoft you know puffed their chest out and beat you know beat their chest you know maybe we'll see that uh next year or year after who knows um but yeah let me take a look and see uh we got some questions here to answer another long show jazz we're over three hours and 15 minutes already people love it um let's see uh bledsoe says jazz back in the spring you and miles were teasing a new spin-off game is that still a thing uh spin-off game like an xbox spin-off game of an ip or whatever but um i don't think it's going to be a franchise you expect basically put it that way okay oh like if you're expecting like a halo spin off or something you might want to temper your expectations a bit but fans of this franchise will be pretty excited about about it um i think it's still coming we've talked about this before and i think you've said this in other places but you do expect 343 to make another game that's not halo infinite right no i didn't i don't well i don't ex i don't i haven't heard that but i have heard they've got another project they're working on right okay oh you mean that isn't halo infinite yeah oh i thought you meant that isn't halo no that isn't halo infinite yeah yeah they are working on another project that isn't highly influenced i know that much okay okay that's definitely going to be been written up in some articles soon uh statue caesar says does the star feel get snubbed next year yes or no um i don't know no well see you have elder like i can already look at eldon ring is going to be nominated god of war is going to be nominated i would imagine horizon zero dawn will be nominated as well like i think you have at least three shoeins for sure breath of the wild two will be nominated if it comes out next year that's up in the air who knows um so you i think you you have three for sure getting nominated so that leaves three other games i think starfield it really depends on how good it is and like how early people have that to review because as we've talked about forza there's some question about when people were playing it and you know if they knew they could update their ballots is the same thing going to befall starfield that's the question um i kind of think i i'm of the opinion i think starfield i think they're going to nail starfield i think todd howard bgs they want to prove to the world that fallout 76 was a fluke and that some of the recent projects like you know like uh that people weren't a fan of like we are going back to core bgs this is what made us popular this is what we're doing star field's gonna blow your mind so i kind of feel like starfield will be nominated but with that release date and if if keeley doesn't change anything then i don't know man i'm i'm gonna say yes though what do you think jess if you had a bet now yes or no if i had to bet now i'd say yes i've got like that they were on a they were on a they were in an interview recently and they were talking about how single players are dna and you know xbox gives us the opportunity to go back to that it's like i always theorized that when bethesda had that sort of crappy few years they were trying to see if they they could function as a games or service company but it's just not it's just not in them you know it's just not in their dna um so i think they're going to nail it because they they've been able to make the game they want to make fully single player rpg operation engine you know what they're known for and what they what they're good at you know so and they've been working on it for a million years so i've got pretty high hopes for it i think it'll be nominated uh kl says uh rand can just write an article about the bots on the microsoft store and how microsoft haven't implemented a protective measure against the scalpers last night the halo series x were gone in 60 seconds is that is that something you're interested in writing about is that is that necessarily bots or is it just a hundred thousand people with the same idea trying to get a console um i'd need to confirm that there is actually bar activity on the store but that's something that's hard to confirm really yeah i don't know it sucks either way you know that there's not enough stock but that's just the time we live in sadly yeah and i think that's that's all the questions i see in chat so um that's going to be the end of the show we appreciate everyone being here on friday i hope you guys enjoy the rest of your weekend play some halo infinite multiplayer or maybe battlefield at that's more your speed uh sparx wants to know if either starfield or god of war will get delayed again i don't think so i think they're both going to launch next year although i guess who knows with kovit and everything going on but i would imagine both get both come out um sherman jacobs wants to know does forza motorsport get nominated in the vgas no if forza horizon couldn't get nominated for game of the year then forza motorsport is not going to get nominated for game of the year it'll probably get nominated for racer of the year but uh yeah not not uh not game of the year uh straight duval says rand do you think the halo campaign could have released early hmm yeah i guess that's the question jazz could they have released the halo could they release halo on the 15th because we had the preview on uh before that and the multiplayer released like do you think it was possible to release everything on the 15th or were they still work i mean because they said they just went gold today um so i would imagine they know then i don't know i think they could have done uh based on what i've experienced i think they could have done but then you'd have a lot of pissed off retailers because like for retail thing they they were able to do with the multiplayer because the multiplayer's not coming to retail right true um the the campaign is going to be retail game and and retail is really complicated and messy and all that kind of stuff so i think it would have been because of the retail stuff it would have been problematic but i think if retail wasn't a factor i think to me it felt polished enough to have launched but maybe there's like a little little few bugs here and there that want to fix up and maybe there's you know stuff more stuff they want to implement that isn't in the preview build i don't know but um what i played felt polished and complete frankly yeah yeah um ravenblaze says rand i believe that all xbox studios old and new will be working on more than one project at a time playground has fable and forza what do you think yeah i think that's a fair assumption i think the majority like i don't think compulsion is working on two games i don't know if you can just uh what uh actually oh wait a minute we okay code name velvet is actually a compulsion thing uh-oh but i've heard that very early in development okay so basically they're already they're already looking what comes after yes okay they're already looking about but they wouldn't be working in development no but it's not but it's not like obsidian who's working on like four games at once essentially yeah or playground who's working on two um i think most studio how many is in exile working on are they just working on project cobalt or they have something else yeah i think in exile is all in on cobalt right now i think they're trying to make their magnum opus they're you know after they've uh you know they've finished all their obligations to deep silver wasteland threes the silver published game uh they had contracted for two dlc they've made those now and now now the entire studio is ramped up and they're all working on cobalt which looks like it's going to be a sort of fps rpg in the vein of their world maybe but um you know with within exile's very unique sense of humor it's really funny it's like you know a lot of a lot of xbox studios have like a unique sense of humor like obsidian has a sense of humor that's it's quite political in a way um you know ironic and sarcastic and then like you got rare sense of humor which is quite silly and cute and light-hearted and a bit maybe a bit rude at times and then you've got in exile an exile sense of humor is dirty and naughty bit filthy you know inexoral sense of humor is makes you blush some of the stuff you haven't played wasteland three man but some of the quests in wasteland 3 are so screwed up it really makes me think like if i ever meet the writer i've got questions for these people now but um but yeah that's in excel it's it's fun because their games have like such different tones to them and uh yeah um nick nick tubby says will they acquire skybox they have worked exclusive with microsoft for a decade i mean i guess your guess is as good as mine on that one um moller x wants to make are they like supports i think there's support yeah uh mahler x says if all 20 million game pass subscribers did the three year gold conversion that's 181 million up front which totals 3.6 billion enough to sustain them for years um and three deer says you say starfield would not be eligible for game of the year because it releases on november 11th but fallout 4 got nominated for game of the year and it released on november 10th i'm not saying that the nomination windows have changed slightly year to year so and after after all the drama that i caused with my yeah the forza stuff yeah after all the drama i caused with my not very particularly well thought out article they might even revise it further i would imagine um but who knows and shout out to pong soul who says he appreciates us both brothers thank you for the friday awesomeness during work and thank you pong for always tweeting out the show uh giving the 10 minute countdown and uh i hope to be in a podcast with you soon brother it's been it's been a while uh pong souls he's always uh you know he's a big member of the community and uh he's not he's like oh he's on on like every podcast and he listens i mean he's here three hours in three hours 20 minutes in uh listening to the show still he says he knows my tell he knows what i'm actually like saying something that i know and is not like just a random guess like he knows it so you know punk's poncho's awesome so i appreciate everyone being here guys um hope you have a great weekend um play some more halo infinite and we'll be back next week hopefully on friday to talk more about you know what's going on in the video game industry hopefully that we'll have some stuff to talk about uh xbox and who knows what's gonna happen maybe we get halo player numbers i don't know but either way have a great weekend and keep a game

Channel: Rand al Thor 19

Views: 174,271

Keywords: xbox, xbox series x, xbox series, xbox x, series x, xbox one, xbox one x, xbox series s, series s, xbox series x/s, halo, halo infinite, halo infinite campaign, xbox game pass, game pass, phil spencer, xbox 20th anniversary, xbox podcast, the xbox two podcast, xbox series x news, xbox series x games, xbox games, xbox exclusives, xbox series x exclusives, xbox 2021, xbox update, xbox news

Id: tlhrbkhj0VY

Length: 205min 10sec (12310 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021