e [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a [Applause] [Music] now [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] now [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] a [Music] [Music] okay all right welcome welcome welcome to the Xbox 2 podcast and this should be a uh well I mean angry I guess uh disappointed maybe disappointed is more of the uh the tone that this show will probably be going for a little bit uh I'm here Rand thor9 the man with the million and with me blizzard fanboy his heart is hurt he's bleeding he's not having the best of weeks my BFF je Cordon window Central in the house hi Rand I mean yeah it sucks but sucks way worse for everyone else who got laid off that's really where the thought process is right now what a horrible crazy week and another reminder of the horribleness of capitalism in general but we'll be speaking about that in a bit um and uh it's not all going to be Doom and Gloom today as much as it probably should be but um yeah what a what a horrible week this has been it's been one of them horrible horrible horrible weeks in the industry and I think this is only the beginning sad to say but hopefully there's better times ahead for everyone involved yeah you know it's kind of funny last week everything was on the up and up Xbox uh developer direct look really good some great games coming this this year with hellblade 2 leading the pack in May my most dissipated game of the year uh and then like following week it's just like oh bad news here we go I I think didn't you share the meme with me a while back it was like one week it's like here's this news like Xbox is back and then like the next week Xbox is Dead Xbox is boom and then next week Xbox is back and the following week Xbox is dead it's just kind of this uh up and down uh roller coaster roller coaster of emotions and jazz is a very emotional boy Jaz is very emotional I am I am not emotional I am 100% rational all times no emotion in fact I'm basically a robot I have no emotions I'm emotionless I am absolutely emotionless but yes it's Xbox 2 episode 30 301 301 are you sure not 302 no no that La last week was our 300th episode which was uh incredible we've been doing this for almost seven years 300 episodes and uh this is now 301 so hopefully another seven years to come hopefully another seven years to come what would the video game industry look like in seven years from now on Episode 600 could you imagine could you even forecast it'll be like all artificial intelligence Gam games being played by artificial intelligence players being reviewed by artificial intelligence game journalists and then the rest of us are just sort of plugged into artificial intelligence like the Matrix I guess that's that's that's where it look like right uh P pukan I guess Pokemon says at least this podcast has 100% retention rate for seven years running without firing anyone that's true that's very true that is true that is true yes we have we haven't even fired our graphic designer Sean laber I know the one and only uh Neo gamespark um yeah he Neo games Spark's got to be loving it because he's got infinite wealth to play so I know he's in his bag right now and uh he says only time jez gets emotional as if he's without Hines beans that's true that's a fact man I think like I don't I've told this story a couple times but I've I've become allergic to pulses after having an infection a couple of years ago so I haven't been able to eat beans for a long time without getting really sick so maybe that's just where all the down the downfalls started happening maybe he's completely right man tough times tough times in the the world of the world of being connoisseurs yeah and uh you know I I sent out a tweet recently asking people what should be the next long game I play because I I think what what I didn't really I finished Prince of Persia which was amazing by the way I think we've talked about that now in like three episodes in a row but I want to reiterate that Prince of Persia is amazing please play it because I don't think that game is going to sell very well unfortunately it should but I don't know if Metro redania sell well at all really um so I was like okay what do I want to play next because as much as I want to play like a dragon infant wealth I haven't I've never played a Yakuza game well actually I have tried playing an Yakuza game and Neo gamespark is going to be upset with me about this but I tried playing Yakuza zero a few years ago and I think I got to like chapter 3 and I just couldn't get into it so I stopped playing it right uh but then I I ended up getting like like a dragon which is the the game that came out a couple years ago and I it I got it early with the Xbox series X right as part of like the review process we got a couple games and it was like okay well we you remember this Jazz we Microsoft sent us the Xbox series X there was some games we could test out to go with some of the reviews and one of them was like a dragon and I was like okay I'm GNA I'm I'm gonna play like a dragon right it that that's like forgot about the turn-based RPG one everybody says is great so I was starting playing it and I was enjoying it but I got to this thing where like it was a bug with the versions We had where it wouldn't load past like chapter three and it would just it would be like come back when the game's fully loaded and it would say on the door I couldn't get into the door it was like and it was like it said like 100% like basically it was waiting for it to be loaded but it was already completely loaded right and I'm like so it was a bug and I had to wait but then I never went back and play it because sometimes I just that's just kind of how I am and like I've always I have it installed and I always like was like I'll come back to this at some point and then you know you look at the the beginning of this year and you got three bangers right off the bat right Prince of Persia Banger 87 on Metacritic right which is probably I'd give the game a nine personally but you know an 87's pretty great and then you got Tekken 8 a 90 people loving it you know and I like Tekken but I don't like Tekken like I love Mortal Kombat for instance um and then and then there's infinite wealth the like a dragon game that was also like a 90 and it's like whoa what is there's all these games and it's like well I need something to play but I like I can't play Infinite wealth because I haven't played like a dragon or any of the other Yakuza games uh you know in cognito tell me no just just play like a dragon and then play Man Without a name and then you can play that and it's just like but I I also got to play cyber Punk and balers gate and yeah so I put out that tweet I was going to leave it up to you guys about what should I what should be my next long game and I I the options were cyber Punk like a dragon uh what was the other one uh Liza P because I also kind of interested in playing that and game is fantastic Final Fantasy 7 remake because when remake came out when remake came out uh I was halfway through the game on like chapter nine and then war zone hit and me and my buddies got addicted to war zone for like 300 hours and I never went back to Final Fantasy 7 remake make so I was like well we know we got rebirth coming out here soon should I but I I was leaving up to the people and obviously cyber Punk won so that's going to be the next long game I play but there is a part of me that kind of is looking at like a dragon and being like H maybe I should delve into this you know so you gonna ignore the Democracy what do you no no no no no no I'm not I'm going to go with what the people suggested I'm going to go with cyber punk you can't ignore the people I know I know the people but I also there is a part of me that it's like very much just like man I may I should also play I need to play like a dragon at some point you know yeah I'll get I mean I'll get around to it next I want I want to do it too but um I've been playing uh Persona 5and person finally finally huh yeah I've put I put like another 12 hours into it the last couple of weeks um so yeah get in there slowly slowly slowly slowly because um I've decided to skip this Diablo season rant why why have you decided to skip Diablo season three it's not very good it's not very good I I mean anyone who's paying attention will know there's a huge amount of drama about Diablo I this current season cuz it's really bad it's got like these traps that kind of just interrupt the flow of the game like Diablo is supposed to be about you know killing things quickly and just doing loads of damage and you know and they they've added these dungeons where it's just like okay stop and wait for the trap to go away it's like waiting for um waiting for an elevator or something it's like like I'm it's so it's so bad like I can't for the life of me trying and can't for the life of me work out why they thought this was a good idea so everyone's mad and Diablo said they're going to change it so BR you just died in your pal World footage I just died some dud with guns just killed you you didn't tell me there was dudes with guns in this game did you not know this I didn't I haven't I haven't seen I haven't seen anything from Pat World once people are like it's Pokemon with guns with Arc survival elements I'm like oh two things I hate okay moving on you know what I mean like well I'll tell I'll okay then well in that case well I will tell I will tell you my experience with power world before we move on well no I mean we we we'll say we'll save the power world stuff for a little bit later this is so like the intro of the podcast we were just kind of riffing a little bit you know riing I've been playing p as well so I'll talk about that in a bit so Jaz isn't very happy with Diablo season 3 right now um come back come back for season ended yeah and you know what's funny you know what's funny oh look miles D the dev is in the chat look at him miles miles devp miles devp but you know what's funny my tweet about what I should play next so many comments about pal world so many comments yeah dude I I think you should play power world because it's Pokemon right which you hate true and it's crafting mechanics and that you hate hunger and cold mechanics which you hate uhhuh and I want to suffer so this is like the ultimate game that makes you suffer right this game is like pure torture to you no it would be yes yes but people people are like Why didn't put this in the poll Rand I I didn't put Power world in the poll cuz I knew it would win what I'm not stupid I'm not dumb people would have seen power world in my poll and then they would have picked it just to spite me and I would have been like I'd have to play power world even though a couple of my buddies are playing it my couple of my buddies are pretty going in strong but they love like that survival element stuff and I can't I just can't I can't do survival element stuff so this officially has to retire Randall trendy gamer I can no longer be the trendiest gamer if I'm not playing the most trending game of all time Jaz so I think we well you see I think we've officially I think we've officially come to the conclusion that I'm not Randell trendy gamer so NOP no NOP no now you see we actually had this discussion in the Xbox 2 Discord no no no no no no no which you guys can join discord.gg xb2 we actually had this discussion about whether or not you're a trending gamer now because you didn't play power world but I was trying to explain to people that I call you a trend trendy gamer right right you're kind of like you're like a gamer hipster oh I'm a hipster now oh you're hip so maybe maybe calling you a trending game was was like the wrong was it it was like a misnomer maybe you should you should really be called the Hipster gamer because sometimes you don't you refuse to play a game because it's popular and then it's like huh that game's too popular for me I've never said that in my life I only play artistic games that are like that are that are analogous to my amazing taste in books you know like a like like a like a hipster and a snob you know oh believe jez so so power world is sort of like it's too popular to play so you're refusing to play it for that reason but I'm not refusing to play it because it's too popular so that kind of goes out the window doesn't it well that's what you tell people I that's that's what I know so Randall trendy gamer is dead we we'll say about that we'll see about that bro you're the one playing power world you're the one playing the trending game well I mean I'm doing that for work bro I'm doing that for work oh you're doing it for work okay yeah yeah I'm just doing it for work I also played I played a bunch of trending games this this week week I played in shrouded which kind of had its lunch eight by pal World unfortunately and shroud is like another Survival game but it's got like it's got almost like a heavy Zelda vibe to it it's kind of like valheim with a budget so like it's it's kind of like breath of the wild meets hardcore survival game you know and it's people are really excited for this game and it's doing pretty well on Steam but I can't out but feel like it'll be so much bigger if it wasn't for world right now so I played a bit of enshrouded very very good very fun very cool going to play some more of that probably I also played bullok and um Falconer Chronicles I don't know if you've heard of this but um Falconer which is an indie game from uh Tom Salah um was a sort of like a flying game where you fly around on a falcon and kill stuff really cool um he's made a city Builder based on the same universe with a really interesting intuitive ultim atic city building feature which is really addictive to use weirdly it's like the most intuitive and addictive Bas building mechanic I've ever experienced I've been playing that as well you know like my base Builders mhm yeah so I'm the trending gamer now I guess you're just always' always hipster gamer you're the Hipster gamer but anyways I want to thank every everybody for uh being here for this episode 301 for the Xbox 2 podcast on this wonderful January 26 well it's no longer freezing cold here in Chicago so I think what was it last week it was negative degre here uh maybe like I think I think they said on the news it was like the longest streak of the cold the longest cold streak in Chicago history since like 96 and oh wow it was frigid or whatever and in fact like two weeks ago we didn't have the show because the blizzard had started and my power was out so this week we're it's it's a nice baly 42° outside in Chicago what's that what's that in real I don't know what that is in real You' you'd have to do the calculations yourself but it's but it's nice outside it's 42 Dees although it has been raining the last couple days so all the snow that was on the ground is essentially all melted now so it's basically like that blizzard never happened so if you guys can do us a huge favor make sure you hit the like button please and subscribe if you haven't already uh we appreciate each and every one of you who Tunes in live as well as listens to this later on iTunes and Spotify and all the great places you can listen to podcasts um but we do have uh we do got some some housekeeping to do before we uh move on with the rest of the show uh we have a sponsor jez right for this episode we do indeed and it is once again the illustrious well hold on on Tamala Tamala says you don't live in Chicago Rand you live in a suburb I know but the thing is nobody would know where it is if I said where I live I live like 30 minutes outside of Chicago so I say Chicago people know where Chicago is I'm not going to be like I live in this Southern suburb of Chicago because people be like where's that it's like it's literally I live like 30 minutes outside of Chicago 40 40 minutes depending on depending on traffic like I can get to downtown pretty damn easily you know what I mean so for all in sense purposes like yeah I live in Chico I don't live in Chicago but like I live in the southern suburbs of Chicago so I'm sorry because if I said where I live one one I don't want to say where I live because you never know with crazy people right two if I said it nobody would know so it's just easier to say I live in Chicago I live 30 minutes away you know so there I do I do this I do the same thing like no one knows my town so I just say I live in Birmingham yeah birmingh and I don't even know what Birmingham is anyway so it doesn't matter to me right you're like you live in Birmingham education American education system being what it is I'm not surprised about this right but anyway let continue we we have a sponsor for this for for this episode we have a a wonderful testicular sponsor this week R from a lovely Partners over at manscaped yes and they have a Valentine's Day message for all the lovely people in chat what is this accent going on here I don't know man just kind of felt it's valent it's my Valentine's Day class it's my it's my Valentine's Day it's my sexy Valentine's Day accent oh my Lord I don't know what that means I don't even want to know what it means but this week's podcast is sponsored by manscaped roses are red roses are red violets are blue trim your balls and your date will thank us too what's up fellas Valentine's Day is knocking and manscaped is the remedy for the love duct the are you going to be get through this chz are you going to be all right we're doing it we're doing it okay is this is this is this your Riz Voice by the way is this how you rised your girlfriend is this how you is this how you R Jen when she comes over oh God shut up this is yeah this is that's Riz that's what the kids say right I got the Riz the Riz yeah so manscaped is the remedy for what the love doctor ordered man I wish people would stop resing me in OverWatch so can read this manuscript manuscript his prescription the allnew performance package 5.0 Ultra designed to elevate your grooming game and shine like the heart throb you are are you a heart throb brand no I'm not Neo gamespark and miles are though so yeah true so Neo gamespark and miles should buy manscaped and let's talk about the hero of the Valentine's Day the lawn mower 5.0 Ultra this electric trimmer features skin safe technology guarding your pday treasure against any grooming mishaps it also comes with the brightest LED spotlight yet it's brighter than your best romantic smile perfect for precise grooming even in the trickiest of spots oh and it's waterproof too making showerer shaves a breeze for the best boxers formulas razor cologne and much more join the 10 million men worldwide who trust manscaped with our exclusive [Laughter] offer go to manscape.com to snag 20% off and free shipping with code xb2 that's code xb2 in the checkout at manscape.com and check the description for more info and thanks manscaped for sponsoring this Valentine's Day episode of the Xbox 2 podcast the Xbox I mean it's it's pretty good give give me a WR give me WR 10 for the uh it's one of your best I think it's one really I I thought it was I don't know what what do people think about about that one I'm gonna I'm going to I'm going to change up I'm going to change up I'm going to change up the accents I'm going to start I'm going to start practicing other accents and I'm just going to start offending different countries maybe I'll do like a Scottish next week and oh God no oh God no this is bad this is a bad idea we'll get we'll get ourselves canceled bro I start doing accents of different countries and get ourselves cancelled I need to learn Rams accent or maybe I'll just get an AI to do it I'll just do could maybe you could do that I'll still I download your voice and then I'll try in a large language model to like to to do your voice and then I'll make you do the podcast every week or the robot you Captain crun says I'm not being honest oh oh damn I mean damn that sucks damn damn that sucks I'm I'm H broken bro yeah so you know Valentine's Day is coming up if you want to look your best for your lady friend or your guy friend we don't judge um you know use manscaped code xp2 a checkout get 20% off free shipping a lot of things there you can use to make yourself sexier to the person who's attracted to you or who you are attracted to you know spice up the love spuds indeed B indeed uh so we also have the wonderful people at patreon.com xb2 uh make sure you put in your questions that thread has been up for a couple days now uh we also have the shout outs so we're going to get through those right now we got therus holy Dark Death Steve Stompy Peter B James wiso tricks are for Trey the Gran is the bip battered hadock Army dude Army dude 52c Ryan kipple foreign object Mythic Marty moronic donkey 99 mazilla randor 19 silus Eric Gregory Elijah Vasquez James Moore Fantastical Halo is the goat krio bright tunder one discarded Caboose Justin duel Frank Mariano PB broking Asen Madison Grizzly mofo OG Governor Grim Dey huffin wagerman achievement the Scarecrow 121 Darren tropy Prof JJJ Ghost Face Killa and wolf Kang kpz thank you guys so much for supporting what we do on the podcast um Tuesday we should be doing Xbox ultimate should be a lot of fun uh we do have I think what two guests lined up for February actually for the first time we're going to be trying to do more of we know we we' talking about doing like two Xbox 2 plus 1es a month but you know sometimes between jez's travel schedule and and like other you know the our guests you know because not everybody can do the the time or the day it can be a little little hard to get uh people lined up but I think we actually have two lined up for February so that should be pretty good um but yeah thank you guys for supporting us over there and uh yeah Xbox 2 ultimate on Tuesday should be a pretty good one I hope hopefully everybody enjoyed the episode with mvg modern vintage gamer I believe that is now live for everybody right jez on your channel yeah it's live up on my channel live up for jez's channel so uh we have a member chat here from silus for three months says Rand have you thought about adopting a dog yeah yeah CU it's almost we're getting I mean it's not been a year yet since Shakespeare left us uh have I thought about it there are times when I think about it for sure uh there are times want to meet Shakespeare bro I mean I know he did the only one he was able to meet was Cognito D and you know when when he saw Cognito outside he started barking and and my you know Shakespeare was a huge dog so when he barks it's very loud and can be kind of if you if you don't know him you might think like oh man he's going to he's going to attack me but Cognito was a little wary of coming in the house like cuz cuz Shakespeare could see him from the patio and he was just barking at him and then I open up the door and Shakespeare's just like you know kind of like sits sits on his haunches and then like Cognito comes in and like Shakespeare's Tails just waging and just just wants to be petted and you know he gives him his paw and they just kind of you know bonded a little bit but yeah the only one who got to meet him was um was Cognito when he came over when did when did he come over is this just it wasn't this P was it no it was two summers ago it wasn't this past year but it was the year before so 2022 when uh he was in Chicago he came over but yeah I mean I've thought about it you know sometimes sometimes you know when you go up when when I finish the podcast like normally I'll be down stairs doing work doing you know that's kind of where I do everything I need to do and when I would like head upstairs like as soon as I would start heading upstairs like he would know and he would be standing at the top of the stairs waiting for me to come up so I could like pet him and you know give him a treat or whatever and sometimes when you know when you go up there and he's not there it kind of gets you down you just kind of remember like oh yeah Shakespeare used to be waiting for me like right here you know what I mean and then you think about that and you get like really sad but I haven't actually given it I mean there's times where you think like God it' be nice to have a dog but then it's like do I want to cuz we we we we had you know we've had we've had three dogs in our life right we have had three dogs Casey which we had from a puppy uh she was a mixed terrier and we had her for 14 years uh then we had Barnaby we got from a puppy like when when he was like 3 weeks old and you know the end of his life wasn't great cuz he ended up getting cancer and it was just awful at the end like he lost all of his fur he really couldn't walk cuz his paws were always bleeding and it was it was very bad end that is horrible and then we we We rescued Shakespeare who was already like four years old at the time cuz we didn't I don't know we didn't feel it was right to like get another puppy after we just had a puppy so we wanted to like honor Barnaby's like memory you know what I mean and so we like rescued a dog who you know could could have been killed and yeah I don't know like I sort of like I don't know I I don't want to really train another dog I know because they're a lot of work dogs are are a lot of work had a cat yeah I don't like cats you don't like cats I I just don't I don't know I I don't want a cat I don't like them I don't like cats I didn't used to like cats until I met my girlfriend's cat love cats now you love cats yeah fair enough I just I'm just a dog person but maybe I'll get a dog eventually in the future but not right now uh jok my girlfriend's cat was so leit hum drum says Xbox third party now this fir Phill booty and Stewart man you want the whole team gone huh you want everybody gone hum drum is one of those he's very much like everything needs to be exclusive and if it's not everybody needs to be fired and all these layoffs guess what everybody needs to be onone yeah I mean I kind of have a good picture of what's going on with that now maybe we can talk about a bit later I'm also kind of tired of the topic but it's happening it's happening yeah so I think we did say move on I think we said in the last podcast we weren't really going to talk about it until it actually happened or didn't happen officially either way I will say it's definitely happening so anyone who's got hopium or copium like Xbox isn't doing this it's it's it's happening like it's not all games it's going to be select games of course but it's happening and um other companies will do it too yeah but there's no there's no reason to discuss it until it actually happens so yeah I don't know I we don't don't know when it will but that's when we'll talk about it y uh nobody says what's up guys GNA be a fun show today it's always a fun show thanks for being here uh Joe Repco AKA flame remember 31 months says hello Xbox 2 I can't believe Xbox took the biggest W of 2024 with P world and Then followed it up with a big round of layoffs sucks man yeah yeah it sucks you go from the biggest of pies to the lowest of lows that's what happens silus says is genbox 360 an ex of jez oh oh okay is genbox an exgirl friend J what's going on she's just a really good friend me and Jen we've we went to school together oh um okay all that kind of stuff went high school together me and Jen super close so excellent excellent okay fair enough uh Jay Foley says jear Rand do you have any updates on what's going on with the Fallout 4 series X update have a good day you two I mean I don't have any updates but I would imagine if I had to guess you know if I'm put if I'm putting my prediction hat on although not the prediction hat you guys think you know the TV show comes out April 12th which is still a couple months away I would Hazard a guess that the update for the next gen version for Fallout 4 will be around that time frame around the time of the TV show I'm really looking forward to that yeah because I mean I like Starfield don't get me wrong but I I really feel like it didn't have the staying power of a Fallout it just didn't not it didn't have that it didn't have fully what I was looking for from this kind of game you know like even even Elder Scrolls has more violence in it so like the combat just got style for me you know and it's fine that he got style for me cuz I put like 200 hours into it you know but I put like 400 hours into a Fallout and God knows how many hours I put into scy him so I'm like I'm hoping Fallout I'm looking forward to Fallout cuz I never did Fallout Falls DLC okay so you didn't do right I didn't and everyone said that was great so I'm looking forward to experiencing some of this stuff be like a new game for me so yeah I'm really I've never played Fallout before I didn't play it I know it came out the same day as rise of the Tomb Raider which I always I did find it weird that cuz Microsoft had the marketing for Fallout 4 and then they also had the exclusivity of Rise of a Tomb Raider if you remember I'm sure you do remember the cluster [ __ ] that was the rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity talk at the time uh it's it's it's so crazy that everyone was mad in hindsight in hindsight now how [ __ ] weird and crazy was it that everyone was so mad about tomb rise of the Tomb Raider being exclusive and then all that's happened since then how weird does that I mean it's that it's it I I don't know I wouldn't necessarily classify it as weird it was just a bunch of entitled people being like what do you mean I can't play the game that I want to play on my console it's I mean like even from the media and stuff oh yeah the media after the way the industry remember the Xbox because the media hated the Xbox One the media presented Xbox as a joke right and but people really like Tomb Raider at the time like Tomb Raider the reboot I think the first one came out in 2013 on the Xbox 360 PS3 right like before the new consoles and then here's rise of the Tomb Raider which I believe was I believe wasn't on the 360 I believe it was an XBox One exclusive exclusive right wasn't on past Generation Um I don't think no I don't think it was and people and it looked really good right like and people were devastated the media was like how could this be how this isn't this isn't right and the fir like first questions that so when does this come to PlayStation you know so much so that like Xbox had to give PR and then Square Enix had to give PR and all the these weird responses that you've never ever seen ever again from any journalist asking questions about any of like Sony or Nintendo's exclusivity deals so when's when's it come you know You' never heard like with with Final Fantasy 7 remake or for spoken or whatever so when does this game come to Xbox you know but but for whatever reason the media just had it out for Xbox in that time frame and they were just not having this whole you know Tomb Raider exclusivity bit right but I I did find it weird that like here's the game that you had marketing for with Fallout 4 releasing on the same day that you have this exclusive Tomb Raider you know you think maybe you would sort of break that up a bit or whatever but I ended up playing Tomb Raider and then I never I never went back to Fallout 4 but then judging from what people talk about Fallout 4 afterwards it's like maybe I dodged the bull I don't know cuz when you ask people about Fallout 4 some people was great and then some people tell you it was [ __ ] dude it's it's it's Fallout 4 is weird right because in terms of role playing in terms of story role playing it was a big step down like none of your decisions really matter or very few of them matter however it did have really great characters and the combat is fantastic and the Bas I mean I know you don't care but the Bas building mechanics is really cool as well and it has these like spectacular setpiece moments which sort of elevate the experience but like like a lot a lot of people say it's like the worst fallout Fallout game you know it's like it's a great sort of almost I hesitate to say this but far cish game you know where it's like the emphasis is really on the shooting and the spectacle not so much the role playing so I gave it seven out of 10 when I reviewed it so you like Starfield better I yeah well it's it's weird right it's weird cu when I at the time when I reviewed Fallout 4 it was sort of like it was just at launch and it was a bit buggy compared to to what Starfield was polished compared to Fallout 4 at launch but um but yeah I did it left a really sour taste because of that the story stuff but I think like when you I think Starfield has a better story and I felt like a lot of my decisions mattered more in Starfield the combat in Fallout 4 was just better overall because of the violence so but I can't give a game a whole point for violence maybe or detract points from Starfield for not having violence because that's just a that's just a me thing right I mean you you told me that you didn't care about it having violence or not which is why I didn't I didn't hold that against the game you know yeah you were very much like I need Gore and it was just like it's about it's about the impact that the guns make if I hit someone in the face with a shotgun there should be some feedback should be some feedback bro I don't know that's a a that's a tangent but whatever anyway anyway what's next R yes anyway so that's so that's one you know I expect the Fallout stuff to kind of coincide with the TV show uh maybe at the start or maybe when it finishes maybe people I know if the show's bad maybe it won't matter too much but if like the show's good people might and we've seen it with other shows that that have a game related content maybe not so much with Halo but we definitely seen it with Last of Us where it was like a good TV show does draw people to play a corresponding video game in the series right and the first trailer for Fallout looked like it was going to be something really cool I'm really interested in checking it out when it hits on an April so and there's and considering like we've talked about before about 2024 being a Lighty year for games well I guess it's depending on your preference like if you're loving jrpgs maybe it's not a light year in the beginning of the year right because you have infinite wealth and you have Persona 3 Reloaded and you got Final Fantasy 7 rebirth so you're eating good but if you're not into that and maybe it's a little bit you know little bit on the the drier side in comparison to last year so someone from like me who's like GNA be delving into their backlog might be like you know what look Fallout 4 does have a nextg patch even though you could have used the mods to get it to 60 or whatever like may maybe it's like hey you know what I I'll finally get around to playing Fallout now because I have the time instead of all these games that are constantly hitting because when you look at like last year it was like man it was just like game after game after game and it was high quality game too it wasn't just like you know bad game it was like here's a great game and here's an amazing game and here's a standout game and here's a really good one and here's a really fun one it was just constant you know so yeah um let me get back to I dropped the thing here what was this okay we have uh senior Bean saying says Halo season 2 looking good excited question mark yeah you know the I've seen Pablo do a lot of PR for for Halo season 2 uh condemning the love scene between him and that Covenant lady uh you know he said that was a mistake and then saying how basically season tw's way better they got rid of the showrunner and a bunch of writers and all the trailers does make it seem like this is the Halo show everybody wanted I ended up not watching season 1 but you know if if the reviews come out and all the people I trust in the community come out and who are who who told me nah it's not worth watching Halo season 1 because it's bad it's bad show right uh but if those same people are like yo they did it Halo season 2 is you know amazing then yeah I I'll go have you watched any of the new trailers for the Halo I know how much you love Halo Jaz have you seen any of the seen any of this stuff well dude I told this story before like when when um I was in a pub a few years ago when the first season come out when was it last year the year before um the Halo TV show I think was two years ago I think ago so I was in a pub and there was like there was people at the table behind me they were talking about the Halo TV show and how good it was but they were all saying like we haven't played the game so it's kind of like they like that H TV show as people who hadn't played the games and I kind of feel like that's where the that's where the the balance and the needle is difficult to thread when you're trying to make something for TV versus the fans and like it's kind of like what the the the actor's name I can't remember his name we'll just call him special Nick the spe the special Nick act who plays Mass aieve because he looks just like special Nick it's really weird um uh he was saying that um people wouldn't engage if he kept his helmet on all the time you know cuz PE people are annoyed that they takes the helmet off because Mass Chev takes his helmet off or we don't see him take his helmet off or whatever um and then people were people were saying like well look at the Mandalorian you know um but I think like at the same time everyone knows the mandalorian's mask or the helmet right I mean does is massach Chief's helmet that iconic and ubiquitous outside of American Gamers I don't know if it is man not in the same way as you know the the Boba Fett iconic mask or whatever but I mean it's it's it's it's not really the point I wanted to make the point I wanted to make is that like trying to thread the needle between what Gamers want what producers think is the best and also the the Casual audience who doesn't play Halo never played Halo and probably never will play Halo how do you thread that needle right maybe if it was like a mega franchise you know like a Star Wars then you can get away with sort of doing things a little bit different um because the brand alone will carry it or Pokemon for example you know obviously Pokémon's been on TV a ridiculous amount but I've been watching this Pokemon stop motion cartoon recently you've seen on Netflix they did a stop motion Pokemon cartoon series which is really cute and really endearing and um it's kind of like that they can play around with that stuff cuz it's such a big franchise and you don't have like an army of Mega fans who were just like oh every single detail has to be perfect and Flawless but it's not realistic to get everything right but I suppose we'll see man I mean he they've said they've they've said things that they agree were wrong like M Master Chief getting getting it on that's really that feels wildly out of character for Master Chief yeah um and uh you know and I I in a big Halo guy but I just it's not it's not massach Chief and it's you know I just it's that that was just weird like it's like it's almost like the the kind of that we have to put this in to prove we're a mature adult rated show you know um which is just you know ridiculous but hopefully the next season's better and hopefully it bodess well for the future of you know it's coming soon I believe it's February 6th or February 8th so season two begins on Paramount plus which I think they said was their one of their best performing shows so even though season season one was panned by fans it was a good performance show it had decent reviews from CRI and it performed well so yeah that's what I'm talking about like there wouldn't be a season two if it wasn't performant yeah um well but especially times of like but now imagine if it's actually good and the fans like it the critics like it you know more people probably check it out and watch it and then you can keep on going and have they haven't even got to Halo yet you know it's like I I think I think they're doing the Fall Of Reach storyline this season so I haven't even done it hasn't even really been a season on Halo which is you know the game maybe you get there in season three maybe you get there in season four I don't know but I mean the reach storyline is fantastic and turned into is that there's no FL has there been any flood in it yet I'm guessing no right I don't think [Music] so I'm going to watch the Halo show man I'm going to watch I'm not a huge Halo right so I'm going to watch the Halo show as a guy who doesn't care about Halo and I'll tell you what I think do that next week yeah how long is it how many episodes prob I think it's Eight Episodes oh that's easier I maybe like eight eight or 10 I it's weird because it used to you know I remember watching Lost and lost was 20 episodes or like you know like shows on the the big networks back in like the 2000s or whatever it's like 24 episodes and then like the Netflix model came in and it was like 12 was kind of the Target and then it was 10 like now you still get episodes that are like around 10 but I just watched Reacher season 2 which wasn't as good as Reacher season 1 and that's like Eight Episodes um I'm I'm I think I'm a lot more forgiving than a lot of people when it comes to medeor adaptation cuz you know I I just kind of like I just kind of get how difficult it is to sort of get the audience on both sides to enjoy it I mean The Witcher show was like the the weirdest one because you have fans of the books you have fans of the games who aren't even aware there is books true and then and then you've got to also make a TV show at the same time like the fact that they were able to and the people running the Richard TV show hated the books and hated the video games so yeah report and thought they were thought they were they could do it better than the author right I was just more talking about how we went from TV shows that used to be 20 episodes in length to essentially you know 10 episodes Eight Episodes like the bearer which just won the best uh Emmy for best you know comedy TV show and is one of if not the best TV show around has uh eight episode seasons and one of like one of the modern sci-fi Classics three body problem uh is getting an adaptation at Netflix starting in March and I believe that's going to be like six episodes or eight episodes so I don't it's just weird to go from you know 24 episodes for a season to like only six but then but now everything takes longer right now I'll tell you something right that is that has been the historical standard in Britain six episodes yeah but six epis like an hour and a half though right no six episode 30 minutes when I was growing up that's what TV was like you know and then I remember the when I watched house I watched house um because cuz Hugh lry was in it and I love Hugh lry from his British stuff that he did and um I was like oh everyone's talking about house I I was shocked first of all how many seasons there were already and second of all how damn long each episode was and um that was when back when I used to watch a lot of TV shows while grinding mines in World of Warcraft and being unemployed um but that's that kind of stuff was alien to me it's like the very American thing like like xfiles too like bro these episodes are long I mean long episodes are great I I I'm just kind of lamenting how you could count on a TV show to happen every season right every year there'd be a new season of the show and it would be 20 episodes and now it's like all right we have time uh Eight Episodes and you know we we it aired in 2023 see you again in 2025 it's not even like every other it's not even every year it's like every other year at this point yeah you know with which yeah I'm not necessarily a fan of that but either way uh thank you Windows XP for the Super Chat no message aquinox says hello friends I'm from Morocco especially on your podcast Jaz I hope you'll convince Rand to play pal world yeah maybe maybe we'll we'll do like when I well I'm kind of holding off on playing power world hardcore because I'm waiting for dedicated servers so maybe when I get dedicated servers we can convince ran to play and make an Xbox 2 dedicated server that we can invite everyone too from the Discord right cool and then Rand has no choice but to play achievement says the media hates Xbox so much they can't talk about power world and Xbox together it's all PC if it was PlayStation exclusive that's all they would be talking about so I'm kind of I'm kind of liking it actually do you know why why you mean you like the game or you liking the discourse no I like I'm liking the fact no the discourse that a those a lot of websites are boycotting the game or whatever a lot of journalist media websit I'm loving that fact because we're mopping up all the traffic I you're seeing how many power guys you sent me that Meme someone made where it was like was pal Central now with you with the machine gun yeah yeah yeah yeah so someone in someone in Windows Central oh I think it was Jen actually they made they made a meme of like the the power world Pals in like a a factory sweat shop and then photoshopped me in there saying oh we're pal Central now like forcing everyone to work yeah it's been it's been amazing for traffic so uh since we're uh on the subject of power world I suppose we'll talk about it right because this is kind of extending into last week into this week uh probably well some some good news before we get to the bad news I guess um yes so power world is taking the internet and gaming by storm nobody could have predicted this right it was a game that I think I've seen in trailers a couple times it was like the Pokemon ripoff that everybody talked about and it finally released last week I think on Thursday maybe Wednesday night and literally just became the biggest thing on Steam ever right like passed up hogw Legacy concurrent numbers and cyberp punk and Elden ring like every single day you would tune in it would be higher and higher and higher to the point where I think it's like the number two alltime uh passed up CSO like I I think it maxed out at 2 million concurrent players on Steam uh and like every day you would look on their Twitter and it was just like another million right so I think uh their last update was a couple was not necessarily yesterday maybe it was yesterday but it was like 8 million in six days 8 million copies sold only on Steam too they weren't given any Xbox numbers um 8 million on Steam in six days which is like eye bogling uh right it is why aren't they giv the Xbox figures I don't know but we is that Microsoft proprietary information or something potentially commission potentially I don't I don't know why they're not giving any of that um but we do know that it's doing pretty well on Xbox as uh as well uh Matt piscatella had shared something where he basically said hey on the 22nd the uh daily you know user count of Po World exceeded that of fortnits and that the average playtime of a power world uh you know session was like 200 minutes or something this is this is Early Access too we're we're witnessing yeah we're witnessing the birth of a new the next Minecraft are we you never know you never you never know about like the longevity of set I'm I'm I'm convinced you're convinced okay this this game will have huge longevity it have a huge amount of legs like you can keep adding new Pokemon to it Pals whatever I keep calling them Pokémon theying Pokémon and we'll get into the discourse around that in a minute but um they keep adding new Pals they can add new land masses they can add new guns they can add more stuff they can just keep it going and going and going in perpetuity Microsoft's helping with the server stuff and you know Microsoft obviously has a huge opportunity there as well to you know maybe lock that down I doubt that will but um as of right now it's kind of like it's a that's such a huge win it's a huge coup for Xbox whoever whoever whoever Xbox landed that game needs to be some like promoted or something but um I think I think it is the birth of the next big thing I really do I don't think this is a fad I think it's going to stick around unless Nintendo sues them into obliv yeah we we'll get we'll get to that but so it's doing amazing on Steam right uh it's doing pretty damn well on Xbox though don't have the numbers all we have is kind of Matt piscatella information but we do know that it's like the most popular game on game pass for sure we've seen those charts I'll just check I'll just check the list now on on on the UK store the the most most play I I don't think game preview games show up in most played games though so I don't think you'll see it in that chart yeah oh right yeah oh that's what wait what I'm last is a top top paid game in the UK right now not top paid I was talking about top played but either way uh it's doing this is the thing like cuz like even with the Insomniac leaks we had uh a while back it was like Spider-Man 2 you know $300 million budget sold like5 million in 11 days and all this marketing Spider-Man the most one of the most I should say most recognizable IP on planet [ __ ] earth right 5 million1 days for Spider-Man and here's a game that probably had no marketing budget at all is made by 15 people you know not like in the Insomniac team and and in San you know wherever they're located in I think California or wherever their offices are 15 people who knows how the budget for this game probably I mean how what do you think the budget for this game is 10 million maybe 15 million if even if that they say didn't they say they found their weapons designer in randomly in arrest something something like that and no marketing they took a Game Pass deal cuz I mean you know they hey we want to make sure that at least we can make more games take the Game Pass deal uh Early Access which by the way Nintendo and I don't think PlayStation e they don't like it's kind of like an XBox exclusive by default because PlayStation doesn't allow Early Access games on their on on the PS5 like they don't it's like one of the reasons why like pubg was exclusive for year to Xbox is because PlayStation doesn't allow Early Access so here's a game in Early Access and there's like here's the Game Pass deal and suddenly it's they're going to start allowing it after this I bet you it's the biggest thing in gaming it's the biggest thing right now in video games period right and it's just like this kind of what made me think of was uh some of the FTC leaks that Phil Spencer email that talks about million budget $7 million $7 million budget and the game sold eight million copies in six days I don't know if it's at 9 million yet uh we don't know what their game pass deal is I'm sure they probably have Clauses in there for like time played which they're probably destroying so they're probably going to make a pretty pretty damn uh Hefty uh haul off of their game pass stuff and all the other things that you kind of go along with it and whatever sales on Xbox right um but it it sort of reminded me of that Phil Spencer email from the FTC leak where he talked about like how the big Publishers uh really they they used retail as a moat to protect themselves uh like you know their their retail uh model as like you go to the store and you see the big games right but basically the democratization of the digital store now you have Spider-Man 2 and you have alen wake 2 and you have all these high budgeted AAA games on these store shelves next to these really small Indie projects right and we've seen a lot of the big big games in recent years sort of come from uh Indie Studios and here's an example of it $7 million budget game no marketing anywhere and it's the biggest thing in gaming going so as far as to out sell bigger games with much more marketing and a fraction of the time it just really kind of hit home was like yeah that is true like the retail model really helped uh protect the Publishers back in the day and then once that was gone they really haven't uh they they use like the money that it would take to build these big AAA games as their moat and the licenses and stuff but and but then here's a game uh just come out of nowhere and just basically destroy all that and I and it's incredible like as much as like the idea of this game doesn't appeal to me like Pokemon something I don't like Arc survival something I don't like I am impressed by the success I just look at it it's like damn look how crazy this is doing every single day a new million you know sales and then what it's doing on Xbox it's like holy crap this wasn't supposed to be like this right nobody was really talking about power world in this way um like they are with other big games and it's just you know second biggest game concurrently ever on Steam right I that this is something like every game wishes for right I don't know I think it's an incredible success story um and I know there's been talk that Xbox should acquire the studio although like you know talking about acquiring Studios after Microsoft just laid off 1900 people is probably like whatever but I I have seen people say like Xbox should should lock it down or Xbox should uh extend the deal I I think you did tweet that they one of the issues with the game is that the versions are mismatch but then Xbox is helping out with that right yeah so yeah the the version of power world is a couple of patches behind and also um the team didn't really have the networking knowledge or the capacity to bridge Steam and the Xbox ecosystems at the moment but Xbox is on the case essentially so you you've played the game right we we have footage here of you playing in in your stream for like two hours or whatever how how you how you feeling about this game and we'll get into the other other Nintendo Shenanigans and the death threats and all the other lovely discourse surrounding pal world so let let's put the discourse aside and the Pokemon aspect of it to one side and talk about it purely as a game right so purely as a game when you set any sort of nostalgia or IP stuff you know discourse we're going to talk about that in a minute you put that to as side it's it's it's like it's well made right and overall it's still very early access e which I think is why people forgive it shortcomings because they they're on ashamedly Early Access textures aren't amazing the audio is by the way this is speaking strictly about Xbox I haven't experienced the steam version of the game so like my experience will differ slightly from yours the audio is messed up uh it's crackly and weird and there's a lot of the texture textures are awful in some places and um you know the animations are weird and pathing is insane in some cases and the the game has a lot of is issues but again it's unashamedly early access the one thing that it didn't do on me is Crash so it at least has that going for it didn't wipe my progress like um you know again this gate did so um it has that going for it as well so like all the sort of core elements of what make the game functional uh there and present right um so but the I think Donna taku says in chat Som really well it's a well-designed game but it's not a well-made game yet because it does have all these polish issues and pathing stuff and all this kind of stuff but conceptually the game is brilliant and it kind of like what it does is it stream a lot of the pain points that a present in Arc and a present in Conan Exiles which are the closest games comparable I haven't played a huge amount of Arc but I have played quite a lot of Conan Exiles because you had rag all penises in it which I thought was hilarious um excuse me so I play pause what's going on sorry what what what what what' I say I I don't know something about ragd dolls ra rag doll penises bro con and exil look okay I thought it was hilarious that con and Exiles had ragd doll penis physics that were banned in America but weren't banned in Europe so I was like I'm going to experience these European ragd doll penis physics so you played Conan to experience dicks yes yes I did R physical dicks physical dicks yes okay and um yeah I thought that was hilarious so I played conon XL quite a fair bit and which is which again was was a good game I played it quite near to launch but again it had some of this kind of janky kind of issues and all these kind of Jank stuff I don't know if Jank feels to be like just a part of the course with these kind of games for some reason but um what it does really well is like it it Blends that kind of the um the uh the Pokemon aspect of it the capturing the little cute monsters it's sort of it it Blends that with the survival gameplay so well so like you you can capture the pals and like in Conan Exiles Conan Exiles you have THS which you can like you can capture capture NPCs and make them work in your base you know and and slave them basically like per per the Conan law and universe right um but powerwell does a kind of similar thing but it's just super intuitive you basically capture the pals you put them in a Pokeball and you install the Pokeball in your base and they just automatically start working start doing stuff intuitively so like if there's like something needs to be crafted they'll do it if something needs to be harvested they'll do it if they've got like this the appropriate skill and that's where some of the management comes in it's like I need this Pokemon to do that and that Pokemon to do this they automatically start tending your Farms so some of the some of the tedious stuff in in like a survival game you hand that off to your pals whereas it like in po p and this is something Pokemon fans have complained about for years with Pokemon you get your Pokemon you stick him in the box and then you never see him again you never touch him like I pay I pay a subscription to Nintendo Rand I pay a subscription for Pokemon home which is a cloud storage device okay for your Pokemon right and I pay Nintendo I think it's like I think it's it's not a lot of money I think it's like $20 a year I pay Nintendo to store Pokémon that I had for decades in their Cloud servers so I never lose them and I've that's a tax I will have to pay for the rest of my life right but those Pokemon are just sitting there in a box doing nothing whereas in this you the Pokemon work on your farm they they they they protect your base they they do all this kind of stuff your base can get raided like random random monsters will come and attack your base and then your Pokemon will just sort of like fight back and there's like a little army war kicking off like all these sort of Concepts work really well and they they work they do it so well you know and the thing is I've tried to do this in Minecraft I've tried to achieve some of these things in Minecraft where like you build a base and you can get raided in Minecraft too since the ill update but like I've tried to like I tried to do things where like I want to I want to have a populated town in Minecraft and I don't know if they've they've improved this or train changed this in Minecraft to make it easier or maybe I was just doing it wrong I don't know but like in order to get in order to get the villagers where I wanted them in Minecraft it was like this huge uphill battle where I had to sort of kite a zombie to where I wanted wanted the Villager and then use an item to convert use a rare item to convert the Villager in the the zombie villager into a regular villager and then like the next time I logged on the Villager had disappeared like he'd been killed by a mob or something I don't know but like so so it kind of streamlines that sort of whole fantasy of having a little base a little army of dudes doing your bidding it streamlines that whole process and kind of a lot of the a lot of the features in Pokemon that people want to see Nintendo do and people have asked them to do like building a base because there was a Pokemon game on Game Boy which did let you have a base and there there was like um there are Pokemon games that let you ride some of the Pokemon and stuff but it's it's of it's so often that you just stick the Pokemon in the box and forget about them whereas in this they're a huge part of the gameplay Loop so there's so much stuff in this game that is really welld designed and like people people in the media and even other game devs aren't giving it credit for the stuff that it does well man a lot of the stuff that it does really well they just um they aren't giving it credit so um yeah that's my kind of experience with power world with putting to side all the rest of the stuff it's like it's a super well-designed game I think the game's going to have legs I don't think it's a fad I think like when they do these updates and they they polish it up and then they start adding new content to it new pals new bosses new dungeons cuz there's there's all these other aspects to it as well there's like Dungeons there's like bosses you know boss battles Big Boss Battles huge PS you can capture all these kind of there all these extra layers that you discover more and more as as you play um and the game's got serious legs man and yeah the discourse surrounded it though is sort of taking the Shine off the game a little bit how aware of you are how aware of the discourse around pal world are you random I mean dude if are tell us about it to the point that I had to mute the word POL on Twitter or X because it I know we talked about before that the Starfield discourse was maybe one of the weirdest ones I'd ever seen for a game right uh how even it was used to comparing it to like other games of the genre and it was just kind of used as SEO bait for a lot of a lot of art articles and stuff and it was just this weird uh this weird game that had this weird Fascination surrounding it about the reviews and the score I even saw like Jason shrier talk about this in his article where he like blamed the high score of the Metacritic on Xbox fan websites on Metacritic which was like very weird you know what I mean like it like Starfield discourse was just on another level I thought until po world happened and I think po World Takes the Cake because yeah you have this game and it's like a combination of all these things it's a game that you know with accusations of AI right so people are like they used AI to make this game or make parts of this game or make parts of the pals and then you have the Pokemon stuff where it's like a lot of this is just Pokemon and a lot of the designs are pretty eerily similar to some of the Pokemons right so you get the Pokemon fans and Nintendo fans upset right um and then you you have it being super successful to the point like Beyond Hogwarts Legacy and cyber Punk and all these other games and it coalesces into this I I don't know like I've never seen so many game journalists or even some developers show their ass on a game like this before right uh talking about like people were saying you shouldn't play this because of the AI aspect which there's even some talk that some of those uh claims against it were fabricated uh or whatever and then there's the whole Pokemon aspect of the game where like were like Nintendo fans were upset that they were essentially ripping off Pokemon and I and I to the point of like death threats where like the community manager for the game or where the developers of the game had to come out and say no there have no death death threats from Xbox PlayStation or PC users but he didn't put Nintendo users in there like I don't know if that implied Nintendo users did send death threats about this game and then you know so there were a lot of journalists basically being like you're going to get sued by Nintendo or whatever and then summer journalist like you can't play this game it's Ai and all this sort of stuff and then like Pokemon finally said something um they released uh they released a statement that it was there uh confirming an investigating investigation into if a game they wouldn't even mention the game infringed on its IP rights quote we have received many inquiries regarding another company's game released in January of 2024 we have not granted any permission or the use for the use of the Pokemon intellectual property or assets in that game we intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any ACC that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokemon we will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokemon and its world and work to bring the world together through Pokemon in the future and then you so you have this right and people are cheing like yeah get them sue them uh but to me the statement's more like stop telling us about this game like they literally lead it off with we've received many inquiries regarding another company's game to me it's just like yeah we know about this game please stop emailing us and adding us on on X to be like get them right and and then on top of it like you know you have the recent Pokemon games that are rash I mean you you said it not me I mean you you know how I I I spoke about Pokemon Sword the only one that I've ever played and I said that game was one of the worst games I've ever had The Misfortune of playing in my entire life so I'm not a fan of Pokemon and this is a multi I've said I've I've said it before and I say it again the only thing carrying the modern Pokemon games is pure Nostalgia Nostalgia right Nostalgia and I I have 300 hours in sword and shield like I looked I looked at the Metacritic for sword and it's like an 80 and I'm like how's this game an 80 this game is awful it's awful in every way imaginable uh to me it I'd give the game like a 40 right but like they never improve and they never get better every single release is basically the same problems and here you have you know a a a game similar with similar concept a little different gameplay for $7 million and it does so much so many things better than Pokemon's ever done but they're like the multi-billion you know billion dollar business and they're getting shown up by this small Indie developer and Nintendo fans are upset Pokemon fans are upset PlayStation fans are upset that the biggest game of the year so far is not on their platform like they want to play it they're they're not part part of the conversation that's another thing I sort of realized is um man when PlayStation fans aren't really included in the conversation with these games they there's a lot of entitlement that goes on I especially when you like you you when you with the p po World Xbox fans too sure I'm not saying I'm not saying they don't I'm just saying it really became apparent this week because it was an Xbox developer direct where they showed off like hellblade 2 and AOW and Indiana Jones and you could tell they wanted to play Indiana Jones because they're making up oh the the first person uh you know motion sickness stuff clearly a game that they wanted to play and are hoping it comes to their platform uh and then power world on top of it a game that's just blowing up the industry by storm and it's not available on Playstation neither will Indiana Jones and I and it's sort of like wow okay like you can sort of see like some of these some of these guys are really upset by finally there are some games that they want to play that aren't on their platform right because they feel entitled uh to have everything essentially so the discourse for this game is absolutely crazy it's absolutely nuts uh I see I saw you going back and forth with some people on Twitter about it um I don't know what else to say other than it's just weird because it's for a game that I have no strong feelings for either way you know so I'm kind of just on the sidelines just watching I'm like on the sidelines you know with some popcorn just watching Everybody attack one another for whether the AI or the cop you know we're copying and it's kind of just nuts bro seriously dude I've I've had re I I'm like friends with a lot of game game divs right I've had really quite you know serious arguments about this um like close friends of mine who were like you know we have to agree to disagree about it right because you know a lot of a lot of a lot of the discourses from game devs right is kind of like and I think there's some valid points to be made here there's there's this disturbed about how close some of the the designs are to existing art assets right so it's kind of like um people were trying to first they said AI had done it and then they said they had ripped the models out of the game and then edited them but that was proven to be false as well most likely so but even even without those the food bits right some of the designs of these creatures are blatantly lifted from Pokemon like they you can't it's undeniable like I was walking around the starting area and I saw a dragon looked just like Goodra from you know Pokémon and it's just like they've just color swapped it and added some leaves and it's just like yeah okay and I do think right going forward they'll steal they they will steer well clear of trying to emulate any Pokemon's designs that being said Pokemon has a design for every single animal on earth there is a keyring Pokemon Rand a Pokemon that is a key ring there is an ice cream Pokemon round so how do you make an ice cream pal that differentiates from Pokemon in a meaningful way a lot of these uh Pokemon have basically turned every every household object into a Pokemon with that styling right and so it's kind of tough if you want to use the Pokemon style which they have and also so make lots of designs that don't completely Riff on existing Pokémon paradigms so I kind of see why some people disturbed by it but at the same time I'm also I'm a blizzard Fanboy but I'm also a Pokemon Fanboy and we've you know at least in terms of my childhood Nostalgia I grew up playing Pokémon my entire school was obsessed with Pokémon we all got in we all got in the schoolyard with our link cables and game boys play Pokémon we bought the cards I was just one of the people of that age it brought me a lot of Joy right I bought every single Pokemon game ever made and I even bought the new ones Scarlet I think it's called but I haven't actually I haven't actually played it once I just bought it because it's Pokemon and I've got all the other ones right um play Pokémon go and all that kind of stuff but I am I'm like unlike the other Pokemon fans I am celebrating this game I am celebrating this game and why because it's going to kick Nintendo up the ass it's going to be like oh snap we've just had our lunch eaten and we've got a game now that we potentially can't do anything about from a legal perspective because we will set weird pre precedence about what constitutes a homage a parody and all that kind of stuff it's not necessarily a road Nintendo wants to go down I don't think um but we'll see what happens you know some of the Pokémon some of the pal designs are really sus you know about how close they are do look pretty similar I yeah some some some of them there's some quite original ones but some of them look super sus but at the same time some of them are just birds in the Pokémon style which is difficult to diverge from in any me meaningful way you know so it's it's a tough one it's a tough one you know and if it does go to court it's going to be very interesting but at the same time like I want Pokemon to have competition because the last few Pokemon games have been fullbore trash and I don't know why anyone would defend them like when I see these games selling 17 million copies and you know I see game journalists Bend overa backwards to give these games 9 out of 10 I sit there thinking if if XBox had released this exact game one to one copy exact game with like slightly different branding it's not Pokemon but it's like a knockoff like palor or something or Viva P or Viva pñ if it was Viva Pata with that kind of quality it would be it would be like it would be five out of 10 or lower on it would be like it' be that Year's joke game Nintendo be like yeah it's the nintend it's the Nintendo tax rebate you know so I don't know why Nintendo gets to get away with all this stuff you know you know um the the the recent Pokemon games were buggy they were broken they were laggy they were ugly ugly as hell they they you reuse the same assets over and over and over and over again with not without adding any new animations it's like it's the height of laziness and I I would like them to have some competition please to make better Pokemon games and I would I would I think it's weird that a lot of people don't want Pokemon to have any competition call me crazy but I think competition is what would lead to having better Pokemon games so that's kind of my take on it so I I get that artists and artists and game devs and Publishers are disturbed by the fact that that the they can sort of Co-op the designs so brazenly in some cases and they did so like there's no but but it's also there's a parody element to this game there's a parody element of this game something like if you've got like if you've got a Pokemon using a shotgun that's hilarious to me and it's not like Pokemon don't have guns too I suppose like blast Blastoise or blasts as Rand once called him did I call him that yeah you called him blasts and a previous show he he's got cannons coming out of his back right um there's a bunch of Poké with guns but this like it plays like a parody you know and even like when you read like some of the the dialogue um and stuff and and they're talking about being P car is talking about being eaten alive by Pals and stuff it's kind of like the dark of it's like the dark vision of Pokemon you know it's like cutesy on the out on the outside and then it's like damn there's some there's some dark stuff going on in this game you can butcher and eat the pals bro you can shoot a pal and then take it to your base and cook it to me in a frying pan dude um you know so there's there's sort of like an element of parody there as well which I'm sure if it did go to court they would argue that point that it's it's a parody you know it's a parody but yeah I want I want intended to have competition the game's very well has some great Concepts very unpolished needs a lot of work and also the game has disparity between Xbox and PC but they'll fix all that um so yeah that's kind of like the whole Pokemon thing I think as I think just to just to round off this discussion about power world before we get into the this the sad stuff asman gold who is um for those who don't know asman gold is kind of like famous huge content creator he's he's kind of like known for Warcraft content originally but now he does he does like everything comments on everything now he he said on a live stream and then said re WR on Twitter I think he's basically saying like addressing the discourse and and there was like it was just like nobody cares if this is a ripoff in essence I'm paraphrasing it but no one cares if this this is a ripoff or if it is made with AI or if they did lift the assets they just care that it's a fun game and that's why it's blown up like it has it's it does a lot of it takes away a lot of the the sort of the irritance of Arc and Conan and even Minecraft and stream lines them in a hilarious and cute way you know it's hilarious that I could make a force a penguin into digging for me in the mindes it's just weirdly hilarious well this is that's kind of how you know the people don't care people don't want to know how the sausage is made right yeah but this is this is kind of like beyond that it's like it's not even about the sausage being made it's just like people are preaching at Gamers and saying like you shouldn't enjoy this game because I said so and it's just like make make a fun game you know I mean and I I I do fully appreciate this the sort of idea that it's disturbing about the art stuff which is why I do think they'll address that with future designs you know I really think they will diverge as much as they can from Pokemon designs in the future so they can avoid this kind of criticism and I will I do think the one of the reasons it blew up is because you can say this is Pokémon with guns you know I in a microcosm Rand I kind of I kind of experienced this on Windows Central because we wrote an article about the thur have you heard of the thge yeah I've heard of it the thur is an upcoming action RPG from 11-bit Studios they're publishing it I can't remember who the developing is but 11-bit studios are publishing it and 11bit Studios publish like really great indie games and we wrote an article about the thge and in the top title we were just like the thge is a is 11-bit studi dark and twisted vision of Pokémon that article blew the [ __ ] up man and like just because we'd give it that Pokemon Association made the article blow blow up and people like oh wow dark and twisted vision of Pokemon I really want to see what this looks like that's kind of what the thge is in a way you play you play as a dude who can summon and capture demons to do his bidding it's like it's a it's a story based it's a term-based it's like a it's almost like a jrpg if it was Western it's like a a a dark 18 rated jrpg it's really it's a really unique blend of genres but the the game playay revolves around cap exercising Spirits demons and then making them do your bidding you know like a bit like Pokémon you know so just the the mere Association of Pokémon made this game blow up but we've seen this time and time again fortnite did it to pubg for God's sake you know and like we've seen other games Riff on other games and it's like can can Pokemon gatekeeper genre is that is that what we're talking about now like vampire survivors was not original either they they borrowed that auto batt thing from a b a bunch of Android games which are doing it because you know Android games were thinking like well it's hard to control these kind of games games on a phone what if we made it so you didn't have to really control anything and yeah and then vampire survivors took that remixed it with Castlevania which nobody really talks about either in like vampire survivors is this Indie darling which a borrowed its concept from an Android game and B basically you know paid homage quote unquote to Castlevania but no one was mad about that no one was mad about that Rand but people mad about this and is it not the same thing or at least similar in a way am I crazy around for thinking that you know did you remember do remember when do you remember when Crafton sued games over fortnite and then what happened nothing came out of that but yeah they backed out because it was it wasn't never going to work yeah it's true it's true uh well Don ataku of course he has St show something you know he says please stop saying Nintendo when talking Pokemon he does he doesn't like that he he doesn't like it because Pokemon's Pokemon right so Nintendo's got nothing to do with it [ __ ] man I'm sorry I hate this narrative like oh it's it's the Pokemon company it's game freak they own 30% of it you're telling me they've got no say and no control over their exclusive of course they do of course they do so when I say poke when I say say Nintendo with relation to Pokémon it's just it's just me saying whoever's responsible for it and Nintendo is at least culpable for 30% of the [ __ ] going on with Pokemon franchise yeah uh Super Chat Dan says it's a myth that PlayStation doesn't allow Early Access because they had temptem a Pokemon clone in Early Access exclusively on PS5 for a while uh just James remember for three months says I I wasn't planning on playing po World until I watch jez's live stream now I'm level 10 I love it what do you think Nintendo will do about this game I don't think Nintendo's gonna do anything about this game honestly I don't I don't think that Nintendo or Pokemon are going to do anything about it um RDX on Fett says Xbox should buy po World company or make them second party or make Po World permanently console exclusive Xbox has caught lightning in a bottle love you guys yeah so what do you think about that you know this game's exclusive for now uh usually early the access games tend to be exclusive you know however long they take to come out like a year maybe this game is exclusive for a year but because of how successful it is I've seen a lot of fans being like Microsoft should you know make it fully exclusive forever or buy the company or what have you that they've caught lightning in a bottle they need to to do it they need to promote this the need to sell console bundles with it you know like get your Xbox series s bundled with pal world and stuff like that right I'm sure you've seen some of that uh some of that some of that uh discussion on various social media webs uh what do you think about that the idea of like hey you've struck gold now you you need to go beyond like you need to lock it down completely or buy buy the company like I will I will say that like I've kind of spoken to people about this and like I've asked them I pretty much said the same thing what do you think about this and I think what what I was told was basically they're not thinking about this right now they're just trying to develop the game we're trying to support them as we can and I don't think they they'd appreciate us turning up with a contract right now so like you got you got to appreciate that aspect of it as well they're playing with they they they're in a situation where they''re being ex there's a huge amount of expectation and they do have this lightning the botle scenario and you you even you were sitting there questioning like is this is this going to be a fad is this going to be a thing cuz people are going to be like expecting fixes and updates really quick now the dev the dev's working on this they have a real opportunity here to to sort of eventually cash out and exit and make billions you know become set for life you know so they're like working flat out to to create a future for themselves and their families and all that kind of stuff and you know right now doing contract negotiations and you know trying to explore cuz it wouldn't just be Microsoft trying trying to buy this stuff it'd be like they have to they have to do like this whole thing and it would take a lot of focus off the game so I don't think they're really caring about that right now and um I don't think Microsoft's going to try and you know mess with proceedings or mess with their relationship with them to to you know make that happen you know but who knows what'll happen down the line you know um there's some you know Microsoft isn't going to stop buying Studios you know we're going to talk about that in a minute with you know as of about all the stuff that's happened this week um but um I mean clear it's clearly it's it's clearly become a desirable property right but I suppose there's there's a lot of there's a lot of minutia that needs to be considered before just like oh send them a load of money send them write them a check and they'll do it it doesn't work like that man doesn't work like that but even if it did it wouldn't be exclusive so it's it's yeah it's one of these thing you know what it reminds me a lot of although it didn't blow up in the same way is um high on life last year high on life you remember how like well it did on game pass last year where they even talked about how it was like the biggest third party game on Game Pass maybe ever or whatever you don't remember that in December of uh 2022 um yeah I mean why why does it remind you that it reminds me of the same way because people said the same thing then Xbox should make it fully exclusive because remember it was exclusive for a period of time maybe like six or eight months that Xbox should make it fully exclusive that Xbox should buy squanch games you don't you don't remember the same exact conversation people had last time they had like a big exclusive sort of blow up out of nowhere it it eerily reminds me of it like this one's big a big time excl you know Big Time blown up and like the same conversation is like you need to make it either permanently exclusive or you need to buy the company it's just it's just weird that it happened with high high in life you know last time a exclusive game became really popular people said the same things you know although this one's like way more popular right cuz it's doing number just sort of wonder what's the what's the number on on on Console like what's the number on Xbox what's it doing on PC game pass uh in comparison to steam like if you were to add everything together What's the total number of sales or What's the total player count you know uh since they're only sharing the the the steam thing but hey you know this is the another another example of like you never know what's going to be successful in the video game industry I guess I mean did and initially did you think a Pokemon like surv Arc Survival game would be the biggest thing on PC in Forever probably not right it's funny right because we do we've started doing this analysis as a company to track games that we think will blow up and the analysis did say that it was going to blow up but I looked in it I was like nah this analysis is wrong so clearly I was wrong um but yeah it's uh I don't think anyone saw it to go like this where it was like up there with Counter Strike and stuff like that nobody saw that and if they did if they did say that they're lying but it's you can't deny that the comparisons to Pokemon has carried this game a little bit and that's why there's a lot of controversy about it I guess but I think like the the way that people lied about it and saying like it used AI when it didn't a not particularly great journalism there um but also not particularly great media comprehension or reading comprehension cuz you know he it just wasn't it wasn't fair to have said that when there was no evidence about it whatsoever or spread that sort of notion um and also uh then trying to say they'd ripped the model assets without any proof and then working really hard to try and be like oh they they you know as if it would be hard right to design to do that manually it's not like Pokemon Pokemon character designs are like the peak of design anyway like little Doodles man I could design a Pokemon in fact I'll do it right now I'll design a Pokemon on Ms paint and call it randu randu it's like Pikachu but it's randu so let's do it let's do it right now I'm going to draw it you're going to draw it right now okay I'm going to draw it and post on Twitter yeah yep so there's Rand looks like Pikachu but also he's got a big big beard a big beard okay big beard um yeah I don't know what's going to happen with power world I don't know if Xbox will extend a contract to them or try to buy him although talking about trying to buy him after what just happened yesterday is probably just like I don't know doesn't feel right uh but if the game hadn't blown up no one would care true it's like all all the all the monster hunter clones that exist I mean godamn look at w look at Wild hearts for example wild hearts that released last year direct it's a direct answer to Monster Hunter you know similar monsters similar gameplay style you know it does some Innovative things too on top like like pal world does you know but now I'm just screaming like oh my God Capcom should sue them you know um I don't know I don't know man well I'll be interested in seeing if this game ends up being uh a new genre right if if it sort of like creates this uh monster catcher survival genre you know people have been wondering what's the next big genre after Battle Royale right where pubg sort of well I wasn't even it's not even really pubg that started maybe was like D Day Z that started or was it either way I forget which one really started started it but pubg popularized it and then fortnite took it over and Call of Duty entered it where people were wondering what's the next big uh genre to come out that would take the industry by storm and you know there was talk that maybe extraction Shooters would be it right but that hasn't really happened yet um have we just found the nextra big genre is like this sort of thing is is this just going to be a one-off where it's just power world by itself at the top or is p world going to die off and eventually just be a flash in the pan or is there a significant audience for something like this uh you know Survival game mixed in with you know something else is this like the surviv is I guess like is the survival genre plus something else going to be the next big battle Roy Battle Royale thing I guess but I guess only maybe maybe maybe maybe I guess only time we'll tell on that one well like ined is doing pretty well um like it kind of like it feels like valheim kickstarted like a Resurgence of this kind of stuff you got V Rising too which did well um and a lot of these games kind of like they kind of like they do what existing survival games do but then add add Like Remix it a bit so V Rising is kind of like yeah it's a survival game but it's also isometric and it's it's like Diablo so it's like a Diablo Survival game with Base building which is you know interesting unique and then you've got like valheim which has like the PS1 kind of graphics with with modern lighting which does look gorgeous you know um so that that was that blew up for a little while but I think the patches the patches have come too slow for valheim to really you know um continue the the momentum I think for that game but then like power world just came along as like okay yeah it's it's kind of Exiles but instead of the annoyance of getting thrs and stuff it's just Pokemon you know and that's kind of Genius you know it's so intuitive it works really well it does all the stuff that con and XLS does with the THS but just makes it way more intuitive I mean even Minecraft has that stuff with the Villagers and making your own village and stuff but it's just a pain it's a pain to Wrangle Villages you kind of have to like take over an existing Village to really get anything out of that from from uh um Minecraft so I think this game will be hugely influential even if it's like the ne not the next big genre it's going to be like you know I I think the next Pokemon that comes out it's going to be you know there's going to be a lot of features that borrow from this where you can do more with the Pokemon interact with the Pokemon maybe base build with the Pokemon and just have do more with the game than just the sort of brinded easy story mode you know we'll see what happens with all that stuff but yeah it's amazing it's been amazing to watch that blow up and I really want to give out give a shout out around by the way okay to Bucky Bucky the sole Community manager of power world who has been working harder than I've seen anyone work online in a really long time so shout out to bookie all right oh moving on from that I guess uh well um we get some of these super chats we're going to be talking about the uh Xbox related layoffs and I'm sure that topic is going to go on for quite some time so if you guys are enjoying the show make sure you hit the like button and please subscribe if you haven't let everybody know that we are live uh let's see we have um we have Smurf who says I hope State DEC 3 blows up survival genre W yeah you never know what's going to blow up in the survival genre I mean they have have a chance with stated K3 to do some I was going to say to do something like different and better than what they did with the previous ones cuz I don't know State of Decay 2 felt like State of Decay 1.5 but I mean survival games like I said they're quite popular on PC these days and they have been for for a while so there's like there's like a chance you know if they if they nail stated Decay 3 you know Zombie Survival sort of game maybe maybe blow blows up I guess we'll have to wait and see with that um we have uh Roberto saying where were most of these fans when nexomon and temptem launched yeah so nexomon and TM like they didn't really co-opt the designs to the same level but I don't know I don't know yeah and the Andrew says ranchu needs to be a tomato and then get to the other ones that deal with the Microsoft thing when we when we were at there so yeah well as I'm sure most of you know by now uh the video game industry is facing a ton of layoffs in fact I think it's been like what 6,000 layoffs in the month of January alone right we've seen layoffs at Riot we've seen layoffs at twitch we've seen layoffs at Indian uh Indie Studios uh you the one I saw yesterday was uh the one the team that made the Destroy All Humans and the one that was making the last uh Ronin teenage mut in Turtle Samurai game uh they lost like half their Studio the runer in Indie Studio lost like 80% of their studio uh it's kind of ridiculous and there was you know a ton of layoffs last year epic PlayStation Bungie um the the list is just too long right like we had a great year for video games last year but also for the video game industry it was pretty bad because there were ton of layoffs everywhere and this year the beginning of this year has been pretty awful like almost seems like every single day I see a news story about some some layoffs at some company and it's it's like Jesus but yesterday was Microsoft's turn as uh they laid off 1,900 people 1,900 people from Activision Blizzard and Xbox although I don't think many people are actually laid off from Xbox or Xbox game studios or zenax maybe a few but it seemed to be mostly focused on Activision Blizzard King uh on a day that Microsoft celebrated uh that they hit the three trillion valuation Mark uh at the stock market celebrated by by laying off 1900 people which is gross you know the the you know one of the things the other and well I mean there's a lot of fallof from this uh and man the discourse around this as well has been very um not good either um you know Microsoft deserves all the smoke right oh they I mean you can say that we knew this was happening and we did uh we knew when the acquisition was going to happen that there would eventually eventually be layoffs uh for redundancies as they're call and you know I don't know how much of the layoffs of the 1900 were for redundant positions I can't imagine all 1900 were redundant positions right but I mean they W they weren't clearly so yeah it's uh it's a sobering day you see that stuff and you you know the video games is my favorite hobby in the world next to reading and I'm just wondering what the video game industry is going to look like in a couple years how this is going to impact you know the games and and like how are are these people that lose their jobs like are they able to get jobs in the video game industry with everybody like it's it's an awful thing you know I've been laid off at jobs it's never a good feeling especially if you're someone who's like I have a fan family and now I'm the only I'm the only bread winner and now I don't have anything or you know I moved recently and now I'm late off and I don't know what to do like or I need my uh need my you know medical stuff so I'm losing my insurance and now like it is it is an awful thing uh what happened and I know jez that you feel a certain particular about this one because this one covers your beloved blizzard uh you know but I mean what struck you I guess you say what struck you the most out of this is this is this just something that was needed although that seems kind of shitty to say that this was something that was needed I I know it was something that was expected I'm not sure we expected this much though uh almost 2,000 people is a lot to be fair I guess you can you can make the argument that when Microsoft announced their intention to to acquire Activision Blizzard King they only had 10,000 employees and I believe when they closed the acquisition they were almost up to if not past 177,000 so they grew I do wonder how much this has to do with maybe the underperformance of something like Modern Warfare 3 you know cuz Activision Blizzard seemed to be doing pretty well for most of the year but I don't really know how Call of Duty did so maybe it didn't perform well and you know cuz we we did see a lot of positions at the Cod Studios uh disappear which I'll talk about a little bit later but how what are your thoughts on everything that happened yesterday and well the first St always has to be with those who are impacted and those who are infected you know and all day the last you know all day yesterday I had people calling me up people phoning me people in tears shaking you know worried about their families and the future and you know all that kind of stuff so yesterday was like really really horrible um just the Avalanche of just human Misery the that Xbox has left in its wake by doing all this stuff it's I've never seen anything like it since I've been covering this stuff and yeah there's been layoffs at Microsoft before and there's been layoffs of other the studio but I've never sort of experienced a situation where I know so many people who are personally affected by layoffs so that kind of made it more visceral for me I think but so there's that aspect of it but the the sort of the broader more important aspect of it you know is like is the is this the end or is this like everyone in the game industry right now has to be having prob probably has this kind of this sort of General fear that is there Studio next is there publisher next you know how is that affecting morale and the anxiety that they creat and especially in America where America has very very little in by way of safety blankets for people who are impacted by these kind of Cups and stuff you know it's not like in in Britain where if you get if you're a diabetic or something and you lose your job you can still get insulin you know you can still get what you need and or like if you've got any chronic illness which requires you to have health insurance you know in America you're kind of screwed you know unless you can get another job with with the correct health insurance straight away so the human misery that's that's been left in Xbox's week is unimaginable and you know any any lay any round of layoffs that they've done has sort of created this situation you know I remember Microsoft did layoffs last year as well and Sim situation then you know literally every company in the tech industry did layoffs last year from Google to Amazon to Microsoft it was just like hey you're doing layoffs let's do layoffs too because you know shareholders loves layoffs Microsoft laid off all these people yesterday and their stock price went up you know and hit three trillion crazy right I seen like you know last year this there's people who were laid off last year were still kind of crusading against the way Microsoft treated people but it's sort of like without getting too philosophical about it it's it's the it's an issue with our entire economic system where you know the the the whole shareholder capitalism system where um companies don't work for the workers or Society even they just work for the shareholders and the shareholders might just be like a faceless hedge fund who they don't care about anything but generating money you know so I think a lot of us kind of like a lot of fans Xbox fans and blizzard fans and maybe blizzard employees themselves perhaps somewhat naively thought that things would be you know I think people expected redundancies right cuz you know Microsoft blizzard and ABK there's a of overlap there a as a sort of organizational level if you're like Microsoft's a big publisher activism is a big publisher you don't need to offices doing publishing stuff or whatever right um so we I think everyone expected there' be some back office redundancies in terms of Finance PR we already saw Lulu get laid off for example famously a few weeks ago and all that kind of stuff we we kind of saw all that coming um but I don't think anyone saw How Deeply the cuts would land on the developer side cuz it's kind of like if this is about making games and making money then don't you kind of have to have developers to make those games to make the money you know and that's what I think that's where it's it's come as such a shock you know I think like when when Microsoft did its layoffs last year it was like the holl lens team it was like yeah sucks but it at least I can understand it you know cuz Hollow lens is going nowhere you know met of the metaverse was going nowhere they laid off all the teams that were responsible for anything to do with the metaverse at Microsoft last year so like holl lens and windows mixed to reality the operating system there and all that kind of stuff and it really sucks but at least it's like okay it makes sense because it's a failed product right you know on paper but a lot of the the people being laid off are just sort of like you look at like their history and what they've worked on and what they've done for blizzard and it's just kind of like man I can't understand why this person was laid off or that person was laid off and like why why this has like gone so far and so deep and I can't understand it you know and people I know like been laid off who've worked on really amazing things and like you get these artists posting posting show reals of of things they've worked on and like look at all these art assets I've worked on it's like oh my god I've I've you know experienced this person's work in the game and it's really good and it's like you're telling me this person needed to be laid off after all the good stuff they've done like it's just crazy so so there's that side of it now sort of like if you uh if you uh zoom out though and look at the state of the industry at large there is a big issue you know we seeing unfold within not just Xbox but also like the wider gaming industry the whole gaming industry has this massive sort of Correction taking place right now where a lot of companies over hired or had these expectations of sort of like the way the industry was going to go and then the industry didn't go the way they that expected potten you know um this is sort of like if you look at um and I'll maybe I'll link it in the comments but there was a really great article that someone linked me and they were like this is this explains why the industry is going the way it is and it's kind of like over when you compare the gaming industry against the the growth of the US economy and the growth of other ENT entertainment other entertainment verticals like movies books TV whatever gaming is underperforming and when you account for inflation you could even suggest that it's contracted by some measures you know since Co so like and I think there was there was a lot of analysis that suggested that after CU there was analysis that suggested that covid would create new gamers right um Co would create new Gamers right and those Gamers would go on to be like permanent Gamers who would like they would develop a habit for gaming and they would go on to be Gamers forever you know they'd start buying games left right center they' start buying consoles and stuff even after the pandemic ended so like if there was any uplift from covid they would see a continued sort of ongoing uplift from more the people who stuck in lockdown maybe discovered gaming for the first time and maybe they'd stick around but apparently that just hasn't happened you know apparently just hasn't happened so like a lot of the expectation around how the industry trajectory will go just hasn't panned out in reality which is why you seeing these kind of Corrections quote unquote is what they call them which is like a complete dehumanizing way to express this kind of stuff but that's this the sort of reality we live in you know it's it's this kind of you know boom and bust sort of world where people are sort of commodified and then treated like you know the pals in pal world you know basically you're going to work on this job until I don't need you anymore as per dictated by the shareholders you know or the share the needs of the sholders so but as well it's kind of like you've got to have money to make money and if you know the the industry is seeing this contraction and people's habits aren't um and people's habits are kind of like not delivering a massive amount of growth like for whatever reason maybe people don't have enough time maybe jenz only want to play ginch and impact and maybe they don't even want to spend money in ginch and impact maybe you know free to playay game is cannibalizing the rest of the industry maybe streaming services are out competing gaming and people are just like people are too tired and too disengaged to want to play any kind of video game right now particularly AAA video games you know I I certainly talked on the show where like I like um I've got into a situation where it's like I've been so tired after work and I'm a gamer and I work in gaming and still I've still been like so tired after work I just can't bring myself to play anything and I just lie in bed with my phone scrolling you know doing something pointless and I think like the video game sort of the executives who were sort of greenlighting these grow these this sort of driving this sort of mentality of like oh we're going to grow we're going to grow we're going to grow um um they sort of didn't realize that or they they sort of of touch and disconnected with the the way that life is for a lot of people in the sort of like us working the working working classes and the middle classes and whatever you know I think they they were thinking like oh these people like they've got loads of time to play games and and they got loads of money to spend on games it's just like no dude you know the the you know the the econ like they tell us the economy is growing and the stock markets hitting the greatest ever you know market caps ever but it's just like the people on the ground we're not really seeing this this sort of we're not seeing the effects of this so-called okay you know soft Landing that they call it right you know nobody's seeing that effect so a lot of people are working extra jobs which means they got less time to play games a lot of people are trying to do like extra schooling to try and increase the the chances of them having a better life and it's just like the constraint is time you know and it sort of it goes it feeds into a wide discussion about the state of the economy and the world the disconnect from the sea Suite layer of what they think consumers should be doing versus what is actually happening to Consumers on the ground you know the Eon the on paper the economy is doing really well but because of inflation I don't think people in real terms are seeing the effects of that you know so it's a it's a whole ass mess basically it's a whole ass mess in every no matter which way you look at it um so much stuff has been really annoying about all this like the way people have tried to use it in a console war context because it's kind of like well you know you're celebrating these Xbox laughs but it's like what are you going to do when PlayStation does the same thing you know cuz this this is sort of a pervasive thing man it's a pervasive thing it's like every industry is having laughs right now A Business Insider like another publication they just announced they're going to lay off 8% of their Workforce you know and um it's uh inflation it's interest rates it's the death of easy Capital it's the death of venture capital as well you know when interest rates were in in insanely low and non-existent it was just Venture Capital flowing all around the place it's was like you have some money you have some money you have some money all those times are gone man all those times are over with so yeah it's just but none of that matters what has is like the people who have negatively impacted and like I just hope that I just hope for like a future where legislators actually work for their constituents and create an economy that isn't like this and I just think when will that ever happen it probably won't ever happen cuz everyone's just so divided about how to approach this kind of stuff some people are even like oh that's just a way is you know could there be a better way maybe I don't know what it is smarter people than me need to work it out but yeah that's kind of I just kind of feel num to it now that's it yeah um yeah I think you mentioned something earlier about like they the the games need to make money or whatever right and thing that like stuck out to me me was was more more it was more of a number than I thought but like for instance Sledgehammer Games lost a quarter of its studio right and they just like crunched to get the Last Call of Duty out in a year and a half and how do you reward them by laying off a quarter year Studio but yet you expect them to like turn around and make the next game in what another year and a half three years like there's been layoffs at all the Call of Duty Studios and Xbox has an issue this generation getting games out on time like how many games have we seen get delayed from like Halo infinite uh to Starfield redfall right where they didn't hit the Tim taes that Xbox said they would and Call of Duty is on this tight schedule every year right and now you're just removing developers from that franchise that's only going to that's only going to make it hard harder for those current developers working on those games to be able to still release that game at a high enough quality level uh on time because you're removing their colleagues it is like it I don't know I don't is Xbox like penny pinching in this scenario where they're like all right we're going to get rid of the redundancies but also maybe some of the results from last quarter didn't hit and now we need to make more cuts to save more money because that's typically what some of these companies do and are the is this going to impact you know the Tim taes of future games outside of the fact that you just you know severely impacted the lives of of developers like is this also going to push back uh the timetables of future Activision releases you know is it going to lower the quality level of blizzard games or the quality level of Activision games because you have to replace people that were highly experienced with people that may not be or are they going to go down the route of using you know uh pH 23 B bky says in the Super Chat in my opinion if Microsoft starts to Penny pinch on Call of Duty developers cost by using more external contractors as it did with Halo they will mark my words destroy the Call of Duty franchise just like they did with Halo and then donat taku says face you literally stole that comment word from word for Tak Kim's tweet at least make it less obvious that you don't have your own opinions like I knew that was from take take Kim because I saw jez reply to him but like are they going to use the contractors that they did for Halo with Call of Duty was that only an issue because of the Redmond policies maybe won't be for COD like there's a lot of unknown variables in all this right because certainly you don't want to see any games suffer you don't want to see Dev suffer you don't want to see the game suffer you don't want to see Tim taes become longer cuz people are already waiting long enough for games I mean how many times like you know the meme is just wait till next D3 or next year will be better or next year and people like oh well this game supposed to come out this year then it gets delayed are is this are you delaying more games are the games going to come out G of be of quality of nature like there's that that aspect that I just sit there and kind of have to like huh I wonder I wonder what the plan is for for you know all these games and all the layoffs and stuff right uh but then specifically you know Mikey bar is gone specifically specifically you know I have words I how many times have I said I I you know when I was in when I was younger I I had spe therapy and stuff and in some words they say but Mike Yar left um which well he didn't leave no he was laid off he's laid off huh that's not that's not what Matt booty and Mike said on their personal responses yeah they can tell with the one he was laid off oh so you basically think he was like we're not going to say you're laid off but we're you will let you leave let you say you left when you get to a certain level you don't you don't get laid off you move on oh you move on you you voluntarily this you volunt he was Li off man guarantee guarantee I don't have any evidence but I just believe that in my heart that he was L off yeah like Jason Shri said on Twitter he said Mike said that he was in it for the long haul and he would stick around he like that was his dream job man he loves blizzard he loves blizzard games he's always on Warcraft and Diablo and stuff like that I don't believe that Mike left I think he was laid off interesting um well this is what Phil Spencer had to say in his uh memo to the team it's been a little over well I'm not going to read that part right um he basically says the leadership at Microsoft gaming and Activision blizzards committed to aligning on strategy and an execution plan with the sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our gaming business growing business together we've set priorities identified areas of overlap and ensured that we are Al line in the best opportunities for growth as a part of this process we made the painful decision to reduce the size of her gaming war first by approximately 1,00 rolls out of the 22,000 people on our team uh blah blah blah blah blah you know a lot of PR speak um looking ahead we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy a bringing more games to more players around the world etc etc um but also like Matt booty had his own sort of thing where he said it's a difficult process but is one that will best enable blizzard and Xbox to deliver ambitious games for our players on more platforms and in more places than ever before I like how it's like we're laying off all these people but by laying you you guys off we're actually going to be better than ever you know way to throw all the people that you just laid off under the bus cuz I mean that's essentially what it says this is a difficult process but it is one that will best enable blizzard and Xbox to deliver on icious games for our players on more platforms and more places than ever before right it's awful it's I don't know like how you can trust Matt Phil after if you're if you're working at blizzard like how can you trust them you know and I've seen Xbox fan um blizzard fans talk about like how how um like how weirdly performative Phil was at BlizzCon coming out shaking Mike's hand talking about Ambitions and all this kind of stuff and um and then for this to happen not so long after it's kind of like why why do all that stuff you know is Phil going to be applauded again when he comes back to BlizzCon if BlizzCon even still exists I don't think so you know is it's kind of like the kind of you know or if you're a current blizzard employee are you are you sort of do you think like okay so that's this year's playoffs now what happens next year or what happens the year after or what happens the year after you know but at the same time he's kind of like where where did they go you know it's not like anywhere else is any particularly great stability well so you're basically saying like and I I agree with you like remember all the photo ops we we saw when Phil and team went went down to Blizzard and everybody's happy and everybody's so excited yeah we're out from underneath the Yoke of Bobby cotic he's gone Phil Spencer and Xbox here they're they're here to make everything better you know they separated us from Activision so we're our own sort of thing uh you know he has there he's going to let us do what we sort of want and you know saw all the pictures and everything and and then you know a couple months later it's like yep gone yeah I mean I get like yeah how could you how could you look at Phil and booty after that and be like believe whatever they have to say I'm sure the morale at those those places are incredibly incredibly low I mean you know there's what survival's guilt and Survivor uh survivors apathy and stuff like people that survived are probably you know just like I can't believe I made the cut ver you know like yeah I um I someone has literally used the word survivors guilt to me literally today yeah it's um I mean then on top of it you cancel a game project Odyssey which we've and you've talked about on the show before um I've seen it played I've seen Odyssey played and it looked really good it looked really fantastic I mean I only saw a small portion of the world I didn't see like the the scope of the full scope of it what I see looked what I saw looked really really good so you know and obviously seeing a small vertical slice is not really indicative of the quality of the overall product and it's a viability in the very difficult market so you know why I kind of like I said on Twitter like I said something like um I can't remember exactly what I said but I I said something to the effect of marcroft did pulled off a huge L by canceling this game I mean that was kind of like emotional I don't know how good or bad it was overall you know but what what is true is you know they they were working on that game for a really long time yeah J said like six years and it's still had a couple if not two three four years before we' ever see ever actually come out right so yeah so it sounds like that game was incredibly expensive and a huge drain on resources so if you still still three years out you know because of I think Jason said it was to do the engine right like they're using a mob an engine designed for mobile maybe that's CU they they had crossplatform Ambitions for it I don't know don't know what the thought process there was but um it looked fantastic it was like it was kind of like it was Survival game but it looked like it had none of the Jun that a lot of survival games are kind of known for it looked like the survival the the the the polished kind of Survival game it looked like it had the OverWatch art style which made me think it was on the OverWatch engine but apparently it's not um you know it had it had like sort of I saw a character that had bow and arrow it had sort of fairy tale Motif to it not not quite like not quite fantasy like Warcraft but more fairy tale like a fable maybe you know um I think it looked really good I was really excited for it I was thinking like this is going to be really great it's going to be a huge game you know but God just it's just devastating man it's so it sucks so much that this game which clearly must have like been at least approaching a playable State it's got canned man it just sucks so bad and I kind of but think like maybe they should have just put it in Early Access or something to start making money on it sell it for 20 bucks or something why does it why do they have to wait until um it's fully done dusted you know if if the CU it's it feels like almost all survivor Games come out in Early Access to begin with for some reason maybe that's just the business model for these kind of games I don't know yeah but but yeah it's canned and that's that's that what do you have to say to the people that said you you said Arsy was coming soon that it was almost done did I say that I mean you mentioned before when weed talked about it that you thought it was like pretty close to being done well it looked polished and playable but I have no idea what kind of scope I have no idea the SC scope of the game like what I saw was like what I saw was polished and playable but I only saw a couple of areas you know maybe that's all they had finished right I don't know so I my mentality was because I've been in I've been in blizzard betas before right um I've been in blizzard Bayers before and it reminded me of being in one of the blizzard Bayers you know where it's kind of like okay the game the game functions now and now they're just working on building out the world you know but I guess just is what it is and it's hard to tell from what I saw you know yeah and my booty did I show you did I show you that g or not I I haven't seen it you you know I wouldn't care about a survival game uh I usually show you stuff like that yeah you didn't with that one he said he said the changes announced today reflect to focus on products and strategies that hold the most promised for Blizzard's future growth as well as identified areas of overlap across blizzard and Microsoft gaming today's actions affect multiple teams within blizzard including development teams shared service organization and corporate functions as part of this Focus blizzard is ending development on a survival game project and we'll be shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects blizzard has in the early stages of development um so I I did see on Twitter that a lot of the the survival team was let go if not all of them maybe there's a few that didn't um it's just it's also weird I don't know if it's ironic but like they cancel a survival game when the biggest game in the world right now is Survival game right it's kind of like wait a minute but like pal world's blowing up and it's like the biggest thing ever since like sliced bread and you you have a survival game in development a AAA one at that and you're just ending it they must have thought that game wasn't coming out any but I guess it's like the sunken cost fallacy right it's like all right we've spent six years on this game let's just keep on going but in reality it's more like you need to you need to not look at what you spent and look at like how much more money is this going to cost and how much how much more time are we going to have to give how did redf Falls slip through that net that's a good question how did redf Falls slip through the net maybe R because redf fall was closer to release cuz remember when when they when they closed the acquisition of of Bethesda in in um March of 2021 redfall was supposed to launch the following year so maybe redfall was just a game that was closer to release than this game is I don't know maybe they needed to cut more budget maybe I maybe the game's too similar to other games that Microsoft has is you know cuz Matt booty does say in this thing uh he kind of says uh as well as identified areas of overlap across blizzard and Microsoft gaming so maybe they feel that maybe they felt that the blizzard survival game was too similar to another game that Microsoft might be working on like maybe ever wild or something and maybe they didn't want two survival games you know I'm just speculating but it is mentioned in there right so I mean sucks this whole this whole situation just completely sucks right like you said people are using it for console war cheering on being like people are also using it as a got a gotcha being like I told you so I told you uh the acquisition would cause these sort of things like everybody knew people were going to get laid off like duh and maybe some people didn't think so because you didn't see a lot you didn't see any layoffs at zenax right away right they Acquired zenax and I don't think anybody got laid off until last year when Microsoft did their their huge companywide layoffs it seems like they sort of avoided that so maybe thought maybe people thought Activision Blizzard would would you know be saved that and then was like no like we need to lay off a lot of people so then people are coming in like Microsoft should never have been allowed to buy them in the first place I saw like Senator Warren came out saying like the FTC needs to unwind this uh you know they get rid of you know they're allowed to buy this company and then they get rid of two thou it's not I mean it's the it's a it's a really awful look and Microsoft deserves all the smoke in the world for it right and I'm sure it'll be used against like I know like it's it's you don't want to talk you know nobody wants to talk about future Acquisitions but I can imagine is be something that's going to be used against some moving forward being like you acquired these Studios and you we let you acquire them and you just you laid off x amount of people like that's not a good look Regulators might be like yeah you know we're not going to let you do that again you know what I mean uh you know maybe not necessarily for like a smaller Dev but if they ever tried going for like a publisher and you know there's a already kind of a segment of of the media that was kind of against the layoffs uh but a lot of the media was May before it because it was like Xbox was in that position where they were like way below PlayStation and Nintendo but then with this you know maybe there's going to be a real push back being like no Xbox shouldn't be allowed to acquire anything more they can't be trusted they're just going to lay people off uh you know there's just a whole [ __ ] smorgas Board of opinions on this thing right and it's it's hard to like weigh through it all and actually get read objective you know opinions about this situation that isn't clouded by some sort of uh you know other aspect right CU I always look for different takes on things but I want to make sure you know the the takes I'm reading are from someone who who's like really doesn't have a vested interest either way just like someone on the outside because sometimes when you get a take of someone who's like invested either or you know there's biasness that could sneep in and of course like you know people say we are biased here and you know of course we we are biased towards it but I also think we are we we uh we're one one of the few out there that really hold Microsoft and Xbox accountable to [ __ ] when uh when they [ __ ] up right and you know this is a situation where it's like yeah we expected it but not this much this is a complete [ __ ] up and it's just like man I don't Microsoft is trying to they've they've cultivated this good guy persona for so long that I I don't know if that can that Persona that they portray where they're like for for you know the gamers and for the devs I don't know if that can like really survive something like this you know what I mean yeah I I said I said Xbox has lost its shine you know and the sort of the sort of the idea that Xbox is like a well-funded startup or the good guy that's shattered now and it's kind of funny cuz it's like we used to say we used to talk about how um you know Xbox would save blizzard and you know they get to unionize and and still all that stuff's still on the table you know but it's kind of like they've absorbed AC Activision but maybe Activision absor absorbed Microsoft because or absorbed Xbox because this is all about Call of Duty now and I kind of Wonder like how much of how much of the operation is going to be canalized by the the need SL desire to capitalize on Call of Duty and Call of Duty alone like huge amount of people got laid off from toys of Bob Toys for Bob um a a sort of huge amount a huge amount of people got laid off from um a huge amount of people got laid off from uh the publishing teams and the all pretty much all the support staff got laid off all of them so Microsoft's going to Outsource all that so even though Activision was one of the few Publishers in the industry that had an internal support team and like I've seen people on Twitter complain like oh they they sucked anyway and it's like they were already underfunded you know and they were kind of like doing their best with what they had and now you're going to get even worse you're going to get outsourced you're going to get outsourced customer support that don't know anything about any of the games and automation like have you ever tried using like Xbox or Microsoft's customer support it's awful it's terrible it's garbage yeah well they outsourc that to Xbox ambassadors free you know people part of the Xbox ambassador program you know which is like they do it they do it for free they do for free that makes me sick that makes me absolutely sick you know coros are going to Coro bro they're going to Coro this is why I've always told you I only care about Xbox I don't give a flying F about Microsoft at all I've only ever cared about Xbox I don't care about Microsoft yeah but now now you've got now you've got the Microsoft edition of Xbox where Microsoft is at this the the the senor leadership table and that you know they're answering directly to SAA and they're not answering to Terry me anymore they're answering directly to the CEO and the CFO you know and you know you got to you got to wonder like how much of these layoffs is sat here being like okay if you're doing this we're doing XYZ you know um but I just kind of just got a hope that it all leads to you know just um more getting things better you know and I don't mean better for better games or whatever and all that kind of stuff but um a sort of more reasonable approach to hiring a more reasonable approach to how staff get treated and that the backlash to this and the way you know the anger frankly gives Microsoft pause when they consider doing this kind of stuff now you mentioned probably not you mentioned uh on a tweet that basically Microsoft um got rid of all their uh people that departments that did physical games and people started running articles about like oh physicals ended on Xbox there's going to be no more physical disc that's kind of I I want to I want to put the record straight about that so okay I tweeted out like Mar Stu is light off the teams responsible for for getting physical discs put together getting physical discs um getting physical discs to retail right and I put that out there and um a lot of people ran with it like oh Microsoft's quitting physical disc completely but that's not what's happening they're not they're not quitting physical discs or physical discs as R likes to call them they're not quitting physical discs yet although let's be real that's C that's the way the industry is trending um which is what I said in my tweets like you can gives you an idea of the way the industry's trending but what that was was consolidating the teams because they don't need they don't need several teams dedicated to doing that role so they still have a team for publishing physical disc discs and getting physical discs into retail for now you know and I did follow up a tweet with that to explain what the situation was and that there is they are still going to do it you know they no there's no plan for Microsoft right now to stop making physical discs of games um but that's the way things are trending M supposedly making a diskless drive for Xbox you know we don't know if they'll do a USB external drive I mean that's that's something they could do to support that ecosystem sorry I'm getting tired um but no mic there's no evidence right now that Microsoft is planning now or in the future to get rid of discs so so just to put that to bed right now they still have a team for printing that stuff cuz face says physical game media eventually will go away but it looks like Microsoft is going to be the first to do that with the Xbox some retailer are getting rid of all the physical media while other retailers are only getting rid of Xbox physical games MH yeah and Xbox is one of those companies that I did see like Z huge reply to you saying that there are some big AAA games that have an 80 plus Shar digitally on Xbox so yeah I think physical I think physical is you're going to be around for a bit but event but eventually it'll be all it'll be all digital but like right now you know something like cuz when you tweeted that I was like oh man so they're you know and they're done with physical because like oh here's how Blade 2 and It's All Digital only right and then the news there it was like well is something like Indiana Jones going to have a physical disc cuz you would assume physical discs you would assume that it should and it would but then you know I've seen like Danny Pon from gamertag radio I think replied to you with like this is what the Xbox section looked at in the store was just recently it was just basically you know gift cards right Xbox digital cards there basically was barely any physical presence whatsoever and it's like I think that's what the future of Xbox like looks like in a retail space in a few years where it's just you know like a digital card like oh you want to get Indiana Jones for example well instead of here's a here's a disc here's a you know a gift card for it where it's the game you know it's the code for the game right like specifically printed uh game codes and stuff but and I I honestly I don't even I know like we are talking about the rumored series X refresh that might come out this year that looks like it may not have a disc drive the adorably digital right um but I still think when Microsoft does their next console whether it's a 2026 like some rumors have it under 2028 I bet you it still has a disc drive in some manner like a disc drive that you can buy optionally because Microsoft is still very much tied to their whole backwards compatibility future and I think they would still want to give consumers the option of like oh you have the disc and you want to play like back compat well you can get this this add-on if you want for your console that plays the discs very similar to how Sony's doing it right now with their uh PS5 slim it's a you know detachable disc drive I just can't see them completely being like no no disc drives ever again in Xbox consoles despite the fact that back andet such a big thing for us so I would imagine you would you would if it's not in the console itself because removing the disc drive doesn't really decrease you don't you don't really gain much right disc drive is like 20 bucks essentially which is why PlayStation when they originally had the the PS5 and the PS5 digital uh and the the digital was $100 cheaper they didn't produce many digital uh consoles because they were losing a [ __ ] ton of money on it so like in my opinion I think we see future XBox consoles or at least this next gen that has an add-on uh for a disc drive for the people that want it yeah it's G to it's going to be very much for the people that want it I mean it's a dinosaur kind of thing you know and like um Dr Dingle n says how many physical copies of power sold zero zero power will probably never be available to buy physical there probably will never be a physical dick of power world so you know it is an archaic kind of thing and it a lot of people are a kind of age you know cling onto this I think but yeah I think even though Microsoft is still going to do physical discs I think it's on the way out it's on the way out yeah it says you know last week everything's great we got some great games coming this week it's like layoffs in the industry then Microsoft does theirs and you're just like you just feel that horrible feeling in your stomach like it's like man what is going on with the game industry you know because it's if it was if it was just Microsoft you'd be like well something's wrong at Xbox but it seems like there's something rotten the for within the game industry at this point like something is is up because like everybody's laying people off and even though it was expected I I guess like some of the thing I don't like is I I I know we talked a little bit about Odyssey a little bit but I've already seen some damage control like people happy it got cancelled like we don't want and it is basically like we don't want another redfall but like you don't know that was the reason they canceled the game you know what I mean by all accounts even from what Jason said like it was well it was highly regarded within the company and from what you saw you know it looked pretty good but I sort of feel like some fans are already like oh they canceled it we need to come up with the reason why it was good and it's like oh well we don't want another redfall right cuz I always said to you jez I said what would have been worse releasing redfall and having it do what it did or canceling redfall and having the Spectre of a cancelled Arcane game hover over everything forever that could be brought up consistently on every podcast like scalebound even though scalebound nobody knows if it was good it's the Spectre that they cancelled something like scalebound in your mind you think it would was going to be awesome so in your mind you're like oh that they I didn't get to play an amazing game right and until redfall until redfall happened everybody well for the people who like Arcane games were like in their mind they would have been like I can't believe Xbox took away from us a banger Arcane game right and it would just been this this this thing that just lived on and in in infamy all the time people will be like well they canceled this game and you never know if it was good or bad so that's why I say like well having the game come out would have been the better scenario because redfall came out it was [ __ ] and people you know it did what it did and then people talked about it if they had canceled it it would have lived on forever right as as you know as a spectre of like something where people would have been like well you know look how crappy Microsoft they they canceled this so it's like now we get okay here's this Blizzard game people were looking forward to or whatever they cancel it and now people got to have mental gymnastics to to basically justify why it was canel because they can't criticize Microsoft and it's oh we don't want another redfall situation but like in reality the most likely reason that they canceled it was because it was going to take too long and cost too much money and they might have something else in the pipeline that's too similar you know what I mean I'm sure you've seen people say that that the reason it was cancelled was because they they didn't want a redfall thing right but it's like well why didn't they cancel redfall at that point yeah you I don't think I don't I think well I think redf probably won't a thing like redf I I'd be shocked if a redfall thing like that happens again but Rand we went several we went at least a couple of weeks with no scal bound mention we did and you just ruined it no there's been scale bomb missions I think you just ruined it bro I'm just saying like if they had canceled redfall people would have been like why' they do that we just never got to experience another arcane Banger and it would have been it would have lived on forever right instead it came out and it was people didn't like it and nobody play whatever damned if you don't but I just I i' see some Xbox fans being like yeah glad it got cancelled we don't want another redfall but it's like you don't know what reasons it was canceled for yeah and I I doubt I doubt it was three years out it would have been like you know what like three years out they know if it was G to you know be like a bad game or whatever so I think it just came down to cost probably it kind of It kind of reminds me of um when Phantom D was cancelled and then gameplay Phantom just came out and he was like Hey that actually looks really cool but he's like it was just that single area you know you don't know how much of the the rest of the game was going to be done you know over the next however many years you know it's just it's just it just sucks for everyone involved and I think we can move on from this now yeah we have uh puckish Rogue says you think game freak will delay this year's Pokemon game because of Po world I don't think there's enough time to make changes for this year's release they're not going to delay it come on now it's a launch of the new Switch you're not delaying a a Pokemon game from the launch of the brand new Switch have you seen the rumors about the new Switch 8 in LCD screen or whatever 8 in LCD screen uhhuh um was apparently first reported by Andy Robinson on VGC a little while ago I thought it was first reported by Nate the hate oh even whatever yeah I I don't know uh who first reported it but it it does seem like there's a lot of a lot of you know fire attached to this smoke so are you surprised it's not an olad screen or you just like of course it cuz they're going to sell it to you two years later they're going to resell it you with the I'll sell it you again with the ol later on but um yeah I'm are you going to get it are you going to get the switch R the new Switch I probably not I'm sure I'll have some fomo where it's like the switch is on sale and I have my my my finger over the pre-order button just like there was a seconds of uh fomo when the OS uh the as Asus Rog Ally came out and I actually had the pre-order page up and I'm like should I get this this and I almost did and I'm like wait a minute I'm not going to use this thing what am I doing and I I clicked out of it I'm sure there'll be a moment of weakness where even though I know I'm probably not going to play anything on it I'll be like I I need it though you know what I mean like I we'll see we'll see if I'm strong enough not to pre-order it maybe there's a game that Nintendo puts I mean Metroid Prime 4 might get me there's that Metroid Prime 4 so you maybe maybe I don't know we'll see we'll see we'll see how much it costs right um but I I I I really doubt they're going to delay a Pokemon game from the launch of the switch so no they're I would say no they are not uh virtu of Brad says maybe some of those toxic employee problems have removed at the same time uh Champagne Supernova says as someone who works in gaming it's unsettling but it's unfortunate not exclusive its business we can be empathetic but we shouldn't be outraged uh aramic lvt says layoffs suck but stop saying three trillion market cap Microsoft laid-off employees the gaming division which is 7% of their market cap laid off people the gaming division does operate does not operate on A3 trillion doll budget I mean this is another thing like Microsoft itself doesn't operate on a three trillion budget I really need people to understand this when a $3 trillion market cap do does not mean Microsoft has $3 trillion it means that's that is the perception of the value of the company per the shareholders so shareholders perceive the company to be worth $3 trillion that doesn't mean Microsoft has3 trillion that doesn't mean that the investors the Microsoft that doesn't mean Microsoft is using the investors money to do things they don't have three trillion that's just it's just a perception of the the the stock the stock the stock value you know the G the gambling the gambling that people do on the stock market it's just kind of like a milestone figure it's like if um if people perceive this comedy to worth three3 trillion doar why they like this you know right so yeah market cap does not mean they have three3 trillion yes it does not mean that but Microsoft three trillion dollars they wouldn't be laying anyone off that's true uh dub says I've been in the games industry for over 10 years now and I've Had The Misfortune of being laid off in the past two times one thing that stings as seen people use this Misfortune is console war fuel of course people use it to say Xbox is this or that or when it happened to Bungie and Playstation they said that you know it was because of this or that and I've already seen you know some some journalists use this as a way to uh attack Xbox fans not even attack Xbox attack Xbox fans and fan websites or whatever right because like these dudes are just they're the worst of the worst um I've seen some of that go on and it's just like using other people's Misfortune to sort of spread your own [ __ ] you know what I mean like are you a child you know I guess they are uh face 23 pky says imagine if Pete Hines or Mike Yara joins Sony I mean do you want them to face do you want Mikey bar Pete Hines to join PlayStation you think that would get their uh Kick Kicking high gear their game production going on are are you excited for another remaster on PS5 phas you looking forward to playing until dawn again it would would that be the eighth PlayStation remastered this gen or the ninth I'm not sure which one is it uh jotus says Xbox's problem continues to be the lack of ability to ensure confidence with this platform to Consumers exclusives hardware and now talent I will say that I don't even think this news even reaches the common gamer I don't think they even know that Xbox laid off for one I don't think even think most people even know Xbox bought Activision Blizzard really right yeah let alone know that they laid off 1900 people I think most people just they just kind of buy what's popular and they they don't really look too hard into it you know same thing with like movies like oh the latest MCU movies out looks interesting I'll go see it if it doesn't look interesting I don't go see it I mean maybe it seems like life or death to us because we're so invested in all this and we listen to podcast and we do the podcast and we're always discussing this with other people online so it feels like this is bigger than life but in reality I'm not really sure this even Steeps down to uh a lot of the actual audience for games you know what I mean I don't know how true that is but you always got to remember that Twitter and social media are just Echo Chambers right and sometimes you have to step outside the echo chamber and um you know think to yourself is like is this is this something that's like people are even are talking about you know and I'm not sure like is anybody going if you're at a job and you're in a water cooler somebody's like you know hey do you hear Microsoft laid off 2,000 people from Activision Blizzard probably not um and you know he says their problem cons be the lack of the ability to ensure confidence within his platform to Consumers exclusive hardware and talent I mean I think maybe the only one that would suffice there is not even Hardware or Talent it's probably the exclusives I think Xbox has gone a long time without having like needle pushing a needle pushing musthave game that transcends which is why I think Indiana Jones is really important because I think Indiana Jones is is a game that the Xbox platform hasn't had in a long time exclusively uh which is one of the reasons why when I look at like the failings of Xbox you know in in recent gens or recent years it's because PlayStation say what you will their games are marketed extremely well and they're always presented as the next big thing in gaming and it kind of they reached that Plateau where Xboxes kind of aren't and I guess you can make the argument well what about for rizon it has more players than any PlayStation game and you'd be true I think fors rizon is at 35 million uh but I think Forza rizon is just if I had to describe for Horizon I don't think I would def I would describe it as like a musthave I think it's one of those like it's it's one of those things where if you have access to it and you like racing games it's a must play but I'm not sure it strikes this it's one of the reasons the same reason why fors rizon doesn't get nominated for game of the year right whereas these other games do and it's like well why doesn't for Horizon it's it's well-loved it's critically liked it's commercially successful right like why isn't fors Horizon put on the pedestal with all these other big games and I think just for lack of a better descriptor it's because it lacks that um I don't even know where I was I don't even know like exactly what it would be I think before we've said it because it's how do we describe this before when we've talked about this with Forza where we described it as like it it lacks your connectional connection emotional connection where cars don't the the character the character connection to a human thing like it doesn't tell a story right it's it's fun to play and it's like the best racing game imaginable and it's available on PC and Xbox and it's you know arguably one of their best games and people love it but I I think you know it it doesn't it the lack of an emotional core to that you know kind of turns it from like a musthave gigantic exclusive like other games on other platforms to just something that if you have access to you should play it and I think that's been Xbox's problem for a while is like they don't have that game that that is like you see that and you're like I need this like for example for me famously well not famously but I never had a PlayStation 3 during the 360 gen because I didn't need one well I was going to say famous we've talked about this we've talked about this on this podcast before I didn't have a PS3 because I didn't need one and I never and I never I never saw a reason to get one because none of the games were really like they didn't really really speak to me when I would see whatever and it was just like I don't need a PlayStation I'm covered by Xbox Xbox has Gears of War and Halo and they got like uh you know uh Saints Row and Oblivion and Bioshock and obviously I was all still neck deep in the achievement stuff but I felt my needs was covered by by Xbox and I didn't I didn't need anything on Playstation so I didn't whatever and then in 2016 I saw that PlayStation showcase where they were like like here's Shadow of the Colossus and I was like oh shadow of Colossus is amazing and then it was like here's god of war and it was the reboot for the first time and I was like oh that looks really good and oh here's Spider-Man and here's Detroit become human and I was like I want to play those games and that's when I finally got a PlayStation I sort of feel like for a long time Xbox really hasn't hit that with a lot of consumers like have that moment of like you see this and it's like I need this cuz I need that game I think they're getting there cuz I think something like Indiana Jones and something like even Starfield uh you know are along those similar uh experiences for some but I think that was not so much them losing Talent OR Hardware because I think the hardware is good I think it's really just been that the lack of a true like musthave I need to get an Xbox and maybe there some of that's taken away by the fact that they're on PC but I think like I I I I think that's like the reason honestly um we have a dead Planet saying pal World being exclusive feels the kind of Xbox temporary naing nabbing fortnite it almost feels overwhelming in a sense doesn't it very happy accident yeah I'm sure they're very happy about that extremely happy yeah it's um it's it's intriguing you know I suppose like the game will eventually come to PlayStation and Nintendo switch well if Nintendo wants nintend I mean I think they I mean it's free money why wouldn't they want it yeah yeah I supp or you think they don't want it on their platform because they don't want like pal world will take away from Pokemon essentially yeah maybe I I think like probably Nintendo or game freak or whatever they' probably be like we just need to Coop to everything from this and just make our own uh cuz that's what that's what people want they just want a better Pokémon and that's what Po's giving them right now yeah C says this kind of proves that the deal was all about King I have not heard any Cuts there I believe there was cuts of King weren't there uh I don't know man I don't know doesn't know I could I I thought I saw that there was some cuts of King but there might have been yeah could have been could be wrong Le bur says maybe someday we'll get Scaled bound Odyssey of a survival a new blizzard Survival game with Dragons wouldn't that be something yeah uh Dave says jez could you read a manscape commercial with extra emphasis on the physical D trying to lighten the mood with all the layoffs uh yeah thano says with hellblade and theow it seems like these are smaller games by smaller Dev teams I wondering if Xbox game Studio going to have more doublea's and Triple A's I mean I I think Xbox even calls hellblade AAA and I think they even call a AAA don't they I think so yeah I know I've pretty sure they call hellblade triaa I mean you're going to have your your your you know your selection of games that are going to be big budget like fables perfect ARS Indiana Jones and then the ones that are kind of like like double A+ thing not everything's going to be super AAA cuz you know there's a lot of people that think now that triaa the AAA industry is unsustainable like the budgets have gotten out of control and you need to mitigate that somehow um I mean but if I you know hellblade yeah I guess maybe because hellblade has what 40 people 50 people Dev team on it it's probably not that expensive in comparison to other games um because the to be an interesting an interesting sort of I don't say experiment cuz it's kind of like well it's the game they're making it's yeah it's Pro it's proven you know but it'll be interesting to see how well scal bound um scal bound jez scal bound it'll be interesting to see how well hellblade 2 does in the current economic environment is what I mean hum game narrative focused Game Pass first kind of thing he says can't wait to play hellblade 2 in NADA on PS5 switch 2 man you're really going for for the full third party thing huh buddy I mean it's probably going to be there those two no eventually maybe well I guess you can't say well then it's just like every game but those two specifically probably probably not we'll see well we'll see so you you're going to do one of your special Nick things where he's like wouldn't it be wouldn't it be nice or wouldn't it be special or whatever the hell no just you know we'll see it bro we'll see all right um yeah anything else really happened this week besides these layoffs and besides po world I guess there was um OT Xbox uh talk they're launching this thing called Indie select Jazz did you read anything about this yeah they' they've got basically a new indie select selection on the store yeah I suppose it's kind of cool um as it's analgous to the the the arcade Wednesdays they used to do on the 360 I guess and it's kind of cool but I don't know Indie s includes a curated dedicated collection in the Xbox store featuring Indie Games chosen by the ID at Xbox team along with support on our social Community channels and even right here on Xbox wire in the game section of the Xbox Dash we now have a permanent Hub that showcases indie games we are passionate about a new collection featuring various channels and rotating themes will go live every Wednesday it's good because I think I think a lot there there are a lot of indie games that need to be highlighted and the store is just a NeverEnding uh monstrosity of just games every single Tuesday or Thursday and it's just like there's so much stuff on there that sometimes it's difficult to find uh something that's really good right something that's celebrated um you either got to listen to this podcast or other podcasts or read reviews to see like hey what's the what's a really good Indie that came out so I think it's smart for them to do this to have like hey here's some really really good indie games from the people who signed them on to uh bring them to the Xbox platform even when I log into my PlayStation I know my play Playstation sort of does this where they're like editor's choices where they like oh these these editors at PlayStation think like these games are the best and they'll have like selections of them whatever so yeah I mean any any sort of thing that gives that highlights indie games more is good in my opinion because there are some really good ones out there that more people need to play uh but yeah let's see is there anything anything else oh there was the uh extra avow footage jez the avow interview um with the Xbox podcast 25 more minutes of stuff did I I know AOW you're looking forward to a vow and it sort of I wouldn't say disappointed you at the direct or maybe you were just more high in Indiana Jones but I know someone who's really looking forward to a vow uh did you have a chance to check out it all the extra info and interview um yeah a little bit um my team covered it at least but they were just kind of talking about how the class structure is a little bit more fluid you know it's not it's not going to be like hard classes I'm a priest I'm a mage I'm a wizard that I'm a warrior whatever you can be like I'm a warrior but I also use a wand or I'm a mage but I also use a bow and arrow or something like that so it's going to be sort of like a dynamic fluid build your own kind of class system I think that was like the emphasis of that um PC Gamer have had a lot of a lot of well they had an interview with the avow Dev team and they' they've broke out a lot of articles about that so um you know check them out on PC Gamer it's I've V sounds like um if they were talking about as well how they they sort of uh they Rift on Vermin tide for the melee yeah for the melee combat yeah which is you know that's a good thing verment TI as good melee but um we'll see where it goes man we'll see where it goes I did see there's uh no sex in the game oh [ __ ] period cancel no no Ro no Romance options even power world has romance yeah have you heard about the the controversial sexy pal World pal no I haven't there's a there's a sexy pal World pal so in the pal world popedia or whatever it's called it's like an encyclopedia of all the pals right entry number 69 I can't remember the name of the pal but it's like it looks like a pink kangaroo with love hearts and um and uh and sort of like in the description he says this pal got T Jo rep CH says jez don't do it it says in the description of this pal it says this pal got bored of sleeping with other powers and now wants to sleep with humans what is this game Run speechless I I don't know what to say anymore uh it's called love love Lander or love maner or something like that I don't know but yeah so so pal world has pal cannibalism pal slavery in sweat shops and also pal a creepy pervy pal that wants to put you in bed bro I did I I did see the Pokemon Mod for uh po world did get shut down right yes it did Nintendo's lawyers were not happy about that one yeah of course um trying to think what else uh oh what else happened this week was iOS is now going to allow Cloud streaming apps so you might see Xbox uh cloud gaming as an actual App instead of a on the browser cuz the CMA was reopening their investigation and iOS and apple was just like no no will on so I think you you'll see Nvidia GeForce on there and whatever cloud gaming stuff on there is that does that make you I'm curious man I'm curious about this cuz it's kind of like Xbox xcloud is already at capacity right now MH like the LA the last few days you try and play xcloud um you get a queue because everyone's trying to play po world for it right um so like if they add iOS into the equation isn't that just going to blow up the qz even more it's kind of like do they need iOS right now before they've actually added more servers I don't know but we'll see I mean obviously it's a good thing I suppose it depends on server capacity and stuff like that um and also speaking of xcloud today as Tom Warren pointed out on Twitter there's a new Xbox Insider program for xcloud which is the first time they've done that so if you go to the Xbox inside a hub you can now sign in and sign up to whoa get access to um Rand can you hear me I'm listening I'm listening my graphics card I think I might be about to blue screen my graphics card is freaking out that was really weird um but yeah sorry about that I that was so weird like my whole screen just went crazy and glitchy which is not that does not bode well but um but yeah there's a new there's a new cloud gaming inside a program so that should be something cool coming up all right uh well let uh I think that's really it uh let's take a let's go to the the patreon questions for the week so if you guys are enjoying the show make sure you uh make sure you hit the like button subscribe if you haven't already and uh let's get some of these questions Nate Miller what do you guys see as the future of live service games I was perusing the Xbox catalog recently and between all the live service and MMOs I was thinking about how many more live service games we will actually get I doubt it will be that many I kind of agree with you you don't really see a lot of life service stuff in development I I know Sony has their big life service push which maybe got got scaled back um and even a lot of the Microsoft games that are being made were a lot of single player Focus stuff because they do have a lot of live service stuff already in existence there's only so many people and there's only so much time and I sort of feel like the ones that that are entrenched are entrenched for good is going to be hard to replace any of those yeah so I don't really know what the future of live service looks like um I tell you what it I tell you now what it looks like looks like mobile phones it looks like Diablo mortal it looks like yeah it does it looks like Diablo IM mortal it looks like genshin it looks like gaka it looks like mobile it looks like Elder Scrolls castles it looks like mobile games and Microsoft keeps saying it like their their growth Vector is mobile so like don't be surprised if you start seeing more mobile games being produced out of Microsoft and not just outsourced but produced into I mean sure I I would see that but I don't necessarily say you would see that on like the Xbox store on PC or console though you know what I mean well you know if this hybrid console they're making well maybe that but like Elder Scrolls castles isn't suddenly going to be on the Xbox store right that gears pop never came over mightbe I don't know gear pop is terrible so well I'm just saying you don't really like why Candy Crush why isn't crush on the console good question why isn't it I don't know there has to be reasons for maybe it should maybe it should be bro I'm just saying there has to be reasons for it but yeah I think I think I think there's just the games that are already there are just so entwined with how with with how people play now that it's going to be very difficult to dislodge those Gamers to get them to really try anything else so I think companies are going to shy away from it and we've seen a a lot of games I think it was like last year halfway through last year where all of a sudden it seemed like the live service bubble bust popped CU we were seeing like the smaller live service games suddenly get discontinued you know like Rumble verse or knockout City or whatever I can't even remember all the other ones on top of my head it just it really seems like that is a very that is a very dangerous risky thing to chase after right everybody was cha everybody wanted their their own fortnite right and they're like we'll just go after this but I just don't think there's there's the the user base right and you you to get people to move off of fortnite you have to like I remember reading somewhere you have to be eight times better than the current thing that that person's using for them for get them to switch you know and it's just really not going to happen so the future life service just may be as it is until it dies out and maybe something may maybe maybe you know what maybe the future of life service is is is what power world has showed us survival plus something else in Early Access in Early Access and that's that's the new life service stuff y uh silus says good day aliens have invaded Earth drawn to our planet by the vocal stylings of je and ran they call into the podcast and ask a question that will Define their knowledge of interactive entertainment you each asked by the alien horde to give them one game that best defines what is a video game what best game distills the Essential Elements of gaming into a single product I'm going to give him Halo because I'm I'm gonna show him what we do to the aliens you know what I mean man I show him po world you're going to show him po world really is that is that really theame you're going to like okay going to show a game where you where you enslave Pals to do your own work for you well I mean we do that we do that as a species do we not enslave the chickens and the cows I suppose do we not enslave the the horses to be to be ridden and so on go that's deep and philosophical bro yeah uh Captain Logan in chat says doy DOI lit Lit C that' be good one golden eye moonlighter there a lot lot of lot of suggestions in chat the future is the future of life service is foam Stars says Sider foam Stars foam Stars the future of life service is Foams interesting now what game would I really show them um maybe Mass Effect how we could live peacefully with aliens you know what I mean yeah Mass Effect great I think I think EUR euralis said the right one is Tetris man Tetris yeah Tetris would be a good one good old urales he he would he would get that Tetris would be a great one or a musical one right like a some music game maybe yeah well like GE geometry is is going to be a universal language right so like an alien would understand the concept of putting geometric blocks into the right position no no no language no language needed sure I would be surprised if an alien civilization has their own version of Tetris I I did I did think that I did well no I I didn't even think of those type of games where you don't necess like yeah okay to enjoy Mass Effect you might have to understand the English language and the aliens would be like what's this but maybe they would intuitively understand cuz they got but what but what if but what if there species that never really uh like evolved with you know know uh shapes like that bro and they wouldn't understand if they've got Intergalactic travel they've got not necessarily man what what if they're blind what if they see by other means you know if they're blind then we got a problem with regards to playing games right true um you'd have to pick a game that was really friendly for not having vision and as the most excellent sightless combat has taught us Killer Instinct is the right game in that scenario Killer Instinct um Earth Defense Force man you should show alien's Earth Defense Force EDF fighting off giant bugs and ants and spiders and stuff JJ says Rand would show them a trending physical dick you guys are just too mean you guys are just what was that was that your laugh that was my that that was my tired Jimmy car laugh oh Jimmy Carr yeah brows when I browse uh YouTube shorts sometimes his his like skits will come up he's really funny man he's a funny dude Jimmy Jimmy Carr is hilarious he's hilarious and he gets heck heckled by people in the crowd and he just like turns it on him and like oh it's hilarious good stuff Jimmy watch his panel shows man watch a out of 10 cats there's a really famous bit they do called the the what's it called it's called The Carrot game or something super famous watch that it's hilarious with Sean Lock brilliant rest in peace Sean luck chess says Rand do you have a job outside of YouTube yes what did you do before YouTube I was an electrician uh right now I'm currently jez's assistant pays me big money true but I had a whole bunch of jobs I think the worst the worst one I obviously ever had was like KFC that was my first job working at Kentucky Fried Chicken I did like construction which I'm almost loed to tell this story because it'll give me a new nickname and I don't want this nickname so I'm not going to tell it I'm not gonna tell this story maybe I'll maybe I'll I'll tell you off air Jaz okay uh but I'm not I'm not GNA say it live to the thousands upon thousands of people that will eventually hear this because okay it it would be become my new nickname and I hated it uh but I I'll tell you but you can't tell anybody okay and then electrician for a while that was fun although I eventually didn't like it but yeah um Lazar wolf he says you could play only one single player franchise for the rest of your life including future installments what are you what are you picking H who would you pick Jaz single player franchise for the rest of your life including any future games that's tough I mean buold is gay doesn't count now does it because he's got multiplayer well I guess you could you just not enable this the the multiplayer you could play single player Resident Evil I'll just I'll just say Resident Evil I think L laran is just going to do good stuff I think keep going to keep doing good stuff and bullers Gates presuming they do bullers gate for you know I think they're going to carry that franchise so I'm going to say bold is gay what if they're the ones that take over the kns over Republic remake God damn that could be really interesting yeah um monkey versus tra says hi guys a normal question this week for me there's been a lot of discussion around whether power world Dev used AI in their development my question for you both if AI can help speed up development process and retain quality gaming experience we would expect depending on gaming genre is it such a bad thing for the future of game development thoughts I think the the the end of the discussion about II is that it should be additive and support devs and shouldn't take any jobs away that's the ideal scenario so like I think using AI to support the work devs are doing is a good thing and to be honest there all a lot a lot of programmers already using it you know visual code Co co-pilot and GitHub co-pilot and stuff like that all the various Co programming um all the various programming co-pilots make coding uh easier process and also there's like you know there's already machine learning being used used in gaming anyway you know like stuff like Photoshop generative fill and stuff like that um that are kind of subtle subtle things without actually designing things outright by ai ai definitely has a role to play but it needs to be it needs to be additive not not detrimental I'm okay with it personally I don't I don't agree with the the widespread just I hate AI and that's it full stop you know AI is going to have a role to play and it should have a role to play and it could make video games cheaper to produce which hopefully will mean less layoffs not more but maybe that's naive I don't know but in this case the the acquisition was that used AI to basically copy Pokemons right not necessarily that used AI to create the game yeah that's proven untrue but I mean they did not use AI to make this I would be for AI if it can help people be more efficient and could essentially reduce the timetables it would be to create future games uh but also at the same time I know uh companies will use it to reduce uh their headcounts so they can save money and that's something I wouldn't want so yeah one way it's good the other way it's bad and I wouldn't not want the bad part but you know somebody well you know somebody's going to do it just to try just to see if they can and hopefully if they do it's recognizable and it just bombs and it's a bad game you know what I mean that's the sort of thing I I at least can look to and be like AI books awful right not saying that every every book a human is written is great because that's clearly not the case but it's like H has there any been like a really good AI book I've seen like people people ask AI questions and it's you know like the answers it give is just nonsensical sometimes or just kind of circular logic right yeah I tried to I tried to get AI to generate me a YouTube video script from an article that I'd written and I I wrote I wrote in the I wrote in it generate me an article generate me a YouTube video script based on this article and this article alone and the information in this article and it just ignored me and it was pulling information from all of the different places and it was just injecting information about a game that I wasn't even talking about you know so it's just like it's got a long way to go you know before before it's actually something that can threaten people's jobs but we'll see um another thing about AI I briefly want to bring up but did you see the Taylor Swift AI stuff trending on Twitter the last couple days yeah it's just there's but there's been a big I mean the Tyler Swift stuff was bad enough but there was a big news story here in the UK where a 14-year-old girl committed suicide because the guys at her school had AI generated pictures of her indecent pictures of her right it's a huge it's a huge thing in the UK right now and it's like I even saw something it's gonna get worse Taylor Swift's considering like you know her legal options against the website right they it's like a deep fake a website and you know it very very some of them were very explicit and then need there needs to be legislation and it's one of those things where you look at the picture and you're like that does look like Taylor Swift a little bit even though you can see some of the where the things AI gets wrong right oh but yeah I mean she's yeah you know don't don't [ __ ] with Taylor Swift maybe maybe she's the one that bring regulation to AI uh hopefully angry angry gnome says with the snail speed of roll out of updates on PC game pass and even the Microsoft store compared to steam are they going to get a better system to these updates I feel it's keeping them from evolving evolving the ecosystem they want to implement on PC power world Dev recently said light on this process oh about Microsoft's long drawn out certification process for their stuff yeah that's been a thing forever well yeah it's just it's just the way Xbox does things you know yeah I don't really see anything changing but it's been like that since like the 360 days and it's just yeah yeah uh lee Sanders says with the chat around achievements review coming up again I was curious what you guys would love to come to the platform I personally love the stats side and would love for them to go more into this being able to see more of my whole gaming career and celebrated achievements across the board in my profile perhaps a section where I can pin my favorite games and rating yes the Platinum achievement would be great but what do you think would be a great addition to the Xbox ecosystem the Platinum achievement come on that's all I really care about the other stuff I don't particularly care about like I don't really care about pinning a favorite game or whatever like I know other people do but all I really care about is give me like an achievement for like completing everything in the game all the other stuff I would say is tertiary secondary right it yeah to me the only thing I really care about is that Platinum achievement could they do more of course they could could do more and maybe it's one of those things where I don't even know what I want until I get it but you know if they said to me would you like to be able to pin a game I'd be like not really I wouldn't really care about that or pinning some of my favorite achievements no like not really uh but if say Hey you want a platinum achievement absolutely you know but but they're the ones that kind of come up with it so uh what is there anything you would want to see cuz I know you don't really care about that I'm not I'm not super interested in achievement systems and stuff like that like if they bring more stuff and features then that would be cool it'd be cool if like they um they uh gave you like Avatar benefits or like cosmetic benefits there were games that had that where if you got an achievement you would get but the avatars have been kind of pushed off to the side um now like no nobody really uses them they're not really promoted or highlighted so I feel like unless you were planning on bringing back the avatars to the Forefront there'd be no reason to do that you know yeah and I I I know some dabs like oh achievement like uh maybe like concept art would tied to that stuff but it it feels like people didn't care about that either so I'm not sure how much you really can do with that stuff like yeah like numbers is cool seeing a rare achievement maybe they need to do a breakdown of of of different Rarities other than just a regular achievement and a rare achievement maybe there needs to be like you know this is I I know PlayStation does it but like PlayStation has common uncommon and I forget the other bre like maybe there needs to be more than just a regular achievement and rare where there's different categories of them maybe those need to be highlighted on your profile like it says when you look at me and it's like Randle thor9 1.3 million gamer scored and then it says like 5,000 rare achievements or something where he's like oh damn you know you you have a lot or whatever completed number of games like there's things they could do with that I do like seeing the the completion percentage when you get an achievement it's like. 3% you know I do like that aspect of of it but I'm not sure how much more they can delve down into it to give you more uh of of that experience you know yeah true achievements does a lot of that right now as like you can go on there and you can can sort of have all that at your fingertips really but I know a lot of people want it on the console so achievement says you have the rest of your life to play one generation only no remasters just the new games released PS3 360 gen or PS4 Xbox One gen uh I would probably choose the 360 gen CU it's my favorite gen i' picked the Xbox One J okay fair enough how any reason why Monster Hunter monster but there weren't any Monster Hunters on the 360 PS3 gen I mean there was no monster hunter world I don't think mon I don't think there was monst Hunter on Xbox back then I don't think there was monst Hunter on PS3 either wasn't it like mostly a Nintendo DS game back then I don't know maybe I'm tripping I don't know I don't know uh tricks are for Trey says so so guys how do you feel about Xbox after this round of layoffs and having two huge leads toart blizzard I mean doesn't feel great right feels bad feels bad man it feels bad man um yeah I mean we talked about it at length about how we feel about it sucks for the team it sucks for the people but you know it's it's business business going to business capitalism going to capitalism right just got to hope for better times for everyone involved yeah uh good Oka says good weekend Randon jez it's tough to ask question about games in the chadow of the mass layoffs at Microsoft it's not easy to say that this was something that was foretold after the completion of the acquisition of ABK if you were someone who know is affected by the layoffs I'll ask instead a question about the podcast specifically Xbox 2 plus one I know I know you're always looking for the plus one any thoughts as to finding someone outside of the Xbox Community to talk about gaming in general someone from say one of the other console communities for PlayStation for example would be Mr Bad bit we've actually had Mr Bad bit on Xbox 2 plus one yeah we we've we've spoken to Mr Bad bit and we also spoke to col mariati last summer yep about Playstation Xbox and stuff so we do do it um maybe we need to do it more uh for Nintendo John Downey from spawn wve um I mean we had Jon on to talk about Xbox we didn't necessarily talk about Nintendo because I'm not really interested in Nintendo maybe maybe we maybe we could have like Nate the hayon to talk about you know Xbox and Nintendo down the road or something um but yeah we've had PlayStation guys on and or even like you know uh some someone that doesn't even really have like just um a uh like you wouldn't classify as one from one cap or the other but yeah for sure like um it's just a matter of who the patreons want and who's available because not everybody's going to be available at the times we do it and stuff but yeah we're always looking for cool people to talk to yeah we you know we're even trying to be like we need to get a we need to get a woman like a chick you know but it's it's it's like I don't you know who you know but yeah uh 09c M says Hey guys hope you're doing well as hard as it is to think about considering what happened do you think there will be any positives from all this Mass layoffs in the industry as terrible as it is for so many people to lose their jobs certainly it must have some impact other than cost gunning any positives I don't think so no I mean it's it's not really appropriate to think of positives I mean the the only positive I suppose is like the doing this now and making sure the business stays healthy prevents even more layoffs down the line that's the only only real positive you can really think of Cu maybe if they don't take things seriously and keep things efficient effective whatever you want to call it efficient um maybe Xbox gets into trouble and we see even worse layoffs you know so that's like the only vague kind of positive thing you could take from this is that hopefully it means that there'll be less not more down the line yeah uh Omen says do you think project Odyssey was the only game canceled during these layoffs personally these layoffs make me worri for state of DEC 3 Perfect Dark and ever wild I think if they were announce games I think they would announce that they were cancelled yes and that's part of the reason why I think the they announced that the Blizzard game had been canceled because it had been announced right yeah if it wasn't announced and if was just a project we wouldn't have heard about it CU projects get canceled all the time yeah I um I mean I could try and find out the status of some of these games you know like I asked about Contraband is contraband still still in production but I think like they they let us know sorry they let us know if if things were going right yeah stve the K3 is the only game Undead Labs is working on you know right so no I I I think if those if I think if anoun game was cancelled they would have they would have uh said so in the thing uh Billy the Brewer says what's up guys I don't have a question just wanted to shout out all the cool peeps in the Xbox 2 Discord yeah discord's always popping f testicle says what is the most satisfying sound in gaming for you stomping the [ __ ] out of Necromorph says Isaac Clark is probably my favorite the heavy stomping sounds combined with the way he yells is pure dopamine for me it's pretty good but you know what mine is the achievement unlock sound probably you know it is that so satisfying dude you know like I'll what I'll I'll just say it's it's so satisfying and the rare achievement sound too oh jeez love that's a cool sound that's a cool sound do you know what my satisfying sound is what the activation sound from Silent Hill one like the the like the it's like Oh I thought you were talking about like the the the siren they use when it switches from world I I'm just talking about the menu when you when you click on something in the menu it goes kind of all right all I've got that as my ringtone notification I I did not know that SJ dub says hey J and Rand I don't have a gaming question this week because I know everyone will be asking about ABK but have there been any good movies and shows that you've seen lately I'm also looking for recommendations on things to watch have a great weekend fellas and stay strong jez well I've started watching a TV show on Netflix called blueeyed Samurai I did I watched blueeyed Samurai it's great H yeah did you how far are you I'm only in episode one but it's very cool I'm really intrigued and I'm going to watch more I just finished um season 4 of For All Mankind on appil TV um it is a show it is an alternate history show about what happens if the Russians were the first ones to land on the moon and not not the Americans um that at least is like basically the setup of the show on season one American didn't land on the moon that's fake news bro fake news but yeah uh I thought they used they used AI to generate the moon I thought it was really good so I'd recommend For All Mankind I also watched uh like I said bluee samurai Netflix was great I watched scavengers reain on Max which was an an animation but it was basically about uh people that were stranded on alien planet and I thought that was really well done uh I watched the last season season 3 of uh only murders in the building which I thought was very funny I I don't know I like I I really like only murders in the building um the bear on Hulu probably the best show on television what you watch so much TV you know what I man to watch but that's we're talking about like you know I watched the bear last year or whatever like I it's not like I L watched it recently but I'm trying to get people to watch the bear so watch the bear you know bear the bear you should watch watch the bear too long didn't watch do you know what I watch what I watch the YouTube channel scary interesting interesting what's it about and Laz and lazy masquerade it's just True Crime and horrible mysterious disappearances Unsolved Mysteries and then I watch it then I get so scared that I can't sleep probably and that's why I'm up on that so as for like what I'm planning to watch um got I want to watch the new the new the new True Detective season when it finishes because I don't watch anything while it's airing unless it's Wheel of Time uh so I I'm gonna watch True Detective when it finishes I got to watch season two of foundation on Apple TV and I think I got to watch uh what we do in the shadows I think they just finished their season five because I quite like that show as well I'm sure there's other shows I'm I'm I have like saved or whatever oh I also did watch Reacher season 2 um which I would recommend Reacher I I did think Reacher season one was better uh but Reacher season 2 was still good uh Diego Herta says sup guys this is me just speculating but I feel like Microsoft is going to be a lot more hands on with the Xbox and ABK now that they see it as serious money making for them I hope I'm wrong I feel that Xbox is at its best when Phil and team are allowed to do what they believe is the best for the brand also how in the world do you cancel a blizzard Survival game with the biggest game right now and probably for the Gen it's basically a Pokemon Survival game instantly Insanity love to hear guys's thoughts yeah I mean there must I mean it's kind of like what J Jason sh's report um goes in in depth about like the issues surrounding the game the engine and the fact that it probably still had two or three years more Dev time necessary you know um so we can only speculate really as to the problems with it but clearly they just thought this is not I mean ran described it as some cost fallacy maybe it's just it just got too expensive and maybe they just thought it's better that we focus on the games that we have out right now that need help Diablo needs help OverWatch needs help world of warcraft's in a good place and and is in a strong trajectory but yeah yeah I mean I guess you can say like oh man how could you cancel a survival game when look what pal world's doing uh but you know jury's still out on pal World being a flash in the pan and you know uh 3 years is that is the Blizzard game when it releases would it been really good would it have just been seen as an also ran I I don't know but maybe like just maybe it's canceled because like it just would have cost too much money maybe they need help on other projects um although it just does feel like they integrated ABK a lot faster than they ever did with Bethesda you know what I mean right like Bethesda you didn't see this like they do this with ABK they get rid of you know the people are for what you know cost cutting measures or redundancies and it's just like cancel a game like we didn't see that with Bethesda even though maybe we should have seen it with redfall um I wonder if they learned their mistakes from Bethesda with the first time through so they're trying to do it better this time um I don't know but yeah them cancelling them cancelling Odyssey was really the only thing that super surprised me because I was like really I I can't believe they canceled that game like gar leaving I didn't think was a surprise um I guess you can say that it was a surprise by how many people got laid off but we knew it was happening I just we just didn't know the breath of it but Odyssey getting canceled I thought was like a shock and Sierra 111 Kevin he says hi guys since a large portion of the layoffs related to ABK do you believe this would have been planned as part of the acquisition and how they would have sold it to the board or do you believe it was more of a recent decision to do so and do you feel this will impact future Acquisitions now with regulatory bodies I mean I've heard all kinds of stuff like you know speculation that this was already planned regardless of the any acquisition from Microsoft I mean Destin posted comments from Activision before the acquisition saying like if um if we're not acquired then it's going to be wor there's going to be like like strongly hinted that there' be big layoffs and stuff like that we can only like speculate really I mean I do think it's strange that Phil went on stage at BlizzCon did all those photo ops with the team and shook Mike's hand and then we've had this kind of whiplash effect where like blizzard blizzard fans and also customers and then employees had this optimism and Microsoft knew they had this optimism and then this happened so I'm just increasingly wondering like is this you know was this something that they decided after that or did Microsoft do that knowing full well they were going to lay off ,00 people you know it's it's a conundrum but maybe we'll never know for sure yeah and as far as F future Acquisitions will it have any impact maybe especially if they bring up like workers rights and stuff and they may be like oh well you said you weren't I I don't know I don't know if they promised they weren't going to lay people off to the regulatory bodies I don't think they would have but I maybe I don't know I don't know let's see if there's any any more late questions that came in while I had this thing open let me see uh no I think that's it so yeah um hum drunk says in the Super Chat I'm more upset over third party over I'm more upset over the third party over layoffs H okay well thank you guys so much for being here this has been episode 301 of the Xbox 2 hopefully you had a good time if you did make sure you hit the like button subsscribe and uh yeah hope everybody has a good weekend weekend uh what are you going to be playing jazz more more pal world you're going to be playing uh Pokemon because you got nine more months 10 more months 11 more months you got to finish it by the end of the year what if I finish Persona 5 before you H yeah that's not GNA happen what no seriously what if I do what if I do finish what if I actually start playing Persona 5 and finish it before you there would have to be some consequences basically Pokemon man there would there would have to be consequences for that wouldn't there you won't you won't won't you so sure I'm I'm 100% sure you will not finish okay Persona before me or even play it okay fair enough because it's po it's Pokemon with demons bro that sounds that sounds cool what about Persona 3 Pokemon with demons bro as well all right well anyways guys I hope you have a good rest of the weekend and we'll be back on Friday February 2nd with another episode of the Xbox 2 hopefully Xbox's got good news next week um but until then uh uh thank you guys for being here and uh keep it gaming later yeah later everybody
