Xbox's Big Gamescom | Xbox Series S | Phil Spencer | Starfield | Xbox Activision Deal - XB2 280

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] awesome [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you thank you [Music] [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] okay [Music] [Music] welcome to episode 280 of the Xbox 2 podcast I am one of your hosts the birthday boy well belated birthday actually birthday was yesterday uh Randall 419 the man with the million and with Starfield and uh as always we have managing editor someone who greatly enjoyed his experience at Gamescom which I'm sure he'll talk about Jess Gordon Windows Central extraordinaire he is here with us yo yo yo made it we made it back from cologne oh man it was so damn warm bro it was so hot it was scorching I was melting it was it was way hotter than la like what what's the deal with that like La is like supposed to be near a desert near the equator and I'm going cologne is always warmer than La for some reason but I don't know that's neither here nor there we made it we're back in the driver's seat uh literally and figuratively if we're talking about games we've been playing League recently that we can't talk about very much oh actually we can talk about armored Core now the embargo's lifted but there's another game where the driver's seat that I can't talk about actually this there's a bunch of games the drivers see that I can't talk about right now but I'm rambling uh sorry we like I had to do a bit of housekeeping at my end but we're here now and uh Happy Birthday to Rand yes now 80 years young I thought it was 90. time dilation is a funny thing man yeah yeah time deletions are funny no I'm I'm the big four too the big the big the big 42 bruh and what better way to spend your birthday than by playing Starfield huh yeah or maybe it's a bad way to spend your birthday I don't know don't read anything into that I played Starfield on my birthday so yes yes she did and I play Starfield on your birthday as well in fact pretty much all I've been doing non-stop is playing Starfield because the review embargo is this week and yeah it's Thursday I'm trying to test yeah I'm trying to desperately get through it I barely written anything in the last month because I was trying to do I was trying to review Builders gate and I ran out of time so I'm gonna have to come back to pull this guy later because I gotta get I thought well I've got a higher chance of hitting the Embargo with Starfield than I do with Bud's gate so oh man what a what a time to be alive there's just so many games come out sea of stars is reviewed really well as well I think we gave I think my reviewer gave it 10 out of 10 and it's it's Riding High on meta Creek right now I don't know if you've seen that sort of jrpg kind of game and we've got more comeback coming up so dude there's just two there's too much too many games bro I don't know I don't know maybe maybe I should stop releasing so many damn games but hey we made it and did you do anything nice for your birthday do you have a pizza Chicago Pizza not really I mean you know my day was pretty much uh I read a book I was reading I uh had a nice I ordered some some nice dinner and I you know with the Starfield embargo quickly approaching on Thursday I played Starfield that was uh that's pretty much my birthday so well that's pretty pretty cool birthday that's probably how I'm gonna spend my birthday to prepare just just gaming I mean it's the the days are partying down and getting wasted are pretty much over for us around yeah I think being 42 years old a lot of my most of my like in real life friends all have kids and stuff and you know it's just one of those things where it's just kind of like yeah everybody's sort of grown and old at this point you know nobody really really does anything anymore so hey more time for gaming right yes that's a good thing more time for gaming indeed and there is a lot of it this past week we normally do the show on Fridays I saw a couple people in chat saying like they do show on Mondays now no we're only doing it on Monday because Jazz was experiencing Gamescom In the Flesh where he got to meet people like gas and John yeah mechanico from Xbox era and wandering Dutch and boxing Burger so you know Xbox Community out there in force huh yeah I also bumped into Club real briefly I was there yeah yeah there was so many cool people there like it kind of it's kind of annoying because it's like man I want to hang out the community but then it's like oh man I've got 50 meetings with really cool upcoming games to do so it's like it's it's so chaotic it's so crazy but this man it was so rewarding this year I think this probably was my favorite ever games comic like I saw so much cool like an absurd amount of cool and there's so much you know Community people there it's also the first one out of the pandemic so uh well those games come last year but it was rough man it was like there was very few booths there and I think like there were sort of like is this going to be a thing still you know I think they weren't sure you know if people would keep coming after Gamescom and after E3 pretty much exploded but no Gamescom is back baby there's a 350 000 people there it was absolutely Rand probably a super spreader event with covid I actually feel a little bit under the weather right now so if my voice my throat sounds weird later in the show it's because I've got a sore throat um and I do feel a little I just feel a little bit down uh in the under the weather kind of thing but but yeah Gamescom was rad bro and now we're gonna get into it in a little bit I played a lot of games and we'll talk about it soon yeah I mean there is a lot to talk about I mean Phil Spencer did an interview with Dustin uh the CMA is back back baby uh which made Jazz getting into his his feelings-based Jazz uh because Microsoft had to completely redo the acquisition to appease the United Kingdom uh you know there's the Baldur's Gates it's finally coming to Xbox this year officially and all the stuff that surrounds that and I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other other stuff as well so if you guys could do us a huge favor make sure you hit that like button if you are new let everybody know that we are live on this August 28th on a Monday we got a lot of things to talk about uh but first Jazz we have uh we have a sponsor for this episode right we do indeed we do have sponsor bear with me one moment our sponsor this week is of course the indomitable manscaped so Rand are you preparing for a Voyage to the stars do you want to avoid having personal hygiene issues while floating around in zero g then you need manscaped for a totally out of this world Men's Grooming experience for all the sleekest version of yourself and to prevent space suit chafing um manscaped had you covered from head to toe starting with their brand new beard trimmer with one guard and 20 adjustable lengths this device is the perfect travel campaign to take oh man I my throat really is sore man let's start again okay with one guard and 20 adjustable lengths this divide is the perfect device to travel companion fit to take care of your main wherever you are in the entire galaxy next in line who can forget about their signature performance package 4.0 including this ultimate groom bottle is the star of the show The Lawnmower 4.0 equipped with skin safe space technology may or may not be space technology to minimize Nicks and cuts and all of your sensitive areas once again manscape supports the Xbox 2 podcast so much they provided an exclusive offer for you our lovely listeners get 20 off and free shipping with the code xb2 at manscape.com that's XB and the number two and 20 off with free shipping worldwide with code xb2 links in the description and feel like yourself again take charge of your life and head into that great duck Beyond with man escaped yes thanks to manscapes once again sponsoring this video I actually I actually took alone my manscape products to Gamescom big help yes it is big big help there you know you wanna you wanna look your best when you're meeting me in the peeps right um but yeah the beard trimmer is awesome that it's it's without the best beard trimmer I've ever owned but um you know so definitely check them out supports the show a manscape has been with us for God knows how long now well over a year well we're two years now with manscape absolutely crazy yeah like the support you guys are giving us through manscapes and the sport manscape give us is amazing and the products are actually genuinely great so Last Man skates but we've also got some patreon shouts because the patreon has grown immeasurably after our uh xb2 plus one with Colin Moriarty last uh uh the week before last I think now at this point um but yeah thanks to everyone for support there Moran's got some shouts to read I think yeah we have uh most spankings Saucy mods James wiser the granite the bip Chris parney starsman hey blinken battered haddock Army dude 52c Ryan kipple foreign object Mythic Marty moronic donkey 99 markozilla Randall Thor 19 Silas Eric Gregory Elijah Vazquez James Moore Halo is the franchise player katreox breaks under one a black from Connecticut Justin Duo Frank Mariano Pro P Bro King acetate in Madison untidy Tim Grizzly mofo OG Governor Grimm DZ huff and wagerman achievement the Scarecrow 121 Darren trophy profit JJ Butterball 8 Ghostface Killah Wolfgang kpz and Ralph Wiggum thank you guys so much for supporting us on patreon um you know patreon.com xb2 and uh we will uh next month we'll have Xbox 2 ultimate probably not sure when yet uh we'll let you guys know but we we do have our guests locked in uh for September which is kind of two plus what uh plus one I was actually going to talk to you and maybe the patreon's about maybe like doing two xb2 plus ones a month two instead of doing an ultimate I don't know well we'll see but uh we we have uh Mr Maddie plays will be joining us uh in September uh we just need to We're just trying to figure out like a date which would be best so Mr Maddie plays what better time to have Maddie on than after the release of Starfield and all the stuff that's going on with the Xbox so that should be a pretty damn good conversation with him uh because we've been on defining Duke quite a bit I believe you aren't you are you on defining Duke again real soon I am yeah I'm talking to uh Matty and Cog about jumping on defining Duke probably after Starfield embargo or something like that but we'll see we'll see if I'm still alive because I got a lot of stuff to do in the near term but we'll see yeah so um thank you guys for all your support and uh yeah we will be having a show on Friday which is going to be a very interesting show because I mean it's going to be mostly star field related because we'll be in probably up by then yeah the embargo's on the Thursday before and me and Jazz actually thought about doing a special podcast on that Thursday the regular podcast is like literally the next day we're just gonna do uh a regular podcast uh which you know will be mostly star field related because we do have a lot of stuff to say about Starfield and everything surrounding it so uh there there will be another podcast this week uh big week you know Starfield embargo and everything so uh yeah can't wait to Friday uh you know I mean I can't wait till Thursday depending on you know so I can give my thoughts on what I think about Starfield yeah but it talks about it a bit before the show and it was like well I think this is the first time we talked on voice since we both had the game um we have thoughts so stay tuned for that basically the podcast a big segment of next week's show will be a review podcast segment but I'm gonna have a written review up on winter Central as well I was going to do a video but I just don't think I'm gonna have time rant yeah but we'll see what happens we'll see we'll see we'll see indeed so um let me get through some of these member chats or super chats we have space doverkin member for 28 months let's effing Go Happy Birthday ran missed you guys have a great uh day T-minus three days and ten hours for exploring the cosmos love you guys thank you thank you for all the happy birthday wishes by the way everybody who wished me happy birthday on Twitter or through DMs or through Discord or through text messages or called me on my phone uh or in the Discord uh you know Xbox two Discord and anybody here in the chat I I see you all so thank you guys very much for all the love really appreciate it 42 and uh another trip around the Sun is completed so we got another one to go and uh you're thinking of everything in space terms now yeah that is true that is true uh we have Joe Repco AKA flame member for 26 months happy birthday Gaz I mean Rand uh ranch hand for sorry for force of habit also jez Khan if you need a sherpa for Warframe hit me up Sir you will need it okay uh yeah I was talking about um Wolfram a little bit on on x I'm never gonna get used to call it there but um because it was a tennocon this past week which is like the digital extremes big event for Warframe and their upcoming fantasy Warframe Soul frame it's a pretty appropriate name for it I guess so there's a lot of there's been some Char about Warframe recently and I don't know armored cause kind of put me in a Mech mode as well because I've been playing that here and there a little bit obviously not going hardcore on it because of Starfield but like in those situations where I can't have any sound like right now and I want to play something where I don't have to give it my full Focus I've been playing armored Core so yeah I'm actually playing on the core right now Tom Henderson's wondering where his invite is for Xbox two plus one don't worry Tom you're on the list you're on the list of yeah people that we want we want to that's the thing we only can we only do one a month so you know well well this is why I was thinking about putting it to a vote on patreon should we do two a month because then we could get more guests in um I I like the once a month thing two a month is it's kind of too much Plus instead instead of the ultimate I was I was thinking but yeah but no but the problem is not everybody can not everybody is available not everybody can do the time we do it uh sometimes you wouldn't be able to do it I don't know I kind of like the ultimate and then having one guest uh at some point instead of like trying to get two guests every single month but we'll figure it out we'll talk about it yeah yeah I mean we'll probably run out of gas at that point but yeah that's a hell of a lot of gas man we could get a hell of a lot of people yeah scarecrow 121 remember for 42 months once again happy birthday Rand glad you got to chill out and relax and it's always nice to uh see Tom saying do more a month you slack well Tom once you get all the info surrounding the Xbox series X midgen upgrade you'll be the first although it does sound like like feels like absolutely not an image and upgrades this time all right yeah it does not sound like we're getting a upgrade this time but yeah um so let me let me open this thing up and let me let me get through uh the few uh I think uh we have some super chats I need to read before we get into everything proper hold on one second uh see going here to this okay here we go um okay uh we have broken no I'm just I was just opening it up trying to get all of them we have um look at the right date here August 28th we have web Dave says happy birthday Randall 419 you're the man Rand thank you Webb thank you I appreciate that very much Eliza Vasquez says happy birthday Ryan hope you and Jazz are doing well brother we are and thank you Andre says Felice anniversiro Rand hashtag scalebound and there's a scalebound mentioned as always every single episode uh Mr drama darks is dropping into which Randa happy birthday thank you Mr John the dark appreciate that very much uh Q10 client says great towerborn video Jazz Tower bone looks like a great couch Co-op experience with all the fam of all ages yeah I um I did a I did a very rough video for towerborne I did that on my phone like I didn't have any b-roll I just pulled the trailer and just rambled into the into my phone microphone using some random app for making videos but I wanted to get some thoughts down for when I write the article while it was still fresh in my mind it was just a little experiment but it was uh it was cool to see all the nice comments about about that video even though it was so like off the cut from random but yeah towerborne was really cool I'll talk about it a bit more when we get into our Gamescom discussion but yeah I think get terrible might have been my game of the show or it's definitely tired with another game but I'll talk about that in a minute oh game of the show really yeah for real uh we have X power saying um will we get Starfield players players and sales next week I mean we've got players from Steam well yeah you'll get concurrent users for steam which me and Jazz have a bet about um I think it's I said it'd be over a million after a week or with it I it has a week for it to to hit a million over over on Steam and current and current concurrent um so yeah will they give actual sales or player numbers I would imagine if they're really really high you might get them uh maybe two weeks later or something although you know with Forza Horizon 5 if I recall correctly they did put out a press release pretty soon after the game launched about how it had the most number of players ever for an Xbox game and pre-release or something there was there was some sort of PR that they released where they were touting how many like how Forza Horizon 5 had the most players for an Xbox like a first party game at launch or something and I would admit I would think if if Starfield eclipsed that number you might would you might see the same sort of PR where hey Starfield was play starfield's the biggest first party release in Xbox history with x amount of people playing in Early Access and you know you you know what I'm talking about right you remember that Forza Horizon 5 uh yeah Microsoft put out basically vaguely vaguely um but yeah I think well I think we'll get numbers I think the game will do really well uh in terms of users purely because of Game Pass and the Curiosity and you know it's one of the most pre-order games on Steam right now judging by the numbers so um yeah I think I think we're gonna see I think we are going to get those numbers personally but we'll see yeah I think I think we will too um what else we got we have a landslide scene what was your what was your pre-star field Metacritic guesses uh Come on talk about it and can't we can't talk about it it's it's too it's too disgusting that kind of thing is like too much of a hint about what we think the game will review at so I can't really talk about anything to do with that so like if you Super Chat asking for like hints about the way stuff is going to review or our thoughts on it we just can't answer that guys I mean Tom Henderson might have an article out with like sources like he did put out one the other day uh but yeah we I will say I've never had as much interest in what people think people think how do I say this I've never had so many people message me with what I think about Starfield trying to get information out of me like my DMs are so full with people just being like so what do you think so what do you think what do you think like so many people want to know and I'm just like I can't say anything it has never happened before for any game you know and I've I've had access to all of like Microsoft's games early for the most part and some other games but like the constant every single day somebody's trying to get some information out of me about my thoughts on Starfield it is very very I've never experienced this before I wonder what this is like for if if like uh big time reviewers like ACG or skill up if it's sort of like that for them where they're you know playing this huge release that everybody's looking forward to like cyberpunk right because it definitely seems like Starfield hype is literally everywhere right but from there's never been a game like this where I've had so many DMS people trying to fish for information oh bro it's ridiculous I've never seen anything like this I've never seen anything like the the leaks we've had during the review program from like all the different I mean a lot of YouTubers have been given access to this game so like you know uh there's there's people breaking in ndas left right and center and um it's you know on Reddit some people have had the game early as well someone got arrested somebody got arrested yeah I've actually got some I was gonna do a report on that but I was so busy at Gamescom but the FBI was involved in that the FBI wasn't what the FBI was involved so like I got a I got a DM from someone who was um they were they were like they were trying to purchase one of the copies right okay um so you just used to set up the whole scenario of what happened for people that don't know so basically what it was was this chap um allegedly allegedly allegedly allegedly stole a shipment of Starfield uh copies physical disks and uh Alex editions from what I've heard right and um someone I spoke to had ordered one of those off eBay uh or wherever they were selling it I can't remember if it's eBay or Instagram or SnapChat or whatever but they were they were trying they were trying to sell them right and um uh they didn't know if it was legit or not but the FBI got in touch with them as like are you aware this is this stuff is stolen the guy's like no and he was like can you give us all the evidence please and all that kind of stuff um so like the FBI the FBI was full-blown involved like pretty quick after that happened and this uh this chap contacted me it was like you know showing me like all the stuff the FBI said and the the that way how to upload the evidence like FBI secure servers and all this kind of stuff and I was like man this is this has turned into like some kind of huge drama and then like before I really got a chance to write it up um because I was at Gamescom but the uh there was like um I don't know what you call it it's like a website where you can actually see publicly what people have been booked or arrested and the dude like full-blown got arrested um for stealing the shipment or whatever yeah well not only that he was streaming the game he like that was where people got the first like footage of it he was streaming it he wasn't playing very well it was kind of like that the polygons footage of like the Doom 2016 where everybody makes fun up so he was he was playing it and then he was gonna sell it and but he had his like name out there and everything and it sounds like he got it was what he got arrested it was just kind of like it was it was absolutely nuts crazy it's like the the dumb the dumbest thing because it's kind of like yeah he what he did was full-blown illegal you know you had yeah you saw a shipment of copies and like why would you try and draw attention to yourself in that situation I'd be like if I if I'd done that with the goal of like okay my goal is to offload these copies um as soon as possible right I'm gonna try and keep this on the downloads as much as possible but this is the thing right because of the hype around the game he couldn't resist he couldn't resist talking about it and getting getting a little bit of clout for it that's just hilarious like the people who you know people were people probably like begging him for info about this and he's probably like oh man this is my chance to be famous for five minutes and now that dude's going to jail probably but for like theft theft of goods or something you know allegedly so let's just it's just a wild story man it's just a wild story and then and then I don't know it's just all I know like there's this like legitimate copies out there now like from people who've broke this uh from smallish shops and stores are broke the the the sale by diet I saw some copies on eBay already constellation Edition I was actually looking for I was going to buy the constellation Edition earlier and I was like where can I buy this from so I I presumed they're all sold out but game in the UK has a bunch of Xbox series X constellation editions left so I just snuck in there at the last minute but as a bunch of them on eBay already so like there's people stealing shipments of this stuff left right and Center or something but uh but yeah it's a what a wild review review cycle this has been well is what it is I've never I've never experienced something like this before every single day it's just somebody trying to pry information from me and I probably will never be involved in something like this ever again it's it's probably just the whole star feel thing I mean I know like Hellboy 2 will eventually come out and and a vowed and stuff but I can't imagine the the fewer being a like of wanting to know about that game would be on the level of wanting to know about this game there's a lot of salt about this game yeah and like there's there's a lot of salt and but there's also like the salt in the opposite direction too like there's a lot of Xbox fans who just kind of of hinged their emotions on this game I've had DMS from people who are just like I'm so worried about Starfield I'm so worried about stuff I saw that I saw that damn you shared that with me and I was yeah he he was the dude was like upset he was yeah he was like a little legit upset like just tell me if it's not going to review well and you're just like what he's like I will be so devastated I'm like oh man you need to get you need to get some serious help if if you know yeah I was just like dude it's just video games you know it's it's really just video games it's like it's like oh Xbox has been been bullied and stuff like that and you're like man some people just really sort of taking this emotionally like on both sides you know I mean the amount of hate I've been getting for the crime of being an Xbox jourlist on Twitter recently is really ramped up and it's all about Starfield like it's just it's just a game man it's so strange the petty tribalism I I don't know if any other sort of fandom has this kind of then when comparing to uh Xbox versus PlayStation I don't know if any other fandom has this but it's whatever man I mean it'll be it'll be over uh after a couple of weeks that's when it will just begin though what do you mean well I don't know I mean even if the game reviewed really badly um it's it's kind of like Bethesda games just get played yeah that's true because they just get played because there's so much you can do with them they're just huge sandboxes and you know there's mods that can fix I mean people play Fallout 4 and Skyrim to this day right I mean how they really they re-release Skyrim how many times now at this point fifty thousand it's like it's a meme about how many times I've released Skyrim and like I I didn't give Fallout 4 particularly go and review like I went back and checked um my review score has disappeared since we moved to a new system but I I think off the top of my head I gave it like 7.5 or something because I was like I was unhappy with how linear it was compared to the previous games although like they did go and oh and also it was quite buggy when it launched but uh but with Fallout 4 it's it's still one of the most played games ever you know and if you in the grand scheme of things there's like mountains of mods mountains of DLC which did address a lot of my concerns with you know um with the games linearity like far Harbor and stuff people said it was a great DLC I never played it myself I'm kind of waiting for the remaster to go back to far Harbor and try some of that stuff but these games just have a massive fan base you know not everybody likes them not everybody likes them and that's okay but um yeah it's going to be interesting to see how the world reacts to Starfield I'm really looking forward to seeing it I'm gonna give a huge shout out to the uh massive Super Chat that hergie Chaney just dropped for uh for the birthday says happy birthday Randall Thor uh damn you didn't have to do that heartbeat I really appreciate it man hope you're uh hope you're doing well I've I haven't I haven't spoken to hargeet maybe I don't think I've spoken Harkey since I started playing Starfield I've just been sequestered uh the quest sequestered by myself um hoggy if you're still there one chip challenge for charity November one chip challenge for charity is gas on board again yeah I spoke to Gaz so like I had this crazy idea of doing a one chip challenge for charity in November for like special effect or or something like that and I spoke to guys about it Gamescom and gas is down to suffer once again so like we're we're gonna do it I'm gonna try and get a one hog eat there I want hoggy there because he was such a boss of the last one chip challenge 10 minutes with no problems and then it all him and all him but what it's like his digestive tract was backwards or something but uh yeah I I don't know I don't know oh the heart gets down Hardy's down so that's that's uh three three of us so Rand you're gonna do the one I told you I mean I saw the person linked Linked In the thing about what I'm not doing the heart I don't care I'm I'll never do the hardship challenge I'm not I don't care uh so so someone sent me this clip of you from one of the podcasts I can't remember if it was Xbox two ultimate or not but you were like nah and I was like rad think of the kit children you were like them kids yes is that Michael Jordan meme I'm sure people know what I'm talking about it's just like f them kids it's like yeah I have some kids I'm not I'm not doing one chip challenge but yeah we'll see we'll see I'll uh we'll have some details in the future I guess you get cold to do it you know um yeah I won't call to do it we'll see if we could get Cole to do it that would be really cool but we'll see we'll see it so oh I think second mechanical said he'd do it too I remember correctly who was doing the rounds at Gamescom as well yeah he was he actually saw I think he saw more games than me like he saw um he saw certain Infinity's game behind closed doors I think it's called which is not yeah which is not project swerte because weird that's not his birthday that moved on from it seems they've moved on from those games which is I don't know well I think they still have one more game in production that we don't know what it is like so it's it's either tatanko or Swift well there's Tatanka that we sort of know they're working on and then there's this new IP that they're showing Lobo right is the name of it well they have another one that they're co-dabbing on from what I understand so uh you know the tanka hasn't the tank uh Hilo leakers were tracking Tatanka through the Halo API for a while and the the API for uh the API was shown whether it's a tank have been updated that went quiet for months I think since before Christmas there hasn't been any activity on the Tatanka Branch but I think someone saw that there'd been some activity recently which is weird but it could be nothing but I don't know don't know the status of that game anymore at all I mean I guess it's possible guys I guess it's possible the other game that the is Project suerte or maybe project suerte was just never got off the ground I don't know yeah maybe it was probably could have just been a design schematic an idea a concept a pitch whatever I mean the the information that I had about suerte was that it was a pitch basically well I mean most pretty comprehensive pitched about it too right yeah most of your project names have come to fruition so I mean this would be the first one that essentially wouldn't if they aren't working on it yeah it'd be a surprise but maybe the pandemic hit it or something I don't know but we'll see what happens we ultimately just don't know at this point but it sounds like the project Lobo whatever they're working on I'm surprised you sounded pretty cool I'm surprised you didn't go see it wow I don't think I like me bro I mean shocker certain Affinity doesn't like you I'm surprised yeah put this put down a list of companies that don't like jazz with obsidian and um and uh what's the other one obsidian there's a lot of companies that don't like me uh Warner Brothers oh yeah Warner Brothers blacklisted me up good old WB but hey all my Mortal Kombat leaks were completely accurate yeah I remember when people were responsible did anybody apologize to you for that for that no I had a bunch there was like two or three Mortal Kombat influencers made hit piece videos about me um saying like I didn't know anything I was lying and it war combat one is a dumb name and then like literally after we got announced I was like oh my God more come up one you know all right come hard yeah come on but anyway it is what it is you know but um but yeah that's that's the job man it's a job sometimes you piss people off that's the job Tom Anderson though season chat yeah Jeff grob knows hey we have over 1400 people watching uh do us a big favor make sure you hit the like button and please subscribe if you're new we got a lot of things to discuss uh because it's gonna be I mean Gamescom was was was pretty big but I do have a couple super chats here I still need to get to we got Lancelot saying have you guys discussed Gamescom thoughts on the black uh black myth Wukong and Crimson desert being the first real next-gen game we haven't discussed it yet I guess we could discuss I'll ask Jazz have you played or seen anything from blacksmith Wukong at all I have not I haven't even seen the trailer for black myth Wukong so I can't really comment the trailer looks pretty cool there's a lot of hype here's the thing okay no go ahead and go say what you're gonna say I saw a behind closed doors presentation of crimson desert um okay because I will say I did not watch the the the the One Night Live because I have been just playing Starfield every day right kind of just in my own in my own world just playing Starfield so I didn't I didn't watch any of One Night Live but I did watch the trailer for Crimson desert because people were like is this real and I watched that that trailer and I'm like I had the same thought I'm watching this like is this a real game because there's a lot of stuff going on in that game that kind of seems like it wouldn't necessarily be completely 100 real I had the same feeling that uh when I watched this trailer as I watched there was a game that Sony showed off at their showcase um I'm forgetting the name of it but it was kind of uh it was really fast paced and it was kind of like a sakuro bloodborne ish type game a souls-like experience what it looked like but it was just like man some of those moves the characters are doing doesn't really seem like it would actually be real this seems I know we found out like oh the developer of the game it only made mobile games before I forget the name of it but I had that same reaction watching Crimson desert I'm like this looks way too good to be true and I use when that usually happens I'm like I kind of like all right I'm doubting it so but you got to see it behind the closed door Phantom Blade yes is the is the game that uh I'm talking about here so so what about Crimson desert behind closed doors okay well I can't I can't talk much about it because I'm under embargo but I can tell you that I watched someone play the game for real real live code okay that trailer was 100 real really wow 100 real um yeah and I can't say anymore anything more than that but I'm really excited to be able to talk about that game in the future but that trailer from Cruiser desert 100 real all right that's that's impressive because Crimson desert if I if I recall correctly was first shown off at an Xbox E3 showcase many years ago right I think it was like maybe God I feel like it was 2018 2019 honestly honestly I feel like it was shown off before next gen started because it's been a while since we've seen or heard anything about it and here we are in 2023 and I feel like that trailer was like I said it was so good it had me doubting if it was real and now you're saying that it is so that's That's mighty impressive did they give a an indication about when it might release it all do we know anything about that I'm not sure I can't say anything even if they did tell me but if they did tell me I can't remember okay all right fair enough but yeah it's real it's it's completely real um and you know it's like the trailer verifiably insane so keep an eye out for that yeah they made picking up goats and stuff what's going on I made um yeah it's wild they made um they made black uh Black Desert online uh previously Korean Dev oh maybe that was yeah maybe that was the game I was thinking back in 2018 yeah yeah yeah so maybe it was in Crimson desert it was Black Desert okay no I have they have shown Crimson desert I'm pretty sure it's not the first time they've shown it off but I think this is the first time they're trying to offer more comprehensively like gameplay and stuff and um when you do look at the trailer like I just pulled it up here yeah I can see what you mean though it looks fake but no it's completely real um and I guess like the fact that it looks fake is kind of I don't know it's it's kind of a compliment to the game really but it could also be like what what um the chap said in the Super Chat that like it does seem like maybe we're getting to that point where true next-gen games are starting to come out and the end the engines are sort of being made to accommodate next gen only and stuff like that I think they previously said that Crimson does it online was going to be a multiplayer game or something I saw some people saying that on Twitter I don't know if I'm completely at on point there or accurate but um I don't know just keep an eye out for that game and keep an eye out for my coverage when the Embargo lives right we have a amazing Super Chat here from aramic lvt says here's a Super Chat amount to match your age Rand oh 50 huh oh man I hope you had a fantastic birthday here either of you bought a collector's edition that was not going to be on time for launch so you bought the game again to play launch day no I have never this might shock people I've never bought a special edition for a game in my life never I've I've I buy too many special editions I and I don't have room for it I've got the Elder Marine collects Edition and I've never even opened it I got nowhere to put it I got the The Fallout 76 special collector's edition uh Boy Construction kit not like it's not like a plastic thing it's like full-blown metal construction kick you have to build it and they're worth like 500 now if you sell them on honey on eBay but um but yeah I I by far too many collect additions and I just don't have space for this well mostly So and I've ordered starfield's collection I just didn't really want to spend the money on them like back when you know during the when I started to buy games for myself and just wasn't gifted for for birthdays and for Christmases and the like to me it was like all right well why would I spend this extra money for this collect I I don't know I had this thought in my head it's like all I care about is the game I don't care about the Statue I don't care about you know any because the one that everybody bought that seemed to me was like the Halo cat helmet one right the special edition for Halo 3. and I was I'm a huge you know a huge Halo fan and even I didn't buy that one I just wanted the game I think it was a combination of not really having a lot of money at the time where it was like okay well I could get the game for 60 but I could spend 200 on this but I don't really have the money because I do have friends shout out to my buddy lovebug gopher uh who literally buys the special edition if it comes with the Statue he buys it and he has this whole collection in his room uh with the big shelves and everything and each individual Shelf has you know here's this armored Core six one here's the Final Fantasy one here's this and that right and they're all just in their thing with all the lights behind it and stuff I call them I call them those are his dolls and he always gets upset at me you know my step dad calls them that too um and my buddy Sam and not dolls my buddy Sam who I game share with on Xbox and Playstation he bought this special edition whatever it was for Final Fantasy 16 but it wasn't coming on time so he ended up also then buying the digital version of the game so I could play it so he he actually bought both versions of the game and then guess what it's it's August so it's been over two months since Final Fantasy 16 has come out he hasn't even played it yet but he bought two copies of the game the most expensive version and the digital version and he still hasn't played it that's hilarious oh bro I was hilarious it was he has been looking forward to Starfield so much right is it the most anticipated game of the year and I texted him like Hey by the way we have Starfield right now and he's like what he's like I'm about to go on vacation for over a week F my life and then and then he was going on vacation and then he was going to um Pax West this week weekend so then he was immediately coming home from vacation and then going to Seattle and I'm like he's I won't be able to play it I was like well I don't know what to tell you like it was just so funny just reading his text being like right the game that we wanted the most we have two weeks early and he was like f my life I'm going to the beach I wanna he's like I'm like I'm sorry man I'm sorry um oh well we have a super chat here from sin Vendetta Ryan happy belated birthday buddy thank you sin appreciate that and he also says also this whole Xbox 360 store shuffling down got me to plug in my old 360 and slowly started buying and downloading all the 360 and arcade games that aren't backwards compatible well that's good I mean they gave you a year to do that if you really wanted to if you're interested in playing any of that sort of stuff uh buying some of the games that were going to disappear I mean it sucks that those games are gonna leave and I know Phil was asked this question at IGN uh you know where he says Xbox is all about preservation which some people were kind of going at fillover.com you say that but Games Keep On disappearing and stuff and it's like hey sometimes it's kind of being like well maybe we can make it you know be on PC so it exists even if it doesn't exist on the 360 and stuff but yeah I mean it's not just like game preservation is not just about game preservation it's about Hardware preservation and it's kind of like sometimes there comes a point where you just you can't justify keeping keeping that up and where you just basically operate in the charity and you know the the ultimate game preservation vehicle is PC at the end of the day so like it shouldn't be like a case of bitching at Microsoft to pay pay for the 360 store to last forever it should be bitching to devs and Publishers to bring their games to PC because that's PC existed perpetuity that's just how PC worked 360 is not gonna exist forever through Xbox series X is not going to exist forever PC is going to exist forever so I don't know hmm it's just my thoughts on it but we also have a member chat here from Sith Lord he says ran I know you won't crack unlike azerlord attic jazz on the other hand we have ways of making him talk hope you had a good birthday Rand I did it was it was a good birthday it was very good um we have risked for the biscuits say what's up Jazz ran three days left to lift off indeed uh and now be on brisket's podcast for like 30 minutes on Friday so I gotta do double duty on Friday because we're gonna do an R show and then I gotta hop in risket show uh for like 30 minutes because he asked me to be on so it's like yeah I could do normally I say no I I can't do two shows in one day because this one by the time I'm done with this one I'm kind of kind of worn out I'm just like all right I just want to relax but I figured let's let's talk about Gamescom you were there um you were there in person you got to play a lot of games you got to see a lot of games you got to meet a lot of people so just tell me tell me this experience bro how to compare it to the other gamescoms and all the stuff that you did and the things that you heard behind the scenes because I know you heard stuff behind the scenes uh yeah so let us know I was there by myself well I didn't have I didn't have a team like I Jammer there with a huge team yeah and I'm there just those with their with their teams with that money little Windows Central like startup Outlet just sending Jazz there by himself right very much but um but yeah I I didn't have I didn't have much you know much of a I know what you call it I didn't have much of a full print I didn't have a huge amount of resources backing me up but that's fine it's just kind of his ways right um but uh when I uh got there I was sort of like I was I didn't know what to expect because obviously Microsoft has said it's a big spoof ever what does that mean in real terms does that actually mean it's actually going to be physically bigger or is it just spread out or is it just like sort of thinly spread out over a white area or whatever but it was by far the biggest Booth I've ever seen Xbox have at any event it was just massive it was the kind of Booth size that blizzard used to have back in the day and that EA used to have back in the day I remember when EA like they did Sims 4 they did Dragon Age Inquisition they had FIFA whatever year it was 17 18 something like that and they had like a almost an entire Hall to themselves it was just massive um and like Xbox was approaching that now and it it was a case of like just because they've got so much content there like that all the Bethesda stuff and all the Xbox stuff sort of under one umbrella now Under One Roof and it was just kind of cool to see that integration I don't think Xbox is hard for but is that an event previously at least not on this scale um so there's like this huge uh Beholder thing from Elder Scrolls Online there this huge like alien battery thing looked amazing they had like a whole sort of diorama with a cosplayer for stalker that like some Greek pillars for Arrow history and told that like they had like a tower for Tower board as well which is really cool like they like a lot of effort had gone into making it sort of look fun almost like a Fairground in addition to having just a sheer sheer volume of content they even had a cabinet with like NASA artifacts they'd borrowed in there there was like space food in there and there was like oh this this is the the flight module from from like some NASA spaceship you know like you know in a sort of little Museum cabinet thing they also had that crazy Fallout Uh custom Xbox thing that I showed off but it was like a celebration of all of Xbox and there was a Porsche there and all that kind of stuff for Forza it was awesome it really looked apart and it really felt like man Gamescom is really truly back now because last year Gamescom was laying around it was lame there was nothing there there was no no Publishers or devs there really or or nowhere near as much as I'm used to seeing from Gamescom gamecom's always this huge massive event like way bigger than E3 has ever been and a lot of people don't appreciate how much bigger Gamescom is because it's a it's a convention you know it's not it's not like like E3 historically it was press only and then they started opening it up to the public when they wanted more money um and they were charging Publishers way too much and like I spoke to a bunch of Publishers and like yep gamescom's always been way cheaper to do than E3 and that's ultimately why Gamescom is thriving now and E3 is dead the esa got greedy Rand they got greedy but anyway EA e3's demise is ultimately Gamescom scan and I think like Gamescom next year will be even bigger even better and even more relevant because I think developers are crying out to list to sort of like instead of spread all their marketing over like a whole summer just let's can we just have one event again please but anyway that's neither here nor there let's talk about the games let's talk about the games I saw around because I saw a lot of games what was the what was the best game you saw by far right so there were two games that really really stood out to me one of them I well this is not including Crimson desert which I absolutely can't talk about under any circumstances um but there were two games that were really stand out to me in terms of like wow that really blew me away and really well actually three games I'm gonna say there were three games that really blew me away and I was sort of really impressed with them so the first one was frostpunk two which I can't talk about at all under embargo for that as well for two weeks so Frost Punk for those who don't know is a sort of apocalyptic sort of God game almost you kind of build a city but it's it's more about the people it's more about like managing the society and you can like you know build up a totalitarian Society or try and make things a little bit more friendly while managing the freezing ice age that's coming I love frostpunk one was really addictive and frostbong 2 sort of Builds on that in a big way talk about that more in future the other game again is another game I can't talk about called the altars which again you might remember from one of the events I think I think it was Xbox's event where they showed off the altars initially do you remember ran no um no I don't remember any any game called the Alters yeah so you I think you remember if you saw the trailer they showed a teaser I think it was at the Xbox event I think it was the altars is kind of like I can't talk about it too much again because I'm under embargo but the teas that they showed off before it's kind of like there's loads of sort of clones of the dude and he's sort of driving this huge space station that looks like a giant wheel with sort of shipping containers in it but that's 11 11 bit as well and the lead developer of that also made this war of mine so if you like this war of mine you definitely need to keep an eye on the Alters which is also 11 bit as well um and also 11 bit hards The Game Pass deal with Microsoft and while they wouldn't tell me event which game specifically are coming to Game Pass you know at least some of these are probably going to come to Gamepad so those are things to watch out for but terrible and I can talk about in more depth more detail because there's no embargo for that I wrote about I wrote it up right after the show and so for those who are interested in talbomb towerborne's working title was the wandering Tower previously and they changed its terrible on and before then it was called project Belfry and we Rand leaked it a begged around not to leak it but ran leaked it wasn't me sure sure um and um and yeah so that's uh project balfree but it's sort of like when it showed up in the trailer like we all we'd have heard that it was going to be a smaller game and it was going to have cartoony graphics and it was going to be cell shared and all that and like I don't think it really showed off that well in the initial trailer that showed in terms of gameplay because it was kind of like they took the models from the game and sort of whacked them in a cinematic with cinematic cameras and stuff and I don't feel like it worked that way in a trailer because when I was actually sitting down and playing it I was like oh wow this game's really gorgeous it has like this Parallax effect similar to Ori with hand-painted backgrounds that look absolutely stunning and um but what really what really grabbed me about towerborn ran it was the gameplay man it felt so good to play it like it had this really weighty combat feel to it really tactile like weapons connecting with enemies and stuff like that and they explained to me that um the combat designer worked on Killer Instinct as well and um there's like some Killer Instinct DNA in this game with the combos and also I talked about the netcode a lot because this is an online game also got local Split Screen Co-op so it's sort of like um it's sort of like the sequel to Castle Crashers that we never got and now we're getting and but it sort of it it does a disservice to call it that because it is so like it is so far beyond Castle Crashers man it's like there's there's gearing again there's like a Diablo kind of loot system to it um there's like it's like uh tile based so like you you expand out the fog of war from your Tower gradually taking um killing bosses and doing events and doing missions and stuff with your friends and stuff gladly gradually growing out um the area of the map that's sort of safe recovering it from the corruption or the the cataclysm or whatever they're not talking too much about the story right now but the area I played was like there was all these giant mushrooms evil mushrooms going everywhere killing everything and um the boss was really quite tough it was like it was not completely easy there's some things like that I think needs more polish of course like it was hard to keep track of where my dude was because there were so many mobs on the screen so oftentimes were like where the hell is my character like I can't find him in the in the scrum when there's four players on the screen I think there's improvements they can do there also a little bit of performance stuff optimization they can do there as well but um yeah terrible and very strong game I think it'd be very very cool game for anyone who's got like friends that play local card games with sort of that Streets of Rage DNA but modernizing it and bringing along some loot addiction for good measure and they talked about like doing DLC and and they want to they're looking forward to working on it for the next however many many years if people enjoy it but um yeah Castle Crashes on steroids is how I'm gonna describe towerborne um I just hope they get the Polish the time to polish the game that the game probably needs um but yeah that's terrible and I really really really really liked it um but I need to talk about a game I didn't like so much and I was a little bit disappointed about which game which which is what what game were you disappointed in talkative stalker two now that's interesting because last week there was a rumor that it was launching in December uh because of store listing but that ended up being false because they announced during Gamescom that because there's a new trailer people went Hands-On and that the game will be launching quarter one of 2024 which is you know January February March um I know people have played it you've played it as well uh and what you had told me it was not glowing at all so let let the people know what you thought of stalker too I guess I can't wait to see uh see what people yeah people say to you okay so the issue is stalker purely purely was how rough it felt it felt like it was coming in really really really hot and this is the dev that's literally gone through hell and back so it's kind of like it's not a case of like blaming the dev really it's more a case of my God I really hope Microsoft gives this studio the support they need to really help this game land as good as it possibly can there was like there was just so many issues with it um in terms of the way the UI worked and freezing and glitching and all kinds of stuff and man it's it's kind of um yeah I just I just really wanted to get the Polish it needs man the demo felt like it had been quite rushed together you know it felt like we've you know we've accepted this slot of Gamescom or whatever we need to make sure that we've got a build ready for Gamescom and they did the best they could with the time they had like the demo that I played was probably literally about three minutes long or one minutes long if that you could get through it really quickly um but the promise is there man the gameplay the actual gun play just fell so immersive and so realistic you know that that's kind of what stalk is known for is a hyper realistic Gunplay and it they nailed that aspect of it and the environmental visuals as well absolutely stunning environments they completely nailed that too the tone of the game completely nailed that as well it's just a matter of Polish I think it's a it's really is a matter of Polish so with regards to stalker and I'll be writing about this soon it's all about I hope that they will that Microsoft will support them to get the Polish they need from that studio so they can really help this game land as well as it possibly can but we'll see we'll see what happens with stalker but the the so the sort of the bones of an incredible game are genuinely there like the combat just the the actual just shooting the gun felt amazing you know and um and the minimalism and the environments and all that kind of stuff but we'll see we'll see what happens um but yeah that studio has been through and they've been through a lot something in that that some some know the Studio's been through probably what they've been through I mean maybe maybe the demo build you know yeah yeah maybe maybe you know um and sure you know but it's it's just kind of like I don't I don't think I just hope that it gets that polish that's my main feedback on stalker too so I was like man this is yeah a bit if it's true a bit rough right um but there's like a lot of the games I played that I know you're not gonna be interested in oh god oh I played cities skylines too I mean I know people people are excited for that game and I know you're really really looking forward to it what'd you think I don't think I don't know if I can talk about it yet but another one that you can't talk about wow yeah jeez uh what can you talk about jazz if I used to say I was very very impressed with it um that comes out on October 24th man I gotta say like the end of this year for Game Pass is is really really packed with I mean September is probably the best month for Game Pass ever when you look at it like I know right now granted it's August 28th but see a stars is launching and I don't know if you saw the reviews for sea of stars but yeah yeah right we gave it we gave it 10 out of 10. I mean like I saw an open critic it's like a 94. that's a day one game pass game as well as also uh day one and PlayStation Plus and they normally don't do that they also like made a ton of money on Kickstarter so they're rolling the dough and the game is actually really good so I know it's not technically September but I mean it's basically September right and then you get star field probably the biggest Xbox game we've talked about this at length biggest new IP for Xbox and skiers I you know so it's like this is the game people been waiting for and that is coming well it depends Early Access is on the 31st which is August but day one is September 6th then you also have Liza P which I believe is like the 18th or 20th it's the lamplighters league I think I think is that September October I'm not I'm not sure but there's like party animals there's payday 3 which is also around I think that's the 20th um there's just like a ton of games coming to Game Pass uh and then the next couple of months man it's absurd it's ridiculous like I'm looking for my embargo's list right now and there's like I can't I can't even no I can't talk about a lot of the games I've played but these are kind of like the the games I'm sort of working on previews for right now and it's like Persona tactica Sonic the new Sonic game um uh what else did I play endless dungeon um I don't know if you've seen in this dungeon but I saw with the persona persona 3 reload the Remake got a got a release date as well which is day one and Game Pass that's February second I believe or February 4th next year yeah something like that um yeah so that's the question they're gonna be done with Persona 5 by the end of the year I mean we're almost in September you got four months to go you know well the first the first thing I asked them was is oh I can't talk about it actually um yeah I can't talk about it but yeah I played a ton of games man a ton of games a lot of them are for previews that are on embargo obviously I might not hear a bunch of these embargoes because I have to I've gotta I've got a review Starfield so I'm gonna end up probably how can you talk about what your star Starfield prep is going to be I mean because I know the only thing we can say about having our field is like we can say we're playing it but uh like you can't really say when you're gonna sit down to write it or how you're gonna write it um I I have no idea man I have no idea I'm gonna try I'm gonna try and do it by section like graphics and performance then gameplay and then story and then should you buy it kind of thing you know at the end which is how do we do it usually um I've done I've done a bunch of notes and that kind of stuff but I haven't even started the review yet I actually just got an email from Metacritic and they were like are you gonna have your Starfield review ready for embargo um and I was like I was like bro I haven't even started yet I know a bunch of bunch of websites have been speaking to have finished their review and I'm like oh man but I have put an absurd amount of hours into that game I'm absurd amount and like more than most I think so I'm I'm pretty confident I'll have enough content for the review but we'll we'll see I mean and nobody's going to be able to do it you know 100 they're every single quest in the whole game but it's all about it I saw Paris in the chat kind of funny what they're going to be doing for for their review and seeing uh their reactions to the game I'm definitely looking forward to that uh to check to check it out when that happens so Gamescom best it's been in a long time essentially a lot of games you got to check out no I I think Xbox should move espresso nah no thanks yeah no no no we don't we don't need no La sorry allies had enough Microsoft should move it's presser and all of its marketing to Gamescom moving forward give Europe some love for a while that's what they should do man well maybe Europe should show some love to Xbox then if that's the case huh well because you're because you're up because Germany don't because Germany don't so loved Xbox so why should Xbox show live to Germany well it's Microsoft's job to fix that well sure for sure absolutely but you know who shows love to Xbox the US yeah realistically about the US instead of going to Germany Xbox should do E3 from Chicago uh come on I got really cold I'm not throwing not during June I don't want to be called man no no obviously they're not going to move the E3 showcase to Germany because everything's around there in E3 around there in June so yeah I mean German gamers are so funny like they're all PlayStation Gamers and PC Gamers they're all they're all PC games man like like the the Farming Simulator Booth is always huge at Gamescom like massive and they always have tractors there and stuff and the most hilarious thing in Gamescom there was um because Germans love their simulation games right and if there's any Germans in the chat they know exactly what I'm talking about Germans love their simulation game I told a story about um an in-law friend I've got who's a farmer in real life and when he finishes the day farming he goes home and he plays Farming Simulator after he's finished farming in real life man so there was um there was a school bus driving around in a circle around Gamescom with um with the Bus Simulator marketing all over it and it was very weird because like you know those big yellow American school buses we don't really have those in Europe um not that I'm aware of anyway so I it was really out of place I was like wait does cologne have American style school buses but no it was Bus Simulator marketing and everyone was going crazy for it man they were like cheering and shouting and yelling like yeah Bus Simulator that's like Jesus maybe maybe bus simulator's game of the show I don't know but um yeah it was it was just awesome man so did you did you see the Starfield presentation like did you see the follow no judged he's no I didn't see the follow TV teaser I didn't I didn't I didn't know there was going to be a Fallout TV teaser so I was just like I'm just gonna skip the Starfield presentation because I'm playing the game anyway and it giving me time to play something else I did not know they were gonna have something like that there so I'm kind of irritated to myself for not going now what about four is about um uh I didn't see pause on Motorsport and the reason for that is uh reasons I can't talk tell you about really yeah yeah um but yeah the the there might be reasons that I didn't see Forza Motorsport either but there was just there was just so much cool to see regardless of all that stuff like another game that I did play was Arrow history Untold okay I know you were looking forward to that game yeah so I'm like it looks it plays kind of incredibly like it it is just it's Steve you know the end of the day it's like sieve and but it does some it sort of refines the Civ formula quite a bit but it's hard to deny the Sea of DNA there and it's uh there's a lot of T there's a lot of um there's a lot of people from firaxis who are working on Arrow history and told um so it's of course it's going to have a lot of sea of DNA um but I I played it and it looks gorgeous it's like fully 3D so it kind of does away with some of the old school kind of tile kind of gameplay or the cartooniness so like that the map looks like quite realistic and so all that kind of stuff I just hope that it gets a little bit but it's another game that kind of needs more polish the UI was gorgeous with all these glass effects on it um yeah that's that's another game I'm probably going to be looking out for I don't know if I know you're not into that kind of stuff I don't know how I don't know how interested everyone in chat is about Arrow history and told I know these games are kind of Niche quote unquote um but our history and told could be a big deal for Microsoft you know turn-based foreground strategy maybe with cloud in mind uh if clouds still exists by then the queues for xcloud are absurd man yeah yeah they're scared right now what is going on bro either tons of people are using them or there's not enough servers or I don't know all they have like if they've like reallocated x-cloud servers yeah to um never reallocating I mean Grand Theft Auto Grand Theft Auto 5 is on Game Pass I wonder if that really increased usage of people playing on the cloud or whatever right well I've heard that like the way x-club works is it's sort of like because it doesn't have like every single Xbox game installed all the time right so what it does is it sort of like it pulls down the game from um and this is from you know talking to people at shows and stuff about how xcloud works it pulls it pulls the game installation down over the network if nobody's if it's not been installed recently on the server so I think some of the cues are just the fact that the games are so big and the local server hard drives are just full of Grand Theft Auto right so if people want to play a game that isn't Grand Theft Auto or fortnite they have to kind of wait maybe for some of the games to install or something it it's I suppose it's weird the way it works but I'm not sure like how else would it work you know um you can't like just have every single game installed 24 7 kind of I have no idea how our Nvidia geports now does it with regards to that because Nvidia GeForce now is like thousands of Steam games on there um I suppose I need to look into that but I know but xcloud has queues is the long and short of it but I don't know well I'm trying to I'm trying to find out more about what's going on there because it is it is kind of egregious some of the cues I've seen is like like two-hour cue sometimes and maybe the queue didn't actually work out to be two hours it was just the calculation and then someone's slammed a screenshot into Reddit or whatever but those are just never queues for xcloud before so something weird's going down but I don't know so did you do anything super cool with uh like jazz and uh sticker mechanical and the Xbox yeah we um we had dinner we went out and we had some Italian I had some spaghetti I think or something I can't remember what I had to be honest what did I have did ABS okay I can't remember we went we went to no I didn't know schnitzel I actually did Saul and Thomas which is french fries basically um and uh yeah we hung out chatting around and all that kind of stuff they were talking about um all the games they'd be playing as well and it was just it was just so cool to see so many of the European Xbox cohort there because you know usually it's when I go to E3 to the American cohort and it's difficult to get out to E3 if you're in Europe because it costs a million million pounds but yeah Gamescom is awesome for that I also spoke to some Xbox people about secret things oh um okay I can't talk about what you can't tease that on the show and and then just say can't talk about about it no I really can't but I will say there's a lot of positive stuff going on Xbox right now and I'm pretty excited for the future as vague as that is right I mean come on you can't do this I can't do this for us you should be able to hear like I'm quite a b at the moment she's you know rare for me lately I'm quite a bit at the moment because I've heard some a lot of good things about us I'll give us some hints bro give us some hints no no I won't I won't I'm around windows central.com bro oh wait I mean what can I just maybe a Tom Henderson will report it and beat you to it might be rough you know [Laughter] I don't know but um yeah Gamescom was just awesome I I'm I'm excited for next year and seeing see if it grows I wonder if EA and Ubisoft and those people come back to it there was no PlayStation and I believe no Nintendo this year Nintendo had a marketing presence um they were in the business area but there was no as far as I know there was no Nintendo Booth um gentian impact at a big presence though very popular of course in everywhere I suppose well I had a big presence I actually didn't get a chance to go look around too much because I had so many meetings but yeah Gamescom is awesome um and uh yeah I'll have more details in the near future all right we have a embargo's lift yeah we have Spartan 661 and Super Chat saying happy birthday ran my birthday was last Sunday well happy belated birthday to you that's awesome uh people are saying master mirror says there was a Nintendo booth oh was that fair enough I would imagine so it was like the best Nintendo game one was like Zelda so I think they had Zelda there or whatever fair enough I I didn't see it but I did see they had a big marketing uh booth in the business area um so but Sony wasn't there I don't think Sony was there at all one thing that was quite funny though and kind of sad in a way Amazon had a booth for Amazon games there was no one there man no one no one at the Amazon games thing no no at least on the on on the on the business day no no one wanted to talk about Amazon it's uh Gaming's tough man you know uh who's running Amazon games I can't remember it's someone we it's someone from isn't there someone from Xbox who's on an Amazon game I thought they like it wasn't like Mark Whitten but I think he left didn't he yeah maybe he left I don't know it's ruined Amazon games these days but yeah oh and there was um it's kind of sad rambling because like I think Amazon is publishing some cool games at the moment and they're trying to do the 10 cent thing with the free to play which I think he's put in putting some people off and also like I don't know if Amazon's artificial inflating the numbers on Twitch thing he's working out for them I think it kind of poisons the well and makes people skeptical of their games like one of the one of the bits of discourse this week ran was that um Immortals of avrium yeah did you see so you were talking about like you know uh we were talking about Crimson desert and like true next-gen games right but here's The Mortals of avrium which just came out which looks like it might have bombed not a lot of people playing on PC uh new IP coming out during the summer about to you know get trampled by bigger games but people were were talking about the digital Foundry video because this is like one of the first if not the first I think it's maybe the second now because I think Remnant 2 was ue5 but this is ue5 but it runs at a staggering 720p on the Xbox series X and no way PS5 but upscale using uh I think fsr2 upscaled to 4K and then the the series s version which we have a lot to talk about Series S uh that was like running at 480p upscaled to whatever resolution they're upscaling it to so a lot of people are like using this game as proof that mid-gen consoles are needed because how can you have a game that's like native 720p in 2023 and stuff is that what you were gonna mention and talk about actually no because I didn't know that I didn't I didn't know it was running so poorly I I saw some people talking about it being sub-optimized on PC and stuff but I didn't know I didn't know that it was that bad on consoles that's crazy what I was going to talk about was the fact that um they had this big marketing campaign on Twitch where they they paid streamers to play the game basically so this is what Amazon does with like some of some of the games they publish like New World New World had this massive inflated artificial concurrency number when it first launched and as soon as the campaign ended the game died fell off a cliff no one cared and the game's dead now pretty much so um they did the same for immortals of avium so EA paid a bunch of streamers to play the games on Twitch and whatever um but it just doesn't seem to have helped the game at all because it's got like less than a thousand concurrent players on Steam right now it doesn't help the games you know a mess on PC um and also that it's launching the same time frame as all this gay armored Core Starfield and uh no like sea of stars you've got the Indie darling in there as well which a bunch of people are going to want to play so it kind of like the worst time for it to launch a sort of I don't know what you call it it's weird because I was going to call it generic looking but it doesn't look generic looking it looks quite interesting and stuff but it's like EA so I just skeptical VA in general but I just kind of like out of all the games there is to play right now malls of avium is just not one I'm even vaguely putting on my radar for whatever reason um but yeah I I don't know it's it's not good for it I suppose but I can't I can't remember why I brought it up now but I think it was just like about it was to do with Amazon's Booth being empty right it wasn't just Amazon's booth that was empty like there was a bunch of like web 3 gaming booths there like the nft games nft games they were completely empty too no one cares about nft games or web3 and all that crap um which was good to see that being a total complete failure um but but yeah gas Club is awesome I'm looking forward to going back next year yeah Michael Mooney's Super Chat says what about Xbox doing uh a July showcase then do boots at Gamescom Pax West and Tokyo game show suppose like it depends also depends on like how much they got to show right wait Phil Phil talks about in one of his interviews from Gamescom that they are approaching this Cadence of four games a year right I believe you said um well yeah so you wanna yeah we can get we can get to some of what Phil said on uh you know IG IGN right uh um let me get to that actual like let's go through the whole lot thing because it'll cover it because there's a lot of things here right that Phil talked about um so basically I guess we'll start it off first here uh we'll talk about uh let's see I'm trying to find the the point here uh he talked about four fours okay uh Dustin asked him you've had a ton of reveals avad was revealed perfect dark south of midnight hellblade uh can you tell us more about the rest of 2023 and Beyond and once that's looking like for Xbox because I believe Jared West said that this is kind of like the beginning of Xbox's Salvo right uh how like 2023 and Starfield releases like the actual true beginning of Xbox's next gen because we we've talked to death about how 2022 was completely lackluster but 2021 was actually really good and this is where Phil kind of talks about that he says what I can say is we're going to have more beats to talk about what we do because the content lineup is so strong which is probably something I'm really interested in because you have what you normally do E3 you have that one newsbeat where you show some stuff off but then most of the time Xbox goes quiet unless until like the game awards well maybe they show one game maybe they show two but when it comes to content it's like here's E3 and then that's kind of really it um but the way Phil talks about it in this interview where it's like hey we did E3 we had our you know biggest E3 ever but now we're here at Gamescom and it's our biggest Gamescom ever and we're gonna be a Tokyo game show and you know all these sort of things that'll happen last year because now we have the content that actually supports that now we actually have a study uh thorough put of games to talk about and market and have people to play so now you need more of the Avenues uh for for people to experience that so he goes on to say that um and he says and I say that completely recognizing that 2022 wasn't so strong yeah okay but we have our biggest Booth here at Gamescom and we have a huge presence I think there's 30 plus playable games on our floor a lot of the first party games tarborn is here R is here SOS Forza so it's awesome to see the footprint that we have in the game portfolio from a first party from Partners from Game Pass so I think what you're going to see from us were maybe last couple years we've been more on an annual in terms of when we talk about our games around I still call three E3 around that time frame this year we did developer Direct in January we did our showcase we're here with the biggest we've ever been at Gamescom and you're going to see more regular times to talk about our games because the portfolio is deep enough that we can support that and that's like really exciting to hear because normally it hasn't been the case right where where Xbox talks about their games at multiple places because they actually have the games to actually have right I don't know what do you think about that are we finally at that point where we're entering like Xbox's I don't know uh lack of better term their Goldilocks zone like the best or at least what they promised this would be right I mean it's a year type the thing that they've always mentioned part of it's a pandemic like I think like people really underest about how much a pandemic sort of put a crease in a lot of this stuff hang on so sorry I'm drowned I'm drowning in slime right now but slime slime I've got I've got a cold man I might have covered I don't know a little covet test this morning it was negative but I don't I don't feel great but um I think the pandemic put a dampener on a lot of a lot of what you know a crease in the pipeline of some of this more traditional marketing Cadence you know we've talked about like we've talked about how I don't know um Xbox needed to do four games a year and you know we all know previous Xbox years have been really bad like exceptionally bad and some of that stuff was a pandemic put in a sort of a buffer and a lot of development some of the games that came out development during the pandemic were just awful and um at some point you just like you just have to sort of ship and forget and move on and stuff and although he did talk about like they're still working on redfall and stuff I really doubt redfull is going to have a kind of resurgence or Renaissance or whatever it's just mainly fulfilling the promises they've made and then maybe moving on you know they supposedly bring working on bringing 60 fps to that I would doubt they're going to be team working on that but who knows who knows man we'll see what happens um but yeah I think Microsoft's approaching that Cadence now of like four games a year and we've been hearing about you know some of these we know some of the games that are on the horizon like hellblade south of midnight and uh Clockwork Revolution and then there's Studios that have games that we haven't seen like Indiana Jones supposedly halfway through development now and uh Contraband where the hell is contraband you know it's it's this is disappeared um Perfect Dark where the hell is perfect dark disappeared um and presumably the next time you see some of these games that are sort of off the radar they'll be in a sort of presentable State and we'll sort of have this sort of flow of newsbeats which is kind of what you need if you're Central your central goal with your sort of I don't know um your business revolves around the subscription um you know the kind of Minecrafts the kind of games that capture the imaginations of millions of people like Zelda you know for example and that kind of stuff okay as Xbox got it within them to do that again because I think that those are the kind of games that people have been yearning for from Xbox and the kind of games that sort of lead to um uh uh growth in the console market share although like Phil always talks about in interviews that they don't want to steal market share from Sony they'd rather grow their market share which is why the series s exists it's it's an experiment to see if there exists a market for someone who will buy a console if it's cheaper for them experiment yeah maybe it is maybe it is about experiment but it was like it was an honorable experiment to have I think um but maybe it works maybe it doesn't you know and maybe they don't do it again I don't know um maybe the plays in the future they do more traditionally and they just have one skew and then do the mid-gen refresh kind of like they did with the Xbox One X or whatever and then have the two skus throughout half of the Gen I don't know man um Microsoft's the only one who's got the numbers on that and they ain't sharing they ain't sharing those numbers well you mentioned you mentioned you know other like Zelda reaching the Zeitgeist and Xbox not having that you know just on the outsides looking at the marketing that Starfield is and like the discussion that star Fields generating online and social medias like maybe Starfield will have that Zeitgeist because I mean you look online everybody's talking about Starfield and I know a month ago people were complaining about Starfield marketing they ain't complaining anymore because it's showing up at soccer games it's showing up on on TV ads it's literally yeah you know there there are PlayStation fans you know putting like a hate campaign on this game I've never I don't think I've ever seen anything like what it's going what what this game is going through right now uh it ever really I mean maybe maybe last of us too because of what happened with you know the story and stuff but I haven't played it no I'm just saying but you look at Starfield and it looks like just from the outset all the marketing and all the discussion and that might be Xbox's for first truly as you would put it Zeitgeist game it seems to be everywhere right so uh you know we'll we'll see how it you know people take to it when they when they play it but it definitely seems like I don't know it's just it's just so odd to me that last month people were crying about the marketing and we were all like well maybe they don't really need to Market it that much in advance it seems like most marketing nowadays waits to the very end right like God of War Ragnarok and some of the bigger games like you don't need to Market it uh like you used to used to and now it's like hey it's two weeks before release and they're really ramping up I mean how they announced the Xbox series X wraps which we you didn't even mention did you see because I know they were there the whole rap stuff right the Xbox dude perhaps I have one right here you have one actually you actually have it in your possession yeah I have the wrap in my position are they even out yeah I don't know no no no they don't come out till October yeah this is this rap can't be under embargo can it bro I can't I can't show you bro well yeah well we don't have the camera set up for this but Joshua Joshua B says in the Super Chat quote so how is Gamescom Jazz unquote and he says under embargo can't talk that's very so you probably yeah I talked about Tower boy you're probably you're probably under embargo you probably can't even mention that you have a series X rap you probably just broke embargo dude yeah maybe I did maybe I did I don't know but I've got I've got a rap I don't think there's anybody go on the wrap I will write up the wrap tomorrow you know um I will say though that the just early impressions are it's a very high quality very very high quality is like sort of felt kind of feel going on on the side that you connect to the console so I'm not gonna scratch your console or anything like that feels very very lovely you know and it obviously doesn't restrict the airflow leaves the Athlon series X uh is at the bottom and the top so there's no there's no issue about airflow heat generation or anything like that um but yeah I will do a little right for that tomorrow maybe but yeah early impressions are good um I don't know if they're 50 good but well they're 15 right there you go yeah so there's there's two there's a Starfield one and there's the two camo ones and I think the two camos are 45 and the Starfield one's 50 I think cheaper [Music] yeah I hide the camera ones um blue camo like what what environment is blue camo good for I don't know but um this does kind of seem like this is their answer to custom consoles it does kind of say we're not doing custom consoles like if if and when gear six comes out or if and when Fable comes out it's probably just easier for them to make a wrap than it is for them to make a custom console right there's an issue of silicon man like Rare Earth minerals are absolutely the demand for Rare Earth minerals I think our red is going to go up by 400 in the next decade or something there's not enough minerals in existence to sustain the demand that's coming for it they're putting microchips in literally everything you know literally everything a Microsoft's in a position where you know it's it's kind of like we don't have enough silicon for our regular consoles and you you're talking about doing custom consoles and stuff so this is like it's similar to the PlayStation 5 uh plates yeah right what the Spiderman the Spiderman 2 console but that's the the custom stuff is just on the plates so all so they can just make a regular PlayStation and then just swap the plates yeah it's probably one thing that did always bug me about like the the custom consoles you know and they're they're cool you know and I had the I had the Gears of War or Series S I think it was a series s it wasn't a series X no 1s 1s sorry um I had the Gears of War 4 1s the the red the Crimson one looked amazing another controller and all that kind of stuff I think it was Gears of War 4. gears five was an icy thing wasn't it um but it was like yeah I've got this amazing console with this all the laser etching and all this badass stuff and now I've got a 1X and now this absolutely gorgeous console is pointless you know but this way I can just take the rap off it you know and I don't have to I don't have to think about buying a custom upgrade so there's pros and cons you know I mean obviously the laser etched custom consoles that they did before are absolutely gorgeous looking but there's an obsolescence there but it sort of begs the question do you think they'll keep the the same Tower design on the series X I think they will because it's pretty damn badass and it seems to be working well for him but yeah yeah I'll have a write-up about the wraps in the in the near future the wraps we have a I don't know the this person this Chinese uh lettering here who says the issue seems to be with Lumen and nanite being on even on my rx790r XTX the game boots up with FSR quality mode on he's talking about Immortals of Abram yeah and risket for the biscuit says I want a mid-gen refresh but if but if games upscaled to 4K and FSR 3.0 is on the way it doesn't matter what res it scales from 99 of Gamers won't see it I did notice that where people talked about that you didn't really hear anything about Immortals of Abrams Graphics or how it looked like until digital Foundry pointed out that it was 720p and then people were like oh my God disgusting uh yeah I I I just realized like I made when he says list 720p I immediately that was my reaction oh my God that's disgusting but maybe it looks okay you know I don't know um but that's the thing about these digital Foundry stuff is it's kind of like a double-edged sword when the headline lacks full context yeah yeah we all think of 720p and we associate it with the dark days of uh the 360. well not even three it was like the 360 yeah the Xbox one oh yeah Xbox One and stuff which which it was like there was it the early Call of Duty ghost that was 720p and 1080p on PlayStation or was it 900 and 1080p because Xbox One PlayStation had that varying resolutions yeah all the time but back to the Phil interview Dustin asked him Matt booty promised us four first party games per year because this is something that they have been talking about since God what 2019 2018 I want to say this like goal of at some point we want to be able to release at least one big game of quarter and Phil talked about at E3 that they're on schedule for it and once again you know Dustin asked him hey are you guys on track Matt booty said yeah and Phil said more than that this year if we start with Hi-Fi Rush Minecraft Legends redfall and he says maybe people don't want to give us credit for redfall but I get it I understand Starfield 4's that we just dropped Age of Empires 4 console last night awesome I'm gonna play that and then going into next year absolutely we have talked about it as an aspiration but now we talk about it as our plan so it sounds like it's finally a reality they hit it this year granted some of the games were varying quality which redfall releasing at the state it did uh did Xbox no favors right no it didn't know um because just releasing games isn't just releasing games is enough the games have to be good games they have to be qualities they can't just yeah they just oh well we released at least four games you that's what you guys want no it's not you just don't release four games you have to release four good games or the games you release have to be good like I understand taking a creative risk and then not paying off the thing is with red fault I didn't really see a creative wrist there it just didn't pan out right so it's like okay Hi-Fi Rush creative risk especially for that studio paid off completely right uh Jeff grob Branson recently on his podcast that um you know there was the whole drama about what Jeff had said before about the game not meeting expectations or not making money for the retail version or whatever but he reported that Xbox is really happy with the studio and they're investing in the studio and they got big plans for Tango which is great because they're a really damn good Studio but Hi-Fi Rush could have been seen as a creative risk from a studio known for making uh horror games right it was a crave on the marketing risk because they didn't Market it really either no it was a shadow drop so I could see that being a big franchise Minecraft Legends kind of seemed like it like a fart in a win it came out no came out and kind of just stunk up the room and then people forgot about it uh I don't really think people are playing that anymore didn't review particularly well redfall well we know about that right and we got Starfield we got Forza so there are your games uh next year we already know at least right off the bat we have hellblade a vowed and towerborn but they did say there's more and announced games for 2024 so they'll probably hit four then it's it's about it's about the consistency too it's about not only releasing the games and of being high quality but also at a consistent basis you can't have another 2022 again right no you can't have a situation where it's like yeah we got games for 2023 and 2024 but guess what 20 25 is Baron yeah it's not even like it's not even like this is a new thing either like we talk about redfall we talk about the pandemic but they've been they've been doing this for years now you know we had Crackdown we had recall which you know showed up initially is like oh wow CGI this must be a big deal and then it's like oh no actually it's thirty dollars um so it's not like it's a new thing that Microsoft had sort of quality issues and quality perception issues because it does create this sort of like uh negative um Aura around the brand when you don't have the quality you know and and that's why like I've often thought we talked about it a long time ago like should they bring back Xbox Live arcade as a brand for their smaller games and and stuff like that Microsoft philosophically doesn't I know Microsoft philosophically doesn't like that because games to them games are games and stuff but like from a branding perspective and thinking about how that how that would look uh from a branding perspective it's kind of like um if you started if you started a book review channel on your main Channel yeah that would kind of that would kill your algorithm yes you know so this is why like some sometimes like sometimes it's good to keep some of these things separate and if you have like a separate brand for your smaller games maybe it could help with brand protection or so I don't know it's a philosophical debate that's it neither here nor there however um uh it does seem like we we're getting out of that now sort of the quality stuff and I I honestly I can't see another red for happening that they've like they took that to heart man I've spoken to people Xbox who they looked visibly distort when I talked to them about redfall you know um I think I write that up in my Sarah Bond uh interview from from E3 oh well not E3 God I wish they'd just call it E3 I can't what'd you call it what do you call that period summer game first I ain't calling it summer game first D3 it'll always be three looks like X will always be Twitter but I don't yeah I think they took that really seriously and they're gonna be putting processes in place to have that oversight because it does impact the Brandy in fact the way the brand looks and Microsoft doesn't have the best brand perception across the board right now you know like even even disregarding Xbox like Windows like you ask the average Joe they think of Microsoft then it's it's usually a negative kind of thing you know um but these are the challenges that Xbox has to overcome and you know one way they're cut through this is by offering good value high quality and doing it consistently you know like we've seen we've seen CD project red sort of turn away turn around its image by doubling down on cyberpunk releasing that incredible anime of Bunker Edge Runners and then and then the trailer for cyberpunk 2077 DLC um don't call it a DLC they they want me to call it an expansion when I want to message you PR decided so like talking about the DLC they say it's not a DLC it's an expansion but um it's a deal so you download content right it's a DLC expansion let's call it that but um uh they're showing off all the new features in the game like completely revamped talent trees and all that kind of stuff and you know it's kind of making cyberpunk delivering on its Vision like even stuff like revamping the police AI which never never bothered me because I always just saw the police are just there for flavor you know but some people really wanted the Grand Theft Auto experience from cyberpunk for some reason so they've added this whole police crime system though um based on player feedback so it's that kind of stuff doubling down on actually rewarding people who stick by you and that's you know what Microsoft has to do and they have to keep doing and they have to keep doing it consistently and every time they they do like a Red Bull thing um every time there's a Red Bull thing it sort of it there's a knock on there you know every it's like one step forward and then one step backwards right so like that they could do like they could release I don't know Starfield could could release and hit like 100 out of 100 on Mercury you know and then like the next game the next big game already it's like Perfect Dark what if perfect dark's another red for you know complete mess and derivative and just sort of like a tragic uh poorly Paulie puts it thrown together game and that that'll undo the Goodwill they're Built For the Brand on Xbox right so yeah hopefully that that will start seeing that more consistently now but yeah ABK is going to throw a whole load of additional complexity on top of that fire as well yeah uh Mr J he has a super J says what comfy gaming headphones do you guys recommend I mean you're the headphone person Jazz I mean I can tell you what I use I use um I usually use my Astro 50s um very cool I don't think that they're confused have you got the fabric ones uh these are the older ones these are I think maybe like Gen 2 not not the newer gen 3 ones or whatever so like my issue with the asteroid 50 well it depends it depends on your budget like you're gonna have lunch into a whole discussion about Xbox headsets I've tested a lot of Xbox headsets in my time so what's the colors what's the comfiest comfiest if we're talking about comfy value and you don't care about having a wire hyperx cloudx is in my opinion the comfiest headset while also retaining a very rich cinematic sound profile um but if you want to get more expensive the more recent Turtle Beach Stealth Pro I actually really love that headset leatherette uh coolant gel and the ear cups feels really really nice there's also like the ls35x which also has coolant gel in the ear cups I love headsets that have coolant gel in the earcups if you didn't if you couldn't tell the issue with the ls35x is the on-ear controls on that great and you know the sound isn't incredible but it's pretty cheap you know so yeah I also Optics and a lot of people are saying arctis Nova Pro I love artist another Pros like headset I use mainly in the UK I love that headset as well very very comfy um but it's also very very expensive um and also the a50s are also comfy but they have fabric ear cups out of the box so it feels kind of like wearing earmuffs and I hate that you can buy aftermarket leatherette things which feel nicer but I don't know but yeah those are headsets however Ryan the heads I'm using right now is actually the Razer Hammerhead earbuds okay podcasting um because you can plug them into your PC and plug them into your Xbox as well and they're just they're just earbuds they sound pretty decent and they're earbuds so no no fatigue on your head and stuff like that so if you want earbuds there's a rise of hammerheads on terrible the sound is amazing and the microphone's obviously not very great but you just want comfort and earbuds they're pretty damn good and versatile Bluetooth and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah that's headsets headsets judge is the headset Master he has them all uh you should give some away from the to the people on the Discord because I know you have a ton yeah yeah I will like I usually like I hang on to them in case like the the teams that gave me the review units want them back or whatever but I I usually ask if like unless I've had it for like five years or something I usually I usually ask if it's okay to do a giveaway because I can't sell them it's kind of like it's unethical I think to sell them this is on benefiting financially from reviewing it then but no giveaways yeah so join our Discord discord.gg forward slash xb2 uh Dead Planet says looking back post column interview is there any argument you guys wish you had made or a point you brought up that now you think you know I wish I had said uh actually yeah okay yeah I can't I can't remember exactly off the top of my head but like I saw some people posting Clips on Twitter and I was like man I wish I'd said this and man I wish I'd said that I was posting Clips was it was it was it Nicola was was Nick out there posting clips of of the uh of that episode because I know he loves it I don't know yeah I can't I can't follow him man the fur it seems like a good guy outside the console stuff but I just can't stand these tweets man they just make me cringe so he does he know he doesn't he just does it for just he just trolls you know that right that's the whole thing yeah but the whole thing is Twitter doesn't engage positivity it's it engages negativity and you want engagements and money now people can make money off of it I mean what do you expect you know dude I'm not hyper I'm not hating on Sony 24 7 for engagement I might get pretty decent engagement oh some bloody memes post a picture of beans for God's sake people love that so so what argument would you so what argument would you I can't remember off the top of my head I honestly can't remember but um I remember I do remember thinking that so we'll have to I'll have to do another debate with them or something at some point yeah because um yeah uh Jay Rembert says happy birthday rant thank you he says our team the White Sox is a bleeping show right now looking forward to this Friday show in regards to Starfield yeah the White Sox suck just you might as well just start a rebuild they're absolutely horrible so uh what are you gonna do man what are you gonna do right [Music] a baseball podcast now I know there's a CMA stuff which Phil talks about here but we'll we'll mention that a little bit later because I don't really want to talk about that you know at this point in time right uh Phil did talk about the consoles the series X and the series s right and this is where we're going to be getting into the mid-gen refresh stuff and where we're going to be getting into the parody stuff with Baldur's Gate so if you guys are enjoying the show make sure you hit the like button and please subscribe if you're new so Dustin says let's talk about the series X consoles three years old where are we with the timeline of the console are we at the beginning or are we in the middle Phil says I think we're still I think we're kind of at the end of the beginning if that makes any sense I think the supply issues early on length in the beginning to some extent both on cost as well as just availability I think from a Game Dev standpoint not just us but third parties really just now starting to see I think the swell of games that got slowed up through covert production now starting to Launch I think we have 85 games launching in the industry between now and tomorrow it seems like there's so many games coming right now that we're starting to get through the beginning of this generation and hopefully into a place where as an owner of a console you've got games that are taking full advantage of the hardware and are great games for people to go play and I look at that lineup over the rest of this year from third parties alone and it's fantastic at the end of this year is ridiculous I mean you're talking about right now like sea of stars it's kind of like Ben rolls in the star field then you got Forza then you got the cyberpunk expansion you got Alan Wake 2 you got Spider-Man 2 you got new you're interested am I interested in what Steve I'm not interested not interested to see a Stars are you interested in it hell yeah I am I'm gonna finish Buffon first though so I'm gonna finish it this year okay I'll tell you man so there's Phil what's next for gaming Hardware are better graphics still enough to differentiate and Phil says I think better graphics more realistic feel will always be important I also love that different form factors are coming out I thought what valve did with the steam deck was awesome I'm traveling with my rag Ally when I'm having when I'm here having a great time playing games I feel like it's a remote Xbox for me I log in my community's there my games are there all devs should support cross save so that's to you Remnant 2 team I'm playing a ton of Remnant too but I can't move to PC but I just love the fact that I'm able to take my save games where I go and play so I love that Hardware is becoming more diverse both in price point and inform Factor and usabilities that more people are playing right yeah I mean he um I think to Phil's point about Remnant I think that did confirm that they are doing they are exploring cross progression but it's hard with cross progression because you have to you basically have to have some kind of server infrastructure to make that happen like um larion and uh larion and um uh cold Steve deposit red they've got they've got like a internal system for this stock so like when I play cyberpunk on my rug Ally which runs it incredibly well by the way which is ridiculous it's ridiculous man playing a game that looks like cyberpunk on a handheld it's just it's just mind-blowing I would never have thought that possible as a kid but um they've got a system you log in with you CD project red login and then boom my Xbox saves are on my wrong Ally which is sweet right and the the more I use the rock alloy which is frequently because you know TV battles and all that kind of stuff um the more I sort of yearn to have cross-save across progression and obviously you get that a lot with Xbox game pass because a lot of these games are designed for Xbox play Anywhere star Fields Xbox play anywhere and when I download Starfield on my PC by the Microsoft store it starts downloading my Xbox saves to it and stuff like that which is sweet um but you know a lot of most games most PC games aren't on the Microsoft store we've talked about this a lot Microsoft store is and it's it's beyond an afterthought if your game is an on-game pass no dev's gonna pause the Microsoft store you know we saw a few games come to the Microsoft store in the past um uh sort of like um voluntarily but it is so so rare it is so damn rare for a game to volunteer into the Microsoft store even though Microsoft Office like they offer a better cut than Steam for games I think it's like it's similar to that big game store speaking of which ran did you see that the epic game store Now is offering 100 Revenue to devs 100 of zero still zero hahaha that's the problem that's gonna do them like that I mean it's the problem with both the Xbox store and PC and the epic game it doesn't matter how much revenue you give to the developers if nobody is buying your games on those stores it doesn't matter if you're giving them 100 because nobody's buying the games on these stores I'm sorry 100 Zero's still zero man what why is Ron so mean to epic games I mean it's just like truth bro yeah it is the truth but it's it's not just like epic game stores like no good good old gold Galaxy as well good old games we should see the project Reds you know steam basically nobody uses it it's a very good platform that you always great you works very well and the deals are really good why I got Galaxy just so nobody uses it like steam is just too damn embedded it's a whole like iPhone thing like how do you get if someone's got an iPhone and they've got all their stuff on iTunes and stuff why would why would they bother switching to Android like it's it's like a concerted effort to make the switch and it works both ways like why why would I bother switching to iPhone when I got all my stuff on Android and it's buying what it is and that's the kind of issue that Microsoft epic games and all these Studios have is like themes everyone's on Steam you know the only the only way Microsoft can sort of coax people over is with the Game Pass bag and it does seem to have been working I would say it works better than probably YP gamestore has been doing um but Microsoft also said this will be the first year they make a billion dollars from PC although a huge amount of that is probably Steam um but anyway ramble ramble ramble I just opened the gold Galaxy it's it's such a nice app it's a really really nice app it's a shame don't use it uh the Xbox app has actually gone a lot better recently as well I need to write about this week because I've I've attacked this app to death I'm someone who's been just non-stop this app sucks Scrap It Whatever there's been some updates to the Xbox app recently on PC and it's actually pretty damn good now so I know I know baby stats I know um I know uh Todd was at Gamescom right because he's like I've never been to Gamescom I'm finally here did you get to talk to Todd did I spoke to Todd yeah not only that Rand wow I can't believe I forgot to mention this but um he listens to the podcast no he doesn't that's a lie Todd Howard Scott Howard does not listen to the Xbox too that's a lie that's a lie from hell it's alive I was like At first I was like oh wow Todd's just being nice and encouraging but dude he knew you by name what he knows me yeah he know you're playing podcast with Ryan so like so it's kind of like you know the I would have assumed that he was just being nice or whatever but he knew you by name so clearly he's familiar with the podcast and he also said um he also talked about localization article that I wrote and uh you know the because they hired they hired a producer for Arabic and a producer for Korean language localization for Starfield and he mentioned my article about localization so that was pretty incredible that was probably so are you saying are you saying right now Todd Howard could be listening right now are you saying that is this something I got a feeling he's not listening right now because he's probably but he might be listening on Friday or do you maybe I don't know it might it might get some clips or something from from a segment about whether or not his game was good but yeah he um he did say that he's looking forward to hearing about all the opinions about the game and I was just stunned that he even knew who it was so yeah well you think you're stunned I mean you're just Gordon window Central I'm just a little old YouTuber doesn't even it doesn't even we don't even do camera and Todd says Todd literally said yeah I listen to your podcast with Rand like what that you can't just drop that in here without me like now I'm just like wait a minute because because he went up the cult he like you know coach was at E3 and he like grabbed coat and he's like hey Colt I'm a big fan I watch your videos and Colt was just like are you kidding me like Todd watches my videos yeah and now you're saying that Todd listens so can we like put out a tweet where it's like um come listen to the Todd Howard approved Xbox two podcast I um I just kind of like I think like they they get they get briefed on you know who who's in the community and what people are doing and kind of stuff like that of course they do right um but it just it just goes to show that they're aware of the community like it's not just it's not just our podcast it's you guys it's podcast too right so it's like there are our content is shaped by you guys listen to the show and that sort of feedback loop that goes back to Todd it goes back to Phil which is why it's important there we remain critical and call them out and ask for better and you know there's there's clear evidence that asking for better works because we highlighted Windows Central we highlight and on this podcast too we highlighted the fact that Koreans and um uh people in Arabic countries they had a petition their petitions of to get the games localized in their languages and we we wrote an article about that it blew up on social it blew up on Google it was on it was trending on Google News they noticed that I shared the feedback with them and now they're putting that plan into action and that's that's ultimately how I see this job and what our role is as podcasters is to work towards a better product and um and you know it's you guys as well to thank for that yeah so BG's and chat saying Rand is blushing I'm not I'm not blushing like my cheeks aren't all red I'm just surprised that Todd Howard of all people would would listen to Xbox two podcast it's just you know I understand I understand like Phil Spencer maybe listening to it or being aware of it or other people at Xbox I mean I know people at Xbox do listen to it from the conversations I have right but Todd Howard of all people I I'm just kind of flabbergasted that he would want to it's because it's not like this is a Bethesda podcast you know no so the fact that he would even be aware of it let alone listen to it is and like no like oh yeah I know I I know Rand or whatever I'm just I've never met him it's not like I went to E3 or or what have you and I don't know is this kind of it's on it's unbelievable to me I wouldn't I wouldn't think that in a million years I wouldn't say I'm blushing BG so I wouldn't I wouldn't go that far because that's that's not like it's more just I just I just don't believe in and still I don't believe I still think jazz is pulling my leg um when would I ever do that I've never pulled you like man you always pull my leg Jackson Rand you're a big deal get used to it uh I'll never get used to that no yeah I mean it's kind of like it's cut it is kind of weird how big the podcast has gotten over the years but it just sort of you just have to keep reminding yourself what the responsibility is or you'll end up like Linus Tech tips with a big Scandal yeah that was like a big thing for a couple days and is anybody even talking about that anymore I don't even know uh probably not well that's the same with any drama right but oh I I did I actually did get called out for accuracy because on the um on the uh the the interview I'm calling myself out here by the way and the interview with with um the guest show with Colin I said that Kenshin impact was owned by 10 cent it is not owned by 10 cent oh okay we we regret we regret the error uh Xbox two Productions yeah I thought holy reverse was like had investment from 1010 or something and it was sort of like within their sphere 10 cents a fear of whatever you call it influence but no they're totally separate and apparently they actually rejected 10 cents attempt to muscle in on their Turf so that's kind of cool right um but yeah that's the correction could you get tired on Xbox two plus one he did Lex Freeman's yeah but Lex Freeman's podcast is massive though so Freeman I doubt we could get tired on Xbox two plus one I doubt it very much we'll we'll try you know I I think like we are at a point where we could potentially get some you know bigger names into the the plus the plus one thing which is one of the reasons why I ran I think we should discuss doing it twice a month I mean I mean I guess I guess if we can't have two people a month we just would do ultimate in the place of it yeah exactly um but but yeah I don't know we'll talk about that I mean we do have this we do have the 300th episode of Xbox 2 coming up we should get we should get fill on for that yeah we should try it that wouldn't happen he wouldn't come on he's like let me comment on the podcast where one of the guys on there is is is is blacklisted by a couple of my Studios you know well I could step aside you could do it with guys oh yeah I'm sure can you imagine gas and fell in the same podcast together oh my God they love guys like you know like got like I think guys is funny I mean guys is funny that's the thing that they're involved and embedded in the community you know and Colin was even talking about this on on the Xbox two plus one on my channel where he was talking about how the PlayStation employees they don't get involved in the community like Xbox does and that like Xbox has a completely different Community landscape to PlayStation where we all jump across on each other's podcasts more friends and stuff and we hang out like and I suppose farmfest is part of that you know but it's it started before FanFest it started on Twitter I think the camaraderie around people who just like you know wanted to stick with Xbox despite all the hate that it gets and was getting you know there's a camaraderie there I suppose but yeah I don't know that's a completely another discussion yeah cold will with their first Super Chat thank you he says uh they say in an interview Phil mentioned the S the steam deck and the Rock by name with other oems making handhelds what are their chances of a dedicated handheld OS happy birthday Iran thank you and I think we've talked about this before Jazz right about uh either Xbox making their own handheld or they're being a dedicated handheld oh isn't that something Windows is doing or or something if I'm not mistaken right so there won't be a dedicated operant system I don't think and the reason for that is you need the problem the the benefit and the problem with PC gaming is often just Windows you kind of need all that bloat that is inherent of Windows to get some of that stuff working like I could run Wasteland what the original Wasteland one from the 80s I could pull that out and run that just fine on Windows 11 like using dosbox or something you know it's it's like the ultimate backwards compatibility but the downside is of course that it's um it's bloated and it's sort of it's um it's sort of a drain on the resources of a handheld where handhelds the resources are restricted right so while I don't think there'll be a dedicated operating system because you do need some of that bloat um I do think what they're gonna do is they're going to make a shell for it they're going to make like a special shell where it'll it will detect that it's running on some kind of device like a steam deck or like a rug or what or the legion the Lenovo Legion go which leaked by some I think that was me as well damn it um Lenovo doing Blacklist me though thanks Lenovo good sports um uh uh the uh I don't think they'll um they won't make a dedicated OS but they will make a shell so it'll detect that it's on that device and it'll be like okay uh we are in handheld mode now uh we'll get rid of the start menu we'll get rid of all that stuff we'll make it touch optimized it'll look nicer and it'll just give you straight into your games or your social features or whatever and then if you want to you can click out into um full-blown Windows similarly to how you can click out to full-blown Linux on the steam deck if you are completely crazy because boy oh boy clicking out of the Steam OS into Linux is scary run it is scary I I I I don't I don't offend any Linux pros and chat because Linux Pros are passionate people but when you're a Windows user and you go into Linux it's kind of like you're wandering into a dark forest and there's like red eyes glaring at you Linux is fearful and frightening um I kind of feel like when you use Linux you kind of need like some kind of engineering degree to actually do anything on it but but yeah uh look forward to that we should have we should have some hopefully some information about that in the next year or so yeah handheld mode uh so Phil talked about um midgen upgrades and so I I mean you straight up asked do you have any news about some sort of mid-generation refresh for Xbox no I think that sort of question is a little bit loaded right because yeah of course if you ask that question to PlayStation if Jim Ryan was in Phil's space he would obviously say no because it as we know from Tom Henderson it's not planned on coming out until the end of next year there's no way they would say oh yeah we're totally doing one because people might not buy the PS5 so I figured you know you would know that Sony would have a similar answer but he did ask us to fill and Phil said no no we're doing right now the increased storage on the on the S but no like I said we're kind of at the end of the beginning in my mind so I think we need to let Dev settle on this hardware and get the most out of it but in terms of increased frame rate increase resolution I just like what the what goes on the PC with high-end gpus and high-end CPUs and it's not always just pixel count or frame resolution I think there's lighting techniques there's a bunch of things that go into what makes the game look and feel great and we have a ton of Headroom as an industry there um so I mean you could say that's push puts a kibosh essentially on Xbox doing a mid-gen refresh but even if they had plans on doing a mid-gen refresh they I I feel like this would be the answer Phil would give regardless you know he's not going to come out and say oh yeah you know what Min gen refresh of course you know just just wait a couple years you know so you think you think those even though it feels sort of downplayed it no chance I don't think my gut right now says they won't but I'm not but I'm not saying this interview is definitive proof because that's what what else is he supposed to say like it would be the same answer like let's imagine like maybe they want to do it like they did with the the Xbox One X where Sony does mid-gen refresh next year in 2024 and Xbox does one in 2025 right or maybe they even decide to launch next and early in 2026 you wouldn't talk about that in 2023 I mean hell we've seen leaks of Sony's PS5 Slim Right we've seen pictures of it we know that it's coming there's there's another price drop on uh that's happening in the UK because they're trying to clear stock only five pounds off I'm so I've been so tempted by that you should might as well I wanna I wanna play foreign Xbox probably at some point now with that whole Square Enix thing but you might have to wait it's coming to PC yeah I want to play Ghost of sushima and I want to play Final Fantasy 16. well exactly and it's like but it's but the thing is you just want to spend money for the sake I've waited this long what's waiting a little bit more like you did play Final Fantasy 16 16 when it came out at this point you might as well wait for a PC version if but yeah I mean I understand like you want a PS5 and it is an attractive price but you know they the Slim's supposed to be coming out next month and they still haven't even uh talked about it at all I'm just saying I so when I look at this interview from just like this doesn't mean anything I I still don't think they're doing one but I don't necessarily think this interview means anything because they wouldn't say oh yeah you know what Dustin we're totally thinking about it and check back in with us in two years when we release one you know what I mean yeah I get that I suppose I suppose they had to ask it's something everyone's discussing right now sure sure um and I'm sure this is this is why I suck at doing interviews because like I already know what they're gonna say so I think what's the point of us asking that because like if he's made it if it was me doing the interview I wouldn't have even bothered asking that even though I because I know what the answer is going to be and it would have been something something like that where it's sort of yeah you could you could get a lot of clicks on it and stuff so you know that's that's how this stuff goes but the kind of other videos I'm terrible interviewed out of Gamescom was the Baldur's Gate Xbox series s situation because oh yeah Baldur's Gate is now coming to Xbox this year where before sounded like maybe it was coming next year um they never said it wasn't coming they always said that it just they just needed more time they clearly prioritized the PC version and the PlayStation version and I've even I've even talked about my conspiracy theory scenario where you know the game wasn't good they weren't going to release the game this year anyways because of Starfield right that I'm not saying they were using the series S as an excuse because I fully believe they were having problems but when you're prioritizing what you're going to release it's like PC is the number one and PS5 and when you look at when they were planning on releasing it literally right on the day of Starfield yeah it doesn't really make sense to release that game across Starfield at all on the Xbox side it does for PlayStation right because they don't have an exclusive until Spider-Man 2 and with all the hype surrounding Baldur's Gate 3 from the PC release it makes a ton of like they played this beautifully is what I'm saying kudos to larion because they were able they did this on purpose man no no you see there's a part of me that thinks look it may not have been on purpose but I think the chips fell in such a way that they benefited it worked out for him because I think the chips fell in that way where it's like okay we our team of 400 right we're prioritizing the PC and the PS5 version we have a release date we we are doing the Xbox version but we need more time because of Series S right so they announced the release date of August 31st then literally two weeks later starfield's like by the way we're September 6th and our release date Early Access is September 1st which is actually August 31st which is the same day as Baldur's Gate 3. so to them it was probably like all right we don't need to really focus that much on the Xbox version because starfield's coming out the same time it would have been so we'll kind of push more for PC they moved the PC version away from Starfield right it was August 31st same day at Starfield not then it was August 3rd so they moved it clear away from Starfield on the PC side of things and then they moved it they delayed it on on PS5 to launch across of Starfield which is brilliant because it gives PlayStation guys something to talk about something to brag about right because you have them on social media talking about that game how it's a console exclusive blah blah blah blah blah right so people are pre-ordering it because it's really good so you hit all that sort of stuff and on the Xbox side so okay and now when you talk about the Xbox you put put it out later because you're not going to put it on around Starfield because everybody on Xbox is going to be playing Starfield for free so nobody is going to be buying your game on Xbox because they have another game that's sort of similar that they can all play for free so you wait and as we know now that it's coming out this year so to me there's only really two places to put it out and that's either November or December you could release it on Xbox in November after all the game of the year nominations when Baldur's Gate probably has like 10 nominations and you can finally release it on Xbox then and people would be really interested in playing it because they might be done with star field they might be done with all the October games November doesn't really seem that packed so you could easily release Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox the tight into the nominations and get a third win of sales because right you got the First with PC you're gonna get your second wind with the Playstation release you get your third with the Xbox and if you don't have it done in time on November you can time it for December after the game awards when it probably wins a whole bunch of game of the game uh you know when it wins a whole bunch of awards from the keeleys maybe even Game of the Year probably wins a whole bunch of Game of the Year Noms from a bunch of different websites you can run some uh trailer that you know talks about the Xbox version and having all the quotes from reviewers and then oh it's December there's nothing to play on Xbox well here's Baldur's Gate three the game of the year right so I'm not I'm not saying they they planned it but I think everything fell in such a way that they benefited from it because even here with that like it got he it was Dustin was talking about the Phil Right Dustin says the buzzers Gate 3 team brought up some issues with the series s and split screen getting it to work properly I know the forza team announced that it won't launch but local split screen is there some future where your lab developers just to launch on the series X versus ask because there's parody claws right now and I'm curious will that ever be loosened up a bit you know this this thing the parity Clause where we talked about it last week where I even played Deadpool's Advocate when I'm like I was like hey you might need to hold firm on this because if you bend on this parody then other developers might come to you and be like hey we're having problems too wink wink we don't want to ship this feature on the series s and I was like you got to stand firm but I mean it sounds like they at least bent for larion um and which we'll we'll talk about we're getting to now and all the information but Phil says I wanted to couple these issues a little bit the decision to do split screen or not is a creative decision a Dev decision so if we think about Forza it has nothing to do with any kind of Hardware thing on this s or the X it's just where they wanted to focus their time we obviously see the data in terms how many people play local co-op for games I love local co-op shout out to vampire survivors right but there's also just a let's go where they play is in terms of where we're going to focus our Dev resources uh in terms of two platforms I want games to launch on both there are feature differences between the platforms we have an ability to kind of handle that and how it works where teams are going to choose to focus their time and their effort is up to them we're here to support them and what they want to go do we want to make sure that games when they're launching on competitive platforms are also launching on Xbox so we're going to learn from this experience as well because we don't love that but I don't think it's something that's a fledo flaw in the system it's Partners prioritizing their game us listening and being a good partner to them and you see some amazing games doing great work across the S and the X blah blah blah um Phil was NS uh uh it you know the conversation going around and Phil says yeah no I think it's a fair question I will say that some of the discussion the community has maybe not come from us at the devs it's been more the community building well this happened and then that happened and then so it must be about this and I think we can do more to add Clarity to actually where we are and I look forward to doing that um I think like what what ultimately happened here and I was thinking about this while you're talking but like larion is aggressively open with this community they are like they are like the they are the probably the best crowd-funded Dev like in terms of what they've delivered on the market and part of crowdfunding is you have to be sort of transparent with the audience right so when people say to them why is XYZ not happening um I don't give a they're just like we're just going to tell the truth it's the Xbox series s again split screen card working I think that kind of Blindsided Microsoft because they're probably not used to working with the dev who just doesn't not give a about Microsoft's um marketing you know and I think it's I think it's a good thing because this is gonna like what Phil was saying we need to be transparent about the way some of this works because people are interested and a lot of the discourse is Right a lot of the discourse about this was not from devs it was from us it was from everyone in the community trying to work out what is unforce I have split screen why didn't Halo infinite get split screen is there a series that's really to Brave for all these problems you know because we extrapolate based on the available information that we have which often isn't a great amount of information you know we we are we're working on none of us none of us are devs or most of us here aren't devs there's some devs who listen like shout out to say dogs for example um but there there's like um uh we're not devs so like I'm specifically furthermore we're not devs on that specific game because it's not like it's not like Dev is a linear path either you know like one day of might have an opinion about something that can be completely off base based on the the engine and the development pipeline that the another Studio has for their game you know develop development is not a linear path I think that's kind of what Phil was saying there like they chose they chose what was best for their game which ultimately was to build it PC first and then back Port it but they didn't account for the series s issues which is honestly fair enough because the game was kickstarted to be a PC game originally anyway um and that's kind of what they're known for right uh and then when he did come down to it the engine didn't back Port that well to the series s and now they've got this issue where they've probably got they've probably got a retrofit some of some aspects of the game and Microsoft's on task to help them with that but the thing is it's like whatever whatever the case is whatever the case may be and why this happened I'm concerned about the end user I'm concerned about people listen to this show I'm concerned about the people who buy the console and and the people who are wondering where the hell is the game of the year probably Game of the Year 2023 not on my not on my console because Microsoft decided to do an Xbox series s which I may or may not even own you know so um any more transparency is good obviously of course it's good um and will will it lead to a pervasive change in the way they handle this stuff I think Microsoft will probably be more transparent with devs from the outset about um how to sort of get the most out of the series s from the beginning of development because I do think that's where some of this some of these issues lie is like um that the pipeline you build from the outset at least that's what some people have told me about it um and Microsoft can maybe do a better job there Microsoft can be more clear with us about the state of the Xbox series s and where it is as a platform what they're thinking of it is because they could shut down a lot of this speculative and often negative discussions by just being a little bit more transparent you know I would love to know how the series S is doing I'd love to know like how what the feedback looks like from that from people who actually own it and use it because like if I got a series s and used it just for testing purposes it'll be a very different experience for someone who uses a series S as their sole console I will say that if you guys remember uh when I I came back to Germany after the pandemic I was I was stuck in England for a long time because of the um the pandemic rules so during that time I like had my Xbox series s x x in in England and I didn't have I didn't have a series X for Germany so and there was no stock so I bought a series s for a little while and you know it was I just constantly missed the series X like why wouldn't you at the end of the day like it was adequate and it was fine until it wasn't and the game like the game where it wasn't fine for me was chivalry too the chivalry 2 was 30 frames per second on the series s when it launched and I think now it's 60 frames a second after a bunch of updates but initially it was 30 frames a second and that was that was it for me I was like okay this is this is where I'm missing out on it and chivalry is not a game you want to be playing at 30 frames I don't think personally especially once you've experienced it at 60 frames and kudos to the devs for for fixing that making it six there but it's that kind of uncertainty man you don't know you don't know which games are going to be 30 which games are going to be 60 when it comes to Series S and I suppose that's on Microsoft figure out because I think I one of the issues people have with this whole scenario right is this interview with Phil dropped on the 23rd even the one with with game one with Eurogamer where Phil says I don't see a world where we drop the s in terms of parity I don't think he heard from us or Larry and that this was about parody I think that's more the community talking about it there are even features that strip on X today that do not ship on the S even from our own games like Ray tracing that works on X it's not on the S in certain games so for an ex- customer s they spent roughly half of what the ex-customer bought they understand it's not going to run uh the same way I want to make sure games are available on both that's their job as a platform holder and we're committed to that with our partners and I think we're going to get there with larion so I'm not overly worried about that but we learned some stuff through that having an important happening entry level price for uh Point price point for our console sub 300 is a good thing for the industry I think it's important the switch has been able to do that blah blah blah blah right so this was on the 23rd but then on the 25th the official Xbox account tweets out in partnership with the talented people at larion Studios were thrilled to share Baldur's Gate 3 will be coming to Xbox later this year stay tuned for more details and what the larian people were saying is that they're going to be shipping the series s version without Split Screen Co-op right uh Xbox then does say to answer some questions we're getting we'll continue to work with larian to explore the addition of split screen on series as post launch now Phil did say that he was going to be meeting with Larry endurance Gamescom right in his interviews which happened on the 23rd and then two days later all of a sudden it's coming this year and it doesn't have split screen Co-op so I guess the question is what happened in those interviews or what happened in those meetings and was parody bent because it does seem like on the outset outside looking in uh they they they bent parity for this and a lot of people are calling like Phil just a liar for I mean what do you what do you think about all that jazz do you think it was just one thing was just like Baldur's Gates just this huge game of the year game we need an honor platform sooner rather than later we'll we'll bend on on split screen coming uh that's perfectly fine you know because they talk about one thing two days two days before and then all of a sudden the game's coming this year uh two days later it's kind of uh it's kind of odd how quickly that all came together no oh I think I think Jazz's mic is muted oh yeah I was I was muted sorry about that um these things move I think these things move quickly like especially when you can get in front of someone and speak to them personally and that's basically what they said happened at Gamescom they actually met up personally I talked about it and what solutions they can they can offer and stuff and I suppose it was ultimately a case of okay a solution we can offer is that will bend on when split screen comes as long as you guys commit to it and it does seem like they are committed to doing it and Microsoft is going to be involved in helping make that happen however however their plan to do it I will be I would not be surprised if they end up giving up on it because that's a lot of overhead to make that work I think um it might just be a case of their engine because their engine does support that kind of gameplay it's not like it's new for Baldur's Gate 3. they even had it in Divinity original Sim 1 where you've got the Split Screen Co-op stuff within that sort of dynamic world it's really cool it's one of the things that's really unique to that team um like the games they make so um but at the same time it's like they've compromised it for devices where it makes sense like it split screen isn't on Steam deck for example um because well steam deck for one is generally a personal device you can't dock It and Boot and uh run it to a TV and stuff like that but they disabled it by default on the steam deck however people have um unlocked it via mods and stuff which again is something you could do on PC stuff um but yeah I suppose we'll wait and see I I don't think this will happen very often where a specific dev has a specific issue that sort of holds up the entire version of the entire version of a game on our platform because of something like this I don't think you're going to see this regularly I suppose the fear was could it happen regularly if the series s is really if it really is a case of power and the series s just not having the kind of power that it needs for these modern these features where devs want to use the overhead and the PS5 and the series X to do these kinds of features that kind of leaves a series that's out in the Lurch and to be honest and this is the Ninja that's why the Nintendo switch misses out on a lot of triple i games it's it's purely because they don't have it doesn't have the power that the games need nobody cares that while there's Gate 3 is not coming to switch yeah that's that's interesting that's interesting isn't it um nobody ever switch just avoids any discourse when it comes to power I will say I'll say this though if Baldur's Gate 3 wasn't a game of the year candidate and wasn't just hugely huge game I don't think you hear any of this and I I don't think they Bend like if Baldur's Gate 3 was just you're running the mill experience that was you know seven or eight out of ten was just okay I don't I don't think you get any of this I don't think you get blown up in this position where they publicly have to sort of backtrack like and they have but then but the problem the other issue is I think people and Phil mentioned this interview is how people conflate everything it's like all right so Baldur's Gate devs have a problem with split screen and Series S and then all of a sudden like the forza they're like oh they're not doing Series S and Halo infinite didn't do uh split screen on Series S right now there's this even this Lord of the Rings game some more of a survival game that looks like ass is delayed on Xbox and everybody anything that's wrong here's the thing that's the problem is anything that's wrong with Xbox when it comes to game releases or features no matter what happens no matter what the truth will be it'll always be blamed on the series s from from this point forward until the series is stopped being supported because game these companies are very secretive about what's really happening I mean we were all like hey why isn't father's Gate 3 coming to Xbox right and they were like it is but we can't tell you why it isn't right now and then eventually like oh by the way we're having these problems right normally you wouldn't get that info it would all be you know they keep it internal or whatever but any sort of problem like if there's a big game in the future that is delayed on Xbox but comes out on Playstation people will immediately blame the series s this is what it's going to come down to at least for the uh social media sphere of like oh Series S rears is something ugly head again right because it depends on the game like if it's a like graphically intensive game then sure but there's a lot a lot of games that just don't come to Xbox because I don't know the jrpgs hyper Niche or whatever I mean sure yeah the Jared but I'm just saying for the most part A lot of the discourse will be around like the series s and what it offers and and and what it can do so Ballers gate threes come in Xbox this year probably November December if I had to guess um which you know it's great if you wanted to play it on Xbox it's going to have cross save I believe so you'll be able to import your steam save and play it on Xbox if you want which is I don't know why you want to do that though I mean what because you don't want to play it it's an excuse to start over oh okay fair enough so that's so I don't know like the whole it's weird because I don't have a series S I guess you know for me it's like a series X and I I understand a lot of people's position is like hey why aren't I getting Baldur's Gate three I have a series X uh don't ruin my experience because of a console I don't own right um yeah there is that's but then but then I've seen it Jazz where people are like series that's older users should Revolt they should sue Microsoft they were promised parody and all this sort of stuff and they're not getting parody now so Microsoft uh they lied uh everybody should sue them because you're getting Baldur's Gate without local Split Screen Co-op I'm sure there's things in the terms of service that preclude people for being able to do that I don't know think about a future nobody ever uses like even Phil 's this article that nobody uses split screen for Forza so they didn't bother to do it they focused their attention on other stuff right but this is what I'm saying like I was those people putting all over my timeline about this and I was just like bro you don't care at all about playing split screen all this gay on Series S you don't give a about it so what is this concerned trolling you know a lot of the discourse is literally just Bud concerned trolling and just general Twitter and do you guys per usual indeed and speaking of we have special Nick in the chat dropping a Super Chat uh no you're not gonna do a dick like that he says happy birthday ran Chomp Chomp spicy no uh yeah uh oh I see I sent I sent Nick that one Tick Tock I sent you where the guy was like he's just like I was I was dying he's like yes yes yes gang gang you know the whole tick tock tick tock yeah so I I should do that I should we should quit doing that yeah and just go to tick tock and just be like gang gang feisty no spicy no spicy yeah no spicy um we have big Afroman saying happy birthday what's up with all the Starfield hate online is it just Fanboys projecting hate because subconsciously they know it will be good would this hate happen if it was also on PS5 no the hate would not happen if it was on if this was a multi-platform release absolutely not absolutely I hate these like these sort of binary events where like you can't you can't know for sure what it'd be like if the situation was different I wish like I had like some kind of inter-dimensional Schrodinger's cat kind of device where I could be like okay show me a dimension where Starfield is still multi-platform just so I could see that this course and how how it would be different and then bring that discourse with me back to this Dimension and be like look look at the discourse when it's not exclusive are you sure that you really care about this or are you just being a salty little well you know so the discourse is strictly around it being exclusive 100 right absolutely I've never seen a group of people so upset about a game being exclusive in my life they're like trying to tear it down and they don't even know if it's good or bad they're just no they're just hanging on to every little league every brainy Tick Tock that's leaked from someone who's got it early and they're hanging on to everything and like some of these leaks are just so far removed from the reality of the game because they're lacking context and you know I know just I just say to people just wait for the right for the real information because a lot of this stuff that you're hearing is just isn't fully accurate and all that kind of stuff and you just just need to wait and to be honest um Todd addressed a lot of the stuff about with regards to the discourse Todds or you addressed a lot of the way the systems work in that Lex Friedman podcast you were talking about yep um he talked about this stuff in depth so it's not like the information isn't already out there you know um but it's just it's painful man I like I've been like having a bit of a social media break just because I just hate seeing my replies my mentions I hate seeing people like linking me stuff from concerned trolls who just have who who are going to hate the game no matter what they were going to hate the game no matter what they're just trying to sort of find a in the armor where they can insert their poison so they can get a little hate button around rather than going outside and touching a bit of grass you know um absolutely really exhausting you know it would be interesting to see in Another Universe if Starfield releases a PS5 exclusive like death Loop and gosware Tokyo and we know Sony was trying to get how the reactions would be for the PlayStation guys versus the XBox guys right right because that that could have been a possibility but yeah it's I I don't know if I've seen something like this before I don't know it's it's ridiculous uh jodecas says it'll happen again when when Xbox has another Zeitgeist kind of game it'll happen all over again maybe you know I keep thinking about both well no I think I think it's happening for this game because a lot of PlayStation fans view it as this game should be on Playstation like if it wasn't for Xbox this game would have launched on PlayStation 5 right whereas I don't know if you'd see that for a vowed I don't know if you'd see that Perfect Dark maybe you might see some for hellblade 2 because the game did launch in on Playstation first uh right but I I I think maybe this might be the only one it's mainly because this game probably what they view it as it was supposed to be multi-platform it was supposed to be on PlayStation um it's I think driving some of it says I keep thinking about both of yours theory about Xbox through connection early after the PS5 Pro Smart of Xbox did a couple themselves from PlayStation and compete at their own pace much like Nintendo I mean it that's not really a theory of mine I'm just saying you never know it could be a possibility we don't know what Microsoft is doing it's Jazz's Theory I don't really have a theory on it right so it seems like it maybe it's possible or at least jazz is from what just you know his theory on it but we'll have to wait and see maybe they do it maybe they don't right and I mean if you were planning on doing it well then it doesn't really make sense to do a big gen refresh um so we have Spartan 661 saying I was so hyped for Baldur's gay three I want to play Starfield first I'm wondering if balder's Gate 3 is going to be a port or did they really give Xbox the true development time on what the series X can do what do you guys think well every game's a poor every game is developed first for PC Sony won't admit it but they develop their games first on Windows because that's what everybody does you know it uses Windows tools or like all the all the dev tools and all this the programs the 3D tools and all that kind of stuff it's all windows so everything everything in history is a port at the end of the day it's just like how much Dev time is given to make it make the best use of the the assets I've got available to them the apis and all that kind of stuff I would hope that it is going to be polished they're going to have you know they're gonna have like six months worth of bug fixes probably um uh uh to put through to the game so it'll probably be more polished than Builders gate 3s right now because honestly they shipped out a patch yesterday that has a thousand bug fixes in it and at the point where I'm in the game I was kind of like I was kind of happy sort of take a break from Baldur's Gate 3 because I was getting to a point in the game um uh where things were getting seriously buggy around the logic was getting bad well I mean people talked about how act three is like bug filled I meant yeah So like um but like act one and act two like those both together at least sort of 50 hours of gameplay you know so I think I think I'm towards the end of act two now so you know it's I'm more than more than got my money's worth here but um I'd be happy to play act three when it's a little bit more polished because towards the end of this act like my my companions know things that they shouldn't know like that they've forgotten that certain characters are dead and stuff like that you know and it's just kind of it really takes you out the immersion when the lot the the branching narrative as complicated as it is it increases the chance of it failing you know because there's a lot of there's a lot of moments where it's like oh they shouldn't know about this or oh they why are they saying this this happened you know kind of thing so I'm uh yeah I'm eager for it to be polished I hope it is polished and um I suppose we'll see yeah Corey says console players should really turn down the excitement on bg3 I stopped playing it because act 3 runs so poorly I have an I9 and a 40 90 and it's still bad yeah I mean we don't know I mean the PlayStation 5 we have nobody knows what the PlayStation 5 version looks or runs at yet so yeah you never know uh Tom Legg says I'm just worried this is going to set a precedent the series s is going to keep missing out on features despite Xbox's own website saying the games need to have the same modes on X and S um I mean it's possibility I mean yeah I think I think on this they've really had to bend because I you I it's ridiculous the game of the year would be indefinitely delayed potential again of the year then again it's like if because of this if split screen is the thing that Xbox no one uses if split screen is a thing Xbox series s has a problem with most games don't do split screen so yeah but I will see I I we know I mean I know that like developers don't want the extra work of course they don't so they don't like the series that's just from that aspect of its extra work for them right so I'm sure they're probably some of them were probably like well maybe we can make give Microsoft an exception for this um but yeah I don't know how it's going to play out maybe it maybe it maybe it does play out in the worst case scenario where a lot of games have S features stripped out or come later or maybe it's just this is kind of a one-time thing maybe this is the one time it happens and it never happens again I don't know no idea how this is going to play out and um let me see we have uh yeah I think that's it so ah well Jazz's favorite uh subject actually no we have one here from from face it happened to Spider-Man 2018 remember puddle gate yeah pedal gate happened I remember that that's true it always seems to happen more greatly for uh the exclusives and I I do remember the hate against Last of Us Part Two but I I think that was mostly that was Xbox no that was an Xbox fans that was mostly like the anti-will crowd or whatever that that whole because of what happened and there's a lot of that going on with the Last of Us Part Two um so yeah achievement says there's already a 14 gigabyte update for Starfield um Corey Tidwell says correction Rand if it wasn't for Sony and their money handing Starfield would be on PlayStation uh uh okay yeah um yeah so I guess we need to talk about ABK because something big happened oh what happened something big happened we have uh Microsoft essentially an Activision restructured the acquisition oh no to comply with the CMA and they brought in Ubisoft so you know what I completely forgot about this I know it did happen last week when we were gone I thought you'd be sarcastic no I mean it happened um so to address concerns about the impact of the pro proposed acquisition on cloud game streaming raised by the CMA we are restructuring the transaction to acquirer to acquire a narrow set of Rights this includes executing an agreement effective at closing of our merger that transfers the cloud streaming rights for all current and new Activision Blizzard PC and console games released over the next 15 years to Ubisoft and the rights will be in perpetuity uh as a result of the agreement with Ubisoft Microsoft leads is proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard so it's a different transaction under UK law blah blah blah as such Microsoft today's notified the restructure transaction to CMA and anticipates the CMA review process can be completed before the 90-day extension agreement acquisition agreement with tax division blizzard expires on October 18th under the restructured transaction Microsoft will not be in a position either to release Activision Blizzard games exclusively on its own cloud streaming service xcloud cloud gaming or to exclusively control the licensing terms of Activision Blizzard games for rival services um the agreement provides Ubisoft with the unique opportunity to commercialize the distribution of games via Cloud streaming this agreement will enable Ubisoft to innovate and encourage different business models and the licensing and processing of these games on cloud streaming services worldwide and Ubisoft will compensate Microsoft for the cloud streaming rights to Activision Blizzard games through a one-off payment and through a market-based wholesale pricing mechanism including an option just that supports pricing based on usage it will also give Ubisoft opportunity to offer abk's games to cloud gaming Services running non-windows operating systems so you it's a big big change so essentially Microsoft is selling the cloud gaming uh gaming rights to abk's games to Ubisoft Ubisoft is paying them a one-time fee for it and then Ubisoft can kind of uh do whatever they want with them um and they've sort of already said that they're it's going to come to Ubisoft plus it'll be on Xbox it'll be on PC it'll be on PlayStation consoles and all the all the previous deals my mother did with booster what are the previous deals that they did with like Nvidia and booster Road only they only work in the ee European Union EU I believe while this CMA one this Ubisoft one is worldwide so I guess Microsoft pertained enough rights to to fulfill those deals they made it's odd because here you have so here you have a French company paying it's it's so odd because it's like Ubisoft as a French company is paying Microsoft American company a one-time fee to get these games which then Microsoft has is going to pay the French company to probably get those games on xcloud which then the French company pays back to the American company on usage rights and this is all supposed to somehow assuage the fears of a UK regulator did it I mean it is ridiculous it's a overly complicated mechanism and I don't know I mean this is feeling space just of course I said the word I said instead of distribution I said distributation I'm sorry Tom sometimes sometimes I say words wrong um but yeah like I think it would have been I think the the CMA might have gone for it a little bit more if they'd picked a British company because you know politically might be problematic so we've given those rights to a company based and European Union if you've got all that all the brexit sensitivities there going down um but I don't know if they're gonna go for this purely on the basis of how weird and complicated it is no and also nah because it's going through well let me finish my point yeah okay finish your point well one of the one of the things that we're audition and complained about was the fact that they'd have to regulate the complexity here I don't think this necessarily precludes them for having to regulate that kind of stuff because they're still gonna have to like make sure everything's all above board and potentially Microsoft and ubusoft have created some sort of mechanism by which they can obfuscate and obscure any sort of preferential treatment between the the Distributors of these these things and that's not me saying they would do that that's me saying like if I was a regulator and I was operating in bad faith which I genuinely believe the CMA to be operating in bad faith these are the kind of arguments that they they could come back with they could come back with like oh we don't we we can't we can't police whether or not these agreements will be honored in good faith a Ubisoft and Microsoft obviously partner up very a lot anyway and they're not really adverts they're not really in competition with each other and Ubisoft is not an adversarial towards Microsoft and all that kind of stuff so it's kind of like if I was if I was CMI operating by faith and I if I was trying to imagine scenarios where the CMA would be like this is why this Deal's dumb I can think of a million different ways where the CMA would be like yeah we're not doing that uh sorry delay the deal another year so we can do another load of to try and stop this from happening because I think the CMA just doesn't want this to happen I don't think they give a about the cloud gaming Market because who does nobody gives a about the club gaming Market whatever Microsoft gives a about the clay gamer Market hence this deal in the first place they're shipping off cloud gaming rights because they don't care they know they know it's not going to go anywhere they know it's too expensive they know the server blades they've got would be would be better used for artificial intelligence right now and that cloud gaming is this sort of God it's like a sort of a really expensive solution for something that isn't going to take off it's just it's just not going to take off it's a cool it's a cooler addition but it's never going to take off in any sort of serious kind of way so I think that kind of creates this sort of weird scenario where you know the the CMA claims they care about Club gaming because they want they want to block the deal and Microsoft is like offered to get rid of cloud gaming because they're they they want the deal to go through because really this is about mobile it's all about always been about mobile this is what it's always been about but the the discourse has never been framed around mobile because the CMA knows it can't possibly ever win that argument um so Microsoft's tried to nullify this but I don't know if they've just oh complicated things even further but then again it's kind of like well what do you do you know what what is what is Microsoft's alternative here with regards to cloud gaming stuff and trying to circumvent the cma's bad faith arguments what is the alternative because if you if you have if you have a mechanism where it's like Microsoft is like agrees to completely give up Cloud basically say okay look we'll get out of the club gaming Market completely and give up on cloud all together if you let this deal go through you know that kind of like that kind of stops them from making use of what they've just invested 70 billion dollars in you know and and even this deal that they're talking about now it's sort of like it sort of reminds me of the way Microsoft owns the mech Warrior BattleTech IP but only as pertains to specific types of video game they don't own enough of the rights to the mech Warrior Universe to actually make Mech Warrior games which is insane so they have to sort of license them out to piranha um and and that kind of stuff and like we couldn't even get them on backwards compatibility because Microsoft isn't sure the legal easy is water tight enough and now we're in a situation where they don't own the full distribution rights of something they're investing 70 billion dollars into it should never have come to this round it should never have come to this and I think they should have just told the UK to go themselves and just close around them that wasn't going to happen I mean I know the the act the cat might say something but I think I think this will get approved I I think they'll beat their chest that they actually uh got a bigger concession out of Microsoft than the EU did like they were actually able to get a divestment uh and Microsoft selling the cloud gaming rights I so I yeah but then then you get the EU saying oh I'm gonna SEC well yeah now you know we don't we don't limit it again we know what yeah we don't want to give them that win so let's uh let's reevaluate the deal from our end again yeah because this whole political thing between the UK and the European Union I really think they should have just told the UK to go themselves and say okay do your worst do your worst you are a worthless country with a worthless government and a worthless regulatory apparatus which nobody takes seriously you know in terms of like you actually know what you're talking about that they are like the most tech ignorant Administration in the west that we have right now in government so I think they should have just told them to go themselves that's what I would do and yeah I'm not a high-paid lawyer and I have no idea what the consequences of such a thing would have been but I would just yellowed it man yeah it I know you would have I know you would have what are you gonna do delete Windows off that millions of government PCS I don't think so baby go yourselves Britain that's what I would have done man well I mean nobody had this on their bingo card nobody had Ubisoft joining the acquisition in any way shape or form this surprise literally everybody nobody had that nobody had this like people people were like oh when this happened before like when the CMA and micro like people were just like oh it's going to get approved on the 29th like like tomorrow we were thinking maybe it gets approved tomorrow because that was the date and it's like nope they're like oh by the way we restructured this and ubisoft's a part of it and we're selling the cloud gaming rights to to Ubisoft and it's just like wow this is a lot and yeah it just kind of shows that Microsoft doesn't really believe in cloud gaming at least for the next 15 years because you're giving up those rights and ubisoft's then going to be able to sell those I mean because it kind of solves a lot of the cma's problems Microsoft's not going to own the rights to the cloud gaming stuff it's going to be a third party that's going to make deals as they say as they you know see fit so it sort of at least on on the outside solves a lot of the problems that they had with Microsoft owning call uh ABK it was like you're too powerful in the cloud Market well now they don't have those games a third party does that third parties can maybe even give it to non-windows based stuff so I I if they block this version of it then maybe someone else steps in the government or because at this point then it was just like well no like they did exactly what the problems were that you laid out so you can't block it right I don't know I feel I feel like this sort of solves the problems that they have with it they're just Drunk on Power too this is all political thing they want to seem like they humble something bro so I think they'll accept it because they'll be like all right yeah we got what we want out of this look look at what we did look what we did to Microsoft we we we we humbled them and their 70 billion dollar deal so yeah you can now own it so whatever we'll wait and see how this plays out because Microsoft's extension with ABK only goes to like the 15th of October who knows what happens after that if it's all not done by then so whatever I mean just whatever I mean I don't know it was dead bro deals there bro yeah you're gonna say that you want to do another hot chip challenge on this one sure man yeah sure the deal is Deborah but uh don't let it through they do not want it to go through man I mean just I I agree with you it's plain as day at this point that they that the CMA never wanted the deal to go through and they were going to use anyway to sort of block it we've seen it yes I agree with you uh they wanted this deal to get blocked but and they they don't want it to get blocked because they care about UK consumers they're getting some kind of political concession out of the America for all this kind of they all they think they are they're just doing exactly what the FTC wanted them to do word for word it's nothing to do with UK consumers because if it was they wouldn't be blocking in the first place you know so and that's why it irritates me so much I don't care if they buy them like I'm I'm you know I I don't think I don't think if Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard all of a sudden all of Blizzard problems are going to be solved like you'd have to be insane to think that you know I it's I I don't even think we're going to feel any of the effects of this deal for like at least five years you know and I think like yeah you might get World of Warcraft on Console out of this I think you might get like I don't know maybe um how you get rid of kotic maybe and hopefully morale will be better and you know maybe you get Starcraft out of it but I kind of think they're working on Starcraft anyway but honestly don't I think Activision is so big so so massive that they'll be operating separately anyway and I don't think like there'll be any tangible benefits for Xbox fans apart from like you know Call of Duty's DLC not being exclusive to PlayStation outside of all their games on Game Pass well yeah of course but um most of the games are either on PC or free play anyway um Warzone and like that like I don't know how many games do they even make these days not that many oh we get we get sick maybe we get a bunch of games on backwards compatibility maybe there's a sakiro 2 gets made because marks someone now owns a publishing rights or something I don't know but yeah I don't care about the deal gone through but what what interests me is just the sheer assholery of the CMA and yeah well I will say about the bad faith people uh people are are saying like hey just wait just watch somebody you know Xbox will buy Ubisoft for somebody else will buy Ubisoft I think this effectively removes Ubisoft off the market because Ubisoft kind of need this well because because if somebody came in if tencent came in to buy you know overtake and buy Ubisoft or Sony came in to buy Ubisoft they'd run into the problems that Microsoft currently has its deal because now Ubisoft is going to hold the streaming rights to the APK game so if somebody so if 10 cent bought them you know I think the CMA would strike I don't think that even the US government would allow that but if Sony want to come in and buy Ubisoft and they would have the streaming rights to ABK and stuff I I think I think this is like sort of a poison pill that like essentially this makes Ubisoft unacquirable uh I don't I don't know though man because that assumes that the arguments were in good faith you know if if the arguments are in good faith then yeah but if the reality my assumption is the CMA doesn't actually give a about any of that I think they'd let I think they'd let Ubisoft get sold yeah I mean it's it's the only way the shareholders are going to get a return on some of that stuff yeah but anyways let's uh let's go over to the wonderful people on patreon shall we yeah let's do it so if you guys enjoyed the show hit the like button please subscribe if you're new you can always join us uh patreon for these questions at patreon.com xb2 where you get access to you know Xbox two plus one or Xbox ultimate when we do them and uh you know the the question answer thread and all that sort of stuff so uh yeah let's uh let's get through this we're a little bit about three hours just so we got about 50 minutes before we got in the show right because we're getting late for jazz so we have uh Christopher saying hey Randon Jazz what's Xbox's biggest game after Starfield Hellboy 2 I mean it depends if you're talking about immediately after Starfield what was it right um [Music] no no I think I'll play two is bigger than Forza Motorsport I mean we were talking to him I was thinking like what's the next biggest game after Starfield towards the end of 2024. I I wasn't you know because I think clearly the next biggest game after Starfield is probably Elder Scrolls six right like when in terms of like what's the biggest in terms yeah but I always think more thinking like at least more more like some that would come faster so we already know how blade 2's next year in a vowed and towerborn and Forza Motorsport I think out of those games I think Cowboy too is the biggest at least for me I mean you could look to 2025 and maybe you point to Fable Fable could be the biggest certainly lining up to yeah right I find nail kind of what they're going for with Fable I think that could be really big I think it would be bigger than hellblade personally I mean I think I think it should be bigger than hellblade absolutely um but in the mo in like recent I I think it's Hellboy too so what was the game you played that you can't wait for Gamescom I mean Jazz talked about that extensively at the uh uh at the at the beginning right the game that what was the game you played that you can't wait from Gamescom I can't talk about it yeah I can't talk about it so although you did say you were really really high in towerborn so you're looking forward to that next year yeah terrible and towerborne is definitely surprisingly one of my most anticipated games now because it's the kind of game that I know me and my brother will love to play the sort of Monster Hunter S combat and getting gear and upgrading and you know on my car one thing they that made a big deal about with um with the towerborne by the way I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but it wasn't that code they were talking a lot about how I wanted to have really good net code for the online play and uh that's why that you know that Killer Instinct devs in the team which was really really cool they were dropping Killer Instincts and stuff so um which is back on the scene now surprisingly um but yeah towerborne of the games I can talk about towerborne was probably my game of the show yeah we have um question here from Silas when Publishers issue codes to content creators is there an understood expectation that set Creator will produce a certain amount of content or do they really care how much you do um it depends if you tell them you're going to make something and they give you the code based on the understanding that you're going to make something at least a video then that's kind of the expectation right I guess what he's asking is like hey you got a code for Starfield right Jess and if you don't publish your review on on Windows Central would they be pissed at you right or would they want to work with you and again if you're not going to actually make content for it right I think it depends on the size of the outlet I think like a lot of a lot of companies accept the fact that Windows Central is we're not IGN and we kind of have to pick our battles as much as possible and even when we do pick our battles sometimes we just we don't things slip you know like um like I haven't reviewed Builders gate yet I got a review code well actually we got review codes for Builders gate in the team and we did we did do a lot of content on it I actually backed the game on Kickstarter so I already had an early access code anyway but um but did I I can't remember but anyway it's sort of like I think sometimes they'll be pissed and honestly I think like they they probably get more pissed at YouTubers if they provide codes and then they don't deliver but we're gonna look like ours I've never been I've never sort of experienced that where an outlet was a PR Company was pissed because we didn't deliver content because I always say like we'll try to get it in we'll try to fit in you know sometimes I'm just like I just deny codes I'm just like look we can't fit this in at the moment you know we short staffed or whatever and oftentimes that is that has been the case over the summer um anything in there where it's like you have to do this right because you don't have yeah you don't have they just yeah like you don't have to they just may not if you don't do anything they might not give you a code for the next game there's there's nothing like holding you like there's nothing stopping you from not doing any content it's not like you're you you sign something or whatever and and you're like no no I have to do this no there's none of that I think like if they if they if they find a pattern where like you know if if like say they've given you three or four codes and you just haven't delivered any content at all I think eventually there will be like these dudes are just farming us for keys or whatever yeah um and that happens I think that happens a lot in the YouTube scene um but generally we only accept codes for things that we are going to do content on um you know and we usually pick one game and then go really hard on it for a few weeks right now we're going hard on Armored Core and a certain space game um we did a review of The Sea of stars but we probably we're probably not going to cover any of the game between now and cyberpunk 2077 DLC it's just going to be 100 Starfield at Builders gate and then maybe news about what about Mortal Kombat Xbox games yeah funnily enough I did just hire someone specifically to cover more combat because miles Don PA has left winner he's working for elfonic now yeah he's working for elephonic who make a Ghostbusters who congrats the miles so we did just take on someone specifically for Mortal Kombat um but we're probably not going to go too hard on that game like I've got the whole team working on Starfield pretty much [Music] I got the whole team working on Starfield too just me the whole team's on it just me yeah uh achievement says do you think there's a clause in the Ubisoft Cloud contract that if they get bought out by say 10 cent Cloud rights return to Microsoft or that they have to sell the Reds to another party for the remainder of 15 years I don't think so because like Microsoft attempts out of a pretty damn good relationship considering the fact that they're the two sort of the business models are both so aligned it's Cur it's easy to think of them as like these arch nemesis kind of Rivals and stuff but they actually have a really good working relationship and you know we saw all the sort of uh you know the stuff with Riot games like they're all in Game Pass all the and you can get like um the stuff for um you can get the stuff for uh all of Riot's mobile games for free with Gamepad so you get what you can unlock all the characters and stuff like that and I'll tell you why that is right and this is what I believe I think it's like an enemy of my enemies like my friend kind of thing because I think like ultimately what both 10 cent and Microsoft want is an end of the Google Apple duopoly when it comes to payment methods on mobile they want they want a world where that can be competing app stores and they potentially they have a method to not give them a cut not steam but Apple accounts a 30 cut so I think like after the deal closes the ABK I wouldn't be surprised if we see 10 Center Microsoft work even closer together especially on mobile especially to explore this potential of like a mobile gaming store that could take on the iTunes and stuff like that I wouldn't be surprised if we actually see them work closer together so no I don't think there's a clause like that but yeah it could be wrong but tencent is not tencent is not the animal well tencent also also I think owns like something like 10 or 15 of ubisofts anyways you know yeah they yeah they they invest though so I don't know Microsoft attention are going to work together to take that Apple and Google I'm not right there that's funny uh true iron leg says if you could only play one game for the rest of your life what would it be and hope you gents have a great week and we know your pick is Pokemon uh game for the rest of your life I mean I don't know the warcraft because I don't think it's ever going away it would have to be like a multiplayer game something you could get somewhat of a different experience every time and not a single player game I was thinking Pub G but I haven't played Pub G in so long maybe it would be like Call of Duty or something because I couldn't imagine being like no it's Mass Effect but how sick would you be of Mass Effect if you've played it for the 15th or 20th time it would have to be something dynamic yeah just play World of Warcraft bro no astranzo says have either of you ever been in a fistfight in real life oh many many many Jazz gets in those brawls bro nah it's just what my school was like man people were just fighting all the time and you know gangs and that's what my school was like so yeah quite a lot I have too many to come quickly I wasn't I was in a fist fight yeah but it's been a long time that was like eighth grade freshman year High School um how old are you in eighth grade 14 Maybe 13. around that age all right uh Birdman says do you guys think Starfield assuming it's good as we hope has the potential to really sell an impactful amount of consoles I wonder with filmmaking that comment and the kind of funny interview saying that Starfield wouldn't sell consoles or potentially be proven wrong who knows well I think it's already been proven wrong because if you look on Amazon Amazon actually tells you how many it tells you sales Trends now for consoles yeah but that doesn't actually say that that wasn't actually Phil's comment it was like even if starfield's 11 out of 10 it's they're not gonna I'll console Sony implying saying that they won't sell more than Sony which I don't know if you did see the MPD data that they released today where Sony's five percent above where the PS4 is and the Xbox series X and S is 10 behind the Xbox one in the same same time frame that's not good no it's not especially I I some I would even dare go to say that's kind of embarrassing for Xbox like I get the stock stuff but they specifically put out a console to hit that mass market price at 299. and if you were to tell me that with that console those to two console strategy that they would be tracking behind the Xbox One three years later I'd be like well then that strategy was a failure and there's just not a lot of demand behind the Xbox consoles which to be fair there really wasn't in 2022 right so to be 10 behind the Xbox One in the US that needs to change and yet hopefully like all the games coming out and they're all good and Xbox has a really respectful Library can start to change that uh but I did not expect that to happen because it because it wasn't it was ahead of the Xbox One for the first two years essentially it wasn't until the end of last year well all of a sudden for whatever reason it fell behind nobody wanted the series s and you couldn't find a series X and now it's behind the Xbox one which was a console everybody laughed at and nobody wanted it was a console that they had to do a price cut within the first six months from 500 to 499 to 399 and remove connect because of the problems it was having right people still kind of laugh at that system and this disparity between it and the PlayStation 4 there's a c the PlayStation 5 with it problems of stock it had the first couple years and now that it's pacing five percent ahead of the PS4 in the same time frame it's like well yeah I don't know like something needs to change here because clearly the whole the whole point of putting out a 299 console is so you can sell lots of them and sell more than the Xbox One and that doesn't seem to be the case so something needs to change yeah I've heard that Microsoft is projecting growth for the future um one of the sort of behind the scenes conversations I had at Gage Cobb was about this specific topic um and I think it is just an issue of content I think and I think I do think starfield's gonna have a meaningful impact on sales but we'll see I mean yeah we'll see how that turns out Governor Grimm says Xbox allowed Xbox folded on allowing larion to launch bg3 without split screen in the series s Larry has said they will continue to try to get it to work on the S suppose Larry never gets split screen to work on the series s what do you think happens to the parody of the series s and X when it comes to the big publishers probably nothing because they're the big publishers right and they have the support Studios all that stuff so I would I would imagine nothing really changes between that and the Xbox and the big Publishers maybe there's some impact into independent developers which is what larian is they're not beholden to the stockholders and all that stuff like the big Publishers are so I don't really think much changes honestly with them yeah uh donataku says after scarfield Starfield scores a 99 a Metacritic and is named the definitive space RPG how will outerworlds 2 stand out in the wake of this Behemoth how can a much smaller scale first person RPG differentiate itself and find a way to shine that's a really good question yeah and I really I don't think we can really answer that until we can talk about Starfield in full right yeah maybe but like if we just assume that you know let's look at the differences between say the outer world and say something like Fallout right I think like one of the things that I think obsidian does probably really well is this sort of I think they'll build a tighter experience for one thing I don't think maybe you won't get the sprawling open world a full-blown open world that you are getting the sandbox aspect is obviously I think it will be paired back in in obsidian's game but I think the the trade-off is it'll be a tighter experience people who want that I've been speaking to people this week who are just like I don't want to play Starfield because it's too big you know and I think like for those people I think our worlds will have a place as a sort of an experience that actually ends so you know if we if we look at games like Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 and Skyrim which people will be playing for 10 years like no one's playing the outer worlds for 10 years because it's not a Sandbox so I think like they can focus more on create cinematic moments focus more on creating a pacing that's more befitting of a cinematic game and I think like that's how they could differentiate themselves and also obsidian writing just kind of stands for itself you know yeah I don't know I don't really maybe we can talk about that after we can talk about Starfield and because I mean yeah I can give more context it's an interesting question because yeah out of Worlds too I don't know what Auto worlds one was yeah so maybe some time in between like if Auto Worlds 2 is not coming until 2025 maybe the two years Gap is more than enough time to have people forget about Starfield for the most part and maybe enjoy a different take on on the space RPG you know we'll see well people people like how does how does our worlds differentiate itself from Fallout you know because they are superficially kind of similar and they did say the outer worlds is our take on Fallout stuff but it was also their take on Mass Effect with the way the companions work and you've got the ship and all that kind of stuff so I do think there's plenty there's plenty in the in the universe of the outer worlds which is you know it's a little I think like with Starfield like if you watch the the public trailers for Starfield it's a very you know the whole the whole massaponk idea is that of Hardcore realism right I don't think our world really airs on Hardcore realism in the same way but yeah you could be right uh we have Elijah saying for jez did the Xbox crew mention Elite Series 3 controller coming in the near future and by the way how a stalker well Jazz talked about stalker already he said it was uh needed more time in the oven rough but I would imagine they didn't talk about a series 3 controller right no they did not yeah so negative on that one it's quite small but smells like a big one says Hey Rand I finally finished watching the bear I didn't actually compete season two because I realized I never want to visit Chicago eat the food there hey what like they say come for the food stay because you got murdered anyways lots of talk about which Dev Ms will acquire next what if they grab platinum and leave Square Enix out in the cold lots of talk recently about how Final Fantasy 16 sales being diminished by Sony exclusivity Acquisitions are always tough bro you never know I mean nobody's predicted Bethesda or nobody predicted ABK and nobody predicted Sony buying some ads do not like who did Sony just buy PlayStation just buy some like headphone manufacturer or something yeah oldies yeah so it's it's tough too tough to say I mean maybe they have some targets maybe you could say uh you know some of the one of the smaller devs they were looking at before or something maybe they want to do something with embracer because of the problems and bracers going through but who knows Platinum you know they want to be bought I mean they've said so as much so um Logan says Hey guys hope all's well have any idea what's happening with project Mara I've been agent since news Theory said anything about it yeah I think they're all in on hellblade right now yeah I I agree with that there's no reason to talk about project Mara when your next game is hellblade they'll talk about project Mar after all the hellblade stuff has died down but I would imagine probably most of that team at uh Ninja Theory is all in on yeah is all in on uh Hellboy 2 to get it to get its shipped for 2024. I agree yeah uh Sierra one one Kevin so it's not guys I was very hopeful on the Xbox game pass family plan as it would have worked well for my family but that could be dependent on cloud gaming being an option it feels like there is a de-emphasis on cloud though outside of families with multiple devices and multiple Xbox game pass accounts already which is probably a much lower use case I'm not sure what a value what a Val what value a family plan could now bring do you believe the family plan will be shelved for a while now that's a really good question um obviously like for those who don't know Microsoft had family plan running test in I believe Ireland and Colombia I think and then they showed that planned down and they were like they gave the people who were on the plan like a little a little benefit like I think something from x-cloud time or something like that so um yeah it's they shut it down and it could be that they shut it down because the economics don't work and they could have just been like you know what this this is going to bankrupt platform or something um and stuff like that and maybe it won't come back but I kind of feel like if it was not gonna ever come back I kind of feel like they would have said so I kind of feel like there would have been less like yeah look we we can't do this um uh We're not gonna do it but they they did leave the door open but maybe they wanted to be ambiguous on purpose so like people would show up about it and just wait it's really hard to say but I'll try and get some more details about it because it was a certainly good deal and I think that kind of they kind of Microsoft's all about growing Game Pass right now so like the whole question is does this grow Game Pass will this grow Game Pass and all that kind of stuff um and if the answer to that question was no then they're probably scrapped it on that basis but yeah um we'll see yeah I don't know I don't know what's happening with that I thought maybe it would be ready by the time star Phil comes out but then again they did just remove the one dollar option for you know hey join Game Pass for a dollar that's gone probably because the star field is releasing so you don't want someone to play that for a dollar plus the try was only for 14.30 right right so maybe they're experimenting stuff maybe maybe they you know maybe we see the family plan next year I don't know uh Highlander remember for 11 months says happy birthday Rand Jazz playing World of Warcraft on our Gallery is great I was playing World of Warcraft bg3 in my Xbox games with my friends when I was in the hospital people people really love the The Rock Ally and even a lot of people very highly about the Logitech gcloud so yeah the G Cloud's really good like the hardware is good yeah it's cloud and yeah it's 300 or I think it's 300 off the top head so it's not cheap device but it's got this huge screen it's got great triggers got great sticks it's so light and the battery life is monstrous so like if you are enthusiastic about cloud gaming the Logitech G cloud is easily the best device to get um if you value it that much but um uh just during the show lenovo's uh Legion go just fully leaked uh Evan blast posted Batman Blaster prolific PC and mobile phone leaker he just leaked the whole video spot for the Lenovo Legion go and it's it's it's a huge boy it's like eight inches uh 800 grams apparently which is really heavy it's like steam deck sort of size but that screen is huge man it's bigger than the rug alloy but I don't and it also has a track pad this is more like a steam deck but man that I'm really curious what the price is going to be I gonna guess it's not gonna be cheap I can see it being like 50 or something I had a map member for 22 months says happy belated birthday around Houston got a PC and I'm so happy to have Game Pass love this show on you guys leave a like y'all yeah if you guys are still listening make sure you hit the like button and uh hit the uh subscribe button too appreciate it Ralph Wiggum happy birthday Rand can't wait for both you and Jess's Starfield review and Thursday is going to be interesting day very very very insane with all the reviews and everything dropping and considering all the the hype around Starfield now uh it's gonna it's gonna be crazy come Thursday uh Tom says do console sales matter as much with PC and cloud in the mix for Xbox no matter as much but they still matter right yeah that they yeah they they don't matter as much like you look at like how Sony's doing compared to Microsoft right now Sony's kicking Microsoft's ass but in in console but like when you look at Revenue it's it's not so it's not so dire you know well the revenue between the two is kind of it's like 15. I just said it's like 15 billion to 25 billion or whatever I mean there's a big yeah the guy but it's not doya it's not like and the Gap will be closed with ABK it'd be like this roughly the same right yes um so yeah my Microsoft Project is projecting growth to each shareholders and one of the one of the ways Microsoft sort of maintains its share price is to have very good projections I have Microsoft is projecting growth then I'll just to reason is that they're probably going to get growth it's oftentimes when companies miss their growth that we see the share price go down aggressively and that's what happened with embracer group like in Bryson group predicted growth based on a verbal agreement with um reportedly Saudi Arabia and that agreement didn't happen so Embrace a group got abandoned by their investors because the investors like these guys don't know what they're doing you know he said there was going to be growth and now there's no growth so yeah yeah so Microsoft's very very Microsoft invested a lot in having good projections and yeah I think the next two years are going to be exciting for Xbox growth personally math says in the superchat happy birthday Rand at Starfield week if APK deal doesn't go through I will suffer through beans and toast in honor of jazz so stuff uh that's enough that's a reward people are saying 800 or something for that thing you're talking about by the way everyone in chat saying 7.99 oh really that's what people in chat are saying yeah holy that's a really good price uh we know do we know it's processor I don't know but Jess we got a lot of we got a lot of super chats to go or not we got a lot of patreon questions to go and not a lot not a lot of time left because I gotta go somewhere okay and I know you're tired you gotta go to bed so we gotta keep the keep the tangents on a low you know uh not Skywalker says I understand you likely signed an NDA and cannot speak about in detail but did you get to play certain affinities project lauro do you believe this to be different than suerte it is obviously not Tatanka busy Studio there are Cheers yeah I I didn't get to play it um but I spoke to people who did check out the demo and they they were pretty positive about it apparently the demo was fun to get thrown together in a few months so it's very very early days for that right now so I wouldn't expect it to be seen publicly yeah be interesting to see who picks that project up because they're shopping at the Publishers right yeah that's why it's there I guess yeah um clearly Microsoft hasn't picked it up so but people are very positive about it people that I spoke to especially since the Dem the demo was sort of very early conceptual kind of stage and it was thrown together in a matter of months apparently um but yeah I wouldn't expect to see that publicly for a while yet um probably needs to get Publishers some publisher on board but we'll see but it wasn't suerte it was not sway Sean Kramer says if I find somebody to mod Peppa Pig in the Starfield can you use it as gameplay for the Stream I mean Jazz would have to record it but we'll see I mean Starfield what type of pickets of what stuff in the Starfield yeah hey yeah we could do that I suppose Jay Foley curious on how game reviews work do you guys still get achievements when playing games under embargo I was curious to see the Starfield achievements but I noticed not even you or Rand have the achievements on your account it depends is all I'll say because I can't really say anymore some games you'll get the achievements other games you won't it just depends yeah it depends how the review programs being set up uh Microsoft said nothing well the developers in there's multiple different ways that a developer could deliver a review build but um we can't talk about Starfield specifically at the moment Lee Sanders says hope you guys uh both had a great weekend spent my fish finishing immortality and tinykin both great games and leave game pass on August 31st so now I'm more of a Casual Gamer not as crazy at getting all the achievements where do you stand on these will you play a game over and over to get 100 now or are you happy with just getting the core ones looked at my achievement percentage and I'm currently a pissport 35 I used to when I was still kind of in it I would play Everything until I was 100 that required five playthroughs I'd play five playthroughs now uh I don't really particularly care too much if it's a game I really like maybe I'll go for it more than others like I stopped it's it's Jedi Survivor and I didn't do all the collecting stuff but normally I would have so um yeah and I know Jazz doesn't give a so no I do not yeah Gucci cheese hey guys my question this week is do you have a game that you love that reviewed poorly for me it's Custom Robo for the GameCube love that game but I found it as a 65 on Metacritic you have anything that stands out to you jazz that's a good question I usually never re look at review scores ever like even before I was a journalist one of the reasons I don't do that is I don't like other reviews reviewers opinions to affect mine or style or whatever so I just don't read any articles from anyone else ever um but historically I didn't read reviews just because I'm lazy oh no off the top of my head a game that reviewed badly that I like but sometimes there's been World of Warcraft expansions that review badly that I still ended up 20 thousands of hours into I think Fallout 76 wasn't as bad as people made it out to be personally I I personally I can't think of a game that I really like that reviewed poorly off the top of my head so I'm sorry maybe definitely not anything this year I just I just can't think of one um I'll try to think of one but I just can't right now Raj says do you think Ubisoft Cloud deal will include reciprocal Clauses to get their games on game pass I very much like to see the Star Wars Outlaw game come with our subscription I doubt it uh I doubt you'll see Star Wars Outlaw come to Xbox I I don't know I think people get caught up in this whole reciprocal Clauses like if XBox was putting their games on switch Xbox Gamers would be like well what do we get out of it well it's like you don't get anything out of it you get the ability to play those games on switch right and I know people bring this up with Ubisoft Cloud it was like hey well what do we get out of that nothing this is X this is Microsoft's way of trying to pass the deal you're not there isn't like no there's not going to be a reciprocal clause Microsoft is selling the cloud rights to Ubisoft ubisoft's not suddenly going to be like hey you can have our games in your Cloud too at least I don't think that's how it's going to work um you know I still think the ABK games will be in xcloud because Ubisoft will be able to sell the rights to other entities so they could sell the rights to sell them back to Microsoft license them rather so those games could be on xcloud and they could also be on Luna and they could also be on PlayStation Plus if those you know third parties were willing to pay the price to whatever Ubisoft is wanting to sell it for and theoretically somebody could pay Ubisoft for exclusivity if the money was enough and Ubisoft agreed to it right I mean theoretically Luna could come in there and offer so much money to get those games exclusive on cloud but it's just Cloud streaming so when I saw this I was just kind of like it's cost streaming I don't give a about Cloud streaming so whatever I don't care you know it's how embarrassing would it be for Microsoft if they couldn't have Call of Duty on xcloud and it was exclusive to Luna I mean I don't think they'd care I mean here's the other here's the bigger question I think that here's the bigger question how much did Ubisoft pay Microsoft for the cloud streaming rights how much is that worth ten dollars ten dollars you think okay you don't think it's worth a couple bills I don't think that pied very much for it you don't think they paid very much for it you know 70 billion dollar acquisition Cloud streaming rights and you don't you don't think they they paid what a ham a ham sandwich and a coke for them and I think that might have played a reuben and a Mountain Dew okay um Tyler says hey guys what is your favorite past Bethesda game studios game and how many hours did you sink into it um I mean I I have over 100 hours in Skyrim I think maybe 120 um I have probably 80 hours in Fallout 3. and probably 70 hours in Oblivion and I didn't play Fallout 4 so I would say my favorite Bethesda game is Skyrim I my favorite Bethesda game is probably um Fallout 3 I would say I think I put more time into Fallout 3 than any other of the games I would think but I did put a ton of time into Fallout 4 even though like I bitched about it being linear and stuff the brace building I have just loved the base building stuff in there like so much I built really extravagant bases I spent a ton of time doing it and I don't know why because you don't really get anything for doing it it was just fun like having this creative canvas apocalyptic creative canvas really enjoyed that so I prefer I am a Fallout series guy before Elder Scrolls I think but I did put a ton of time into Skyrim as well um it's just and I've tried to come back to it a few times recently because with all the extra additions they made but I just find it to be like it's just a little bit too dated for me now um even with all the upgrades I've done even though they added fishing it's a little bit too dated for me to get into it but I do want to go back up by Fallout 4. Tommy says any chance of a private lobby Xbox two Lobby and the new card hosted by you guys Warzone or multiplayer Lobby doesn't have to be Cod but seems to be the most popular one streamers creators get most of the audience happy late birthday Rand and go Orioles I mean Jess is the one that plays multi multiplayer in Call of Duty so you'd have to ask him I do not um I barely fly multiplayer and cool injury these days and kids are just so sweaty and Twitchy and I mean there's so many people with mouse and keyboard now and it's just like man there's like a there'll be a dude in the lobby with like 40 kills and zero deaths up in Nuka stuff I just don't like the way Call of Duty is these days so I usually just stick to OverWatch where it's more balanced for mouse and keyboard and maybe maybe someday soon we could have a game thing or something but it's just mine and Jazz's schedules are so opposite of one another yeah but time zone we'll try to work on that and talk talk through it Omen says happy belated birthday Rand well I'm very envious that you both got to play Starfield early are you in any way saddened that you have to play so much of the game so quickly and also can't participate as much in the hype cycle of us regular non-ivory Tower players uh I do regret that actually I do regret it um I'm sort of like it's kind of cool for Starfield because they have given us a lot of time the review program started a long time ago like and I've been able to cover Gamescom and I still think I've gone I'm gonna have plenty of time over the next few days to get the review done um but yeah I kind of I kind of do miss just enjoying the review cycle of games um the hype cycle and but it's kind of one of them first world problems kind of right yeah this job's also amazing so no I'm fine with it I'm fine with it uh trickster for traces hope I'm not too late almost forgot happy birthday Rand with Tokyo game show next month do you expect any Xbox Final Fantasy announcements no I don't think so I think it's too early for any of those I think it's too early for Final Fantasy 16 I think it's too early for Final Fantasy 7 remake I think so Final Fantasy 7 remake I think so yeah I don't think they I don't think Sony wants that announced until like at least until the the new one is available you know what I mean I don't know I I think it's too early but I would love to be wrong that'd be an interesting announcement well nobody expected Phil ah sure I followed Fantasy 14 event anyway so who knows man I just have a feeling Final Fantasy 14 is going to be the first one that Launches on Xbox before they announce their next game I mean Phil even said in the interview with Dustin they kind of got to do it at their own Cadence right yeah uh Parker says random jazz people talk about Tango doing evil within three of their next project however do you think they're just setting themselves up for a mirage as Catalyst situation where vocal minority is asking for it but the majority really don't as evil within three would be the third entry in the series I hear no one talking about wanting I mean it's it's hard to disagree with that to be honest like as someone who does like there within us a franchise you know I really especially the first one I wasn't a huge fan of the second one um I don't I don't I they went too hard on stealth I think for the sequel but uh uh I think you might be right the probably isn't as big of a fandom for that game as I don't know Xbox fans would hope even though like I feel like the characters are a little kind of iconic and uh like safehead or well the Executioner I suppose his real name is but everyone calls him safehead like we Google it Google trend um and I think like with with a bigger budget maybe they could reach a bigger audience and it could become something more than it previously was but I think you could be right I think Hi-Fi Rush is the play as much as it pains me to say that well we know they have two teams right you have the team that did Hi-Fi rush and the team that did ghost wire Tokyo right so you could do both games you could do evil within three and high fry Rush too right I don't I don't necessarily think it's one or the other unless unless you're saying like you need John Johannes to make evil within three I think he's talking about is it actually worth doing because oh is there anyone who actually wants it outside of a sort of well I mean you know if there was anything if there was any time to do it it would be now with horror going through uh you know a Resurgence recently yeah it would be now if you're ever gonna do it it's now right I agree but I do think Hi-Fi Rush too if you were choosing which one to do I think it's high for I Rush 2 over evil within two because I think Hi-Fi I think Hi-Fi Rush has hasn't hit its ceiling right it has Room to Grow where I sort of feel like Evil Within has hit its ceiling and Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi Rush is just at its beginning right it has as potential for big growth as a franchise um Saucy mod says happy birthday Rand my daughter also has a birthday yesterday well happy birthday to her don't really have a question this week but I do want to thank you two for always putting on a great show well thank you we appreciate that and mix Radice seeker of Hearts says hello guys and happy 97th Rand you guys probably mentioned this during the Baldur's Gate 3 talk but what do you guys think about the series S I think it is fine and this was a specification not the norm I've seen some people even say to do Cloud for the series s not from the usual sources thank you and take care uh I mean clearly it is a special case right this hasn't happened before so it's special the question is will it remain a special case or will it become the norm I don't think it becomes the norm I do think there's a lot of concerned trolls out there that are like well this means all the Publishers and all the developers are going to be like we don't want the series s anymore and they were pretty emphatic in the interviews that Series S ain't going away right it's just maybe maybe they bend the rules on some features here and there uh so I think Baldur's Gate remains a special case I don't think it's something that you'll see happen all the time yeah I agree so uh that is all of our questions that the wonderful people over at patreon have for us you can join patreon as well patreon.com xb2 you should put up a a poll there jazz or just a discussion of if people want to Xbox two plus ones instead of ultimate uh yeah I'll put a poll up but to even see if we even have the bandwidth to do it because sometimes it's just me getting these guys just doesn't doesn't lift a finger to get these guests you know well you did for Colin and you did for Florian but you know it's sometimes it's hard getting you know I mean I wouldn't be against it if that's what I want you know it's so it must be so hard being Rand man I mean it's not I'm gonna do one lift one finger per week well I have a full-time job when's the last video you made bro do I I don't need to make videos bro I you know I mean I I I was going to make some videos about the Gamescom stuff but Starfield bro um making some videos like there's I got Starfield I need to play you're gonna make a video by Softail possibly haven't decided uh must be so nice I didn't work for a living what do you mean uh we're just so nice what do you mean what I mean train says happy birthday Rand Jazz did you hear anything at Gamescom about an update to the Achievement System nope um I well that's a lie actually it's it's basically what we expected I did talk to someone about it um briefly and we talked about how like it's something they'd like to do and they'd like achievements and it's just about like bandwidth and picking battles and stuff like that we talked about how like you know what we talked about earlier how one of the one of the opportunities Microsoft has is with devices like the Asus rogallo right Windows Windows is a damn mess on a handheld so like if you're if you're Xbox well Xbox if you're Microsoft gaming because that's to remember that's what the division is called now it's Microsoft gaming you're Microsoft gaming and you'll see your growth potential being on PC um where a lot of achievements sort of either just don't exist or the sort of second fiddle a lot of those Dev resources kind of have to go first towards fixing the window shell for the handhelds like the Isis Rock um I think if people keep making noise about it I think they will eventually do it but it's just a case of picking the battles I guess all right I'm looking to see if we actually did have an extra question um is this an extra question yeah I think so I think somebody got one in here uh oh wait now this is this the wrong one here my bad or maybe um a good question here just somebody sent me a thing where it says uh star feels now the biggest uh game on Steam yeah I did see that it's the number one selling game on Steam right now yeah Tony bro I shouldn't have bothered doing reviews bro million concurrent easy I will say easy uh so yeah I think that's uh I think that's that's everything we wanted to talk about so I want to thank you guys for your support all the happy birthday wishes I see them in chat all the comments on the patreon and all that sort of stuff really means a lot to me uh uh a lot of people wish me happy birthday which you know does make you feel good about yourself right and um so we will be back on Friday September 1st regular time to talk a lot about Starfield clearly because the Embargo will be up and you know maybe you know there's a lot of people that have are playing it maybe they jump into the podcast to give their own thoughts too you know certainly possible you know maybe Paris can stop by for a few minutes or maybe gas or somebody who or else is yeah you know uh but yeah we have Keyshawn Thompson remember for 20 months happy birthday Iran appreciate you and well I hope everybody enjoyed the show this was episode 280 only 20 more to go for 300 and we will see you again on Friday love you guys uh make sure to use the checkout code for manscaped xb2 to get 20 off and check out the patreon if it interests you patreon.com xb2 everything's in the description we'll be back on Friday Starfield it's all gonna be about Starfield baby it's all gonna be about Starfield oh man anyways uh until then this has been random jazz and we're out of here keep it gaming guys take care everybody and xb2 with Medscape later

Channel: Rand al Thor 19

Views: 83,535

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Id: DoGUR5SAm0Y

Length: 233min 52sec (14032 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2023