Fresh off the Xbox Games Showcase during June’s Summer Game Fest season, Xbox president of gaming content and studios Matt Booty discusses upcoming titles, doubling down on subscription gaming, the surge of interest in “Fallout” and the difficulty of shutting down studios like Tango Gameworks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome the Strictly Business Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
the business of media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer,
TV and Video games Jennifer Moss. Microsoft's Xbox is taking
a victory lap after an impressive Game Showcase presentation at
the David Geffren Theater in Los Angeles on June tenth.
The show was anchored by the reveal of Call of
(00:27):
Duty Black Ops six, followed by major announcements from titles
across Xbox Game Studios, eluding the DEZDA, Activision, and Blizzard,
as well as third party titles. Here to talk about
the highlights from the show and the inner workings at
Xbox post Activision acquisition is Matt Booty, head of Xbox
Games Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Thank you, Matt for joining us today. I so appreciate
your time after the long weekend we had at showcase.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, well, thank you very much for the opportunity to
be here. It's great to talk with you, and thank
you for making time this past weekend to come to
the showcase. What did What were your impressions after actually
seeing the show.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I was actually going to start off by asking you
to give yourself a grade, and then I will give you.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Mark, Okay, we can what.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
The internal judgment has been on how well how you
all did well.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
First and foremost, I'm just very proud of our teams.
You know, these trailers and these demos take quite a
while to put together. I think, as you and I discussed,
we actually start the process in December, you know, getting
ready for the show here in June, so there's an
awful lot of work. Very proud of our teams and
the quality that they delivered. The breadth of content that
(01:53):
was on display there was just fantastic. If I go
on based on fans reactions and some of the press
reactions that I've seen out there, I would say that we,
you know, deserve a pretty positive grade. It's always a
big source of that's energizing, it's inspiring. It's just so
great for our teams to see the reactions. This morning,
(02:15):
I was watching a compilation of some of the reactions
to the Gears of War trailer and was so great
to see the fans really resonating with the approach that
we've taken there. So I think internally we feel positive
about it. Of course, you know, now it is so
important that we execute. Well, we've got twelve months an
amazing lineup of games, but you know, at the end
of the day, it's about shipping those games and making
(02:36):
sure they're great, making sure that we live up to
the expectations of the fans and that we deliver them
on time. So a little bit of a break to
be proud, and then I think it's back to work
for all of us.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
All right. I agree with your assessment. I will say
going in, I did not expect as much as I saw,
and that's a positive thing. I really thought, you know,
this is going to be mainly call of duty, and
we're going to get a lot, and we're going to
see a lot of good stuff, and that's the revealed
call of duty. But the sheer number of other things
that came out of it high level and it was
(03:10):
just a lot. I'll say that it was a lot,
and it was a lot of good stuff too, not
just dumping a bunch of stuff on. And I am
not the only one. I mean, obviously you've seen there's
headlines that this is Microsoft's best showcase ever, this is
microsoft best showcase in years, and so I wanted to
know just coming up, like you had said, we talked
about in December is really when you start this. But
(03:32):
what kind of led to this convergence of having this
number of high level announcements, first looks, gameplay footages to
show at this time because some years are drier than others,
and this was just so much at once. And I
want to know if you were pushing to get things
ready in time, if there's things that you maybe would
have held but chose to announce just to give it
an extra push. What made this showcase so impressive because
(03:55):
it wasn't just Black Offs, which was the big star
going in.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Now, that's so hepeful question, and I have a few
good things in there to talk about. I think, first
and foremost, this was our first opportunity for all of
our studios across Xbox Game studios, across the studios inside Zenomax, Bethesda,
and then of course Activision and Blizzard to really come
together in one moment. And so I think the some
(04:20):
of the critical mass that we had, some of the
excitement about the number of games that we're able to
show and the quality really is a reflection that this
is the first time that our teams have been able
to come together. We also and you hinted at this
are beginning to hit the rhythm that we've always aspired for,
and that really is our commitment to our players of
(04:42):
being able to deliver a much more steady cadence of
games on a more predictable rhythm. And we started really
in earnest with acquiring and building out our studios portfolio
in twenty eighteen, and then we had the wonderful Zenmax
Bethesda acquisition in twenty twenty one, TI twenty two, and
then you know, last fall bringing on board Activision, Blizzard
(05:05):
and King. But it has taken a while to sort
of get all of that up to speed. And in
the midst of that, of course, we, you know, all
of us went through COVID, which certainly had some ups
and downs in the industry, you know, across not just games,
but all of entertainment. So I feel like this is
us beginning to hit our stride. And one of the
things that I am encouraged by is that I look
(05:29):
forward to the future of next year that we are
in position to hopefully deliver also a great lineup and
a great showcase next June. And one of the things
that I read an article that someone pointed out is
that it's interesting that this was a year that we
didn't have some of the traditional heavy hitters from Xbox,
like Halo, like Fortsa, And of course we've got teams
(05:52):
working on those projects and we've got a lot of
cool stuff to share when the time is right. But
the fact that we deliver heard hopefully a critical, massive
excitement and it didn't depend on those things that we
historically go to. I think it's just a good indicator
and a good sign that we're going to be able
to can you know we've hit that stride and then
(06:13):
we're going to be able to continue deliver it that
cadence going forward, doing.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
In the Dark Ages, Gears of Work, et Ay, Fable,
a lot of big IP, a lot of very beloved
fan ip. Some were given release dates, some weren't, and
some we just have a target of, like twenty twenty five,
And I wanted to know, you know the release date
Jenga that goes on here and what you're holding back
(06:39):
either because you don't know yet or because you are
specifically waiting for other people to make choices like exactly
when GTA six will be released next fall.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Well, I think many across the industry. Of course you're
going to plan around GTA six and we're all looking
forward to that game, which you know should be amazing
for us, excuse me, for us. I think the issue
is as much making sure that we don't step on ourselves, right.
We have a pretty big portfolio, We have a pretty
(07:12):
big lineup through the fall and through the spring, and
we certainly want to make sure that every game is
given space and has got an opportunity to shine, and
we don't end up overshadowing one game by launching it
too close to another. So when we leave actual months
and days of the month sort of open ended, that
(07:34):
has as much to do with the fact that we
are looking ahead and making sure that we do the
right planning so that we're not getting in our own
way right. Certainly, everybody in the industry wants to make
sure that we don't land in the shadow of someone
else's big release, But we just need to keep options
open as we sort of look to optimize. How do
we make sure that every game gets its appropriate day
(07:55):
in the sun, And that's pretty important to us. The
other thing is that we really want to make sure
that when we declare a date that we're committed to that,
and certainly within a year, within six months when we
declare a date, you know, we want to get much
better that we're really living up to that and we're
accountable to that. You know, games, like a lot of entertainment,
the further out you get, the harder it is to
(08:17):
predict and you know, predict an actual date. So we
just want to be in integrity that if something is
further out than a year, that we're not trying to
create sort of a false precision about when we can
deliver that game. But conversely, the closer we get, we
actually want to you know, we really want to be
accountable to our fans and be accountable to the industry
on when we're going to be able to ship.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Going back to Black Op six, it was great to
get to sit down with those guys here everything that
they haven't been able to say before, and know what's
been going on behind the scenes. One of the things
that I discussed uh with them a little more was
about intelligent play and about making it a little bit
easier for people who are not used to call Black Ops,
(09:01):
used to this kind of game in general, to play
the game and to enter the game, and you and
I talked a little bit about this already, but going
into the idea of accessibility for new gamers and bringing
in people while at the same time not making something
too easy for people who are well versed in this game,
for players who do not need that going in. I
(09:23):
want to ask about that for Black Ops specifically, but
also just how Microsoft is looking at that across its
studios right now.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, well, certainly I would start high level. I mean,
gaming is in such a different place in pop culture
and entertainment and in the world than it was say
five or ten years ago. You know, it's bigger, it's
become more popular, it's certainly more accessible, more diverse than ever,
and in many ways we compete directly with more what
I would call traditional entertainment. I think the thing that
(09:53):
we're all working on is how do we grow those
audiences and how do we bring more people into existing franchises,
And you know, you mentioned how are we doing that,
you know, on a Call of Duty and on Black
Ops six. It is a topic that also plays out
with something like Minecraft and something we just celebrated the
fifteen year anniversary this summer. And while Minecraft can be
(10:18):
seen as visually simple and is very appealing. There are
parts of it where there is still a fair barrier
to entry if you've never played the game before. So
I think all of our teams, including the Call of
Duty team, are looking at how can we provide what
I would call user adjustable, user customized on ramps that
(10:38):
provide a way to get into the franchise. You know,
franchises have been around for ten or twenty years. They
sort of collect a lot of institutional sort of lore
and a lot of institutional understanding about how to play
the game, and at times it can be intimidating coming
into a game, and that can be everything from game
(10:59):
mechanics to making sure even that we do a very
smart job of how we put together our multiplayer matches.
You know, one of the things that we use AI
for is to make sure in a game like Years
of War that if you're in a multiplayer game, you
are matched up with someone who is an equal skill level.
You know, there's nothing more frustrating to be new to
a game. You get dumped into a multiplayer match with
(11:21):
somebody and you just you know, you survived for a
few seconds. That's not a person who is going to
become a new fan of a franchise. So I think
it's important for us, as you point out, to not
compromise the existing game. We don't want to water it down.
We want to make sure that we provide a game
that existing fans love. But all of our teams are
focused on providing these more broad on ramps to how
(11:44):
we can grow audiences.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I was very excited to see this Skyline Valley expansion
coming for follow Out seventy six, but with the immense
popularity of Amazon's Followed TV series, I had suspected there
might be a new game in the works that you
would announced. So I'd like to know the thought process
and decision making that goes into deciding to build on
an existing game versus put a new game in the works.
(12:09):
Not that I don't think you don't have something going on,
or at least announce what the what the life cycle
is of a game essentially.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Well, that is such an insightful question and is just
I would say, one of the core pieces of art
that we wrestle with in the game industry and in
game design, which is, for example, you've got a game
like Minecraft, at some point, do you continue to evolve
Minecraft and build on it and expand it, or do
(12:38):
you at some point say we're going to pause, stop
and we're going to make Minecraft two point zero, for example. Now, clearly,
in the case of Minecraft, we have continued to build
and grow on it. A game like forts a Horizon five,
you know, it is the fifth iteration of the series,
So clearly we're committed to ongoing discrete iterations of that
(12:59):
game and that franchise. But even within that franchise, we
have ongoing updates with DLC new content, and at some
point you make a decision that we've sort of built
all the content for that iteration and we're now going
to move on to sort of the next discrete turn
of the crank. In the case of Fallout, one of
the great things that happened to coincide with the show
(13:22):
on Amazon, which is fantastic and they've been great partners,
is that there are just a number of ways that
you can engage with the Fallout franchise. Right there's not
just one game. There's Fallout four, there's Fallout seventy six,
there's ongoing content for all of those. You can even
go all the way back to og Fallout one. There's
Fallout in New Vegas, so much like a franchise like
(13:43):
say Star Trek or a Mission Impossible or a Star Wars,
just a lot of ways that you can engage. To
your question about how do we line up a game
with a movie, that is one thing that has gotten
very different in the last five to ten years, given
that both games and movies have such long production cycles.
(14:03):
You know, a major triple A video game can take three,
four or five years to put together. You know, movies
are in development for a long time before they actually
start shooting, and then they've got their own schedules. So
I think that when we can get linear media that
lines up with an existing franchise that provides a lot
of ways for a new audience to engage, that's the
(14:24):
big win. I think it's much harder and probably more
risky to try to think five years into the future
how you might sync up a new game with a
new new movie or a new TV show.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Talking about among the announcements made one that I found
that kept coming and coming coming as the titles were
announced was we'll be available day and date Game Pass.
And that's a really big deal to have a new
title available immediately to those subscribe to game Pass plans,
So asking about that choice and what that means, and
(14:57):
what that means for Xbox and Microsoft's overall strategy push
in game Pass and pushing the subscription model.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
You know, it really is a core part of what
I would just call our Xbox promise. Right in the
Xbox promises to the players are that our first party games,
the games that our internal studios make, that those are
going to be available on day one in game Pass.
Right that you're going to have the availability of what
(15:23):
we call Xbox Play anywhere where those entitlements are, both
on console and on PC. That we've got a commitment
to letting you play where you want, on the devices
you want, which is why we support cloud streaming in
a number of ways. You know, why we're looking at
games that expand to mobile, and that really is part
of that core promise. So when we get all of
(15:44):
our internal studios committed to launching day one into game Pass,
it's really kind of part of that overall tapestry of
what we see as our ongoing promise going forward is
you know, what is what does it mean to be
an Xbox player and what is the Xbox promise?
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Talking a little more about game Pass. I'd love to
know our results you've been seeing there since adding Diablo
for and how you maybe have seen those results inform
what you're moving forward doing with the day and date results,
what you're really looking for end quote. What is a
success on game Pass for you all?
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, Well, Diablo is an interesting one that we were
watching because, of course it was a game that had
previously launched right it had launched prior to the acquisition closing.
But when we put the game into game Pass this
past March, in terms of the number of hours and
the number of players engaged, it was our biggest first
(16:39):
party launch into game Pass ever. So what we saw
was new players coming in, and we saw people coming
in that had not played Diablo for So this was
great for the franchise in terms of new players expanding
that audience. And then we also saw, because of that
new cohort of people coming in, overall engagement in the
(16:59):
game going up. So that's sort of the best of
both worlds for us, that we not only bring in
new players, but that that influx of new players actually
caused more excitement in the game and engagement across the
board to go up. I think the number was roughly
that we saw people playing over ten million hours in
(17:20):
the game in the first ten days. So that is
certainly something that we see as a success, But most importantly,
I look at it as success for the game team.
In other words, do they see it as being additive
to what they're doing, do they see new players coming in,
and do they see it generating growth and excitement in
the franchise? And we certainly saw those things.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Kind of opening it up to a little bit of
a broader question about what marks a successful game for
you all in general? What you see and you have
games in different buckets, different areas, what is the measure
of success or are there different measures based on the
kind of game?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Well, it really is unique to each game, and the
underlying reason for that is that our portfolio covers such
a diversity of game types and content. If you think
about it, roughly, we have got three broad categories of content.
I would say there are the sort of big pillars
of games, the you know, the Call of Duty, There's Minecraft,
(18:19):
you know, the Warcraft. Right then we've got games that
I would say are our Triple A and sustained games,
things like Sea of Thieves, things like forts a horizon
that are predictable hits, are very ongoing games that have
been successful like Elder Scrolls Online. Then there's a third category,
which are games that are meant to push the art
(18:41):
form forward, that are meant to show what our teams
are capable of, right that bring brand Prestige two Xbox
into game Pass, And I would put in that category
smaller games like Pentiment and even hell Blade two that
we just launched to you know, a lot of critical
acclaim a number I think almost you know, a well
over a dozen perfect scores for that game and really
(19:02):
being called out as such a technical achievement. So within
those categories of sort of the blockbuster pillars, the predictable hits,
the frank, the ongoing franchises, and then the new ip
and things that are meant to push forward the art form,
each of those really have unique metrics in terms of
how we measure success. You know, for a game like
Call of Duty that is one of the biggest games
(19:24):
on the planet where we make a significant investment in
the development, they're going to have certain targets and certain
goals of what we need, you know, to see for
them to be successful. That's going to be different than
a team like Ninja Theory that made a game like
Helblad two with about one hundred people. Right, so every
you know, every game is really looked at differently. But
(19:48):
you know, we're committed to the teams and supporting them
to make the best game they can. That's one of
the first questions we ask is, you know, did they
do the best that they're capable of doing? And I
think in a lot of cases we can say that
they did. And then are they supporting our devices? Are
they supporting our services? And then are we again delivering
back on what I would call that Xbox player promise?
(20:08):
But there it's not a sort of fixed set of
metrics that I could apply across such a broad portfolio.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll be back with more from that after this break.
Now that we've nerded out extensively about showcase, I would
like to go back and just have you start a
little bit by just breaking down what your day to
day role is, how you got to this position.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah, well, I it's really a privilege. You know. I
get to support the leaders who lead our studios and
business units, which are you know, roughly broken down as
Xbox Game studios, which are mostly based that leadership here
in Redmond, and that includes things like Halo and Forts
and Sea of Thieves and our smaller studios like Double
(20:59):
Fine and come Pulsion Games. So there's Xbox Game Studios,
then Zenemax Bethesda, another grouping of course, which includes you know,
Todd Howard and his team who delivered Starfield and Elder
Scrolls Online, the team making Indiana Jones the Great Circle.
And then we've got uh, you know, Activision, which is
(21:19):
really the sort of overall arching group for Call of Duty.
Then we've got Blizzard, and then we've got King. So
then in addition to that, really sort of standing on
its own is one of those sort of studio groups
also as a Minecraft. So those six groupings of our
content team each have leaders over them, and our leadership
approach and our leadership structure is to put very empowered,
(21:44):
creative oriented leaders in charge of each of those six
business units as we call them. And within those business units,
particularly around Xbox Game Studios and Zenemax Bethesda, they're really
oriented around a studio system where each of those studios
has a very empowered creative and business leads. So my
day to day is really making sure that they're supported,
(22:07):
that they feel that they've got what they need to
be successful. To provide a little bit of an interface
between their world, which is about making games back to
the broader Microsoft and Xbox world, and to make sure
that the things that we're doing as a first party
content group are aligned with Sarah Bond's team. Sarah runs
(22:27):
our platform and game pass teams and making sure that
we're in sync and in harmony in terms of how
we help support the platform and vice versa. It really
is a privilege. We are just blessed with great leaders
there who have got, you know, decades of combined experience
across all of their leadership teams, and it really is,
(22:50):
you know, what makes things go. I joined Xbox in
twenty ten and started out by working on bringing some
of the Xbox and content over to mobile and particularly
over to Windows. So when we were first working with
Windows and having a game store within there, and then
in twenty fourteen for four years got to lead Minecraft directly,
(23:13):
which is really just an amazing experience. I learned so much,
just amazing folks with the studio in Stockholm and another
group here in Redmond, and then in twenty eighteen started
taking on more and more of a role of leading
our first party games, and before that quite a long stint.
This is actually only the second job I've ever had.
The first job that I ever had was coming right
(23:33):
out of university and starting in a place in Chicago
called Midway Games, where I had the great fortune to
work with the teams that made games like Mortal Kombat
and Nbajam and NFL Blitz, And consider myself very lucky
to still be friends with many of those folks and
always take great pride that under Warner Brothers, you know,
(23:54):
a game like Mortal Kombat here thirty years later is
still going strong as a franchise.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
You know, obviously you are a huge part of the
oversight in the post acquisition of Activision Lizard. I want
you to know, you know, kind of what things look
like at the moment if the dust has settled. Microsoft
have not been immune to the same situation that's happened
across the gaming industry where there have been layoffs. But
Microsoft was the one at the time who was in
(24:21):
the middle of a giant merger, so it was in
a different position at the same time as that was happening.
So I don't know what internally things look like right now,
But based on the showcase, it seems like things are
are calmer, It seems like things are organized, But I
don't know if we can expect any more changes there
what it looks like right now for you.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, it's really a bit of two stories. First and foremost,
our main focus is to make sure that the game
teams have what they need, that they feel supported, that
we as Xbox and we and as Microsoft are being additive,
and that they feel like they're being set up to
do their best work with the minimal amount of distractions.
(25:04):
And that is a big part of my focus, which
is providing again a bit of that interface to make
sure that we are doing a proper business integration, that
we're integrating on the topics like security and making sure
that we can all share files back and forth, okay,
you know, and making sure that all the financial systems
(25:24):
get integrated. You know, I work with a lot of
great teams that are focused on that, and that work
needs to go on. And you know, as you would
expect for two very large organizations coming together, there's just
a lot of activity there that we're still in the
middle of. But I would hope that the studios report
that the very first thing that we focused on, and
the thing that is the most important, is making sure
(25:46):
that those studios feel stable, that they've got what they
need to ship games, and that we're trying to minimize
any distractions for them, you know. And one of the
things that we're focused on, there's a lot of interest
between the studios and getting connected, right how can they
talk to each other, how can we start to possibly
share technology we're appropriate across our teams, And you know,
we're an organization of close to seventeen thousand people now,
(26:10):
one of the biggest content organizations on the planet, and
it's just going to take some time to get that
infrastructure in place. And I appreciate your good words on
the showcase, and it's good to see that that's how
it's perceived externally. I think for us, we're very focused
on making sure that now we can turn around and
deliver on the promise that we made this weekend on
what we showed, and certainly I've got a lot of
(26:32):
work to do to make sure we ship great games
in the next twelve months.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
One aspect that I know was hard was the closure.
I mean, any closures are upsetting, but fans took the
closure of Tango pretty hard, and I want to know
in that case, in particular, what the reasoning was and
if there was any talks of shopping and around to
other potential buyers. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Well, you know, obviously, any time that we've got to
do something like that, it's difficult, right. It is first
and foremost difficult on the people who are affected. We
put a lot of energy into making sure that we
give full support to everybody who is impacted by something
like that through severance and other things. You know, those
(27:14):
decisions are never made lightly, they're not made quickly, and
there are a lot of people and processes and oversight
to make sure that we're making you know, a good
decision there, and they're just they're always difficult, and the
energy goes into making sure that we are supporting the
people that are impacted and you know, really making sure
(27:34):
that they're taken care of. I won't get into the
real sort of nitty gritty details on you know, what
went into the decision, mostly out of respect for the
people there, just because you know, they There was a
lot of work that went into delivering Hi Fi Rush,
which was a great game and you know did well
(27:55):
for us. I think the thing to be considered is
that for us, it's as much such a forward looking
situation as much as it is looking back at one
certain game. You know, there are a lot of things
that go into success for a game. You know, what
leadership do you have, what creative leadership do you have?
Is the team the same team that shipped something successful previously?
(28:18):
And we have to look at all of those things
together and then ask ourselves are we set up for
success going forward? And while there may have been factors
and situations that previously led to success, they may not
all still be in place as you look at what
you're doing going forward. And you know, with many of
our studios, we try to look at options. I think,
(28:41):
you know an example, we recently had Toys for Bob
Studio that was previously working on Call of Duty titles
go back out and become a new independent studio. And
you know, I think we've announced that we've got a
publishing deal with them, and we'll share more about that
when it's important. I think back to a studio called
Twisted Pixel in Texas that we acquired and then for
(29:04):
a sort of change in goals, it wasn't a perfect
match anymore, but that studio today is still thriving. We
wanted to set them up for success. So we absolutely
look at what the possible business options are to keep
a studio open or to keep you know, perhaps have
it change hands. And it's just one of the things,
of course, that we look at across the board. Sometimes
those things come together, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
With one of the new acquisitions with Blizzard, you have
a very big opportunity this year to be part of
the twentieth anniversary of something with World of Warcraft, so
that you all did not build, but you own it
now and you're part of it. And so I want
to know how something like that works. If you tell
Jon and the team at Blizzard, like Gopher, whatever you
(29:46):
guys want to do, this is your twentieth birthday, We're
just here to help. Or if you have thoughts and
you have ideas and you want to push that as
much as.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Possible, well, first I just say, how lucky are we
that we have so many of these g as that
we get to celebrate these you know, anniversaries, and really
they are celebrations for the fans, right, I was lucky
enough to be part of the five year, ten year,
and now fifteen year anniversary for something like Minecraft firsthand.
And you know how lucky are we now that we
(30:16):
get to sort of help celebrate with the fans the
twentieth anniversary of something at Blizzard. So first and foremost,
I think Blizzard is going to tell us what they
want to do, you know, and it's going to be
my job to go figure out how we can pay
for it, just paint blunt. But you know, nobody knows
those fans better, nobody knows that community better than Blizzard,
and I think that they're going to be the ones
(30:38):
that will, you know, really guide us on what's appropriate
and what will build the excitement and first, you know,
mostly be a celebration for the fans. You know, that's
how we come at these things, whether we're talking about
just the longevity of something like Elder Scrolls Online or
whether it's Minecraft or even you know, how we look
at how we celebrate something of course that is now
(31:00):
multi decades in existence, like a World of Warcraft.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I'd love to know if you can speak a little
bit about what you've seen so far the results of
bringing the first four games to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation
and what titles you might be thinking of doing that
with next.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, we you know, we really set up those four games,
and if you look at the games that we picked,
it might seem as maybe a bit of a you know,
a grab bag of an odd assortment, but it really
was set up and designed so that we could test
a variety of content and see specifically, you know, what
the reception would be for that content. And you know,
(31:38):
also in some cases we have got teams like the
Minecraft team or like the Call of Duty team that
have been shipping multi platform for literally decades, and then
we've got other teams or that's a new muscle to build.
So we had some sort of business experiments that we
wanted to run, and we also just mechanically wanted to
start to build that muscle and see what was involved.
(32:00):
So some of the smaller games like Grounded, like Pentiment,
like High Fi Rush. I would say that it was
great to see some of the positive review scores and
great to see some of the positive fan reception, but
the one where we really focused with support and we
went out and promoted with Sea of Thieves and we
have been really pleased with what we've seen on Sea
(32:22):
of Thieves. You know, just in terms of some things
that I can share that we're encouraging to us is
that when we launched Sea of Thieves on PlayStation five,
we saw an uptick in engagement on Xbox and on PC.
So again there's this thing where you've got more people
coming into the franchise, which causes more excitement, which actually
(32:44):
grows the franchise overall, which, if you just really want
to be sort of direct about it from a business
point of view, allows us to continue to reinvest in
that franchise and continue to grow it. So that was
sort of one of the first things that we wanted
to see. Another really interesting encouraging stat is that about
half the people that we saw playing on PlayStation we're
(33:05):
playing with people on other platforms. So this is about
expanding that community. It's one of the things it's core
to our Xbox promise about letting people play where they
want to play, with the people they want to play
with on the devices they play with, and it's encouraging
that we didn't see sort of a vertically insulated community there.
(33:25):
That the work that the team had put into being
best in class in terms of cross platform play really
paid off because we saw people engaging kind of outside
their own device ecosystem, which was great. The other thing
is it just it brought new players into Sea Off Thieves, right.
I mean, one of the real goals that all of
our franchises have, and I think we all have across
(33:46):
the industry right now, is how do we grow? And
you know, that was really great to see that it
was bringing in new players that had never played CfDS before.
So I think we consider that a success. You know,
we all continue to make those decisions individually on a
case by case basis. We are absolutely committed to having
(34:08):
launch exclusives on Xbox. You know, it's part of our
core promise, and we want to continue to bring our
games to more players on more devices going forward, and
we certainly have got a lot of experience with that
with things that have just historically been on multiplatforms for
so long.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I have just one more for you and closing, which
kind of goes off that you know. You know that
I straddled the TV and video game world, and one
thing we've been seeing a lot of recently is bundling
and bundling and streaming in a way that looks a
lot like cable. It looks a lot like cable always
BLUs so on. You know, from your side on the
(34:47):
gaming side, when you look at what gaming can do,
and you look at how you are looking to work
with Nintendo and with PlayStation in these new ways, and
what that means for platforms, if you see something similar
happening on the gaming side, with like walls breaking down
a little bit, and what that could mean, what you
think you would do and what you might never do.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Still, yeah, well, obviously I can't speak on behalf of
Sony or Nintendo, but I'll say in each case, we
just have great working relationships with the teams at Sony
and Nintendo, right. I mean again, our portfolio consists of
games that have shipped on those platforms you know, for
ten fifteen years, right, And that doesn't happen without a
(35:28):
great partnership with them, and so we've got a great
working relationship. I think that as you point out that
as gaming becomes a bigger part of pop culture, as
the number of gamers on the planet you know, hits
two billion, three billion and continues to grow, that it's
inevitable that we're going to see that content sort of
(35:48):
seeks to be everywhere right, and that we're going to
probably see some some blending across the sort of boundaries
and across the sort of differences that maybe have existed historically.
For us, it really comes down to maintaining that player
first focus, right. We want to be where the players are.
You know, a device the Xbox will always be core
(36:11):
to what we do. The console's foundational to what we do.
But you know, going all the way back to twenty sixteen,
twenty seventeen, when we started supporting shipping all of our
games day and date on PC, when we started branching
out into things like cloud streaming, which allows you to
really take your game anywhere, focusing on making sure we
get things right like cloud saves. You know, one of
the biggest sort of like just pieces of friction right
(36:34):
now is it's really possible to get yourself kind of
caught in a corner where you start a game on
one service and then you want to play the same game,
but you're on a different service and your save data
doesn't come over, and you're product It's just we want
to we're very committed to getting that all squared away.
Some of our games do it really well. In other places,
We've got some work to do, so I think what
we will, you know, see more of that going forward.
(36:57):
You know what the future holds for those trends, you know.
I don't I have that crystal ball. I do know
that we're going to continue to follow our fans, follow
our players where they want to be, and as gaming
grows to be something that is right there side by
side with more traditional entertainment like music and movies and TV,
we'll probably see some of the same things start to
(37:18):
happen in gaming that you've seen the last ten years
in linear media.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Matt, it was a pleasure having you today. I so
appreciate it. It was a great way to wrap up showcase.
So thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk and it's been great.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
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go to Variety dot com and sign up for the
free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune
in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
Welcome the Strictly Business Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations about
the business of media and entertainment. I'm senior business writer,
TV and Video games Jennifer Moss. Microsoft's Xbox is taking
a victory lap after an impressive Game Showcase presentation at
the David Geffren Theater in Los Angeles on June tenth.
The show was anchored by the reveal of Call of
(00:27):
Duty Black Ops six, followed by major announcements from titles
across Xbox Game Studios, eluding the DEZDA, Activision, and Blizzard,
as well as third party titles. Here to talk about
the highlights from the show and the inner workings at
Xbox post Activision acquisition is Matt Booty, head of Xbox
Games Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Thank you, Matt for joining us today. I so appreciate
your time after the long weekend we had at showcase.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, well, thank you very much for the opportunity to
be here. It's great to talk with you, and thank
you for making time this past weekend to come to
the showcase. What did What were your impressions after actually
seeing the show.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I was actually going to start off by asking you
to give yourself a grade, and then I will give you.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Mark, Okay, we can what.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
The internal judgment has been on how well how you
all did well.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
First and foremost, I'm just very proud of our teams.
You know, these trailers and these demos take quite a
while to put together. I think, as you and I discussed,
we actually start the process in December, you know, getting
ready for the show here in June, so there's an
awful lot of work. Very proud of our teams and
the quality that they delivered. The breadth of content that
(01:53):
was on display there was just fantastic. If I go
on based on fans reactions and some of the press
reactions that I've seen out there, I would say that we,
you know, deserve a pretty positive grade. It's always a
big source of that's energizing, it's inspiring. It's just so
great for our teams to see the reactions. This morning,
(02:15):
I was watching a compilation of some of the reactions
to the Gears of War trailer and was so great
to see the fans really resonating with the approach that
we've taken there. So I think internally we feel positive
about it. Of course, you know, now it is so
important that we execute. Well, we've got twelve months an
amazing lineup of games, but you know, at the end
of the day, it's about shipping those games and making
(02:36):
sure they're great, making sure that we live up to
the expectations of the fans and that we deliver them
on time. So a little bit of a break to
be proud, and then I think it's back to work
for all of us.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
All right. I agree with your assessment. I will say
going in, I did not expect as much as I saw,
and that's a positive thing. I really thought, you know,
this is going to be mainly call of duty, and
we're going to get a lot, and we're going to
see a lot of good stuff, and that's the revealed
call of duty. But the sheer number of other things
that came out of it high level and it was
(03:10):
just a lot. I'll say that it was a lot,
and it was a lot of good stuff too, not
just dumping a bunch of stuff on. And I am
not the only one. I mean, obviously you've seen there's
headlines that this is Microsoft's best showcase ever, this is
microsoft best showcase in years, and so I wanted to
know just coming up, like you had said, we talked
about in December is really when you start this. But
(03:32):
what kind of led to this convergence of having this
number of high level announcements, first looks, gameplay footages to
show at this time because some years are drier than others,
and this was just so much at once. And I
want to know if you were pushing to get things
ready in time, if there's things that you maybe would
have held but chose to announce just to give it
an extra push. What made this showcase so impressive because
(03:55):
it wasn't just Black Offs, which was the big star
going in.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Now, that's so hepeful question, and I have a few
good things in there to talk about. I think, first
and foremost, this was our first opportunity for all of
our studios across Xbox Game studios, across the studios inside Zenomax, Bethesda,
and then of course Activision and Blizzard to really come
together in one moment. And so I think the some
(04:20):
of the critical mass that we had, some of the
excitement about the number of games that we're able to
show and the quality really is a reflection that this
is the first time that our teams have been able
to come together. We also and you hinted at this
are beginning to hit the rhythm that we've always aspired for,
and that really is our commitment to our players of
(04:42):
being able to deliver a much more steady cadence of
games on a more predictable rhythm. And we started really
in earnest with acquiring and building out our studios portfolio
in twenty eighteen, and then we had the wonderful Zenmax
Bethesda acquisition in twenty twenty one, TI twenty two, and
then you know, last fall bringing on board Activision, Blizzard
(05:05):
and King. But it has taken a while to sort
of get all of that up to speed. And in
the midst of that, of course, we, you know, all
of us went through COVID, which certainly had some ups
and downs in the industry, you know, across not just games,
but all of entertainment. So I feel like this is
us beginning to hit our stride. And one of the
things that I am encouraged by is that I look
(05:29):
forward to the future of next year that we are
in position to hopefully deliver also a great lineup and
a great showcase next June. And one of the things
that I read an article that someone pointed out is
that it's interesting that this was a year that we
didn't have some of the traditional heavy hitters from Xbox,
like Halo, like Fortsa, And of course we've got teams
(05:52):
working on those projects and we've got a lot of
cool stuff to share when the time is right. But
the fact that we deliver heard hopefully a critical, massive
excitement and it didn't depend on those things that we
historically go to. I think it's just a good indicator
and a good sign that we're going to be able
to can you know we've hit that stride and then
(06:13):
we're going to be able to continue deliver it that
cadence going forward, doing.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
In the Dark Ages, Gears of Work, et Ay, Fable,
a lot of big IP, a lot of very beloved
fan ip. Some were given release dates, some weren't, and
some we just have a target of, like twenty twenty five,
And I wanted to know, you know the release date
Jenga that goes on here and what you're holding back
(06:39):
either because you don't know yet or because you are
specifically waiting for other people to make choices like exactly
when GTA six will be released next fall.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Well, I think many across the industry. Of course you're
going to plan around GTA six and we're all looking
forward to that game, which you know should be amazing
for us, excuse me, for us. I think the issue
is as much making sure that we don't step on ourselves, right.
We have a pretty big portfolio, We have a pretty
(07:12):
big lineup through the fall and through the spring, and
we certainly want to make sure that every game is
given space and has got an opportunity to shine, and
we don't end up overshadowing one game by launching it
too close to another. So when we leave actual months
and days of the month sort of open ended, that
(07:34):
has as much to do with the fact that we
are looking ahead and making sure that we do the
right planning so that we're not getting in our own
way right. Certainly, everybody in the industry wants to make
sure that we don't land in the shadow of someone
else's big release, But we just need to keep options
open as we sort of look to optimize. How do
we make sure that every game gets its appropriate day
(07:55):
in the sun, And that's pretty important to us. The
other thing is that we really want to make sure
that when we declare a date that we're committed to that,
and certainly within a year, within six months when we
declare a date, you know, we want to get much
better that we're really living up to that and we're
accountable to that. You know, games, like a lot of entertainment,
the further out you get, the harder it is to
(08:17):
predict and you know, predict an actual date. So we
just want to be in integrity that if something is
further out than a year, that we're not trying to
create sort of a false precision about when we can
deliver that game. But conversely, the closer we get, we
actually want to you know, we really want to be
accountable to our fans and be accountable to the industry
on when we're going to be able to ship.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Going back to Black Op six, it was great to
get to sit down with those guys here everything that
they haven't been able to say before, and know what's
been going on behind the scenes. One of the things
that I discussed uh with them a little more was
about intelligent play and about making it a little bit
easier for people who are not used to call Black Ops,
(09:01):
used to this kind of game in general, to play
the game and to enter the game, and you and
I talked a little bit about this already, but going
into the idea of accessibility for new gamers and bringing
in people while at the same time not making something
too easy for people who are well versed in this game,
for players who do not need that going in. I
(09:23):
want to ask about that for Black Ops specifically, but
also just how Microsoft is looking at that across its
studios right now.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, well, certainly I would start high level. I mean,
gaming is in such a different place in pop culture
and entertainment and in the world than it was say
five or ten years ago. You know, it's bigger, it's
become more popular, it's certainly more accessible, more diverse than ever,
and in many ways we compete directly with more what
I would call traditional entertainment. I think the thing that
(09:53):
we're all working on is how do we grow those
audiences and how do we bring more people into existing franchises,
And you know, you mentioned how are we doing that,
you know, on a Call of Duty and on Black
Ops six. It is a topic that also plays out
with something like Minecraft and something we just celebrated the
fifteen year anniversary this summer. And while Minecraft can be
(10:18):
seen as visually simple and is very appealing. There are
parts of it where there is still a fair barrier
to entry if you've never played the game before. So
I think all of our teams, including the Call of
Duty team, are looking at how can we provide what
I would call user adjustable, user customized on ramps that
(10:38):
provide a way to get into the franchise. You know,
franchises have been around for ten or twenty years. They
sort of collect a lot of institutional sort of lore
and a lot of institutional understanding about how to play
the game, and at times it can be intimidating coming
into a game, and that can be everything from game
(10:59):
mechanics to making sure even that we do a very
smart job of how we put together our multiplayer matches.
You know, one of the things that we use AI
for is to make sure in a game like Years
of War that if you're in a multiplayer game, you
are matched up with someone who is an equal skill level.
You know, there's nothing more frustrating to be new to
a game. You get dumped into a multiplayer match with
(11:21):
somebody and you just you know, you survived for a
few seconds. That's not a person who is going to
become a new fan of a franchise. So I think
it's important for us, as you point out, to not
compromise the existing game. We don't want to water it down.
We want to make sure that we provide a game
that existing fans love. But all of our teams are
focused on providing these more broad on ramps to how
(11:44):
we can grow audiences.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I was very excited to see this Skyline Valley expansion
coming for follow Out seventy six, but with the immense
popularity of Amazon's Followed TV series, I had suspected there
might be a new game in the works that you
would announced. So I'd like to know the thought process
and decision making that goes into deciding to build on
an existing game versus put a new game in the works.
(12:09):
Not that I don't think you don't have something going on,
or at least announce what the what the life cycle
is of a game essentially.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Well, that is such an insightful question and is just
I would say, one of the core pieces of art
that we wrestle with in the game industry and in
game design, which is, for example, you've got a game
like Minecraft, at some point, do you continue to evolve
Minecraft and build on it and expand it, or do
(12:38):
you at some point say we're going to pause, stop
and we're going to make Minecraft two point zero, for example. Now, clearly,
in the case of Minecraft, we have continued to build
and grow on it. A game like forts a Horizon five,
you know, it is the fifth iteration of the series,
So clearly we're committed to ongoing discrete iterations of that
(12:59):
game and that franchise. But even within that franchise, we
have ongoing updates with DLC new content, and at some
point you make a decision that we've sort of built
all the content for that iteration and we're now going
to move on to sort of the next discrete turn
of the crank. In the case of Fallout, one of
the great things that happened to coincide with the show
(13:22):
on Amazon, which is fantastic and they've been great partners,
is that there are just a number of ways that
you can engage with the Fallout franchise. Right there's not
just one game. There's Fallout four, there's Fallout seventy six,
there's ongoing content for all of those. You can even
go all the way back to og Fallout one. There's
Fallout in New Vegas, so much like a franchise like
(13:43):
say Star Trek or a Mission Impossible or a Star Wars,
just a lot of ways that you can engage. To
your question about how do we line up a game
with a movie, that is one thing that has gotten
very different in the last five to ten years, given
that both games and movies have such long production cycles.
(14:03):
You know, a major triple A video game can take three,
four or five years to put together. You know, movies
are in development for a long time before they actually
start shooting, and then they've got their own schedules. So
I think that when we can get linear media that
lines up with an existing franchise that provides a lot
of ways for a new audience to engage, that's the
(14:24):
big win. I think it's much harder and probably more
risky to try to think five years into the future
how you might sync up a new game with a
new new movie or a new TV show.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Talking about among the announcements made one that I found
that kept coming and coming coming as the titles were
announced was we'll be available day and date Game Pass.
And that's a really big deal to have a new
title available immediately to those subscribe to game Pass plans,
So asking about that choice and what that means, and
(14:57):
what that means for Xbox and Microsoft's overall strategy push
in game Pass and pushing the subscription model.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
You know, it really is a core part of what
I would just call our Xbox promise. Right in the
Xbox promises to the players are that our first party games,
the games that our internal studios make, that those are
going to be available on day one in game Pass.
Right that you're going to have the availability of what
(15:23):
we call Xbox Play anywhere where those entitlements are, both
on console and on PC. That we've got a commitment
to letting you play where you want, on the devices
you want, which is why we support cloud streaming in
a number of ways. You know, why we're looking at
games that expand to mobile, and that really is part
of that core promise. So when we get all of
(15:44):
our internal studios committed to launching day one into game Pass,
it's really kind of part of that overall tapestry of
what we see as our ongoing promise going forward is
you know, what is what does it mean to be
an Xbox player and what is the Xbox promise?
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Talking a little more about game Pass. I'd love to
know our results you've been seeing there since adding Diablo
for and how you maybe have seen those results inform
what you're moving forward doing with the day and date results,
what you're really looking for end quote. What is a
success on game Pass for you all?
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, Well, Diablo is an interesting one that we were
watching because, of course it was a game that had
previously launched right it had launched prior to the acquisition closing.
But when we put the game into game Pass this
past March, in terms of the number of hours and
the number of players engaged, it was our biggest first
(16:39):
party launch into game Pass ever. So what we saw
was new players coming in, and we saw people coming
in that had not played Diablo for So this was
great for the franchise in terms of new players expanding
that audience. And then we also saw, because of that
new cohort of people coming in, overall engagement in the
(16:59):
game going up. So that's sort of the best of
both worlds for us, that we not only bring in
new players, but that that influx of new players actually
caused more excitement in the game and engagement across the
board to go up. I think the number was roughly
that we saw people playing over ten million hours in
(17:20):
the game in the first ten days. So that is
certainly something that we see as a success, But most importantly,
I look at it as success for the game team.
In other words, do they see it as being additive
to what they're doing, do they see new players coming in,
and do they see it generating growth and excitement in
the franchise? And we certainly saw those things.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Kind of opening it up to a little bit of
a broader question about what marks a successful game for
you all in general? What you see and you have
games in different buckets, different areas, what is the measure
of success or are there different measures based on the
kind of game?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Well, it really is unique to each game, and the
underlying reason for that is that our portfolio covers such
a diversity of game types and content. If you think
about it, roughly, we have got three broad categories of content.
I would say there are the sort of big pillars
of games, the you know, the Call of Duty, There's Minecraft,
(18:19):
you know, the Warcraft. Right then we've got games that
I would say are our Triple A and sustained games,
things like Sea of Thieves, things like forts a horizon
that are predictable hits, are very ongoing games that have
been successful like Elder Scrolls Online. Then there's a third category,
which are games that are meant to push the art
(18:41):
form forward, that are meant to show what our teams
are capable of, right that bring brand Prestige two Xbox
into game Pass, And I would put in that category
smaller games like Pentiment and even hell Blade two that
we just launched to you know, a lot of critical
acclaim a number I think almost you know, a well
over a dozen perfect scores for that game and really
(19:02):
being called out as such a technical achievement. So within
those categories of sort of the blockbuster pillars, the predictable hits,
the frank, the ongoing franchises, and then the new ip
and things that are meant to push forward the art form,
each of those really have unique metrics in terms of
how we measure success. You know, for a game like
Call of Duty that is one of the biggest games
(19:24):
on the planet where we make a significant investment in
the development, they're going to have certain targets and certain
goals of what we need, you know, to see for
them to be successful. That's going to be different than
a team like Ninja Theory that made a game like
Helblad two with about one hundred people. Right, so every
you know, every game is really looked at differently. But
(19:48):
you know, we're committed to the teams and supporting them
to make the best game they can. That's one of
the first questions we ask is, you know, did they
do the best that they're capable of doing? And I
think in a lot of cases we can say that
they did. And then are they supporting our devices? Are
they supporting our services? And then are we again delivering
back on what I would call that Xbox player promise?
(20:08):
But there it's not a sort of fixed set of
metrics that I could apply across such a broad portfolio.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll be back with more from that after this break.
Now that we've nerded out extensively about showcase, I would
like to go back and just have you start a
little bit by just breaking down what your day to
day role is, how you got to this position.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah, well, I it's really a privilege. You know. I
get to support the leaders who lead our studios and
business units, which are you know, roughly broken down as
Xbox Game studios, which are mostly based that leadership here
in Redmond, and that includes things like Halo and Forts
and Sea of Thieves and our smaller studios like Double
(20:59):
Fine and come Pulsion Games. So there's Xbox Game Studios,
then Zenemax Bethesda, another grouping of course, which includes you know,
Todd Howard and his team who delivered Starfield and Elder
Scrolls Online, the team making Indiana Jones the Great Circle.
And then we've got uh, you know, Activision, which is
(21:19):
really the sort of overall arching group for Call of Duty.
Then we've got Blizzard, and then we've got King. So
then in addition to that, really sort of standing on
its own is one of those sort of studio groups
also as a Minecraft. So those six groupings of our
content team each have leaders over them, and our leadership
approach and our leadership structure is to put very empowered,
(21:44):
creative oriented leaders in charge of each of those six
business units as we call them. And within those business units,
particularly around Xbox Game Studios and Zenemax Bethesda, they're really
oriented around a studio system where each of those studios
has a very empowered creative and business leads. So my
day to day is really making sure that they're supported,
(22:07):
that they feel that they've got what they need to
be successful. To provide a little bit of an interface
between their world, which is about making games back to
the broader Microsoft and Xbox world, and to make sure
that the things that we're doing as a first party
content group are aligned with Sarah Bond's team. Sarah runs
(22:27):
our platform and game pass teams and making sure that
we're in sync and in harmony in terms of how
we help support the platform and vice versa. It really
is a privilege. We are just blessed with great leaders
there who have got, you know, decades of combined experience
across all of their leadership teams, and it really is,
(22:50):
you know, what makes things go. I joined Xbox in
twenty ten and started out by working on bringing some
of the Xbox and content over to mobile and particularly
over to Windows. So when we were first working with
Windows and having a game store within there, and then
in twenty fourteen for four years got to lead Minecraft directly,
(23:13):
which is really just an amazing experience. I learned so much,
just amazing folks with the studio in Stockholm and another
group here in Redmond, and then in twenty eighteen started
taking on more and more of a role of leading
our first party games, and before that quite a long stint.
This is actually only the second job I've ever had.
The first job that I ever had was coming right
(23:33):
out of university and starting in a place in Chicago
called Midway Games, where I had the great fortune to
work with the teams that made games like Mortal Kombat
and Nbajam and NFL Blitz, And consider myself very lucky
to still be friends with many of those folks and
always take great pride that under Warner Brothers, you know,
(23:54):
a game like Mortal Kombat here thirty years later is
still going strong as a franchise.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
You know, obviously you are a huge part of the
oversight in the post acquisition of Activision Lizard. I want
you to know, you know, kind of what things look
like at the moment if the dust has settled. Microsoft
have not been immune to the same situation that's happened
across the gaming industry where there have been layoffs. But
Microsoft was the one at the time who was in
(24:21):
the middle of a giant merger, so it was in
a different position at the same time as that was happening.
So I don't know what internally things look like right now,
But based on the showcase, it seems like things are
are calmer, It seems like things are organized, But I
don't know if we can expect any more changes there
what it looks like right now for you.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, it's really a bit of two stories. First and foremost,
our main focus is to make sure that the game
teams have what they need, that they feel supported, that
we as Xbox and we and as Microsoft are being additive,
and that they feel like they're being set up to
do their best work with the minimal amount of distractions.
(25:04):
And that is a big part of my focus, which
is providing again a bit of that interface to make
sure that we are doing a proper business integration, that
we're integrating on the topics like security and making sure
that we can all share files back and forth, okay,
you know, and making sure that all the financial systems
(25:24):
get integrated. You know, I work with a lot of
great teams that are focused on that, and that work
needs to go on. And you know, as you would
expect for two very large organizations coming together, there's just
a lot of activity there that we're still in the
middle of. But I would hope that the studios report
that the very first thing that we focused on, and
the thing that is the most important, is making sure
(25:46):
that those studios feel stable, that they've got what they
need to ship games, and that we're trying to minimize
any distractions for them, you know. And one of the
things that we're focused on, there's a lot of interest
between the studios and getting connected, right how can they
talk to each other, how can we start to possibly
share technology we're appropriate across our teams, And you know,
we're an organization of close to seventeen thousand people now,
(26:10):
one of the biggest content organizations on the planet, and
it's just going to take some time to get that
infrastructure in place. And I appreciate your good words on
the showcase, and it's good to see that that's how
it's perceived externally. I think for us, we're very focused
on making sure that now we can turn around and
deliver on the promise that we made this weekend on
what we showed, and certainly I've got a lot of
(26:32):
work to do to make sure we ship great games
in the next twelve months.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
One aspect that I know was hard was the closure.
I mean, any closures are upsetting, but fans took the
closure of Tango pretty hard, and I want to know
in that case, in particular, what the reasoning was and
if there was any talks of shopping and around to
other potential buyers. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Well, you know, obviously, any time that we've got to
do something like that, it's difficult, right. It is first
and foremost difficult on the people who are affected. We
put a lot of energy into making sure that we
give full support to everybody who is impacted by something
like that through severance and other things. You know, those
(27:14):
decisions are never made lightly, they're not made quickly, and
there are a lot of people and processes and oversight
to make sure that we're making you know, a good
decision there, and they're just they're always difficult, and the
energy goes into making sure that we are supporting the
people that are impacted and you know, really making sure
(27:34):
that they're taken care of. I won't get into the
real sort of nitty gritty details on you know, what
went into the decision, mostly out of respect for the
people there, just because you know, they There was a
lot of work that went into delivering Hi Fi Rush,
which was a great game and you know did well
(27:55):
for us. I think the thing to be considered is
that for us, it's as much such a forward looking
situation as much as it is looking back at one
certain game. You know, there are a lot of things
that go into success for a game. You know, what
leadership do you have, what creative leadership do you have?
Is the team the same team that shipped something successful previously?
(28:18):
And we have to look at all of those things
together and then ask ourselves are we set up for
success going forward? And while there may have been factors
and situations that previously led to success, they may not
all still be in place as you look at what
you're doing going forward. And you know, with many of
our studios, we try to look at options. I think,
(28:41):
you know an example, we recently had Toys for Bob
Studio that was previously working on Call of Duty titles
go back out and become a new independent studio. And
you know, I think we've announced that we've got a
publishing deal with them, and we'll share more about that
when it's important. I think back to a studio called
Twisted Pixel in Texas that we acquired and then for
(29:04):
a sort of change in goals, it wasn't a perfect
match anymore, but that studio today is still thriving. We
wanted to set them up for success. So we absolutely
look at what the possible business options are to keep
a studio open or to keep you know, perhaps have
it change hands. And it's just one of the things,
of course, that we look at across the board. Sometimes
those things come together, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
With one of the new acquisitions with Blizzard, you have
a very big opportunity this year to be part of
the twentieth anniversary of something with World of Warcraft, so
that you all did not build, but you own it
now and you're part of it. And so I want
to know how something like that works. If you tell
Jon and the team at Blizzard, like Gopher, whatever you
(29:46):
guys want to do, this is your twentieth birthday, We're
just here to help. Or if you have thoughts and
you have ideas and you want to push that as
much as.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Possible, well, first I just say, how lucky are we
that we have so many of these g as that
we get to celebrate these you know, anniversaries, and really
they are celebrations for the fans, right, I was lucky
enough to be part of the five year, ten year,
and now fifteen year anniversary for something like Minecraft firsthand.
And you know how lucky are we now that we
(30:16):
get to sort of help celebrate with the fans the
twentieth anniversary of something at Blizzard. So first and foremost,
I think Blizzard is going to tell us what they
want to do, you know, and it's going to be
my job to go figure out how we can pay
for it, just paint blunt. But you know, nobody knows
those fans better, nobody knows that community better than Blizzard,
and I think that they're going to be the ones
(30:38):
that will, you know, really guide us on what's appropriate
and what will build the excitement and first, you know,
mostly be a celebration for the fans. You know, that's
how we come at these things, whether we're talking about
just the longevity of something like Elder Scrolls Online or
whether it's Minecraft or even you know, how we look
at how we celebrate something of course that is now
(31:00):
multi decades in existence, like a World of Warcraft.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I'd love to know if you can speak a little
bit about what you've seen so far the results of
bringing the first four games to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation
and what titles you might be thinking of doing that
with next.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, we you know, we really set up those four games,
and if you look at the games that we picked,
it might seem as maybe a bit of a you know,
a grab bag of an odd assortment, but it really
was set up and designed so that we could test
a variety of content and see specifically, you know, what
the reception would be for that content. And you know,
(31:38):
also in some cases we have got teams like the
Minecraft team or like the Call of Duty team that
have been shipping multi platform for literally decades, and then
we've got other teams or that's a new muscle to build.
So we had some sort of business experiments that we
wanted to run, and we also just mechanically wanted to
start to build that muscle and see what was involved.
(32:00):
So some of the smaller games like Grounded, like Pentiment,
like High Fi Rush. I would say that it was
great to see some of the positive review scores and
great to see some of the positive fan reception, but
the one where we really focused with support and we
went out and promoted with Sea of Thieves and we
have been really pleased with what we've seen on Sea
(32:22):
of Thieves. You know, just in terms of some things
that I can share that we're encouraging to us is
that when we launched Sea of Thieves on PlayStation five,
we saw an uptick in engagement on Xbox and on PC.
So again there's this thing where you've got more people
coming into the franchise, which causes more excitement, which actually
(32:44):
grows the franchise overall, which, if you just really want
to be sort of direct about it from a business
point of view, allows us to continue to reinvest in
that franchise and continue to grow it. So that was
sort of one of the first things that we wanted
to see. Another really interesting encouraging stat is that about
half the people that we saw playing on PlayStation we're
(33:05):
playing with people on other platforms. So this is about
expanding that community. It's one of the things it's core
to our Xbox promise about letting people play where they
want to play, with the people they want to play
with on the devices they play with, and it's encouraging
that we didn't see sort of a vertically insulated community there.
(33:25):
That the work that the team had put into being
best in class in terms of cross platform play really
paid off because we saw people engaging kind of outside
their own device ecosystem, which was great. The other thing
is it just it brought new players into Sea Off Thieves, right.
I mean, one of the real goals that all of
our franchises have, and I think we all have across
(33:46):
the industry right now, is how do we grow? And
you know, that was really great to see that it
was bringing in new players that had never played CfDS before.
So I think we consider that a success. You know,
we all continue to make those decisions individually on a
case by case basis. We are absolutely committed to having
(34:08):
launch exclusives on Xbox. You know, it's part of our
core promise, and we want to continue to bring our
games to more players on more devices going forward, and
we certainly have got a lot of experience with that
with things that have just historically been on multiplatforms for
so long.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I have just one more for you and closing, which
kind of goes off that you know. You know that
I straddled the TV and video game world, and one
thing we've been seeing a lot of recently is bundling
and bundling and streaming in a way that looks a
lot like cable. It looks a lot like cable always
BLUs so on. You know, from your side on the
(34:47):
gaming side, when you look at what gaming can do,
and you look at how you are looking to work
with Nintendo and with PlayStation in these new ways, and
what that means for platforms, if you see something similar
happening on the gaming side, with like walls breaking down
a little bit, and what that could mean, what you
think you would do and what you might never do.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Still, yeah, well, obviously I can't speak on behalf of
Sony or Nintendo, but I'll say in each case, we
just have great working relationships with the teams at Sony
and Nintendo, right. I mean again, our portfolio consists of
games that have shipped on those platforms you know, for
ten fifteen years, right, And that doesn't happen without a
(35:28):
great partnership with them, and so we've got a great
working relationship. I think that as you point out that
as gaming becomes a bigger part of pop culture, as
the number of gamers on the planet you know, hits
two billion, three billion and continues to grow, that it's
inevitable that we're going to see that content sort of
(35:48):
seeks to be everywhere right, and that we're going to
probably see some some blending across the sort of boundaries
and across the sort of differences that maybe have existed historically.
For us, it really comes down to maintaining that player
first focus, right. We want to be where the players are.
You know, a device the Xbox will always be core
(36:11):
to what we do. The console's foundational to what we do.
But you know, going all the way back to twenty sixteen,
twenty seventeen, when we started supporting shipping all of our
games day and date on PC, when we started branching
out into things like cloud streaming, which allows you to
really take your game anywhere, focusing on making sure we
get things right like cloud saves. You know, one of
the biggest sort of like just pieces of friction right
(36:34):
now is it's really possible to get yourself kind of
caught in a corner where you start a game on
one service and then you want to play the same game,
but you're on a different service and your save data
doesn't come over, and you're product It's just we want
to we're very committed to getting that all squared away.
Some of our games do it really well. In other places,
We've got some work to do, so I think what
we will, you know, see more of that going forward.
(36:57):
You know what the future holds for those trends, you know.
I don't I have that crystal ball. I do know
that we're going to continue to follow our fans, follow
our players where they want to be, and as gaming
grows to be something that is right there side by
side with more traditional entertainment like music and movies and TV,
we'll probably see some of the same things start to
(37:18):
happen in gaming that you've seen the last ten years
in linear media.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Matt, it was a pleasure having you today. I so
appreciate it. It was a great way to wrap up showcase.
So thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk and it's been great.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
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