Day 0 Update #537 - The Xbox Empire Strikes Back

In this episode of the Day 0 Update: We talk about the huge Xbox layoffs, Kotaku finally being freed from G/O Media's clutches, and EA shutting down Anthem's servers in early 2026. All this and more, up next!

Full show notes can be found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Welcome to Day 0 update for July6th, 2025.
I'm your host, Chris Emoji. I'm Brandon Perkins.
And I'm Jan Red Vic. And yeah, it has been, let's
say, a noteworthy week, I guess.Yep.
The Microsoft layoffs hit, and boy were they worse than I was
expecting. We'll get to that stuff here

(00:43):
later, but they're not the only company with issues.
We have 11 bit studios making a big mistake.
Leslie Benzies continues to makemistakes on his studios games.
We got some weird stuff going onsome other companies and yeah,

(01:05):
we'll get to that stuff here a little bit later.
But before we do that, we'll talk about what we've been
playing and I'll kick it off here as I have been playing more
Death Straining 2. I am now in Episode 3, but I
don't, I don't know how many there there are in this game,
but the second episode was just cutscenes basically like 1

(01:29):
little bit of gameplay. But yeah, I basically went
around to all the the different facilities in Mexico.
Then they give you one last job that is basically, oh, here's
some stuff for the baby Lou. You know, just head back and you

(01:51):
do that play. I've done a boss fight, which
was a bit messy in just the way that the what I remember the
boss fights from the first game being you're going to have all
this power all over the place and are usually doing something
to cause a lot of chaos. This one kind of love to just

(02:14):
spew crap at you and sucked up the the tar if you weren't able
to get on to something first. You know, a bunch of stuff like
that. So I kind of went in
underprepared. I didn't realize I was going to
need more guns and whatnot. So luckily there's stuff that

(02:36):
happens there where other peoplekind of are able to donate
things that go to other people there, blood bags and grenades
and some guns and such. That went pretty well.
After that you get your first vehicle.
So they give you a vehicle pretty quickly.

(02:57):
It's like a Tri motorcycle, 3 wheeled motorcycle.
I kind of let you carry a bit more stuff around and also when
they kind of just throw a bunch more stuff around the areas,
things that you want to take back to these different bases
and whatnot. So where I'm at is kind of

(03:21):
meeting up with the, or I'm about to meet up with the the
rest of Fragile's crew on her big like airship thing that we
have run into. And so yeah, that's about where
I'm at right now. I'm going to meet up all the the
other actors that are that are in this game are a bunch of them

(03:41):
I guess. So there's that.
Been enjoying that still. I got a copy of Rune Factory,
Guardians of Ozma in from GameFly.
I was able to start that up and yeah, that's been pretty good so
far. I think that might be the first
of that series that is in full 3D versus kind of being, you

(04:08):
know, plastic style top down kind of thing for for ADS or 3DS
or whatever kind of platforms those were on.
So the, the story here is that you are playing this character,
you know, you pick male or female forts and you're going to

(04:28):
wake up in this area in what's some amnesia about what you you
probably are. I assume you'll find that out at
some point. When you wake up in this
village, it's kind of at your feet a bit.
The guardian has disappeared. And immediately you start

(04:51):
helping out people and you kind of deal with some pretty basic
stuff. And then, you know, people start
showing up to do people. I think that's come from an
actual airship, Final Fantasy style airship that provides some

(05:13):
flavour. I guess they were trying to
fight this dragon, this evil dragon that shows up that you
kind of help them deal with. And in there you kind of find
out that's are these good and bad Dragons and you meet the

(05:34):
what is essentially a white dragon that you kind of met in a
dream, but they're in the form of like a goat looking
character. So you're kind of dealing with
that. So I assume at some points that
character will turn into their full dragon form.
But for now they're just like a weird like goat spirit that

(05:56):
hangs around. And so yeah, basically in the, I
assume the villages must all be named after the seasons because
they're we're in the spring season.
And so they're like, we're in the spring season.
So I'm in the spring village andthey kind of give you a section
of the the village that you can build stuff on and you kind of

(06:20):
learn how to do that stuff. And eventually you can assign
the people in your village to take care of things like like
wood, tend to the the garden, you know, select ORS and manage
shops and that kind of stuff. All your kind of basic stuff

(06:43):
you'd expect where I'm at some handful of days in right now
where they basically kind of opened up a bit where I have the
ability to kind of hang out withpeople.
You can chat with them, kind of build up your friendship meter
with them. Some characters have, you know,

(07:04):
an actual affection meter for romantic relationship type
stuff. There's male and female options
for that, although I have not been built building up that one
just yet. Mostly you talk to people a day,
you get a little bump on the theyou know the buddy meter.

(07:27):
I can do a hangout session, which is usually you picking a
topic from 4 random topics they give you and you're trying to
figure out like OK, which ones are is this character going to
like? And so generally if you know
anything about them that will make that easier.

(07:48):
I think I just opened up the ability to kind of invite them
to go out with me when I go out to the area, start fighting
enemies and collecting, you know, materials and whatnots.
So far I've not gotten the ability to, I've done that whole
area. There's a dungeon ish area that
has a bunch of enemies and a boss that you find out is one of

(08:09):
the villagers that's been missing that they're kind of
getting turned into demons at some point.
So I assume every so often somebody will disappear and
you'll have to go find out wherethey're at and deal with that.
But, you know, it's, it's a lot of that stuff you expect out of
these kind of games. The managing of the villagers

(08:33):
also involves things like payingthem.
So you if you want to get, you know, props going so that you
can sell that stuff and pay for people to do work and whatnots
and see what else there is. Yeah, I'm in the middle of

(08:53):
trying to build more buildings, but I don't have the the money
for it just yet. But yeah, there's so probably in
the early parts, but now I'm actually where, you know, time
actually passes. Yeah.
It's like the the chatter stuff with people where you're hanging
out and talk with them about thing that has time attached to

(09:15):
it. Some things might be like 10
minutes or 30 minutes if they'remore in depth kind of stuff.
So I'm going to keep dipping into that.
But yeah, this this seems like apretty good game on the switch
to interesting thing is there's like a top down view you can get
for the area that you can, you know, plant crops and put

(09:36):
buildings down and all that, that you can then can use the
the joy con as a mouse to do stuff there, which is kind of
neat. But also it's like it's only for
this one thing as far as I've seen.
But yeah, they have their own version of achievements in this.

(09:58):
A lot of yeah, collectible type stuff.
There's a kid that's obsessed with these frog statues, so he
wants to know whenever you see new ones.
So he shows up as an exclamationpoint on the mini map and I'm
always annoyed by that. You can get requests from people
though where I'm at the the two requests I have are for

(10:19):
vegetables I don't think I can get yet.
So hopefully they're not time limited or anything, but I think
the only things I can make rightnow are cabbage and what is the
other one? Turnips.
These two people I think want like tomatoes and lettuce or

(10:44):
something like that. Spinach maybe.
I was like, I don't know where the hell I'm going to get that.
Not even my shops have anything like that, even though the
restaurant that's run by one of my buddies has anything with
that. But yeah, this is one of those
games still enjoyable. So I'm looking forward to put

(11:05):
more time into it. But yeah, it's it.
It does everything you kind of expect out of this.
So on Switch to kind of runs pretty well and seems to do what
you want. So I'll be enjoying putting some
more time into that. And the last game I'm playing is
Super Mario Strikers 2 since that is on the the Switch

(11:28):
GameCube app now. And that is a game I never
played on the original GameCube.Just not one of those games I
was all that interested in, nor any of the reports to the the
Wii or the the sequel on the Switch one.
Just never bothered with any of that.

(11:51):
But I've been playing this a fair bit and, you know, it has
some similarities to things like, you know, Mario Kart,
whether you have cups to win, which is just a series of
matches you do against the othercharacters teams and a kind of

(12:11):
hilarious fashion. You have your main character and
then you have sidekicks. You pick one of the the four
types of sidekicks, I think it'sHammer Bro, Koopa, Alberto and a
Toad. And depending on which your main
character you're using the the side characters are all themed

(12:32):
after that. And so some of those can just
look real dumb and ugly. Like I, I did a tournament with
Donkey Kong and I think I pickedHammer Bros.
So they have shells that are literally brown and green, maybe
not in an appealing way. Kind of looks like like if you,

(12:55):
you know, mash those colors together would just look like
vomit. So, you know, it's kind of one
of those things with Peach. I had Bertos and they were just
pink. So I didn't even think about
the, the color thing until I sawlike Luigi had some and they
were green. I was like, OK, this is a little
weird. And so yeah, you're just

(13:16):
completing cups and playing on the rookie difficulty, so it's
not been too hard. There's like an end game
achievement system a bit where it's just like a score this many
goals. You get the bronze version of
that trophy, you know, and then there's a milestones for silver

(13:38):
and gold for that stuff. Like there's at least one
character to unlock, you know, unlocks more cups as you beat
the previous ones and all that. So yeah, it's kind of one of
those that controls pretty well.Though I don't know if my setup
or the some of the input latencythat is in errant to the the

(14:00):
GameCube app right now is makingsome of the controls a little
weird where I'm kind of just passed to another character and
end up passing twice or trying to pass to set up a a good shot.
And you know, hitting A to pass and then be right after it to

(14:20):
set up a pass and shoot and justkicking it in or just seems to
ignore button presses. There's been some of that, so I
don't know where that's necessarily coming from.
But yeah, that's been a little frustrating.
But being on the rookie difficulty is not a huge issue,
but I'm sure we'll be more as I play through the higher

(14:45):
difficulty stuff. But yeah, that's a game that
holds up pretty well. Yeah, back like the the arenas
look pretty nice, but the the crowds are all just, you know,
flat images that are bouncing upand down.
So there's a lot of extra detailthat is not that you might

(15:06):
expect from that are probably inthe modern versions of this
game. But this one, the arenas look
nice, but the crowds don't basically.
But yeah, that's that's been funand that's been pretty much what
I've been doing. So how about you, Brandon?
Yeah, well, As for me, I have mostly, most of my gaming time

(15:31):
has been taken up with Deus Ex. I have been playing a lot of
Shotgun King on my PC because that game is incredibly
addictive and it has ways of drawing me back in just very
easily. But Deus Ex has been sort of my
primary gaming and I am honestlyabsolutely shocked at how well

(15:54):
that game actually holds up. Like that game originally came
out in what, like 1999, two, 1000, something like that.
That game is like 25 years old and yet somehow it's still a lot
of fun and it's still, you know,incredibly engaging.
It can be vexing at times. It it's sometimes it there are

(16:19):
parts of it where it definitely shows its age.
And there are also parts of it where it shows how like so much
of it would be, would you know, just still stands out and still
kind of just astonishes me. I'm over like halfway through it
now. We've recently left Hong Kong.

(16:40):
We're now in Paris. And the one thing about that
game I will say that's also really fascinating to me is the
the version that I'm playing is on the PS-5.
It's the PS2 version, which was Deus Ex the conspiracy.
They actually like managed to take the original game and like

(17:00):
pretty easily, like adapt it to a console in a way that's
honestly very easy to to figure out and is very intuitive and
not being really, you know, not being opaque, like say a certain

(17:22):
system. Sure, true.
But yeah, there. I will say though, the one thing
about that game is once you get through get through it a good
deal, the the parts of the plot can start getting really
uncomfortable. Because the whole sort of thing

(17:42):
about Deus Ex is that it's got alot of like conspiracy theory
stuff thrown in it. And considering, you know, the
last 10 years, it's just like, oh, wow, this is starting to get
uncomfortable. But out of that, damn, the game
is so damn good. And I highly recommend it.

(18:04):
It's it's on PS plus for premiumusers.
And yeah, it's definitely fun. But the only other thing I've
been playing is a, a game that was sort of a friend of mine,
you know, sort of pointed me towards it's, it's still an
early access. It's a game that the friend of
mine said you, if you're loving Deus Ex, but you want it to go

(18:26):
more hard in on like the cyberpunk stuff, you're gonna
like this one. It's called Parapetia.
And it's essentially like he sold it to me.
Like imagine Battle Angel Alita but in the middle of post Soviet
Poland. And I was like, all right, you
sold it to me. And it basically it starts off a

(18:48):
lot like what Battle Angel Alitais.
You're essentially like a draw, an automaton or a drone or some
sort of robot individual who wakes up in the middle of a,
what appears to be a junkyard inlike the middle like this
warehouse. And you run into this guy who's

(19:08):
a basically, he's a scrapper whomakes a living, you know,
scrapping and reselling, you know, old tech parts and stuff,
especially for cyborgs. And he basically says, OK, you
know what, I restored you. You ended up being kind of a,

(19:28):
you know, kind of a loss for me,but you know what, I like you.
So I tell you what, I'm going togive you a piece and I'm going
to give you this extra ability that I can give to you.
Because much like with Deus Ex, you've got, you know, the Deus
Ex with a little bit of fallout.You've got all of these, like,
additional cybernetic enhancements that can make you

(19:52):
go faster, jump higher, give younight vision, that kind of
thing. And he's like, OK, and I want
you to go over to this place. They got this old, like, Soviet
piece that I need for a job. And it's worth a lot if you can
get me to it. If you can get that thing to me,
I can pay you handsomely. And when you go out of this

(20:14):
place and you start looking around, you realize that this is
not quite post Soviet Poland as you're imagining it.
Basically, this is a 1990s wherethe the Cold War is still very
much ongoing. Poland is technically
independent. It's called the Polish

(20:34):
Solidarity Republic, named after, you know, the Solidarity
trade union that ended up toppling the old communist
government. But the Soviet Union is still
around. It's called the Second Union
now. And basically you're in an area
that's called the disputed zone,which is like this kind of like
a DMZ that's like in between Poland and the Soviet Union

(20:59):
where there's essentially just sort of lawlessness and both
sides. There's kind of trying to trying
to slowly get get control over it bit by bit.
And so you've got all these various factions, including, you
know, factions that are with thePolish, factions that are with
the Soviets. You've got some independent

(21:19):
factions. There's like this weird
religious cult that's also running around.
It has like a very strong, like kind of greedy, grimy sort of
cyberpunk anime influence too. It's not, it doesn't really like
have like big fan service or anything like the Citadel does,
but it's it's still kind of there, but you kind of have to

(21:42):
look for it. The game's still currently in
early access, but it's it's honestly really enjoyable.
I will say though, considering you know, the game is still in
early access and everything, youknow, some of the controls are
kind of a little wonky and you're going to have to like

(22:02):
kind of get used to them and you're going to like to have to
use like hotkeys and stuff for alot of it, especially when it
comes to using like getting yourabilities started and
everything. It's especially a it, it is
fortunately you can kind of use like a hybrid with like both
keyboard and controller, which I've been sort of using.

(22:26):
But yeah, that's basically what I've been playing.
So, Daniel, what about you? Yeah, for me, I've been on
holiday for a little bit, so I've I've had some more time to
play some stuff. The main thing that I finished
was a roughy in the Riverside. As I mentioned, I was like the
main game that I was playing last week.

(22:46):
And yeah, I finally rolled through credits and there is a
lot in that game. It is really easy to get
overwhelmed by the amount of collectibles that there are to
find. But the main thing that I really
like about it is that, you know,the golden path to go through
things is pretty easy to follow.The main thing that I don't like
is that while you do have a hub world and it's really easy to

(23:09):
find yours, to find your way from getting to point A to point
B, the hard thing is that there's no means of fast travel.
And you know, a lot of the time will be spent like actually
going from that point to that point.
And it's a little annoying in that regard.
I know what I talked about at last.
I said that the main thing that will, you know, make or break

(23:30):
the game or make the make, make or break the experience is
people's propensity to solve puzzles.
And the main the the main puzzles in this game are going
to be with the games swap mechanic.
So you have the ability to change one piece of the
environment to that same piece. An example I I I love to give is
there's a waterfall. If you use a swap mechanic on

(23:53):
climbable vines, you can go ahead and change that waterfall
to vines. Another thing that I did was I
changed an ocean to lava, which burned away boxes and also
melted steel that I can use as platforms.
And then eventually, like when when everything turns back into
water, you, you essentially havenew islands to climb on top of.

(24:15):
So that was all well and good. The main, the main way this game
really hits is when you actuallyfinally fall into the game's
pull and loop. So the main thing here is that
the world score is pretty much stolen by this Rubik's Cube.
And the, the, the main way to get everything back is to find
these golden letters, which are kind of like the Hollywood sign,

(24:39):
except it says Riverside. So like, those are like the main
things you're going to be looking for in this world.
And, you know, the, the main wayyou do that is by following all
of these sort of open world levels.
By open world, I mean, it's pretty similar to what you'll
see in Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie.
You know, you can enroll as you can enroll and explore as much
as you want, but at the same time, like they're all pretty

(25:01):
self-contained. And the main thing is that
you're going to be solving quests in the middle of these
levels in order to, you know, earn these items.
So very similar to Banjo Kazooiein that regard, which I think is
what they're trying to follow through here.
But yeah, the, the, the main thing that I wasn't really
liking was that there just weren't enough platforming
segments for me. And then eventually the swap

(25:24):
mechanic really wore out. It wore out its welcome.
The main thing that I did like though, is that once you get to,
you know, the, I don't want to call them dungeons.
They're, they're more like levels, but each of them really
feels very varied. The first one kind of has you go
through a platforming segment, whereas the second one is more
of like stealth where you want to avoid like certain enemies

(25:46):
seeing you. And at the same time, you also
want to be able to have a sense of comprehension because there
is one puzzle where you have to know what color flowers this
funeral caretaker likes, and youwant to be able to change those
flowers to the right color. And there is no real way that
the game actually takes notes for you.
So it's something that you really have to remember.

(26:07):
And like. The thing that'll suck is if you
put the game away, come back at that point and not know what
you're doing. You know, there really aren't
that many characters to talk to talk to.
So it would be tough to really if just find your way in, in, in
in doing all of that. The other weird thing is that
the game sort of ends in a in a,in a cliffhanger.

(26:29):
And you know, obviously with with this being an indie game,
like there, there, there's no guarantee that a sequel will
happen, especially with the way the industry was.
But yeah, there, there definitely is, you know, a nice
bit of charm to this game. I will say that I liked this
game a whole lot better than theoriginal release of ukulele,
which is like saying a lot because Ukulele was supposed to
be the the spiritual sequel to Banjo Kazooie, and I think like

(26:54):
this is closer in that regard. But yeah, I definitely enjoyed
my time with roughly in the Riverside.
The game is like rather short ataround 8 hours.
And if you want to find everything, it can probably
double that and take it a 15. But yeah, it's a good time.
And the cool thing is I think the games only 20 bucks.
So, you know, if you want to go ahead and just throw to take a
rabbit out of the hat, it's, it's definitely worth a try.

(27:17):
After that, I played a little bit of Astrobot.
I don't know why I did. I just went ahead and browse my
PlayStation collection and I waslike, you know what?
I never played Astrobot since I originally beat it.
And yeah, like you now, now we have all of these speed and
running worlds in addition to the Christmas level that came up
during the holidays last year. And I played a little bit of

(27:38):
the, of the holiday level and itmade me realize, yeah, it's,
it's been so long since I've played this game that I don't
remember what a lot of the powerups do.
So I didn't ultimately, you know, find all of the
collectibles in that level, but I definitely had time and
remember just how responsive everything was.
And yeah, so I, I jump, I jump back into the time attack mode

(28:00):
and I had a lot of fun. I, I went through the, the level
where you have to use the, the ice mechanic in order to build
new platforms and get to the end.
And I was like, cool. The, the, the main thing is
it's, it's, it's very similar toneon white where you know, you
want to be able to get to the end at the same time, like it's
a time attack and maybe you're not going to be able to compete

(28:22):
with the world, but you'll be able to, you know, compete with
people on your on your friends list.
And then like I saw Chris on there.
So I was like, cool, I want to see how, how fast I can beat
this level. And like once I was finally able
to like get a good time over mobile.
All right, I'm I'm I'm done for the day.
So yeah, I haven't tried the other levels in that just
because like, you know, once youreally like try to study the

(28:45):
layout of one level, like you really only want to play that
one. So that was that.
That was about it there. I don't know when I'll go back
to it, but it's definitely a lotof fun, especially like when
when you really want to get yourcompetitive juices going.
Like I see myself really enjoying Astrobot's time of
attack versus something like Sonic's where you know you're
you don't really have much control of what's going to

(29:06):
happen. And while you do, it's like it's
just too fast for anything. But yeah, Astrobot was
definitely fun in that regard. In the meantime, I'm just
bidding time for other releases.So I've decided to just jump
into stuff that I've felt interested in.
Xbox actually gave us a code forFantasy Life.
I, the girl who steals time. This game came out maybe a month

(29:27):
or two ago and I did not know who to contact to get a review
code. So it was cool that Xbox just
ended up giving me one. And yeah, I didn't, I didn't
dive too much into it yet. I'm like 30 minutes in.
The main thing I did was I, I built my character and I was
thrown onto the island for the first time and there is a little

(29:47):
bit of a plot here. So it is pretty cool to see.
But it looks like a lot of what I'll be doing is Animal Crossing
esque quests, if you want to call them or just various chores
before things move on. But yeah, I'm I'm definitely
enjoying the vibe so far. It is very level 5.
I haven't played a game that sort of puts things in front of

(30:08):
you like this since you know, Kuni 2, which, you know, I kind
of gave a mixed review too, but I definitely saw the charm and
that and I'm also seeing a charmin this release too.
So eventually I hope to hop backin.
But the main game that I've beenplaying is Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D
Remake. I have had this game since
launched last year, but it also came out late in the year.
And the reason why I never dove into it was because I had

(30:31):
upgraded my PS-5 to a 30th Anniversary PS-5 Slim and I
didn't realize that it didn't come with a disk drive.
So it took forever to get a diskdrive and by the time I finally
got one, it was already, you know, 2025.
So I've been hopping in other things and yeah, Dragon Quest 3
HD 2D remake is, I don't know ifit's completely the game that I

(30:52):
remember, but I'm definitely having fun with it.
At the same time, I don't know if like any of you guys played
it or even played the older 1 and in a recent time, but it's
harder than I remember Harder inthe sense where I'm going into
more random battles than I wouldexpect and at the same time like
they're kicking my ass. Even if I decide to you to to

(31:16):
turn to turn on the the automatic mode where the the
game pretty much plays itself asas smart as possible, like I
still die. I don't know if I'm not grinding
enough because I haven't run away from any battles.
So the fact that I'm struggling this much is a little
questionable. So I don't know if there's
actually a difficulty tuner thatI can hop into.

(31:38):
I'll probably do that just because like I want to be able
to chill. I don't want to be, I don't want
to be yelling at myself when I'mplaying Dragon Quest and yeah, I
want to be able to finish this game before 1 and 2 comes out,
you know, later in the season. So yeah, definitely enjoying
that. I'm about, I want to say 4 hours
in, I'm at the pyramid and I heard the pyramid also gets a
whole lot harder, so we'll see about that.

(32:00):
But yeah, I'm definitely enjoying my time with all that
and I'm looking forward to Tony Hawk next week.
All right. All right, so yeah, let's get to
some news. And ironically, our first news
is the Game Pass stuff that's being added for this week, which
just feels a little silly to talk about concerning what the
last part of the show is going to be.
But if you still have Game Pass and still want to keep it,

(32:24):
there's going to be some games to check out.
So let's get to that. Let's see here the stuff that's
available now. There is, let's see, Little
Nightmares 2 for Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game
Pass Standard. So yeah, you can check out the
second of that series. I assume the first must be on

(32:48):
there, but yeah, that's when youcan check out.
Let's see. Also available is Rise of the
Tomb Raider. This is a return, you know, the
second of the the reboot trilogy.
That's a pretty good game. So that's one you can check out.
Yep, stuff that's available. Let's see yeah, there's three

(33:11):
more here that are available now.
Legend of Mana for Game Pass standard, Charles of Mana for
game Pass Standard. So if you don't have ultimates,
that's available in the the cheaper tiers now and let's see
also available here Ultimate Chicken horse, Game pass,
ultimate piece of game pass and Game Pass standard.

(33:32):
That's one of those competitive Co-op games where essentially
you are a variety of animal characters who are given each
round a piece of level or some destructive thing to use to
build out ways to get around this level to the goal.

(33:57):
If everybody gets there safely, nobody gets a point.
But if somebody dies, everybody that survives gets a point.
So it's kind of one of those games where you want to trick
people up. Trick people up, but don't not
be too tricky so that everybody dies.
Otherwise, nobody gets a point. It's one of those kind of

(34:19):
chaotic things where, Oh yeah, you can learn which of your
friends are not trusty trustworthy because they're the
ones that always want to destroyand fuck everybody else over.
So there you go for that. That's one of those good games.
They got a sequel coming, I think at some point.
I'm trying to see if I can find the name for it.

(34:42):
Ultimate Sheep Raccoon. Yeah, that'll be out later this
year it seems like. Yep.
And I think that's more racing focused versus a platformer
thing. Yeah.
But stuff coming out in the nearfuture on the 8th, on Tuesday,
The Ascent returns to Game Pass.So we have Game Pass Ultimate,

(35:05):
piece of Game Pass and Game Passstandard.
That's the cyberpunk action RPG dual stick shooter kind of
thing. Basically Diablo with guns.
Yeah, pretty good game, very rough around the edges.
I think maybe they polished it since the the early version I
played. Let's see on the 9th Menami

(35:27):
Lane. This is Yeah, one of those cozy
management SIM games that I haveon Steam that is really good.
This beyond Game Pass, Ultimate PC Game Pass.
Basically you are building out the businesses that will be
businesses homes you'll be putting on just one St. as like

(35:51):
a Japanese in area. I guess you're basically trying
to figure out like, OK, we need,you know, a food place, you
know, shop, maybe a place to hang out, a spa or something,
and some houses for people that go shopping and everyday people.

(36:14):
We'll go spend that money, but also be some stuff that gets
dropped that'll get you extra either money or points or
something. Then you can start trying to
upgrade businesses and all that.You can set up colors of the
build of the buildings to try toget uniform or have something

(36:36):
different. Each one.
You're just trying to satisfy, Ithink up to three goals that
you're given for that particularchallenge, and there's like five
of those. So it's not something that
requires a ton of time. But yeah, this is like a game
that's goes on, I think it's like 5 bucks on Steam normally.

(37:00):
So it's not exactly an expensivegame, but it's one of those nice
chill games. And eventually, or you might
unlock it right away, but there was like an endless mode that
will have more wild stuff that can change everyday.
Like other types of businesses might do better or you may get

(37:21):
more people or more young peopleas a concept of like young
people, like certain kinds of businesses and old people, you
know, wants spas and whatnot, that kind of stuff.
So that's a nice little game. So that'll be on console and PC.
So they they must be releasing console version then.
OK, So yeah, that's one to checkout if you like, you know, your,

(37:48):
you know, city builder kind of thing.
But lose, you know, you lose pretty quickly once it starts to
grow. This is pretty manageable on
that front. So that's Wednesday and on
Friday I believe will be Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4.
I'll be on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, the

(38:13):
long-awaited collection of Tony Hawks 3 and 4.
The big change they made is the the open maps of Tony Hawks Pro
Skater 4 have been aired down tobeing suited for the the two
minutes timer thing that's the the first three games did.

(38:35):
And so you kind of lose the the more exploration and challenge
focused stuff there. But they, I assume, put a lot of
those challenges as like the toomany things you do.
So yeah, I'm curious to see how that stuff does.
But yeah, have not been like eager to preorder this or

(38:56):
anything because it's that kind of change just doesn't make me
excited for this as I'd rather have, you know, the your
original experience preserved and upgraded as needed.
But losing that is kind of like losing.
What was interesting about that fourth game is that they kind of

(39:18):
changed up the formula a bit andthen that kind of worked into
thought one and two and the restof the games in the franchise.
So yeah, there's that. I guess you go to the deluxe
edition or the just pay for the upgrade for the deluxe edition.

(39:40):
Now you can start playing it on Tuesday. 3 days early was 20
bucks. Yeah boy, that's a lot of money
just for not owning the game just to play it early.
Might as well just buy the game at that point.
Yeah, let's see the last one here.
July 15th or Game Pass Ultimate piece of Game Pass and Game Pass

(40:02):
standard high on knife returns. So if you missed it the first
time around, you can see the game that they're making a
sequel for. It's a fine game.
Yeah. Very much that kind of Rick and
Morty humor. But what if your guns yell at
you? That looks like that is pretty
much it here. Not too much, but a few nice

(40:26):
things here. So yeah, anything you're
interested in, Brandon? Well, the ascent obviously is a
game I would definitely recommend if you're a person who
wants a more like sci-fi versionof Diablo with guns.
Let's see trials of mana. You know, if that's something

(40:48):
you, you know, that's a pretty good mana game you want to play
that Legend of Mana is also there.
That that's about it. Obviously you got high on life,
but that game irritated the fuckout of me.
So let's see. Yeah, that's about it for me.

(41:08):
How about you, Dan? Yeah, for me, it's easily Tony
Hawk. I've been looking forward to
that for a while, primarily because, you know, 1 and 2 ended
up being so awesome. And Iron Galaxy did a solid job
with the, with the PC versions. And then the main thing was I
never actually got to play 3 and4.

(41:29):
So, you know, I'm looking forward to finally getting a
chance to do that. I actually signed up for the
Taco Bell demo that to play a couple of levels and I and I
definitely had fun with it. I am hoping, though, that you're
able to change up the controls primarily because when I was
really into the series, I actually put it on the Gameboy
Advance and that version was actually really, really good and

(41:52):
so good to the point where I actually prefer those controls.
So yeah, I don't know if that can happen, but you know, either
way, like that's easily going tobe tops for me.
Although I I plan on playing it on PlayStation.
OK, so yeah, real. Quickly though, Monomial Lane
also looks interesting. I love cozy games, but I also
don't really like management Sims, so I don't know.

(42:13):
I might try this for a few minutes to see how it flows.
But aside from that I'm I'm justreally liking the art style.
But As for the rest of the stuffthat's being offered here, I've
either already played it or justdon't really care.
I'm not much for the Ascent Highon Life.
I'm also in Brandon's corner of it being really annoying and
that's partly why I didn't finish it.

(42:34):
And yeah, those manic games are both actually good.
Yeah, yeah, Menomine Lane is pretty low key on the the
management stuff. It's I think the the missions I
did, you're literally managing like 6 or 7 buildings.
That's about it. It's nothing too complicated.
It's not like a SIM City or anything.

(42:54):
Yeah. But yeah, there you go.
Yeah, as we talked about last week, System Shock 225th
anniversary remaster got delayedon consoles to some point in the
first half of July and we found out pretty quickly it's July
10th, so. Yep, which is Thursday, so.

(43:16):
Yeah, that'll be out pretty soon.
So you can finally see if the the UI has been improved at all,
at least for controllers. So yeah, there you go.
Let's see. Next up here we got a bit of a
surprising announcement here held Divers 2 is coming to Xbox

(43:40):
Series X&S on August 26th as thethe hugely successful game on
PS-5 and PC is moving over. This will be, I think, Sony's
first published game on the Xboxas MLB was the one handling
publishing duties on and will beThe Show.

(44:01):
And so, yeah, I imagine this is very much anything that
Arrowhead wanted to push for. And Sony seems cool with that
because they would like people on there to buy it and spend a
lot of money. So they're pretty up for that
when the IT makes sense. And this seems like one that
makes sense. Yeah.

(44:22):
Those people got a lot to catch up on now.
Yep. Oh yeah.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to beinterested in seeing like how
much this actually grows their user base.
I don't know if Tall Divers is in the middle of a Lola right
now, but obviously like we've seen the good and the bad with
it and it definitely could use the boost no matter where it's
coming from. The other thing that's rather

(44:44):
complicated is that this also comes out the same day as the as
the as Gears of War Reloaded. So and that one's obviously
coming out on PC, Series X and PlayStation.
So I'm wondering how it all justkind of lies with each other.
But either way, you know, putting a game on more platforms
is always a good thing. Yeah, hell, Divers does pretty
well most days. I'm trying to check here.

(45:06):
Yeah, it's 19th on the Steam most playlist, peaking at 58,000
for today on Steam alone. And so I would assume that's a
pretty good amount of people on PlayStation as well.
And so yeah, it's a game that's doing just fine.

(45:27):
See, I don't I don't expect Xboxto be rivaling PC or PlayStation
on this for players, but should be just fine.
Yeah, definitely. Because like that game is, is
like if, if, if hell divers too,if any is taught people
anything, it's that one of the best things that a game designer

(45:50):
do is to step back and let players make their own fun.
And that's part of what hell hell divers like ongoing appeal
is, is it's got just enough in it that that you can literally
like just the the developers arelike, OK, we're going to step
back and we're going to let you guys play with the blocks and

(46:11):
people have been playing with the blocks.
Yeah, yeah. As people going to test out all
the the systems and how that stuff works.
Also, remember, friendly fire isvery much in play.
Oh yeah. In fact, it's very much just
part of the experience. Yep.

(46:32):
Yeah, it's like a imagine Starship Troopers if a Wiley
Coyote decided to join up. That's kind of a very, that's
very much the the effect of playing that game, just having
random shit blowing up and it's like, damn it.
And like not only blowing up, but like sending you a good

(46:52):
distance into the air. Yep.
So yeah, there's that's, that'llbe interesting to see.
And yeah, the the catch with that game is it is cross play.
So you can play against or with people from the other platforms.
But Yep, there's no cross progression.
So progress you made on PlayStation or PC will not carry

(47:15):
over to Xbox, which can be a deterrence that would be nice to
have. But I imagine that makes it just
more appealing for people that either want to start over or are
just fresh to the experience. So yeah, there you go.

(47:37):
And Next up here, EA is bringingsomething back as they tried to
do NBA Live games for much of the last 10 years and mostly
didn't work either. The games are terrible, though.
The the last couple in like 2018and 2019 we're pretty good, if
not very good. But by then, the 2K games had a

(48:02):
stranglehold on the market, and even selling NBA Live for much
cheaper than 2K was not appealing to people, even
without, you know, a big focus on microtransactions or anything
like that. Just didn't go through.
But it seems like with the success of college football

(48:23):
doing very well, they have teased that they are bringing
their March Madness series back,tweeting out bring the Madness,
let's run it back with a pictureof a basketball similar to what
they did for college football back in the day.
So I assume this means likely wewon't see anything for a few

(48:45):
years at least as they kind of build up the team and do all
your pre production stuff and all that.
So yeah, they yeah, they still won't or will be involved in
this as a licensing partner, butit's not going to be called NCAA
basketball. So might just be EA Sports

(49:06):
college basketball. And seems like it probably won't
be out until 2028. So yeah, a few more years of
waiting for that, but that'll beinteresting to see because
college basketball has changed greatly since I think the last
time anybody really did any of those games.
Yeah, like what? When was their last college foot

(49:27):
their college basketball game? Let me see.
I think it's NCAA basketball 10.All right.
They had Blake Griffin on the cover, who's no longer in the
league, or at least I don't think he is.
What year did that come out that.
'D be 2009 I think. Oh wow, that that that has been

(49:48):
a while. Damn, that's like, that's almost
20 years. Damn.
Yeah, yeah, Blake Griffin was inthere, as you know, when he was
on Oklahoma and became the, I believe the number pick for
that's. And yeah, they kind of stopped
because it generally just didn'tsell well, especially not as

(50:10):
well as the NBA Live games. I think 2K stopped around the
same time for that's the games are always pretty good.
But yeah, you didn't have licensing for the players.
I don't know that they even had the ability to customize that

(50:30):
stuff as easily as they had for college football.
And yeah, the the whole thing here since then is that the one
and done rule has become big. So a lot of the the best players
play for just one season and move on.
Often the number one picks end up doing that if they aren't

(50:53):
playing overseas in Europe or wherever and end up skipping
that process entirely. So kind of one of those things
of the turnover on this for players is going to be a pretty
interesting to see how they handle that stuff because
transfers are as big of a deal in basketball as they are in

(51:13):
football. But obviously there's less space
or less roster spots for the thepeople there.
So, you know, if you're good enough to be demanding big, you
know, NIL contracts and transferring all, you're
probably good enough to get intothe the draft in a reasonable

(51:36):
spot. But yeah, Foster's balls in a
weird place less or even weirderthan college football has been
because at least their players stay at least three years, at
least get some continuity, even if they transfer to other
programs a lot. But yeah, so this will be
interesting to see how this all goes.

(51:57):
And yeah, what how they deal with the way that college
basketball works these days. You kind of get to the draft.
You have like no clue who most of the players are if you don't
pay attention to every single game.
Yeah, we're in a really interesting spot with basketball
in the video game industry. Like, you know, we all know that

(52:19):
EA Sports pretty much dominates the football landscape with both
Madden and now college football coming back.
And then with basketball, it's the other way around. 2K sports
absolutely dominates it. With NBA2K, as soon as they had
that Jordan year, the writing was on the wall.
I think the last NBA Live was 19.
And then, you know, we just talked about the NCAA game

(52:44):
season to exist way earlier thanthat.
I believe 2010, two, 1009, you guys just said.
And yeah, like you're looking atthe sports landscape now, the
NBA is starting to go down in viewership, while the NCAA,
thanks to call the troops and not call troops, honestly,
thanks to March Madness, has definitely seen unprecedented

(53:06):
levels of success and viewership.
And I think a lot of that can beattributed to fantasy sports and
gambling. But that's a totally, that's a
totally different argument to make at this point in time.
But yeah, it's definitely an interesting move from EA,
primarily because of the fact that they're they've stayed away
from basketball ever since NBA Elite was done and then not

(53:28):
released. And yeah, they have good reason
to do that because 2K dominates the landscape.
But at the same time, seeing what they were able to do with
college football might mean theymight be able to replicate some
of that success with NCAA or whatever they want to call it.
And this could work because while NBA Live, you know, lost
2K, at the end of the day, it wasn't a bad game.

(53:48):
There was never a point in time where I thought NBA Live was
bad. And this could be a way for it
to not really, you know, not really be a Segway to having NBA
Live come back. But, you know, definitely put
basketball back in some sort of way with EA Sports.
And, you know, the way they handled things with the various
college football recruits and students and luxury deals,

(54:12):
definitely, you know, was definitely something that's
something to take note of. And yeah, they can definitely do
the same thing with basketball. I don't know how the money would
work. And obviously, they're avoiding
the NCAA for a reason. They're avoiding most sports
leagues for a reason. And yeah, like, this is
definitely going to be. It'll be interesting seeing how
this progresses. Obviously, this will take time.

(54:34):
When we first heard about college football coming back, it
took like, an extra three years.I'm pretty sure it would be
basketball, if not harder. Yeah.
So, yeah, that looks neat. Be curious to see how that turns
out. So yeah, that's the last of the,
like, new game announcements here.

(54:56):
A lot of the rest of this is industry news.
First up, we finally found out that a Nintendo is essentially
confirmed that the Mario Super Mario Odyssey team is the one
working on Donkey Kong Bonanza. But they're not talking specific
names like who on that team which people are taking.

(55:16):
It's like, oh, there's not goingto be a Mario game anytime soon,
which is like one. Nintendo kind of works in such a
way that they can easily have other teams working on games at
the same time. Mario Odyssey team doesn't have
to be the only team working on Mario games as they opt in art.
They don't think Super Mario Wonder was was that team.

(55:42):
But yeah, this not a huge surprise because the original
trailer for this definitely had those vibes of the style and the
the freedom of sorts that the the Donkey Kong games generally
do not have in them and that Mario Odyssey had compared to
even the the previous big Mario games.

(56:05):
So yeah, nice to see some actualconfirmation said just being why
don't you look at the credits and deal with it then?
So yeah, that's. Nice.
Yeah, I know it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that this
team worked on it. But, you know, as Chris said,
it's like, it's weird since they've gone on to that policy

(56:26):
of not announcing until, like, we reached the game's credits.
But at the same time, typically for a lot of Nintendo's bigger
releases, they did go ahead and,you know, talk.
Yeah. Either way, looking forward to
this one. Oh yeah.
Honestly, anybody who watched the trailer is like, yeah, the
Odyssey team is definitely involved in this somewhere.

(56:48):
Like it it was, it's it's like there's just so many little
hints here and there. It's like, Yep, it's the, it's
them. Yeah, so yeah, there's that.
The other Nintendo news is that they posted a mysterious message
on the Canadian Nintendo websites basically saying let me

(57:14):
see here. Yeah, the brief announcement
here pricing for the original Nintendo Switch family of
systems and products in Canada will be will change based on
market conditions is included Nintendo Switch OLED model,
Nintendo Switch, Nintendo SwitchLite physical and digital
Nintendo Switch games and Nintendo Switch accessories.

(57:36):
Other Nintendo products including Amiibo Nintendo Switch
Online memberships will also experience price changes.
Please note the pricing change does not apply to the Nintendo
Switch 2 system accessories or software.
And so they say they will share specific changes on August 1st.
So that'll be something to watchout for in less than a month

(57:59):
here and see what this weird move to increase the prices of.
You know, I don't know that theyhave too many of the original
switches at this point. Those have even been updated a
bit with a better battery life in that.
But a system that is essentially8 years old at this point

(58:21):
getting a price increase as the sequel system comes out.
There's a pretty, you know, new move.
Nobody's really done that before, I don't believe.
And yeah, obviously the the economy stuff is certainly a big
factor, but it's kind of wild tosee this thing happen.

(58:42):
So if you are in need of a switch, I guess in Canada you
better be buying one soon. Yeah.
It's certainly not getting cheaper or else they would have
done it right away. Oh yeah, yeah, tariffs.
Yeah. It's a bitch.
Yeah, so yeah, that's that's weird, but let's see here.

(59:09):
Yeah, the Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds is losing their
three person leadership team in weird circumstances as Crafton
sort of announced this whole thing.
Yeah, saying that the the game developer Charlie Cleveland,
technical director Max McGuire and the CEO Ted Gill have all

(59:33):
exited the studio effective immediately, which is not
typically how things go. Usually would announce it
themselves if they're leaving for their own reasons.
So it sort of gives the air of like, oh, the crap did not like
something they did and got rid of them.
They have the the new CEO, SteveA postsis has been brought in as

(59:58):
the new CEO. He was running the what's the
other studio, the one that just did clips of protocol is that
one of the top people there, which is quality wise not great,
but also who knows they're working on Subnautica 2.

(01:00:21):
That's. Coming to Early Access later
this year. Yep.
So something there must have happened that's Crafton did not
like unless they had some argument with the the three
leaders and picked them out. I'd be curious to see more on

(01:00:41):
what this is. But yeah, this is some strange
news pursue that's generally done cool work up until now.
So yeah, there you go. Just some weird industry news.
Let me see here. Next up.

(01:01:03):
Yeah, Leslie Benzies, head of Build a Rocket Boy, who just
released Mind's Eye to probably the worst reception I think a
game has had. Probably this year.
Cyberpunk. Yeah, definitely worst reception
this year. Yeah, just a game that clearly

(01:01:25):
was not ready for launch, but just.
Still very unfinished, yeah? So, yeah, the, we've heard from
one of the other at the studio that was very much like, oh, we
think they're people being paid to try to undermine this this
game's reception and all that. And even the IO Interactive's

(01:01:48):
publisher head was like, no, I don't believe that's a real
thing. But apparently as a report from
IGN who had two people that wereat this meeting that Leslie
Benzies had with the the rest ofthe developers here a few weeks

(01:02:08):
after launch, somehow waited that long to address people.
Yep. About this after they've laid
off, I think the the current number is about 300 people that
are looking to lay off saying that so they're present at the
meeting present at the meeting with Benzies who claimed that
the former racist of that bill rocket boy would recover from

(01:02:30):
the disastrous mines I launch. I guess they're going to try to
relaunch it. He also insisted that the studio
would relaunch the trouble game.So exactly what that means isn't
specified. And yet most curious thing is
that he allegedly claimed that the struggles of mine's eye and
a studio could partially be blamed on internal and external

(01:02:51):
saboteurs. Which is like, boy, you think
people have some weird stake in this game that's I don't think
exists at all. There's I don't think there's
any reason anybody inside the studio want to tank this game
intentionally considering much of the the team is being laid

(01:03:14):
off, much less external people that can recognize the the signs
of this game was not going to come together most likely with
the the way that they weren't marketing the game or showing it
off and in sort of substantial fashion that showed that they
had confidence in the game's success.

(01:03:35):
So this sabotage thing is so weird and kind of just funny at
this point. So yeah, I'm curious to see what
a re launched version of this game looks like, especially now
they have far fewer people than they had before.

(01:03:57):
So yeah, this just more weirdness happening with Mine's
Eye and Little Rocket Boy and Leslie Benzies kind of just one
off the deep end. Yeah.
Yeah, it's all just bizarre. You know, obviously with the
game coming out a few weeks ago,like, nobody really expects to
just release a crap game. Like, you know, you're going to

(01:04:20):
be taking pictures with all yourstaff and being excited for it
and, you know, your leadership goes, goes and does this when
he's already done it in previousweeks and has looked weird
publicly several times. So yeah, I think that's good
that that guy has got to be checked out, but it's definitely
a weird situation. Very much so.

(01:04:42):
Yeah, he's made his money, so hedoesn't really have that much at
stake on other than making more money.
But a guy that's made like £1,000,000 a year for the last
few years while they're they were making the game, he has the
time to I guess imagine that there are people that give that
much of A shit. So yeah, there you go.

(01:05:05):
But Next up here we got our first bit of AI news here, 11
bit studios, makers of the altars, a game that's been
otherwise well reviewed and wellreceived.
People found out, you know, looking at details and such
finding out that there is like in game monitors that's are

(01:05:28):
visibly the text visibly shows like the the AI response to a
prompt, I believe asking for, you know, technical, you know,
descriptions of things that's fits science and technology kind
of thing. That would be for this kind of

(01:05:49):
thing as well as I forget if there was.
Yeah, the AI generated language localization also appeared in
some of the non-english languages.
Yeah. That's is pretty obvious in a
lot of that stuff because you know people in those countries

(01:06:12):
know what sounds like natural writing here when you're doing
localization versus stuff that'smachine generated and often just
doing it literally localizing things and not having any real
sense of trying to turn into words that people might say

(01:06:35):
often making mistakes. So after a few days of this kind
of going around so 11 bits put out a statement yeah, saying
that see I'm trying to see if they got a link to the whole
thing. But yeah, they were basically
saying they were addressing the various accusations.

(01:06:58):
So they use the AI generated as as work in progress had
mistakenly left one in the shiftgame, which you shouldn't be
using that entire, you know, in the 1st place that they're, you
know, in developments, you know,temporary, you know, textures
and texts and all that kind of stuff.

(01:07:20):
You should make it obvious to see that stuff.
I know to replace it. But yeah, yeah, here's their
statement. We've seen a wide range of
accusations regarding the use ofAI generated the altars.
We want to clarify our approach give you more context.

(01:07:41):
AI generated assets were used strictly as temporary work in
progress during the development process in a very limited
manner. Our team is always prioritized
meaningful handcrafted storytelling as one of the
foundation game. During production, AI generated
text for graphic asset, which was meant as a piece of
background texture was one used by one of our graphic designers

(01:08:02):
as a placeholder. Never intended to be part of the
final release. Fortunately, due to an internal
oversight, the single placeholder tax was mistakenly
left in the game. Just since conducted A thorough
review and confirm that this wasan isolated case and the asset
in question is being updated. For transparency, we've included
a screenshot to show how and where it appears in the game.

(01:08:23):
I do not want to downplay the situation.
We also want to clearly show itslimited impact on your gaming
experience, which that seems like a way to minimize people's
feelings about this. In addition to that, a few
licensed movies at the altars area, the base were added at the
final stage of development. While those were externally
produced, our team was not involved in the creative process

(01:08:45):
and these required additional last minute translations.
Due to extreme time constraints,we chose not to involve our
translation partners and had these videos localized using AI
to have them ready on lunch. As always our intention let me
see here's always our intention to involve our trusted

(01:09:07):
translation agencies after release as part of our
localization hot fix to ensure those texts would be handled
with the same care and quality as the rest of the game.
That process is now underway andupdated translations are being
implemented. Which that sort of tells me they
hoped we will be OK with that and that them doing the

(01:09:28):
translation now is like, well you found out and you're angry
so we'll fix it now. Then try to minimize this to
give you a better understanding of what a small part of the
overall scope of the game's narrative layer they are.
Those few external movies are approximately 10,000 words out
of 3.4 million across all languages in the game, or just

(01:09:49):
0.3% of the overall text. The alternative was released
those specific dialogues in English only, which we believed
would be a worst experience burden on English speakers.
In hindsight, we acknowledged this was the wrong call.
Even more so, no matter what, wedecided we should have simply
let you know. As AI tools evolve, they present
new challenges and opportunitiesin game development for actively

(01:10:12):
adapting our internal processes to meet this reality.
But of all, above all, we remaincommitted to transparency and
how we make our games. We appreciate your understanding
and continued support as we worktowards that goal.
So be like, oh, this is only 10,000 words and only 0.3%.
The total words is like, yeah, your language means so little to

(01:10:34):
us that, you know, it's only 0.3%.
We couldn't even have translators work on that before
lunch or, you know, launch it with the note of like, hey,
we're still working on, you know, this, this languages.
So Please be patient. We'll be updating that in the

(01:10:55):
game kind of thing. And now they didn't do any of
that. I didn't even have these Steam
thing that you can let people know like what AI was used for
in this game, which a lot of people are using.
And so they didn't even do that.So they makes it seem like, oh,
they were probably intending to hope nobody would notice any of

(01:11:17):
this stuff. Unfortunately made kind of a
good enough game that people wanted to look into those kind
of details. And obviously the people in
those regions whose language text was all messed up and
garbled. But yeah.
And it's like, I think developers are going to find a

(01:11:38):
lot of backlash on this kind of stuff, even for the most minor
things if they're not willing togive people a heads up and try
to be open with it versus hidingit like 11 bit did here.
Even if you're still going to get backlash even then, like the

(01:11:59):
only way you're going to get people to understand and be even
the slightest bit OK is to actually be open with it versus
try to act like you didn't do itwhen it's pretty obvious from
the ways that people are able tofind this stuff.
Otherwise, you're just going to create some more motivation for

(01:12:19):
people to continue to be aggressive with their backlash
versus just intending to not support these games that are
going to use the AI and use it sloppily like that.
So yeah, that's a bad thing to see is 11 Bit Studios has been a

(01:12:42):
very good developer. There's.
No real reason. There's no real reason that they
do this, but yeah, that's a sad thing to see.
But they also handled this really poorly, so yeah.
Not. What you want to see, But yeah,
there you go. Not if you have anything to add,

(01:13:04):
Brandon. No, but it's just disappointing
really, Really nothing else to add to that.
Yeah, we got some good news here, Geomedia.
Shitty company that tore apart all of the Kotaku and all the

(01:13:24):
all the sister sites they had that were generally pretty good,
especially as a collective covering a wide range of topics.
And all that has sold off. Many of them has finally saved
Kotaku from their bullshit and sold them off to a digital
publishing company. Kelly OPS.

(01:13:46):
I believe this is the same publisher that has Gizmodo, I
believe. So they're reunited in that
sense. And yeah, I saw actually a good
joke here that they called Jim Span Feller Jim spam filter.
So that's good to see that they will be free of Geomedia and

(01:14:12):
Jim's wrath of trying to completely change how they do
their work, even when they have generally done very well in the
views and all that with the reporting and all that stuff.
So hats off to Kotaku on a new era of having some freedom to

(01:14:32):
decide what they want to work on.
Hopefully that works out for them.
But yeah, that's good news. Definitely getting them away
from those assholes is probably one of the best things you could
do for those people. Yeah, yeah, obviously Go Media

(01:14:52):
was definitely a big problem to them on their acquisition.
So I honestly don't know much about Kelly OPS, but I am hoping
to all goodness that they are a much better owner.
And hopefully, you know, we start to see signs of Katako
being, you know, what they were,what, what we're used to seeing
because it it hasn't been the same for, you know, lack of a

(01:15:13):
better way of saying. Yeah, when you see how much they
focus on guide stuff, things that will hit with the SCO.
So yeah, wish them the best and hopefully can see the more
writing about stuff they actually care about.
So yeah, there's that. And then we got some EA news and

(01:15:34):
finding out that they are going to finally put the nail in
Anthems coffin as. They're going.
To shut down the servers on January 12th, 2026 and that will
essentially mean the game is no longer playable.
Yeah, believe it or not, this game did still have a group of

(01:15:55):
dedicated players like, long after this game bombed.
And honestly, that's pretty impressive.
Anybody can read my review of this game that I did back when
it came out on Smash Pad. I liked it for what it was.
You know, when it, you know, actually functioned.
God, it was it is. It was such a waste of

(01:16:17):
potential. It it had so much so many ways
this game could have gone. It had some of the best flying
mechanics I've ever encountered in a game of its kind.
Just it was. It had so much.
Again, I got to use the word so much potential.
It had so much. And then EA stepped in midway

(01:16:39):
through and said, no, you got toturn this into an MMO so we can
do a live service thing. Yeah.
Like. It was very much a game that
wasn't really not really ready for launch.
No. It was fine for launch but I
could definitely tell like they they had plans for adding more
content to the. Game.

(01:16:59):
Oh yeah, I mean they announced like a whole like Anthem 2.0
that was supposed to happen and then EA stepped in and killed
it. Yeah, said.
We've already lost enough money on this game.
Yeah. No sense wasting more, I guess.
But yeah, when I saw this, I waslike, that's sad.
Yeah, have a game that's still has cool things about it.

(01:17:22):
Yeah. You know, it's essentially what
if BioWare made their kind of RPG feature a bunch of iron men,
though with some weird mechanics.
Like I would say maybe the heat mechanic doesn't really need to
be a thing as aggressive as it is.
That kind of reminds me of like the the Borderlands pre sequel

(01:17:45):
rather on the moon. And it's like, oh, you have to
worry about oxygen oxygen now. And it's like, wait, why?
Why would your spacesuit not be good enough to supply all the
oxygen you need? And it's like, yeah, why would
you have these complex suits that heat up really aggressively
that you have to dump them in water or stop flying for a

(01:18:07):
while? And it's like that gameplay
reasons to give you a reason to stop and, like, do things.
But yeah, when I saw this news, I immediately downloaded, like
jumped into it. And I was like, Oh yeah, I'm
level 2 like right at the beginning about to get your
first mission. It was nice seeing like, like it

(01:18:28):
still looks pretty good at all that.
I have the OR the Apex edition that's been on sale for like 2
bucks a bunch of times. So yeah, they say they're going
to take it off of EA Plays playlist on August 15th.
So if you want to check it out before everything goes away in
that game, do it sooner rather than later.

(01:18:51):
Yeah, still be playable online until January 12th.
You can only purchase in game currency.
Oh no. But can you use your remaining
balance until Anthem service go offline?
And it's like, yeah, I guess youshould if you bought currency at
some point. That's like the most milk toast
part of that game for what I cansee.

(01:19:14):
So yeah, definitely took him a while because this is a game
that's, yeah, almost launched seven years before the the
shutdown dates. And yeah, it just did not do
super well. It was kind of another X on the

(01:19:36):
by where? Yeah.
Misses. Basically the first in what
ended up being a long stream of mishaps.
Let's call them that. I think Andromeda was.
Before. Well, yeah, Andromeda had
already come out first, that's true.
And that game was made by AB team that was not terribly

(01:19:58):
experienced with it. Yeah.
And much like, you know, Vale guard, I think it also it it it
it I think that game went through a couple of different
versions before the final game came out and it kind of showed
it. But yeah, it's like EA has got

(01:20:19):
was just way too involved in BioWare shit.
Yeah. Yeah, like that.
That I people ask me, is like, what has happened to BioWare?
EAEA happened to BioWare. That's the problem.
And higher ups kind of leaving at.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, getting replaced
with people who were to drink the live service Kool-aid

(01:20:43):
basically, and then ended up realizing they screwed up and
having to course correct at the last minute.
And that's how you end up getting Veil Guard.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie, whenI first got this news, I thought
it had already been sunsetted. I didn't know anything was
happening in Anthem at all. So you know, when, when Brandon
talks about they're still being people doing something like I'm,

(01:21:06):
I'm, I'm wondering what they were actually doing, considering
there is like no content to speak of aside from like
obviously what came out when thegame initially came out.
And I definitely relate to him to the point where I put, I
didn't put in like crazy hours into Anthem, but I was
definitely a part of its launch.And I really enjoyed the launch
for what it was. And even though there was an

(01:21:27):
extreme lack of content, I was fine with it because, you know,
I didn't plan on spending my entire day in that world, but I
love that world. I am not a BioWare fan.
I am not a fan of any of the Mass Effect games.
I do not touch what's it called?Oh, no, that, that, that's,

(01:21:48):
that's definitely a different world.
But like, yeah, I I definitely like was never really into
BioWare, but I really loved the way the game looked.
I loved the idea that everybody was Iron Man.
The game handled, in my opinion,it handled like a dream.
And really my only complaint during its launch period was all
the rubber banding going on because that just, you know, it,
it definitely confused me to an extent.

(01:22:11):
But yeah, like, the main reason why it failed, aside from the
fact that I wasn't ready for launch, was that the content
plan was not evident and they just stopped communicating,
which you can't do for a live service game.
And, you know, obviously, with all the changes EA wanted to
make to it in order for it to reach that live service kind of
thing, they were not prepared for that.

(01:22:33):
And it ended up just launching the way it was, which was fine.
But at the same time, there was no chance for the game to redeem
itself, which is sad because, you know, you look at games like
No Man's Sky, you look at games like Fallout 76, both of which
launched, in my opinion, you know, worse than Anthem.
But you know, they eventually found their footing and their
games that people continue to play to this day.

(01:22:54):
And so that being said, like, itshocks me that people were still
playing with this game because Iwonder what they were doing.
I don't know if they were role-playing or whatever it may
be, but I'm also a part of a freelancer discord where they
all want to go back in to see ifthey can platinum the game.
And I don't know like what exactly is possible, but it's
definitely a cool attempt. Yeah, the game very much seemed

(01:23:15):
like they one of their own destiny when that was at sort of
the height of its power. Yeah, like that's definitely
like a good comparison. Yeah.
And then we had the time to it just it just didn't happen.
Nothing was put in. Yeah, but like you, you compare

(01:23:35):
them side by side and it's like,yeah, you can definitely see the
Destiny envy. Yeah, those still had the Bower
thing. Or like any loot you got.
You couldn't much until the end of the mission.
Yeah. Versus Destiny, where you can,
we'll try to find quiet moments to look at stuff you got and be
like, oh, is this better or whatever?

(01:23:58):
So yeah, if you want to check that game out, it's, you know,
available for pretty cheap, so you can check it out and see
what you missed. But yeah, there's that.
And then we'll get to the biggest news of the week.
We knew Microsoft, I was going to be having some layoffs.
The numbers I saw we're going tobe touching like all the

(01:24:22):
different parts of Microsoft. But the Xbox division was like
1000 to 2000 maybe, but seems like maybe more than that.
The total amount of people beinglaid off here, take that around
like 9100 potentially that's 4% of their 200 and whatever 1000

(01:24:46):
people they have at Microsoft total, which is a shit load of
people, kind of a stunning number to see.
And we got some specific studiosand games that were affected
here. Perfect Darks reboots has been
cancelled as well as the initiative studio itself that

(01:25:09):
was formed. I was like watching some of the
E3 stuff, and that was in 20, I think 2018-2019 that happened.
They essentially announced the formation of that as part of
them acquiring a number of otherdevelopers.
I think Double Fine was that year as well.

(01:25:31):
And it's like, boy, that is a huge failure on the part of Matt
Booty and Phil Spencer, because that was one of.
Their. Studios that's they were like
they're going to be making, you know new stuff for us the the
head of Crystal Dynamics who worked on the Tomb Raider stuff
was working on this was the headof the studio.

(01:25:53):
I think at some points in the past few years he might have
left, but that's definitely something that's still.
That was yeah 2018 so 7 years they've been hiring up and it
seems like just studio kind of never got over the hump into

(01:26:14):
full development with, you know,more concrete game there that's
you could be like, this is a thing that's going to happen.
We did get that trailer last year, the gameplay trailer.
I very much felt like a verticalslice where if you veered too
far off the path and maybe did certain things so you could get

(01:26:39):
it to break. But obviously for the trailer,
they didn't show any of that. It just looked like very much a
perfect storm of things to do during this mission.
I didn't really come together aslike an actual bowl game there,
which seems like that wasn't toofar off considering they cancel

(01:27:03):
the game in studio. Got them all down.
All those people are laid off, unfortunately.
Luckily, I think the the crystaldynamic people will be able to
go back to their studio. So there's that's the long
delayed game Ever Wild from Rarehas been cancelled, one that has

(01:27:23):
lost the number of directors on that game.
That's is no longer going to be happening.
Yeah. Which is a shame, not really
surprising because I don't thinkwe really got much in the way of
real gameplay out of that or anything.

(01:27:45):
It's just like how this is stillgoing.
Phil's played it, he says it's pretty good.
And he's like, OK, that doesn't really mean anything when you're
in such an extreme situation where you just need to cut
things that are not ready to go to start making more money for
them. And then it turns out
apparently, that when it, when that game went, at the same

(01:28:06):
time, Greg Males, the guy who's the director of Sea of Thieves,
actually announced that he was leaving the company after the
cancellation. Yeah, which is a big deal
because that guy's been he, thatguy's been at Rare since like
the 90s. Yeah, and I believe like half
the studio's been laid off at this point, so Rare's kind of

(01:28:30):
just to see if Thieves support studio at the moment.
Maybe they'll come up with a pitch that's Sarah Bond and Matt
Booty likes and they'll staff back up again.
But for the time being they're kind of just going to keep
working on see if Thieves. So there's that.
Zenimax Online Studios had a newgame that was reportedly like a

(01:28:55):
Destiny Two kind of thing, the shooter MMO kind of thing.
That seemed pretty promising. Number of people that played it
enjoyed it, called it a good game, but seemed to be far
enough away from being finished.That's it was something that
could be put on the chopping block and ended up getting

(01:29:17):
cancelled. And so, yeah, the like the the
head of that studio, what's his name, Matt Fior, who you've seen
the the Bethesda showcases, the guy that's always talks about
Elder Scrolls Online. That's him.
He was the head of the studio for a while at least, but he

(01:29:41):
also either left or got laid off.
So I imagine a number of people there got laid off with that I
believe turned 10. Makers of Forza Motorsport have
been cut in half, had about 50% of their people laid off.
So they're seems like from what people are saying, it's going to

(01:30:03):
be more of a support studio for Forza Horizon for now, as the
the last game just did not do super well.
And so that's sad to see. You know, Ravens software has
also been hit with layoffs big time.
They're one of the Call of Duty support studios.

(01:30:24):
So if you thought so, the game'ssuccessful.
They have no reason to lay people off.
Well, there you go. Yeah, probably every every
studio at Microsoft probably sawsome cuts, maybe the ones more
further in developments, maybe spared for now.
Like, I don't think I saw Obsidian mentioned in any of

(01:30:46):
this. Or that's, yeah.
Phil Spencer, his notes, it was a big part of this.
And yeah, just very much tone deaf from what I saw this.
Yeah, let me see the whole note here.
Yeah, here it is. Today, we're sharing decisions

(01:31:07):
that will impact Xbox or impact colleagues across our
organization. The position gaming for enduring
success and allow us to focus onstrategic growth areas.
We will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business,
follow Microsoft's lead in removing layers of management to
increase agility and effectiveness out of respect for
those impacted today. This preserves of today's

(01:31:28):
notifications and any organizational shifts will be
shared by your team leaders in the coming days.
There's more to this, but yeah, kind of a a little tone deaf
there in the way that it's framed.
It's like we're following Microsoft's lead and removing

(01:31:49):
layers of management, and it's like, I don't think all of these
people are managers. Yeah.
Much less is that how game development really works with
all this stuff. So yeah, this is tons of people
here. And yeah, even people not part
of the studio have been affected.
Part of the the group have been affected as Romero Games has

(01:32:14):
announced that they've laid off most of the people at their
studio because their project funding was cut.
Presumably they were working with Bethesda on a new FPS.
Is the, I think the studio been doing some streaming like every
Friday, checking out, you know, new first person shooters and

(01:32:37):
such things That's were very much in the vein of the type of
games John Romero worked on, which was, you know, the
original Doom and all that. Yeah, the studio has effectively
been shut down. There's, you know, a few people
there. I guess basically John and

(01:32:57):
Brenda are the most parts. They've said they're going to
work on maybe getting some new funding and be able to bring
some people back. But yeah, they've been usually
affected by this, which is a shame that the studio that's
been around for a while, you know, John and Brenda Romero are

(01:33:24):
big time game developers, been working on a lot of big games
for decades, so. Oh yeah.
They unfortunately have played aparts in these layoffs and yeah,
people are very much have been critical of Matt Booty and Phil
Spencer, Phil in particular saying he should be retiring.

(01:33:48):
Yeah. There's a lot of this stuff
that's going on here is direct result of his leadership of Xbox
for the Blast 1010. Eleven years at this point.
Yeah, he. Took over after the Xbox One
launched and. Dude's a kind of kind of a relic
now. He was, he's very much of that,

(01:34:08):
very much part of that whole live service model era when
there was just a glut of them. Now that that that market has
made that bubble has basically burst, it's time to bring in
some new blood. Well, and he's, he's been in
charge of Xbox since shortly after the Xbox One launched.
And before that he was in chargeof their first party

(01:34:28):
development. So like if you notice how the
first party development changed at a certain point in the Xbox
360's life. And so they start stopped
finding a ton of like original games.
I kind of were just making a newFable, a new Forza, a new Halo
or Gears when the the Kinect came out that was kind of under

(01:34:53):
his watch. And yeah, the first party kind
of just languished for a long time until they just started
acquiring, you know, a dozen developers and then two of the
biggest publishers in the industry.
And now they have a huge amount of properties under their
control that they can exploit asthey need to and have kind of

(01:35:14):
become the biggest entity in thevideo game industry.
Not really for any of the pure success they've done.
It's purely because of Microsoft's success that allows
them to have the funds to make these kind of acquisitions.
And yeah, when you got, you know, Call of Duty supposedly
doing really well and people working on the support studios

(01:35:39):
for that, for those games, and it shows that there's kind of a
lot here that is just kind of rotten at its core in the
Microsoft business where they'rejust kind of too big to fail.
And as we've seen with a number of companies, even the companies
making bad decisions don't lose their jobs.

(01:36:02):
They're just given more leeway to with this kind of stuff, like
layoff tons of people to make the numbers go up and make it
the the next quarter or this current quarter, like look
better than it maybe would have otherwise.
It's not like they haven't been releasing a bunch of games and

(01:36:24):
all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, just sad to see.
And then the last one here, one of the execs at Xbox, Xbox Game
Studios, Matt Turnbull, I decided to post an extremely
unhinged LinkedIn post shortly after these layoffs were

(01:36:50):
announced saying let's see here.These are really challenging
times. And if you're navigating A
layoff, preparing for one, you're not alone and you don't
have to go it alone. I know these types of tools and
gender strong feelings in people, but I'd be risk remiss
in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the
circumstances. I've been experimenting with

(01:37:11):
ways to use LLMAI tools like ChatGPT or copilot to help
reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with
job loss. Here's some prompt ideas and use
cases that might help you if you're feeling overwhelmed.
Some for career planning prompts.
Resume and LinkedIn help prompts.
Networking and outreach prompts.Emotional clarity and confidence

(01:37:34):
prompts and yeah, then ends here.
If this helps, feel free to share with others in your
network stay kind, stay smart, stay connected.
And of course he got fucking roasted in the comments so much
he had to delete it. Delete the post yeah, there's
people who have been posting screenshots of this.
They have a link here to some ofthe comments people were were

(01:38:00):
were adding to this and talking about this.
And yeah, it's we are rough the way that people are talking
about this thing. The LinkedIn is easily the worst
social media out there because it's people that think they're
great with advice and all that and ends up becoming just more

(01:38:24):
marketing love to kind of make them look smarter than they
actually are. Because I would say if you
thought this was a good idea to post after you laid off
thousands of people, I just saidit's the the worst thing you
could do. Like, hey, why don't you embrace
the AI to help you figure out how to get a new job?

(01:38:46):
And it's like, boy, that's not that's not a thing that's going
to help you get a new job, considering there's not that
many free rolls out here or openjobs out here for people to, you
know, get. So yeah, this guy just looks
like a huge asshole. So yeah, it's a shit show of a

(01:39:08):
whole last few days to see how this stuff has been impacting
that and learning just more and more as people, you know,
unravel the layers of everythingthat's going on.
Saw people talking about how another thing that's Microsoft
gets out of this is that, you know, the vested stock people

(01:39:30):
get from Microsoft that's supposed to, you know, best, you
know, usually every year, depending on how much they are
getting. Well, as people probably didn't
reach the point that they could actually cash that in.
And so that becomes stock that the company itself gets to own
again. And that's just more money for

(01:39:51):
Microsoft. Probably chump change compared
to a lot of what they're workingwith.
But that's still more things. That's like, yeah, that's,
that's real, you know, shitty. In a way.
So yeah, this just all around just real shit and really just
makes Xbox's whole thing just seem less like it's a a long

(01:40:18):
term plan and more just like a thing that they're making up as
they go along. And that's, you know, there's no
real reason to support them if you can, if you feel like you
want to have some control over your involvement in this, you
know, cancel Game Pass. I don't buy games from Xbox

(01:40:42):
anymore because it's if you've been supporting them as normal
that that led to, you know, thousands of people losing their
jobs. So your support hasn't really
improved anything. The capitalism just keeps going.
Yeah. And always takes, never gives to
these people. So, yeah, just kind of the the

(01:41:02):
awful place things are in. And I'm sure financially this is
going to be great for Microsoft,but it certainly doesn't feel
great when, you know, Matt Bootyand Phil Spencer been talking
about how much they care about the people making the games and
have to do this kind of stuff. That's those they really don't
care. You got some of these studios

(01:41:24):
that are getting shut down or close to being shut down if they
they'll find the next good pitchfor a game or whatever.
So yeah, do you have anything toadd, Brandon?
Nope, just fuck the Xbox and fuck Microsoft.
That's all I can add. How about you, Dan Rib?

(01:41:46):
Yeah, I mean, like just just just to, you know, quickly go
over my say of it all. I do want to quickly apologize.
Last time I was in the podcast, I wrongly said that I thought
that this would primarily be on support teams.
And my information told me that we'd see like 2000 layoffs, you

(01:42:06):
know, not to go ahead and like, you know, disrespect, you know,
any numbers here? But yeah, going from 2000 to
9000 is absolutely insane. You know, let's let's go ahead
and put that to perspective. You know, despite all their
problems, everybody loves Nintendo.
We're all going to put Iwana on his pedestal for doing what he
did to avoid layoffs. But Nintendo doesn't even have

(01:42:29):
8000 employees. Microsoft laid off 9000.
Granted, it's not all in, It's not all in gaming.
But yeah, as far as like, you know, providing jobs for people
who need them in order to, like,you know, put a roof over their
head. It's just, it's just sad and I
feel bad for just about everybody who all of a sudden
lost their job in the 4th of July when we're supposed to be

(01:42:52):
celebrating our country. Granted, a number of us, we're
not celebrating at all just because of, you know, what's
what's being done to it. So it's really, really sad just
to go over like, you know, as much as I would have to say with
these bullet points, the Initiative being closed and
Perfect Dark being cancelled, you know, not to be a jerk, but

(01:43:14):
it like it, it doesn't surprise me.
I think the writing was on the wall when Perfect Dark was not
shown during Xbox's SGF showcase.
And when you're a studio who takes as long as the Initiative
did to show what they showed with Perfect Dark last year and
then all of a sudden have nothing this year, that's not

(01:43:35):
good. At the same time, like, I
totally get, you know, the sentiment of people being
disappointed over the fact that this was a game that should not
have been touched. Like you can't take that long
and have nothing to show for it.So as much as this sucks, it's
like, you know, it's it's it's hard to say that I didn't expect
this at all. I thought perfect Dark was the

(01:43:57):
coolest thing they showed last year.
So obviously, like I have my opinion of that there.
But yeah, like with the way thatMicrosoft has been handling
things throughout the generation, even going back to
last, it's it's it's hardly a surprise.
That being said, ever while being cancelled is also sort of
expected as well, primarily because like we until now, we

(01:44:20):
still don't know what that game is.
I am looking forward to the day where people are eventually
allowed to talk about it and give us more information.
Because even though that was easily a game that people can
easily look forward to, the factthat nobody knew what it was,
despite its really, really, really long time in development
is also just just bad. So, yeah, again, like, I feel,

(01:44:42):
you know, for everybody that wasaffected.
So like, seeing how everything has been in the industry, it's
like you can't work in it and not feel at least a little bit
scared. That's the way that I've been,
you know, these past few years. And then once it eventually hit
me, it was like, OK, let's see how I deal with it now.
And, you know, I'm lucky enough to still be in the industry in

(01:45:04):
the way that I am, but I can't say that I haven't been going
through my own difficulties as well.
Which brings me to Phil. You know, like you look at him
now compared to looking at him when he first got hired, like
the dude has definitely aged. Like, I'm not going to, you
know, I don't want to be an apologist for him.
But at the same time, it's like,you know, he's not taking any of

(01:45:27):
this. Well.
I had the fortune of speaking tohim at Summer Game Fest a couple
times. And you know, he, he gave me his
honest review of what he thoughtXbox showed at SGF and he told
me he'd give it AC, which, you know, someone who works in, who
works as an executive giving like his own presentation AC

(01:45:49):
like like that to me, like takesballs.
And I definitely like respect him for giving me that, that
full opinion. But at the end of the day, like,
as we mentioned earlier, like these 9000 wasn't just gaming,
but it definitely hit gaming harder than we thought it would
to begin with. And at the end of the day, like,
he does have people to report to.

(01:46:09):
Everything he said was definitely tone deaf.
But unfortunately, you do have to say something.
I wish he didn't say anything. I wish that things were
definitely more, we're definitely more transparent
because that's kind of the vibe that Microsoft has been giving
ever since the the Xbox One X. And it just hasn't been that

(01:46:30):
way. And yeah, it's tough.
And then As for like the news about him with not retiring
anytime soon while he is debunking it, it absolutely
would not surprise me if he actually did step down.
You know, the man's been the head of Xbox for over a decade,
which I believe is longer than anybody else.
It's definitely longer than Magic.
It's definitely longer than Allard.
And I don't know if there was anybody even before Allard.

(01:46:52):
So that's what I have to say about that.
And then in regards to what Turnbull said on LinkedIn, yeah,
that's beyond tone deaf. Like, it's weird because
obviously you know me being there as well as, you know,
knowing as many people as I knowwithin the industry who has been
affected by some sort of layoff,including Microsoft's, It's

(01:47:15):
tough. Like, you don't want to read
anything from anybody unless it was a coworker.
And in this situation, we're talking about somebody who has
had his job for over a decade and maybe he does understand
what it's like to be laid off. But you being laid off 20 years
ago versus being laid off anytime within these last three

(01:47:35):
years is not the same at all. Like in 2018, if you were laid
off, it was almost like a good thing because you were you were
getting severance and a lot of different studios were hiring.
Now everybody is laying off. There is no sign of them getting
better at all. You know, Amir Sotbach's group
definitely said that things weredefinitely getting better this

(01:47:58):
year. But like, after what happened
with Microsoft and the 9000, which was like, you know, more
than triple what anybody expected, it's just, it's just
rough. We're seeing a lot of veterans
in the industry leave and pursueother dreams.
And at the same time, what they're pursuing isn't working
out either. It is really, really tough to
find anything in gaming, anything in tech, what have you.

(01:48:22):
And you know, seeing what happened here is just really
rough, especially knowing that Microsoft has laid off.
I want to say this is the fourthtime in the last two or three
years, and that's not good. Like, you would hope that this
is the last time, but at the same time, it's like nobody's
safe. The fact that Turn 10 was

(01:48:43):
affected, that the way that theyhave when Forza is not only
something that people know Xbox for, it is a reliable seller.
The fact that they had, you know, the number that they had
is just really rough. And it's really hard to think of
any situation where anybody at Microsoft to say it at all.
And that sucks. And yeah, that's really all I

(01:49:03):
have to say. And I wish everyone all the best
here. And like, even people who are
still at Microsoft or still at Xbox who have their jobs, it's
harder, not just because you have less people there, but
because, you know, the mental side of it where your friends
are gone and, you know, 9000 people are affected, but, you
know, multiply that number by three because their families are

(01:49:24):
also affected. And at this time of year, it's
really unfortunate. Yeah, and it just kind of puts
big spotlight on the way that Microsoft has been focusing a
lot of their attention, you know, Game Pass, a lot of talk
has been going on about how sustainable that is.
And it seems like not very if it's seemingly cannibalizing a

(01:49:48):
lot of potential sales that they're able to get on Steam and
PlayStation, but. Yeah.
And the rough thing about Game Pass is that nobody is going to,
nobody is going to call you wrong when people call it like
the best value in gaming. And like, I think they've
already gone on a record and said that they do Game Pass at a

(01:50:09):
loss. And that's weird in general
because, you know, businesses are not in the business of
saving us any money. Game Pass is something that
actually does do that. But at the same time, seeing the
companies that are supposed to benefit from it and not benefit
is just you wonder how sustainable it is from the
business standpoint, as well as let you know keeping things up.
Like there definitely is value from a historical standpoint.

(01:50:32):
But if if you're not an indie oreven if you are an indie, like
I'm wondering like what the actual come up actually is by
being a part of that program. I still have it.
Granted, like Xbox themselves gave it to me for a full year,
but it's, you know, like the value was definitely there, but
it's it's it's really just hard to really want to support

(01:50:53):
anything that they're doing. And for the last three
generations the Xbox has been myleast played console and I don't
know, nothing really motivates me to just continue on with it.
Yeah, and I think the The thing is that like most people that
have Game Pass aren't doubling abunch of the games on there.
They're just finding like 1 hereand there to focus on for a

(01:51:18):
while until they need something else and then.
I spend more time browsing it than I do playing anything on
the. Yeah, like I spend most of my
time managing the download space.
Yeah. With that, so yeah, it's just
like, yeah, it's like the I think where I I also see
developers talking about like the back catalog stuff is more

(01:51:41):
valuable than the day one stuff because, yeah, you know, a lot
of the a lot of the day one games are negotiate through
publishers. So if you're the developer in
that relationship, unless you'reowned by them, you're likely
getting cut out of the deal in some way.
Like I think about Outriders, where I don't believe people can
fly ever made money off of that game.

(01:52:05):
And I believe that would probably be a big part of that
being Square Enix making a deal to get that on Game Pass.
So the benefits of that probablymostly benefited Square Enix so
much. So I believe one of the games
that people can fly cancelled because Square Enix just wasn't

(01:52:26):
helping them out with anything was a sequel to Outriders.
And it's like, yeah, that seems like the way that would go.
They kind of squeezed out as much money as they could out of
that game that did not seem likeit was going to sell incredibly
well. Got as much attention as

(01:52:46):
possible through Game Pass, but also made sure they were the
ones that benefited the most from so that people can fly.
Kind of entered into some rough times where they, you know,
we're looking for work to do that would help keep them going.
And it's like, yeah, this is a thing where when people talk

(01:53:08):
about developers benefiting, that's for maybe solo
developers, but like the developers that are
self-publishing, but publishers are going to get the majority of
the the money on most of those games.
In a way, it's like, yeah, this maybe isn't as great of a value
on developers unless they're somehow it helps them just get

(01:53:29):
more word out there and make more money on the other
platform. But that isn't always the thing
that happens. Much like just games trying to
sell the the successes are sometimes just lock in perfect
timing, declare obscure where it's like Game Pass stuff
definitely helped get enough people to check it out before

(01:53:53):
they bought it on their own and saw kind of what game that is.
But yeah, it probably could havedone that as well.
Just selling those people would have figured out how good it was
either way. Then you have stuff like South
of Midnight where it's like thatbeing only on Xbox and PC and

(01:54:14):
kind of being more of a more of an artsy project versus
mainstream focus kind of thing. It's like, yeah, that might not
have been a great fit for Game Pass, but you know, good for the
people that could burn through that, like move on to another
thing. But yeah, Xbox is kind of in

(01:54:35):
this weird place where like theydon't seem to be doing much in
the hardware side at this point because they're they're handheld
they were supposedly making. Now it just seems like it's
going to be an OEM thing where they're going to have Asus and
maybe other companies making their own versions of that Steam
Deck style handheld versus them doing anything themselves.

(01:54:57):
And the the rumors around their next console thing seems like
it's going to be potentially similar.
They're just have like OEM boxes.
They're all basically the same but made by different companies
that have some merging of Xbox and PC.

(01:55:17):
And there is like a a PC that's more consoleized.
But yeah, Xbox is an interestingplace of turnover, both physical
with these people being laid offas well as their bench on for
contractors that they keep on for a year and a half and they

(01:55:41):
let them go and all their all their, you know, learnings and
all that just disappear. It seems like I was potentially
a huge problem for like the Forza Motorsport game because
you have people figuring out howthings work with their engine
and then leave and then not, youknow, bring up any other anybody

(01:56:01):
else. And you end up with games that
just don't feel like a cohesive product in a way, when we have a
cohesive team that works on it and is not just they're rotating
in and out constantly. So yeah, we'll see what other
stuff kind of falls out of this this whole thing for next week.

(01:56:23):
But yeah, there's been a rough, rough time to get this news.
And they'll just hope that this is the the extent of it because
yeah, they laid off like 2500 people last year.
And a good chunk of this 9000 isthat Xbox or is from Xbox.
So could be anywhere up to like 5000 total people in the last

(01:56:48):
year and a half or so. And that's an incredible amount
of people, even as Xbox or Microsoft as like 200,000 people
working there. Just a ridiculous situation.
They're now the the biggest company in the gaming industry,
mostly because they bought 2 bigpublishers and a the N 12

(01:57:12):
developers over the last like 10years here.
So it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.
But yeah, I don't know where things go for Xbox, but let's
see how that goes. Yeah, we can make an entirely
different podcast about how we'dfix Xbox, but there is a lot to
do. Yeah, but yeah, I think it's

(01:57:33):
going to end up doing it for theshow.
This is been a fun one or fun inquotes.
But yeah, we'll be back next week with some new news,
hopefully some better news and more interesting things to talk
about then layoffs and AI bullshit and CE OS that are

(01:57:55):
believing there's aid saboteurs and their myths.
So yeah, that's going to and I'mdoing it for this week.
If you enjoy the show for that friends and family know they
should check out the podcast andselect strangers that are also
tired of Microsoft being a huge force in the gaming industry.

(01:58:18):
So yeah, thank you all for tuning in.
Hope you have a good week ahead.We will see you all next time.
Have a good one. Bye.
See you.