July 3, 2025 • 44 mins
This week we talk about Xbox’s layoffs, Helldivers 2 coming to Xbox, Switch 2 screen problems, BioWare potentially becoming the Mass Effect studio and much more. Click this link for my socials, all of my other content and ways to support: https://linktr.ee/baundiesel
00:00:00 | Intro
00:00:19 | Opening
00:05:25 | News
00:42:47 | Updates
00:43:26 | Wrap Up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast, episode 344.
I am your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about the Xbox layoffs, hell, Divers 2 coming to Xbox,
BioWare becoming a Mass Effect studio, and much more.
Years ago when I started making content for The Division, The
(00:24):
Division One was the 1st thing Istarted making videos for and
streaming. And it's actually where this
podcast came from. This podcast up until a few
years ago was called The Echo Cast.
And that was a reference to the echoes in The Division.
These kind of memories that would be recorded and you could
(00:46):
come upon them and kind of see what happened somewhere based
off of all of the video cameras and cell phone footage and all
that. And at that time I had gotten
into, you know, the division community and I dabbled in other
ones as well. But the Division was the, the
main 1 I had interacted with, which at the time was the first
(01:07):
time I'd really gotten involved in the gaming community.
It's why I started making videosand stuff.
I, I'd been involved in other ones and forums and chat rooms
and stuff like that back in the day of like Ghost Recon and you
know, Age of Empires 2 and stufflike that, but not in the same
way. This was new because now we had
(01:28):
Twitch and we had, you know, Reddit and subreddit and you
know, I finally only ever got into Twitter due to the division
and, and do the gaming. So, you know, whether or not
that's a blessing or a curse, I don't know.
We'll have to, we'll have to decide that another day.
(01:49):
But not long after that, I was kind of like, man, I want to
work in games. I knew people who worked at some
game studios. It seemed like it was a cool
job. And I applied for a, a good
handful of jobs at EA, Ubisoft as, as well as there's actually
a few local, I wouldn't call them studios, but gaming
(02:12):
affiliated companies in my area that, you know, I'm thinking,
OK, you know, I, I make videos, I, I, I pay attention to this
stuff. I, I, I should do this, this
should be my job. And I will say at this point
that I don't know if I'm more thankful something didn't work
out more in my entire life. I would have made more money.
(02:35):
I would have done more interesting things.
I probably would have moved to some cooler places than I live.
That's kind of a hit or miss, upor down.
My, my wife would not have likedthat.
But I, it could have been interesting, right?
And, and instead, all I can think about is how I'm, I'm
(02:56):
almost at my current job for 13 years.
The, the job I do is a job that helps people in need.
I'm, I'm really good at it. I've done it for a long time.
I know everything about what we do and, and I contribute to
society, right? I, the job also helped me get my
student loans forgiven and, and all kinds of things like that.
(03:16):
And I'm really happy. And you know, my job has given
me the life I have, which is great.
And I just am not sure if I would feel the same had I had
gone into gaming specifically I had gone, I, I'm not, I don't, I
don't know how to code or make models or doing animations or
anything like that. I applied for mostly community
kind of community jobs, community directors or community
(03:41):
managers and things like that. There was actually also a job
for EAI think that was some kindof like research job, which I
have experienced and doing clinical research as well, but
it didn't work out. And, and man, with all these
layoffs and just the way the industry is, I couldn't be more
thankful. Oddly enough, the first job I
(04:03):
tried to go after after college back in 2010 has as hard as it
is to admit that it was, I actually tried to be a cop as
well and talk about, and I got really close a few times.
My area is extremely competitivefor those jobs because they pay
very well. And most of the departments
where I live actually require like a degree like you, you
(04:26):
know, it's, it's, it's not the same everywhere, but here it's,
it's actually pretty good. You have to have some pretty
substantial credentials to become a cop here.
It's a very competitive market and I, I wanted to do that and,
and, and instead I became a social worker and, and at the
end of the day, they kind of do the same job.
I just deal with a much less tense situations and everything
(04:48):
else surrounding that job. It's another example of how I'm
glad something didn't work out. So that is kind of where I go
into this week thinking about how thankful I am to have my
situation that I have being verysimple and very nice and, and,
and having a lot of feelings forthe people who are in this
(05:13):
industry that I dreamed to be inat one point.
And, and how that dream is probably pretty great sometimes,
but obviously has had some downsides.
Let's get into the gaming news. We're going to kick it off, of
course, with Xbox layoffs. So we talked about this last
week and mostly last week I talked about how so many
(05:37):
journalists and, and, and influencers and stuff were kind
of almost like hotly anticipating these layoffs.
You know, Monday, Tuesday came to win.
And then Wednesday came in the announcement started.
So the, the, the Meta, the overall Microsoft laid off about
9100 people. That is about 4% of their
(05:59):
workforce. If you want some silver lining.
I expected, and many people expected 5%.
And, and that may seem like defending them or something.
I, I can assure you at no point,why defend these layoffs?
I think they all suck, but I, I do think it's important to talk
about them and to talk about whythey happened and what it means
(06:23):
for the future and stuff like that.
So that's what we're going to do.
So that 4%, hey, that 1% difference is like, you know, 2
or 3000 jobs. So I, I think it's OK to be
thankful that 2 or 3000 people and two or three thousand
families are not trying to figure out their futures right
now. But you still need to empathize
and and consider the 9000 plus people who do have to do those
(06:44):
things. And that sucks.
The kind of big hitting pieces of news around it where that the
initiative the at one time like super studio, a quadruple a
studio that was supposed to be this big deal for Xbox that was
going to make perfect dark. The initiative has been
(07:05):
shuttered. The shutdown is gone.
If you didn't pay attention to what kind of happened with them,
that ended up becoming almost like this little tiny studio for
like they basically just took a bunch of people who were known
in the industry who had lots of experience.
And it seems like they just tried to throw them into a
studio together, hoping that like gold would come out.
(07:27):
And instead a lot of the rumors and a lot of the conversation
over the years was that a bunch of indecision and, and
paralyzation came out and, and, and instead of becoming this big
34500, maybe even bigger development studio, they, I, I
believe they're only around 50 people.
(07:47):
I don't want to say only like, oh, they only laid off 50 people
from the studio. It's awful, It sucks, but this
you know, when you, when you seethe headline of the initiative
shut down, we aren't talking about four, 5-6 hundred people
who got laid off. It was probably around 50.
They they brought in Crystal Dynamics to be a Co dev.
And in this situation, Crystal Dynamics was going to be the
(08:10):
principal developer of this gamewith direction from the
initiative. So in hindsight, you know, that
whole setup was probably, you know, not a great sign even
years ago. This game's been development in
some capacity for over 7 years at this point.
And, and I think at the end of the day, you can look at this
(08:32):
and realize that this studio, this project, the whole
architecture of this situation is just from a bygone era, that
this was a very late 2000s, early 2010's idea of making this
super studio and, and bringing back this IP and, and blah,
blah, blah. And in 2025, you know, you're
(08:56):
567 years in from the reports we've seen, is that, that that
demo they showed a year or two ago was, was a borderline non
representative vertical slice ofthe game.
That the actual game they were working on wasn't anywhere near
that, that, that, that Polish or, or that amount of finish.
And it just, you know, it, it was going to take too long, cost
(09:18):
too much. And that's, and that's when
these things happen. So it sucks.
I feel bad for the people who lost his jobs.
I can't pretend like this was all that surprising.
We run into a very similar situation with Perfect Dark.
Obviously Perfect Dark is cancelled now for all the same
reasons I just said. As well as ever, Wild has been
(09:39):
cancelled. Ever.
Wild is this game that got showcased four or five years ago
now. It was from Rare.
After Sea of Thieves, everyone was excited to see what their
next big project was. It was supposed to be this.
And then all we heard about after that is that they
basically didn't know what kind of game to make it.
And it was kind of going nowhereand it got rebooted or
(09:59):
temporarily shuttered or whatever.
And then a couple a year or so ago, it started popping back up.
And even fairly recently, Phil Spencer said he went and saw
what they were working on. And I was really excited by it.
And it just, I assume a studio, you know, head had to report to
someone above them and they said, hey, where's that game at
(10:21):
and how far away is it? And what are we thinking for
audience and things like that? And unfortunately, it just seems
like again, kind of like perfectdark.
It was around for four or five plus years.
It probably wasn't anywhere nearcoming out.
And they just feel like those resources would probably be
better used elsewhere. And whether it's the money or
(10:42):
the devs or, or whatever. And and they shuttered it.
There was also a Zenimax online studio MMO that was in
development that has also been shuttered that was technically
unannounced. We don't really have any details
on it. We just know it's not going to
happen anymore beyond that. And, and to be fair, we don't
(11:03):
know. So out of the 9100 layoffs, that
was all of Microsoft. I, I've seen a few people say
that was only Xbox and that's not true.
It it's, I would presume 1/3 to 1/4 of those were from the games
division. So, you know, I believe their
gaming division has 20 to 25,000devs in it.
You know, losing a couple thousand, that's that's a big
(11:24):
deal. It's a big chunk.
It's also not like they shut down half the company, right.
So when we start talking about some of the reaction to this,
you know, keep that in mind. There did seem to be pretty
significant layoffs for specificteams and regions and things
like that. Turn 10 forces developer their
team was cut in half that that'ssurprising because forces has
(11:46):
been so consistent and almost every, you know, mainline Forza
game has scored extremely well and and they are doing ongoing
work on the Forza Motorsport, their last title, which was
extremely good. I loved it.
I thought was a great game but they are they are very much into
long term life service support of that game and I I suspect it
(12:10):
seems like Forza Motorsport isn't supposed to just be the
next Forza game. It kind of felt like they it was
meant to be the Forza game for quite a while.
Instead of calling it Forza 8 orwhatever would have been next,
they called it Forza Motorsport.And my assumption is they
probably aren't scaling up for aa whole new game.
They're just supporting this one, likely until next Gen.
(12:32):
maybe even beyond. And I I would imagine that's why
that team got cut in half, whichsucks.
And then outside of that, it kind of seems like most of the
layoffs that I've seen were fromlike marketing teams and the
publishing team. I, I have to imagine as they are
bringing together still to this day, Bethesda, Zinamax,
(12:54):
Activision Blizzard, King, I believe King was, was took a
pretty hefty layoff as well. The, the mobile studios that,
you know, things like publishingand marketing, you know, they're
bringing together 3 publishers that all had their own
publishing and marketing teams, right?
And we've been seeing over the last few years that those teams
have taken huge cuts because they're, you know, they, they
(13:16):
probably don't feel the need to have three of those.
We also got news last week, I believe that Xbox in general is
getting rid of their regional marketing teams and
consolidating that down to just,you know, individual teams.
I think they're even contractingoutside of Xbox.
I think there's a like a contractor from like South
Africa or something that's taking over those operations.
(13:36):
If I'm wrong, please let me know.
So it seems like the the majority of layoffs actually
came from them cutting off people from departments that the
average gamer just. Doesn't even know.
About or hear about a lot of thelayoffs and and resignations
also have come from people that you were pretty had been around
(14:00):
for, you know, decades at this point.
People who were probably ready to just retire and take that
pension or or take that four O 1K or take their stock options
and sell all those and live pretty forever.
One of the interesting bits of news that came out today, I'm
recording this on the 3rd of July, was that John Romero's
studio, John Romero being the creator or one of the creators
(14:22):
of Doom. Pretty legendary dude that his
studio had a first person shooter game that was being
funded by Xbox at that. That funding has been pulled and
that studio is, is shutting down.
This was one of the ones that was kind of interesting the way
it was being talked about because people are like, oh, I
can't believe Xbox would cut offa, a John Romero game.
(14:44):
You know, he's so legendary. The this studio, just from
trying to research it a bit was it's kind of interesting that
they've released two games called Sigil and Sigil 2.
Sigil 2 being a game that from what I can tell, is essentially
an expansion to the 1993 Doom game, which you actually have to
have do that that original, thatgame to even play Sigil 2.
(15:06):
I'm not sure if Sigil one was inthe same situation or not.
I but I, I just to throw it out there that this wasn't some like
big AAA studio where he was trying to make some big giant
AAA experience and what was, wastrying to kind of, you know, do
do something. It's very likely this project
they're working on with some like indie game basically,
(15:28):
obviously it gets headlines because of who he was.
I I would imagine this is more likely just a that studio was an
outlet for him to just keep being creative without being in
the under the auspices of some big studio or publisher and it
just didn't work out. But it still does suck.
I feel bad for what the the devsthey had there and him for
whatever this project was. And, and yeah, so on the, I
(15:52):
guess brighter side of things, 40 plus projects are still in
production. They were pretty clear about
that. There were some rumors that
bounced around about Phil Spencer potentially retiring
after the next console release, which could be as soon as next
year, handing over the reins to Sarah Bond.
Microsoft came out and claimed that he's not retiring for
anytime soon. We'll see.
(16:14):
I feel like from so many of the interviews and stuff Phil does
kind of, he has to be tired at this point.
It, you know, I'm, I'm not goingto feel bad for a guy making
like $100 million a year, But still, you know, he, he, he does
try to be personal personable as, as as much as someone in his
position can, I guess. And at least they claim that's
(16:38):
not true. I, I think the writing's on the
wall, though. It seems like they've been, you
know, kind of grooming Sarah Bond for a long time to take
over that position. And I, I suspect that's
happening sooner than later, even if they deny it.
On a personal note, I'm really happy that undead Labs state of
decay three appears to still be good to go.
Jess Corden said that he got in touch with people in the know
(16:59):
and that that studio as far as Ican tell was untouched and the
game is still full speed ahead. I'm still hoping for that to
come this year and next year. I I think the overall look at
this is again to be clear, layoffs suck.
I feel bad for the people, but Ido think so much of the
conversation is is just really useless.
(17:23):
You expect it from the regular gamers, right?
Like all my 4U tabs on social media have been a nightmare of
of random saying that oh Xbox can't recover from this, oh Xbox
is going down the drain, Xbox isdone, blah blah blah blah blah.
Not realizing that they're talking about, you know,
probably the second most profitable studio, you know,
(17:43):
profit margin wise behind Nintendo or or publisher behind
Nintendo, the biggest publisher in the world in general with by
studio and by gross income. Their, their hardware hasn't
sold as good as PlayStation, butthey've still sold 30 +
(18:04):
1,000,000 units. I would imagine they stopped
reporting that quite a while ago.
My guess is they're closer to 35or 440,000,000 units at this
point, even though that, you know, obviously is still doubled
up by PlayStation and the switchto will will trounce them all.
But you know, they, they, they're, they're making tons of
(18:24):
money. Even in Matt booty, I think, and
Phil Spencer put out letters which they I really, they really
probably shouldn't have because it I get what they were doing.
They, they're basically saying Xbox is stronger than it's ever
been. The future is bright, but in
order to sustain that future, wehave to do these things and no
(18:45):
one wants to hear that. And and I appreciate that.
I, I I understand why, even though from a business
perspective it is like it makes sense like like let's just be
honest, the games they shut downperfect dark, ever wild, this
other game, we're all games thatwere from reporting going
nowhere, that that weren't coming out anytime soon had cost
(19:05):
a ton of money already and. You know the, the, these.
They, they all kind of followed the template, right?
They've been in development forever.
They probably weren't anywhere near done.
That's not sustainable right now.
And so that, that those resources are going to go to
other places now, especially knowing that they still have 40
other projects that they're currently public or working on,
(19:26):
right? Producing, you know, the, the
studios and, and these overlapped, you know, marketing
teams and, and publishing teams and all this.
Like, you know, I, I don't know what these people do.
I, I won't pretend to, I, I think it sucks what happened to
them. I hate that they lost their
jobs. But like you, you can appreciate
why if, if there's, you know, 3 departments and three different,
(19:48):
you know, parts of the company doing the same thing, why that
kind of maybe doesn't make sense.
It can even be bad for the business if they're overlapping
each other or stepping on each other's toes and things like
that. I I just, you know, some of the
normie takes were as bad as I expected.
Of, of pretending like this means that Xbox is like failing
and it's done and irrecoverable and stuff like that.
(20:10):
But even though like notable people's takes on this like
could be kind of rough of like just going for what I would call
kind of the click bait or the kind of low IQ take on all this
stuff of like, like, like the initiative and perfect for
perfect DARPA. I saw people being like, man,
that was the game I, I was the most excited for.
(20:30):
And I don't doubt that. I don't want to dismiss that.
I'm sure there were plenty of people who were excited for that
game. But let's also be honest about
the fact that we saw like a cinematic trailer like 6 years
ago and essentially A cinematic gameplay trailer a year or two
ago. And that was all we kind of knew
about it. And the studio never really
(20:50):
seemed like it found its feet. And it, you know, we didn't
really know much about the game.Like there wasn't really
anything there. I saw people doing the same
thing with Everwild. Like I was curious about
Everwild. Just the vibe was interesting
from the what we had seen of it.But what we had seen was just
like a trailer like five years ago.
And it sounds like it was in turmoil.
It just wasn't coming together, right.
(21:11):
So they cut it. I, I just, I, it, what was
interesting was seeing some people even going so far as to
be like, no, I, I, I wish Xbox just would have never bought
Rare. I, I wish Xbox would have never
bought Activision Blizzard King.I wish Xbox would have never
bought Bethesda Zinamax. Like, let's be very clear about
(21:33):
some things. Many of the studios and
publishers that Xbox purchased were going down the drain.
Rare would not exist today if Xbox didn't buy them.
I'm not saying their current situation is much better.
I mean see if thieves is insanely popular and successful.
So, you know, maybe I am saying that, but like Bethesda Zinemax,
(21:54):
they were in trouble like like they were not OK, like they they
were insignificant financial trouble and being purchased by
Xbox relieve them of that. And now we still are getting
Bethesda games, games from Zinemax games from, you know,
machine games and from, you know, Todd Howard and all this
stuff. And whether that you think it's
a good thing or not, I don't really care.
But but those, there's a very real chance that those companies
(22:17):
may not even exist anymore if not for these deals.
Activision Blizzard King in its own way, you know, probably it
was sustainable somewhat on its own, but is now not, you know,
under the thumb of Bobby Kodak anymore.
He got his big golden umbrella and took off, you know, or
umbrella parachute. And I'm not saying that Xbox
isn't doing these things perfectly.
(22:38):
A lot of these issues, a lot of the problems with these these
these games that got cancelled in these studios that lost devs,
It's bad management. Like for sure like to a point
and some of the statements aboutthis from leadership at Xbox,
they're making these cuts and rearranging these things to
make, you know, to to change leadership to make less people
(22:58):
in between the decision makers and the frontline people.
That's all gobbledygook. It's industry speak.
I understand that. But a lot of these problems and
you know, probably come a lot from trying to integrate all
these studios and these publishers and you know, there
there's a lot of, you know, things missing in the middle.
And even going back to when Tango Gameworks and Arcane
Austin got shut down, like thosetwo studios were going to get
(23:20):
shut down by Bethesda's in the Max anyways.
And then they got bought out by Xbox Arcane Austin.
They let them keep making Red fall even though they did not
want them to. They let them keep doing it to
be hands off and not overly pushy as their new owners.
And that failed miserably and studio got shut down because
they hadn't ever produced anything significant besides
(23:41):
helping with some of their previous games.
And then, you know, Tango Gameworks, you know, the, the,
the evil within the first game was pretty successful and they
hadn't made anything successful sense, you know, in, in the, in
the evil within sequels and Tokyo, what whatever that game
was called the, the, the, the, the ghost Tokyo, Ghostwire
(24:02):
Tokyo. And then even hi-fi Rush was
critically successful, but was acomplete failure financially,
even when it went to other platforms.
And, and, and so that's who you got shut down because their
founder left and a bunch of their leadership left.
And now you know, Crafton has them and everyone celebrating
(24:23):
Crafton buying Tango Gameworks and letting them make Hi-fi Rush
too. But then we just found out that
Kraft and took another studio, they bought the Subnautica
studio and just pulled all of their leadership out and
replaced it with their own. So can, are we really going to
argue that Tango's in a better place right now?
I would argue they're not, but that's a different conversation.
(24:43):
I just, these layoffs suck. I wish it didn't work like this.
But also this is how it works. And this probably is, again,
just mostly from a financial point of view, probably good for
Xbox in the long run. I want to be very clear, as much
as people are, I saw, I will never forgive Xbox for this.
You know, people are already past it today.
(25:04):
There will be people who will drag it on.
And to a point, I think it's good to not forget that these
layoffs happened. But just keep in mind that one,
people are going to forget quickly.
And two, there's going to be more layoffs in January and a
year from now. So that's where we're at.
Take it or leave it I guess and better Xbox news at least to
(25:27):
them. Helldrivers 2 is coming to Xbox
on August 26th, 2025. This is This will be get talked
about a lot. I'm seeing it all over the
place, but I don't know if the importance of this will get
truly talked about simply because this is a PlayStation IP
(25:50):
being published by PlayStation on Xbox.
This has never happened. I saw people trying to say that
oh this, that MLB The Show is licensed to Sony.
Sony does not own that that thatlicense.
That's from the MLB. They they own the license and
actually the MLB publishes the Show on on Xbox.
(26:14):
It's not even Sony. Sony doesn't publish it there.
They were basically forced to make it go to Xbox by MLB.
Death Stranding, I saw people being like, oh, Death Stranding
just came out on Xbox. Kojima and his studio purchased
the rights to Death Stranding away from PlayStation and then
self published it onto Xbox. That's that that that is not the
(26:36):
case. There's a few other games I saw
people talk about, even games like, well, maybe eventually
Marathon comes out. That's a contractual thing When?
PlayStation bought Bungie or Sony bought Bungie that was
saying that their next title wasallowed that was going to be
multiplatform, I assume because they'd already put in a lot of
work on that. And for a multiplayer game, you
(26:56):
want to be multiplatform. And but this is the first time
that a PlayStation IP is going to be published by PlayStation
on Xbox. Now, notably, this isn't a first
party studio that makes it the the Arrowhead is a third party
studio, but this is a PlayStation IP.
They own the helldivers IP and they just they license to that
(27:19):
licensed it out for development to Arrowhead.
So this is, I mean this, this ispretty wild.
I I don't think it can be understated how big of a deal
this is. And I saw some I think pretty
good takes today of people beinglike this is 100% evidence of.
(27:42):
Xbox's generosity is, I think what you could call it to
PlayStation, of putting their first party games on the
PlayStation recently and maybe even to this day.
Of the top five selling games onPlayStation for multiple months
this year, there were three or if not more Xbox published games
(28:03):
because, you know, it's not getting talked about much, but
PlayStation isn't releasing hardly any first party games.
They will have ghosts of Utah this year.
Last year they had Astrobot, which was a big success even
though it didn't sell that well.But critically, it was a success
at one game of the year for manyof the the big awards.
(28:23):
You know, then you go back to Spider Man 2, God of War
Ragnarok. I'm sure there's been some other
games sprinkled in there, but most of their games have been
third party temporary exclusives, right?
Like the Final Fantasy games and, and, and oh, Blackmith
Wukong and stuff like that. So I think that there's a pretty
(28:45):
good chance that this is one of the first signs of PlayStation,
especially with a multiplayer game that's been out for a year
and a half, right? Like this isn't like it's day
and date or anything that they're probably seeing their
sales flatlining the game. Never.
Hell Divers 2 never sold very well on PlayStation.
All of Hell Divers 2 success came from PC 100%.
(29:06):
If if anything, I remember seeing that there's a pretty
good chance that it had Helldivers 2 only released on
PlayStation. It would have been a failure.
Like it would have been considered like like bad like a
like a bad deal. It got saved by PC players.
So of course, you know, even PlayStation is smart enough to
(29:26):
know that more people buying thegame is good for them, right?
And buying cosmetics and and buying the the Helldiver bucks
or whatever, but still this isn't something I think
PlayStation will have done a year ago, five years ago like
this is new. This is something different.
They also do have new leadershipthere, so that has to be
considered as well. But I think this is insane.
(29:49):
I I I I really I I don't think everyone maybe agrees with me
and then that's perfectly fine. I, I think this is an insane
thing for a Sony first party IP to be put on Xbox.
I, I, I hope it's a sign of things that come.
I also may be very console worry, may be very lamely have
(30:11):
been kind of paying attention tosome of the the Sony people,
some of the Sony fanboys to see if there's anyone defending this
by using the exact same logic they make fun of for Xbox doing
the same thing but in reverse. Yeah, we'll come back to that
one day. On the story, I honestly didn't
get to dive into too much because of everything else going
on. It does seem like there's some
(30:33):
issues with the switch to displays.
Luckily, and this isn't me beingmean, it's just me being honest,
I think the average Nintendo gamer doesn't care.
So what it stems from is some analysis by Digital Foundry as
well as some other kind of tech Youtubers who found that the the
(30:55):
the delay on kind of like inputsand what you see on screen for
the switch to display could be 30 to 40 milliseconds, which may
not sound like much, but especially if you're playing
like a twitchy game or a shooteror whatever.
Just for comparison, when you like when I was buying my my
monitors for my PC and for my Xbox, I was looking for three to
(31:19):
five milliseconds of delay. And even that is too much for
some people. Some people want to be even more
responsive. So 30 to 40 milliseconds.
It's significant. You that would be a noticeable
lag to anyone who's playing anything even somewhat
fast-paced. Now, admittedly, many of
Nintendo games aren't many of Nintendo games that that's not
(31:42):
going to be that big of a deal outside of, you know, if there's
some shooters, some fighting games, things like that.
And, and let's be honest, the people who are super serious
about those type of games probably not playing on switch
to just that. That's at least my opinion.
I could be wrong, but yeah, a really interesting story.
This isn't something they can fix.
(32:04):
It's just the, the kind of displays they put into these
things. It's just the way they are.
I, I don't think the majority oftheir buyers are really going to
give a crap or even know this, but it does.
It is just a reminder of, you know, that switch to is like 3
year old tech. Even it's DLSS and stuff is, is
(32:24):
pretty outdated at this point. It's got this kind of crappy
screen. It still has the crappy controls
that are going to get stick drift almost immediately for at
least some people and just no one cares.
They're going to sell 100 million of them.
So, you know, good for Nintendo way to, I guess, educate your
consumers very well or not at all.
(32:47):
A former BioWare developer says that the studio may be a Mass
Effect studio. So during a a live stream, Mark
Dara, a former BioWare dev, one of the O GS over there was
recording footage for a retrospective on Anthem.
He's doing soon. And during that was answering a
bunch of questions. And towards the end he dropped a
a few tidbits that were kind of interesting.
(33:10):
He stated specifically that he wouldn't be surprised if Mass
Effect becomes the only game that BioWare works on,
especially if the next one is successful.
He talked about how because of so many of the firings and
layoffs and moving people aroundthere, there isn't really that
many people left at BioWare who would even argue like, say the
(33:31):
next Mass Effect comes out there.
There's not really anyone there who's going to be like, OK,
guys, let's do Dragon Age now. And since they appear to
basically be a one game studio moving on, moving on from here,
you know, you would have to havesomeone there in leadership be
like, OK, we're doing Dragon Agenext if that's what they were
going to do. And that doesn't seem likely
with everyone who left or was forced to leave.
(33:54):
He also something said somethingkind of interesting about how a
BioWare isn't big enough to makethe next Mass Effect on their
own, which I anticipate will start production here later this
year. So he implied that they will
either or need to hire up a bunch, which they will likely do
and they will almost certainly use a Co dev studio.
(34:16):
So whether it's like EA Motive or or another studio at EA,
we've been seeing them do this alot.
They're currently doing it with the Battlefield game.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see 234 studios get
together with BioWare and leadership to make the next Mass
Effect. And I kind of think it works.
I kind of like when when publishers do this because it
(34:36):
keeps people busy. It keeps people from getting
laid off, hopefully. And this could be a good thing.
One of the interesting things along with that that he talked
about is that, you know, late last year in 2024, we found out
a bunch of BioWare devs were loaned out to other studios to
help them work on Skate and IronMan and the Battlefield and so
(34:57):
on. And then earlier this year in
2025, we were told, you know, those were permanent placements
now that those people were staying at those studios.
Well, Dara implied in his video here or in his stream that that
isn't completely true, that at least some of the people who
were loaned out are still technically BioWare employees
and will be brought back to the studio once they begin
(35:19):
production on Mass Effect. So, you know, take that for what
it is. I just, I don't know, I I
thought this was kind of interesting.
I love the Mass Effect series. I got really into it here in the
last few years. I make a ton of content about it
and I pay really close attentionto it.
(35:39):
I really anticipate this year's and seven day hopefully being a
big deal and in in a way to really kind of solidify like,
yeah, this is happening. The games we made, we're in full
production now, we're ramping up.
You know, here's a bunch of screenshots or here's, you know,
some a trailer or here's, you know, some concept art or
(36:00):
something. Here's what we're doing.
We've got our team in place, youknow, let's go or whatever.
I just, you know, every day I wake up basically hoping not to
get news about EA and BioWare because until, unless it's a
announcement, a full production on Mass Effect, I, I, I worry
(36:21):
every day. So we'll, we'll just cross our
fingers. I hope for the best there.
The Don't Kill Games initiative gets 1 million votes and will be
addressed by the European Union.This is a big movement by it was
started off by one particular person and group and it kind of
expanded from there. They essentially want to force
(36:43):
publishers in the future to ensure that when games come out,
they they have either like an expiration date of like they
have to stay very clearly, you know, four years from now, we're
going to shut down the servers for this game.
So, you know, so people, you know, know what they're getting
into or to make it possible for games to continue working even
(37:04):
after the servers for them get shut down.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you know, you
know, many of us are used to the, the olden days where you,
you bought the game, it was on the disk or even you could
download it on, on newer systems.
And no matter what, whether yoursystem was without Internet,
whether, you know, you could just play the game, there's no
problem. Well, what people don't realize
much nowadays is that a lot of modern games use servers either
(37:29):
for piracy reasons or like a game like The Division, you
know, everyone knows that Division One and two, like yeah,
you can go to the Dark Zone and do PvP or you can, you know,
request help to do Co-op with other people and stuff like
that. What what some people may not
know is that game like The Division is streaming assets
like like the world and via a server is streaming all of the
(37:54):
AI behavior, all the MPCS that you're fighting and stuff.
All of them are controlled by streaming and data from a
server. That's not being done locally on
your PC or on your console. That's all being controlled off
site. So a game like The Division
isn't just dependent on one server for multiplayer.
A a game like The Division or the series like The Division
(38:16):
probably has four or five different server dependencies.
And so one day when The Divisionhas few enough players and
Ubisoft decides to shut The Division down, you won't be able
to play it. You can't just play it offline.
You, you have to be connected tomultiple servers for the base,
(38:36):
you know, the base usefulness ofthat game to even exist.
And and I don't think people always realize that.
So you know that that's what they're trying to prevent here.
Now there's been a bunch of drama over some people opposing
it, some game devs being againstit because it could require game
devs to, to, to give out information that is proprietary
(38:57):
and, and you know, like with like server structures and
things like that, or even information that could make it
easier for people to hack games or to hack multiplayer games and
stuff like that. I, I really hate the way this
has worked out because basicallythe, the two sides of this hate
each other instead of both sidesbeing like, oh, you have a good
point. I wonder how we can meet in the
middle, right? And at the end of the day, all
(39:17):
this don't kill games movement really is.
It's just a movement to get attention on this issue.
Maybe nothing happens, maybe nothing changes.
But I think there is some credibility to the idea of
wanting game devs to be responsible for making sure that
their games that people buy withtheir money are are accessible
in some capacity even after theystop officially supporting them.
(39:42):
A few quick killers here at the end.
The Altars game players found evidence of AI scripting and
things that were in the game that that were that were in
there. The studio addressed it, said it
was an accident that the those were left in the game.
They were meant to be replaced. They were, you know, supposedly
just temporary. But also there were some
subtitle issues in the game for for languages with localization
(40:06):
where they basically admitted like, yeah, we ran out of time.
So we used AI to make those subtitles.
Apparently the subtitles are terrible and not accurate at
all. And they vowed to fix that.
Yet another warning to studios that, you know, maybe it's worth
taking the little bit more effort or whatever and, and, and
just getting this fixed up. Ubisoft's next Ghost Recon game
(40:31):
is reportedly going to hit internal testing later this year
in 2025 and, and alpha testing. I, I really hope I get into
that. I'm super curious to what this
next game is going to be like. Ghost Recon Future Soldier, I
think is the last true Ghost Recon game.
Wildlands was OK, but it was like silly and the open world
(40:53):
just made it feel very empty. And I just, I don't know, I I
thought it was the wrong direction for the franchise.
I also didn't like that it got taken from Red Storm, which is
one of their developers, North Carolina and given to Ubisoft
Paris, who previously had made like the Raymond games.
And I think you can tell becauseI don't think Wildlands was that
great. And then break point was a
(41:15):
complete disaster in my opinion.The the game felt terrible to
play. I thought it looked terrible.
The story was cheesy, the characters were awful.
It had some like cool customization and stuff, but
that was about it. The world was literally empty.
This big giant world that you'replaying in, there was like
nothing happening in it. They added like robot enemies
(41:36):
that are a complete nightmare the fight against and not even
the nightmare and like it's challenging but just a nightmare
and that it just kind of sucked,at least in my opinion.
I, I don't know, we'll see. I, I want to be excited for
this. I hope that they take it back to
its roots a bit. And then EA finally has
(41:56):
reported, it's been reported that EA hopes for the next
Battlefield game to reach 100 million players.
Oh no, I just, I just to that I say, Oh no.
I think that basically would confirm that the next
Battlefield is going to have a free to play component.
I'm wondering if they're going to do free to play multiplayer
(42:16):
and battle Royale and then do like a 20 or $30 add on for the
single player story. We'll have to wait and see.
I'm super excited for it either way.
But if they're hoping to reach 100 million players, they're
obviously not going to sell thatmany copies so they have to be
doing some kind of free to play option.
(42:36):
I am very curious if a free to play BR slash multiplayer mode
could could get in there, but we'll have to wait and see.
As for content updates, I don't have anything big this week,
nothing too crazy. I, I think that it's going to be
a pretty typical and you know, week here coming up.
(42:58):
I am hoping to finally get back to my Mass Effect 3 modded PC
playthrough on Twitch. I obviously will continue doing
the podcast and hopefully we'll be posting some videos next week
about anything that comes up that is interesting to talk
about, especially obviously if it's Mass Effect or the division
(43:18):
or Xbox related, we will be doing that.
But that that's kind of all we have for now and that is where
we are going to wrap it up. Thank you for listening to this
episode. Subscribe to the show on your
favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or iTunes and
subscribe to the Von Diesel YouTube channel to get all of my
(43:39):
videos, including this podcast. Thank you to everyone who
supports as a YouTube member andor Twitch subscriber.
If you're interested in supporting this podcast and all
of my other content, please check out the links in the show
description. If you have any questions or
feedback, hit me up on social media at Von Diesel or at the
Bonfire. Let me know in my Discord or
(44:01):
leave a comment on Spotify or YouTube.
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time.
This is the Bonfire Gaming Podcast, episode 344.
I am your host Morgan AKA Von Diesel, and this week we'll be
talking about the Xbox layoffs, hell, Divers 2 coming to Xbox,
BioWare becoming a Mass Effect studio, and much more.
Years ago when I started making content for The Division, The
(00:24):
Division One was the 1st thing Istarted making videos for and
streaming. And it's actually where this
podcast came from. This podcast up until a few
years ago was called The Echo Cast.
And that was a reference to the echoes in The Division.
These kind of memories that would be recorded and you could
(00:46):
come upon them and kind of see what happened somewhere based
off of all of the video cameras and cell phone footage and all
that. And at that time I had gotten
into, you know, the division community and I dabbled in other
ones as well. But the Division was the, the
main 1 I had interacted with, which at the time was the first
(01:07):
time I'd really gotten involved in the gaming community.
It's why I started making videosand stuff.
I, I'd been involved in other ones and forums and chat rooms
and stuff like that back in the day of like Ghost Recon and you
know, Age of Empires 2 and stufflike that, but not in the same
way. This was new because now we had
(01:28):
Twitch and we had, you know, Reddit and subreddit and you
know, I finally only ever got into Twitter due to the division
and, and do the gaming. So, you know, whether or not
that's a blessing or a curse, I don't know.
We'll have to, we'll have to decide that another day.
(01:49):
But not long after that, I was kind of like, man, I want to
work in games. I knew people who worked at some
game studios. It seemed like it was a cool
job. And I applied for a, a good
handful of jobs at EA, Ubisoft as, as well as there's actually
a few local, I wouldn't call them studios, but gaming
(02:12):
affiliated companies in my area that, you know, I'm thinking,
OK, you know, I, I make videos, I, I, I pay attention to this
stuff. I, I, I should do this, this
should be my job. And I will say at this point
that I don't know if I'm more thankful something didn't work
out more in my entire life. I would have made more money.
(02:35):
I would have done more interesting things.
I probably would have moved to some cooler places than I live.
That's kind of a hit or miss, upor down.
My, my wife would not have likedthat.
But I, it could have been interesting, right?
And, and instead, all I can think about is how I'm, I'm
(02:56):
almost at my current job for 13 years.
The, the job I do is a job that helps people in need.
I'm, I'm really good at it. I've done it for a long time.
I know everything about what we do and, and I contribute to
society, right? I, the job also helped me get my
student loans forgiven and, and all kinds of things like that.
(03:16):
And I'm really happy. And you know, my job has given
me the life I have, which is great.
And I just am not sure if I would feel the same had I had
gone into gaming specifically I had gone, I, I'm not, I don't, I
don't know how to code or make models or doing animations or
anything like that. I applied for mostly community
kind of community jobs, community directors or community
(03:41):
managers and things like that. There was actually also a job
for EAI think that was some kindof like research job, which I
have experienced and doing clinical research as well, but
it didn't work out. And, and man, with all these
layoffs and just the way the industry is, I couldn't be more
thankful. Oddly enough, the first job I
(04:03):
tried to go after after college back in 2010 has as hard as it
is to admit that it was, I actually tried to be a cop as
well and talk about, and I got really close a few times.
My area is extremely competitivefor those jobs because they pay
very well. And most of the departments
where I live actually require like a degree like you, you
(04:26):
know, it's, it's, it's not the same everywhere, but here it's,
it's actually pretty good. You have to have some pretty
substantial credentials to become a cop here.
It's a very competitive market and I, I wanted to do that and,
and, and instead I became a social worker and, and at the
end of the day, they kind of do the same job.
I just deal with a much less tense situations and everything
(04:48):
else surrounding that job. It's another example of how I'm
glad something didn't work out. So that is kind of where I go
into this week thinking about how thankful I am to have my
situation that I have being verysimple and very nice and, and,
and having a lot of feelings forthe people who are in this
(05:13):
industry that I dreamed to be inat one point.
And, and how that dream is probably pretty great sometimes,
but obviously has had some downsides.
Let's get into the gaming news. We're going to kick it off, of
course, with Xbox layoffs. So we talked about this last
week and mostly last week I talked about how so many
(05:37):
journalists and, and, and influencers and stuff were kind
of almost like hotly anticipating these layoffs.
You know, Monday, Tuesday came to win.
And then Wednesday came in the announcement started.
So the, the, the Meta, the overall Microsoft laid off about
9100 people. That is about 4% of their
(05:59):
workforce. If you want some silver lining.
I expected, and many people expected 5%.
And, and that may seem like defending them or something.
I, I can assure you at no point,why defend these layoffs?
I think they all suck, but I, I do think it's important to talk
about them and to talk about whythey happened and what it means
(06:23):
for the future and stuff like that.
So that's what we're going to do.
So that 4%, hey, that 1% difference is like, you know, 2
or 3000 jobs. So I, I think it's OK to be
thankful that 2 or 3000 people and two or three thousand
families are not trying to figure out their futures right
now. But you still need to empathize
and and consider the 9000 plus people who do have to do those
(06:44):
things. And that sucks.
The kind of big hitting pieces of news around it where that the
initiative the at one time like super studio, a quadruple a
studio that was supposed to be this big deal for Xbox that was
going to make perfect dark. The initiative has been
(07:05):
shuttered. The shutdown is gone.
If you didn't pay attention to what kind of happened with them,
that ended up becoming almost like this little tiny studio for
like they basically just took a bunch of people who were known
in the industry who had lots of experience.
And it seems like they just tried to throw them into a
studio together, hoping that like gold would come out.
(07:27):
And instead a lot of the rumors and a lot of the conversation
over the years was that a bunch of indecision and, and
paralyzation came out and, and, and instead of becoming this big
34500, maybe even bigger development studio, they, I, I
believe they're only around 50 people.
(07:47):
I don't want to say only like, oh, they only laid off 50 people
from the studio. It's awful, It sucks, but this
you know, when you, when you seethe headline of the initiative
shut down, we aren't talking about four, 5-6 hundred people
who got laid off. It was probably around 50.
They they brought in Crystal Dynamics to be a Co dev.
And in this situation, Crystal Dynamics was going to be the
(08:10):
principal developer of this gamewith direction from the
initiative. So in hindsight, you know, that
whole setup was probably, you know, not a great sign even
years ago. This game's been development in
some capacity for over 7 years at this point.
And, and I think at the end of the day, you can look at this
(08:32):
and realize that this studio, this project, the whole
architecture of this situation is just from a bygone era, that
this was a very late 2000s, early 2010's idea of making this
super studio and, and bringing back this IP and, and blah,
blah, blah. And in 2025, you know, you're
(08:56):
567 years in from the reports we've seen, is that, that that
demo they showed a year or two ago was, was a borderline non
representative vertical slice ofthe game.
That the actual game they were working on wasn't anywhere near
that, that, that, that Polish or, or that amount of finish.
And it just, you know, it, it was going to take too long, cost
(09:18):
too much. And that's, and that's when
these things happen. So it sucks.
I feel bad for the people who lost his jobs.
I can't pretend like this was all that surprising.
We run into a very similar situation with Perfect Dark.
Obviously Perfect Dark is cancelled now for all the same
reasons I just said. As well as ever, Wild has been
(09:39):
cancelled. Ever.
Wild is this game that got showcased four or five years ago
now. It was from Rare.
After Sea of Thieves, everyone was excited to see what their
next big project was. It was supposed to be this.
And then all we heard about after that is that they
basically didn't know what kind of game to make it.
And it was kind of going nowhereand it got rebooted or
(09:59):
temporarily shuttered or whatever.
And then a couple a year or so ago, it started popping back up.
And even fairly recently, Phil Spencer said he went and saw
what they were working on. And I was really excited by it.
And it just, I assume a studio, you know, head had to report to
someone above them and they said, hey, where's that game at
(10:21):
and how far away is it? And what are we thinking for
audience and things like that? And unfortunately, it just seems
like again, kind of like perfectdark.
It was around for four or five plus years.
It probably wasn't anywhere nearcoming out.
And they just feel like those resources would probably be
better used elsewhere. And whether it's the money or
(10:42):
the devs or, or whatever. And and they shuttered it.
There was also a Zenimax online studio MMO that was in
development that has also been shuttered that was technically
unannounced. We don't really have any details
on it. We just know it's not going to
happen anymore beyond that. And, and to be fair, we don't
(11:03):
know. So out of the 9100 layoffs, that
was all of Microsoft. I, I've seen a few people say
that was only Xbox and that's not true.
It it's, I would presume 1/3 to 1/4 of those were from the games
division. So, you know, I believe their
gaming division has 20 to 25,000devs in it.
You know, losing a couple thousand, that's that's a big
(11:24):
deal. It's a big chunk.
It's also not like they shut down half the company, right.
So when we start talking about some of the reaction to this,
you know, keep that in mind. There did seem to be pretty
significant layoffs for specificteams and regions and things
like that. Turn 10 forces developer their
team was cut in half that that'ssurprising because forces has
(11:46):
been so consistent and almost every, you know, mainline Forza
game has scored extremely well and and they are doing ongoing
work on the Forza Motorsport, their last title, which was
extremely good. I loved it.
I thought was a great game but they are they are very much into
long term life service support of that game and I I suspect it
(12:10):
seems like Forza Motorsport isn't supposed to just be the
next Forza game. It kind of felt like they it was
meant to be the Forza game for quite a while.
Instead of calling it Forza 8 orwhatever would have been next,
they called it Forza Motorsport.And my assumption is they
probably aren't scaling up for aa whole new game.
They're just supporting this one, likely until next Gen.
(12:32):
maybe even beyond. And I I would imagine that's why
that team got cut in half, whichsucks.
And then outside of that, it kind of seems like most of the
layoffs that I've seen were fromlike marketing teams and the
publishing team. I, I have to imagine as they are
bringing together still to this day, Bethesda, Zinamax,
(12:54):
Activision Blizzard, King, I believe King was, was took a
pretty hefty layoff as well. The, the mobile studios that,
you know, things like publishingand marketing, you know, they're
bringing together 3 publishers that all had their own
publishing and marketing teams, right?
And we've been seeing over the last few years that those teams
have taken huge cuts because they're, you know, they, they
(13:16):
probably don't feel the need to have three of those.
We also got news last week, I believe that Xbox in general is
getting rid of their regional marketing teams and
consolidating that down to just,you know, individual teams.
I think they're even contractingoutside of Xbox.
I think there's a like a contractor from like South
Africa or something that's taking over those operations.
(13:36):
If I'm wrong, please let me know.
So it seems like the the majority of layoffs actually
came from them cutting off people from departments that the
average gamer just. Doesn't even know.
About or hear about a lot of thelayoffs and and resignations
also have come from people that you were pretty had been around
(14:00):
for, you know, decades at this point.
People who were probably ready to just retire and take that
pension or or take that four O 1K or take their stock options
and sell all those and live pretty forever.
One of the interesting bits of news that came out today, I'm
recording this on the 3rd of July, was that John Romero's
studio, John Romero being the creator or one of the creators
(14:22):
of Doom. Pretty legendary dude that his
studio had a first person shooter game that was being
funded by Xbox at that. That funding has been pulled and
that studio is, is shutting down.
This was one of the ones that was kind of interesting the way
it was being talked about because people are like, oh, I
can't believe Xbox would cut offa, a John Romero game.
(14:44):
You know, he's so legendary. The this studio, just from
trying to research it a bit was it's kind of interesting that
they've released two games called Sigil and Sigil 2.
Sigil 2 being a game that from what I can tell, is essentially
an expansion to the 1993 Doom game, which you actually have to
have do that that original, thatgame to even play Sigil 2.
(15:06):
I'm not sure if Sigil one was inthe same situation or not.
I but I, I just to throw it out there that this wasn't some like
big AAA studio where he was trying to make some big giant
AAA experience and what was, wastrying to kind of, you know, do
do something. It's very likely this project
they're working on with some like indie game basically,
(15:28):
obviously it gets headlines because of who he was.
I I would imagine this is more likely just a that studio was an
outlet for him to just keep being creative without being in
the under the auspices of some big studio or publisher and it
just didn't work out. But it still does suck.
I feel bad for what the the devsthey had there and him for
whatever this project was. And, and yeah, so on the, I
(15:52):
guess brighter side of things, 40 plus projects are still in
production. They were pretty clear about
that. There were some rumors that
bounced around about Phil Spencer potentially retiring
after the next console release, which could be as soon as next
year, handing over the reins to Sarah Bond.
Microsoft came out and claimed that he's not retiring for
anytime soon. We'll see.
(16:14):
I feel like from so many of the interviews and stuff Phil does
kind of, he has to be tired at this point.
It, you know, I'm, I'm not goingto feel bad for a guy making
like $100 million a year, But still, you know, he, he, he does
try to be personal personable as, as as much as someone in his
position can, I guess. And at least they claim that's
(16:38):
not true. I, I think the writing's on the
wall, though. It seems like they've been, you
know, kind of grooming Sarah Bond for a long time to take
over that position. And I, I suspect that's
happening sooner than later, even if they deny it.
On a personal note, I'm really happy that undead Labs state of
decay three appears to still be good to go.
Jess Corden said that he got in touch with people in the know
(16:59):
and that that studio as far as Ican tell was untouched and the
game is still full speed ahead. I'm still hoping for that to
come this year and next year. I I think the overall look at
this is again to be clear, layoffs suck.
I feel bad for the people, but Ido think so much of the
conversation is is just really useless.
(17:23):
You expect it from the regular gamers, right?
Like all my 4U tabs on social media have been a nightmare of
of random saying that oh Xbox can't recover from this, oh Xbox
is going down the drain, Xbox isdone, blah blah blah blah blah.
Not realizing that they're talking about, you know,
probably the second most profitable studio, you know,
(17:43):
profit margin wise behind Nintendo or or publisher behind
Nintendo, the biggest publisher in the world in general with by
studio and by gross income. Their, their hardware hasn't
sold as good as PlayStation, butthey've still sold 30 +
(18:04):
1,000,000 units. I would imagine they stopped
reporting that quite a while ago.
My guess is they're closer to 35or 440,000,000 units at this
point, even though that, you know, obviously is still doubled
up by PlayStation and the switchto will will trounce them all.
But you know, they, they, they're, they're making tons of
(18:24):
money. Even in Matt booty, I think, and
Phil Spencer put out letters which they I really, they really
probably shouldn't have because it I get what they were doing.
They, they're basically saying Xbox is stronger than it's ever
been. The future is bright, but in
order to sustain that future, wehave to do these things and no
(18:45):
one wants to hear that. And and I appreciate that.
I, I I understand why, even though from a business
perspective it is like it makes sense like like let's just be
honest, the games they shut downperfect dark, ever wild, this
other game, we're all games thatwere from reporting going
nowhere, that that weren't coming out anytime soon had cost
(19:05):
a ton of money already and. You know the, the, these.
They, they all kind of followed the template, right?
They've been in development forever.
They probably weren't anywhere near done.
That's not sustainable right now.
And so that, that those resources are going to go to
other places now, especially knowing that they still have 40
other projects that they're currently public or working on,
(19:26):
right? Producing, you know, the, the
studios and, and these overlapped, you know, marketing
teams and, and publishing teams and all this.
Like, you know, I, I don't know what these people do.
I, I won't pretend to, I, I think it sucks what happened to
them. I hate that they lost their
jobs. But like you, you can appreciate
why if, if there's, you know, 3 departments and three different,
(19:48):
you know, parts of the company doing the same thing, why that
kind of maybe doesn't make sense.
It can even be bad for the business if they're overlapping
each other or stepping on each other's toes and things like
that. I I just, you know, some of the
normie takes were as bad as I expected.
Of, of pretending like this means that Xbox is like failing
and it's done and irrecoverable and stuff like that.
(20:10):
But even though like notable people's takes on this like
could be kind of rough of like just going for what I would call
kind of the click bait or the kind of low IQ take on all this
stuff of like, like, like the initiative and perfect for
perfect DARPA. I saw people being like, man,
that was the game I, I was the most excited for.
(20:30):
And I don't doubt that. I don't want to dismiss that.
I'm sure there were plenty of people who were excited for that
game. But let's also be honest about
the fact that we saw like a cinematic trailer like 6 years
ago and essentially A cinematic gameplay trailer a year or two
ago. And that was all we kind of knew
about it. And the studio never really
(20:50):
seemed like it found its feet. And it, you know, we didn't
really know much about the game.Like there wasn't really
anything there. I saw people doing the same
thing with Everwild. Like I was curious about
Everwild. Just the vibe was interesting
from the what we had seen of it.But what we had seen was just
like a trailer like five years ago.
And it sounds like it was in turmoil.
It just wasn't coming together, right.
(21:11):
So they cut it. I, I just, I, it, what was
interesting was seeing some people even going so far as to
be like, no, I, I, I wish Xbox just would have never bought
Rare. I, I wish Xbox would have never
bought Activision Blizzard King.I wish Xbox would have never
bought Bethesda Zinamax. Like, let's be very clear about
(21:33):
some things. Many of the studios and
publishers that Xbox purchased were going down the drain.
Rare would not exist today if Xbox didn't buy them.
I'm not saying their current situation is much better.
I mean see if thieves is insanely popular and successful.
So, you know, maybe I am saying that, but like Bethesda Zinemax,
(21:54):
they were in trouble like like they were not OK, like they they
were insignificant financial trouble and being purchased by
Xbox relieve them of that. And now we still are getting
Bethesda games, games from Zinemax games from, you know,
machine games and from, you know, Todd Howard and all this
stuff. And whether that you think it's
a good thing or not, I don't really care.
But but those, there's a very real chance that those companies
(22:17):
may not even exist anymore if not for these deals.
Activision Blizzard King in its own way, you know, probably it
was sustainable somewhat on its own, but is now not, you know,
under the thumb of Bobby Kodak anymore.
He got his big golden umbrella and took off, you know, or
umbrella parachute. And I'm not saying that Xbox
isn't doing these things perfectly.
(22:38):
A lot of these issues, a lot of the problems with these these
these games that got cancelled in these studios that lost devs,
It's bad management. Like for sure like to a point
and some of the statements aboutthis from leadership at Xbox,
they're making these cuts and rearranging these things to
make, you know, to to change leadership to make less people
(22:58):
in between the decision makers and the frontline people.
That's all gobbledygook. It's industry speak.
I understand that. But a lot of these problems and
you know, probably come a lot from trying to integrate all
these studios and these publishers and you know, there
there's a lot of, you know, things missing in the middle.
And even going back to when Tango Gameworks and Arcane
Austin got shut down, like thosetwo studios were going to get
(23:20):
shut down by Bethesda's in the Max anyways.
And then they got bought out by Xbox Arcane Austin.
They let them keep making Red fall even though they did not
want them to. They let them keep doing it to
be hands off and not overly pushy as their new owners.
And that failed miserably and studio got shut down because
they hadn't ever produced anything significant besides
(23:41):
helping with some of their previous games.
And then, you know, Tango Gameworks, you know, the, the,
the evil within the first game was pretty successful and they
hadn't made anything successful sense, you know, in, in the, in
the evil within sequels and Tokyo, what whatever that game
was called the, the, the, the, the ghost Tokyo, Ghostwire
(24:02):
Tokyo. And then even hi-fi Rush was
critically successful, but was acomplete failure financially,
even when it went to other platforms.
And, and, and so that's who you got shut down because their
founder left and a bunch of their leadership left.
And now you know, Crafton has them and everyone celebrating
(24:23):
Crafton buying Tango Gameworks and letting them make Hi-fi Rush
too. But then we just found out that
Kraft and took another studio, they bought the Subnautica
studio and just pulled all of their leadership out and
replaced it with their own. So can, are we really going to
argue that Tango's in a better place right now?
I would argue they're not, but that's a different conversation.
(24:43):
I just, these layoffs suck. I wish it didn't work like this.
But also this is how it works. And this probably is, again,
just mostly from a financial point of view, probably good for
Xbox in the long run. I want to be very clear, as much
as people are, I saw, I will never forgive Xbox for this.
You know, people are already past it today.
(25:04):
There will be people who will drag it on.
And to a point, I think it's good to not forget that these
layoffs happened. But just keep in mind that one,
people are going to forget quickly.
And two, there's going to be more layoffs in January and a
year from now. So that's where we're at.
Take it or leave it I guess and better Xbox news at least to
(25:27):
them. Helldrivers 2 is coming to Xbox
on August 26th, 2025. This is This will be get talked
about a lot. I'm seeing it all over the
place, but I don't know if the importance of this will get
truly talked about simply because this is a PlayStation IP
(25:50):
being published by PlayStation on Xbox.
This has never happened. I saw people trying to say that
oh this, that MLB The Show is licensed to Sony.
Sony does not own that that thatlicense.
That's from the MLB. They they own the license and
actually the MLB publishes the Show on on Xbox.
(26:14):
It's not even Sony. Sony doesn't publish it there.
They were basically forced to make it go to Xbox by MLB.
Death Stranding, I saw people being like, oh, Death Stranding
just came out on Xbox. Kojima and his studio purchased
the rights to Death Stranding away from PlayStation and then
self published it onto Xbox. That's that that that is not the
(26:36):
case. There's a few other games I saw
people talk about, even games like, well, maybe eventually
Marathon comes out. That's a contractual thing When?
PlayStation bought Bungie or Sony bought Bungie that was
saying that their next title wasallowed that was going to be
multiplatform, I assume because they'd already put in a lot of
work on that. And for a multiplayer game, you
(26:56):
want to be multiplatform. And but this is the first time
that a PlayStation IP is going to be published by PlayStation
on Xbox. Now, notably, this isn't a first
party studio that makes it the the Arrowhead is a third party
studio, but this is a PlayStation IP.
They own the helldivers IP and they just they license to that
(27:19):
licensed it out for development to Arrowhead.
So this is, I mean this, this ispretty wild.
I I don't think it can be understated how big of a deal
this is. And I saw some I think pretty
good takes today of people beinglike this is 100% evidence of.
(27:42):
Xbox's generosity is, I think what you could call it to
PlayStation, of putting their first party games on the
PlayStation recently and maybe even to this day.
Of the top five selling games onPlayStation for multiple months
this year, there were three or if not more Xbox published games
(28:03):
because, you know, it's not getting talked about much, but
PlayStation isn't releasing hardly any first party games.
They will have ghosts of Utah this year.
Last year they had Astrobot, which was a big success even
though it didn't sell that well.But critically, it was a success
at one game of the year for manyof the the big awards.
(28:23):
You know, then you go back to Spider Man 2, God of War
Ragnarok. I'm sure there's been some other
games sprinkled in there, but most of their games have been
third party temporary exclusives, right?
Like the Final Fantasy games and, and, and oh, Blackmith
Wukong and stuff like that. So I think that there's a pretty
(28:45):
good chance that this is one of the first signs of PlayStation,
especially with a multiplayer game that's been out for a year
and a half, right? Like this isn't like it's day
and date or anything that they're probably seeing their
sales flatlining the game. Never.
Hell Divers 2 never sold very well on PlayStation.
All of Hell Divers 2 success came from PC 100%.
(29:06):
If if anything, I remember seeing that there's a pretty
good chance that it had Helldivers 2 only released on
PlayStation. It would have been a failure.
Like it would have been considered like like bad like a
like a bad deal. It got saved by PC players.
So of course, you know, even PlayStation is smart enough to
(29:26):
know that more people buying thegame is good for them, right?
And buying cosmetics and and buying the the Helldiver bucks
or whatever, but still this isn't something I think
PlayStation will have done a year ago, five years ago like
this is new. This is something different.
They also do have new leadershipthere, so that has to be
considered as well. But I think this is insane.
(29:49):
I I I I really I I don't think everyone maybe agrees with me
and then that's perfectly fine. I, I think this is an insane
thing for a Sony first party IP to be put on Xbox.
I, I, I hope it's a sign of things that come.
I also may be very console worry, may be very lamely have
(30:11):
been kind of paying attention tosome of the the Sony people,
some of the Sony fanboys to see if there's anyone defending this
by using the exact same logic they make fun of for Xbox doing
the same thing but in reverse. Yeah, we'll come back to that
one day. On the story, I honestly didn't
get to dive into too much because of everything else going
on. It does seem like there's some
(30:33):
issues with the switch to displays.
Luckily, and this isn't me beingmean, it's just me being honest,
I think the average Nintendo gamer doesn't care.
So what it stems from is some analysis by Digital Foundry as
well as some other kind of tech Youtubers who found that the the
(30:55):
the delay on kind of like inputsand what you see on screen for
the switch to display could be 30 to 40 milliseconds, which may
not sound like much, but especially if you're playing
like a twitchy game or a shooteror whatever.
Just for comparison, when you like when I was buying my my
monitors for my PC and for my Xbox, I was looking for three to
(31:19):
five milliseconds of delay. And even that is too much for
some people. Some people want to be even more
responsive. So 30 to 40 milliseconds.
It's significant. You that would be a noticeable
lag to anyone who's playing anything even somewhat
fast-paced. Now, admittedly, many of
Nintendo games aren't many of Nintendo games that that's not
(31:42):
going to be that big of a deal outside of, you know, if there's
some shooters, some fighting games, things like that.
And, and let's be honest, the people who are super serious
about those type of games probably not playing on switch
to just that. That's at least my opinion.
I could be wrong, but yeah, a really interesting story.
This isn't something they can fix.
(32:04):
It's just the, the kind of displays they put into these
things. It's just the way they are.
I, I don't think the majority oftheir buyers are really going to
give a crap or even know this, but it does.
It is just a reminder of, you know, that switch to is like 3
year old tech. Even it's DLSS and stuff is, is
(32:24):
pretty outdated at this point. It's got this kind of crappy
screen. It still has the crappy controls
that are going to get stick drift almost immediately for at
least some people and just no one cares.
They're going to sell 100 million of them.
So, you know, good for Nintendo way to, I guess, educate your
consumers very well or not at all.
(32:47):
A former BioWare developer says that the studio may be a Mass
Effect studio. So during a a live stream, Mark
Dara, a former BioWare dev, one of the O GS over there was
recording footage for a retrospective on Anthem.
He's doing soon. And during that was answering a
bunch of questions. And towards the end he dropped a
a few tidbits that were kind of interesting.
(33:10):
He stated specifically that he wouldn't be surprised if Mass
Effect becomes the only game that BioWare works on,
especially if the next one is successful.
He talked about how because of so many of the firings and
layoffs and moving people aroundthere, there isn't really that
many people left at BioWare who would even argue like, say the
(33:31):
next Mass Effect comes out there.
There's not really anyone there who's going to be like, OK,
guys, let's do Dragon Age now. And since they appear to
basically be a one game studio moving on, moving on from here,
you know, you would have to havesomeone there in leadership be
like, OK, we're doing Dragon Agenext if that's what they were
going to do. And that doesn't seem likely
with everyone who left or was forced to leave.
(33:54):
He also something said somethingkind of interesting about how a
BioWare isn't big enough to makethe next Mass Effect on their
own, which I anticipate will start production here later this
year. So he implied that they will
either or need to hire up a bunch, which they will likely do
and they will almost certainly use a Co dev studio.
(34:16):
So whether it's like EA Motive or or another studio at EA,
we've been seeing them do this alot.
They're currently doing it with the Battlefield game.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see 234 studios get
together with BioWare and leadership to make the next Mass
Effect. And I kind of think it works.
I kind of like when when publishers do this because it
(34:36):
keeps people busy. It keeps people from getting
laid off, hopefully. And this could be a good thing.
One of the interesting things along with that that he talked
about is that, you know, late last year in 2024, we found out
a bunch of BioWare devs were loaned out to other studios to
help them work on Skate and IronMan and the Battlefield and so
(34:57):
on. And then earlier this year in
2025, we were told, you know, those were permanent placements
now that those people were staying at those studios.
Well, Dara implied in his video here or in his stream that that
isn't completely true, that at least some of the people who
were loaned out are still technically BioWare employees
and will be brought back to the studio once they begin
(35:19):
production on Mass Effect. So, you know, take that for what
it is. I just, I don't know, I I
thought this was kind of interesting.
I love the Mass Effect series. I got really into it here in the
last few years. I make a ton of content about it
and I pay really close attentionto it.
(35:39):
I really anticipate this year's and seven day hopefully being a
big deal and in in a way to really kind of solidify like,
yeah, this is happening. The games we made, we're in full
production now, we're ramping up.
You know, here's a bunch of screenshots or here's, you know,
some a trailer or here's, you know, some concept art or
(36:00):
something. Here's what we're doing.
We've got our team in place, youknow, let's go or whatever.
I just, you know, every day I wake up basically hoping not to
get news about EA and BioWare because until, unless it's a
announcement, a full production on Mass Effect, I, I, I worry
(36:21):
every day. So we'll, we'll just cross our
fingers. I hope for the best there.
The Don't Kill Games initiative gets 1 million votes and will be
addressed by the European Union.This is a big movement by it was
started off by one particular person and group and it kind of
expanded from there. They essentially want to force
(36:43):
publishers in the future to ensure that when games come out,
they they have either like an expiration date of like they
have to stay very clearly, you know, four years from now, we're
going to shut down the servers for this game.
So, you know, so people, you know, know what they're getting
into or to make it possible for games to continue working even
(37:04):
after the servers for them get shut down.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you know, you
know, many of us are used to the, the olden days where you,
you bought the game, it was on the disk or even you could
download it on, on newer systems.
And no matter what, whether yoursystem was without Internet,
whether, you know, you could just play the game, there's no
problem. Well, what people don't realize
much nowadays is that a lot of modern games use servers either
(37:29):
for piracy reasons or like a game like The Division, you
know, everyone knows that Division One and two, like yeah,
you can go to the Dark Zone and do PvP or you can, you know,
request help to do Co-op with other people and stuff like
that. What what some people may not
know is that game like The Division is streaming assets
like like the world and via a server is streaming all of the
(37:54):
AI behavior, all the MPCS that you're fighting and stuff.
All of them are controlled by streaming and data from a
server. That's not being done locally on
your PC or on your console. That's all being controlled off
site. So a game like The Division
isn't just dependent on one server for multiplayer.
A a game like The Division or the series like The Division
(38:16):
probably has four or five different server dependencies.
And so one day when The Divisionhas few enough players and
Ubisoft decides to shut The Division down, you won't be able
to play it. You can't just play it offline.
You, you have to be connected tomultiple servers for the base,
(38:36):
you know, the base usefulness ofthat game to even exist.
And and I don't think people always realize that.
So you know that that's what they're trying to prevent here.
Now there's been a bunch of drama over some people opposing
it, some game devs being againstit because it could require game
devs to, to, to give out information that is proprietary
(38:57):
and, and you know, like with like server structures and
things like that, or even information that could make it
easier for people to hack games or to hack multiplayer games and
stuff like that. I, I really hate the way this
has worked out because basicallythe, the two sides of this hate
each other instead of both sidesbeing like, oh, you have a good
point. I wonder how we can meet in the
middle, right? And at the end of the day, all
(39:17):
this don't kill games movement really is.
It's just a movement to get attention on this issue.
Maybe nothing happens, maybe nothing changes.
But I think there is some credibility to the idea of
wanting game devs to be responsible for making sure that
their games that people buy withtheir money are are accessible
in some capacity even after theystop officially supporting them.
(39:42):
A few quick killers here at the end.
The Altars game players found evidence of AI scripting and
things that were in the game that that were that were in
there. The studio addressed it, said it
was an accident that the those were left in the game.
They were meant to be replaced. They were, you know, supposedly
just temporary. But also there were some
subtitle issues in the game for for languages with localization
(40:06):
where they basically admitted like, yeah, we ran out of time.
So we used AI to make those subtitles.
Apparently the subtitles are terrible and not accurate at
all. And they vowed to fix that.
Yet another warning to studios that, you know, maybe it's worth
taking the little bit more effort or whatever and, and, and
just getting this fixed up. Ubisoft's next Ghost Recon game
(40:31):
is reportedly going to hit internal testing later this year
in 2025 and, and alpha testing. I, I really hope I get into
that. I'm super curious to what this
next game is going to be like. Ghost Recon Future Soldier, I
think is the last true Ghost Recon game.
Wildlands was OK, but it was like silly and the open world
(40:53):
just made it feel very empty. And I just, I don't know, I I
thought it was the wrong direction for the franchise.
I also didn't like that it got taken from Red Storm, which is
one of their developers, North Carolina and given to Ubisoft
Paris, who previously had made like the Raymond games.
And I think you can tell becauseI don't think Wildlands was that
great. And then break point was a
(41:15):
complete disaster in my opinion.The the game felt terrible to
play. I thought it looked terrible.
The story was cheesy, the characters were awful.
It had some like cool customization and stuff, but
that was about it. The world was literally empty.
This big giant world that you'replaying in, there was like
nothing happening in it. They added like robot enemies
(41:36):
that are a complete nightmare the fight against and not even
the nightmare and like it's challenging but just a nightmare
and that it just kind of sucked,at least in my opinion.
I, I don't know, we'll see. I, I want to be excited for
this. I hope that they take it back to
its roots a bit. And then EA finally has
(41:56):
reported, it's been reported that EA hopes for the next
Battlefield game to reach 100 million players.
Oh no, I just, I just to that I say, Oh no.
I think that basically would confirm that the next
Battlefield is going to have a free to play component.
I'm wondering if they're going to do free to play multiplayer
(42:16):
and battle Royale and then do like a 20 or $30 add on for the
single player story. We'll have to wait and see.
I'm super excited for it either way.
But if they're hoping to reach 100 million players, they're
obviously not going to sell thatmany copies so they have to be
doing some kind of free to play option.
(42:36):
I am very curious if a free to play BR slash multiplayer mode
could could get in there, but we'll have to wait and see.
As for content updates, I don't have anything big this week,
nothing too crazy. I, I think that it's going to be
a pretty typical and you know, week here coming up.
(42:58):
I am hoping to finally get back to my Mass Effect 3 modded PC
playthrough on Twitch. I obviously will continue doing
the podcast and hopefully we'll be posting some videos next week
about anything that comes up that is interesting to talk
about, especially obviously if it's Mass Effect or the division
(43:18):
or Xbox related, we will be doing that.
But that that's kind of all we have for now and that is where
we are going to wrap it up. Thank you for listening to this
episode. Subscribe to the show on your
favorite podcast app, leave a review on Spotify or iTunes and
subscribe to the Von Diesel YouTube channel to get all of my
(43:39):
videos, including this podcast. Thank you to everyone who
supports as a YouTube member andor Twitch subscriber.
If you're interested in supporting this podcast and all
of my other content, please check out the links in the show
description. If you have any questions or
feedback, hit me up on social media at Von Diesel or at the
Bonfire. Let me know in my Discord or
(44:01):
leave a comment on Spotify or YouTube.
That is all I have for this episode of the Bonfire Gaming
Podcast, so until next time.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.