Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Game Mess Mornings with Me Jeff Grub,
your host from giant bomb dot com. Thank you for
tuning in. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about
the future of Xbox as the industry continues to shift
and change and more from that blue point situation. It's
gonna be a good one because we have lex Luddi
on the show. Lexi, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Oh? Pretty terribly glob but let's not talk about that.
How you doing? Ah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, same, I'm doing all right.
Speaker 1: It's it's fun. It's like, you know, I really enjoy
the Olympics. I enjoy it more when I can sort
of just I grew up like rooting for Team USA
at these things. It's a lot easier when you could
like comfortably just sit back and be like, I hope
they do all right, and not have to worry about
them partying with fucking Cash Patel in the locker room
after they win, and just being like, what was it
all for?
Speaker 3: If this is what you were gonna do? You?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a good time here.
Speaker 1: Even the escapism, uh just crashes right into that goddamn
wall all over again. Uh, but yeah, who am I
to complain. I'm doing all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're hanging in. The good video games exist still, Yes,
that's pretty notice notable at the moment, like despite everything
else going on, being able to play good video games
is still like, huh, Karen's pretty good. Huh yeah, is
it mon pretty fun.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of like, oh, that's really solid
games so far this year, which I appreciate. It's like, okay,
like even as like no one was expecting a lot
from the early part of this year until we get
to like Resident Evil here in a couple of days.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, it's like, oh no, there's been several
like paranormou site is one I keep wanting to check out.
I know it's not for me, but I'm it just
looks interesting enough that I want to give it a shot.
And people are like, no, yeah, it's it's really really good.
So and then and then every day someone like messages
me about a new indie game, and there's going to
be the next fest happening starting right now, right, it's
starting today, if now it's this week, and it's like okay, yeah,
And there's always four or five games that come out
of there that are not just like worth checking out.
Many of them end up being the Game of the
Year contenders and stuff like that. So yeah, we'll play
some video games. It's gonna be a good week on
the website everybody for that. So just stick around. We'll
have plenty to go on, especially as like Resident Evil
does come out. I'm sure we'll be talking about that.
Let's explain ourselves though, we're Giant Bomb. We're in independent
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and it gets you special goodies like ad free shows,
Grubsnack's premium Marry Me Tomadaci, which I showed to the
kids because they like Tomadaci life, and they were very
very impressed by Abby's meme making skills. My wife like
commented on and she's like, that's just Jeff Backlar. That
is just Jeff Backlar's soul captured into a video game.
Did you get a chance of checking out out.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's messed up. How good she is at it?
Speaker 3: Like it's messed up.
Speaker 2: It made sense when it was the sims on the
so many sliders and you know, configurable things that you
can do. You can really take it to hone in
on specific traits and stuff that. Yeah, the me is
like it's such a limited canvas. And still I'm like, man,
Dan does have crazy eyes.
Speaker 1: He does, indeed, But yeah, you go to gianbomb dot
com slash join and become a premium member and yeah
you get all that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Please and thank you.
Speaker 1: As far as this show goes most weekdays, I Jeff
Grub will help pace your gaming life back together. That
includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own
original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input
of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart.
If you were watching live on Twitch, welcome. You can
always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by
searching for Games Mornings, or find the RSS feed on
giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show
later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Hello YouTube.
Speaker 1: All right, we have a lot to get into, so
let's start the morning mess with that story.
Speaker 2: It was a slow news. It was a slow news weekend, right, nothing, nothing.
Speaker 3: Happened since that last game mess Mornings.
Speaker 2: It's I actually did mean to bring this up. It's
kind of fucked up that you keep on getting me
on for dragstays like this, like yes, right, yeah, it's
an hour of my time, and then there's nothing to
talk about.
Speaker 1: I need someone to come out there and dance for
these people and entertain them, do something because we have
nothing else going on, for example, nothing like Phil Spencer
leaves Xbox new Microsoft Gaming CEO steps in.
Speaker 3: Let's kind of cover the basics here.
Speaker 1: Phil Spencer retiring after thirty eight years at Microsoft. He
stated he had been planning to step down since fall
of twenty twenty five, and will remain as special advisor
through summer twenty twenty six to a with the transition.
Sarah Bond, who was publicly considered his air apparent, she
is also resigning. That is more unexpected, as many viewed
her as Spencer's air apparent. Bond noted it was the
quote right time to take her professional step, her next
professional step, excuse me, and will also serve as a
temporary advisor to Sharma who is Asha Sharma. Formerly the
president of Microsoft's Core AI product division, Sharma has been
named the new executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft Gaming.
She has a background in scaling platforms at Meta and
Instacart rather than traditional game development. That will become a
point of contention. We'll talk about that, as I'm sure
we talk about.
Speaker 3: All sides of this. Meanwhile, Matt Booty continues to go up.
Speaker 1: Matt Booty, previously the head of Xbox Game Studio, Booty
has been promoted.
Speaker 3: To Can't Stop the.
Speaker 1: Booty Executive vice President and Chief Content Officer. He will
report directly to Sharma and oversee all internal development teams
across Xbox. But that's THEA and Activision Blizzard. So look,
there's a lot more to get into. Tom Warren had
a report this morning. We'll get into that.
Speaker 3: I kind of have. I tried to grab it real quick.
It was behind a pay well.
Speaker 1: I paid it, so I have the story here, But
I think I might just hit the highlights regardless before
we do that, though, Hey, what the hell?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the five PM on Friday. Five PM on a Friday,
when all good news stories get released.
Speaker 3: At the Golden hours. They call it yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2: This it comes up in Tom Walland's reporting, But the
scale and magnitude of how unorganized this is is maybe
one of the more notable things about ish Well.
Speaker 1: It just looks that way because the agentic AI is
handling most of it and it's very organized.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if if you saw my Blue Sky
post about it, but did you read Syonadella's statement?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think. I don't know. If I did,
I might have seen it.
Speaker 2: Let me pull up the first line of it, because
it is maybe the most obviously I didn't like this
thing imaginable. This is the opening sentence Asaki and Nodella's
statement that went up alongside this.
Speaker 3: Games have changed a lot since pac Man. Alright, sorry,
go ahead, don't tell me, all right, read it? Really,
I gotta hear it.
Speaker 2: Gaming has been a part of Microsoft from the start
flight simulator shipped before Windows, and you can practically retrace
the line from direct dex in the nineties to the
accelerated computer era we're in today. The most notable thing
about this is that nineties is done Parma ninety Parma
s like a totally human person would write fash.
Speaker 1: M, yeah boy, hey, that's that's some great work there,
co pilot. Very that's very meaningful to me what you wrote.
Uh okay, I mean that's the that's the under that's
the subtext to this entire story, right, is that it
seems like Microsoft, the AI company, is.
Speaker 3: Saying we need even more AI.
Speaker 1: In our games, to the point where that's you know,
we need someone who is all in and gung ho
and basically operates her entire life on that. We need
her in charge. Let's let's hit some of this Tom
Warre and stuff just so we can like get because
I think he did a good job of getting some
of the answers we've been looking for here. So let
me just hit this on Phil Spencer, longtime head of Xbox. Internally,
employees say Bond's departure had felt increasingly likely in recent months.
They also said that Asha Sharma's ascendency seemed inevitable. The
Activision Blizzard acquisition dragged on far longer than expected, which
strained leadership. Basically, you know, it put Microsoft in the
crosshairs of the government of governments around the world for
a very long time, and I bet that was pretty frustrating.
Speaker 3: This is you know what let's go back to that
real quick.
Speaker 1: A lot at the time, Like I think I said
this on a lot of Game mess mornings and whatever
wherever else I might have been talking about this, it
never seemed like it was Lisa Khan. It's Lisa Khan, right, Lisa.
It never seemed like Lisa kan stood a strong chance
of winning that case. But I was always like, it's
still worth it for her to air it out, because
any sort of friction, any sort of frustration she puts
in front of these companies will be something that they
remember and factor into their costs going forward. And this
feels like in the end, she definitely like hurt this
company much more than they're willing to admit in terms
of like how they felt about that whole thing. And
so like Lena Khan, sorry, Linik, thank you Linik. I
knew it just didn't sound right. Thank you, Lena Kon
And just so like the fact that she kind of
was willing to go in there and throw herself in
their head first into fighting that without a strong case
of or hoping to win under the way the rules
currently operate, I think it was still shows that she's
right that politically, you should be doing anything you can
to stand in the way to force these companies to
really consider every choice that they're making.
Speaker 3: But that's that's an aside.
Speaker 1: Microsoft shift away from Xbox exclusives towards a multi platform
strategy can created internal tension. I think this is something
that's like a public secret, right we've known this that
there was constantly conversations back and forth with the like
who fell on what side was maybe a little unclear,
but it certainly seemed.
Speaker 2: Like the off like Bethesda were like, yeah, actually not
us though, you know, for a while there, and you know,
they were like even you know, as companies were being acquired,
some of them were staying multiplatform and some of them weren't.
And then that quickly shifted to now everything's multiplatform, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I bet that was another thing,
like you pile that on top of what was happening
happening with Activision, those conversations probably got pretty heated. Efforts
to redefine Xbox beyond the console produced mixed results, like
they were, you know, everything is an Xbox these you
sort of say that, And I think the biggest you know,
sort of thing you can point to from that campaign
is the meme.
Speaker 3: It kind of became a meme. This isn't everything as an.
Speaker 1: Xbox Uh, you know that that's Hey, look, it's hard
to like for a corporation to manufacture even a meme. Uh,
but I bet they were looking for more of a
return on investment than that. Spencer's resignation triggered months of
succession planning. They also Tom Warren reports it sounds like
this was a mess. The leadership change was supposed to
be announced later, but leaks forced Microsoft to reveal it early.
Some Xbox teams learned the news from reports and news
outlets before receiving internal communication.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The article is part of like they basically, he's been
covering this for a while.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I kind of wrote down here that Bond had
an internal memo about leaving and this does not signify layoffs,
is the last thing I wrote down here. Okay, let's
kind of reassess now that we got a little bit
of that out of the way, how do you view
what is happening here.
Speaker 2: I think the Phil Spencer's stuff has kind of been
expected for a while, and I think that you know,
it's become pretty clear that he's like, well a lot
of people blame me for a lot of stuff, And
you know, the more I keep doing this, the more
I'm just ahead of the kind of final years of
this thing, and people don't associate me with any of
the successes that I had anymore. And so I can
totally see him wanting to step away. And as for
the Sarah Bond stuff, like she was his pick as
far as I know, she was the person that like
he wanted to replace her. I think that something that
comes up in here is, you know, even her team's
not being aware that this was happening that day and
putting up that LinkedIn post asking for like feedback on
player accessibility and stuff kind of punts to how out
of the loop she was kept on this towards the end.
And I think there's a lot more layers to it
than simply she's spear hair headed one failed initiative. Yeah,
there's a lot of executives that spearhead a lot of
fucking dumb shit and keep their jobs. And this is
probably an accumulation of stuff. And you know, there's everything
that you could take into account from, Like there's stuff
that we don't know about to you know, maybe Xbox
or Microsoft being like, do we want a black woman
running one of our divisions? All of these different like
sociopolitical things and just like basic things add up to
how Sahia makes this call. I also think it's pretty
believable that Sahia probably asked cole Pilot at one point
who he should replace it with. That's your speculation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I g's a safe assumption at this point
he talks about how he uses that stuff. But you're right,
we're just speculating on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, I think there's a lot of the argument among
the fanboy sort of atmosphere out there is, hey, wouldn't
Sarah Bond have been better? Didn't we want Sarah Bond?
And it's like, no, I don't really think she makes
much of a difference in the future of Xbox versus this.
This a new person.
Speaker 2: I think she was maybe more up to speed, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, maybe probably right, But like you know, the
conversation around the idea that's as Sharma Asha Sharma does
not play video games.
Speaker 3: I don't think Sarah Bond played video games all that much.
Speaker 1: Like like that, if that's the concern, you're not getting
that much of a different person.
Speaker 3: But I think you're right. Sarah Bond up.
Speaker 1: To speed, and she at least was in the spirit
of For all of Xbox's failings, even under and especially
under Phil Spencer.
Speaker 3: He at least made it feel like they were.
Speaker 1: In the game by paying attention, being engaged and sort
of talking to the audience. And so it made it
worthwhile to sort of pay attention to this company because
it felt like there was someone that was listening. So
if we had these conversations, they would get back to
him and he would maybe act on him, maybe not,
and maybe make the right decision, probably.
Speaker 3: Not whatever, but it just felt like, Okay, he.
Speaker 1: Was engaged, and that's something Sarah Bond was trained under
that and likely would have been aware of that. I
think Microsoft was mostly done doing that in a very
open and bold way because it's burned them so many
times now. But the very least she would have known
how to do that, I don't think, you know, based
on Asha Sharma's weekend where she is clearly having Ai
respond to these people about their their concerns about the Xbox.
Speaker 2: She's definitely writing all of those responses herself on Twitter.
You know, take off the landing, she says to Microsoft
Flight simulative people or whatever, and like, let's it go,
she says to Nintendo, fucking yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah right. So so that's what she's been
doing this weekend. I don't think, uh that Sarah Bund
would have been like that necessarily, but I don't think
things were going to be looking much more brighter under
any sort of leader after Phil. So okay, so Asha
Sharma is on Twitter and she's responding to people with
hear you when they ask questions like hey, we want
exclusives to come back to the Xbox platform.
Speaker 2: She has stopped now since she was called out on this.
By the way, there was a very clear cut off
of hey, she stopped the plying.
Speaker 1: Yep, I bet she has like what what does hear
you mean when it comes to exclusives on the Xbox
coming back?
Speaker 3: No, they're not.
Speaker 1: We know they're not coming back. That's that's not even
on the table. Why would she say that?
Speaker 2: Because she didn't say that, he's probably the answer because
you know, ais are trained to yes and and here
you is a very like customer support response.
Speaker 1: Uh okay, let's just ask that question then. So how
important is it for someone in her position to actually
to actually play games. This has become one of the
debates that's happened in the wake of this.
Speaker 2: So like Reggie feesa Ma famously worked for Guinness, and
he worked for Rebach, I think for Nintendo, and you know,
he was a character. He was a charismatic guy, and
he kind of got over the hump of clearly not
being a gamer by being very charismatic. And I think
that you could see that he at least really put
his whole self into what he was selling. It's also
worth noting that, you know, he was the head of
Nintendo of America. He wasn't the head of Nintendo.
Speaker 1: But this is twenty five years ago as well, right,
So yeah, he comes to a different generation where it
was very easy to grow up not playing games, especially
for someone trying to be a black man in America
trying to make his way in business.
Speaker 3: Right, he was probably had probably had different priorities.
Speaker 2: And I think that in this case, you look at
it and you go more when you're talking about the
head of a massive division, you usually want someone who
understands the division and didn't start their Xbox account a
month ago and is clearly having someone else un lock
random achievements to make it look like they played. I
think that that like if they're if they're aware enough
that it looks bad that she's not a gamer. That
kind of tells you how much of not a gamer
she is. Of them being like, oh, we have to
un lock some Minecraft trophies or achievements, I was like, oh,
oh boy. But you know, I think that it is
really important for the people in charge of these decisions
to understand how these games actually get made, because especially
when you put it in the perspective of you have
the person in charge of core AI coming in who
maybe understands a negative amount of how these get like
inverse understanding two other people, which is like, well, I
just be told I can do right, Yeah, h I
just plus the bottom and the thing is in front
of me, right Like I think, yeah, I saw that
Gemini stuff. Why aren't we just doing that? And so,
you know, I don't think that this is a great
setup for good beginnings. And you know, we might eat
cro here, we might totally eat cro I don't think
we will. I would at most of my life savings
that we wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Well get on the poly market. Make it happen.
Speaker 1: Then LEXI put your money on. Look, you're right. I
think it's weird because in any other medium, I think
we would not be having this conversation. It would be
unacceptable for a book publisher cd CEO to say I
don't read books. It would be unacceptable for a film company,
while we know it actually might be true in the
case of like a Zaslov, right, for a Zaslov to
come out and say I don't watch movies, or for
him to clearly have not ever watched a movie and
then being that that role, it would just be impossible.
Speaker 3: We're not there yet with gaming.
Speaker 1: And I think you can point to successful people in
the space who like outright shout they don't play games.
Strausseelnik at least has made a lot of money, and
so like they'd be like, okay, he's runn out of
the company. He says, I don't play games. I'm not
the consumer in chief, is his line whenever.
Speaker 2: He's they've never lost money on AI.
Speaker 3: Light right, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And it's like you're coming from this space that is
of questionable providence and success, and that is your sort
of business card that you're dropping, and you don't have
the bone of fides from the space that you're going into.
It's in twenty years, this will not be acceptable, Like,
this will clearly not be acceptable. I think you're right,
she could still find success and we could be eating crow.
But why at this point for a business that includes
you know, yeah, you're trying to shift its business model
away from the console, but it's clearly still a gaming
business and you're going to be making Minecraft and Call
of Duty and all this other stuff into the future.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: There's two sides of it, Like there is the Boeing thing.
Boeing is the example that involves people's lives, so I'm
not going to take it easy, like take it lightly
or whatever. But there is this concept where Boeing had
an engineer and charged them for a very long time,
and they became this very successful company, and then it
sort of reached its plateau, and then they put a
money person in charge, and that money person did find
a way to preached the value of everything, and then
the planes weren't very good anymore. And it's like, I think,
right now, Microsoft's planes aren't very good, So what kind of.
Speaker 3: Person are you put in charge? Again?
Speaker 1: And this does not match up with the need of
this company from my point of view.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think something that came up a
lot on social media is like, well, let's give them
a fair shake. You know, they haven't done anything yet.
They've they've made one public statement and you know, they
haven't made any decisions. We don't know the direction. Like,
and my question for those people is like, what case
has giving the benefit of the doubt to a CEO
wound up being positive? Like at what time? How many
times have we been like, well, they really proved us wrong.
They really were men of the people, and you know,
they they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and they
were right. And so it's really and like people being
out there being like she's saying the right things and
I'm like, yeah, they all do.
Speaker 3: They are changed, not even table stakes, yep.
Speaker 2: Like if they weren't saying the right things, they wouldn't
have the job, they wouldn't be in the place where
they are now. So yeah, I don't know this whole thing.
It doesn't feel good, does it. None of it feels good.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, for all the conversation about
whether or not she's played games, I think you know
they are screaming at us, what is really happening here?
She is Satia Nadella, yes man coming from AI, and
that like that is you know, they don't have to
dangle the keys in front of us of her not
being a gamer or whatever, like we know what's really
happening here. Like I said from the beginning, the subtext
of every single part of the story is Microsoft the
AI companies putting someone from AI in charge of Xbox,
something that like they gestured at under Phil in a
strong way they gestured toward AI. But now it's like, oh,
the gloves will come off on this, and they think
that is the future and will they be transforming everything
in the shape of that. What does that look like?
Itably looks like dog shit? And now we got to
see here and watch it happen in slow motion or
I guess slightly faster motion than it was already happening,
all right, And then I guess the last thing here
is if you're someone at Xbox right now, my understanding
is there's a lot of people looking around at each
other being like, let's just go for broke, like let's
see what we can get away with under this new leadership,
sort of ask for forgiveness instead of permission. And I
think that's like, that's your best hope for maybe getting
a few more good games out of this company before
it is fine like cook to the point that Microsoft
abandons it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean your options realistically are ask for forgiveness
rather than permission or ask for independence, similarly to Toys
for Bob. Yeah, and that's kind of your two routes,
cause either which way, you're probably not going to exist
underneath the Microsoft umbrella within five or ten years, genuously
because they don't want developed They don't want a lot
of employees. They Microsoft like is very blatantly out there
saying like, we want less employees, We want all of
this stuff being done by like a gentiic fucking assistance
and whatever. We can also are homage, so clearly they like, yes,
they don't want you there, So get away with what
you can get away with while you can, or get
the fuck out while the getting's good, and you know,
build something healthier and more sustainable outside of that ecosystem.
Speaker 3: Yep. I yeah, I don't you know.
Speaker 1: I feel bad for anyone who's stuck in this and
hopefully you can navigate it, especially can and find a
soft exit if that's what you need to do. All right,
So we covered most of the aspects of this. Let's
take a break. We'll come back and start talking about
Blue Point because there's a little bit more from there.
Maybe some reporting people got talked to. We'll see what
we have to say about then. After these messages, if
you want to skip out on these ads, you go
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Once you do that on the website you can find
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Speaker 3: Grab those.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we will be right back. All right,
it's Game mess Mornings. Jeff Grubb, lex Luddy LEXI, let's
get back into it. Before closing, Blue Point Games pitched
two remakes to Sony. I think you can figure out
what happened with that. From Instant Gaming News, one of
the biggest news stories of the week was undoubtedly the
closure of Blue Point Games. The studio behind the remix
of Demon Souls and Shadow of the Colossus, will close
its doors in March. On Twitter, insider Detective Seeds said
he managed to contact two former employees of the company
to understand what happened. So here look, we're taking on
his word that he actually talked to real people and
those employees knew what they were talking about. But this
is out there and Jason Schreyers deepunked some stuff.
Speaker 3: Not this.
Speaker 1: This doesn't fly in the face of anything I've heard.
But let's just kind of put that little salt to
a grain of salt. On top of all this, the.
Speaker 3: Two developers worked in two separate divisions.
Speaker 1: They obviously wish to remain anonymous, which they did in
the story. First, the subject of the God of War
live service game was raised. The project began during the
production of Ragnarok, in which Bluepoint participated. Sony quickly approved
this connected title proposed by the studio, but it missed
several deadlines. Bluepoint realized that the game was far too
ambitious for a team of seventy or so people. Ultimately,
the Japanese manufacturer canceled the game in early twenty twenty five.
You know, I think we can probably suss out the
suggestion here, being that Bluepoint Games wanted to work on this.
It sounds like the kind of thing where it's like
they liked working in the God of War space and
the live service stuff was what they were able.
Speaker 3: To do or I guess this is my reading on
the situation.
Speaker 1: The live service stuff provided them the framework to get
the approval for a massive budget to make this game.
Speaker 3: Does that sound right to you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like even when you say this is
the game we want to make, you have to remember
that this is the game we think will be allowed
to make, and this is a game that we think
will get approved by the people with perse strings. So yeah,
that totally makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: After that, blueboyt Games did not work on any approved
projects until it closed. The company proposed four game ideas,
but all were rejected by PlayStation. Among these titles were
two remakes of single player games, one of which is
currently in development at a different studio. Maybe we can
assume that was the God of War one, two, and
three remake. I mean, they obviously they know God of War.
I bet they might have suggested that would have been
good for them. In any case, the atmosphere has deteriorated
significantly after the cancelation of the God of War Live
service game, and employees had already decided to leave. As
a result, only about fifty to sixty people remain when
the closure was announced since no projects had been approved
by PlayStation, the studio's demise was expected by a large
part of the team, which is definitely what I heard
that it wasn't surprising, even if it was very infuriating.
The writing was on the wall. The writing was really
stupid on the wall. Okay, so just a little bit more.
There kind of lines up with a lot of stuff
I think we could have pieced together in terms of
they were pitching stuff. They were probably pitching remix, Yeah,
they were, at least according to this reporting this story.
After having some time to digest it, how are you
feeling about Sony and Bluepoint and all of this?
Speaker 2: Infuriative was the right word? Like everything about this seems
like you really couldn't figure out something to do with
one of the most like technically talented and like the
most institutional knowledge of any of the studios that you have.
You can find anything for them to do on any
other projects that you're working on, And your only solution
was to get them entirely off your books was to
basically be like, no, you actually can't make any of
these projects, Like we are so adverse to risk that
we're not even going to let you work on a
new ip that could hit or we're not gonna let
you work on a remaker something that will probably make
a relatively fair amount of money, or like it, especially
if one of those remakes was Got a War. If
that God of War actual remake is now being handled
internally by Sony Santa Monica, that's a massive project. That's
not a small project. That is three games, and it
is going to require one a lot of outsourcing and
two a lot of like Sony Santa Monica's time and attention.
And you already have a situation where things like the
Heretic Profit and Corey Barlag's new game are taking like
five eight years to make, and you're putting more strain
on those handful of studios that get blank checks. You know,
like these things don't operate at scale. We see that
with Ubisoft. You can't just throw more employees at one
studio or one company and make it so that they
can make the exact same equivalent amount of more products,
because these people have to work as a team, they
have to integrate, they have to find workflows, they have
to do this and that, and you want separate distinct
teams with separate distinct voices working on separate distinct projects
because if one of them goes wrong, it doesn't affect
the other. And the idea of like, actually, let's take
some of these eggs out of this baskish and because
you're so hoping that the one egg that you have
in the basket is gonna wind up being like a
golden goose is like insane. It's insane to me, Like,
I understand why it happens, but it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's This is one of the like of
all these negative this parade of negative stories we've had
for the last couple of years, but especially in the
last few months and maybe even so especially in.
Speaker 3: The last couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Uh, this is the one that's like, oh, it really
does feel fully cooked, because what this story says up
to us at this point is these traditional places where
it's not just like ah man, gaming is like only
a certain kind of game can be made in the
United States, Like a place like Austin, Texas is one
of the bedrocks of where video games were like turned
into a full fledged medium, and they can't make games
there anymore, not in any like not unless you are
id and I mean we'll see, like, how does Microsoft
feel about ID after you know, it seems like Doom
didn't quite live up to expectations. We'll see it's it's
very frustrated, like to know that, like it felt like okay,
but Bluepoint is carved out a niche like it can
work right, and it's like, no, we've built up an
infrastrut around the world.
Speaker 2: Turn on investment on that niche isn't as big as
a potential return on investment on something that is less
likely to hish.
Speaker 1: And you know what like happens here is the people
who were at Blue Point, many of them could leave
start their own like outsourcing project studio, and Sony immediately
immediately hires them back to help with that God of
War remake, but at a fraction of the cost of
what they would have had to pay them if they
were employed there. This is I think, you know what
we can like unions would not probably not have saved
these people, but an industry wide union certainly would have
helped somewhat.
Speaker 3: We have a lot of studio specific unions.
Speaker 1: I think what when people were calling for unions in
this industry a long time ago, what we meant was
an industry wide union, similar to how it operates in Hollywood.
That's what these people really need. And short of that,
this stuff is not just going to keep happening. It's
going to be the default for this industry. And here
we are again, Uh, how we feeling about Sony overall?
Like it like they have defaulted into this space where
they are the place that's where people are gonna play
GTA six.
Speaker 3: So it's like it sort of has.
Speaker 1: This bubble of vulnerability around it right now where it's
like any sort of bad feelings don't matter until GTA
six happens, and then that's going to kind of take
off like its own rocket. But Sony doesn't need to
operate that way the right They don't need to like
run their business in a way where it's like, oh, yeah,
we don't have to make the right decision or we
don't have to invest in our future because we have
this big, uh, sort of the elephant in the room
happening here later this year.
Speaker 3: How are you feeling about Sony overall?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I'm not a CEO pretty evidently, but in
a lot of ways it doesn't I've never been able
to figure out the mentality of like let's just hitch
your wagon to another company being successful, Like if they
do Grayish, then we'll do better than them somehow at
some point. And when they do put things in such
hyper competitive and like when they view the world in
such a hyper competitive way, the fact that they are
relying on another company's product to be their boon for
this year, to be their real like big seller and
the thing that makes them a lot of money that
doesn't seem healthy and that doesn't seem like a thing
that they should be relying on. And yeah, like I
don't know that. Say, the play was good, and then
everything since then, I've been like, man, this doesn't feel
good either. Why is it that every time I interact
with this hobby's I will come away thinking this doesn't
feel good? Oh no, yep.
Speaker 1: People are at other Sony studios are kind of waiting
for the other shoe to drop. But that's just people
being like seeing this and being like, Okay, if we
have not gotten like over like three of our last
pitches confirmed, are we next?
Speaker 3: Or something like that?
Speaker 1: You got to imagine like Ben's studios looking around if
they're not working on something like are we next?
Speaker 3: And I bet they're not the only studio feeling that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've these big corporations that have made their business
consoles for a very long time. It feels like they
are at some sort of natural end and they are
flailing around in a way that is hurting everybody else.
Speaker 3: Kind they could just figure.
Speaker 1: It out and we can get back to some sort
of stable status quo, even if it's worse now, because
I think we've accepted that gaming is in a weird
lule right now, so maybe it's just going to be worse,
But just you don't have to like add on top
of that with your flailing at these companies. All right,
let's continue on. Nintendo Treehouse returns this week with a
pair of gameplay showcases. This is from Jim Norman and
Nintendo Life. Another week, another Nintendo surprise. Perhaps this one
isn't quite as big as those in recent memory, but
Nintendo has announced that it's bringing back its Treehouse showcase
this week with gameplay presentations for the catcherly titled Super
Mario Brothers Wonder, Nintendo Switch To Edition plus Meet Up
in Bella Bell Park, which is cool, and Pokemon pokag.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think you mean Malo the Super Mario
Wonder Nintendo Switch to Edition plus meet up in Bella
Bell Park game.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, tam and rights reserved. Yeah, this is happening.
Is it tomorrow?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: I think it's tomorrow at two pm Pacific time, five
pm Eastern. Okay, yeah, I think this is not the
Nintendo direct that people were hoping for.
Speaker 3: But Nintendo.
Speaker 1: What people keep saying Nintendo needs to start talking about
some of the other games they have this is they're
still focused on reminding people Pacopias coming, and they have
a lot more Nintendo Switch two editions. I think people
are running out of patients with the Nintendo Switch two
Edition stuff though, LEXI, what do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Did you see any of the stuff around that
Zeno Blade Nintendo Switch two Edition?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Did I?
Speaker 1: I think I I meant to include it, but I
don't think I actually did.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got it's two stories down, Nintendo. Let's just
hit it now. Yeah Nintendo, No, No, it's okay. Nintendo
seemingly offering refunds for poor Zeno Blade Chronicles X Switch
two upgrade. This is for my Nintendo news. Nintendo has
apparently started refunding those who have asked for their money
back for the disappointing Zeno Blake Chronos X Definite Zeno
Blake Chronicles X Definitive Edition Nintendo Switch two upgrade. There
have been humorous videos on the subject on YouTube, with
many reporting the game looks worse than it did without
the upgrade, with poor texture issues and upscaling techniques. It's
not clear who did the upgrade according to this story,
but yeah, people have been like five bucks for this
and this is bad, give me my money back in
Nintendo is starting to do that. Yeah, this is this
is starting to feel like another straw on the camel's
back in regard to how people are feeling about their
Nintendo Switch to if this is happening in you know,
concert with a launch of first party games like that
would feel little bit different because we it feels like
a dearth on that side of things, or we get
maybe the disappointing tennis game to a lot of people,
people are like, hey, why did I spend so much
money on the system.
Speaker 2: I'm like, without being mean or weird about it, like
they didn't have to go about upgrading it this way.
They had that cap in the sessions to just raise
the frame rate cap. People did that manually on overclocked
switches yep. And also like an emulator right now for
we you can run that game at four K with
four K assets, like you don't need to upscale those
textures with AI, which is how I'm presuming you get
lower quality texture detail when you're upscaling textures like that,
Like you don't need to. You can just bump up
the internal resolution and it will probably look much more
pleasing to the eye. And I've been thinking about this
a lot. How fucking weird is the mood going to
be at the Game Awards this year?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be. It's gonna I mean it's it's
gonna be weird. It's Summer game Fest. It's actually gonna be.
It could be rancid at Summer game Fest, right well, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because also no one will be at some isn't American.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's gonna be like it's gonna stink, and then
you know we're gonna carry that energy into the Game Awards. Yeah,
it's gonna feel kind of kind of bad across the board.
Speaker 2: I tell you what, though, the pubs that games calm
are gonna be fucking wild.
Speaker 1: Yes, maybe maybe I'll try to get out there for
that again this year.
Speaker 3: That would be good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I look, Nintendo's in a weird spot with this stuff,
where I think this was, this stuff would be easy
for them to gloss over if they had their three
D Mario game ready to go, if they had Zelda,
if you know, Pokemon Gen ten was a little bit closer.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, people are looking around and asking themselves,
why why did I spend so much money on this system?
That you know leads into the January twenty twenty six
US Video Game Market Highlights report from Sircana. Matt Piscatel
has shared this on Blue Sky, as he normally does.
He does point out the industry saw an increase of
three percent sort of across the board, and this is
for United stating it saved, We're back, you know, it's
kind of keeping up with inflation a little bit. That
is a three percent increase for video game content as well,
which is like just everything that is a video game
or video game DLC or micro transactions.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Video game hardware though, was up sixteen percent, while accessories
were down five percent. And we'll talk about that accessories
spinning to cap this off. So yeah, let's see, the
top selling game was called Duty Black Ops seven still,
which maybe like that game was a disappointment, so maybe
that is like a real bad sign and that's where
we're at, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Again, it's up year over year.
Speaker 1: The only new game on the chart was I think
Code Veane two at number eleven, so it's a lot
of games that had already released, and then like the
the switch to and Xbox versions of Final Fantasy seven
remake had that jump from two hundred and twenty five
to number nine on the chart, So it did all right.
Speaker 2: To be fair Codeveane two being the only new release
game there. Like we talk a lot about like, hey,
January had some good releases. Ganuary had like Cairn. You
know that's not going to be on the Sarkana reports.
You know that's for you and me. That's not for
people who are buying physical games exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and this this does include digital but not
from like smaller publishers like Can Yeah, so that just
would not show up on here no matter what. But
as far as hardware went, a hardware spending increased that
aforementioned sixteen percent compared to a year ago, reaching two
hundred and forty eight million dollars. Switch To spending was
able to offset year on year declines across PlayStation five,
Xbox Series, and Switch. Those were down seventeen percent, twenty
seven percent, and seventy nine percent.
Speaker 3: Percent, respectively.
Speaker 1: But despite sales falling compared to a year ago, PlayStation
five led the hardware market in both unit and dollar
sales for January. Nintendo switch To ranked second across both measures. Now,
there's a couple things there. I think people are like
PlayStation five s thoughts selling the switch to. That's probably
bad for the Switch too, and I think probably uh,
but there is a Bell curve to hardware sales, and
PlayStation five is still in the middle ish part of that. Yeah,
it's declining, but it's still in the middle ish part
where it's higher than it is at launch. Now, usually
I would chalk that up to supply constraints earlier in
the generation, but it's obviously not always just supply constraints.
Sowitch which two should like sell more next January than
it did this January, and that'll.
Speaker 3: Be closer to the middle of the Bell curve for
its console sales.
Speaker 1: But regardless, I mean, how do you read this is
switch to like slipping on, and obviously that price is
hurting it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean anecdotally, I did see sales for PlayStation
stuff in ways that I haven't seen sales for any
switch to things carry over past December, even if that
is just like hey, get an extra controller with your
PS five or whatever. There are minor bump ways that
they are getting bumps, And when you consider basically neither
of them had like big first party releases, I can
see how this does happen. It's not a great sign.
But I also do think like Nintendo, out of all
of the companies around, have the most cards to play.
You know, they have the most cards in their hand.
They're gonna be like the episode of The Simpsons where
they're playing poker and they're like, Joe on you five ass,
and so you know they they do definitely have things
that they just haven't talked about, and I think that
the impatience is coming from, hey, why haven't you talked
about these things, and not hey, you don't have the
You clearly don't have these things, which is where the
frustration with someone like Sony is coming from, is, hey,
you clearly don't have things ready right now, and you
are relying on your third parties in a way that
isn't healthy, whereas Nintendo can be like, no, we have Steff,
we're just not showing it yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think if someone asked this recently on one
of the episodes, like like, will we get past this
point and sort of look back at it as like, oh, yeah,
that was that happened at the beginning of the generation
when they when they didn't have a lot of games.
But no one really thinks about that anymore because we
did get Mario and Zelda and Smash Brothers and Pokemon
and all this stuff, and then people were happy. We
will get to that point very likely, as long as
the games are new and interesting. I think of it
like we end up getting a lot of stuff that
feels like your Tennis Fever, which I think is an
alright game, a game I liked, but very familiar. That
that begins to add up and stack against Nintindo, where
it's like this is very samy, and you are trying
to justify this consol to people who already have a switch.
You are not making a strong argument to those people.
Speaker 2: To put in perspective my godson is about seven now,
and his uncle is a bit older than me. He's
he's the youngest of the children on my mom's side,
and he was like, Oh, I'm going to get him
a switch for Christmas. I was like, oh, you should
probably get him a switch too, because like it's all
things considered, not a whole lot more expensive, and like
it will keep them happy for a lot longer because
as he kind of figures out, you know, what things
are and what these things actually are, and is he
gets more online, you know, in that kind of in
eleven twelve age and starts to figure out, you know,
what new video games are and stuff like that. Himself,
he will kind of be like, oh, I want the
newer one, And his dad was like, yeah, but like
there's there's enough on the switch one that I can
just get him the switch one and he will be
happy for so long and so quiet about it, like
he won't care, and because he's probably not as tuned into,
you know, things like I was when I was eleven twelve,
that age when it comes to stuff like performance or
you know, I remember when I was thirteen getting online
and starting to visit game Spot every day, and yeah, yeah,
I'm really becoming aware of who the Daniel Dwyer guy
was and stuff like that. But like, I wonder if
he's gonna have that same thing where he goes online
and he like seeks out that information, or if he's
just gonna have the thing that's in front of him
and be like, actually, this is fine, This is totally fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, say, get a builds characters for for a kid
to have an older console and stuff like that, and
I the process that the parent goes through of you know,
that's two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars in the
bank right now, and the kid is going to be
happy enough for at least a couple of years.
Speaker 3: That's an easy calculation to make in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally fa totally fine.
Speaker 1: All right, Last thing on this, Uh, the accessory spending
dipped five percent compared to a year ago to one
hundred and eighty five million dollars. This is the lowest
January accessory spending since January twenty twenty. So January right
as the pandemic was like just very like getting started,
like the very very beginning tip of that where there
was a lot of uncertainty. I think this is one
of those numbers you look at like, oh, yes, things
are sort of returning back to pre pandemic levels, not just.
Speaker 2: Like just in time, everything's going back to normal, right, yes,
like and kind of let's just call on the last
five years guys.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh huh, and it's dipping below those numbers, and
that's say, oh okay, So I think people have like
really actually turned away. There was always that like, oh,
maybe they'll be able to keep some gains of the pandemic,
and for a minute there they did. But as these
new generations have dragged on and the switch to has
sort of presented itself, people are going, I can wait,
because you know, it's just all too expensive.
Speaker 3: And I don't blame anyone for thinking that.
Speaker 1: Last story here, resident evil requiem leakers deserve quote a
thousand deaths, says Hideki Kamia.
Speaker 3: This is from Ali Reynolds.
Speaker 2: It's actually the usual punishment that you get for breaking
a konamiumbago. So it's strange that someone would call for
it for a Copcom one.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's right there, right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, these company's talking. Maybe Copcom's reading up on
what Konami's been doing.
Speaker 1: Yep, I'll just I'll read his message here. I'm sure
the final developments of Residentval two were also exposed in
the Weekly Photo magazine. For your own selfish satisfaction, you
tramp it on the feelings of the users who were
looking forward to the game, as well as the feelings
of the creators who put all their effort into making
It's a despicable act that destroys the happiness of everyone
and deserves a thousand deaths.
Speaker 3: May you be cursed to never be able to play
games again.
Speaker 1: Man, that's a bad That's some bad juju to put
on somebody, for sure.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I look, people.
Speaker 1: Have been spoiling this, and they've been doing it in
some like really bold ways where they've just been going
to social media and throwing late game stuff out there
in video clips that are very easy to accidentally start
accidentally start watching. So I hope that people were able
to avoid that. That game is out soon, and I'm
looking forward to hearing what people think.
Speaker 2: Indressing Bogo on that one. I'm curious how people go
about dealing with that Embogo.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Okay, that's gonna wrap up the headlines and the
stories for today. Let's get to the other stuff we
got to do. There's no poll question because it was
Friday and we did the Bomb twelve. But hey, if
you want to submit your game for the Bomb twelve
this week, the game that you've been playing, just go
to giant bomb dot com, scroll down, go ahead and
observe what was the Bomb twelve from last week. But
there on the left hand side you'll find a button
that is a link to a form where you could
drop whatever game you're playing up and until through Friday.
We'll get the results, talk about it on Friday Show
and wrap up the week that way. In the meantime, though, Lexi,
why don't you tell people where that can find you
on the internet what you have going on and all
of that good stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to be around too much this week.
I'm traveling to an event in London for two days,
but I have to go up to Dublin first, so
I'm actually going to be traveling for like four days,
which is but yeah, you can find me on Blue
Sky at Lexlodi xyz, and we have a bunch of
really cool stuff coming up on start Menu, which is
the website that I wun for people trying to break
in two games media and the games industry. We have
some very cool reviews coming up. I'm sure you might
be able to guess what those are, and you can
catch me around the place talking about things.
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, good deal.
Speaker 1: We have a new poll question, if you haven't purchased
a switch to yet, what will get you to do so? Price,
drop more first party games, O led version or nothing.
We will get the results of that and talk about
it on Games Mornings here on Giant Bomb on Wednesday.
Speaking of Giant Bomb, we're kind of sussing things out
on this Monday. We're going to be going going into
our meeting right now and figuring everything out, but probably
not doing this today. There's some things in motion, but
we might have something else in its place, and then
you could expect the BombCast tomorrow. Expect coverage of a
bunch of new games. Just look out for that all
throughout the week, and we look forward.
Speaker 3: To hanging out with you. You guys should go to
giant bomb dot com.
Speaker 1: Right now and just bookmarkt people still do that, right,
All right, let's see here.
Speaker 3: I think we got everything all wrapped up. LEXI, thank
you so much for hanging out with me today and
talking about video games. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Anytime Globe always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for watching and listen. I mean you
are the best audience in gaming. Until next time, have
a good one, take care of yourself and goodbye.