Is Game Pass Killing Xbox? - Kinda Funny Games Daily 07.07.25

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2:07What's up everybody? Welcome to kind of funny games daily for Monday, July 7th, 2025. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 Under 30 a.k.a. New York Game Awards nominated a.k.a. Birthday Boy Blessing at Aoyah Jr. Good day, Greg. I know your birthday already happened, but I wasn't here for it. We weren't here either.

2:33Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I was at home all chilling. Happy birthday. Thank you so much. Is this a new coat or an old coat? It's a new coat to me. It's an old coat that a friend passed it on to me. I stopped hitting him and I was like, listen, You said I'll fit this shit. I'll take it off. I love these fat friends. Exactly. How was your birthday? It was good. It was really awesome. I hung out with friends. Went on a boat. I saw this. It was like a brew boat or something. Yes, they call it a brew boat. For my birthday, in recent years, I've been trying to find ways to like, what's something I could do that's going to be like a memorable experience?

3:06What's a creative way to drink? Yeah, exactly. Honestly, that's the perfect way to put it.

3:11Blessing Adeoye Jr.:What's a creative way to keep our friends together so we can drink and have fun? a couple years ago, I went bowling. Last year, I got COVID. This year, we went on the brew boat. It was fucking awesome. They basically took us around the Oakland Bay for an hour and a half. My phone connected to Bluetooth. We were blasting music. It was bring your own beer kind of situation. That's my main question because that was the thing. I saw the Instagram stories while I was in Salt Lake City. I saw you out there partying. It wasn't like... They were providing the boat. You provide the beer. Yes. They provided a boat.

3:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:You provided the cider. Here's the thing. I brought a big old bottle of whiskey and then reread the rules to the boat. Cannot bring hard liquor onto the boat. You cannot be chugging it. You're the one person who didn't read the rules. Yeah. Cause I have my friend Holly do everything. Cause Holly knows how to organize things. And so like she read the rules for me and it organized everything for me. I just put together the little party invite. Um, but yeah, like I ended up drinking, thank God Belinda brought, which she brought like these canned, like, I think it was like canned margarita or canned wine or something along those lines.

4:11It was like a Pogmosa thing. Yeah. Yeah. It was really good. I wanted to try one, but I was too late to that. Too scared.

4:18Blessing Adeoye Jr.:But yeah, I did that. And then we went out drinking at a tiki bar afterwards. And I was like, I was on the third. I had like, I had two birthday parties. You got to love that. Yeah. Because then on the second, the day before, it was our last volleyball game of the season. And then afterwards, we all went to, have you been to the spot? Espedes, the Brazilian steakhouse. I know of it. I can't remember if I've been to that Brazilian steakhouse. It's so good. Okay. I love it. This is my second time going. Went there as like a post-volleyball thing slash birthday thing with my friends. And let me tell you, I fucking love this spot.

4:48Blessing Adeoye Jr.:We got to put that on the list for like a team outing or something. Like a team celebration, end of year. We go to Blessing's favorite restaurant. Yeah, exactly. You guys won't be disappointed with that. No, yeah. Brazilian steakhouses are always hot. Oh, yeah. They got the little like puffy cheesy bread things. Oh, yes. That's how you know. That's how you know. It's off the chain. How was your weekend? It was great. I went to Salt Lake City. I was at Monster Jam World Finals. Thank you so much, Monster Jam, for sending the Millers out there. It was me, Ben, and Jen, because, you know, Ben's obsessed with Monster Trucks and Monster Jam, and I want to do a kind of funny podcast about it.

5:23Unfortunately, this week we got to review Jurassic Park. But, you know, I mean, next week I can do the kind of funny podcast about it, get into the weeds about it, but it was awesome. Like, you know, I mean, I've talked at length about how the dad I want to be and be that dad of like, all right, well, if Ben's into something, I'm into it. Let's do it. let's have and this was the first taste of that of like i don't know i don't know thing one about like i know the toys obviously we play the video game obviously but like to be i was my first time ever going to a monster truck show that's awesome and like being there like the the short encapsulation was like we were there and it starts and there were teens sitting next to me in the suite and they were popping the way we pop for wrestling i was gonna say i feel like monster trucks and

6:02Blessing Adeoye Jr.:wrestling even though very different i feel like there's a crossover there is and it's definitely that energy and that excitement and that fandom and all that stuff but it was like such a family forward event but then there were these kids there that were like free not i say kids again they were like 20 maybe i don't know somewhere between 18 and 22 yeah in this row with us that were there independently and they were freaking out at the races like who's gonna win or whatever because like the the number one thing i've learned about this uh when i started saying i was going to the monster jam world finals they were like oh like is there a season is there like and i'm like yeah i didn't know it i didn't really think but the amount of people who think it is professional wrestling or it is harlem globetrotters or just like whatever like no they race and they do these things and there's judges like there's all these different like actual competitions to monster jam it turns out that's really it was a blast it's crazy i've not met one person that's like oh yeah i'm a fan right i know i know i know i think it's interesting because i think 98 percent of everyone there had kids with them so i think it is that like like you go there with a family it's like a fun event to go to but then there's that two percent of people there they're like no I follow the season.

7:04These fucking weird Mike Minotti's. Yeah. Yeah.

7:06Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I got a favorite truck that I followed from the beginning. But I mean, like it is again, like I know I'm sure we'll get into the podcast next week, but it's like to fall into it and really like, it was awesome to be inside of a sport and a fandom that like, Oh, like I know nothing about this and everyone's surrounding. It's like when Roger got into WWE and like on that drive to raw, where we were catching them up on everything ever that happened. And like to be around these people. And it's like, we rode the elevator with the original, the guy who was the original grave digger driver right because we were up in the suites and he was up there too and then he's but then it's like all of his kids now drive all the different grave diggers and so it's like this whole like family thing and the sun it's just it's insane how cool it was he's like the rikishi exactly they'll soon be doing the bloodline gimmick i'm sure doing this but yeah it was it was something special and mainly to watch ben's excitement we got to do the um i want to edit together the video we got to do the uh hey you're not going to preschool you're going to monster jam thing where we drove by preschool and he goes this isn't the way to preschool oh it's because you're not going to preschool you're going to the monster jam world finals and he goes for realsies so it was good but enough about my son and the amazing weekend i had with monster jam uh of course this is kind of funny games daily where we run you through the nerdy news you need to know about in the world of video games each and every weekday live on twitch.tv slash kind of funny games youtube.com slash kind of funny games and podcast services around the globe if you love what we do we'd love you to pick up a kind of funny membership you can get one on patreon.com slash kind of funny youtube.com slash kind of funny games apple and spotify ten dollars gets you all of our shows ad free that's more than 80 a month and it gets you your daily dose of me and an exclusive show we call gregway that's 15 to 20 minutes long that adds up to four hours of podcasts that are all for our members each and every month however no bucks tossed away no big deal uh you could like subscribe share tell your friends about the show leave a review wherever you're getting it uh hit that follow button hit that subscribe button it would help us out if you have twitch prime or if you have amazon prime you got twitch prime it's a free subscription to give away each and every 30 days and if you're on youtube.com slash kind of funny games live as we record you could write in with a super chat to be part of this whole thing just like lepercut did who said greg did you feel the altitude at rice eccles that was the stadium we were in in salt lake city rice eccles it's what they you know it's like the name yeah yeah no i did not feel the altitude there i went to the salt flats though that was cool now you're saying words jen made us drive i let us slide with the rice mom mom did the whole thing of like all right i planned a fun excursion before monster jam let's drive an hour and a half to the salt flats oh my gosh and it was actually really cool oh it was like you're walking on the moon or another planet i guess oh you post pictures of this of course i think i saw that and i was like where the fuck is Greg right yeah yeah yeah it's very cool uh of course everybody we're an 11 person small business all about live talk shows which means kind of funny games daily is far from the only piece of content you'll get today after this show it's the games cast where they're reviewing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 plus 4 uh after the games cast is Jurassic World Rebirth in review woof and then the stream is Dune Awakening with Nick and Andy if you're a kind of funny member.

10:14Today's the day. I see Superman, everybody. It's happening tonight. I'm going to see James Gunn's Superman. I am very excited. You can find out what my excitement levels are in the Gregway that will be published momentarily. Of course, tomorrow you can get my spoiler free reviews of Gregway. Oh, look at that. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney, the Psalm twining. I wasn't on last week. It's a holiday.

10:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah, there was tomorrow had the, you know, audacity to get married on the same day xbox lays all these people off then it was the then i left to firm industry have we gotten to the bottom of delaney adding the psalm he's a sommelier yeah sommelier because i has he always been or is it new to this is a correct me from wrong thing but hasn't he called into the happy hour to give us like sommelier conversation right i might but somebody else makes us drinks yes i think that's a bartender i think that's a different guy yeah I think we knew that Delaney Twining was a small because I feel like we talked about it with him.

11:14Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Delaney, let us know. If you're watching live, let us know if we talked about you talked with you about wine because I think I'm pretty sure we did. I like remember this but this could have been one of the ones that you missed and I was there for it. Okay, okay. If so, I need some wine pairings. What wine should I be drinking with my chicken wings? I mean, this sounds like a Delaney Twining question. That's what I'm saying. I'm putting out there Delaney. Yeah. Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays, but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's begin the show with what is and forever will be the Roper Report.

11:42Time for some news. Six items on the Roper Report. A picker's dozen. Some energy right there. It's Monday. I haven't done it in a long time. We're all back together. It's been too long. Number one. In the wake of Xbox layoffs, founder of Dishonored and Prey developer Arcane slams Game Pass. This is the one, the only, W-Y-P at IGN.com. That's Wesleyan Poole, wasn't it? You probably didn't know that. I didn't. Hot on the heels of the layoffs that have swept through Xbox, the founder of the Microsoft-owned Arcane Studios has hit out at Game Pass, whose subscription model he called, quote-unquote, unsustainable.

12:31Raphael Colantonio. There you go. There it is. And I practiced beforehand, for the record. That's how bad I am. who founded the Dishonored and Prey developer and served as its president before leaving in 2017 to start Weird West maker Wolf Eye Studios, took to social media to ask, quote, Why is no one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough, cough, in the parentheses, Game Pass. When asked to expand on his thoughts on Game Pass, which Weird West launched straight into as a day one title in March 2022, Colantonio, see, I got a second one, nailed it, said, quote, I think Game Pass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by Microsoft's infinite money.

13:11But at some point, reality has to hit. I don't think Game Pass can coexist with other models. They'll either kill everyone else or give up, end quote. Colantonio's comment sparked a debate about the pros and cons of Game Pass in industry terms as well as for the consumer. Microsoft's subscription service has been called many things over the years. the death of the video game industry, the savior of smaller developers who benefit greatly from payments made by Microsoft to secure their games and everything in between. During the great Xbox FTC trial, I love calling it that. The great, never forget, I lived through it.

13:46To decide the fate of Microsoft's$69 billion acquisition of call of duty maker Activision Blizzard, the PlayStation boss, Jim Ryan, oh, then PlayStation boss, Jim Ryan, claimed that he had talked to quote, all the publishers, end quote, and that unanimously they all hated Game Pass because it is value destructive. He also said Microsoft appears to be losing a lot of money on it, end quote. Back in 2021, Xbox boss Phil Spencer countered Game Pass doomsayer saying, quote, I know there's a lot of people that like to write things that we're burning cash right now for some future pot of gold at the end.

14:20No, Game Pass is very, very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow, end quote. Quote, Colantonio's comments were backed by a number of industry peers, including a former VP of business dev at Epic Games, Michael Douse, publishing director at Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, said the biggest concern right now revolves around what happens when all that money runs out. This, Douse added, is, quote, one of the main economic reasons people I know haven't shifted to its business model. The infinite money thing never made any sense. End quote. Blessing. Greg. a whole bunch of layoffs last week.

15:00Crazy. And we continue to see this. Before we went live, Samuel in the YouTube chat said, Greg has been staggeringly quiet on Xbox leadership the past week. Hope to hear some clear thoughts today. Samuel, I was at a fucking wedding and then I had to go see monster trucks jump high. Okay? Sounds like excuses, Greg. Can you fucking back off? Are you even following me on BS? That's blue sky, Tim. Excuses. yeah it sounds like you're you're finding ways to get out of you know commenting on this now listen i'm just saying everybody who got laid off probably deserved it no i'm kidding um of course what a fucked up situation this was last week what is what an outrageous number of layoffs to wake up to what as usual the fucking insane world we live in of this is what it's all led to this is what capitalism has led to microsoft xbox felt like they had to buy all these studios to stay competitive to do this thing and then this happens and it's a just a complete clusterfuck of everything going on and outrageous and it sucks and obviously my heart goes out to everybody affected by these but for this blessing do you think game pass is a big part of this conversation

16:07Blessing Adeoye Jr.:um i think it's a part of this conversation because it's xbox's that's it's their business strategy right it's what they've been trying to lock in on and focus on it's a it's the core part of this being an ecosystem not just a platform not just a console not just hey we're going to get those box sales of these individual pieces of software that we're making to sell the consoles like you see other console manufacturers making game pass is a central part of this but i don't think it's the part of this i think there is a conversation though as far as it being unsustainable because i think there could be validity there and i think we should get into that but as far as like what the central part of this is right like i it is what you mentioned before it's the capitalism of it it is the ai um like shift that you're seeing across the tech industry and how there right now is a race for everybody to implement ai as much as much as possible and cost shifting to that and away from the actual workers that you know bust their asses to to do their job right i think it's that i think it's what we've been talking about um for months and months with both matt piscatella um guesting on the show and then also the lana pierce video i reference all the time right the industry maturing and money coming out of the games section of the industry right and like i think what that does as far as the amount of money there is to go around and then also i think it's the activision blizzard acquisition right and like the amount of scrutiny that that's put onto the xbox division of microsoft from the higher-ups the satya nadella's and like the people that are microsoft microsoft looking down at the xbox microsoft and going yo all right we spent all this money we need returns cut this cut this cut this like there i think there's so many layers to this but i i i think the game pass conversation is interesting because i think in the midst of everything that's gone on right especially in the last week and this even goes back to like freaking uh tango gameworks being um i guess not shut temporarily shut down by xbox right and then later on being opened back up by a different company um i am at a place with game pass where it is tough for me to look at game pass and like i guess the core of what xbox is and what they're presenting and what they're selling it is so tough for me to get excited and i think that's going to make a lot of people go well bless you play on pc playstation nintendo like how often are like are you you're not an xbox diehard you grow up with xbox all this stuff right but i'm also somebody who i've wanted to be excited for what xbox is doing because i think from the outside looking in right like it's felt very innovative it's felt very i think xbox game pass there's the phrase that gets repeated all the time as far as oh it's the best deal in gaming and i think on the consumer side there's a lot of truth to that as far as oh i'm gonna get the bang for a buck i'm gonna pay a set amount of money and i'm gonna get to play clear expedition i'm gonna or clear obscure expedition 33 i'm gonna get to play blueprints i'm gonna get to play uh the upcoming gears of war and doom the dark ages and avowed and all these things no man's sky that inherently for consumers is such a fantastic deal and i think there is room in space and a a solid strategy that could exist as far as meeting gamers where they're at where everything is going up in price give people a way to get into where it makes sense for them.

19:21Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I think for me, that all starts to topple when I look at the companies that you're supposed to be fostering, the studios that you're supposed to be fostering, and I'm seeing them topple one by one. I'm seeing Tango get fumbled. I'm seeing Initiative. Thank you. Get fumbled. I'm seeing Everwild get canceled. I'm looking at a Double Fine and going, well, I know they have a game coming up this year. Is that going to be their last game? Because are you going to just fucking destroy them? in the next 12 months or something right like i there's this push and pull with xbox and game pass and how that fits in with it where i'm like how valuable is game pass going to be for me when the reasons why i show up to a game pass start to disappear one by one in all this conversation about initiative uh you know you bring up is double fine on the hook or whatever after this uh ever wild where do we enter into the conversation i'm this is expanding and here we go where the whole show is one topic but we're gonna do right at what point do we enter in and have this conversation about well what about when the games don't come together and i'm not ever saying this out of the other blah blah but like clearly perfect dark wasn't gelling right initiative had been started to make perfect dark they're working on it i'm assuming we're off the rails it's not working bringing crystal dynamics to try to fix this get it going we still can't we have to pull the plug we kill the studio we created to make this game and that fucking sucks i hate the idea that that happens i hate the idea these people lose their jobs i hate all of this right but then there is this other side of well for x amount of years those people had jobs and i don't know would the would the would the would it have been better for xbox to partner with a second party studio pay them and have the milestones and then get to this point where they pull their contract and cancel perfect dark and then that second party studio scrambles try to get fun like i don't know the answers here and again i think so much of this is easy as commentators players consumers to sit on the sidelines say well i would have done this or i would have done that blah blah blah but then there is this reality of where we're at with the video game industry where we're at with capitalism again where it's like this is such an interesting conversation to have in parallel to when people are like, I can't believe games cost so much, and then somebody inevitably in the chat is like, you're missing the point.

21:41I can't believe everything costs so much. Why the fuck is life like this right now, right? Where it's this idea of like, well, Xbox lost the console generation, so they moved this thing, which means they need to buy people, which means they're buying things to stay going, but that's the way, like, we can be mad at them for then doing all this, but then they're doing the thing they feel like they need to survive. I'm getting way down the line but back to ever while the game that we've heard about forever ingested it forever and at some point do you say you got to pull the plug i'm more interested personally in what's going on with or what went on with the xenomax online studios uh mmorpg that got canceled where there was yesterday i saw a headline and read a little bit of like phil spencer liked the demo so much that matt booty had to take the controller away like that's how engaged so why did that one get

22:27Blessing Adeoye Jr.:canceled i mean six months ago he was saying um similar ish stuff about everwild as far as like he was asked in an interview what's an xbox title coming up that you're excited about and he's talking about like oh yeah i just visited the team over at rare and like everwild is looking like it's shaping up pretty well yeah granted like is that lip service is that him being a ceo and just trying to talk up any project that could use talking up sure probably but i also think that to your question of these projects that may or may not have been shaping up because i'm right there with you as far as we didn't know whether or not perfect arc was actually good we didn't have hands-on with it right we just saw one extended gameplay trailer that like some people like some people were like yeah you know what i mean like ever wild we never really saw anything about ever wild i can't tell you what that game is right like we didn't really know shit about it and i'm not i'm not above the idea that like hey projects video game projects especially get canceled all the time and most of the time we just don't know about them because they're not announced yet i I think my problem with it is that I, it's been very tough for me to get excited about Xbox first party as a unit when it feels like they are not fostering these studios to be the best that they can be.

23:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I feel like the, I know we can, I can say the last 15 years, right. But if we're zeroing in on even just this generation, right. Like I think this year we're at a great place with third party, right. Where it's like, Oh damn, we got doom the dark ages. That was pretty good. A lot of people like avowed. a lot of people you know love south midnight right like you got a thing going for you as far as finally putting out good consistent games but in the last however you're calling them third party because they were like bethesda and they're acquired and that's what you're saying or first party sorry not yeah sorry i heard you say it i was like wait i'm at first part right here um but when i look at a when i look at the cancellations that we just talked about right in the last week when i look at tango gameworks when i look at like i don't know it feels like there's an amount of cancellations and amount of things that a red fall amount of things that aren't shaping up to be like the dominoes that we're talking about all the all the time right and i don't even think the dominoes exist anymore right like i find it tough to be in a place first party wise where i trust in the xbox team to foster these teams well like it's not like they bought the initiative they started the initiative like that is xbox starting that up to go hey we need a quadruple a quote quote unquote studio to foster it a big IP for us.

24:44Blessing Adeoye Jr.:We want something that's going to like, you know, help be this like, you know, we need a tent pole. We need something big. And like, they did that. They spun up that studio. They talked about that studio. They had people, I'm sure move from all over the world. They revealed it as a perfect dark. And then they showed us gameplay last year and then they shut it down. How is that? How am I, how am I supposed to look at that? How am I supposed to look at the other feelings that we keep hearing about and look at Xbox first party and be like, oh well the problem is that you know games don't come together sometimes it's like well for y 'all games don't come together a lot of the time it feels like let's bring in a whole bunch of chats because you're all you're right on the money with where they the super chats are remember youtube.com slash kind of funny games to be part of this uh luis wrote in with his membership for 15 months thank you and said allegedly the layoffs across microsoft are to pay for the ai infrastructure which of course would make a lot of fucking sense and back to what you're talking about at the very top of this right that everyone is chasing this fucking ai garbage so of course this is going to happen which then falls into another chat i saw go by of like if it was about the ai thing it's not like phil liking a game is going to be able to save it they need to do this or whatever um however though i like what you're saying right there uh there it is uh christopher says uh xbox is incapable of shipping triple a games at scale they simply haven't managed their large ip and games well over the last decade and i think you look at it you go halo we bungled halo yeah halo infinite it was not this raging success that put halo back on the map and made it be this thing that everybody cares about right i do want to i do want to do the thing that i shouldn't do right which is clap back at people in chat swing on them i'm so sick is it christopher you want to go after him it's uh what ryan ause who says same for playstation jerry w92 says bless playstation canceled 12 games last year my here's my thing nowhere in these news stories or in this article or in the headline of the show is playstation mentioned if this is a playstation story i'll say the exact same thing right like i feel like me and you i can speak for myself right like i have similar miscarriages about playstation especially this generation oh my god this live service push that's gonna fuck things up for another generation you definitely have never talked about it though blessing you definitely didn't put out an entire video about this idea of playstation side of all i made a whole video essay and i'm i what have you done for me lately though you know what i mean yeah i didn't fucking come on i didn't stop tam's wedding to scream that's why i was laughing at it because i think people have a very different perspective when it comes to me and xbox where they just don't want to hear it yeah like i'll say a thing and it goes into one ear and out the other where they're like you know greg's not saying said shit i'm like i'm not said shit either right and that's because both of us have been out there was a reddit article that pissed me off this last week to a gary wood extent i was like man i feel like i'm gonna go on a widow right here where like there was a person that was like oh um you know blessed that he wants to play peace walker but then talked about busting out his ps3 again like you could you could just play it on xbox game pass like of course blessing doesn't know about xbox like all the comments all the replies are like oh yeah blessings never touched an xbox like oh he's always hitting on xbox i'm like motherfuckers my save file is on the ps3 that's why i want to play uh play it there right yeah i think there's the i think the fame boyism as far as when we get into this conversation leads to quite a few things i think for me it gets in my head a little bit right as far as like i don't know how to talk about xbox anymore but then also i think it fucks up with people's expectations as far as like their fan perspective and how that fan perspective connects to how they think about xbox and how they talk about xbox and how they want to perceive xbox where if we're talking about the dollars and cents of it and we're talking talking about like what has been happening both the last week and also the last few years of xbox shit's not been good right and i feel like we should be able to talk about like yo shit's not been good i look at xbox game pass and from a consumer perspective getting back to this conversation i think i still stick with the idea of like hey man for consumers it's a pretty good deal but for the industry i don't know like i listen to what people are saying right as far as like these industry leaders as far as this dude who um rafael cole antonio who founded arcane talking about like it fucking up with people's expectations of these things right and like the idea of the infinite money that they have to use to fund um xbox game pass and i hear that because i look at this and i'm like listen i don't know how this can be sustainable for xbox but also like i don't know man phil spencer keeps saying it's it's sustainable somehow so sure he knows the dollars and cents i want to bring i want to jump off of a lot of that but i'll bring in l captain 22 who wrote in and said uh super chat game pass hasn't grown enough to sustain itself sony fighting the acquisition brought big microsoft into the room.

29:05They looked at the 75 plus billion for Activision slash ZeniMax and said, yeah, we need profits sooner than your plan gets us. And that, I think, is this thing that goes back to the AI conversation or the rumor that that's where this came from, right? The idea is, and what I've said this entire time, is that Xbox and Phil Spencer are committed to their vision as long as Microsoft allows them to be. Microsoft is the one with the purse strings who can come in at any point in time. when there's a dip in the other businesses uh you know to come in and be like fucking turn a profit now why are we spending so much on this cut that studio do this thing blah blah me like that's what you see when you have a parent company coming in and doing these kind of things and it gets into this hinky bit of like all right cool well i you can believe a ceo of microsoft or of xbox as long as you want to but when it's the ceo of microsoft then talking to phil saying change all

29:57Blessing Adeoye Jr.:this do you think phil still has like his hand on the wheel and i'll say like the team of xbox I think as much as you ever do when you have a boss. It's not like the buck ends with Phil. That's just not how it is. It is in terms of game decisions, sure, but then he has to turn around to Microsoft and say, here's what we're doing. I don't necessarily agree. I'm not taking El Capitan's picture as Bible truth of what's happening, but I do think there's a lot of that involved. Cool, we gave you all this money and gave you Call of Duty, which you said is the biggest game in the world. Where are the Game Pass subscriptions?

30:28Where is the influx of cash? You're not making it. So yes, we do go and trim the hedge here and get rid of some of these things that aren't working. Why is perfect dark is how far out and it's not good. We're working with an outside second party now. Kill that. What is going on with this game? Do you think what are the what do you think that's actually going to sell? Kill that. I do believe that that's a very real possibility. Yeah. And again, it's what I've said the entire time is Xbox has gone this. Oh, game pass route. I've always said it's how much leash are they going to get? How much rope is Microsoft going to give them until they either hang themselves or prove that this is the right thing.

30:59And this was a great move. And yada, yada, yada. the end product of this do you think like where do you i mean there's only i mean i feel like this is an outrageous statement but there's only one way this ends and i don't know if it's in a year or in three decades but game pass goes away at some point yeah yeah this can't go on forever and it is this infinite money thing and it is to the you know this article bringing out this 2021 phil spencer right i know there's a lot of people like to write that we're burning cash right now for some future pot of gold at the end no game pass is very very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow that's what was said in 2021 is that still true in 2025 was it true in 2021 they're not turning over their ledgers for us to go through and see but i think that that has to be the case and that has to move but i i think it'll be in my head xbox it's interesting about this xbox business where you're like i'm not interested in anything they're doing right yeah whereas on the opposite where i'm so interested and i'm more xbox than i've ever been in my life i was i restarted no man's sky last night on my rog ally on xbox you know game pass so that i can have to save both places whatever right i'm with you of like xbox xbox first party doesn't it isn't the reason i'm using xbox so much i'm using xbox so much for xbox game anywhere right yeah or play anywhere whereas like obviously outer worlds 2 can't fucking wait for whenever stated okay three is going to actually come out i'll be interested in i hold out hope that that could be great but i'm not sitting there going where is halo oh my god gears i'm not that xbox guy i'm xbox services guy which is why it's a different ball of wax where i'm like i love game pass i think they're killing it with it i love this play anywhere business and i do really believe in that future if microsoft gives them the chance to really get going with it i do think this answers a lot of people's concerns in terms of 80 price points It's games only cost more X, Y, Z.

32:55And it suddenly does become, I know I've been saying it for years, so it sounds like it'll never happen, but I do think it happens that, oh man, that game does sound cool. Well, you could play it right now. And people figure that out and start doing that when they don't want to buy the new thing. And then maybe they do buy the dual box, whatever, handheld, any of the million ways to get into the Xbox ecosystem.

33:13Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah. What I do think is interesting. And this is the problem with where we're at right now, is that I totally get this conversation here from Rafael Colantonio saying, this isn't sustainable. I don't like Xbox Game Pass. And us coming in and being like, hey, the founder of Arkane says this sucks, right? I think this is, and this is just me talking as Greg Miller, a guy who talks to a lot of developers. I think that story would be different every time you talk to somebody else. Every other developer we were going to, that has worked with Game Pass, stayed away from Game Pass, I think they're going to have a different conversation where I don't want to give, I don't want to throw this opinion out, but I also don't want to be like, see, the founder of Arcane hates it, where it's like, sure.

34:06But like Weird West is the game from Wolf Eye Studios that they're really referencing. I'd love to talk to him about what happened with Weird West. What in your, don't give me the dollar total, but like, are you mad because you feel like if it wasn't on Game Pass, you could have made more money from it? Did Game Pass pay you too little for it? Did you not see sales elsewhere? Because I was like, listening to this and I'm thinking of all the, this is the other problem of you want to talk about PlayStation Plus or Game Pass, you immediately fall into probably the shooting stars, the one in the millions, right?

34:38Where, oh man, Rocket League, of course, off PlayStation Plus, yeah. But it's like, I remember Little Kitty Big City, right? That launches day and date on Xbox Game Pass. But then I googled, Little Kitty it's it's sold sold not played sold 100k in less than 48 hours and so it's that thing of so many people you do talk to about game pass see their game go to game pass for free they get that amount of money that chunk of money from game from xbox that allows them to pay their staff be in the black before they launch something that just games don't get to do most of the time and then you go and the popularity the beat whatever people still go and buy it on their platform of choice even with me in the whole man xbox play anywhere i love it and i'm using the xbox app on my pc everyone still looks at me like i have three heads when i mention that to a pc player because they'd fucking rather crawl through glass to get to their steam account and then use x you know what i mean so it's like i don't know i think it's such a case-by-case basis of what people are actually seeing and i've definitely seen other developers be like we were on game pass and we uh savage planet right uh revenge of the savage planet they were like we were on game pass and we really thought that was going to lead to people buying the dlcs for it or the thing and it did not and we you know i mean like again i would love to talk to them in on the record like are you when you made the deal with xbox did they say to you like oh you want this number but we'll give you this number because you're going to sell that dlc and you'll get like you know like there's that minutiae of it of like do you feel like you got a bum deal or you really like is it did you see how much you sold elsewhere and like shit we shouldn't even done game pass we could have there's all these different permutations of these conversations that get interesting but i do to double all the way back to christoph right xbox is incapable of shipping triple a games at scale we have not seen i and correct me if i'm wrong everybody in chat keep me honest here we have not seen hey we are xbox all our games are day and day on game pass and we have not seen them say here is the halo that is on par with the last of us or and i know this is insane but a gta like sure avowed hit for some people south of midnight like but we're talking about games of a lesser caliber than here is the xbox franchise which i imagine so many people would think perfect dark was going to be yeah that that just hasn't happened in a way that people are like i'm here for this i guess

37:08Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i don't think that's ever gonna happen sorry bear i don't want to cut you off what do you want to say no no go ahead oh no i just said well you go you go for it kind of jumping off of that in terms of like if the xbox brand had like itself the core brand the core franchises haven't been the the strongest thing in the last uh few years you know a couple of exceptions here and there like i would make an argument for Indiana Jones or Doom or whatnot, right? Game Pass then relies on kind of like this ballooning of bringing a bunch of other things in to try to get more people in. And the reason why I have my doubts about Game Pass is just the amount of stories that I've heard about a big company and another live streaming subscription industry that is much more mature and has been around much longer, which is Netflix.

37:58and how Netflix kind of model definitely greatly impacts the sustainability of productions. You know, we constantly hear about a bunch of productions being, you know, greenlit, and then these things only last like a season because of like this crazy scale of expectation that is put on productions. And that's kind of where I get concerned about where does what does Game Pass look like in a few years? does it start to look like the kind of ballooning that Netflix has seen? And again, this is not to say that all subscription models are inherently bad or are always going to lead into this direction.