Xbox Announced Senua As Bait For Buyers - Kinda Funny Games Daily 06.17.26

0:00This episode is brought to you by Video Game Town, an independent website that strives to pay some of your favorite writers to build a new community for smart and fun daily gaming gaming gaming. Check them out at Video Game Town and on every social media platform. Experience hits technology with the new Pro X2 Super Strike, the fastest mouse Logitech G has ever built. Head over to LogitechG.com to grab yours and start clicking faster than the competition. If you want to get our shows ad-free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kind of funny. today's gaming news stories include why microsoft announced ninja theory's new game despite planning to shut it down epic spills a bunch of details about unreal engine 6 and a studio behind a brand new game pass shooter closes we'll have all this and more because this is kind of funny games daily

0:56what's up everybody welcome to kind of funny games daily for wednesday june 17th 2026 of course i'm your host tim gettys and we had to get him in on all the xbox conversation it's no bike mike you know i was missing it tim yeah i'm in my little bubble just gaming having the time of my life missing out on all this unfortunate news yeah what a what a week it's been i'm just top level i know it's a silly question how are you feeling about it all oh i mean a mixed bag of emotion i think i'm like everyone right there it's very sad and depressing to see just so many people lose their jobs or like have the threat of losing their jobs and of course to see xbox a brand that i love and like identify a lot of my gaming memories too just completely lost it feels like right like no true clear vision no identity right now and like what they want to do and so yeah it just sucks all around but we will see the reset is coming right the reset is here asha had 100 days she's looking at the next 100 days as jason schreier has a great xbox video out today we will We'll find out by the end of June here into July what studios are going, what aren't going, what the true reset is.

2:04And then we'll see what her vision with Matt Booty is for the next 100 days plus, right? Like how do you salvage this? Where do you really want to take it? 100 days at a time. 100 days at a time. 100 days at a time. That's how I live my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. 100 days at a time, too. I do. You brought it up. But I want to give another shout out to Jason Schreier's YouTube channel. Yeah. Incredible insight on these videos. I thought he might have put one video out and be like, we'll see when I have something to say, I'm going to come back. He's finding things to say. And the valuable expert level insight that he has is so good.

2:39So much great insight. So much fun to listen to Jason Schreier, all of his knowledge. But this one in particular, this recent one of like, let's go back and like relive the Xbox moments and like what was going on. Hip for me, and I'm sure for you, Tim, and a lot of people listening of like, as someone who was lived and died Xbox, I have, I was like, there would be moments she's like, well, 2015, this happened. I was like, I remember that Jason, that's crazy. 2017, they did this. I remember that too. That was crazy. That was crazy. Yeah, there's a lot of great moments from this video and we'll talk about it some more, of course, on one of the big news stories, but it has been a wild week.

3:14I mean, she put out the big Xbox Wire post in the email to all of Xbox staff. You knew it was coming, right? Of like, hey, this is going to change. And so now we will see what that change is. So obviously I've known you a long time. If I was associated you with the X, the Xbox, all of that. Wait until you find out this purchase I made. I made a really irresponsible purchase. And Tim, it was made even more irresponsible when Xbox decided that they're going to lay off half of their studios and staff. Because let me tell you, Tim, this thing was sick. But now it's like, oh, what'd you get, Mike? I bought a gigantic retro video game LED display of Xbox.

3:56it's about three feet it's a neon sign about three feet long it was a lot of money and i was pumped up about it and then two days later they're like we're shutting down five studios i was like damn was this was it over or under a thousand dollars oh over tim i negotiated still a lot of money it's on the way it's three feet long tim it's on the way it's neon green man Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you could have got it for... No, no, no. Mine's way cooler than all these. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's too bad because it was on eBay. I don't know if Kevin could find it somewhere, but it's just like the generic all black, bright green Xbox.

4:36It's three feet long. It's cool, man. I remember when you wanted that N64 table. I would have been living life with that N64 table. And that was only$300. Mike I am legitimately concerned about you Tim as you should be because I wake up every day I'm living 100 days 100 days at a time everybody at any moment oh no not even mine's cooler than this way cooler than this they're going to have to get a picture of it I can't wait to show it to you oh that's insane well what I was trying to set up there is forever I've known you as an ex guy but right now you're in a z-hole him man what a couple of months it's been two months of just non-stop zelda gaming ocarina of time majora's mask into wind waker twilight princess i'm gonna finish twilight princess by probably friday and i'm gonna look back on four incredible games that have changed my outlook on gaming my thoughts on nintendo and zelda as a franchise now i i feel so sad missing out on so many incredible moments, right?

5:41It's like, I tell a story all the time on N64. We grew up with third-party games. We were playing rare games, Rampage, Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, no Zeldas in sight, and now here I am. My life has changed. You've done most of it. Like, you're only missing Skyward Sword at the end of Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword as, like, the 3D Zeldas. That's pretty damn well. I'm impressed, Mike, and what I love is your genuine passion and enthusiasm when you come in and update me on where you're at. You just did something incredible in Twilight Princess. One of my all-time favorite Zelda dungeons moments, period.

6:12That was the coolest. So damn cool. Going up to the Sky Islands up there. It's like, what? There's a city in the sky? So every time you play one of these games, you're like, this is the best one. Tim. And it just keeps happening. I love that. It's the truth. And now I'm coming off of this one. And Tim, I'll spoil it for all of you out there. Might be the best one. Might be the best one, everyone. Might be the best one. Great dungeons. Love the art style. I'm down with Midna and the Twilight world. I want to learn more about Zant. We're getting little tidbits about Zant. Ganondorf is out there.

6:44The Dorfers I like to call them. Three lives just connected by fate forever, man. How cool is that? How cool is that? And the Triforce. Tim, we should put that dragon in the movie. When he fights that dragon, we should probably put that dragon in the movie. What do you think will be some of the cool moments in that movie? I have no idea. We need to know just a little bit more to have an understanding of how grounded it's going to be and how epic scale it's going to be. You think they'll put Yeti in it? I doubt it. They were making suit. She got possessed by the mirror, Tim. You know what I mean?

7:22It's like the ring. You look at yourself in the mirror. You start losing your marbles. She was losing it. I had to take the mirror back and help her out. And then she was like, let's go snowboarding. And I was like, you know what? why not i knew you were gonna love it i knew you're gonna love it mike and i know you're gonna love this episode of kind of funny games daily if you're watching live be part of the show by super chatting on youtube.com slash kind of funny games uh we already got a couple here uh turn around adam says mike sky skyward sword's amazing don't listen to the haters i do think skyward sword gets caught in this place of it's the least good of some of the best games ever made okay so it gets kind of over the the language around it gets i think a little bit uh exaggerated and hyperbolic okay like it's it is a fantastic game and awesome story elements like there's a lot of good in it uh it's just yeah i think in it's in the shadow of uh it's brethren i don't think you're gonna finish that one and be like and this is the best okay okay but that's okay we'll see i'm gonna complete season one i'm calling it there will be a season two i think i'm gonna mix in a little bit of 2d games i'm taking a lot of recommendations so we're gonna see a lot more zelda from me here later on i love that so much um and then only special feature says if you think about it 100 days is a quarter mile quarter mile at a time that's it baby like that's how you got to run a business you just 100 days at a time is the best way to put thousands upon thousands of people's lives on the line you know what i mean i'm taking feedback i'm getting a lot of i'm getting a lot of tweet responses it's all right we'll figure it out the snow bike microwave that's it Buy that sign that you've always wanted to buy.

8:56It's a sign, literally. And then the last super chat for right now, Snakey, who says, I just want to send some love your way. I've been unemployed for three months since I got laid off, and I finally found a job. Thanks for keeping me sane, KFM, and shout-out to my wife. Shout-out to your wife. Thank you so much. Congratulations. You love to hear it. Shout-out also to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney the Psalm Twining, and Lacks Nomad. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report. it's time for some news five stories today uh bakers does it

9:34oh he got cut out oh he's still ripping he's ripping i'm still ripping it but the mic did not continue to catch him i think he just finished no it's it's automatic i just keep going i do that almost every time god bless him yeah god bless him with it story number one why microsoft announced ninja theory's new game despite plans to shut the studio down this comes from wesley and pool at ign at the xbox game showcase earlier this month earlier this month is doing a lot of heavy lifting that is true it was also just like 10 days ago yeah uh at the i was explaining all this to gia last night and i had to explain like the timing of this game being announced pretty amazing situation she's like there's no way that's right i'm like i assure you it is there's so many moments that would be so fun to tell somebody that doesn't understand you're like and then they announced it we all were like they're announcing another game already like they just did this like what do you mean it's crazy man okay at the time there was little concern about the game's release indeed there was a little concern publicly at least about ninja theory itself but a lot can change in a week and in the case of xbox almost everything did amid the reports fans expressed confusion and how microsoft could announce senua from ninja theory and then just days later tell the studio staff it planned to shut this company down according to GameFile Microsoft allegedly planned to close or spin off Ninja Theory when it revealed Senua and it did so thinking that the promise of a newly announced game would help draw investor interest in the studio GameFile's Steven Totillo suggests Ninja Theory management may have not even been aware of Microsoft's plan alright wow okay what like that's just there's a lot of reads you could have on this yeah of course the positive read is like okay like they're trying to be helpful they're trying to position this team to find some level of success potentially hopefully that is the most positive read you could possibly have because all the other reads are like so you're trying to give other people faith in a project you don't have faith in you want someone else to pay for the mistakes you made but you still think it's valuable.

11:45You think there's something. This is bad, Mike. What do you think? I really like this studio, but I'm not quite ready to let him go, but I'm ready to let him go, so somebody else should take them. You know what I mean? I still want to see him stick around. It's a head scratcher, Tim, truly and honestly. It's a roller coaster of like, what are these decisions being made? And you don't quite know unless you were in the boardroom there. At first, when you see it, we've always heard the conversation of like, oh, we show these games so early to maybe draw people who are talented in the industry, some devs that are looking for new roles that want to jump over and join this team we haven't ever had a conversation of like hey let's show the game so other investors can come and buy this studio from us and take it off of our hands right we've never had that conversation no because it's fucking insane like here we are bad business like that's just silly silly stuff that there is again the reality of they need to do something and they if they're gonna get rid of the studio because they looked at the numbers and decided that because due to their decisions i'm not excusing them but where they're at they they decided they need to get rid of it it's like all right this is at least trying to tee them up for success like i was saying however and here's the big part tell me i tend to roll my eyes when i see people talking about uh a lot of the the companies these corporations that uh we watch make announcements when they say things like they lied to us about when a game getting delayed or a game getting canceled even or whatever a lot of that stuff it's like sometimes the way people talk about it i'm just like guys i get where you're coming from yeah but that just seems like a little extreme this is one of the first times where i'm like yo y 'all put this in a showcase knowing that there's a chance like so it was the expectation that they will get sold off and that this game will come out in 2027.

13:38Okay, that's not happening. Didn't they put a year on it? I don't think they put 2027. I'm not sure on that one. I think they did. Can somebody let me know? Because I want to make sure that I'm not adding extra stuff to them that's not good. But, like, this is the definition of false advertising. This is selling an ecosystem and a box. I'm trying to push the box. Based on, it's not even just lies. They did put 20, they put 2027 Mike did Tim. And it says game pass clouds. So they're going to be able to get the game out in 2027. While they are frantically trying to find someone to buy them to save their jobs while making the game.

14:21Yeah. It's just not good business. It's just not good. You know, you know me. I like to always look at the optimistic side, right? Maybe it was, let's put the trailer out there. let's see the fan reaction to this so when we do come to the table and have this discussion with you maybe you have a little more leverage of like hey mike a aka ceo of xbox we had a lot of positive fan reaction maybe don't sell us off or give us a chance let's make this game together right because we're negotiations maybe it's not time to let us go quite yet a lot of people spoke about it and maybe on the flip side was like hey not a lot of love coming from this trailer during this reaction at our biggest showcase, we don't really want to be part of this anymore.

15:03You know what I mean? It's like, there's so many ways to look at it. But yeah, I don't know who looks at that and goes, now I want to go buy Ninja Theory right now. Right? Like, who's going to step up and invest in Ninja Theory at this moment when Xbox just hung them out to dry on this one? Yeah. We got a super chat here from Eponis Prime that says, I feel bad for the studios, but what's the company above them supposed to do when you put out games no one cares about? Triple down on Senua? Why? undead now undead labs is next data decay has no appeal now i understand that there is a bit of um snark in that comment and i understand this is a snarky time like i i really am trying to reflect on my tone when i talk about this because it's impossible for me to speak on a lot of the stuff without starting to yell and without getting angry and saying fuck a lot and i don't want to do that but it's just in me and i can't stop because like like you were saying we've been covering this for so long we've been talking about the fucking dominoes good bad and all of it for so long and it just feels infuriating that we have talked about all of this on camera like we could make a documentary just about kind of funny's takes we could probably do it about each individual person's takes on xbox over the last 10 plus years and there is a consistency of where we we were and where we are now of the amount of times we're like that doesn't sound good that doesn't sound good and i think that a lot of the praise at moments and like the like the hey like let's see how this goes was like when there was some level of belief that there was going to be a commitment to this path or that path or whatever it is and i say that to bring in here of like uh what's the company above them supposed to do when you put out games no one cares about there is that balance of allowing a team to pitch a game and then the high ups approve it and it goes forward and it is a smaller type of like a double fine type game or something like that and when xbox had it's a whole pitch for game pass that pitch was hey it's going to help us allow us to let the creators that we have create the thing that they want to create and not just have us be a house that only puts out the same products over and over and over it is a bit ironic i think as i reflect on that because we we talk about um nintendo always of like or a lot of people talk about it's just it's just mario and delda and at a certain point it's like when you look at the smash brothers almost 100 character roster and you're just like okay yeah well it's just a lot of things you know um that they're putting out the their their game at a fairly steady cadence a lot of remakes a lot of stuff point i'm making xbox what are they forza gears halo yep they've been that for a long time mike and before they added gears it was kind of just halo it's all true you know so going back and and then they acquire everyone so then it's like you do get some bigger hitters like the fallouts and the elder scrolls and things like that you can add i think to that pantheon of like big titles but they had a bunch of teams that don't make those big titles they they had a bunch of teams that make these other things and there just has to be a path to success that is possible that the higher-ups are looking at otherwise you're literally just sending all these things out to die or you're not even sending them out to die you're just killing them because when you're in trouble for the other bad decisions you made you're like well the first thing i need to do is try to save money so we're gonna kill you yeah before you even get something out the door it's what is the vision tim right previous couple years back, the vision was Game Pass and adding as many games to that service as possible, right?

18:45Trying to make high quality Metacritic scoring games, art games that will just get in the Game Pass and people can go out in there and play or is the vision now, hey, we're only doubling down on the big IPs. I think you and I can go through Xbox's big IPs now from Activision Blizzard to Bethesda and now Xbox and go, hey, guess what? Remember the Call of Duty treatment that we did where we took all those studios inside of Activision and said, you only make Call of Duty, that's what the new vision is now, right? Here's the seven big IPs, every studio underneath us is going to make those seven big IPs, right?

19:19I mean, the irony there is the vision of, what does this team want to do now? The irony is one of the franchises they do have access to that does sell really well is Spyro. And who's making Spyro now? The company that they spun off to go independent. It's very backwards. Zach in the chat was saying, what happened to, quote, Game Pass is the best value in gaming. I think an important thing, I've seen that thrown around a lot in reference to game media people, but I think the important context there is best value in gaming to the consumer and best business decision for the sustainability of the company are incredibly different things.

19:58And in fact, the more of a value it is to the consumer, it probably is a worse decision for the business. As we saw what happened there. We're seeing what were happening. As I was living off a Game Pass for$1 for three months, $1 for six months,$5 for the year. Like, a lot of consumers were really enjoying that subscription model because that was the way of the times. We all were jumping on subscription trends. And I was trying to save money. I was trying to get the most bang for my buck. And Game Pass was delivering that. 200-plus titles, day one first-party titles, all for$10 a month. It's hard not to say that was not the best deal in gaming because it was on the consumer side of things.

20:38for the company though they were definitely losing out on all of that yeah ejrpg says can we really count elder scrolls and fallout as big xbox titles when not a single new game in either franchise has launched since they were acquired besides 76 no we can't because xbox doesn't really have big titles and the title the big titles it's forza at this point yeah like would we even call halo a big like what's big title mean because yes we would call them but it's like i i think that big title also needs to come with a level of they top down look at it as a success and i don't think i mean clearly they don't with the scrambling that we've seen at halo studios right well since halo 4 and the 5 and now infinite halo has not been the scene of course so like halo had a moment of course that team was not prepared for the live service side of things but through the purchases and acquisitions yeah all of bethesda titles those big ones are part of xbox now it's just they haven't put out those titles now they're going to scramble to try to double down on those titles because those are the titles that the mass general audience is going to gravitate towards and buy we talk about elder scrolls 6 and the gravity that that's going to have on exclusivity or just in general with gamers so fallout's in the same league as that so is elder scrolls so is call of duty right so is world of warcraft so is diablo like all of these are now under xbox you might not associate them with that but like they are and now they're going to make a pivot to all these teams need to start building those games that's the only games we care about from this point forward yeah now this is just a different lens on the same conversation we've been having but you're saying that they don't associate these games with xbox and you need to assume that no matter what vision Xbox was chasing when they acquired Bethesda and when they acquired Activision Blizzard they wanted those games to be associated with Xbox correct I would assume so yeah and you're saying that people don't I think so that message right there saying oh I don't and it's like oh no I very I very much do now you you do yeah 100 % you do yeah I mean they're Bethesda titles but they are under the Xbox and Microsoft brand now and I think it is Xbox's goal was to try to or should be to double down on these large IPs and make it known that they are part of this.

23:00But we've had that discussion with Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, and that team before with Todd Howard of like, we're keeping Bethesda as their own business. They're running themselves, but it's under the umbrella now. They just need to leverage that. If you want to sell consoles, if you want to start making area space in this ecosystem, you have to start doubling down on the biggest IPs that you own. They haven't done that yet, right? We've seen that conversation of, we're going to let the devs choose what games they make. And that was that one last comment right there. It's like, when you just make whatever games you want, you're not giving the gamers what they want, and it seems to be leading to bad business decisions.

23:38If you have Elder Scrolls and Fallout, maybe we should be chasing that. And not be going with Avowed or Outer Worlds 2, when those two titles are much larger than those. Yeah. There's a lot there. tell me your pushback because no it seems like you don't associate them with definitely not i like i do simply just buy yeah they bought them yes they are in the xbox showcase but uh when they're not having the xbox game studios logo but when the game starts up on a playstation why would anybody that's playing the game associate it with xbox right like you play doom the dark ages on a ps5 why would you associate that with xbox at all like that makes no sense Like they just, they didn't commit to, I mean, either direction.

24:24That's the biggest problem. We had the biggest conversation. Because like, if you're going to buy them, the point that I'm making is like, if you're going to buy those things and you got to assume, you have to assume that you want the association there, it's like you then just need to lock those things together. I think if you listen to the X-Cast with me in Paris back in the day, that is exactly the conversation. You don't spend$68 billion. You don't spend$8.2 billion on these companies and not make them exclusive, right? I think their dream was to probably have that shift in the tides and make all these games exclusive, because then you're forcing the gamers to make a true choice.

24:57If they could have made Call of Duty exclusive, they would have, right? If the court documents didn't say, hey, you got to keep putting this out everywhere, you would have forced the gamers' hands of going, oh, man, I really love Call of Duty, and now it's not on PlayStation, and it's going to take years for PlayStation to build a competent shooter to compete with that. and now I have to really start making the decision of like now Bethesda titles, Activision titles are all not coming to PlayStation or Nintendo. Am I jumping ship, right? Like that's how you make those games. That's it though, right?

25:27We've had that conversation. I know. But they didn't want to do that because there's so much money to be made. So it's like at that point, it's like, alright, then the association is simply broken then. You're just a publisher. You're just a publisher. And I saw someone in the chat say, I think it was Jake uh saying does Tim associate Marvel with Disney and the answer is yes because and it the difference is that Disney has Disneyland that I think ties all the Disney things together in a way that like they have we are constantly seeing Mickey and Luke Skywalker and Iron Man presented together in some way right and then there's the there's just things like that but that is what disney is xbox has a box like has a brand and an actual product that you need to play their games but as i say that that's not true you don't need the box to play their games oh man that's interesting tim yeah i i've always after the purchases and acquisitions i've associated those with that maybe because i'm in game pass and like those games are day and date with game pass and that's how you you're like hey these day one dates are day and or these games are day and date with that game pass i associate that it's a very good service and then that is a very good point that's with the ecosystem that i've been attached to right so like maybe it's a different side when you're in it like that thinking of the the brand as xbox game pass yeah i actually do think reframes the conversation because that is also how they present those games like when you look at the showcases sure there's the activision presents or bethesda presents or whatever but there's also the it's on game pass and like they lead with that often yeah um so it's like all right thinking about that branding it's like call of duty became on game pass and got taken off of course but yeah i i associate them with xboxes i think now we'll see over the next with this reset they're probably going to double down on just the biggest titles only like we talked with call of duty in those studios and you're only going to get those yeah and i mean they asha said as much right like she even specifically called out fallout and elder scrolls as examples of that um but to close out this xbox conversation um before we cut to ads i do think it's interesting that like we're you bring up the outer worlds and uh and about and stuff and like that makes sense because i specifically as a team it's like well they quote unquote could have been working on fallout right but it's like what about compulsion like what what should have compulsion been doing like they you need to be making new ips to some extent right like and south of midnight didn't hit the way that they that it that needed to but like i just don't like what i mean why'd you buy him then there's so much monday morning quarterbacking that we all could have done the fantasy critic draft of like that right and i've been on record with xcast of like if i was phil i would have pushed teams towards two things that i thought was missing out of the portfolio which of course was a mascot platformer and a third person narrative action adventure game we saw those become what was selling at the time for the past decade and Xbox really shied away from those they were like we don't want to get caught up in the mix we don't have teams to make those and they never really doubled down on that right and I felt like that was those were the two areas that should have been going for that team of like hey these are what's selling the last of us uncharted like all of these are just blowing your doors off of your games right now why aren't you getting into that and they really stayed away from that yeah all right we're gonna move on to story number two after a quick word from our sponsors this episode's brought to you by video game town video game town is an independent media site where you can find fascinating articles podcasts and videos created by the best and brightest in games journalism in order to escape the ai hellhole our industry is currently in video game town proudly presents the best in gaming coverage joined by plenty of familiar faces kalief adams jenna steber Merrick Kay, Ian Walker, and more.

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31:11Mike. Tim, I love when I do something insane and I see it in your face. dad tim comes out it's he's just he's not happy he's not happy about it i mean i want to let you know i love so much about the idea i love neon signs love neon signs i understand that you love xbox so that makes sense to me you know especially the og you know that green all of it like this all adds up to me like i i actually have no qualms with it at all it's just the price um so wait Is this it? No, that's not it. No, that would have been amazing if I just told Tim the price tag what I said, and he saw that, he wouldn't tweet that.

31:51You bring this up first. I know. It's the devil's work. This is fucking. This is the targeted ad that we got when I started Googling stuff. This is so embarrassing. Can you imagine having this up in your house? Yes. Are you ready? I'm here to show you the real one. Oh, my God. Tim, look at this monstrosity. Three plus feet in length. Green neon glow. That it's just sitting on a series X. Look at that thing, man. So he's shipping it to the house right now. Did you pay extra for the shipping? No, no. He paid$4. Okay. So you battled him. He was asking for$2 ,000. He was asking for$2 ,000. Now I will say real neon is very expensive.

32:39Like the spare bedroom sign we have, like that shit was not cheap. And like you can just get fucking Two lights LED tubes Like whatever Does this look like real neon to you? That's my problem Kevin I'm going to need to see this thing in real life When it comes in We're going to need a place to put it We're going to need a place to put it What does that Hold on You didn't buy this with a plan in your house No no plan at all Tim You know what 100 days from now I would have a plan on where I wanted to put this I wrote him, I said, hey, big dog, I love Xbox. I'm into Xbox. I'll give you$1 ,000. I try to give him the N64 table.

33:20He goes, I'd be taking a bath on it. $1 ,500 at the lowest. And you were like immediately, yep, that sounds right. I immediately wrote, let's do this thing. I'm so in. He goes, it sounds like it's going to a great home. And I wrote him, sir, I assure you it's going to a great home. I'm an Xbox mega fan. You at least convert him to become a fan. You said, like, hey, here's Games Daily. We'll talk about it. I'm an Xbox mega fan, my dude. All right. And now here's the problem, Tim. I don't have a place to put this. I don't know where this will go. Here's the problem. I don't have a place to put this.

34:05That is the seventh problem in the line of problems. I'm talking about just this scenario here. Mike you are a problem you have a problem you create problems for others this is insane this is going to be coming to the studio we will have to figure out where this goes okay we'll see I can't believe it I can't wait to see this thing in action is that not sick though? I mean it's pretty fucking sick but I want to let you know it is not$1500 sick I'm going to be honest with you it's$100 sick you think it's a hundred dollars that's a hundred dollars sick i think we could make something like this that was my thing it's like when i looked at and he was asking how much i was like how do i make my own thing i think we pretty damn easily and then i was also going to write people at xbox to be like is this worth it you know what i mean like somebody's got to have a closet here but instead you just let me go crazy offered him like this there's got to be someone out there phil spencer you know what i mean someone that's like let me just come to the closet grab all the gear i need let me go crazy because now i'm over here with rudy he's charging me fuck man oh well let's go to story number two let's do it baby epic reveals unreal engine 6 is integrating ai models so developers can reduce tedious work this comes from andy robinson at bgc epic has detailed unreal engine 6 which it says will prominently integrate generative ai models to allow developers to build content faster while maintaining the creative control you need.

35:42Unreal Engine 6 was first announced alongside a glimpse of the next-gen Rocket League game last month at the State of Unreal event in Chicago held on Wednesday. Epic shared more details on its plans for the middleware. According to Epic, UE6 is about evolving how developers ship and operate games more so than how they build them. Um, I got lost. Our approach with UE6 is shaping up quite differently from how we developed UE4 and UE5. Over the next two years, we'll be unifying the two major streams of Unreal Engine development, 5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite, into a single product, Unreal Engine 6, it said.

36:15UE6 will keep doing the things you want Unreal Engine to do. Rendering will keep getting better. Cook times will come down. Iteration loops will get tighter. Mobile is increasingly capable. But UE6 exists distinctly from an incremental UE5 development path because three things about game development need to change at the same time. Unreal Engine 6's three big features are its shift to the gameplay programming model, Verse. It's moved to make content and code portable and interoperable across games and its integration of AI models, according to Epic. According to Epic, UE6 will introduce integrations with AI models such as Claude, Gemini, and others, which will act as creativity and productivity multipliers, enabling teams to focus their efforts on the essential creative and technical tasks of development rather than time-consuming manual tasks.

37:02During State of Unreal, the Fortnite Maker provided examples of such tasks developers may wish to use AI to speed up, including setup of levels, character rigs, particle systems, skinning bone weights, as well as adjusting lighting. Our goal for UE6 is to greatly reduce the tedious work in authoring content to leave more time for creative exploration and increase the amount of iterations a team can make to polish their content. UE6 will ship with tools and workflows where you can choose to bring your own favorite models, battle-tested against internal development and in UEFN. During an onstage presentation, Epic showed how AI large language models, LLMs, can be used directly with Unreal Engine to generate content.

37:38During the demo, it used a Claude prompt window to furnish a virtual apartment by asking for items which were then pulled from the assets library. It later showed how it could change the lighting in a city scene by asking Claude to alter the time of day or even use a static photo as a reference. Epic stressed that developers will have final control over their creations and can manually change their results. Unreal Engine 6 will enter early access at the end of 2027-ish, Epic said with the full release planned around 12 to 18 months later. Additionally, from Mario 64 in UE6, you have the option to use a player's entitled Fortnite outfits in your own games and you'll get the tools to build outfits for your own games that work inside Fortnite NFTs are back they did it, they found a way to actually do the fucking thing where your stupid gun in one game can go with you to other stupid gun game we talked about that for a long time that's crazy we wanted that it took longer than we thought it's only costing us all the water on the planet oh but we're here oh uh tim thoughts on this because i don't have much right this is like this is super developer talk that's way over my head of course my generic like thoughts after reading this and like going into the live stream it's like yeah this seems about on par with the evolution of what you would be doing building out this programming tool and this software but like i don't have much thought process after that yeah i mean i'm right there with you in the sense that like i'm not a game developer i'm not a scientist but i do know that i read this and none of it makes me feel excited or good you know it's like yeah it's just kind of like this it it really buzzed me out that uh unreal engine is is exciting and we've seen so many great products there's been problems of course but that's how things go but it's like uh them being able to help so many developers see their vision through allow the vision to even exist in the first place like we've seen so many iterations to get to this and now it's like so focused on this generative ai push reminds me of the nvidia side of the dlss stuff which like i've been such a huge fan of as we've been going up the iteration since its very first uh introduction and then as we get to dlss 5 it's like oh man this generative ai stuff it's like we're really at a point that i i don't believe in it i don't like it and that's just me personally talking about this it's like i don't know i don't know if the developers are going to like this i don't know where epic does have ownership of libraries of assets that is one of their strengths so if the generative ai is just pulling from stuff that they do own that like and that is stock assets that they are pulling from there's levels to that that i'm like i personally i understand if people don't agree but i'm like okay i think that that's fair and valid and whatever and you are being creative and you are doing uh getting rid of the tedious tasks we know there's a bunch of tedious tasks in being creative if anyone's i video edit i can say that that's what i can speak from and it's like there's a ton of dumb ass tasks that i would love to have some help or be able to cut out entirely but there's a lot of them that i'm like this doesn't feel right and there's just a line i think everyone has a line and that's not even bringing in the effects that this is having on the world and that's not even bringing in the effects it's having on the tech that we love the this is going to raise the price of the computers and systems for us to play games on so the games being made in ue6 are we even going to be able to afford them there's a lot of things I don't have anything additive to say to this no Tim neither do I I think you said pretty said it pretty well though I said something let's get to story number three studio behind a claimed cosmic horror shooter on Game Pass shutting down less than 30 days after launch this comes from Ethan at Kotaku Luna Abyss is an atmospheric bullet hell game that borrows from Metroid Prime Returnal and other shooters to punch above its weight unfortunately despite some glowing reviews and positive player ratings on steam the studio behind the day and date game pass release is already preparing to close its doors less than a month after shipping it we're enamored by the love and support it received both by our industry and critically by journalists and media qualey lab ceo holly emery wrote on linkedin on june 16th via game informer whilst we face many challenges along the way it's been the highlight of our careers and we're incredibly proud that it's finally seen the light of day thank you to everyone who believed in us the executive continued unfortunately as of yesterday the entire team has been made redundant a decision that was completely outside of our control as a result the entire team are available for work as of today i'm so proud of what we were able to achieve with luna abyss for such a small team in a genre that is incredibly difficult to hit a good review score in such a bummer yeah unfortunately because we had a couple of members of this team here in the studio and we demoed this during our gdc uh mix live streams and they were very passionate about their game their game was very cool atmospheric bullet hell that was giving doom vibes and it was very cool it was unfortunate to hear that it just didn't find an audience after 30 days right i go over to steam it has 600 plus positive reviews very positive it's on game pass it's on playstation as well so it just seems like it just didn't find the audience there yeah i mean they had such a bummer because especially if it's hitting the marks that you kind of expect to also it looks cool yeah um but yeah man it's it's tough out there and a lot of this just goes back to the same reasons that we talk about all the time.

43:09It's, it's time and money, right? Like there's just a lot out there and it's on game pass. Like there's so much here that is trying to help it succeed. Yeah, of course. But you still just, uh, lightning in the bottle, man. It's like you, and it goes both ways, right? Time, right. discoverability, right? It's like, as Jeff put it at summer game fest beforehand, and the first six months, there's already been 9, 200 games that are released, right? This is one of those games. in the 9 ,000-plus games I've released already this year. It is tough to find new games, to give yourself time with new games when you already have 1 ,000 games in your backlog, other games that are calling your name.

43:48It is very hard out there for small teams. I mean, you know, the Game Pass shutting down less than that headline there, I wouldn't call blaming on Game Pass, but you can see in the chat, people quick to say, oh, Game Pass is good for games, right? It's like, that's unfortunate that even on Game Pass, couldn't find the people that it needed. Yeah, and that's a marketing thing. I don't blame Game Pass at all. I think this is a perfect example of the value of Game Pass. But when you offer a lot of things on a platform, you need to find a way to curate that platform, or else it's just a bunch of noise.