Xbox Layoffs HUGE Number, Drops 5 Studios - Kinda Funny Games Daily 07.06.26

17:13Blessing Adeoye Jr.:because all of this is complicated. There are so many details within here. And yeah, some are good. I think Double Fine and Compulsion Leaving, that wasn't the promised outcome. I would have expected them to close down. And my prediction was always that they would close down Double Fine and Tim Schafer would start up another studio anyway. For it to happen like this, I think is the best case scenario, especially them being given the runway. Even though I'm mad at Xbox overall and Microsoft as an organization overall about this whole thing, that is a generous move from them. I also, if I'm going to try to find any silver lining here, I appreciate being spoken to by Asha Sharma in this thing and just saying, this company is losing money.

17:54Andy Cortez:Yeah. Yeah. And that's why these things are happening. And maybe that's just me being so. Word salad to death. Word salad and completely like I've just gone completely numb from all of the other. we care about these people you know my bonus is way more than everybody but we we my bonus is more combined than this that entire organization but we care about the i'm so numb by that that i do feel like hey this company's losing money sorry like that's just kind of how it is and i do appreciate the just the the you know the fourth right now there is other corporate speaking this things i'm not gonna um but you know i'm also not just trying to analyze the the writing quality of

18:38Blessing Adeoye Jr.:this or whatever i agree with you wholeheartedly but it all sucks but i do wonder like are they losing money like the quote they say specifically here is we are operating in margins of that are three to ten times lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses that to me doesn't sound that they could be losing money but i don't think they say they're losing money for me what i gather is you're just not making as much money as playstation and other console platforms i think they look at it and say we're not making the money that we want to we're not making enough money to make this worth it for microsoft to operate all yeah and and that as bad or as good as you think that that is i've obviously you know we've been up here for the last several years talking about like it'd be it'd be awesome if people didn't need all the money in the world right like we could we could make stuff and enjoy things and and not need ceos to be making that much bonuses and for you know i i understand that the job of these people is to give the maximum amount to shareholders because they want shit back for something they don't give a shit about

19:42Andy Cortez:either way but it's just it's a one of the jason schreiber just talking about fiduciary responsibility yes but it is like it's still completely normal to look at all of us and go i fucking hate the way everything works and i just yeah and i want it to all burn down So you have a question. Drink called it out today, and I have it in front of me over here, right? I'm reading from Tweak Town, but it is the fact that, yeah, it was a 3 % accountability margin, so similar to profit for the entire fiscal year, 2026. So, yes, they made 3 % profit in 2026. Yeah, which is just not enough for them. Exactly, which, of course, is where I always get so fucking furious at this, right?

20:18Andy Cortez:Before all this, we were talking about Microsoft having told everyone in the company you have a 30 % accountability, accountability margin, right? Which would be a 30 % profit margin, which is insane in video games, period. So to sit here and be upset at a 3 % margin, it's like bullshit, but okay. It's back to, I mean, it's like, it's like, I totally get exactly what you're saying. Again, to take us out of this and put us in the suits on wall street. Yes. I get that shareholders want number go up dramatically every year and doing this will make that probably happen to a degree, right? because we are killing so many fucking people, killing so many different studios, getting rid of a double fine, getting rid of a compulsion that isn't generating that level of profit.

21:00Andy Cortez:So yeah, you assume next year they come out and they have better numbers to show there, but it's like, this is back to the argument we have all the time here of business colliding with art and what are we doing? Why are you doing it this way? And it's also the triple, quadruple, quintuple whammy of not only are we letting that many people go, it's a really tough job market and the world has never been more expensive to exist as a person and it's you know i could try to look at layoffs in the past and go well at least a lot of people were you know there were a lot of job openings and at least but now it's like everything is bad like living as a human to try to afford to to try to afford this world is already enough of a challenge and for that to happen to lose your job and to have all of these external things kind of hitting me it's like god damn does it does anything ever take a break you know yeah uh hit youtuber jason schreier the schreier guy one take schreier as they call is apparently thank you chat blowing up my phone as they say uh he has texted me 1600 cuts today plus 1600 cuts in the next 12 months which does include the divest yeah i think i pulled it from jason's video got it got it got it got it Yeah, I was reading this dream guy.

22:14Andy Cortez:You can't trust him. Can't trust him at all. It's almost like when this news is breaking, it's so severe. People are trying to figure out what the fuck any of this means. Because these numbers are so colossal.

22:25Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah. There's so much to talk about here. I don't even know where to go next with all this. I think we should just keep rolling.

22:32Andy Cortez:I'd like to read Double Fine's message, if you don't mind, and Compulsion's message, and then we'll get into the rest of the news here. Double Fine put up a post and says, Real quick, I do want to say, I think there is a this mentality from, you know, gamers in quotes, you know, capital, you know, hard are gamers that that look at Christopher Drink is someone untrustworthy. Like, oh, do they? I didn't know that. I'm sorry. There's a current sentiment of like a small group of people going like they're going, we don't fucking trust that guy. he's I think his podcast is great I mean the game business show in general like it's a sub stack

23:12Blessing Adeoye Jr.:or whatever I listen that's why I think last episode I did a whole I talked about a whole thing of like you know journalists have a hard job when it comes to a lot of conflicting reports even the blade stuff that we'll talk about right it seems like there were certain things behind the scenes of they're looking at blade the arcane is not on the chopping block but arcane is being looked at is in the same line of compulsion and double finding these other yeah right but because of france and their laws there's a big war process there and jason came out and confirmed and like yeah they're not closing out arcane for now yeah right yeah sorry if i didn't i didn't realize there was drama with uh drink no but yeah bleed is happening also we're getting there we're getting there's no drama just like other how other people feel about him if they because they're like it's usually like the people who are really big fans of of a certain sure faction or whatever Like I am diehard Xbox.

24:00How dare dream? Yeah.

24:03Andy Cortez:Double fine statement reads once again, double fine productions will be an independent studio. We're thankful to everyone at Xbox for seven great years together and for working with us to reach an outcome, which preserves our history and culture and returns ownership of our games to us, to everyone who has reached out to us these past few weeks. Thank you so much for all your kind words. We've been deeply touched by all your messages. We will share more news soon on what comes next. Your continued support is greatly appreciated. Tim and all of it double fine. Meanwhile, compulsion puts out an update as well.

24:35Andy Cortez:When compulsion games was founded in 2009 as an independent studio, we were just a few dreamers in a leaky old gramophone factory devoted to creating rich storylines and experiences that felt handcrafted. That's awesome. I want to work in a grandma, grandma phone factory. We care about the craft of making games, the stories we tell and the players who experienced them and the assembled creators who put their heart and soul into doing something different. Today, we are sharing that Compulsion Games will return to independent management following our time as part of Xbox. As part of this transition, we will retain the rights to Contrast, We Happy Few, and our award-winning South of Midnight.

25:13Andy Cortez:We're grateful for the years we spent with Xbox, for the support they provided our team, and for the opportunity to bring these games to players around the world. As an independent studio, we're excited to continue building the distinctive games that define compulsion while making the next steps in our journey our immediate priority is to support our teams throughout this transition period we are confident in the future of compulsion games and look forward to this next chapter where one thing will remain constant we will create unique games that tell important stories all with the goal of touching the hearts and minds of our players

25:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:hell yeah coming up sometime later today whenever this episode is done is a games cast where me and Tim talked to the team, the leads from Toys for Bob, who's working on Spyro, Realm, Beyond. One of the things that we talked a lot about was, hey, you were with Activision and now you're working as an independent studio, still on an Activision product. And we'd asked them a lot of how that worked and all this stuff. And it seems like with Compulsion and Double Find, they're getting a lot of the same sort of transition of, hey, we, obviously on the Xbox side, It is a we want to save money. Right.

26:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:But for the fact that double fine and compulsion are able to kind of go independent, that's such a good outcome for them out of this whole thing. Reminds me of Iowa Interactive.

26:30Andy Cortez:Yeah, very much so. Right. At the top, you talked about how it's normal to have conflicting feelings with all of this. Right. And I think that is like never to look past more than thirty two hundred people losing their jobs. Right. and how this is all changing and all these shifts to get here and be like i would have told you when this all started that yeah we're gonna see studios close we're gonna see you know people laid off and mass right the fact that you are seeing very much io interactive hitman kind of stuff with square here where it is like cool we're selling you back your company you get your ip too like we're not gonna you know we're not just gonna kill you in the crib and say goodbye to this we're gonna do this and provide whatever this financial runway is you know not pat anybody on the back too hard for that but the fact that it isn't just you're out on your ass or this is all gone yeah it almost seems like like an apology you know i mean yeah like we you know we made a lot of bad calls yeah uh management here past management a lot of bad decisions that you know like when i think about the we want 1 billion players and we expect game pass to do this and you know things like that it's like there are a lot of projections being made there were a lot of hopes and predictions of what the company could do and it just never hit those highs we bought you for a

27:46Blessing Adeoye Jr.:reason that didn't work out for us yeah we bought you because we wanted content for xbox game packs because at the time that was the vision and we needed content for that to help drive people in help drive subscription numbers and when we're in this place in 2026 a lot of trying to reset refocus and make the business completely different than the phil spencer business you look at a double fine you look at a compulsion you look at some of these other studios and go you don't fit in our plan and that's the scary when it comes to big acquisition like this and making a big company making multiple acquisitions like this this is the scariest thing of oh shit we changed our mind that means you're no more useful to us and so a lot of the time that means we're going to close you down or lay off your team or turn you into a support studio like this could have we could have been in the in the dark future where double fine just becomes a call of duty support studio yeah we're in the good place at least for the for these exactly on the top line

28:37Andy Cortez:we're in and the timeline we're in right yeah like it's such a complicated feeling thing where you want to say all that but then it's just like well fuck you goddamn microsoft for doing all this ai bullshit for not i mean nearly a hundred billion dollars what are we talking about so like let's say we start here with the mood right and the tenor of just all of everything going on right sure and we get all these releases of all the layoffs and we are just dipping dip and dip and we are falling like real deep into the to the earth's core and there's a bit of bit of a mood bump where we go oh thank god some of these companies are allowed to keep their stuff but then i but then i go maybe we dip dip back down because now these companies can no longer operate the same way and might lead to further layoffs because they'll have to be you know reduces in staff because they can't oh of course hey that's the thing like and that sucks even more like it's it's awesome that double finding compulsion can go off and do their own thing but then they go hey we're independent now and we can't afford everybody we hired here

29:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:with microsoft's money i mean how big did double fine grow over the time they were with microsoft i don't have those numbers i don't think and i'm not even talking like mass layoffs or anything i just mean like there will be at least 20 to 30 or you know whatever it's so like there's still i'm not ready to jump to that yet like oh i am because i one of the things that we've that jason's talked about that you know as my xbox stuff has been happening that i've read right is that like when xbox acquired these studios these studios operated essentially still independently like there obviously there is a relationship there with xbox and there's a conversation there with xbox so i don't think they they acquire double fine and then go all right higher up higher up higher up like i think those studio i think double fine continued to act as double fine for all that time no i mean i don't think that they would have been told to hire up i think they look and go we have xbox money now sure let's hire a couple people here and it's nothing major i'm not saying going from like you know 80 employees to 280 or whatever but it's like there will be general yeah that you have extra runway you have extra funds to kind of work with and and i think those extra funds will be kind of looked at differently now and yes i and i do think you'll see sadly i i i would i think you'll see probably some layoffs

30:55Andy Cortez:i'm ready to jump to like 20 to 30 people yeah when this is all done and all the inks done and they're completely out and whatever else you know what i mean at first i would wait and go buy double fine games and compulsion games when that happens go get out everything you can right but it's more like i'd love to get tim in here i'd love to get uh i think it's gif from compulsion games in here right to talk about what are the realities of this because i think even if it's like let's just say they didn't hire more right think about and i hate doing this because we're one of we're saying things but think about like what the sf rent for double fine is and how oh in the past seven years of being under Xbox, whatever your rent is increased or done, let alone work from home, work remote, wherever they were all at with that.

31:35Andy Cortez:It's like all these actual situations of like, okay, cool, the nuts and bolts of running the business, figuring this out, like, you know, the overhead, the cost, the food, the coffee, everything else that I assume when Tim sold Double Fine was like, I just want to be creative again. I don't want to worry about all this bullshit. You take it, Xbox. Now it's whipped back to you seven years down the line in industry and free fall. And so now you have to imagine it's right back to it of like make or break on the next game or whatever our next project or our next partner or in like as we've talked we're talking about this all the time here on this show right like that funding for independent games has dried up a big driver of it was Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus and stuff like that.

32:13Andy Cortez:so like it's like you turn around in your tim schaefer and you're double fine you look you look at a devolver and like do that but can devolver give you enough money to justify the team you have so then it's like are we doing fig are we doing multiple projects like i have to imagine there's that to a degree moment of like we we survived it the brand is still alive we got it this is cool and then there has to be the fuck this is going to be i agree 100 i think i'm just

32:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:not ready to assume yet like i'm not ready to write them off of you're not you're not going to be able to figure this out in a way because i think i think double fine is different from a lot of studios out there i think double fine has a lot of personality double fine has a lot of output i think we underrate how many games and how savvy how many games they put out and how savvy they are as a studio as far as being able to navigate putting out psychonauts 2 and that being a critical success game you know game awards nominated game all this shit you get keeper last fall you get kiln this year like they have a good output in their very creative studio that i think and I think many publishers like a Devolver or others look at a double fine of, oh shit, that would be awesome to publish one of their games.

33:18Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I just think Microsoft, I don't think they're a Microsoft studio.

33:22Andy Cortez:Agreed. They were a weird pick until you go back and you talk about it, you look at it and it's like, cool, we're bringing on people to get, we don't care about sales, we just want the awards and we just want Game Pass content. Then it makes sense, I think, that you bring in a double fine that way of like, all right, cool, you're making Keeper, you're making Keelan, you're cycling. But do they have to then go,

33:39Blessing Adeoye Jr.:okay, we're going to work remote because we can't operate a studio yeah yeah so now you pivot to this and it's like

33:44Andy Cortez:all right cool what is your next game and like what is the big idea that can be the game that you have people rally behind again whether that is you know something on fig and having the crowd fund it which i would think with their history compulsion again you jump to i was you know googling around it looks like it's between 90 and 120 people right now according to just linkedin whatever googles i'm getting it's like okay cool what is their next thing how far on their next game where they you know you're talking about this runway and financials what does that actually get you but yeah there's the excitement that your thing isn't dead if we sold kind of funny to somebody and then they were like no we don't want to do anymore they gave kind of funny back i'd be super excited about it but then i'd be like oh fuck we got to rebuild everything we

34:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:just gave you we got to rebuild yeah compulsion weirdly enough i worry about a little bit more oh 100 yeah oh a thousand percent his compulsion when you're looking at their previous titles of course south midnight is one that so many people love yeah and we respect that game but how long do we get until their next title do they make a south of midnight too like i don't see i i don't see south of midnight as an ip game necessarily so are you making something brand new like that's i have so many question marks when it comes to where does compulsion go from here as opposed to where does double fine go from here yeah double fine just keeps being double fine yeah i think when

34:53Andy Cortez:you have somebody as industry legend is tim schaefer yeah that that hits different i think tim can go pull strings he can do the crowdfunding thing in a way i don't think compulsion could do yeah they could do it i think they'd get as much money or whatever i agree and so yeah it is like what do you do is compulsion what's your next idea how do you go because they make such amazing fucking art yeah everybody we have much more to talk about i'll remember you'd be super chatting about it i'll get i'll read through the ones you've put in so far uh while of course you hear about our sponsors because if you didn't know we do this each and every weekday a live talk show network about video games and we couldn't do without your support like subscribe share follow if you have twitch prime or amazon prime you have twitch prime give us that free 30 day subscription right now go buy andy and i's album kindoffunny.com store but most importantly pick up a membership you get everything we do each and every weekday ad free your daily dose of me greg miller and a one-man podcast show called the greg way and of course you get good karma for supporting an 11 person 11 year old small business but right now you're not using your benefits so here's a word from our sponsors this week we're sponsored by patreon.com slash kind of funny because it's patreon pledge month if you enjoyed the crazy amount of summer game fest coverage we put out in June, please consider tossing us a few bucks this month with a Patreon membership or upgrade your pledge for July.

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38:09Andy Cortez:Thank you so much for getting in here. I want to go to Volk Dasher to start. This is what tires me from the world and the internet. why are more people angry over discs than humans losing their dream jobs and studios being messed

38:23Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i think we're talking about apples and oranges agreed to be mad at multiple things i think that's

38:27Andy Cortez:dumb i think it's oh i think it's your algorithm maybe right now i don't know yeah well i also think that like there is the jiminy jillicers layoffs well i mean how many years of games daily have been defined now by our industry is being rocked by the worst layoffs of all time you know what i mean like you're going to get desensitized and i also think that for this news in particular the fact that it's been slowly leaking being hinted at telegraphed by asha sharma in interviews like the the disc thing from playstation literally was you woke up like what the fuck discs are over like different thing and that does directly affect a gamer capital yeah we're inherently hard r but like capital g gamer that affects them it's been some damage over time instead of just like the one critical shot yeah yeah we're inherently selfish is really what it comes down to also true yeah yeah i like this one from just rex quote it's time to lay off 3200 people you know what we need another new c-suite level employee that'll fix it not bad but it is it is again take the humanity out of this which is of course how we get shitty ai crap but to this it is an interesting reset for xbox of like hey we had what was it 14 layers

39:43Blessing Adeoye Jr.:of management holy shit thing is like if i'm if i am where i go back to if you remove the humanity out of it if you look at it from the perspective of the devil right like all the shifts they're making if i'm playing this like a video game if i'm playing xbox management sim yeah i'm trying to map story i'm trying to maximize the numbers guess what you did all the things that i would done yeah yeah yeah i'm a person with a heart and so no i think i think so much of this this is obviously very terrible news but asha is coming in to to look at the uh like microsoft leadership and go i'm gonna make these numbers make sense for you and she's making the numbers make sense in a way that is breaking all of our hearts and making us all really mad because we're humans and we have hearts and we care about these studios and we care about the creativity of these developers we want to see them thrive and all this but yeah like they are um restructuring xbox to make it more like a successful publisher and do your thing i guess shut this and we'll

40:40Andy Cortez:start with you how do you feel about i want to hit a billion players a day i mean it's as laughable as battlefield saying they wanted to hit you know whatever 100 million gamers it's like wow you are really out of touch i don't know where you got that number from um i think it's easy to look at that and just say yeah well that's windows users because they have the xbox app or whatever i mean that's the bullshit i know i know no no it all completely yeah it's all just bullshit it's just numbers and it's just you know trying to get people excited i think where my where i just get incensed and like oh i just fucking get so angry at thinking about shareholders who don't care about this hobby and this art going like fuck yeah look at all these layoffs let's fucking go baby that's gonna be more you know like i i get angry at just that and that's just more you know systemic and that's not really talking about the industry anymore but uh it just sucks i think i just get mad about the decisions that lead us here because what you're talking about as far as the

41:41Blessing Adeoye Jr.:shareholders and all that stuff right that's just capitalism that's what happens with every business the thing i get mad at is are the people who bought these studios and the people in the the management that bought activision blizzard and just made and made the terrible decisions to get this year right like if you don't do that you might be in a place where you're healthy enough to continue and not have to lay off all these people yeah 100 but guess what you bought activision blizzard you bought bethesda you bought arcane you bought double fine you like you buy buy buy spend spend spend and guess what you did all this shit with a bad bet i forget what game dev it was from what studio but it was somebody saying like we are we're being punished because your call of duty didn't perform the way you wanted it to yeah and coach hammer i think was it i want to

42:26Andy Cortez:say yeah well i thought no it was somebody not i thought it was something not related to call of duty at all that was the thing of like call of duty no yeah yeah it was somebody i see yeah it was somebody else in the microsoft family and and i can't but like that just makes so much sense it's like they those big those big hits have to hit and if they don't you see just that ripple effect go all the way down um talking about you know the bad decisions being made looking at you know helen chang who's been uh promoted to this role will direct report uh will report directly to me over two decades at xbox helen has helped build some of our most important businesses from xbox live to leading moyang and minecraft franchise i look at the bottom of that paragraph and say learning from our successes and failures and hold ourselves accountable for results there has never been accountability like the people get laid off and then the ceo still make those massive but like in what world is there accountability for anybody aside from going like i'm being held accountable you know why because i feel bad about doing this like that's my accountability i feel so terrible about having to lay these people off like i don't that i look at that sentence and i'm like i i don't really know if that sentence necessarily makes a whole lot of sense in this climate you know yeah yeah no because the accountability i mean like we'll see what going forward that means accountability right but it is the fact that yeah the people who make these decisions i mean let's just be frank like this is a maybe a bit not as frank or as clear as it should be but like we're talking about the after effects of what phil spencer and sarah bond set course for yes right again we can be mad at them about it i do think that so much of this is not being supported for Microsoft at top with Satya Nadella.

44:17Andy Cortez:So to turn it to Satya Nadella, let's just say he, or even toss in, let's just toss out my usual, I'm carrying water and saying it's all Satya Nadella and Microsoft's fault. Phil and Sarah's strategy didn't work out. Now let's hold people accountable. Well, they left. They're gone. They were making millions of dollars. I don't know how much Sarah was. I don't know how much Phil was, I guess, technically either. But let's just say they made millions of dollars and left. Now you're dealing with the people I know on Blue Sky, the people who are I'm friendly with at Bethesda right now putting up hey I'm no I no longer have a fucking job and Jess over at Bethesda who's a community manager on that she did not have millions of dollars from this and she is being punished for a bad decision from people who did golden parachute out to some degree whatever it is and if you want to go back to me wanting to tell Sati Nadella you to bag a shit he's fine with his 95 million dollar bonus that was 22 % higher than it was the year over you know what I mean like that's what we're talking about where accountability is no longer in this industry hoisted or foisted upon the people who actually did the job we the people we need to hold accountable are people making the decisions and not the people are doing the work that their bosses bosses bosses told them to go do and that's the fucking problem we have where it's the workers being punished how do we punish the leadership i mean you and me personally right now we eat them i know what to do i mean i get this now you're back into the overall capitalism fucking sucks.

45:42Andy Cortez:You know what I mean?

45:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I mean, what are we... We're analyzing a statement that means nothing. It's what it comes down to, right? The holding the people accountable.

45:48Andy Cortez:Oh, sure. But I mean, but like, so... Yes. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, honestly... Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you on that, yes. I think from the OSHA letter, we're going to hold ourselves accountable for results. That is her saying in no uncertain terms that... Nobody's safe. Exactly. If we go and we make a bad call, the fucking like, you know, you don't get a bad game anymore. You don't get a thing. And again, like now, if we're hitting a reset button, not even in the fucking hokey email to the Xbox, if we're hitting a reset button and just be like, all right, cool from blank slate, let's go here forward.

46:24Andy Cortez:If it is that this team really wanted to make this game and they thought it was going to sell. All right, cool. Go for it. Fucking didn't. All right. See you later. Like that's, I think what she means now, again, are there people at the top of the pyramid who are saying to go make that game? We're into a bunch of hypotheticals here, but I think this is her being like to Andy's point from the top of the show this is a letter although there's corporate speak in it for sure that is unflinching because i do think in 2026 july 6th we are in an unflinching time everything you fucking love and want to use whether it's your iphone your computer your everything is going to cost exponentially more there is no sugar coating it there is no hiding it in the this is we're seeing the first pinch points of this where in reality it's going to be everything that is like this soon where there's like oh fuck it that didn't work so everything's fucked can i bring in story number three because i think it pertains to the conversation sure but can i just i want to give shout out to harvey randall at pc gamer right the headline is xbox ceo wants its games to cater to quote more than a billion people each day end quote or 24 times more than the peak population of steam which is delusional the headline they had yeah i mean if you i'm sure they're lumping in people watching fallout on amazon people you playing it oh i I don't even think that.

47:34Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I just think you lump in Candy Crush and you lump in World of Warcraft and you lump in college. If you lump in all their biggest games, I'm sure you can make the argument that we're there, like that they're almost there. Because remember, like the same people are playing all these games. They're not saying a billion unique people. They want to speak to a billion people. So when you take the user base of all the highest things because they own everything, I'm sure they're not that far off from a billion. Fair enough. Which sounds insane. My plan is to make a million dollars. Every day we walk in here, I tell you I want a million people watching Kind of Funny every day.

48:09Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Roger makes a good point, right? Anybody who just boots up a Windows PC. Because guess what? You boot up a PC and then Xbox. You can make it so that Xbox automatically turns out. Yeah, that was the first point of it. I was like, your PC has the Xbox app. Andy said that. A number that they're looking at.

48:24Andy Cortez:My bad. Roger. Fucker.

48:25Blessing Adeoye Jr.:You want to jump to story number three? Yes.

48:27Andy Cortez:We're not forgetting story number two, but we'll get there. We'll get back to story number two.

48:29Blessing Adeoye Jr.:because story number three we're talking about you know refocusing doing all this stuff story number three is about bethesda uh this from wccf tech francesco de mayo but that's the pivots to a franchise first model as xbox cuts 3200 jobs uh betting everything on the elder scrolls and fallout after weeks of rumor and speculation xbox has confirmed today that is cutting 3200 jobs with some of its first party studios under the microsoft umbrella either getting sold or returning to independence and the accompanying note from xbox ceo asha sharma there is no mention of anything specific regarding ZeniMax Media, Bethesda's parent company.

49:03Blessing Adeoye Jr.:But according to reliable journalist Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, the creator of the Elder Scrolls series is being affected by this restructuring to focus on its key franchises. Quote, ZeniMax, as I mentioned, is going to be impacted pretty significantly. They're going to be restructured to a franchise first model. They're basically going to be focusing on their biggest franchises, said Schreier in a fresh video. They're going to focus on Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Quake, Wolfenstein and Doom so all five of those franchises are going to be a big focus for ZeniMax moving forward end quote

49:37Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I know it's not there do you think no it's not there do you think they just forgot Starfield no I don't think they forgot it I don't think they forgot they must not have hit control paces yeah yeah

49:50Andy Cortez:bringing that up agreed can I roll into story number four because you sure I think that's right there the Elder Scrolls online team seemingly gutted by Xbox layoffs says games roadmap will quote unquote be shifting. This is the one, the only kind of funny games daily award winner, Rebecca Valentine at Kotaku. The Elder Scrolls online appears to have been heavily impacted following today's sweeping cuts across Xbox sources speaking to Kotaku have shared that the impact of the cuts on Zenimax media, or I'm sorry, Zenimax online studios developer of the Elder Scrolls online has been brutal. Shortly after the news of layoffs broke this morning, individuals began getting invites to group meetings with HR where they were laid off alongside their colleagues.

50:29Andy Cortez:Over 20 individuals have already posted about being laid off from ZeniMax on LinkedIn with more across other social platforms. Many reported having long tenures with the company, several over 10 years. While the total number impacted on ESO is unknown, multiple individuals within ZeniMax have suggested to Kotaku that the total number impacted could be as much as half the development team. In a post on the ESO forums, community manager jessica folsom has said the team wants to quote reaffirm our commitment to the elder scrolls online end quote however quote the roadmaps we previously shared will be shifting quote we want to take the time to evaluate the work in front of us and then lock down an updated schedule while we'd love to share more concrete details today stepping back to get our plans straight will let us continue come back to you with a clear timeline shout out to this community manager Jessica in the forums right now you do not need to be posting that this isn't on you you don't even know who's getting fucking fired in these HR zoom calls yet the road map I understand is the least of your concerns but I appreciate trying to do your job still which again shows the dedication of these individuals how much they love the projects they're on and seeing this shit all blow up in their faces all roads lead back to Embracer saying we gotta exploit Lord of the Rings I mean this is in the you know the fucking playstation thing right we got to monetize the existing we don't care about it

51:59Blessing Adeoye Jr.:jason one of his videos talking about how bobby kotick was notorious and we saw we've seen this in real time right notorious about exploding certain franchises right tony hawk's success put out a tony hawk every year call of duty's success put out a call of duty every year uh guitar hero's a success sorry put one out every year right like that is when we're in times like this that is what these companies do and right now xbox is in the process of going what are the franchises we need to exploit i'm surprised that even wolfenstein made it into this list from from jason and like we'll see what that actually pans out but we're talking about let's accelerate making more more elder scrolls more fallouts more wolfensteins probably more halos probably more gears right what are the biggest ip what are the what are the eight biggest ips that we own under xbox we're just doing those now i'm surprised wolvenstein also made the list and i'll tell you why i think it made the list because it's the show old oh yeah like only because it's old because it's an older franchise that has been around for a while and maybe newer people to the xbox ecosystem look at it as like the legacy franchise or whatever even though i don't think wolvenstein is selling numbers like the other games are yeah but thank fuck thank god it's still going to be in that like sort of you know in that group that they see is like worth worth keeping around right yeah like i just i think that they you know asha sharma who again didn't know the most about video games coming into this job and like is kind of learning on the go and kind of You know, everything's kind of moving a million miles a minute.

53:39But I think they look at one of that, they look at that name and go, oh, that's an older IP. That's something with a foundation. Let's keep that shit going, too. I also think. Just like Halo, just like the other ones.

53:49Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I think Wolfenstein also has predictable enough numbers to where you know what you're working with. Like, you know, Doom, obviously, they're still putting those out. And Doom, I assume, I'm trying to find numbers, but like I'm seeing maybe 6 million for Doom Eternal. over 6.6 million paid units within his first nine months right like i look at a wolfenstein and the numbers the number i can find for the new colossus which was uh wolfenstein 2 in 2017 is 2.7 million which is not due numbers but also it's not terrible yeah but it like depends on what you're

54:21Andy Cortez:putting into it these are ip you keep around because you can do so much with them it's an old game you can always put out collections you could always they're working on the wolfenstein show they you know i mean there's merch there's this there's that there's juice to these things because we you know this is something we've seen so much and i'm gonna say movies but obviously see it with games but i think it's more pronounced with movies of like where are the original ideas well nobody wants to take a gamble on that so they're rebooting franchises and doing live action adaptations of cartoons and stuff and again i know also killing not killing nazis a little too woke nowadays of course gotta be careful with that what's funny you bring that up and it makes me think of pete on stage right talking about punching nazis all the time and then it made me think of Of course, Pete Hines, you know, a friend of the show who left Bethesda not too long ago, right?

55:00Andy Cortez:Remember what? This is three months ago when he was on Kirk's podcast, and it was Pete Hines left Bethesda because the company was being, quote, broken and destroyed, end quote, under Microsoft's leadership. And, like, you sit there now, and it's like, having done one of the—I guess we didn't read it on this show. Let me see if I can get it real quick. Not that it really matters, I guess, but I love giving juice to the folks that are great folks. Matt Fireor who of course ran ESO who if you remember when Mike and I did the four part series about ESO this long podcast Matt was here giving us stories he had been you know forever he had left after Blackbird got cancelled where like that was my dream and now I'm just going to go off and do my own thing today Matt BS that's the saddest guy Blackbird is so sad that's the blue sky Tim said I am unbelievably shattered and heartbroken with the news coming out of Zenimax online and Xbox in general today the team at ZOS is made up of of amazing, dedicated, smart, and above all, awesome humans.

55:55Andy Cortez:To see so many of them laid off today and last year at this time is just awful. I use that and the Pete conversation to talk about something that I don't think we get a chance to talk about often because we're talking about the fucking corporate bullshit, ruining everything, blah, blah, blah, gutting an insider thing. When I talk to Matt, when I talk to Todd, when I talk to anybody about what it used to be like at ZeniMax, they bring up Robert Altman. he of course is one of the founders of ZeniMax he was the business guy and it was the idea that if they would come to him and say it's going to cost us much to delay we're going to do this kind of thing and he would say is it good for players and they would say yes and he would do it I'm boiling down a million different stories to get here but it was the idea of like what happens when you have a large business ZeniMax is far bigger than you might think it is right in terms of Bethesda and online and yada da da da it's not just a local or not local, a small independent thing.

56:50Andy Cortez:But when you have people at the top who are there because they love fucking video games, like this can be a business where we're making money and that is the goal, but we're trying to fucking take care of people. And it's the reason when I think you talk about how people, I would say used to think about Bethesda used to think about blizzard. Like you're talking about people who were like, we are in this business for the love of the game. And the art of making a game is more important than the fucking return on investment. and now we're upside down on that where it is all people care about is making the fucking money so you're just getting bad decisions across the board that aren't player first that aren't endearing you because i mean think i've talked about this before uh when i interviewed todd on the first daily games cast one of the things you know people like the interview but i when i went for the feedback of the people who didn't like it that stood out one of them was call out a question i had asked of like about the bethesda community because i remember back in 2010 whatever it was going to pax and seeing the bethesda booth and the bethesda store they had in there and the lines the lines they had to buy fallout hoodies and plushies it was just like what an incredible thing to look at that yes is merchandise but it was that all these people love this brand of games

58:08Blessing Adeoye Jr.:you know i mean the same way we talk about devolver to a degree that was me in 2019 like in 20 circa 2018 and 2019 but that's the to me was like modern capcom right now where i'm a fan of fallout i love doom and i love wolfenstein yeah and so when you get those back to back like that of like 2015 getting that fallout getting wolfenstein in 2017 getting doom 2016 as well and like dishonored as well like but that's the late ps4 xbox one era i think was unfuckwithable yeah like and i don't have that same feeling anymore because they're not the same bethesda

58:40Andy Cortez:anymore yeah yeah and that's the thing of like having that momentum and that identity and then gambling it away and i'm not blaming the people who work at bethesda for that i'm blaming this we're gonna go sell the company we're gonna go do this and i'm not even sure you know behind the scenes why altman and crew decided to sell as an amex i'm sure it's out there i'm just not up to date on that but to get there and then see all this stuff where you go you're microsoft i mean this is such a funny, this is not at all comparable. Stick with me. Whenever it comes up on a Greg way and people like, well, would you ever sell kind of funny?

59:11Put the lower third on the screen. This is not at all comparable.

59:15Andy Cortez:Would you ever sell kind of funny? I'm always like, I mean, no, but never say never, but no. And I'm also like, but more importantly, who the fuck would buy us? Like if IGN bought kind of funny, cool, but like they, nobody's going to support us on Patreon. No one's going to get a membership anymore because now it's this. and then it's also going to be then if you erode the fan base and it's no longer the kind of funny best friends what are you even buying anyone so it's the same thing i feel like to a degree of like we're gonna buy but we're gonna buy these things people love but when you buy them people are like i don't love it as much anymore like it's not this is an unconditional love

59:50Blessing Adeoye Jr.:counterpoint what if it was ign pass you know and ign didn't just buy us they bought giant bomb and they bought easy allies and then people could pay ten dollars a month eventually pay thirty a month but ten dollars a month yeah you then get access to all the content

1:00:05Andy Cortez:the big game pass what if they bought a bunch of european outlets though this started laying those people off you know what i mean oh man this fucking place close to home uh like my wish from all of this and this is just like the most this is the most completely like selfish choice right is that management looks at what's hitting big out there. What, you know. Let's chase the tricks. People going for like the friend slops up. But I wish like the one silver lining I could get out of this is personally, just only for me. They look at the success of Subnautica and go, reboot back up that Blizzard survival game you guys are working on.

1:00:48Do something with that. And that's just like, that's just completely selfish of me.

1:00:53Blessing Adeoye Jr.:and I understand that but according to Jason in his video that he put up today with this news he did say that they're still exploring new IP yeah yeah but like you know it is very much a we're exploring it we're all coming to conference service they'll be like fuck no well there's a team Jason said there's a team that's like under Activision formerly made up oh of CD Projekt Red people correct me if I'm wrong and they're working on like some RPG or whatever but who knows if who knows what we'll ever see of that. It sounds so much like the movie industry right now. If you're not a known thing, we're not greenlighting you.

1:01:27Andy Cortez:Yeah, yeah, 100%. There's that story about... Michael Mann making that Miami Vice reboot with Jamie Foxx back in the day. I don't know the story. And it was Jamie Foxx and I forget who, but it wasn't going to, he just put the name Miami Vice on it because he just wanted to make a movie. And they wouldn't have greenlit it if it was some other thing. So he called the Miami Vice, even though that was never necessarily the plan. It was like, there's just no other way that a big corporation would greenlight a movie like that unless it has that name attached to it.

1:02:00Blessing Adeoye Jr.:The studio I'm talking about, by the way, is called Elsewhere Entertainment. They're on Activision's website. God bless them.

1:02:05Andy Cortez:God be with you. Good luck. Go get it. Try to do it. You know what I mean? Talking about a fucking company. Not a silver lining at all. But, granted, 1 ,600 more jobs would be lost in this fiscal year. But, like, the fact that we're not talking about Obsidian any of this is not strange to me. But, like, if I would have been, like, this is what's going to happen. Here's the information. They're going to make a fallout, obviously. Still, but I mean, yes. and they should I agree with that criminally underplayed Outer Worlds 2 avowed like there's so much good grounded I know a lot of people love like they make great stuff but it's that idea of like I would also see like if the fucking axe is swinging out there of who like why are we doing grounded kill the ground and I'm not saying do this but I would have predicted grounded team gone it is we're keeping the RPG folks to go make the next New Vegas 2 or whatever

1:02:55Blessing Adeoye Jr.:yeah I wonder I do wonder what those conversations are because I imagine if Obsidian is going to make a Fallout or an Elder Scrolls type game, it's all hands on deck. Because even though you mentioned criminally underplayed Outer Worlds 2, that and Avowed, I don't think have a wide scope enough. For Xbox, of course not. Yeah, to compare to a Fallout.

1:03:13Andy Cortez:Don't get me wrong. If I'm Asha Sharma and I'm having these conversations, I'm like, Avowed 2? Cute. No. Yeah. You're making Fallout New Vegas 2 and you're making Fallout Japan. I'm going to combine all these games and make a bigger game and we're going to call it

1:03:24Blessing Adeoye Jr.:either Fallout or Elder Scrolls.

1:03:25Andy Cortez:See, here's my thing. I wonder if the bigger games is what they're thinking, though. i think they want faster games actually the startup mentality of remove layers let's you're

1:03:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:doing new vegas 2 awesome and you're doing fallout japan i think they want both i i think i think they're looking at their studios and going we have enough to offset like hey we're not we're not waiting as long for the next fallout because yeah obsidian's making this fallout uh but that's you're gonna make this thing maybe you have another studio work on either of them i think they still want big games i the for the last however long they've been doing the small games and that's just not been working out for them so i think i think asha would be averse to small

1:04:03Andy Cortez:games and to be clear i'm sorry yeah we're going fast i'm not talking small like keeper small i'm talking like not a hundred hour rpg you're doing 250 hour rp oh yes we're putting out one year the next year not a not a not a 200 million dollar budget video game i i if i'm master charmer i'm like how can i find a way to sabotage roblox how can i find a way minecraft to just exactly and minecraft being such a massive success i think they look at that and they go man we just haven't really taken advantage of this we've had this golden goose that we've kind of taken for granted because it brings in a lot of money but yeah we gotta like obviously they made a movie so i'm not saying that they're just completely resting on their laurels but you gotta really really take more advantage you gotta fucking i think they're gonna exploit that they're gonna exploit the fuck

1:04:50Blessing Adeoye Jr.:out of minecraft yeah that is their most successful acquisition yeah oh yeah like minecraft's only gotten more popular yeah it has the movie it's had spinoffs i don't know how the spinoffs are done but like regardless minecraft is only this summer how do we put out propaganda to get kids from stop and play and i think the next i think the next move is to make minecraft even more like roblox yeah i think that's i think they're going to try exactly that do you think they do minecraft too i don't know minecraft well enough to know if that makes sense it's like the usual thing of

1:05:19Andy Cortez:like you have so many dailies on or so many concurrent return players on minecraft how do you convert them to two i mean you're just putting stuff out uh volk dasher super chat says if xbox has fast turnarounds and releases a lot of franchise games that are sevens or eights in succession that's gonna win versus playstation seven year turnarounds you gotta we're talking about flooding the zone but i also think if you're flooding the zones with big ips maybe maybe again like this is something we talked about last week and i'm gonna fucking butcher the quote as well right where it was the unnamed xbox person saying we're using bygone franchises to chase a dwindling market right like how many yeah you make a bunch of halo games does anybody is halo actually moving units and making you go do it like there was the rumors over the weekend right that like from i think it was jez talking about like maybe disc drives are back on the table for a project uh helix right and it's like if that was true then get through this and then do the whole like we're so we're committed to physical games but then of course sony is the one making the fucking game or the printing the discs so it's only a matter of time before playstation's like sony's like no for me it's the hardware aspect that i don't know i don't know how

1:06:29Blessing Adeoye Jr.:they resolve because that's the fuck out of it with the content helix it's two thousand dollars it's meant to be boutique we're everywhere we're publishing everywhere when we're talking about their first party content microsoft's xbox still owns more studios than god and so i've always been in the mind of like yo y 'all should be killing sony with this shit you know what i mean on the first party front you guys have more studios than anybody i think now that they're focusing on exploiting this shit we'll see how that goes but on the console manufacturing side that's still yet to be solved like we're talking about all this restructuring we're talking about the reset and we're talking about all this what the fuck are you doing for next gen how are you going to make it affordable for people how many people are actually going to buy the console when you're when you're making these games exclusive yep i'm of the same opinion that you know when we sit up here and i feel the same way similar to snowback mike about a lot of their properties where they rarely but like this one i i totally agree with him when he goes gears isn't selling your xbox a new halo is not selling it's not converting a playstation user to come over and i just i don't even necessarily think that that has to do with the quality of the game like i i just don't know if we're in that landscape anymore like there's i the the fact that so many awesome games will come out and people go i'll wait for game pass i'll wait for say it's like we're just in a different economic landscape and interest landscape where you don't necessarily feel like i mean i would but outsiders don't necessarily feel i have to buy that new last of us three or whatever like it's i just feel like we're get it's getting more and more rare for those people to want to buy that big franchise sure on the xbox side i think of it as like they just they've never had those they've never had the spider-man they've never had the the you know like i just mentioned last of us or whatever they they've been missing that man big ass franchise i mean should i reference it of mike saying that starfield needs to be the game of the generation like it was supposed to be starfield yeah starfield would have been that as somebody earlier in chat mentioned like the dude bros aren't the meta dude bro shooters aren't the meta anymore and i kind of like in with that as far as the kind of games that sell consoles i do think halo and gears need to be in the rotation because that is your identity but oh yeah elder scrolls the next elder scrolls game should be that game right that should sell a console in the way that a spyro man or a i don't know a god of war sells a console like you there fallout i think is another one of those too but the thing that sucks is that i'm now i'm just naming bethesda games yeah that's his biggest ips you need a couple more of those and i think you can have that but i i think you got to change up the meta it can't you can't rely on gears and halo well we're i mean we also think about the fact that starfield should have been that game I think if even if Starfield came out with full tens across the board that it still doesn't have the name of Elder Scrolls that's the thing it still doesn't have the fallout chat was popping

1:09:37Andy Cortez:off on the twitch side saying hopefully fables that fables not that I fable on paper and everything we've seen I'm like that might be my favorite game of all time when we finally get our hands on that that looks incredible amazing but I don't think fable has the name recognition yeah and again, you're back to scores and whatever, or you want to talk about a different fucking reality, just completely nonsensical for Xbox to have been successful and being a completely different place. Starfield needed to not exist. And that needed to be Elder Scrolls. Yes. That needed to be all this. Oh yeah. Here we go.

1:10:10Andy Cortez:That's what we're doing. Boom. We bought them. Their next game is that it's exclusive to Xbox. Here we fucking go. Like or fallout. Yeah. Because fallout comes out, the tv show comes out and then you we're in the place where we're looking right now with all the news coming out about cyberpunk edge runners having you know season two and suddenly cyberpunk on pc is at its largest and you get back to the news cycle that way and people get reinvigorated to get back into that it's like dude that there was such a perfect recipe there and it's like it was so hard to predict all those moving pieces or whatever but damn that could have been a recipe for greatness

1:10:44Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I agree with y 'all about Fallout and Elder Scrolls. I'm not convinced, though, that name recognition is the sole thing, though. I think if Starfield came out and was a 10 out of 10, I do think it would have moved units. I look at a game like Baldur's Gate 3, and I don't think Baldur's Gate 3 sold because of the name recognition of Baldur's Gate 2. I think Baldur's Gate 3 sold because it's a 10 out of 10 RPG that people flock to, and that was a cultural moment. I mean, Elden Ring is a weird example because Elden Ring is basically more Dark Souls, but Elden Ring is another game. That's a new IP that came out as a 10 out of 10 game and people flock to it.

1:11:18Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Right. I think that's a pandemic game to me though. Elden Ring and animal crossing are pandemic. If Elden Ring came out today, you would still, it would still have the same impact. I don't know. I don't think, I don't know if it would have the same impact numbers wise. I think during the pandemic, everybody having eyes on what everybody is doing and people are not as busy with the outside world. They're just busy with whatever people are doing on their phones. like if animal crossing new horizons came out today it would not do those numbers and i think elden green would still be massively popular i don't think it would have been a 25 million unit seller so here's my question i just think we're in a two years ago is it's crazy that i'm even saying this but i think like where we're living at right now economically and with how our attention is just being pulled in a million different directions we're in a very different spot than we were even two years ago i think eliminating animal crossing

1:12:12Andy Cortez:from the conversation because it would actually invalidate my point but talking about elder elder elden elden ring sorry elder scrolls elden ring it's getting me elden ring and uh baldur's gate three right the insane success of those games but then being multi-platform and being for a built-in audience oh for sure that helps if we turn that around the conversation we're having right now if either of those games were to release right now and be xbox exclusive would they turn the tide for xbox right now to get people who have been burned by xbox burned the console prices right now the inability to get them yeah would that get people to go buy those games or about

1:12:51Blessing Adeoye Jr.:those consoles i think enough of them does like it just can't be one of them but like you look at if we're looking looking at playstation or nintendo as an example right playstation it's you don't just have god of war you have spider-man you have horizon you have i was gonna say returnal returnal might not be on the same level but you get what i mean right you look at nintendo you have breath of the wild you have odyssey you have like these big first party games coming at a decent pace and we're every year to every other year we're expecting that either of those platforms are releasing something that is like nine out of ten ten out of ten ubiquitous conversation happening as far as those games impact we just haven't had that with xbox if every couple years you can have a Elder Scrolls or Fallout or like that level of game

1:13:31Andy Cortez:here we are we're back here and we don't have that history with Xbox right and I don't show it to me right show don't tell Asha has to show that they have to do this if we are here in three years talking about the fucking dominoes for Xbox lining up right like and I

1:13:48Blessing Adeoye Jr.:want to make it clear that I'm making hardware I want to yeah I want to clear I'm not like I'm not just bullshit around yeah but I want to make I want to make it clear I don't think they're going to pull it off but i'm saying if they wanted to pull it off of like staying in the console race and doing all this shit these are all the decisions you make yeah like you're making all the decisions if you're trying to pull that off now i think we're too far gone i don't think i i think especially with where hardware is at like everything's fucked you yeah you made bad decisions five years ago when you acquired all these companies and you made bad decisions in 2013 when don matrick

1:14:17Andy Cortez:did all that shit see it's interesting i still stand by in this alternate universe or whatever you made bad decisions when you didn't support xbox everything's an xbox i think i i wonder if there's any monday morning quarterbacking going on at sati adela level oh there's probably a million monday morning but i mean just like the idea of like oh man everything's getting more expensive it's five times more expensive right now than it was two years ago to make a console oh shit well it'd be great if we could tell everybody just to buy like you know what i mean like go buy an xbox and buy game pass to be able to stream your shit and put it on everything and Like, it's like, I don't know.

1:14:52Andy Cortez:You can't read. Nobody can predict the future. So when they were like, we're losing money, this sucks. And the AI is fucking, I want to put on a goddamn stupid Borg face, whatever. Like I get like, they chose this thing. But in terms of the gaming business, like right now, what a great response it would be to PlayStation's raising their price. Switch raised their price. We're not raising the price of Game Pass. You could be playing that for right now for 30 bucks or whatever it is. Or well, now 20 bucks, you know what I mean? Whatever. let's we haven't even gotten into the other news story about arcane yeah let's let them enter the chat just have some more good fucking news number two but really number five i guess uh as xbox tries to sell or close arcane the future of marvel's blade remains unclear with reports suggesting it was delayed internally and is running over budget we go to the one the only wyp that's wesley yin pool at igin.com the future of marvel's blade remains unclear as microsoft tries to sell or close its developer Arkane Lyon.

1:15:48Andy Cortez:Today, as part of a significant reorganization at Microsoft's gaming business, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said Arkane's management, quote, is beginning required consultation with its works council to review potential strategic options, end quote. As a French studio, Arkane must follow the country's labor laws around a potential sale or closure, and this process may take some time. Meanwhile, the future of Marvel's Blade, which was in development at arcade leon remains unclear will it be released is it canceled could another company pick it up with arcade leon potentially contributing to development continued development ign has asked marvel games for comment and microsoft has yet to expand on charma's statement the verge reported that marvel's blade was delayed internally to late 2027 and was running over budget ign understands this to be accurate but neither microsoft nor marvel has suggested a release window blade from the team behind death loop was announced in december 2023 with a reveal trailer but we've seen nothing of it since andy do we ever play blade

1:16:56man i it's it's so sad to hear that something is running over budget and things are like you don't want to be running over budget now maybe three years ago we could have sustained like it's no problem we could have sustained that hit daddy phil would have been like keep doing your thing man we're gonna let you guys make the games that you want um yeah this is awful fucking news this is like i mean i you know i don't want to measure the worst disasters against the worst disasters but this one is a real big bummer yeah to see that yeah and you know i was it was it jason trier's video talking about the only reason there haven't been any big moves made is because of

1:17:37Andy Cortez:of france labor laws 100 um and they kind of imply it here yeah yeah igian calls that out this article yeah um i mean i would i would love to greg i'll tell you what i would love to play blade yeah do i think we'll play blade um unless there is a drastic move to speed up whatever it is that's holding it back and and we don't really it's hard to even say that because we don't know what's holding it back we don't know if it's creative we don't know really what's slowing down the process and until we get more information there it's kind of hard to say what to say so you know like i i think about any time a movie is in creative limbo and you just you just have a feeling like this isn't really going to shake out the way you want to yeah but if it's something that just kind of got over scoped uh and i say that in a very minimally uh i'm just trying to it sounds like i'm trying to minimize it but yeah if something gets like over scoped then that's not a creative thing that's just hey there's a lot of cool shit we want to do then you hopefully try to speed up that process and say what can make the what can hit the chopping block but

1:18:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:i i'm not having a whole lot of faith right now unfortunately what do you think bus i mean i'm of the mind like fuck blade i don't really care about that game i care about arcane as a studio like i care i mentioned it before i know bear also fucking loves dishonored dishonored one and two I love Prey Prey got Arcane Austin Who made Prey Already got shut down I'm also a Deathloop enjoyer Deathloop hell Arcane is such a Special studio And of course I'd play an Arcane Blade I want to play an Arcane Blade I don't say fuck Blade

1:19:13Andy Cortez:I don't give a fuck I understand what you're saying The story you're worried about Isn't the game The story I'm worried about

1:19:17Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Is not the game It's about the studio Because the studio deserves to live Because this is one of the most Talented studios in the industry I was coming from the side point That I don't care about the studio I just want Blade you're like take it away from that i can't give it to anybody now blade the this story particularly where arcane is at with all this makes me extremely worried from all angles right like when we're talking about them being over budget and this game being slated for fall 2027 who knows how much more time they need the problem with budgets and delays is that when you get delayed when a game gets delayed even further and takes longer to come out you're paying people longer and a lot of where those budgets come from is from paying people month after month after month after month and that is how budgets balloon and i i think one of the reasons i'm also like fuck blade is that blade seems like such a different game than arcane has ever made before and so i just don't know if they have the processes they have the template right like i look at the chops the chops and i'm sure they can make a good blade game if they have the time and space to do it but yeah i look at death loop i look at i look at um dishonored i look at the games that they make and there is an arcane game that if they're making another one of those i'd be like oh yeah that's probably gonna be out by fall yeah them making a blade game that's seemingly third person all this shit i don't know man that makes me really scared yeah we talked about this a lot uh i you know i'll

1:20:46Andy Cortez:i do care about arcane as a studio uh but to start off the conversation i don't think we ever play blade. No, I just don't think it's, it's coming together. I don't know or anything. I'm not suggesting I know anything, but I think it falls so much into the camp of the amount of times we talk about studios, usually in the live service push. Hey, let's go make a game that isn't our cup of tea, but we want to get into live services and you get a suicide squad. You're like, what the fuck? You know what I mean? Like the reason the great studios have great lineages is because they're able to come together make a game make mistakes learn from those mistakes take it into the next game make a better game but make this and you keep compounding interest on this of like cool we've been together and even if we are losing people here there layoffs when they do happen we have a core that understands and a process and we know how to work together and you roll down that hill and the snowball gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and so to go here and have it be that we're going from dishonored to death loop now to third person blade i'm with you of like I think that transition is just difficult enough that if you weren't supremely confident to go out and do that, you go out and do it with an IP as big as Blade with shareholders like Marvel slash Disney on top of you.

1:22:00Andy Cortez:That's a really tall order. And it's not that you're not a talented studio. It's just that they're stacking the deck. Were they forced to link? No, no, no, no, no, no. I think they looked at this as like a really cool creative opportunity. But that's where you go into, hey, we're over budget and we're fucking late. is that we're an incredibly talented studio. We know what is good and what's bad. And so we wanted the challenge and we have that challenge and now we're out there making it and it's tough, but we're getting there and we're finding it, but it's going to take more time. It's going to take more time.

1:22:32Andy Cortez:It's going to take more money.

1:22:33Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And I also think making Blade under Xbox is different from making like a Dishonored or something, right? Where we look at... Arcane and Double Fine, very different studios, get bought for different reasons because Arcane comes with the... Put the lower third up. Yeah, put it the lower third up, right? But like, you know, when you buy Double Fine, you buy Double Fine to make Double Fine games, right? You're like, okay, you're going to make these. Cool. Arcane, when you take in a Blade to develop, I do think that puts you on a different level as far as what your financial responsibility is. Like, you're making a Blade to sell and do well.

1:23:04Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Like, I don't think they're forced to make Blade, but I think when they make the decision to make Blade, it is the decision to step up as a studio and go, oh, we're going to be a contender. We're going to be a studio that really matters to the arithmetic and all this shit. And we think Blade is going to do really well. And so now when they're in the place of either getting sold or figuring out what they're going to do, I get scared on multiple levels. One, Arcane, I don't know. Somebody might have to do a history check of like, has Arcane ever been independent? Of course, they get bought under Bethesda to Microsoft.

1:23:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And so it's like, do they have a structure where they can make that transition? Maybe not as easily as a Double Fine or a Compulsion. So there's that. And then also like, who's going to buy them? I would hope somebody buys them because they are talented, but... Yeah, this is like in sports when there's a player with a massive contract. You're like, oh God, who is going to want to pick up that contract? Because right now, there have to be a lot of expenses under the studio. But to get back to the game point, we're like, who do we want to point the finger at? Because if you're Xbox telling Arcane, no, just keep making Dishonored, then we can't be happy about that too.

1:24:13like we go no you let arcane work on what this is this is back to the monkey's paw situation i've

1:24:19Andy Cortez:talked about before right where i think there are so many talented video game studios whose games languish under oh it's a cult hit and for years we've been leaning into you can't be a cult hit and be a big studio right it's why i've applauded insomniac taking on spider-man where it's like sunset overdrive fucking rocked right that was a great but like you couldn't make people play granted Xbox launch yada yada yada low install base but you put team an incredibly talented developer like Insomniac with Spider-Man money signs you know equals money signs right and I think that's the similar thing here where yes people love Dishonored yes people love Deathloop so taking that studio and giving them Blade equals money signs right but I do think there's the wrinkles we're talking about of like okay cool and it's gonna be third person like well we don't make that and I saw people debating it even Baird asking was it ever confirmed we forget this all the time because we think of the video the fucking announcement post on Bethesda was Marvel's blade is a mature single player third person game set in the heart of Paris now in development at Arcade Lyon like it's just the game's been talked about for three years but we've seen nothing so nobody you forget that you you would immediately would sit there and go arcane's making it it's going to be first person yeah and

1:25:29Blessing Adeoye Jr.:like I don't want to yeah and I definitely don't want to discount that because I was gonna use Indiana Jones's this game but I guess that game was also first person so that's a bad example but I think Arcane could have looked at Blade and been like oh shit we have an opportunity to do this let's make this, we're passionate about this, all that jazz I just think that changes what your relationship is with Microsoft and the business and how important this project is for you and all that shit Allowing your little indie band to get bought up It's like you're working on a very important project right here to the thing of I don't know who buys Arcane I get scared of who buys Arcane honestly

1:26:07Blessing Adeoye Jr.:yeah and also if you buy arcane you how much do you want to buy arcane to then make a game published under xbox that's the other thing it's when we talk about wb selling studios and it's like oh enroll licensed mortal combat to you it's like no i don't think many people want to do that if i'm going to buy a studio that's in the process of making a blade game i want to own that blade

1:26:26Andy Cortez:game well here i mean now we're so into the weeds of the business arrangements of this i'd be interested to see if it like again way longer on this show yeah we talked about okay cool they're letting double fine compulsion you leave and you take your IPs with you right this isn't where we want to be I wonder so much muddier here yeah but I wonder if we can read from those situations here the the thing that makes this muddy is that they couldn't start this process because of until the announcement today with the French government right then they have to have these conversations yeah yeah so you imagine the same kind of conversations with potential partners for arcade leon slash marvel blade marvel's blade would be happening and i do wonder if it can be as simple as xbox is like we're getting out of this business and develop or i'm sorry publisher why you're buying them you're gonna have to deal with marvel games but we once we give it to you we're out of it like we have nothing to do with that anymore now you figure out marvel games if they're going to continue on making the blade game or if it's going to be marvel's taking back the license and killing it i mean i know i know i called xbox

1:27:30Blessing Adeoye Jr.:generous with the double fine you get to keep your ips couple compulsion by keep your ips yeah i

1:27:35Andy Cortez:don't think xbox is gonna let let play go i don't think how much do they even have for you know what i mean like i we don't know we don't know what the actual agreements are in terms of it i think because this one's because of marvel games being involved this is the one that i think's the most like where i could even you're over budget and you're late and it's like marvel games is going to go and then all this happens like no we're killing the blade game we wish you luck in your future endeavors at which point killing the blade game so many layoffs from that exactly who's buying arcane to then keep them going and have them jump start a brand new project you buy arcane you take the dishonored things you lay off the entire things and spin up a small team to go you know I don't fucking know success or whatever I'm so scared with this one yeah this one makes me real sad because of a lot of the

1:28:23Blessing Adeoye Jr.:corporate ties i hope it works out i hope it is they get bought by a company and then they pay out xbox for the marvel deal and now they're we're getting blade we're getting blade through just whatever whatever other publisher i feel like i hope it's a good publisher though that's the other thing worst case scenario we could be looking at like a star wars 13 13 thing where it's like well that's tied up with disney that's a i think i canceled it's just gone forever and this could be one of those awesome games that you know if you're arcane you're just like can we can we just like reskin it as something else?

1:28:51Can we Redfall two?

1:28:53Andy Cortez:You know what I mean? People are popping off obviously, but who would buy our candy? You gotta, let's double all the way back to story. Number one. All right. Ninja theory and undead labs have entered into terms to join new ownership with funding complete to, I'm sorry, with funding to complete and grow Senua in state of decay three. Andy, who's buying ninja theory and Senua who's buying undead labs and state of decay. I was so confused by the wording of enters new ownership. I was like, oh, they're not getting let go. Oh, no, they're leaving Xbox. But they're not. But it's new ownership. It just sounded like they were being put into a different, like, section of Microsoft.

1:29:35Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, that's what I was like initially. I just think, like, yeah, it enters new ownership. We're spinning off a different thing or whatever. Gosh, I don't know, man. Let's toss out the usual suspects. Saudis.

1:29:49Andy Cortez:Are they coming in for any of these guys? I say no. I'm out of here. I say no. I say no. I hate this combo. Small potatoes. Small potatoes. They're working on their EA thing. They got bigger fish to fry. So then you go, okay. Tencent. Would they care about this? Krafton.

1:30:04Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Would they care about this? It stresses me out. Krafton, I can see caring about State of the Decay. That seems like a Krafton type thing.

1:30:10Andy Cortez:That fault. Krafton's the one who has... Hypnotica. And the fucking one that only I like. Policial protocol. redacted those are horary scary games right what i'll toss this out for sanity decay 3 it won't happen it won't happen but blumhouse answer the call that could fit nice you have a horror

1:30:28Blessing Adeoye Jr.:portfolio but i look at sanity came more for the survival than the horror right so like who has

1:30:34Andy Cortez:the infrastructure to support that yeah which is why i say crafting but also after the whole

1:30:38Blessing Adeoye Jr.:subnautica situation i don't know what crafting is trying to do anymore i don't know they're trying

1:30:42Andy Cortez:Right now, Crafting is at fucking the AI going, can we buy? I'm like, don't buy anybody, Crafting. What do I do? Hey, Google Gemini, would you buy on Dead Labs? And then Ninja Theory, same question.

1:30:54Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I mean, Ninja Theory, I think would be, God, I'm going to say this and people are going to get real mad at me and clip it out or whatever. But I think Ninja Theory would be a great PlayStation studio. And this is me speaking from playing Hellblade when it was a PlayStation exclusive and being like, man, this is a great exclusive for this platform. I think that's the first one I throw out, I think specifically because of that. But I think any studio would be blessed to have Ninja Theory in their roster. Yeah, that's the first one that comes to mind. That's not bad. I can see that. I kind of... What I would hope for, and kind of the same feelings that I had the day that we first saw Senua during that Xbox showcase, was, okay, this is, obviously Senua is not the most recognizable name.

1:31:38it's not the biggest draw right but this could be a really financially efficient video game project with reusing assets you know you have a lot of you know you have the core character made you have you know at this point you know maybe you could just use a lot of the environments you use whatever like there's this could be a financially decent game to make that doesn't completely kill the books and you're like why the fuck is this why are we 150 million in or whatever um and so i hope that there's at least that as a selling point for any possible suitors or for any publishers just looking to like yeah we could do this oh it's costing this much yeah that sounds good to us um but i think if it was any other project i wouldn't have a

1:32:25Andy Cortez:whole lot of faith when does saber enter the chat with any of these i feel like these are all with all due respect everybody's saving money right now these studios are too good for Saber Saber has a lot of solid studios make a lot of stuff Super Chat from Side of Fry says Kepler Interactive gets State of Decay Focus takes Ninja which I don't think is crazy but to your point this is just who are good fits who are good fits right now yes everyone is holding their purse nobody can afford anybody we're just talking publishing right yeah yeah yeah publishing deals well they're looking for owners

1:32:57Blessing Adeoye Jr.:no they're looking for owners no but like for our fantasy booking yeah like I would I wouldn't see I think Xbox is still publishing Senua and Undead in State of Decay 3 that was my takeaway from it but tell me if I'm wrong about that

1:33:12Andy Cortez:I think it's so unclear Asha's letter just says entered terms to join new ownership with funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3 so they're going to own the studios the whoever the suitors are right now they will own two different studios one will own Ninja one will own Undead but I don't know what the publishing would be but i would imagine you're publishing that they the new people would publish that the new publishers i would think the people who are buying are publishing i guess if you're

1:33:37Blessing Adeoye Jr.:selling it in undead labs if you really mean to not let them have stated okay yeah because that's their whole thing like figure it out it's like we're called undead labs we already named the studio after what this game is you got halo studios being like well what else can we do

1:33:54Andy Cortez:we're called halo studios that's one of the reasons like i'm not shocked i guess but i'm surprised undead labs again has made it like i i don't want to be we're not sitting here like who should have died or whatever but it's i think ever put out a game under xbox yeah oh when do they get by when do they get bought were they really not when were they bought syndicate one to say to decay too great and then it was like they've had so much turmoil at that studio that i was like we might never see state of decay 3 and so to see it again it'd be here it's like okay but like are we actually State of Decay 2 seemingly came out under Xbox.

1:34:282018 was their first year owned by Xbox.

1:34:31Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Okay. Hmm. So I don't. Because they were part of the June 2018 showcase.

1:34:41Andy Cortez:I hope for the best because I love State of Decay as a franchise but like I feel like this is a game that comes out and they get closed. But maybe.

1:34:48Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Oh well actually I got this article from Polygon titled Undead Labs spent eight years as an Xbox studio

1:34:54Andy Cortez:and didn't release anything what's the intro graph does it talk they put out state of decay

1:34:58Blessing Adeoye Jr.:got bought the next day and then nothing the last era of xbox before whatever this one is truly began on june 10th 2018 when phil spencer used xbox as e3 showcase to announce acquisition of studios ninja theory playground compulsion and undead labs wow woof damn state of the uh decay 2 came out a couple of weeks before acquisition wow oh yeah they didn't put out anything while owned by xbox is there a way we can get the clip from 2018 when they announced these studios like i just want to see they're so spread apart though right i've seen it on my feed of there is a him stand or

1:35:34Andy Cortez:them standing in front of a graphic that's like welcome all these studios that's what i thought

1:35:38Blessing Adeoye Jr.:yeah because i just want to see phil in front of all these studios that they ended up they're all not doing good shit with i have another question in terms of acquisition uh at the end of all this who do we think is going to end up owning Xbox who seemingly does not see expensive hardware in their future is trimming down to possibly look more profitable and is using numbers like a billion users per day to try to highlight shareholders and new ownership possibly into buying them? That is my question.

1:36:13Andy Cortez:I think

1:36:18Andy Cortez:I think that's still so far off there's still so much story of this train wreck to be written where it's like I feel like Xbox I Microsoft holds on to the bitter end I really feel in terms of what they're doing here where I think the next death of Xbox is we're not doing hardware or we're doing hardware just as a boutique thing it's there but I don't see them doing that I see them killing hardware in the next five years where I just don't think Project Helix is going to be able to make a move in this landscape with this memory crisis we're having with the ram shortage like i feel like you kill that just go to games and then it's a slow pare down of we're getting rid of even more studios that aren't doing it until it is just halo and then it's like i guess that gets sold at a garage sale maybe but maybe x i don't know i think there's still so much more

1:37:03Blessing Adeoye Jr.:before we get there i'm waiting to see what their hardware moves are because they're very they talked about it right i just talked about they're very aware of the hardware situation that we're in yeah partly because again they keep they keep talking you're a big part of it yeah the hot dog costume who did this yeah we're gonna find who did this um but i want to see i'm so fascinated by what their hardware move is because i don't based on the way they're talking about it i just don't see them releasing helix the way that they've talked about it being the most popular most powerful thing so i'm i guess what are you doing i desperately need to see what this is because certainly you get you got something or you're just planning all this shit for nothing like i want to see but to answer your question

1:37:45Andy Cortez:barrett elon musk oh jesus but his ai game's out this year isn't it and last show was gonna happen

1:37:51Blessing Adeoye Jr.:well you gotta put out use his x logo you gotta have a publishing platform for your ai game sure fair enough yeah okay and you got the ai ceo so like it all works because greg you were saying like these smaller studios are too small fry for Saudi Arabia. Xbox, though, that's a different beast.

1:38:12Andy Cortez:Very true, Barrett. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:38:14Blessing Adeoye Jr.:It's going to be a joint venture. Elon and Saudi Arabia. Everybody's going to love it.

1:38:18Andy Cortez:Well, that's sad. Yeah, I know. Sorry to bring out. I'm sorry. No, no, no. All right, hold on. I scrolled and I scrolled and I scrolled. We just have to pray for the memory crash. I mean, it's here. Oh, the crash. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. We have to pray in the next five years that all these people driving up these costs go, man, we're really not getting money back like we thought we would, as they won't. And then everything to just sort of like come back to earth. But it's going to be the toughest journey until that happens. I hope it happens. I toss in assets. I allied a bit. It's just, you know, my memory retconning.

1:38:54Andy Cortez:Steven Sotillo put this up today. Microsoft's big E3 2018 new studio reveal is a shot of a bygone era. And it's the thing there of the initiative, Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, all sharing it. So just Playground Games is not standing right now for Xbox. At least Phil Spencer was nice.

1:39:10Blessing Adeoye Jr.:You know, because he couldn't do anything else, man. God damn. Jesus. You got to screen cap this and just be like, here's all the studios affected except for Playground or whatever. It's insane. You keep adding things in.

1:39:28Andy Cortez:Steve Sandler, a friend of the show in the super chest goes remedy or i o i for ninja theory could be cool yes but we're right back to i uh remedy i worry about i worry about remedy does not have the liquid capital for that and then yeah i o i right like fucking i saw i mean i know we saw the headlines and the stories but then i saw a social media post going around or it was on the james von subreddit of like this developer over there being like whiplash of friday night being at the 007 party rap party being you know complimented for how well the game sold it's our high and then monday over the weekend get scuttlebutt from friends of like i think there's layoffs coming and then monday being a meeting you get laid off you know i mean and granted that was because that uh xbox thing they'd all been working on but like this guy worked on 007 right it's still like it wasn't just that other side team that got yeah exactly exactly right so it's just an outrageous business of doesn't matter how the other meme that goes around of game failure, layoffs, game success, layoffs.

1:40:30Andy Cortez:Biggest game in the world, layoffs. You can't shake it out there. There's one from way earlier, another super chat from the one only Steve who wrote in. Sorry, I just thought about another possible ramification to come back. Steve said, this makes me extremely mad when we're talking about all the Xbox stuff, of course. From my side of the industry, accessibility has been heavily gutted at Xbox today with the layoffs. Xbox doesn't have a culture of accessibility anymore. I don't trust them anymore. Wow. I mean, that's the thing where you're talking about Asha saying in these letters, we're resetting Xbox and we're, you know, we're spending the same amount of money on Xbox, but we're going to put it in different places.

1:41:06Andy Cortez:That is these initiatives that were great initiatives and made gaming for everyone and did all this stuff getting gutted. And yeah, that's again what you're seeing. One of the things we didn't touch on, because of course, there's too much to touch on on one thing, was the conversation about outside vendors. What did she put in here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. uh blah blah when we're reduced management we were talking about all that stuff and we will streamline how we work across our tools with a cleaner code base shared services and 50 % reduced vendor spend again remember you think of xbox and you think about these layoffs and i'm not saying we should look past them but last week on our side of the industry and i think it was beginning last week maybe middle of it doesn't matter a lot of conversations about oh my god assembly media has just been cutted which is the people who are doing pr for xbox on a million like it like there are so many ripples outside of the direct hey this and to say you're cutting 50 of your vendor spend might be good for the xbox bottom line but there are so many satellite businesses around xbox that were that used them and required right i want to say rested i needed their work required their work you know what i mean or whatever or leaning on it that are gone there

1:42:08Blessing Adeoye Jr.:was i think jason was the one that tweeted about assembly but then he corrected himself and mentioned that is actually not connected to xbox they had layoffs and stuff but yeah they weren't

1:42:17Andy Cortez:like directly i wonder if it though i'm sure now bosses bosses get told hey we're not renewing your contract next next year you go okay well i'm gonna have to get rid of one that i'll throw out there for ninja theory epic of course unreal engine ninja theory was sent to a uh i believe

1:42:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:they use unreal all that stuff yeah and they're also a very technically like talented studio as far as what they want to do with that type of stuff i think epic actually would see them as very valuable interesting just one to throw out there i would love i wouldn't want it but i would love capcom to buy them and go make a make something make a resident evil game make you know look at our ip what can you sort of play around with did you have something to say though

1:42:59Andy Cortez:i know it's way past it but when i brought the steve sailor thing you had something you want no that was what i wanted to make sure just make sure just make sure

1:43:11Andy Cortez:DMC. Oh yeah, they did make DMC. Kago Michan 205 says at the gym, please make this the longest games cast because this is good stuff. This isn't even games cast. This is still games daily. We knew we'd be long today. You do have a games cast coming talking to the Spyro developers, which is pretty exciting. Again, kind of related to this, which is nice in terms of you were owned by somebody you got out and now you're still doing it. How are you?

1:43:31Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Literally owned by Activision.

1:43:32Andy Cortez:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:43:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:man now i'm just thinking about capcom owning ninja theory because that would mean i think they would i here's the thing right dmc dove may cry not the fan favorite of course yeah but i liked it i'd like there's a lineage there there's a lineage yeah there's something there do something else with that you know we have you know we got cool tech we have good mountains the next game can't have the senual model in it if it's not going to be a senual game but you know give her a different haircut

1:44:04Andy Cortez:alternate universe people love multiverse shit Resident Evil character how about we put the Xbox stuff to bed for right now and move on to story number 5 there's non-Xbox news Nintendo will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next year this is Andrew Webster at The Verge Nintendo is making a new version of the Switch 2 with a replaceable battery in Europe but its predecessor has a very different future as part of an updated FAQ about revisions to Nintendo hardware in Europe, the company confirmed that it will stop selling all iterations of the original Switch on the continent starting next year.

1:44:38Andy Cortez:Here's the full statement. When you say cotton, it's real severe. Not on this land. From mid-February 2027, almost 10 years after the Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems. Specifically, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch OLED model. Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027. The news comes as Nintendo is making a bunch of changes to the rest of its lineup due to EU regulations requiring user-replaceable batteries. Starting this summer, the company says it will start introducing updated versions of various devices on a quote-unquote rolling basis, ahead of the regulations coming into effect on February 18, 2027.

1:45:25Quote,

1:45:26Andy Cortez:there's no difference in functionality between the current products and revised products containing user replaceable batteries nintendo says man end of an era end of an era i hope this doesn't roll out to other areas oh there's no way it doesn't you think so i think i think this hits every i think if we were in a different hardware climate maybe not but i think they look at it's costing how much to make that thing still and even if it's not a big amount it's still something that you could take away from your production but I wonder how much they're selling here's my thing though I hear you I think this is strictly it won't roll out to other places because at least it won't roll out to the US because our government doesn't care about consumers like this is strictly because the EU is like yo this is you have to let people replace their batteries and Nintendo is like peace we've sold enough of these we're not going to sell them on your continent yeah if you and that because that's the answer if you're a person in the eu and you're like i i really want a fucking you're like cool cross the border get them somewhere else go to america and buy them in walmart when you're there and come back with it like i think this is strictly like we are so far gone on nintendo switch's install base that they're like we are not making a bat a way to replace the battery there switch to yeah we have a long life with that so we have to make that change here we don't so fuck it here's the deal we still have a little bit longer at least

1:46:46Blessing Adeoye Jr.:because Nintendo Switch right now is the second best-selling console of all time right behind the PS2 and according to Wikipedia they're only separated by about 4 million.

1:46:55Andy Cortez:Yeah.

1:46:55Blessing Adeoye Jr.:So at the very least I think they're going to want to hit number one. Yeah. They'll probably do maybe even before next.

1:47:00Andy Cortez:I don't know when they turn off production obviously when they stop selling but I think this is strictly we're not making a special model to eke out a few more units

1:47:07Blessing Adeoye Jr.:in Europe. And I think they'll probably keep selling pretty decently especially because Switch 2 is going up in price. Yeah. Which fuck did Switch 1 go up in price? I forget where we're at with that. I think it might have. I'm of the mind that we're close to ending the cycle anyway. So if we get a jump start on it, what's our return? It also depends on what their return is recently and how, you know, whether it's worth it for them.

1:47:29Andy Cortez:Yeah, they did raise the price on it. Yeah, I hear you. But I think for right now, especially where we're at, they'll keep making them as they've been making them.

1:47:38Blessing Adeoye Jr.:They want to celebrate that best-selling console of all time. Sure. Number.

1:47:43Andy Cortez:Andy. Hey. When they do stop making. Nintendo Switch regular models. That'll be big news. But if I wanted something smaller, see the tiniest news I need to know about, where would I go? You'd go to our last story, the Wii News channel, where we cover all the small news items you need to know about.

1:48:00Andy Cortez:Number six, the Wii News. United Video Game Workers, CWA, announced their hardship fund. Quote, game workers have been facing unprecedented layoffs for the past five years. United Video Game Workers is launching a hardship fund to help workers across the U.S. and Canada that have been impacted by these layoffs. Sad that this needs to exist. Awesome that it does exist. Super easy to get into and go. I want to read this part for you, though, okay? Because on their FAQ on their page I was reading earlier, it says, are there any ways to donate to this fund? For people who want to support this initiative financially, if you are a game worker in the U.S.

1:48:36Andy Cortez:or Canada, you can join United Video Game Workers and get involved in the fight to organize our industry. The fund comes directly from our membership dues, and as we grow our membership, it enables us to take on more ambitious initiatives to improve our industry in the coming years. Then, I'm double-checking because it wasn't open earlier. Yeah, sadly, but I bet they'll be back on it today. This FAQ still says, there is also an itch.io charity bundle being organized by Necrosoft Games that will go live later this month. However, it's already closed. That was a June thing. I'm hoping to get a new one up there because this is a pretty great thing and clearly needed in our current market landscape.

1:49:12Andy Cortez:and then the only other piece of we news cyberpunk 2077 has now sold 40 million copies worldwide wow can you believe it why did i do you guys know why it set a new concurrent record because of the cyberpunk edge runners season two got it i saw people i saw people be like wow the numbers are crazy right now for cyberpunk i seen but i was like i didn't understand why can i tell you man

1:49:32Blessing Adeoye Jr.:sure i love that game like i think about i was thinking about cyberpunk because this news this morning i was like what if i just replayed cyberpunk it's real good man i can't believe how much I love this game what five years six years later it's a good video game you thought it's a 2.0 and Phantom Liberty ah Phantom Liberty god what a good DLC I think that might be one of my favorite RPGs you ever play The Witcher what's The Witcher god damn is that the Gwent game god let me tell you dude I played a lot of Gwent in that game and that's it then I couldn't find Daneline for the Wii news I love that that's your story every time I just couldn't find Daneline I couldn't find Daneline I was like fucking quit

1:50:06Andy Cortez:we're out of there everybody I just wanna play Gwent I don't care about Daneline as I said there are so many super chats here. Thank you so much for getting through and wanting to be part of this show. Let me give you some non-Xboxy ones. Christian says, USA plays Belgium at 5pm tonight. Go, go, go, USA. Sorry about Mexico.

1:50:24Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah, Mexico should have won. Yeah, it was a tough one. I mean, they played for so much of the game with the other team having a man down. Like, they should have won, but you gotta capitalize on that, brother. Yeah, they didn't take advantage of that. You gotta capitalize on that. What's his name? Harry Kane? Harry Kane. Yeah, he was going sicko mode. Yeah. Sorry about the Spurs, too. Thank you, man. That's the toughest thing. It's the most L's that the Mexican community has taken. Because the Spurs fan base is about 90 % Mexican.

1:50:57Andy Cortez:Gifted Pink Super Chat says, birthday tax. I just turned 30 yesterday. Thanks for being with me through the good times and the bad. Love you all. Keep up the great work. Happy birthday. Happy to be here for you. Chris Rodriguez says kind of funny Midmax Giant Bomb should do a small charity event stream to kickstart Double Fine slash other game devs going independent again shit maybe drop graphics and make games for old consoles again PS2 etc I'm sure when everybody's got their stuff buttoned up and out there we will be supporting however we can support like I said I would hold off even on running off to buy Double Fine games yet let's wait until they're like we're fully fully none of this money is going to Xbox alright Kevin A's XA was rigged you know what up and out And I'm also thinking, I saw All Up's comment It said, at least they still got Goku It's true, us Mexicans, we still have Goku He's always on our side

1:51:44Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Let me tell you, we got Balogun back Florian, the soccer player Who got a red card Oh, he's back Yeah, Trump made some calls Crazy Real fucked up But also, let's go Every comment I saw was like, man, I fucking love corruption Let's go, baby He did something okay

1:52:09Andy Cortez:Tdswar is 96 Turned 30 yesterday thanks for being a beacon Of humanity and goofiness in my life Happy birthday of course

1:52:19Andy Cortez:Austin says birthday Tax just turned 26 and I'm forever grateful To kind of funny for being there through some Of the best and worst times love y 'all We love you Thank you for giving a darn Exactly that's what it's all about here Travis the

1:52:36says, Are you guys watching SGDQ this week? We're raising money for Doctors Without Borders. Today, they're running UFO50, Tunic, and Super Mario Odyssey.

1:52:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I want to know what they do for UFO50. I want to see what they do with Tunic. I want to see some Tunic pop out. That's awesome. I love SGDQ every year. It's just an awesome thing to kind of just have on a second monitor, you know? I watched a few years ago, they had a GTA Vice City run that I was just locked into. Very fascinating stuff.

1:53:06Andy Cortez:And that's it.

1:53:07Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I didn't know you love monkey ball. Who doesn't love

1:53:09Andy Cortez:monkey ball? We asked people to write in a kind of funny dot com slash wrong telling us what we screwed up as we screwed it up. The balloons the balloons writes in and says Elden Ring was twenty twenty two. Is that a pandemic game? Yeah. I think we think of it because we were still working from home but I would say by twenty twenty two a lot of people were back at like not working from home. Like, people were back working in their places of employment, you know?

1:53:36Blessing Adeoye Jr.:It's crazy you think Elden Ring was only good because it was a pandemic game. Not because it's a banger. I thought you were a fan. That's the only reason. What sports you gave me? I mean, retroactively, it's a 10 out of 10 now. We should have been on a 10-point scale. Why were we on a 5-point scale? Did you beat Shadow Virtue? I mean, kind of. Kind of. I got them so close. He's on a trial. Stop speaking. As your attorney, I'm telling you to stop speaking. I'm not here to take a quiz. I was fighting pre-patch Radon, DLC Radon.

1:54:03Andy Cortez:Y 'all don't remember how hard he was. Pre-patch. Yeah. Everybody, this has been another episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily. It's been supersized. Remember, each and every weekday, we run you through the nerdy video game news you need to know about live on twitch.tv slash kindoffunnygames, youtube.com slash kindoffunnygames, and podcast services around the globe. If you like that, we'd love you to pick up a membership. Of course, you could like, you could subscribe, you could follow, you could give us your Amazon Prime, Twitch Prime, free 30-day subscription. but it would mean a lot if you went to patreon.com slash kind of funny youtube.com slash kind of funny games apple or spotify picked up a membership got everything we did ad free got your daily dose of me greg miller and took care of our 11 person 11 year old small business like i said the programming day far from over we're gonna roll into games cast where tim and bless are gonna sit down with toys for from bob toys for bob for bob about spyro toys from bob bob we're giving toys and then after that it's game showdown and then after that's the stream so there's a lot of stuff to catch up on if you're listening later youtube.com slash kind of funny games for now though that's the end of games daily until next time it's been a pleasure to serve you take his hand