The Xbox Reset, PS Disc Death & Why Gaming Is At A Crossroads

0:02This is the premier podcast spotlighting people of color. Every week we talk news, what we've been playing, and tell you who's invited to the cookout. Our show is all about talking about gaming through a prism of blackness because we are the culture. Welcome to Bricago, y 'all. Yo, what's good everybody in Bricago? This is the Spawn to Me podcast with Kahlief Adams. I'm your host, Kahlief Adams. Hope you're doing well. Hope you're having a fantastic summer and getting all the goodies and goodness into your body. All that vitamin D, all that goodness in your soul. The New York Knicks are the NBA champions.

0:36I repeat, the New York Knicks are the NBA champions. I will say that probably for the rest of 2026. Anyway, excited to see you all. Make sure you're checking out all the goodies on the feeds. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and all those places. I'll be making some dope public appearances very, very soon. as the time that you're probably hearing this, I'll be in flight to New York to go do some dope stuff over at Games for Change in New York. And then the week after that, I will be in the Nashville area for the National Urban League Convention and Conference doing a couple of talks over there to talk about gaming and all the cool stuff there as well.

1:15So if you have, you know, space in your place to go see me and come hang out, that'd be rad. And hopefully we can chop it up and give you some dap and stuff like that there. This week, we're going to be talking about two topics. We're going to be talking about the Xbox reset and how that's kind of affecting the human beings who are involved in all of this madness. And I do have a take around the PlayStation sharing that they are killing the physical disc. I think my take will be a little bit different than what most people are kind of already digging into and sharing. and it'll probably be something I'll probably get some trouble for.

1:55But I'm excited for it either way. But for all that, let's get into the 411.

2:14So first up, we're going to be talking about the Xbox reset. Asha Sharma shared in a memo a couple weeks ago about how the business is not doing well, it is unhealthy, and as a result, they will be cutting almost 4 ,000 jobs from the company. 1 ,600 released on July 6th, and then another 1 ,600 will are slated to be removed by the end of 2027 or through 2027 in June. So basically another year from now, 2027. It's been a really weird time for Xbox. Again, the changing of the guard has happened. We've seen a lot of discussions bubble up about what this means for the future of the brand. And what does this mean?

3:02Not only for the studios that are going to be in the fold that are, you know, some still there, some not. And what does that mean for you as a part of the gaming industry and looking at this all in saying, like, what does this mean for me as a worker? What does this mean for, you know, the games that I want to be able to create in cool spaces? What does this mean for the companies that are out here who are supposed to be looking out for us, even though we know that that's not necessarily true? And what does that mean for some of the players? And what is the expected output for them to see, you know, what do games look like in the future?

3:41What does all of this kind of now become as a hobby and as a space that is going to be one that is continuously supposed to be one in which joy is at the forefront? And we've seen so many different aspects of all of that kind of go away through, you know, mismanagement, through tariffs and issues on the pricing front with games being more expensive, hardware now being even more expensive, being projected to be more expensive. and all of those pieces therein, what does this mean for everyone in the ecosystem? You know, we've had some developers already kind of be absorbed. We have some who have left the mothership in Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs is still looking for a buyer or has a buyer, we just don't know who.

4:35People are still worrying about Arcane Leon in the Blade game. And, you know, does independent actually become the better route for a lot of these spaces? And the answer to that is it really depends. It depends on so many different factors. It depends on do you have any monetary runway to get to the next game? Do you, you know, what's the terms that you're going to be having to get through to pitch your next game and develop it? What is the compromise on creativity? You know, one of the discussion points from Asha Sharma, we had some kind of bublings up after that of, you know, we're going to be focusing on our kind of most well-known IPs and we'll have some new stuff in the mix, but we're going to basically double down on the stuff that you know and love.

5:24And what does that mean? We saw Bethesda come out with Todd Howard as well, come out with some statements and Id as well, who had some massive cuts to their studio, almost cutting it in half. With a lot of the discussion points being, you know, we have projects that are in flight. We have stuff that we know that you want that is going to be coming, but it's going to be coming much later. and for me as a person who's both trying to find and stay in this in this industry and get back into it as i'm laid off currently um you know i think a lot about that latter part that i talked about which was the what is the creative part um wind up looking like as a player you know i'm like well we're going to get remakes and remixes and remasters for the foreseeable future the games that are in the mix that are already kind of in flight, the Elder Scrolls, the Fallout Fives.

6:18How are you supposed to make these massive games when you just cut almost half of the studio's workforce? What happens to the people who are now back in the funnel who don't have the ability to find a job anytime soon? You can't all go work at Epic. You can't all go work at Steam. You can't, you know, at Valve. you can't all make your own studio you can't all do that stuff and sometimes again you know with a with a larger discussion around where games are made how those budgets are being created how much those budgets are going to wind up being you have uh you have a lot of conversations that are that are not complementary to each other they are actively fighting against each other in ways that are not helpful to anyone involved except for the corporations and except for the people who are making the most money.

7:10So it winds up being a very fraught discussion that I don't know where we are going. And I am worried for the people. I am worried about all the people who I see at GDC every year who are undergoing massive turnover at an alarming rate that we haven't seen in a very long time. These are kind of, I wouldn't say the, they're unprecedented times, at least for the way that I'm looking at it. And we don't know how we're going to kind of turn the ship. At least I don't know how we're going to turn the ship. I don't know if they know how they're going to turn the ship. You know, I had a really good discussion on another podcast that kind of revolved around, you know, if these are the memos and the talking points that are coming from the head of the company, one of the big discussions that has happened over the past couple of years is like what's the confidence level that we're going to be able to get to, to be able to feel like any of these decisions are going to actually move the company in a direction that we can then feel more comfortable supporting in some form or fashion.

8:19And I don't know how that works if you're going to be thinking about it from even just the consumer level, right? This has always been a discussion point for most consumers. It's been like, well, we don't know what your messaging is saying and it's very confusing so so therefore we don't know where to go um i think the opposites kind of being in the mix change even advice that i would give people who are looking to go to join the fray i know i'm going to be going to this conference at the urban uh national urban league and i'm sure a lot of the young folks who are going to be there like hey khalif do you you know what is your best thoughts about getting into the video game industry?

9:04And currently my answer is don't. It doesn't make sense to. It is too unstable for all of this to be in the mix. And if you're looking at all the money that you're probably going to spend to, you know, be a part of the ecosystem, be a part of this workforce and be a part of this thing, with more than likely you have some collegiate debt more than likely, you know, you're not going to go and become a dev right away. You probably have to still work your way up through the usual channels of QA or even marketing or some of those other spaces. So many of those places are gone and they're not going to be coming back.

9:48Some of those things are going to be replaced by AI, you know, and that's even another conversation that's happening even within Microsoft of how much is Microsoft eating its own tail by building the systems and building the technology that is giving it the impetus to kill off a large chunk of its own workforce. This is not the first time this has happened in terms of Xbox either. This is probably the fourth or fifth set of layoffs that we've seen across their channels. We've seen other layoffs in other studios and other companies as well. You know, what does that mean in terms of the overall outlook for where we are?

10:25Is this the actual bubble that we have been hearing for a long period of time of like, is this the actual gaming crash that we are expecting to happen? And, you know, for all the things that are going to be coming down the line that I'm excited for in terms of games, the ability to feel like a company that I, that I have gotten very close to that I, that I appreciate, we've worked together a long time is building this really weird moat around the way that people can connect to it because it has to do all these things that are very corporate and again like i am not a fool i have been in the corporate spaces for a long time i am not a person who is tweeting at asha sharma every day who's like answer my question about a thing or i'm not the person who is having that kind of parasocial relationship with those people.

11:22Sure, I see those folks at conferences and or at events that I get a chance to go to. And I do like talking to them because there are some insights there that you would not get just kind of, you know, just talking to them through the internet. But I also know that like, at the end of the day, they have been brought in to do a very specific job. And right now that job is cost cutting. And that job is to reduce overhead. And that job is to, you know, make the numbers work in a way that doesn't work with human beings at the, at the end of it. Um, which makes me really, really disappointed and really sad at that stuff, because it's not like Microsoft doesn't have money.

11:58Microsoft is doubling down on AI. They have been, they have been partnering with companies like NVIDIA to do a lot of work. They've been, you know, doing a lot of work, building their own models. I'm sure that they're in the data center space too, to try to figure out like what that looks like for them, which means tons of money that's being pumped into a technology that we're still trying to figure out is it real or not um it's it's um it's a hard time thinking about what the next layer of this hobby is going to be like who knows what the the xbox helix is going to cost you know i'm sure it's going to out be outpricing most people gaming in itself is going to be very expensive um and will those experiences even be worth the money Again, if we've talked about all those pieces where, you know, the main discussion has been, well, all these things are going to go up for the foreseeable future because we can't afford to subsidize them in any other way, which they probably will have to.

12:59They're going to have to try to subsidize these things in some form or fashion to be able to get it into your hands, to be able to play it and to make the case for why you should buy it. But it's going to be a very weird time for the next couple of years. and you know I've said it on previous shows I've said it on this one I'm really worried about those the remaining 1600 people who are there I had conversations with people I've seen my LinkedIn looks like a fucking graveyard right now there's like people left and right who are senior people if you talk about institutional knowledge being lost in this industry my LinkedIn everybody's LinkedIn for people who are in the gaming industry we are seeing people who are like 20 year veterans is just getting dumped on the street.

13:42Sure, they got a severance package, but still. You know what I mean? Ageism is a thing. You can't just, again, like, just magically find yourself another job if you're over the age of, you know, if you're pushing 50. I'm pushing 50. I'm trying to figure that out and what that looks like for me. Never mind people who are infinitely more experienced than I am who are doing that work, and see them just get dumped on the street is freaking weird. we saw glenn schoenfeld uh creator of so many different you know layers of the call of duty series you know one of the first you know the founders of the dead space series he retired but sarah did share that he's retiring this week and the first thing i thought was like he must be tired tired of trying to find a hit tired of trying to make a new thing seeing all the spaces that are here that are just like being squished from every angle and i'm sure we're going to see more of that we've seen a couple of folks already who were heads of studios either get pushed out or get you know you know taking their their golden parachute and dipped out because they were like gaming might not just be it anymore i don't want to have to deal with all this madness to be able to sustain a life like that's not it's not fun if you're trying to have a job in a world where this is all supposed to be again fun um yeah i don't know there isn't a an end note to this there isn't like a you know a checkbox to end this conversation on a happy note or even a silver lining note i don't know where that silver lining is um i do know that i'm worried and i do know that even with the clarity that comes from the head of the studio and the head of the company you know xbox with asha and matt booty and all those other folks and there's some people on those teams that i love i love them dearly they're like really good people um I worry for them because again, like you never want to see people lose their jobs.

15:40You never want to see in an already screwed economy, more people have to try to figure out what their next pivot is going to wind up being. I was hoping, I was hoping when I was young and probably very, even more naive that I was like, um, trying and hoping that there would be longevity in this space. and the more that I do things in it, the less I see that that's real. I mean, I've always known that having worked at tech companies. I knew lifers who were there at Intel. I knew Amazon was always kind of fishy when it came to when you were able to get a job and what did that look like and how long did that take.

16:19And they are very much a cutthroat company in the way that they hire and fire in lots of different ways. but like man if this is the way it works and this is the current state of the business and no one is really giving us the real understanding of like okay so this is the this is the rip the band-aid moment off a portion of the of the conversation what are you doing to mend the wounds. That's the part that I'm, I'm waiting for. What does it mean when you're like, well, we're, we're working towards sustainability? You know, what does it mean when, you know, you, you talk about these margins, but we don't know what success looks like.

17:06We know what the, we know what the bad part looks like, but what is the, if we hit this number, we're, we're starting to look good conversation. And when does that happen? Because I'm sure that's a projection that has to be in there too though you can you rip the bandaid off and say how bad things are but you have to be working towards a goal um and what does that goal mean and what's that goal say about the human toll of where all these things kind of move so lots of lots of worrisome parts of that conversation again this is all things that have been discussed ad nauseum you know in the in the zeitgeist of the of the gaming space but i just wanted to add my my two cents to that and and i'm hoping that we will find some you know some hope in it it was really weird to be able to go to the xbox fan fest and see so many fans so hyped and so excited and so happy and then the day after that just get ripped out from underneath them you know like i know that there's a difference between the online spaces of twitter and reddit and all those spaces and the human beings who just jump on their console and, and, and hit, and hit start.

18:13But like, it feels like that gap is closing in a way that is not great for anybody involved either, which is, which is very profound in a weird way. Um, which brings me to our second and last story of the week. Uh, cause I already just put out, if you're a lot, if you're watching this, you should be watching also some takes that are becoming, that will be coming up very, very soon on some content that I got a chance to check out some games and things, especially Battlefield, which is so good right now, Battlefield 6. So make sure you're checking out that stuff. Well, you know, I'll probably even talk about it here.

18:48Maybe we'll do that for a secondary episode. But the big thing that has been going on in the space has been everyone is losing their minds about PlayStation and them removing physical discs. So this is not going to be one of those conversations where I am rocking with the crowd in this one. And I'm sure even people seeing this, they're going to be like, you're a freaking idiot and we hate you, which is fine. I don't mind being an outlier in conversations. Now, mind you, the big discussion that has been happening over the past couple of weeks has been that Sony shared in a memo that moving forward after, I think, this year, there will be no more physical disc production.

19:34There have been many, many very valid reasonings behind people's being upset. You have folks who are in the preservation layer. You have folks who are thinking about it from a consumer ecosystem layer saying, like, you know, you're removing the used market where games are cheaper. You know, people will usually play games in those spaces and buy things a little bit later. all those things are there you know even someone was talking about you know if you really want to go play a game go to the library and go go rent a game or you know and do that kind of stuff oh gamefly-esque way and a lot of the the discussion has been around ownership and yes i think ownership is is a very interesting concept in lots of different ways i i i have a anecdotal story to share that I think kind of relays where I'm at.

20:31So I need you to ride with me a little bit. And again, even the conversations around like physical versus digital and, you know, digital, not, you know, you're basically renting things already with licenses in there. Like, I think that's a reasonable argument. I think there should be more legislation towards kind of giving you more of a way to hold on to that stuff. If things are, you know, if platform change or if there's some issues or, and that stuff like there are ways to bolster digital ownership which i think is the real reason why people are mad and the real thing i think they should be you know pushing towards because now they're boycotting they're doing this no disc no buy thing that i think is it is what it is um but the story i wanted to share was my grandma loved watching the oj trial she was a person who would sit up and physically record literally every moment of the OJ trial.

21:33She would record C-SPAN and CNN and had at the end of it, we had a stack of VHS tapes in my, in her room that were probably the size of a fifth grader in height and about as long as I am laying down horizontally. And I would ask her all the time and she would say, because I was like, why do you, why are you recording this? Like, this is not going to be important. Like this is, none of these things matter in the grand scheme of any of this stuff. Why do you care so much? And she was like, one day, baby, this will be something you can pass down and give to somebody else because this is history. She didn't really understand how most of these things were going to be archived in some form or fashion anyway.

22:22She didn't have a real good understanding of YouTube because he wasn't really paying attention to it or the internet in that way. You know, I was like, grandma, this is like seriously just a waste of time and space. And she was like, no, baby, like, trust me, this will be a thing at some point. So it made me think a lot about framing ownership in a way, because when she passed away, me, my aunt, and, uh, you know, another family member had to figure out what to do with all of these tapes, what to do with all of this physical media, what to do with all of this stuff. and it sucked it sucked for a bunch of reasons because it just kind of reflected like man this was such a freaking waste of time and this is a shitty thing to do to the environment and nobody in the hell wants these goddamn OJJs so it made me think a lot about this current conversation around the physical disc itself and all of the pieces that are in there Like, yes, you can probably recycle all of this stuff when you die.

23:38But somebody at some point, if you have that big collection, if you have that big wall of stuff, if you have all those things that are taking up a room in your house, when you die, someone has to manage that for you. A conversation, and I look, I have a studio full of crap in here that somebody will have to manage before I die or when I die. I'm trying to reduce that stuff. I've already written it into my will that like, give it all away. There's no reason to keep it. Give it all away. Or sell it. You know what I mean? Whatever you want to do in that respect. But that's also a burden that you're putting on someone else at some point.

24:21So I think about that a lot. Um, the other thing I think about is the concept of ownership is interesting because of time. Not only just because of time that you're spending kind of doing that work and cataloging and making it pretty and putting it all together and finding it and searching for it and spending resources towards it, all of that kind of stuff. there's a lot of time invested in that thing and i think a lot of people do enjoy that part which i you know kudos to you if that's your thing and that's your vibe i that's cool that's your thing i don't necessarily you know resonate with that feeling of holding a thing i i much prefer the the convenience of being able to just hit a button and download a thing and then play it i'm not a person who replays a lot of stuff i don't go back often and and and go and and go find that stuff if my if something were to go wrong i would be very sad because it's a lot of stuff that's in that mix and a lot of money spent sure um but like i'm not looking at all of this and being like man i really am just like looking at all these things around me and worrying that because they're not going to make any more and i'm losing out on something i don't have fomo around physical media in that way.

25:42Even though I appreciate the fact that people do. So that's the secondary thing that I think about all the time. Where I'm just like, in this conversation because it's a very weird one that is driving a lot of animus right now. Like, anytime PlayStation puts out a post about any game at this point, anything that they do, anything that they say, they got a whole bunch of people who aren't underneath those posts who are like, no dis, no buy, you are fucking this up, you are evil people, oh my god, this is the worst thing on the planet. I don't think it's the the worst thing on the planet. I think there are lots of things that are much worse on the planet that are happening.

26:15The second thing, when it goes back to that conversation of time, is something that I have remarked about, you know, to my family and stuff, you know, I'm getting older, I'll be 48 next month. Um, and I think about this number a lot. I don't think about it often, but I thought about it a lot when thinking about the conversations around this show. The average age is probably around like 80 years old. And for me, I probably have around, God willing, universe willing, I have probably around 12 ,000 days left on the planet if I stay together. And, you know, if I'm just hitting 80, that's midlife or whatever it might be.

26:57I have 11 ,000 days left on this planet, in this existence, in all the things that are, you know, here. does this matter that much in that respect? And the answer in my mind is no, it doesn't matter that much. There are so many other things that I can think about right now currently that matter more. There are more conversations that I think matter even more currently. I think there are even better uses of time in terms of if you're going to boycott, if you're going to use your voice in a public way, if you're going to talk about issues that are happening in the world that are around us. There are tons of things that have happened, even from the time that this decision has come down from Sony that has happened that I think are more important that we could be using our voices for instead of this.

27:47There's a couple of things that have popped. I'm going to read some things off there because I've been thinking about it. The one beautiful, and a lot of these things are kind of US centric. Of course, I know this is a global thing because of the way that this all works. So bear with me. I'm just talking about the US currently right now. excuse me i have snot the one beautiful bill got passed which will do lots of different things for you as a human being if you're in the united states one it expanded work requirements for snap uh snap to take effect in november 1st of 2025 it expanded that for most people that means most of those up to the age of 64 will now have to fill out paperwork showing that they are working volunteering or participating in work training programs for at least 80 hours a month veterans, unhoused people, former foster youth will not have to be subjected to these policies.

28:38There increases in immigration fees that you have to pay. The Big Beautiful Bill increases your energy bill, changes the food assistance like SNAP. It makes education more expensive. It makes limited tax deductions even harder to get across the line. Some of these things don't take place This year, they take place in, you know, moving past the midterm elections. But some of those things are in that mix. Largest loss of health care in American history. The bill slashes critical funding for Medicaid and Medicare and the Affordable Care Act in that way. Tariff policies got expanded. There were major decisions within the executive orders that have been shared.

29:25The ones around immigration, regulation, trade, all of those things. The Supreme Court has made it, you know, they've helped the Trump administration strip more people of voting rights. They've talked about a narrowing of the Voting Rights Act, which has happened in between that time. Luckily, they've upheld the conversation around birthright citizenship in that space. um what was another one um the supreme court ruled that the president has broad authority to remove members of the independent executive agencies like the ftc we're already seeing that happen in other places like the fda if you have explosive diarrhea this might be one of the reasons why because we're removing regulations on things that we used to have real regulations on immigration ice is running rampant killing people in the street

30:22you know we're doubling down on AI in harmful ways because that will have some effect on the environment there's a lot of stuff that's in the mix currently we had the president of the United States get on the bully pulpit this week and lie for an hour and some change about the elections being stolen even though he basically said that they were only they were stolen under his own watch because he's stupid it. Again, I think about that, how many days we have left number that'll vary based on who you are, how healthy you are, all that kind of stuff. And I think about this particular issue and its, you know, position in all of the other stuff that's happening in the world.

31:09And sure, you can hold more than one, one issue in your mind at a time, but like on the order of what things are the most important or more important, this is very low on the needs and wants list or importance list in my mind. But it is as a gaming populace, a thing that is bubbled up so so big and fast that I feel like I would love for gamers and I would love for people in this space to use that same energy for things that do matter in those other spaces. Because a lot of the things of how we got here come from repercussions of those other discussions in other places. It feels like people forget how the tariff nonsense that we have done in a geopolitical way is affecting all of these things.

31:59We are forgetting the interconnectedness about all of those conversations and all of those discussion points and all of those policy changes and things that are coming in. but we're like oh i'm gonna jump on twitter and i'm gonna be like no diss no buy and that's the biggest issue in my in my purview that's crazy to me that doesn't really feel like that's that important um i know people will disagree about this i know they'll be like college you're just standing you're standing for corporations again and i don't but like again i i'm hoping that people are smart enough to know or smart enough to be able to say that even if I feel this way, there are way more things that we should be upset about and way more things that we should be galvanizing together for or way more things that we should be figuring out how to fix that are not these kinds of issues.

33:00I've watched two people get shot this week from from ICE investigations. Like, what are we talking about? This is not important in the grand scheme. So my hope is that people will take some time and hopefully people will do the internal audit and kind of give things the space to be thought about in all of these ways, in the same ways that they're kind of discussing these conversations because i really do think there are way more important things to to poke at way more important things that we can be together on if we're thinking about rallying the troops you know when we all get our high t shots because you know pete hexath decided that we all need some now if you're going to fight in a war and i'm like all right y 'all i don't i don't feel like I can muster the angst and emotion that comes from a conversation and a rallying cry around this thing, because I know that there are too many other things that are happening in the world that are infinitely more important.