The right to repair – and play games anywhere

24:59So that's Apple's take on the Oregon bill. But the other notable thing about this bill in particular is Google used it as an opportunity to come out fully in support of right to repair, including all of the parts pairing stuff in this Oregon bill. And they're basically using this bill to loudly say, yes, you can have a hardware business without controlling what goes into that hardware after the fact. I can't speak as well as that because that's simply something that we do not do. That is Google's head of consumer hardware, Stephen Nickel, on a call with me last week. You can have that quality.

25:32You can have that safety with your repairs processes that we implement and not be concerned about it, right? We work with really good repair providers. We also make the process as simple as possible. So we're not as concerned. So obviously, Stephen knows that taking this more relaxed approach means that more aftermarket parts are going to find their way into Google products. But here again, he just didn't project any worry about it. We want you to have that best experience. And so, you know, we believe that best experience means authorized parts. We know that other parts are out there, third-party parts for various aspects, right?

26:07But continually, we believe if we put out this experience and we make authorized parts available, accessible, and affordable, you're going to select those, right? So that is basically where things stand at the moment. Google and Apple both support the basic concepts in these repair bills, and now they are duking it out with lawmakers over specifics like parts pairing, which is not super satisfying for shop owners like Jessa. It's slow moving. It's precarious. But everyone involved is starting to reach the marrow of this debate. And along the way, Senator Solomon is noticing that same shift that Nathan Proctor and other advocates are seeing in the industry.

26:48this really slow but steady realization that opposing repair laws just isn't a good look. You know, having folks that have been at the table but are now neutral, having Amazon neutral, having Intel neutral, Microsoft, OBI, which is the Oregon business and industry, which has been in opposition, is now neutral. So this policy is coming, and I'm really excited to be one of the ones to bring that forward. Gotcha. So to be clear, getting to neutral is the win, because all those groups were in opposition. Yeah. It's an absolute win. This goes back to something Kyle said to us last year, which is basically that the big shift was making it very hard for someone to credibly, loudly be against right to repair.

27:33And it does feel like that has shifted, that we've gone from sort of a reasonable people can disagree way of thinking about this stuff to right to repair is the right idea. And we can argue about the details of it, but this is clearly how it should work. And I think at this point, That particular battle does seem like it has been won. It absolutely has. And everyone I talked to said the same thing, that 10 years ago, it was perfectly acceptable for a manufacturer to say, no, we know best. We own this entire process. This is how we operate. There was no pressure to even give lip service to this idea.

28:10And if nothing else, there is now a lot of pressure to give lip service to this idea. You have to at least pretend to care now. Yeah. And now the whole battle is going from pretending to care to, if not actually caring, being forced to participate in ways that are really meaningful. Right. And figuring out how all of this is actually supposed to play out in the real world. We're still at the phase of if my phone breaks, where am I supposed to go and what am I supposed to do? But that's a much more interesting next phase, I think, than am I allowed to fix my own phone? Yes. It also seems like that is leading us to the next question, which is basically like, how is all of this supposed to work in the real world?

28:50Because I'm also increasingly aware of the fact that everything we own is technology and everything we own breaks in new spectacular ways. And so we're going to need this big, vibrant repair ecosystem. And we figured out like very little of it yet, but at least we can get to the work of figuring out how it's all supposed to work as opposed to figuring out whether we're allowed to do it. Right? Right. Absolutely. And it's a very good point that like as smartphones go today, so could go a lot of different things in the future. Yeah. So I wanted one last perspective on this, which is the zoom all the way out.

29:23Why is this going to matter to everyone in the future perspective? So I called up someone who thinks a lot about how to keep all of this technology working for us. My name is Stacey Higginbotham. I am a policy fellow at Consumer Reports. Stacey spent years reporting on the Internet of Things. So when she looks at a technology like parts pairing, she sees trouble ahead for a lot more than cell phones. We're adding software to a lot more products that historically haven't had software in them. A good example would be your home appliances. Your current home appliances may not have like a Wi-Fi chip in them and they may not have a lot of software that allows them to do cool features, but your next one probably will.

30:02Those companies are learning from what Apple's doing, and they're going to be implementing similar sorts of software pairing techniques to make these devices less repairable by third parties, but also just less something that the consumer themselves has ownership of, if that makes sense. And that's the big risk here, I think, with software pairing is that it's not going to stop with your phones. It's going to go to everything because as we connect our devices to the Internet, they get not just radios, they get software and cool features. And you're going to lose control over a lot of that going forward.

30:38OK, so you've just brought up the like big, huge galaxy brain size question behind all of this, which is do we actually own the stuff that we buy? And like, we cannot get into that now because dear God, the things it will do to me and this episode. But that does feel like this question, right? All of this boils down to like, is my iPhone, my car, my dishwasher? Like, is that mine to do with as I please? Or am I essentially operating something under someone else's purview? Exactly. And iPhones are just far enough out ahead of all of this that it is easy to look at them and start to go like, oh, what if the whole world worked like that?

31:19And so that's what we're doing right now with consumer electronics like iPhones. And it's what a lot of this right to repair movement really boils down to in the end. Okay, so someday, very soon, you're going to come back here and we're just going to get deep in our feelings about ownership. And I'm going to yell about Kindle books getting removed from Kindles. It's going to be a whole thing. But for now, you mentioned more laws. We're going to cover right to repair a lot this year. I actually think this is like one of the big sort of trundling along in the background stories in this industry.

31:47And you're deep in it now. You're going to keep covering it for us. But set the stage for the rest of the year for us a little bit. What is 2024 going to look like in this space? Well, we're going to have to see. It's really hard to predict what happens with all of these different bills. So I'm going to be following what's going on in Oregon. That bill that we talked about just passed out of committee. It's headed for the full Senate in Oregon right now. So we'll see what kind of legs lucky number four in Oregon looks like. I'll keep track of other state bills. And I want to just keep talking to repair shop owners and DIY folks because parts pairing is really important for them.

32:22But there's a ton of other stuff that they're grappling with every day that is very closely connected to the right to repair that has nothing to do with anything that regulators are trying to tackle right now. So there's just a lot more going on here. And as you say, I think this year is going to be a big year, both for the laws and for people asking those even larger questions. Fair enough. How should the people get in touch with you? Like we said, you're going to be covering this all year. If you run a shop and want to talk about it or just have feelings about your iPhone screens, how should people find you?

32:55Oh, email me, william.pore at voxmedia.com. And I will check back here when I learn more about all those things. Awesome. Thanks, Will. Appreciate it as always. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about some big and slightly confusing news from Microsoft. We'll be right back.

33:18Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree. Zoe, this thing weighs a ton. Drewski, lift with your legs, man. Santa, Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not that. Of course he did. Right, Santa? You know, my elf Drewski here, he handles the nice list. An elf? I'm 6 '3". What everyone wants is iPhone 17. And at T-Mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus? I'm Mrs. Claus' much younger sister. And at T-Mobile, there's no trade-in needed when you switch, so you can keep your old phone. Or give it as a gift.

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34:59Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree. Zoe, this thing weighs a ton. Drewski, lift with your legs, man. Santa, Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not that. Of course he did, right, Santa? You know, my elf Drewski here, he handles the nice list. And elf, I'm 6 '3". What everyone wants is iPhone 17. And at T-Mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus? Ahem. I'm Mrs. Claus' much younger sister. And at T-Mobile, there's no trade-in needed when you switch. So you can keep your old phone. Or give it as a gift.

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36:02Welcome back. So we talked a little bit about this on Friday's show, but Microsoft made some big gaming news last week that was also kind of small news. The company announced a couple of new bits of information about how game streaming and Game Pass are doing, but also said that it's going to take four games, which have previously been Xbox exclusives, and make them available on the PlayStation and the Switch. In and of itself, this is not like earth-shattering news. It's a couple of games in a couple of new places. but there's something bigger going on underneath all of this and the verge is tom warren i guarantee you knows what it is tom warren welcome back to the verge cast hello you have had a week my friend i have it's been an xbox week i feel like microsoft likes to do this to you every once in a while where they're just like for five straight days we're gonna ruin tom's life like tom is this is birthday so we're just gonna mess up his week for all the times that he's messed up our weeks yeah it's kind of him yeah so okay so let's talk about the news which will take us not very long and then i want to talk about all the stuff underneath the news because this is very much sort of the the tip of the iceberg above the water kind of moment for for microsoft and xbox so i want to talk about all that but the news of this podcast which is just the funniest way ever for microsoft to release this news what new stuff did we get from this microsoft announcement on thursday yeah i mean the big news is obviously the stuff that's been rumored for weeks or months now and that is that microsoft's bringing four games which they're not actually naming um we'll get into that um but four games to playstation and nintendo switch or nintendo switch i don't think every single of those games will come to both as far as i'm aware but yeah four games on multiple platforms essentially now obviously microsoft does publish you know minecraft and games like that and they're going to be publishing Call of Duty now because of Activision Blizzard on multiple platforms.

37:54But I still think this is still, although they downplayed it, I still think it's pretty seismic. Like it's, you know, putting your Xbox exclusive games that people have purchased on Xbox onto rival platforms is definitely a strategy shift. Even if they framed it as just for, for now, we're just going to, you know, take some learnings out of it and stuff. But that was the big news. And then they kind of softened the blow of that because obviously they knew it was going to be pretty controversial amongst Xbox fans like Doom and Gloom with the fact that they're working on a next generation console which you know you'd expect them to be right but they're saying it's going to be you know some giant technical leap so we'll see what happens there.

38:34Other than that there was the first Activision Blizzard game Diablo 4 coming to Game Pass a sort of reaffirmation of Game Pass being you know games being day one on game pass and then just this kind of light sort of theme throughout it of bringing the games to players where they're at that very much that multi-platform thing so right so and that seems to me like the big picture underneath all of this and and my sense is microsoft would very much like you to think that it's just sort of running an experiment just trying some things seeing what happens let's just put some games out who knows what'll happen but underneath you get the sense that this is a moment for Microsoft that is much bigger than it would have you believe.

39:17So dig all the way down to the bottom of the iceberg here. What is this sort of big picture thing that Xbox is trying to do? You got this leaked memo from Phil Spencer that I think kind of seems to lay it out in bigger picture terms, but even that might be downplaying it slightly. Paint me the biggest version of this picture here. So I think to paint the picture, we have to understand why they would even do this in the first place, right? Because it sounds, if you said this a year ago, people would be like, no way, they're not going to bring Xbox games to PlayStation. That's just like, you know, conspiracy theory or whatever.

39:48But if you look like, so two years ago, they obviously announced the acquisition Activision Blizzard. At the time, they had 25 million Game Pass subscribers and they announced that. Since then, we've never heard anything more about how many Game Pass subscribers they've had. At the time, they were kind of pushing Game Pass as the reason to buy an Xbox Series S and X. They launched the Series S as a$300 console that was kind of the Game Pass console, right? You buy that to get the Game Pass subscription. That was the way in, right? Sales of those consoles haven't gone as well as Microsoft hoped.

40:19We've seen that. They're still lagging far behind the PS5. And Game Pass has stalled. So Phil Spencer admitted that in late 2022. So probably about 10 months or so after they announced that$25 million. And I think you can fairly safely assume that the fact that we have not heard much since then is not a sign that it has massively turned around. Not good news. But the one thing we didn't mention with the news is that they actually said 34 million now. Oh, interesting. Okay. Which was pretty much a spot on what analysts said. They said 33.3 million. So it's like very close. That includes Game Pass Core, which used to be Xbox Live Gold.

40:55So that is an interesting part as well. But when you take that example of Game Pass stalling, Microsoft needs to find revenue growth elsewhere. where if they're not selling the consoles and getting that user base up so that they can sell the microtransactions, the games, all the in-game content, everything else, you need to find revenue from elsewhere, right? You still need to grow. Microsoft needs to grow, especially when they're putting so much money on the line with these studios. So I think that's the main driver behind this. And you're right, they're framing it like it's a test, right? They're going to learn.

41:28And I'm sure, yeah, they'll learn a bunch of stuff, but they've already been publishing on PlayStation and Nintendo for years now. So there's not a lot of learnings that they're going to pick up there that they don't already know. So if I'm Microsoft, it feels like you take kind of the last couple of years, and you can you can do one of two things. You can either say, we believe that streaming and cloud and Game Pass is the future. We think we're early. Microsoft has a really long history of being slightly too early to really good ideas. Yes. But we are going to keep pushing on this. And they've talked a lot about how they're in third place and this is the way to win the next generation and so if you're phil spencer there's a version of this story where you say the only way out is through right yes the other side is to say maybe this isn't working and then to say okay let's go back to something that feels more like a way that you can actually make money in the gaming industry and the two ways to do that are either make games that people buy on lots of platforms or make a gaming platform on which people buy your hardware and play your games and it feels like Microsoft is wanting to say that it's still on the streaming is the future side of things, but it's kind of like trenching back towards this like very normal way of running a gaming business.

42:39Yeah, and that's a good point. The cloud stuff is also a big part of this as well, because they kind of bet on cloud being bigger than it perhaps has been or will be potentially in the next sort of five years. Essentially, they've also had this vision of exports everywhere, right? Like on every screen or whatever, which we've heard them say in this Leap Memo. It's always been that vision, like on PCs, on consoles, on cloud, getting into mobile devices through streaming. That's always been that vision. They've just kind of tweaked it to now include PlayStation and Nintendo Switch as targets for that vision.

43:13Something that I haven't seen anyone's kind of picked up on or I haven't written about it, I probably should. But if you think about this, when you publish a game on a rival platform, say like Blizzard, they publish like Overwatch on multiple platforms. you sign in with your blizzard id to get into that game that gives you cross progression and and all sorts of account linking stuff what happens if microsoft does that with its games that it brings to playstation switch like it requires an account where you get some of that xbox ecosystem the cross saves and if you do want to buy an xbox then all your saves are there all that sort of stuff that they they constantly talk about and what happens if they do eventually then start sending subscriptions to give you in-game stuff or like perks and stuff for those games I don't know exactly how that will work in terms of the platform holders allowing that, but it's a possibility that these could even be like Trojan horse games for something like that down the line.

44:06Because they know they can't get Game Pass natively on those consoles because Sony's going to want their 30 % cut. Nintendo is, just like Microsoft would if it was the other way around. But I do feel like there's a possibility that they might be able to work around some stuff with the account stuff. We'll see. That's interesting. And so maybe I'm not giving Microsoft enough sort of vision credit there that maybe they're not just pulling back to we have to sell people video games because that's how you make money in the gaming businesses by selling people video games. And we have to do it any way possible that they can do a little bit of that while also still pushing on this Xbox everywhere.

44:41Every screen should be an Xbox kind of strategy, which like intellectually, I think, is the right strategy. I think it's, again, it seems like Microsoft is early here and whether it can survive how early it is remains to be seen. But it does feel like that ought to be where all of this goes. And maybe Microsoft isn't giving up on that entirely by doing this. No, I think a part of it is also that they obviously Game Pass is pretty disruptive. It was definitely something that kind of shook up the industry a little bit. It definitely made Sony respond. They responded with subscriptions beyond what they were offering.

45:14and I do wonder if that's kind of Microsoft's plan here as well is like to try and shake up this idea of exclusivity because obviously we saw the Sony president announce just hours, funny enough, before Microsoft's event that they wanted to aggressively pursue multi-platform or that's the way they say it but I think the way that you can really understand that is PC because he did mention computers in particular so I think that's more them saying they want to be day and date on PC more often because there's money to be had there, right? hell divers 2 came out recently and it's doing massive amounts and i think this is microsoft kind of saying sony you should probably do this as well you know like do it on pc and i don't know whether we'll see sony do playstation games on xbox anytime soon but the other part of all of this with if people are all publishing on different rival platforms and stuff it's just valves just sitting there sort of laughing right yeah they've got all the exclusives they want right they're getting the PlayStation ones, they're getting the Microsoft ones, they're not getting the Nintendo ones unless Nintendo does PC games, which I do think they should.

46:16But they are building, quietly building the Steam Deck and Linux platform to rival Windows. And that's one of the last touch points of Windows for consumers is gaming, right? If Microsoft loses that, they lose a lot of consumer in really, if that goes away. So I think there's definitely a part of that as well, that Microsoft's looking towards. They're seeing what Valve's doing that strategy, there's a possibility that we could have gaming consoles that are Steam decks, right? They are basically a game console now, so you can plug it into your TV. Well, and speaking of that, we were sort of anticipating potentially getting some big hardware announcement.

46:51We've been waiting for the Xbox handheld for what feels like years now, and we didn't get one. But you asked Phil Spencer about it, and I would describe the answer he gave you as the closest thing to saying yes we're building a handheld that he could possibly say without saying the words yes we're building a handheld was that your read of what's going on yeah that was because he said like unique hardware right like and positioning the hardware teams to sort of design in a way that they haven't before and obviously they're going to have to create unique hardware if if they are putting more of these games across the planet you need you need to have the hardware be some some sort of unique thing so that doesn't seem too surprising but yeah i did ask him because he always likes a bunch of people's tweets about handhelds so i'm like it's such a funny strategy i love it it's so obvious right like he's obviously trying to say something but um i think part of it is they obviously have to improve the window situation on handhelds so there's competitive to steam deck but yeah like the xbox handheld itself i'm very curious if they if they do that um and when and on what sort of platform that runs because i think the the most ideal thing that they could do which they could technically do it's just whether they could put all these things together is have it run windows but never expose windows like steam deck has linux and doesn't really expose it unless you want to go into the desktop but then have it run the virtual machine of xbox os on top so you can get xbox games on it because then you don't have to worry about the pc game pass store and the microsoft store and which isn't very good on pc and then you get the best of both worlds right you can still play steam games on it as well like that would be if you wanted to sell me a steam deck that was running with that would be i think a lot of people would buy that i think so too well and this goes back to one of the strangest microsoft strategies to me and i you and i've talked about this before but i'm curious how you're thinking about it now which is microsoft never seems to be able to decide whether it wants to make its own hardware uh and it kind of vacillates in and out between betting really big on surface and doing some really interesting work and really changing the PC industry.

48:49And then this sort of pull back from the innovation there, which, you know, caused Panos Panay to leave and some other machinations going on there. But it seems like if I'm Microsoft and I am all in on the hardware business, they should have built more Xbox stuff by now. So it seems like there's one way to read that that's like, well, these two things are too obvious to have not been together by now. If Microsoft actually cared about doing this. And if you're taking the Windows strategy, you just kind of are happy running on partner devices rather than trying to build your own. Yeah. But then it is pretty obvious that they're building a handheld.

49:23So like, what do you make of this? Like, does Phil Spencer want to build this hardware? Or is he trying to like start an ecosystem of hardware that he can just put his games on? I think ultimately, they probably do want to build the hardware. Okay. There'll probably be some sort of combination of the Surface team doing that or helping out with it because they kind of help out with some of the Xbox stuff anyway. And a lot of the lab testing is kind of shared. But yeah, I do think they'll build it. it comes back to the question of what platform will it run on um and i think that speaks to probably why they haven't done it before there's been that weird like there's always this weird split between xbox and pc stuff and microsoft always tried to kind of force the console stuff onto pc but pc gamers don't really want that they use discord and steam and they don't really care about an xbox party chat or whatever like that's not a thing right and it's just i think that is reflected internally like there's like the old days what was that org chart where like microsoft business units will point in guns at each other like i think that's still that still kind of exists a little bit in there's still fiefdoms and stuff you know like i do think that xbox hasn't been able to do exactly what it wants on windows because the microsoft stores there you know there's a control of windows that's away from xbox so if they can break down those barriers somehow like they're gonna have to if they want their gaming business to to survive on windows at least anyway because Valve is doing some impressive stuff.

50:43And I don't know, that's the biggest threat, I think, to Microsoft's gaming stuff rather than Sony. When Microsoft talks about its competitors, Phil Spencer and others, they talk a lot about PlayStation and Nintendo. Yeah. But they don't talk a lot about Valve. How much do you think Valve weighs on Phil Spencer's mind as he considers the future of Xbox? I think more so these days, although he probably wouldn't admit it. But I think you can just see, like obviously steam bank isn't doing huge numbers right now but it's starting that category of devices but it's like beloved yeah and it's beloved game like capital g gamers like love that thing and i think i feel like if i'm phil spencer the thing i've learned over the last decade is i have to keep the capital g gamers happy yes exactly yeah that is becoming it's something that's had promise for like 10 years and now it's like an actual reality like people are actually playing these things they're not just some random oem from somewhere like there's creating them this has got the full backing and in proton on linux that's the main that's the key right it's getting those games and like not emulated but you know like translated onto linux um so yeah i i feel like if they can tie it all over together internally at microsoft then they could pull something off like the windows underneath and the xbox on top but there's licensing stuff like they publish to say when they bring their game to xbox it's on a console right not on a pc interesting there's a lot of stuff to like work for if they're ever going to do that i don't know whether it ever realistically happened.

52:09But that would, I still maintain that if they did pull it off somehow, it would be a killer device. It does feel like this is a year where if everything goes right, Microsoft's vision for this could come sort of to fruition in really interesting, new, powerful ways, right? It has Activision Blizzard, so it has this big new, I mean, title in Call of Duty, but also this big new pipe into mobile in a way that Phil Spencer has been telling you for years is really important. With all the changes coming to the app stores, Microsoft might have an in to be able to do more stuff. The handheld thing could start to happen.

52:44It just feels like if Microsoft's vision of Xbox everywhere and being this platform across all different screens, it does seem like a lot of things would have to go right, but you can sort of see how the pieces would start to fit together, right? Yeah, no, you can. And you mentioned mobile, and I think that's like that is a key one for them because they're also going to be publishing a bunch of like Call of Duty mobiles is huge so with Activision Blizzard King Candy Crush all the rest they get a really big entry point into mobile and they obviously were trying to leverage that to build a store on iOS and Android but then obviously the Apple changes and Phil mentioned I specifically pushed him on the Apple changes for Xbox Cloud Gaming because I think that's that's kind of a precursor I'd say to the mobile store because they've been trying to get that app on there for years now and they've had to do a progressive web app instead.

53:35And it's interesting that he said we can't monetize Xbox Cloud Gaming even if they were to do an app. So obviously whatever Apple's changes are under the hood, they're not good enough for Microsoft. And it's also interesting that those changes and what Apple's doing in iOS 17.4 by removing the PWA apps means that Xbox Cloud Gaming is basically just going to, it's going to be a link now. It's not even going to feel like a slightly native app. So that puts them back a step back as well, in the EU markets at least anyway. Yeah, Apple's ability to claim it has opened up the App Store while seeming to not satisfy anyone who wants a more open App Store has been very impressive.

54:15Is he still thinking about mobile as kind of the center of what's next in the gaming ecosystem in the same way? I feel like a few things have shifted, right? Because for mobile, for Microsoft, when they were thinking about it, it was more cloud, right? before abk divisible but is the king but now the cloud has slowed down and people aren't really as interested in it and handhelds are emerging right as as the kind of mobile now almost i feel like that's that shifted things a little bit it's definitely shifted our thinking like we thought that cloud would you know grow like microsoft did and i think targeting mobile native games in ios and android is is still a ways off like they have they have these big ones but they still need to build a bunch of different games there so um i don't know that there's necessarily change i think it's just definitely pushing more towards the handhelds than cloud to get to that sort of mobile state or this idea of exports everywhere you know well and to that point actually one of the things you asked phil that i thought was a very funny way of asking the question was basically would you rather continue to pursue the next minecraft or the next pal world or the next version of these individual games not gaming platforms but games that are sort of universes and platforms unto themselves rather than trying to get more game pass subscribers and he said he gave you a really wishy-washy answer which is basically like we'd like both which like of course but it does seem like we might be entering a phase where rather than i have access to you know these 10 triple a games all in one place we're kind of entering a place where the triple a game is the platform like that's what fortnite is becoming that's minecraft is that roblox is that maybe that's the next turn rather than i have a bunch of sort of disparate games all available in the same app and microsoft is gonna like all you have to do is look at the money and that's what it would tell you to chase right now right i know i agree i kind of posed the question to him is like that's my thinking that they'd rather have another minecraft like or a fortnight you know like these are essentially social platforms that like teenagers hang out in right just to chill with their friends um so who wouldn't want that and the amount of in-game revenue like that's like a big chunk of the xbox content and services revenue right is for from from all these in-game purchases so so i'm sure they would love a massive hit like that and power world was obviously a big one for them having that just not exclusive to xbox it's just the fact that sony doesn't allow those early access games on their platform but having that available on Xbox.

56:44I feel like that's probably been pretty enlightening as well. So yeah, I feel like they would still prefer to have one of those big games than, you know, another million Game Pass subscribers or whatever, because they'll probably get the games of Pass subscribers on the back of that anyway. Right. Yeah. I mean, and I think what does seem to be true is that making one of those that is a big hit is a lot harder and a lot more finicky than it gets credit for. So he's probably right to kind of hedge his bets a little bit there but it certainly seems to be true that if you can get one of those handful of spaces online where people actually want to be and hang out and spend time i mean you've caught lightning in a bottle and you should chase that kind of to the ends of the earth yeah it's i think it's the thing that they're tracking internally as well as like it's the engagement right there that everyone tracks these days as well the time spent in a game the time spent on the console rather than we've sold x amount of consoles um which is is great, but that's a funnel into your software.

57:40And if you don't have the games to keep people sticky in there and they're going elsewhere for, you know, whether it be Netflix or whatever for their entertainment needs, it's keeping that sticky experience to keep people spending and keep people playing and all that sort of stuff. So that's definitely the way that they're looking at internally. Makes sense. So, okay, last thing, and then I'm gonna let you go. The four games that are coming from Xbox to other platforms, Microsoft has not announced, but you know, because you're better at this than everybody at Microsoft. Sorry, everybody at Microsoft.

58:08What do you make of the four games that Microsoft picked to do this with? And then also you asked Phil about Starfield and Indiana Jones, kind of these bigger name games, the sort of central franchises. Do you think we're going to see those at some point here in the future go down the same road? Yeah, so the four games are kind of interesting because Sea of Thieves, obviously, it's a pirate game, which would be kind of funny to watch Xbox fanboys and PlayStation fanboys battling out in the seas, right? Trinking each other. It's actually kind of perfect. Virtually murdering each other. So that's going to be quite funny to witness.

58:43And I think that one makes sense, right? It's a multiplayer game, a live service game. You do want those games across as many platforms as possible because when the numbers dwindle, then it doesn't make for such a good game, less people playing it. So that one makes sense. Similar sort of thing for Grounded as well. Similar sort of multiplayer sort of experience there and stuff. and then you've got like Hi-Fi Rush which I think is probably one of the ones where it's like less obvious why it should go on other platforms but I think the way they kind of launched it it was like a shadow drop after an Xbox I think it was like developer director that they had and it didn't really have much fanfare but it's like a great game I think Phil described it as like a hidden gem which is true and they want more people to experience that and it could I guess get people to think differently about Xbox games or Xbox as the platform like that sort of thing same same kind of same thing with pentiment as well then the interesting one about pentiment is that we should have known that it was going to go on switch or playstation all the time because in microsoft's blog post when they first announced it at the bottom of it they said xbox console launch exclusive so aka it's going to go elsewhere like they they had it there plain as day all along but yeah like beyond that these are the four that they're talking about initially but beyond that There are bigger questions around Starfield, obviously Indiana Jones, other games.

1:00:02There's a bit of a backlash as well with the Xbox fans at the moment about Starfield and some of the reporting around it and Indiana Jones. So I just want to be super clear that Microsoft is considering both of those. It was considering, it still is considering. It's not off the menu, it's not on the menu, it's not been finally decided or anything like that. So those still could come, but they might not. We don't know yet. It's not a finalised decision like these four titles are. but i think the the important thing is the fact that they were even considering it shows you what their ambition is here right the talk of xbox every screen's an xbox xbox everywhere all that sort of stuff if you add it all together you can you know and you look at their finely crafted messaging during that podcast if you read between the lines and you look at very no bias or anything like that you could pretty much see what their strategy is right there let's go slowly surely maybe some learnings, maybe we'll launch day and date a certain game in the future, unannounced games, all that sort of stuff.

1:00:59They're toying with all these sort of ideas. Nothing is final, but I think it does come down to the fact that they're even thinking about that stuff. That's the interesting part for me. I think that was the bit when I heard that they were thinking about some of these things. Then you know it's a bigger strategy shift than the way they kind of teased it out on Thursday. Yeah. And you get the sense that Microsoft is trying to do a huge thing without anyone realizing how huge a thing it is, which Microsoft has learned the hard way. When it makes giant noises about how it's going to change every industry forever, it goes badly.

1:01:30So this time, it seems like they're trying to make just as big a change, but like so quietly that nobody notices. Yeah. And it gives them the room to adjust as they go, right? They could have some plans for certain games to come in like the next six months. And And the problem everyone also has to think about is that this is going to cost them money to port this, to do the work. And it's not something they just go, OK, we're going to put this game in here. And then, you know, Monday they publish it. This is planned months in advance. This is like a big project internally. So it's not something they've just thought, oh, we're going to do these four games.

1:02:04But yeah, it does give them that freedom to sort of tweak things as they go. Look at what the fans reception, look at the sales numbers, all this sort of stuff. They'll have people pouring over all this data with MATLAB for hours and hours, I'm sure. But yeah, I think it still speaks to that there's something bigger going on, for sure. All right. Well, I suspect it's going to be a big year, so we're going to have to check in a few times. But Tom, thank you as always. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right. We've got to take one more break, and then we're going to get to the Virgcast hotline.

1:02:32We'll be right back.

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1:03:58All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. We love all of your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every single week. We've been getting a lot about the Vision Pro, and if I'm being honest, I'm excited about the idea of talking about something other than the Vision Pro. So if you have questions about anything on Earth other than the Vision Pro, please send them in. 866-VERGE11-VERGECAST-THEVERGE.COM This week, we have a question about passwords. Hey, VergeCasters. My question is kind of simple.

1:04:30Do you think the recent slate of crackdowns on Netflix, Hulu, et cetera, on password sharing will achieve their goal of getting more paid subscribers? Will people just throw their hands up and say it was fun while it lasted? You know, like many families, friend groups and the like, you know, mom and dad pay for Netflix and Max. I pay for Hulu, Disney Plus and Amazon. And we've had our little happy Netflix, Amazon sharing ecosystem. them. Now that I can't access their Netflix account, I kind of refuse to get my own partially out of spite and partially out of my budget, genuinely not a lot for it.

1:05:08So I'm wondering, do you think there'll be more people like me who say, you know, F it and just do without, or more people who will suck it up and, you know, get their own subscription? Who do you think is going to blink first, us or the services? Thanks. Hope to hear you guys answer this question on the show. Appreciate what you do. Of course. We have a question about passwords and we have a question about streaming. Who else but Alex Kranz. Alex, welcome. Hey. Okay. So first of all, I want to know, does your family have a who pays for what streaming arrangement? Because my family 100 % does.

1:05:40And I'm glad to know that others do too. Yes, but it's really just I pay for everything. And then my mom, when she wants to watch things or my sister, they like text me and are like, can I have your password? So it's just everyone mooches off of you. Yeah, they're just all mooches, but I guess it's like reciprocal. I mooched off my mom for, you know, 18 years. So that's fair. This is your way of paying them back. That's beautiful. Yeah. So what do you think? I realize I have a pretty strong opinion here that I can't base on anything, but I'm curious what you think. Well, the data suggests that consumers blink first, that we blink before the companies do, right?

1:06:15Like Netflix has been successful with their password sharing crackdown so far, which is like a major bummer because I really want them to blink first. But now that Hulu is doing it, now that Disney Plus is doing it, we're getting more people in on it. At some point, that's going to stop, right? At some point, people really are going to stop saying, no, I just don't need this product. And Netflix has been like really successful because it's Netflix. Hulu might not be as successful, even though everyone should go watch Fargo. It's great. You know, a lot of people will be like, I don't need to watch Fargo or whatever new FX show is on.

1:06:49I don't need to watch Bluey. That's the Disney Plus one, right? Yeah, like, that may happen. In which case, yeah, suck it. Streamers, stop trying to, like, crack down on all of us. Just let us do what we want. Yeah, that's basically where I land too. I think it seems to me that it's clearly going to work from a technological perspective. Like I think when Netflix started doing this, everybody's like, oh, this will be easy to get around. Like spoiler alert, super not easy to get around. They have more or less done the thing they set out to do. And from that perspective, it's clearly going to work.

1:07:22And anyone who wants to lock people out is going to lock people out. They're getting very good at this. It's very sophisticated. It's just going to work. I do think that if you're a streaming service, the very last thing you want to do is give people a reason to say, do I actually watch anything on here? Yeah. And like to your point, right, there are streaming services that I pay for. Like for me, weirdly enough, it's actually Disney Plus. I don't use Disney Plus that often. I don't really know why. Like I like all the stuff that's on there. It's just not when I sit down to watch something. It's probably the fourth app I open.

1:07:50And so for me, the minute it becomes sort of in my face, whether I want to keep paying for Disney Plus, I'm probably going to say no. And I think what's about to happen to a lot of people is it is going to be put in their face. Do you still want to pay for this? And I think you're right that the answer for most people for Netflix is yes, right? Like I, I watch an alarming amount of Netflix. Most of it is not stuff I couldn't live without. There are very few things on Netflix that feel like core to my personality and life. but it's just where I go to watch stuff and that's pretty powerful and also only Netflix gets to be that thing and so for me I feel like Disney plus can probably get away with it just because it has some of that same like core content to some people but like Hulu is actually probably a good example like how much stuff is there on Hulu that if Hulu suddenly went away from your life you would be like devastated without I really liked Fargo Fargo is really good I'll give you that look the new season was excellent but it i agree yeah like hulu is is one i probably i would i might churn on right i might i might subscribe when i need it and unsubscribe when i don't yeah my my big galaxy brain take is that it is both going to work and it is also going to like speed up this crazy consolidation that is happening in this industry right now where having the account is going to be the way that you win, right?

1:09:08Like having a login that I have, which for lots of people, they're not going to have a login anymore. And they're going to have to make a new one and making people make a new login is hard. And you lose a lot of people when you make people do it. And so I think it's going to take all of these like, not quite Netflix streaming services, and it's going to make their lives much harder in service of trying to get more people. So I think it's going to consolidate. That's why they're doing that thing where they're bundling, Right. Like that's why Paramount Plus, you can get that now through Amazon because they acknowledge that most people only want that for either their Taylor Sheridan or their Star Trek fix or to watch the Super Bowl poorly.

1:09:47So I think they kind of recognize what's going to happen. And a lot of them have made peace with it. And Netflix can get away with it. Netflix has shown it works for Netflix. So Netflix is going to keep doing it. And it'll be fine until one day you say, do I need to watch that many K-dramas? Maybe I can watch something else on another channel. and be done. Right. Yeah, we're definitely in a phase where Netflix kind of continues to flex on everybody and everybody is trying to do a Netflix impression. And it seems less and less likely that it's going to work for a lot of these companies. Yeah. All right.

1:10:17Well, we'll see. In the meantime, we still should have been angrier about this the whole time. And I am angry about it now. And we will continue to be angry about it. Just find a great website where you can download a file and then you put that on a software program and stuff happens. I don't want to get too into it, but you can work around it. At the end of this, Alex's Plex server will be the only streaming service left and it will be great. Just pay me money. Don't actually pay me money. Nobody, please don't come and shut me down. I do not share it with people for money. That's wrong and immoral.

1:10:47Well, we're all going to jail, but thank you, Alex. Appreciate it. You're welcome. All right. That's it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who was on the show. And thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com. Lots of right-to-repair coverage. Lots of Tom's stuff. Especially his interview with Phil Spencer, which you should read. All of it's really interesting. We'll put some links in the show notes. But you know, theverge.com. It's a website. We like it. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other games you'd like to see ported to new platforms, you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com.

1:11:18Or keep calling the hotline. 866-VERGE-11. Hearing from you is my absolute favorite thing about doing this show. So keep them coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil, I, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about more AI news, Mobile World Congress, and a whole bunch of other stuff. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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