from vacation. I don't really know what's going
on in the world. Because I was pretty much out
in the middle of nowhere to give you an idea.
I was an hour and a half away from the closest
AMC, so I could not go see the new F1 movie.
And I was pretty sad about that here. But anyway,
so I thought we would start off with a happy.
Topic, you know, just getting back into the groove
of things. It's been three weeks. You know, the
world's on fire, I guess. So let's yeah, something
that's not going to like make us all super depressed.
So anyways, large scale layoffs have been happening
across like the gaming division of Microsoft.
In total, Microsoft has laid off recently about
9000 employees. This also means the cancellation
into high profile games that have been in development
for a very long time. Rare's Everwind and the
initiatives reboot of Perfect Dark. Alex, have
you heard of these games? Were you waiting for
these games? I was not particularly waiting for
these games. Perfect Dark is a classic. series
that they used to have. I was kind of looking
forward to a reboot of it. I'd heard of it, but
I wasn't like jumping over the world about it.
I don't know. Rare is dead. Like, I hate to say
it, but rare rare as a studio is is toast. Well,
also, the initiative studio was shut down and
this this studio was formed back in 2018 and
they actually never released a video game. Other
companies hit hard with the playoffs recently.
Blizzard, Call of Duty's developer Raven Software.
They're currently working on Black Ops 7. Forza
Motorsport developer Turn 10 laid off close to
50 % of their employees. Elder Scrolls online
developer Xenomax with a Z. Online Studios canceled
and unannounced massively. Exciting multiplayer
game supposedly. I don't know. They didn't announce
it but Doom creator John Romero was working on
a new first -person shooter game apparently for
Microsoft which is lost funding Meaning we will
probably never see it But yeah, everything that
I just listed Has has been owned and operated
by Microsoft so I asked this question to you
Why is Microsoft buying like half of the gaming
market just to kill anything or Are they even
good at running gaming studios? What are your
thoughts? I'm gonna start with your second question
first and the answer is are they good at running
game studios? No Case in point was bungee. Yeah
Yeah, bungee three four three. I don't know how
that whole back and forth with all those mother
Anyway, no, they're not going to run in gaming
studios. They're just not. And I don't know what's
happening over at Xbox. I saw some of the strategy
when they were like, again, they were buying
up Bethesda. They're buying up all this stuff
like, OK, we're going to do this with Xbox and
we're going on this live journey. And I, for
a long time, was a proponent of Xbox Game Pass.
OK, for a long time, I was a proponent of it.
I thought it was a great deal. Um, I don't anymore.
Um, I don't know what they're doing over at the
Xbox division. Um, it, it, it boggles the mind.
I don't know what the strategy is. There seems
to me no rhyme or reason for it. Um, I, I, I
really can't, I can't put it all together. Now
it may have something to do with this. And I
brought this article up on IGN and I thought
about what we were going to do as a separate
segment, but you know what? Now I think we're
just Loop it in here. IGN. Oops. Hang on. Let
me fix one thing real quick. IGN has basically
said that Gen Z wants a. It's an article, basically,
younger Americans are spending way less money
on video games, 25 percent less on video games
than this year than last year. Now. Without without.
I'm sorry Wall Street Journal, you don't understand
why these kids are buying less games. You don't.
It's not just economic woes, okay? Honestly,
video games are one of the cheapest forms of
entertainment, dollar to hour of entertainment,
out there, right? You buy a $60 game, you can
milk that mother for a lot of entertainment.
That's not why. I'll tell you why. There's just
not a lot of good stuff out there right now.
The gaming industry is in kind of a drought Right
like I what was the last game Jay that you were
really and I mean super hype about Super hyped
about or like super obsessed with Hyped about
you're like man. I'm buying that day one. I want
to take a day off work. I Let's go. I'm not waiting
for it to go on steam sale I'm not waiting till
somebody recommends it to me before I become
obsessed with it after I start playing. No, this
is this game is coming and I want to jump over
the moon to play it right now. Cyberpunk. And
let's see here, what year did Cyberpunk I I legit.
Built a gaming PC. Yeah, and and when did that
game come out? I could tell you five years ago.
Five years ago. Five fucking years ago. Some
of the YouTube chats ask if there's if IGN other
periodicals still relevant. Somewhat. I would
say they're still somewhat relevant. I still
get a lot of good rundown stuff from them, so
I'll give IGN credit. I'll be honest. The hype's
just not there right now. We occasionally get
like a brief cultural moment like with Helldivers
Yeah, right where everybody kind of jumps in
Helldivers for a little while and then it goes
away right, but honestly What's everybody excited
about? See, I'm not I'm not entirely sure if
that's it I think We are just like massively
over stimulated Could be and I say that because
I remember when I was younger playing console
games. I mean, I would sit there and put in probably
100 hours for fucking games that. I might not
even buy today, and I think there's just so much
content 24 seven of new game, new game, new game.
This is on sale. This is on sale. This is on
sale. Like I legit have like, you know, a steam
library of games. 200 games, probably 50%. I've
never played, um, completing a game is like impossible
now. And I could say like, well, I'm a, I'm an
adult now, right? Like I have a job, like I have
responsibilities, but I don't think that's it.
I think I go to work and I look at the thousand
unread emails I have, and I'm in like five or
six, like family group chats on social media.
No offense, guys. um text chats insert whatever
other social media bs by the time i get home
like i kind of want to like unplug from the matrix
for a little bit like it's just too much like
everything is always new all the time right yeah
absolutely and again i i think it's younger people
are playing less games people our age are more
picky about the games they play and the ones
they invest time into I can tell you in the last
year and a half, there's probably four games
I've invested more than a few hours into. Right.
And it's it's it's hard to grab me these days
again. So the sales numbers, I mean, again, 25
percent year over year drop in 18 to 29 year
olds. Right. Which is a big part of their market.
Right. Means I would not be shocked if. Microsoft
and other gaming companies are having some really
hard financial times right now. Right. So these
kind of layoffs again, very, very sad, but not
surprising to me at all. And again, I think that
Microsoft specifically, when it comes to Xbox,
they kind of lost their way. Right. Like they
had some clear direction in the Xbox, the 360.
The Xbox one was a. Absolute misstep. It was
an absolute misfire during that console generation.
They knew it. They did it from the jump. They
screwed it up at the gate. And honestly, I don't
know if Xbox ever recovered from the absolute
debacle that was the Xbox One's launch. Right?
That thing went down in gaming history as one
of the absolute worst console launches you could
do. Right? Connect is necessary. You have to
have it for the full experience for Xbox One.
You can't sell Xbox One without Connect. A year
later, yeah, we'll start selling Xbox One without
Connect. We're sorry, right? You can't lend games
anymore. Everything's DRM locked. And then PlayStation
comes out with a commercial the next day. The
next day at E3 showing full frickin' loanability
of their games, right? Like they... They bungled
that launch so much and again, I don't think
they've ever really recovered not fully. You
know. It sucks that all these people are losing
their jobs, you know, 9000 people, but they've
got to. They've got to find a way out of this.
Yeah. Jay's just over here, silent, shaking his
head like I just I don't know. I think I think
the whole system is broken. I think back in the
day you had game developers that like legit were
nerds that loved playing video games, that loved
making video games that and I'm not saying that
nowadays like, oh, nowadays the kids don't care.
I'm not saying that. But now I've seen this like
mindset of when you have a startup, your number
one goal is to get big enough to be bought out.
Period. And that's well, we won't go down that
road. Let's let's take I'm going to put a pin
in that particular topic for just a second, because
I may start a new topic on this. The crappy thing
is, is that the system used to work really, really
well. Right. Is that game developers would make
games and then game publishers and gaming companies
would pay them for the games that they made and
then start over again. Right. And I think we
see this again where corporate consolidation
is just bad. Corporate consolidation is not a
good thing. Right. And every time. Every time.
it happens everybody loses um somebody in the
youtube chat is making a joke and it's a classic
seattle joke and i'm gonna i'm gonna talk about
this right so so back in the day seattle has
always been a company town right it's always
been a company town and back in the day there
was a billboard when we thought boeing was going
to blow up right and and lose uh leave town for
good right and so consequently somebody put up
this billboard with the last person leaving Seattle
please turn out the lights so he's not always
going to leave and Seattle was going to die right
uh so somebody in the YouTube chat said well
the last person leaving Redmond shut the server
down um I don't think it's to that point Microsoft
as a company is doing fine Okay. Microsoft's
doing great. $245 billion in revenue last year,
$109 billion in operating income, up 24%. Microsoft
is doing fine. Corporate consolidation is bad
because when people are managing individual department
P &Ls, they're going to cut to make their bonus.
Right? That's how this shit works. Okay. Corporate
consolidation is bad. Right? It just is. It always
has been. Okay? It sucks. It really, really sucks.
And what happens is people lose their jobs. It's
bullshit. Anyway, that was a fun topic to open
the evening with Jay. Yeah, I wanted something
light, you know, something fun. Something like,
you know, a fun topic. Yeah, just kind of bring
everyone out of depression.