Blizzard is Microsoft's Hidden Weapon?

All right. Well, let me move on now to something that is so full. Grand Theft Auto 6. So, its pre-order sales obviously were absolutely taking off in the $100 skew was crushing it. I think Phil, you love that. Zelnik separately confirmed GTA 6's $100 Ultimate Edition is pre-selling ahead of the $80 standard edition, though he cautioned that there's no history from which to extrapolate demand pull forward. So, the trailer thing is uh GTA 6 an extended look premiere on Netflix August 27th at 12:00 p.m. Pacific. You can figure out where that is in your time zone. It's also going to launch on Rockstar Games YouTube channel and the GTA 6 website 6 hours later. So Netflix has a six-hour exclusive on like a 20inut quote trailer and from what we've heard the trailer is a marketing asset versus a game asset.

So we'll we'll see what's inside of that trailer, but apparently it was more marketing driven than game driven from some folks uh that we heard from in Seattle actually that had some knowledge of all of this. So Netflix and Zelnik framed it as an appetizer for the story coming. I'm personally not sure how a six-hour exclusive window helps Netflix. It's going to be on the internet within 5 seconds of anyway. So I I don't think that's like, oo, we're going to get all these subscribers signed up to watch a trailer 6 hour before it's anywhere else. Uh they didn't disclose if there were any money changing hands. And and if you think back to remember when Netflix had all of the GTA ancient mobile games and they were like it's our best downloaded items. So maybe there was some sort of like longer term deal play that led into GTA 6 kind of getting you know getting in on it. But here's why I think they did it. I think Grand Theft Auto is like how do we get top offunnel new audience reach with a few

hundred million DAUs? I I actually don't no one knows how many DAUs Netflix has on that you know imagine on that day on everyone's Netflix screen is Grand Theft Auto like check it out now as we all know gamers and everybody else who's already going to buy this game has an alert on their phones for Rockstar social channels in their YouTube so the next challenge is how do you get to new players that Netflix you know might give them a chance to do that that get get them a chance to get somebody into a storydriven game that um these people would never have known about this in you know any other way. In an irony um I think both Netflix and Grand Theft Auto pissed everybody off because as the news cover that like it's behind a pay wall. Although I think we should all know that Netflix does have an advertising skew that you can get that is like a lower cost. But in a PR win, everyone still said go to Netflix on August 27th at noon. And so even though everyone's

pissed off, they still covered it. So I think that was a pretty fun win. All right, so let's move on to our next story. So in a world of leaked emails, this is pretty fun. So over the last few weeks, I think I mentioned I heard or thought I heard that Blizzard was doing really well. So we had talked about Overwatch 10th anniversary coming back and reigniting the game. And I was musing that Joanna Fair's might be one of the few non-gaming board leaders to come in and show some success. Well, there's nothing the leaked email to help me make your point. So, this leaked email said that Blizzard finished FY26 as Xbox top performing studio while Xbox revenue fell 7%. So, Fairies wrote that in FY26, it was the third highest fiscal year for topline revenue in Blizzard's history. and 25 and 26 were Blizzard's first back-to-back growth years since FY17. Uh this was due to Diablo I uh

that drove the year and then Overwatch also posted its strongest quarter since 22. So I wanted to cover a few things that uh happened over her tenure. She was able to reopen China. Remember remember like Netflix sorry Netflix and Blizzard broke up during the um previous administration. You remember they were doing boba? They were doing like revenge boba drinks at each other in the corporate offices. They they had like a name in the net's office for like some some way to on Blizzard. This was this is awesome drama.
This this is how all the the people not all but how so many startups that left Blizzard with the uh with the legendary names got funded because Netis was just funding them. like just leave Blizzard. Here's 20 m, 30M, just walk away from that office and start something of your own. We will fund it just in spite of Blizzard. This is our business goal.
Yeah. And then they all lost their money. But all of them lost their money. All of them lost their money. It doesn't

matter as long as it hurt Blizzard. Apparently didn't.
Well, they came back and they kissed and made up uh the summer of 24. So that's back on track. They also set a cadence of one to two major releases per calendar year. Then hit it in 26 with Midnight and Lord of Hatred inside of eight weeks. Rebranded Overwatch 2 to Overwatch in February for the 10th anniversary. You know, they added all that great stuff. Five Heroes, new progression, new loot box, reset the franchise, and delivered its best quarter in four years. Delivered growth ending a seven-year streak uh without consecutive growth. So I think it's a great case study to kind of make an analogy for Asha Sharma to figure out like what has Johanna Fair's done right and what are some of the pitfalls that she faced and that she overcame. So when she started out remember she had a little bit of experience on Call of Duty Mobile esports but not necessarily like working on a product or a game team. And I talked about back then you know making

sure she had support that she had a system of people that were going to help her understand how do you talk to the creatives? How do you understand and equate the business with the creative side of our industry? It feels like there's been some secret sauce for how she's actually delivered that and and next time I want Crest to come on and give her some some kudos, maybe even a little apology cuz he was a little harsh when she got the job. And I actually went back and looked. It was February 1st of 24, twig 268. But I'm kind of happy. I'm happy to see someone who came in, especially a woman, which is always nice to have, drive some success in the industry that didn't actually feel the archetype that we typically have for a leader. Thoughts? Anyone?
Go Blizzard. Like, American Institution is being saved before our eyes, defeating all this claim about China destroying America. Overwatch for the win.
Take down marble rivals. I am into this rivalry.
Yeah. Super awesome. All right, Mishka,

what's going on at Ubisoft Barcelona?
This is mice nuts news to be honest, but it's something that I've covered on this podcast because there was this battle with Ubisoft Barcelona against their employee or the HQ in Paris and that battle was quite public. So the background is that Ubisoft proposed cutting 51 jobs from the Barcelona studio as a part of restructuring plan to downsize and focus this small branch exclusively on Rainbow 6 franchise. Now the cuts proceeded despite the studios major contribution to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Wing which launched to a strong commercial success and as this fight got rowdy the workers staged walkouts and limited duration strikes in the summer and they demanded few small things. One was reversal of the layoffs of the 51 layoffs and a 5-year minimum just a minimum shield against future

collective dismissal. So no layoffs in 5 years plus more. Uh they also required reinstatement of 60% remote work policy. So that means like three out of five days pushing back against the mandatory 5-day return to office mandate. And finally, immediate compliance with frozen internal promotion, unblocked salary improvement plans, and better severance terms. As anybody know understands, this ended exactly how you would have expected. Ubisoft eliminated 51 positions at its partial in the studio. But I think there's a happy ending. Not that the people got eliminated, but what happened when they caught the job? Because these workers launched a new studio. They secured funding and they have a game out on wishlist and the game is called Puzzle Mage. They're set for PC release in 2027. They surpassed 1,000 wish lists on Steam. And this warms my heart. uh

instead of battling this corporation and staging these walkouts and doing demands and doing essentially anything nonproductive, they just grew this massive chip on their shoulders, got kicked out of the company, went out with their probably severance holding them and bootstrapping and built company of their own. Like that's capitalism, folks. And I hope they succeed and I hope Puzzle Mage is a magical hit.
[music] [music]
Hallelujah.