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[Music] headlines. So, actually, let me set this up because one of the things that we did that was really, really fun at the end of the day at the event, there's this service called Menty, I think, and you can put questions up. You scan with your QR code and then everyone in the audience can like take the poll or the question. And so, Crest went in and was like, "Wait, wait, wait. I want to put a question in." And I think it was like, "Who is the worst CEO?" And actually, you didn't put the person who now we're gonna talk about. I I I really missed the boat on that one. All right. So, Embracer CEO, Mr. Lars, Wing of Fours, whatever the [ __ ] you pronounce his name. Oh, by the way, I am promising not to use the F-word anymore. So, I'm going to try my best. What? What? Or to use it less. I'm So, I'm Who are you promising? Myself. Because I listened to the podcast afterwards. It was horrific. Okay. So anyway, so embracing CEO Lars

is no longer CEO of Can you edit in like a physical swear jar? Sorry, continue. Anyway, he is no longer charge of Embracer. Thank the Lord. Like it's about goddamn time, right? It took way too long. But I guess at the end of the day, he had to clean up his freaking mess. See? Gotcha. Gotcha. Um and so I'm going to give him credit though. I'll give him one credit. like convincing these debt and equity holders to invest in his Ponzi scheme was an absolute brilliant move. Like clearly he is a sales guy, right? But he had absolutely no business managing a video game company. Period. End of sentence, right? So I'm glad he's gone. He's being replaced by I forgot his name, Phil Rogers, who is a legitimate CEO of a gaming company. So, I'm hoping that he can figure out what to do with that. The only problem is that they're keeping him on board as chairman and part of his roles of

responsibility is mergers and acquisitions is and this is how we got into this trouble to begin with, right? So, why would you do that? We need a clean break and he needs to get the [ __ ] out of there. Oh, and then let this other guy run the show, right? And so, if I was Embracer and I was on the board, I don't want Lars to do M&A. That's like the big problem, right? So, they do have a pipeline of products coming out. Of course, you know, Kingdom Come 2, Tomb Raider, etc. We absolutely have no details on any of these games. I frankly don't even know if they have the capability of delivering any games or publishing any games at this point given all the turmoil in this company. But, I'm going to give Phil a shot and we'll see how he does and we'll keep tracking their progress. Well, isn't Embracery just split up into three companies now? So yeah, it hasn't been done yet. Like it's they're working towards it. And it seems like these guys are in charge of the entire all three companies still. Oh, I don't know if leadership's going

to be implanted. I don't know. The structure is not complete yet. The restructuring is not complete. So we'll see. Okay. The next quick announcement is that the Unity CTO Steve Collins steps down after six months. First of all, when you hire something like a CTO, it could take months months if not years to find the right person. So, he probably lasted less time than it took to actually hire him, you know? So, that's not a good look for Mr. Steve Collins, right? And some of the people at the event last night, he didn't have a great reputation king either. So, maybe the emperor has no clothes. I don't know. But at the end of the day, I want to be really clear here because I think people are misunderstanding the situation with Unity. The engine itself is almost irrelevant at Unity. Unity engine is break even at best. All the future of Unity lies in adtech, right? It's about the new platform that they're working on. That is what's going to make them see the light. So, yes, Unity engine is important from a maybe a strategic perspective or from, I don't know, PR. Yeah. Razor razor blade,

right? Like you need the razor of the engine in order to have a foundation for the adtech. The problem is that they're not getting that from that. But that's a whole other subject. But anyway, the point is that yeah, the CTO of the engine business stepping down, not a good look, but really all that matters is ad tech. And so like that's what's going to make their stock do well and the business to survive. And we got a lot of mixed thoughts on that at the event as well because it looks like it's better, but it's just not ready for prime time. It just can't compete against half. That's the at the end of the day. So the stock move is a little bit premature. So we'll see. All right, I'm just keep rolling. Yeah. Yeah, it's all you. I mean, you loaded this up before our event, so I was a little bit busy. So, thank you. These are the easiest things to cover, right? Because these are the big events of the summer, right? So, we have the Xbox showcase. We have Summer GameFest from Jeff Keelley. So, we're just going to run through these as quickly as possible and give my quick takes. But the Xbox

showcase was profoundly disappointing to most for a variety of reasons. Although it was actually a decent show. The some of the highs were Persona 4 remake was really cool. They did do a tease on Black Ops 7, which we'll get to in a minute. Outerorlds 2, which is coming out soon, and a bunch of other games came out, third party that looked really good. And so it was primarily a third-p partyy type event. New DLC for Indiana Jones. And then the teasers for first party were disappointing, right? So Fable, Forza, Gears of War, right? And so, yeah, I mean, it's good for them to have something there, but clearly they're not ready for prime time to show at these showcases, which seems odd because they're coming out freaking next year. You know what I mean? It So, that was a little bit of a miss. Do you think it's because like so old school, remember we had to branch a build and do a whole build to get ready for E3 or these big moments? Do you think it's like the team's like, you know, f you and I don't want to do that anymore, so they don't

have the content to show? That is very likely. I mean, this is the whole issue with E3 just in general was that it takes people's attention away from actually making the games. Yeah. And so, they don't want to dedicate the resources to create the best trailer or some gameplay demo. But generally, they do have these type of, you know, vertical slices where people are playing through like new games to get people hyped and excited. And just one of those games would have actually probably helped a lot, right? Like Gears of War. I mean, oh, I love that IP. Yeah, the Fable has been in development for a long time. That was supposedly out re going to be last year, right? So, yeah, just having a playthrough on the Fable on what it looks like would have just sealed it. I remember that got delayed like it got a lot of [ __ ] I think, because some of the charact I forgot what it was, but it got [ __ ] on. So, I think they had to rework it. I hate to be called cynical, but shocking. My cynical self is like these guys are not executing at all on first party. like they are so mismanaged right

now that there's just no way they can execute against these releases because they have way too many considerations going on with what's going on at Microsoft and you know their position there and I'm going to do a piece on LinkedIn about this that is not going to go over well I'm sure like what did Phil Spencer miss on right so they bought all their means of production like they brought Halo in house they brought Gears of War in house they grew these marquee franchises that were third party and then they bought the means of production and then when they owned that asset that they proceeded to destroy it. And I'm just I'm not quite sure like what Phil Spencer could have done better in the production process. Like he set up a whole studio ecosystem around Halo. Like he tried to throw capital at it. He tried to do the same for Gears. I just don't where did he go wrong? I mean I think this whole subscription thing has been a distraction, right? I think their whole strategy has been distraction to what matters most is making great games for a platform that are exclusive that

get people to buy your freaking platform, right? I mean that basically fundamentally, right? They should just spin out Xbox and let it compete independently. Get rid of subscription, all that stuff because I think that will get them focused on what matters most is building out the studio or actually executing against these projects because they do have some good IP, right? But they just Was that a good P&L if it gets spliced out on its own? Well, they're going to have to be forced to get get back on track, shave some weight like Yeah. Yeah. It a It's not going to be easy, right? But it's better now than it is in 5 years when this thing is going to be a death of a thousand cuts and there's going to be nothing left, right, of you know, all this whole org. So anyway, all right, moving on. All right. Yeah. So the biggest challenge Oh, and then also they announced the stupid hardware thing, the rogue ally, which did get a lot of press. I look, I'm not suggesting that it didn't get great press, but this is just a remake of of an ASUS handheld, right? It's and it's going to be like 600 700 $800, right? It's it is a non-event in gaming. It doesn't mean anything really. Um

Yeah. I want to [ __ ] on the trailer. So, Phil and Crest, like we've done skew management, right? Yeah. Please help me understand why on earth you launch two versions of a handheld that isn't even unique that oh it has Xbox buttons. It's a modified ROG Ally and you know this is like an incredibly small market already. I think there's only been like four or five million units of the Steam Deck sold. You know this PC less, right? So, this PC to Xbox to cloud gaming system, you have two SKs that are going to be super expensive. Like, what what explain it to me? Anyone? Anyone? Cuz I can't explain this as somebody who shipped physical product to a store. Like, that is just insane. Yeah, it is super heavy. I mean, it's it's hardly portable almost. It's just so niche. It's so niche. And the fact

that they didn't release price is indication of that the price is going to be insane, right? Yeah. It's going to be super high. So the trailer, listen, they did the best they could with what it was. But what I didn't what I thought was misleading is in the beginning of the trailer, they give you this impression that this thing is like new, that it's being sculpted from this translucent, you know, translucent, I guess, liquid ass. Liquid ass is the official term. Yes. Yes. So, um, Xbox is also adopting liquid ass and so it gives you this impression that this thing is like kind of uniquely sculpted and developed for the Xbox and it's not at all. It's a device that has new buttons and you know, so a lot of the USBs and the messaging in this are such that I don't think it's going to help sell this thing. I think this is going to be a super challenge. If I were to have done this, I would have done one skew. Try to make it, you know, affordable. You know, right now we think this is going to be more expensive than the unit itself,

which what Xbox Series X sells at 600 bucks now. I forgot where we are because they jacked up the price for tariffs, right? And the Switch 2 is 500 bucks or 450. It's like, yeah, Switch 2 is is 450 by itself, 500 with Mario Kart 8. All right, so go back to your [ __ ] on the rest of this. Here's my take. Microsoft has really lost its way, right? Like First party is not delivering at all in 2025 and they have promises for 2026, but who knows if any of these games are coming out in 26 because we have no information or details about these games at all. Not to mention GTA is coming out in 2026. Why would you want to compete with GTA? You know, like all your efforts should be getting G people to play GTA on your platform at this point, right? There's a huge problem here. Again, the handheld looks really cool. It's but super niche. It's going to be super expensive. Probably 600 800 somewhere around there. That's not material. It's an engagement driver for the core. It's not like something that's going to expand the audience. But the biggest thing that

actually I'm really really scared about, right? And we don't know yet for sure. But the Call of Duty thing was really really scary for me, right? Because at the end of the day, they only gave a teaser to Call of Duty at this show, right? And Call of Duty is coming out in a few months, okay? And so like generally we would have so much information and teasers and like dev diaries and all the [ __ ] about what's going on with Call of Duty, but they didn't do that, right? And they haven't done that. And so the reveal was very very disappointing for the fans. And so speaking to Variety, this guy Tyler Ball explained what the company was trying to do with this announcement on Black Ops. He said, "Usually at this point in time, we have teased everything that's coming out. And I think in a lot of ways we're setting this up more like a Beyonce album dropping. Nobody's going to know about it and nobody's going to see it coming. It's like, what the [ __ ] is happening? Okay, why are we doing a Beyonce drop for Call of Duty? Call of Duty is the biggest game in the world. Every year for the last 15 years, we

don't do freaking Beyonce drops. Okay? And the fact that he's bringing up Beyonce is beyond me right now. Right now, he clarified. So he clarified. So when I first read this, I was so incensed. But he clarified though that this is just for the announcement that they are using the Beyonce drop. Okay. But at the end of the day, they're going to do more typical marketing campaign for Call of Duty for the rest. But what worries me about this is that either the team is not ready to deliver the type of content that we need to do the marketing messages that they typically do, which is scary, right? because the execution is not there, which has been there for the last decade, right? Or two, they don't have the budget anymore, or they're pulling budget or trying to save money because they're losing their ass on this stupid subscription. They're pulling budget from the marketing machine that is Call of Duty and for the first time ever, they actually have competition this year, right? They have Battlefield coming out, right? And so

it's I worry I I'm worried I'm worried that they're not going to execute against this. And the fact that they're iterating on Call of Duty Black Ops is actually kind of a good thing, but it's also a little bit scary that they don't have another game coming, right? They're not doing the different thing. Anyway, I'm worried. I'm worried about where Microsoft is going and this is all very very scary and bad bad juju and bad signs. So anyway, that's my take on this. I mean, but I'm confused because the second part of his quote you have here is the whole goal was to really do something different for us to zag and show up in a unique way and one point in doing that is almost not doing any pre-promotion and giving it to players in a really unex so is was it the trailer or is it the game he's talking about? Eric, so there's this thing I was reading Michael B. Jordan, you may know him as the lead actor in Sinners. He was referring to something that I think Denzel Washington said. He says, "You don't want to be overexposed." You know, you don't want to give yourself away for free when you charge for it on the weekends. Call of Duty has just been

overexposed, Eric. You don't understand. You don't understand what's coming. It's going to be shock value. They're overexposed. [Music] Battlefield's edging in. Uh, buckle in. No. Well, well. [Music]