Microsoft Buys Zenimax, EPIC V Apple, Subscription, & Tencent | Roundtable News | Episode 236

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what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the number one podcast game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brain and fam as always and i am here with my special guest uh the one and only the unofficial second host reid what's up what's what's up how you doing i'm doing good all right man uh it's been a while man uh exactly a month a lot of things have been happening and i kind of want to catch up with you with uh a little bit of the same thing right i don't see the virus any better than before it's kind of similar to how

it's been and you can't really talk about other things but besides that so let me check up with you how are you doing no i'm doing good you know yeah um you know still working from home which is it's it's a lot man all the zoo meetings sitting in the same chair all day like it's it's taking its toll for sure um but um but you know still got a job still here hanging in so it's it's going good great man so uh let's go right into it i know we're starting a little later than usual this is our routine monthly roundtable news so let's just jump up look at these trends these transitions though like what's going on so uh ray graham as always every month we go over round table news events that have happened uh most uh recently microsoft bought zenimax so the last time we talked about

the the next gen consoles um let's talk about that man what pandemic do we have a pandemic people are losing their jobs is it even a thing man it's been sold out ps5 xbox series x even geforce cards within five minutes have been sold out everywhere uh what's your commentary like tech geeks and nerds are okay it seems yeah well folks are also saying that the supply has been around the same as it was in the past especially around the the 30 80 cards but i'm struggling to believe that i'm pretty sure there must have been some sort of production problems and so that's why you know these things are taking these things are all just selling out immediately like i or maybe the demand is higher because everybody's home and just wants to play video games i don't know but like i i can't believe that the that the supply has been unfazed by the pandemic yeah uh

i'm actually really surprised i mean of course a lot of it are like about a bunch of like ponders or flippers right who are instantly putting it on ebay and knowing that the demand is high i think this is a lot higher than anybody anticipated to be honest like every console generation launched have always been people lining up and in this case online waiting pressing the refresh page uh this was within five minutes and these consoles are not cheap 500 and then those cards are around that much too didn't you know that that there was that many people with good enough pcs ready to run like 30 70s 3080s man i was very surprised by all that well it's only the 30 80s right and it apparently a lot of bots a lot of bots picked up a lot of the 3080 sleeves i i know i want one i didn't i managed not to be able to get one uh but um but i also wasn't really

trying that hard either i was just like if they're if they're available they're available if not i guess i don't get one so i'm not really sweating it that much um i'm more surprised about the consoles just selling out immediately although they always sell out but i guess this this time around there were it was the fastest i've seen the pre-order sell out um so yeah like just because people want to play games you know and and i think on the console side like the xbox um series series s um the pre-orders for all of that open today i believe but then those sold out right um and the series that's like that price is right man like you know what is it 2.99 that's that's that's a nice price for um for a next-gen i'll put that in quotes console right that's gonna sell it real real fast well like kind of help me paint a picture here of course the 500 is a sweet spot they've known for generation that that seems to be the right price where

people don't like go up in arms and try to burn down buildings right so 500 is the the sweet spot and there were rumors that once xbox kind of revealed their numbers that uh sony responded and were somewhat prepared to kind of match that the lower uh tier console and this seems to be the first where they're offering two versions and for sony it seems a little bit more straightforward where uh their lower tier is basically a stripped out version without the blu-ray drive it's just hard drives but it seems like the xbox version is a little bit more complicated than that it's not just without disk drive what exactly is that i didn't read too too into it's clock down clock down gpu so it's the same cpu same cpu but the gpu is locked down uh so you want you know you're not gonna get you're not gonna get a 4k you're not gonna get 4k yeah it's it's made for 1080p

um and uh what is the other thing oh yeah and memory um the memory is is lower i think it's it's only uh 10 kids or something like that of memory uh so how does does that let me check well i guess the development of games doesn't get too affected right i mean you're still nowadays i i have i i've been debating this with people a lot um and i think this whole notion of like you get a scale and that's what that's what um xbox is going that's what microsoft's going for right they're like hey you can just scale down your graphics right the performance target is 100 yeah it's 1440p at 60fps for the series s and so they're like oh yeah just scale down the resolution and you're good right and and scale back some of the effects and you're good um but then also you know the ram is only 10 gigabytes where the xbox series series x is 16 gigabytes um that's uh

that's the sizeable difference in the amount of memory that you have and yeah maybe smaller textures is is the answer but then you know you can't really focus on a unique experience for the series x right you always have to make the experience also be able to be played on the series s uh so maybe you know maybe you you can only stick with graphical features that you turn off and on and you really can't deliver a different experience um so that's something um we'll see how how it pans out in reality if most developers ignore series s and then the games just run like crap on series series s or um or what happens with that right but uh but i i can imagine like the skew is going to present some problems for scalability and quality and the type of experiences that you have when you talk about purely next gen now if you're talking about if you're talking about

this gen xbox one xbox one x games game pass that's a completely different story and series s can play those games well right and and people will be [ __ ] fine and ms will get more game pass subscribers and and in the world to be great yeah it's um i don't know like i guess for people who don't know uh they would go for the lower console i guess for parents they're kind of targeting for that for xbox i guess it is a good move the digital and it's also a digital box right so it's perfect for game best right there's no risk you just connect it and you're playing game pass games and you're you scribe and you're good to go right well i mean that that brings on to the medius of the other topics so the last time you we we talked at round table and we kind of mentioned many round tables before

you know content is king right and holy [ __ ] microsoft is coming at it hard i think the last i read was they have now over 21 first party studios with with the acquisition of the testa so we're talking about fallout we're talking about doom wolfenstein dishonored quake oh my god elder scrolls that is yo when this first got reported when this first guy reported i was like because everybody like it just came through trickled through my timeline yeah and people were like oh microsoft bethesda and my initial reaction was like so and and mostly and that's harsh but it was mostly because you know okay yeah skyrim morrow wind starfield is is in the works right um those are big ips uh they're just not my type of

is that something to get me excited about right like you know i'm not gonna decide about any of those games um [ __ ] you i bet you'll fall out yeah fallout as well and like it's just yeah i'm beside a big fan of those games for various various reasons right um and then i looked again i was like oh wait no they bought xenobats and then i got way more excited right because yes um id and arcane come along for the ride and then it's like oh okay that that makes way more sense you're talking about dishonored you're talking a death loop that is still in development you're talking you're talking doom which is an amazing amazing game uh you're talking uh what's uh wolfenstein you mentioned quake you know like this that's that's those are those are games that i'm like i'm like oh okay those are some like legit games right and the whole package is a whole bunch of ip right and like we're saying yes contents king you know this stuff is immediately going

on game pass right like immediately post haste let's go on game pass right so that we could have uh a broader selection of games that people could play and pay for this like low low muffy fee that everybody's talking about what a great value it is right 299 plus whatever you pay per month and you could play doom and wolfenstein and and dishonored as much as you want right plus everything else like that that's that's yeah it's a pretty big pretty big deal yeah so like the game pass actually brings me to another point so of course with with i think even before that news you know sony uh president was is the president who was being asked jim ryan right so who's that guy he's one of the head honchos over there their english guy um was he english but he was asked about if playstation is

going to offer a similar thing so with playstation ps5 they recently had their event the biggest thing is that uh they they said the biggest ps4 titles will be playable day or something right for ps5 owners uh which is huge uh as part of their uh playstation plus subscription right that's cool yeah and of course the question is what about future day one exclusives ps uh ps5 exclusive are those are ever going to be on the service day one and so that that his response and let me read that response and i want to know your thoughts and i'll give you my thoughts afterwards um let's see uh he said what has been over the emergence of last year's into absolute powerhouse in terms of the hardware lineup well his main thing i'm searching for i'll look for the quote in a bit was that you know these games are over a hundred millions of dollars it doesn't make sense to just offer for ten dollars uh day one um

which i get it but it made me cringed a bit because it's like this is a very old way of thinking here and this you know this kind of for the first time i actually gasped anticipating wow this is when xbox actually will gain some major grounds because this is how sony who is king of the hill right now right with their 50 60 offering per game they don't want to change that they want to keep that gravy train going well let's be real let's be real let's just state the facts yeah gamers will pay sixty dollars or seventy dollars or even 80 dollars for a sony studios game yeah did they when it comes to consoles when it comes to when i say consoles i'm talking playstation xbox specifically um ain't nobody really beating out the doors for

whatever microsoft was coming with right no no like let's just be let's be real about it right and so and so people are beating down the doors for for sony stuff right because every game they come out with that has the sony studios logo on it is is a hit and it's a banger right and they think that they could continue to do that and yeah why give it why give it away for ten dollars a month right when when you can sell millions and millions of copies of of the game you know what i mean yeah uh they don't they don't feel they need to do that although i think um i think eventually over time after you after you squeeze all the money out of it then then yeah put it put it on the playstation plus collection like i'm sure that will happen and i assure that playstation post collection will get more games as time goes on because they already have batman on there already right which is kind of like a third

party title um and so they will they'll do more of that right but yeah why put miles morales on on that thing when they know people are just going to light up to buy that you know for 80 and spiderman was my game of the year last year right or was it last year yeah last year yeah right when when like i'm i'm buying this like it's there's no doubt i'm buying this you know what i mean right so like why why they don't need to do what microsoft's doing because quite frankly ain't nobody really buying those microsoft games there's not enough games or there was just not enough games for people to buy and that's also why microsoft is making the big play on content content content and game pass like they want to amass subscribers is there a platform they're a platform that spans more than just games and consoles very platform across across the to your computer as

well um and sony's like no we're just going to give you good games and and you will buy them right so well let me ask you this man yeah um and we didn't mention this yet aside from the mega news and this is within like five days right before the making news of zenimax being acquired they announced microsoft camp announced the ea play as being the game pass that's all year we're talking games mass effect all the sports games all the star wars games all the respawn games i'm about to say about this i'm also about to say kind of similar thing right like microsoft needs content like game pass is going to be a never-ending black hole for content like it it will just always need more content because you have to continue to provide value to people that are spending a monthly price um i don't know what the long-term

effects of that will be in terms of like the the price of games and all that kind of stuff right and i don't know how microsoft can make back all the money that they're spending because you think ea play being on game passes ea student out of the kindness of their hearts no they're doing that for a big for a big-ass check right so um so i don't i like we'll see how how this goes you know and honestly i heard about the ea play stuff and i'm like yeah unless i'm a big time madden player or a fifa player um i don't care so much you don't get so you all right yeah with the news of ea play with the news of zenimax you still put sony on top like at least marginally better on consoles on xbox and on playstations so day one buy is still playing station five the top the top games that get released

are what name the name the top games that pop into your head and it's it's gonna be horizon zero done it's probably going to be uncharted it's going to be god of war it's going to be less of us part 2 right final fantasy sounds like it's going to be the time exclusive as well right and then and then demonstrates dark souls and like the list goes on right and then you you talk about what's on what's on microsoft it's like yeah those games are cool too i guess but they're not they're just it's not the same leak we're talking about here you know it's just not the same um and so microsoft microsoft's coming with content content content content collide it with content make it cheap uh it's a super good value like if i was like in the market right now for a new console and i had no video games and i had no allegiances like of course like i'm i'm going to get a i'm going to get a series s like of course

all right man like that that it definitely made things a lot more interesting i really thought like microsoft was just gonna go in with you know hello infinite and the bad press it's going and going with and then another gears of war i was like wow guys you need to step this up and then they have you know everything now i feel like they have everything else besides what sony has and it's becoming way more interesting i think than the last gen console uh it seems like it's more competitive at the very least uh that these two companies have really uh some ammunition to play with now uh i love i love this quote that i've seen from uh jim ryan though i think it's hilarious actually yeah it was cool trying to find for this here's here's one quote though i don't know but it's one of them uh we think that if gamers are making a decision on a piece of hardware that is going to last them for several years they want certainty they want certainty

that it's going to be future-proofed they want certainty that when it comes to upgrade their television to a 4k version for example the ps5 will be completely compatible i agree with them man like the s like i kind of knew that it was gonna be short-changed a bit but hearing what you said it's like that's that's a big it is it does to me it does 4k like for like video playback but it doesn't do for games yeah like it's just that come out even the nintendo switch is going coming with a 4k you can't be an xbox and have a lower tier version yeah i don't know about that move i mean i'll be interested to see how many moms get tricked into buying the lower version of that and yeah and everything but uh i don't know i i i do like the honest the more honest approach is sony it's like it's literally without the drive or not and that's a you know that's a real decision for the next gen is like do we really need hard

drives anymore i mean not hard to have disc anymore you don't yeah and everyone seems to be downloading he's like that's fine so it seems like for me uh the old mentality a lot of people i know like friends that we have are still going for the disc version for no reason right because it's been years since we bought anything disc wise but they still go for the disc version but but like on the xbox on the xbox i think so if you want performance you want the the full performance you have to fix the distance right um and i think that this version still comes in handy if you have any sort of uh other disk media like blu-ray drives or hd dvds or anything like that um it's useful for that well uh let's let's talk about and move on another topic so like obviously i don't know you did you even get a pre-order any of the consoles no no no you're waiting dude like no it's like this right i i recently bought a new computer all right wait wait what kind of cpu you're waiting

did you get the threadripper no i just got a ryzen uh 3900xt right that's cute um if you're gonna go amd man go amd i wasn't trying to i wasn't trying to spend 12 grand on on just something cpu right um but no but uh like and it's decent like it's like decent it's good it's because it's it's it's fine right and um so now i'm just waiting on the gpu so like so gpu wise right at this point at this point it looks like i'm gonna wait i'm gonna wait and see for the right reason i'm not waiting for the amd amd when amd shows their stuff right i would expect um nvidia to have supply back in order i would also expect there might be some new nvidia stuff available uh and then see like what the story is right um at that point uh i'm not in rush but the only rush the only time i have is i need to have something before cyberpunk comes out yeah that's good so let me ask you this

right being the graphics guy uh obviously 3090 looks very attractive it's it's the best out of the three it does not look very attractive well like we want to ask for the price is it worth it just for a few frames from the 30 80. so 3080 is the better buy what have you okay so so there's some rumors and leaks that that came out over the weekend i believe about the 20 gig version about the about no about well that but also the 30 90 some benchmarks got leaked it's not that great and then it's showing it's showing ten percent increase over over 30 80 for double the price now now i don't know about i don't know about you but i ain't trying to spend double the money for something that's only 10 percent more performance like that's not that doesn't seem like a sound financial decision that i would be making so that that seems like a complete waste

of money right it has way more vram and all that right but the way more vram doesn't seem to be uh substantially crazy a practical it doesn't seem to be a practical issue today it doesn't seem to be an issue that affects benchmarks for the games that you're gonna be playing today maybe it will affect the games you're playing two years from now maybe right but today having 24 gigabytes of vram uh and paying twice the price and getting 10 percent of the performance uh 10 more performance uh doesn't seem like a wise decision um and so then it's it's the 30 80 and the 38 is the one that's in the in the right price point right it's it's it's expensive but it but it's still in the rice right price brain where it's not crazy down you know what i mean but i still think most people probably just get the 30 when the 37d is actually available but out of the three if you were to

buying the nvidia and not wait for it it's the 38. yeah yeah just like just like my uh you know just like the 10 series 1070s and the 1060s or the more popular cars and and then uh in the 20 series 2060 super 2070s super are the more popular cars because they're the ones that are more affordable and still get pretty good performance and then the enthusiasts are doing like 20 80 ti's and the crazy expensive um cards well let me ask you this uh the the next uh question is um yeah i'm sure you're you're riveting because your old your old bosses are kind of like railing it in uh too epic i thought by now that it would simmer and like we kind of guess i'm sorry yeah leading up to december 30th right i

was like i was like who's my old boss what's your boss the one before now not the pair company but the apple company yeah so they they've been going at it hard uh since a month ago so kind of give you guys an update the listeners out there that are not like at the edge of your seat following this uh they they got pushed back for uh not pulling all games that are made in unreal right they just said that's bull that's crazy all right simmer down uh but they followed that up with trying to continue to get that going um like there was a follow-ups uh suit let me pull that up so i don't miss quote where apple is again pursuing to pull the support of unreal games in ios did you hear about that no i didn't hear about that

uh well i don't i know they try to pull it and then the judge ruled that you can't do that yeah so they had a follow-up uh to that so let me uh let me do that there instead epic unreal mouth mac in ios but more more importantly right they've been trying to uh downplay how basically effective um [ __ ] let me change over to your camera because my camera's getting hot but uh essentially what they're saying is that apple well epic is playing this game because a lot of their engagement has been going down right well yeah yeah i saw that quote yeah it's not that cool but then epic of course came back saying that's you know they kind of cherry picked certain data to to show that in in reality they've been 30 up since october 2019 or something like that so fortnite is still doing good i mean

after a month of i feel it's getting worse have your views changed uh with what's going on over there you think that everything's gonna wrap up by december still well did i say that last time i can't remember what i said but the last time you said that this is all gonna wrap up from fortnite and app uh epic can't afford this um and they're gonna grovel at some point not publicly but privately and they're gonna be back on the ios yeah yeah yeah i think my prediction is still like yeah end of the year um before the end of the year should feel all handled there's there's a whole lot of there's a whole lot of trash talking going on but uh yeah i expect the end of the year be fine yeah i mean what do you really feel that epic is still trying to win for everybody i mean what is what is it really do they really feel that they can get their discount are they fighting for that

what's your opinion on that no no what are they fighting for right now it's just safe face i i don't know what's going on right now honestly i have no idea i'm just like i'm just like just watching to see what happens right like um i don't see i don't see apple negotiating quite frankly you know what i mean especially with all the trash talking that's going on i don't see apple negotiating and like you said before apple don't need don't need any one particular developer like they got money coming in regardless right so yeah i don't see the ending well personally it just seems to be such an unwinnable fight that they both know and for some reason no one's backing down is this what rich people do they just keep fighting until until they run out of money i don't know

obviously i just got the popcorn man i'm just like yo it's crazy man like every time i look at this i'm just so surprised that they're auntie up like they're going harder every time and it doesn't seem like epic has any chance and apple is never going to back down they're making more money than before uh i don't understand like it was fun to watch but now it's just dumb and like to add on to that right while apple's getting richer you know they're coming out with new watches and [ __ ] uh epic again is in more crazier trouble with the government successfully blocking tick tock and now they're going after 10 cent right i'm sure you saw that right yeah absolutely and at first 10 cent uh at first it wasn't tencent it was just mostly wechat

and uh and other apps from china that was very popular but we falsely i think believed that the game companies were safe for some reason but now that that has settled it seems like they're analyzing every company including epic riot uh and everything else that tencent does within the united states yeah how do you feel about the man this is like i'm not very political i don't really care when it comes to that but there are some things that i do agree with you know just being asian it doesn't like i still feel like that the china exchange i love it i love it i love it because you're like i'm not very political but because now they're [ __ ] with my peoples no no no i'm saying the opposite like even with chinese i feel like it's an unfair exchange right obviously i'm more american i'm not even chinese but like you know we're all one over there

but like it's definitely a fair unfair exchange they're constantly stealing american technology rebranding it and and and just you know re-populate with with a billion people but like over here we're we're starting to really use their app and they're getting stronger too like tick-tock is a phenomenon tencent has a huge grip on the game industry and many many other companies that we probably aren't aware of and uh if left unchecked i mean what does that mean um i can only see it as a disaster and we're already seeing effects of that it's not like we're one step and we're like 100 steps in and trying to back out a bit and the whole thing's crazy right because we were talking about oh they steal our technology right like we make all our technology over there right like you know all the apple phone stuff is still built over there and and there's like all those consoles are built over there and all those gpus that we're just talking about are built over there right so like are they really stealing anything like i don't think so bro

right like when we're out there using their labor to try to reduce the cost of our kids right um and so now and they have some app that they you know that they have some some monetary interest in here comes the government saying now we don't want we don't want that app here right it's just like yeah i don't want to go too crazy on your thing right but like but your president is tripping right like all right all right now you're canadian right so you think this is a over exaggeration of trying to somehow stop the bleeding of uh relying on outside resources you know it's just a way to apply pressure to try to re-negotiate trade deals like that's all this is and then and then what's going to

suffer is the people that just want to have some fun during the pandemic and make a tick-tock like you know what i mean like it's the most it's the most it's the most mundane stupid stuff that's going to suffer from your president wanted to negotiate better trade deals right like it's it's he's just tripping like let's just be real yeah what do you see this uh because i was for sure thinking tit talk was going to get bought out and everything's going to be cool surprised apparently apparently oracle bought them so now so now like whoa sky's limit for them you know yeah uh i'm being sarcastic by the way uh the hell of those again i think i think that's a horrible purchase but anyway uh i don't know why they did that yeah it really is it also just seems like people just get a richer fertile for no good reason and and it's it's just it's all of it's the

whole thing's silly i've already been following it too closely this is just really silly and it seems really stupid and the old president tripping it's definitely a a bizarre man all these news i feel like we're on an upswing right like uh everybody's buying cars everyone's buying consoles way more than i thought i seriously didn't think it would sell out that quick the stock market's going crazy too like like people have the stock market yeah yeah it has gone crazy it seems like all tech people are fine in a weird way and there seems to be a huge disparity uh between everybody right now like you i know friends that are out of jobs they're having a tough time then i know friends that got two ps fights that's like what i gotta it's so weird and uh and now we're

hearing things like this not just the tencent stuff but you know just companies infighting with other companies um vying for better money it doesn't seem like the time to do this you know i mean i don't know how you are but like people are going through like mental fatigue and illness right now yeah dude like i'm i'm are you [ __ ] with everyone entertaining yeah i'm 100 with you man it's just it's just the the big dudes at the table with the stacks of cash gambling on our lives really you know like that's just you know yeah i kind of wish everyone just be cool and just pass let's let this year just pass through without any worries man now people are worried about if they're going to be able to play fortnite or all this [ __ ] which i don't think will get to that extent but yeah it doesn't seem like a

we need positive news it doesn't seem like we've been getting any good news lately i mean like this last two weeks uh i'm sure you were like stuck in the house because of the fires you know i was too like i wouldn't go outside in my backyard yeah so going even harder with quarantine yeah i think it took it took a bit out of me too and like even at this point i'm just like yeah i need another vacation i need to i need this to chill for a minute and just recharge from all the craziness i know a lot of people struggling with that a lot of people also struggling with not being able to see family or are concerned about going back home to see family um being in the house all the time people that do have jobs are on zoo meetings all day dude which is which is which is so insane even even me doing this this with you i'm just like damn this this is you've been doing this all day i've been doing this all day dude it's it's it's a lot it's a lot right so first of all it started with us all right so if anything you cut back other

stuff you tell all your bosses no yeah i just like i'm not working today excuse you guys [Laughter] it is crazy because on top of that you know my kid is going through it too you know you're talking about adults but kids who are going through uh schooling right now doing online you know most of the teachers don't know how to do i get i guess like a lot of businesses they don't know how to do online interaction yeah they they tend to over book hours like he's sitting there five hours in front of a computer uh because they're treating it as if they're in in class and i'm like you guys are idiots what are you doing first before all this you were complaining about how they were staring the screen too much and now you're literally making them stare at a screen for five hours and i don't know man i i yeah this this and that's that's the other topics like i know folks with with children who are working and the kids are doing

the class and the kids are home and it's a mess and like and and they're you they're clearly stressed out and they're doing there's a lot going on and they're just trying to make it through it's it's it's hard out here man it's hard for everybody for real yeah yeah let me kind of dig this i found this article and it's when we're talking about uh the inner workings of this let me look this up so this this article uh especially let me pull this up so this article right here um what's cool about this bag before there's a lot of like private emails made public oh yeah yeah yeah so i don't know you've been reading it before you sleep like i do just like a good night story right but uh a lot of details a lot about their

private well especially epic right they're a private company so they don't really reveal numbers unless they have to um but in this one in particular they were talking about how the lead up to it um you know all those threats that like sweden was making like i think we commented on how immature it felt uh about like uh how he if apple didn't give him his way that he would do all these things like a bunch of empty threats and i don't know man like when i'm looking through this i feel like apple have professionally been through this many times before like this isn't new to them and they kind of have like a routine that they were going through and epic seems like the new kid on the block like mentioning like we mentioned many times before who's just i don't understand this like it doesn't seem like epic like epic is okay not

winning this right but they're fighting so hard as if they're gonna win something and i don't i'm i'm trying to understand the business side of us why are they doing this like is this really making more people play more fortnite is this are there a lot of companies you know siding with epic and sitting together with them in zoom meetings to discuss how to take down apple i mean are they expecting governors and senators to sit together and talk about how apple's monopolizing everything because recently they they came out with their apple uh subscription model right which is combining everything which i actually should have done that i i swear i i i mentioned this like years before with you right it's like why aren't they doing like what prime does just combine every [ __ ] product they have into one subscription model and then it seems of value right of course spotify

comes out saying it's anti-competitive you know because now for five dollars extra on top of apple music uh becomes very uh attractive right for for for apple users to not use spotify or any other subscription and just buy apple one or whatever yeah like i mean like real talk real talk for a family for a family plan yeah i i i already spent i have apple apple music and for a family plan i already pay 14.95 yeah right um for for a family plan for apple music um if you're telling me i could get a family plan and you could add apple tv plus apple tv plus i currently get apple tv plus for free right but until only for a year um and some some cloud storage for for like five bucks more like yeah okay like why

not like that seems pretty pretty reasonable yeah like so as a consumer it's when uh for them controlling iphone it's a win i don't understand the strategy of people complaining like it seems such a loser mentality to me um they're a business that grew their own thing from nothing and now that the equivalent is this to me right i don't see people going like you don't see costco pulling kirkland tinfoil off the shelves or kirkland meet you know uh like all these warehouses and stores they tend to kind of brand their own stuff do knock offs of these other bands and they sell it and they sell really well because then they own the place right they they can do that yeah and so before i see that being taken off the

shelves at costco i don't see why apple or in in in the digital era uh where any of these companies oh anybody anything like i i feel like it's it's been i guess are people complaining about apple one is that what's happening yeah man so like spotify uh immediately afterwards uh especially saying this is anti-competitive right uh they're they're because not only that they have like apple fitness thing um sure yeah yeah with the you know and they're going to do a peloton i think amazon's kind of doing that too they they they recently did like a fight everybody everybody's looking at peloton going uh yeah we want all that yeah yeah so amazon and apple amazon 2 right is coming out like with the podcast kind of like what spotify did and so like amazon and apple is kind of doing the same moves in this pandemic where they're you know taking what's popular and doing

their own version all right just the costco model right just like every company if if spotify wants to be competitive they should also become a platform and and make a bunch of other software and then bundle it together and and then they will also to be competitive but they don't own a platform so yeah sucks to be you i guess right like that's you know i don't know if people are gonna at the news of apple one are gonna just leave droves like i don't see that happening no i mean right now spotify has a lot more subscribers and i think there is a lot of value for a singular focus company doing one thing really well although you know music apple music and spotify shared like pretty much the same library but i still you know for a non-apple user and even if i was using apple i still prefer spotify because again they're focused right and it seems like they're doing something dude because it's not like you've been an apple right it's not like they have the same size team for every

little apple one subscription model i mean they are different departments but for doing so much you're generalizing yourself you're not as focused uh in each area until it grows to a certain it's not their main point of the business and they're doing that a lot to kind of leverage and kind of harken back to what xbox you know is doing that they're not caring at this point although they do have an influx of quality of content more so than two weeks ago right they don't care about that they're going for quantity and uh people are okay with that and apple and apple doesn't seem to really be going for the quantity right like they're charging they're charging a pretty cheap price and they're really focusing on these in my experience um more quality like more high quality fewer high quality things is kind of what they're going for even with apple arcade every game i see that advertises apple arcade i'm like oh

i would i would play that that looks pretty dope like this they seem to be really picking good good things for their services so you you try the apple arcade let me let me as i've been i haven't i haven't i haven't tried it um but i've seen games uh you know i've seen games say hey i'm on a upper arcade and i'm like oh that looks like an interesting game too bad i'm not paying for this um and now that they have this apple one thing it's like oh okay well it makes sense maybe now right so what the let me ask you this right it doesn't seem like the reason why i'm talking about apple it seems like the tech industries are kind of merging with games lately right um xbox with playstation especially right now are vying for third party to become first party the strategy of winning have always been if you can't buy them outright then you just duplicate and just offer it cheaper to the

consumer and then lev and like off offload any any losses with other parts of our company right do you see ever that being issued directly with games with game developers with playstation and xbox doing what they're doing do you feel like it's hurting us in that way i mean outside of what apple is doing with epic like none of this really matters to us but will it matter to us if we continue this kind of like big conglomerate doing what they want and just all the mom and pop shops pretty much amazon right don't exist anymore well yeah i think that's been happening a long time in video games right like the big publishers have been taking over um and then then there was kind of like the indie boom with a bunch of indie games everybody's like oh yeah this is a lot better because now we have a bunch of indie developers uh but these days a lot of indie developers are signing up on these big platforms right because they want the

guaranteed money and guaranteed revenue and at the highest high end there's really only a few are a handful of companies that make all of the games at the high end right um that's been happening for a long time and and so now everybody's like okay how do we make more money right or how do we add more value get more users uh subscription services the money's always is always reliable because it's coming every month right um and then the more people you have more money you make period right um it's interesting to see uh what effect that will have on the industry in terms of like the cost of games people's expectations for the cost of games because they're like hey i could pay five dollars a month how come you're charging me 15 for this game right i play i can play a hundred games for five dollars a month why am i gonna buy your game for 20

well let me ask you that like with apple arcade xbox going the subscription model uh sony playstation is definitely putting a lot of money behind their first party games maybe they'll throw up a couple of breadcrumbs to to independent games to kind of get more more stuff in their library if they're all kind of going for quantity do you feel like developers are going to eventually hit a problem where their game is not getting financed enough uh because they're not caring about spending too much money on you just to get some kind of con like an hour experience do you feel like there's a kind of stoppage there i i think developers already have a hard time finding money anyway but uh and i don't know if um i don't know if i don't know if like we'll just get a bunch of small games but i think we're still gonna have the same size games that we're gonna have right um but i just think we're

just gonna have fewer of them or fewer developers making them uh maybe um i i'm just not i'm not sure i'm not sure like what's gonna happen honestly but i i think with the whole move just i think sony is not really moving the subscription they're more focused they're still focused on the traditional way of making games internal studios big money spend five years come out with a dope game right and sell to a whole bunch of people um microsoft is taking it differently apple apple's also apple these with their model like at least they're paying uh the developers like some reasonable amount of money so that they feel that they've they've made enough money from their game in order to put it on that arcade right um i don't know like i i don't know exactly how microsoft is funding these things and most of the games that are on gamepads are actually either old or first party titles right

um so i think microsoft was trying to make that money back through through just having users on the platform okay so let me look that up we're about the hour mark i just i'm curious about how much subscribers they have so far um for game pass for game pass the last time i thought was 15 million yeah so they said they had uh currently 15 million paying 15 million though like people are fifteen uh yeah that's the thing last thing like there was all sorts of one dollar deals and free deals right like who knows how many like how many of these are actually paying the the ten dollars a month um but even five bucks but that's nice but that's so that's the way but that's the way to grow your customer base right you give deals you grow get the people and they stay yeah and then you get the money right so um what's that quick math 50 like 550 million dollars

a month yes yeah you know they're also doing game pass for pc right yeah yeah that's probably what i'm buying into to be honest that's that's an even bigger population of people quite frankly right because how many xboxes are out there again what's the number on xboxes xbox one xbox one uh sales sales numbers how many 75 million dollars a month see like that's what i mean man this is the netflix model right obviously what worried me about jim ryan what he said was like hey these are over 100 million dollars to to make we wouldn't want to offer it day one it doesn't make any sense yeah it was like have you heard of netflix i mean literally these movies are 200 million dollar movies and they put it on netflix and because they have like over what 200 million subscribers right is is that flex does is that returning a profit yet no i think they're still i think they

still make a lot of money they just spend more money to exactly yeah and and they're they're spending big on content acquisition right they're spending big on funding movies and stuff which is cool because a lot of uh underrepresented voices and smaller things that wouldn't get funded it's the new movie theater especially now right i think yeah but they have to eventually make money sometimes there has to be someone if they stop spending money one month then yeah they will make money but like uh so i want to end it with this right so even with me calculating 15 million subscribers at five dollars right but their their thing is ten dollars so just half that's 75 million dollars a month for it microsoft you know i don't know how many consoles they ever sold in a month but ain't 75 mil 75 is impressive it's a start i mean it is very attractive like even as a pc player where i don't maybe i don't want to get an xbox game pass seems like a really cool

addition if i get a sony console um because sony doesn't have any other option i think they're playing it really smart they're playing the nintendo version of well yeah here's here's how i'm on cdm like maybe it's game pass on pc um or just maybe i just buy games on pc most of those games are going to show up in xbox that are xbox exclusives are going to be playable on pc if that's a better resolution with your new yeah yeah invest in a good pc you're good to go right and then just buy buy a ps5 and you're that you have your bases covered right all right so last question there i i know we kind of glaze over this um your best guess man because i am always fighting for the little guy that's why i'm in my my key here uh i'm always curious i feel like the gap is getting bigger right with what they're calling quad a now right oh

stop it i do i heard it like five times from five different studios right yeah yeah they need to stop that man it's catching on bro oh my gosh so it's quad a so it's even costing more now um yeah people want bigger games faster um these console makers are snatching up a lot of studios and it doesn't feel like a huge uh push from at least the console guys to kind of finance independent games right it's still through like angel investors for most of it yeah sure right it's from outside influence do you feel this generation seems like there was a good amount of indie games just nota and all these like really good games coming out do you feel that slowing down next-gen uh with all this content going on to game pass like more than ever before well all i've

seen is that i don't know if it's slowing down but i've seen the quality go up okay yes that's that's more what i'm seeing i'm seeing indie games that are even higher quality more more and more you know uh that's that's the only thing i'm really out of everything do you think that's going to make it harder for any guys to kind of um of course going to cost more you're you're competing with um you're also competing with other established games right so i think i i just think making games in general is as the years go on and the technology improves and as as everything happens it's good to be it's just getting more expensive even for indy unless the indies make real real concerted efforts to lower costs right but it's it's prices are just going up on everything because also technology is getting more advanced and

and yeah it's just going to cost more and so the so that there has to be ways of coming up with ways of reducing development times or reducing development costs in order for it to be uh not a drain on the costs but still get the same result right i will say this though um as my camera gets back on i will say this um i don't i don't think the impact of what this pandemic uh has done to the industry has been felt yet right and it's not going to be felt till early next year or the year after because a lot of indie studios are not shipping on time a lot of aaa games that were in development are being pushed back i feel like next year we're going to feel that i feel november we're going to feel that with a lot of more closure layoffs in my life maybe maybe i don't know i think i think in november nobody's going to talk about anything in the video game

industry other than cyberpunks like i i i think maybe that would be a good time to lay off people because like the media will not notice because they'll be too busy writing a hundred articles a day about cyberpunk that in the mike tyson fight yeah but i'm really worried man because it's uh like the stock market right we've been on this uptrend um with the graphic cards the console you know it seems like the games are doing well on twitch and everything i'm just waiting to hit that peak there's going to be a peak because i'm hearing you know through my network a lot of games are being pushed back vertical slices and all this stuff [Music] consistently being delayed because of the how people are working remotely is not being effectively figured out yet right it takes a lot of time and i think i think some companies have figured it out and they're like yeah we're doing this forever and then other

companies like when it comes to games the game companies are just like flailing or flailing around though do they they are struggling hard man in my opinion like independent people who've done freelancing on the side who kind of hustled before are thriving but like most most with especially parents are having such a tough time right now and like i i think any developers especially are having a tough time finding funding uh because try try asking for millions on a zoom call it's not the same it's it's not quite the dog and pony show that people are used to because people kind of feel that in a room right and the zoom calls like how many millions is like you know it's most likely being zoomed from a shitty apartment like mine right here and it's like how should i trust you so a lot of those are being canceled man i don't feel like anybody is investing in anything right now

unless it's like you know i know it's i have no insight but i i do like the market man people are going crazy on the market and people are waiting for the for the market to correct you know uh maybe it's maybe the election will help will help correct that i don't know um so if you're if your president gets re-elected maybe the market goes even crazier i think he needs to start defining him as my president people are gonna send me hate mail now yeah i love it i love i love doing that though i love it it's my favorite thing to do for you there's madness going on on all fronts for sure but uh let me uh let me close up this hour man it's it's always yeah i mean the energy for this one i don't know man like i i think because mostly for me though i just recently i think two days ago i finally went outside because of the the smoke and dude it was it was hard two weeks

man usually i'm pretty closed off from society before this whole thing but that was a real test to my ability to not do anything i would shoot like the first day that it cleared up up here it was like it was like oh yeah this is much better you know and then also up here we had the whole like it was all over the internet the whole like red orange skies that was crazy dude that was crazy so yeah it's it's it's it's a lot better now so well wait till uh i can't wait for what october brings every month seems to be something hopefully hopefully it's it's uh it's very low-key yeah well this is something about this year man i feel like an alien's gonna pop out i i i i'm wagering money on it man because you know every year california has a fire but this fire was crazier than any other year ever it wasn't just this fire there was like many fires but that's what i mean it's like this is

a california theme but for some reason this year it's just crazier um los angeles still still yellow huh los angeles still got smoke going on even in los angeles trash dude it's always possible no not not not all the way down by by where all the rich people like you live but still like it's definitely crazy man well i want to thank you for for connecting talking kind of convincing me a bit i do see a comment for people who are talking about like uh 3090s are good for devs i mean do you even recommend it at all for des for doing virtual production or any of that yeah i guess if you do something that has like a crazy high view right like the like you know pure compute stuff and like you're using a lot of memory for like uh compute buffers and and things like that yeah it it makes more sense in that case force was a gamer not much sure but but if i'm like hey i'm gonna play cyberpunk 2077 doesn't matter uh you're just burning your money of course well uh let me ask you about

the threadripper man where's that check going on like in youtube channel or something there was youtube we're on facebook people are talking discord this is later than usual so not a lot of people are up at this time i usually do it in mid-afternoon but uh yeah man so cpu-wise right the threadripper it's like 2 000 cpu is that worth it for a developer oh hell yeah yeah for no for developer of course yeah like um i know a friend of mine got one for it like he's he's making an indie game right now and he's getting like he's getting like loving it he's getting single digit minutes of compile time of unreal [ __ ] oh my god yeah so that's that's that's amazing that's amazing uh productivity right so wow looks like i gotta upgrade dude i went through the pc part picker

and i was just gasping at the price because i had most the parts but just for that and getting the right motherboard for it i was like over four thousand dollars here's the thing right you do a lot of video editing video production right yeah which is which is which is ideal for multi-threaded situations and also beefy gpu situations as well quite right now um buying a threadripper and a 30-90 in your case you may see some substantial gains that makes a lot of sense to me i'm gonna have to talk to my wife and explain it the way you do i i need to spend and drop down four thousand dollars during a pandemic to play cyberpunk and do some some podcast editing oh man anyways i mean i mean like it depends on how much time you save on on rendering out those videos well

i've been swatching i've you know all those tests that people are doing it's like like a huge percentage uh faster and it's just one of those things where if you're dropping that much money for 30 90 might as well take care of the other side yeah all right if you just got you got thousands to burn like good good do it that's important i feel bad man like i see news like all these things being sold out and i don't know if i'm pushing my luck being okay or not buying these tech stuff and it seems i don't know i feel like something's going to happen where i lean you just chill out you don't know what november looks like i feel like november is going to be crazy for whatever reason we had an earthquake like earlier in the week just a random earthquake in the middle of the night um it's pretty big too anyways uh i want to thank you for

coming on to the show as always uh for sure i'm gonna throw actually let me do this man let me throw let me throw your contact so you can find me at brandon fam i'm getting blue champs in the youtube channel and let me i made a special graph for you man check this out damn oh god oh god oh look at that you can play your gram on twitter at water ass how do you pronounce it i always forget it's it's what a ross rat awesome that's water ass in my every time i see it i read it that way that's the main communication right for you yeah so ferrari listeners they're always a huge fan uh interact with the man ask them questions disagree with them i i implore you because a lot of this nonsense yeah i'm the only one batting it so feel free to throw it out there dude anyways it's what it's always right yeah

that's how you feel about it all right that's uh that's another roundtable news episode i'll see you guys next week you