TWIG #348 Roblox’s Big Bet, Blizzard's Mobile Chaos & Destiny Rising’s Flop

I just want a cafe of Fredo. What's that free coffee? It's their version of iced coffee. They're the only Europeans to have discovered that this [ __ ] exists.
Yeah. Cafe Fredo Megala parac. [Music]
Hello everyone and welcome to Twig 348. I am Jen Dano. fill the marketing and publishing role on the podcast today. So, in first chair, we have
Phil Black. Monetizations are dude, you were sleep old, man.
Oh, man.
I was reading a note from Levy.
Catch Levy. Just
now you can't say his last name. Ethan Levy.
Oh, whatever.
Oh, man. Not happen.
Eric, strategy investing. Mishkatkov, friend of the founders.
Friend of the founders.
No, Kalispera is what I'm saying now.

It's uh it's 6 PM. I could say Kalisper.
Oh, because you're trying to
Yes. Yes. Okay.
Here's what we got going on today. Destiny Rising. So, we're going to look back a little bit of the story of how we got here and then check in on how it's doing. Newu has a free Global Games Market Report 2025. It's out and we have the highlights. We are so lucky to get an early preview of that. So, lots to go over there. Blizzard has a new head of development. Well, new to the role, but not new to Blizzard. So, we're going to muse on where they're headed. Roblox RDC 2025 happened this past weekend. So, we have key takeaways. And then, a former B Bethesda executive is harsh on subscription services. Crest just absolutely couldn't resist the red meat from the story. So hang in to the end and you can hear us talk yet again around Xbox Game Pass and all of the challenges there. This time from an outsider, not from us. All right, Mishka, you just were trying to speak

Greek.
First week in Athens, kids went to international school, which is fun because my kids don't speak English as they're actually they didn't speak English, so they got trained. So now they're like one week in they are forced to speak English dayto-day. We got the house almost done. We only missing kitchen and all the furniture. So that's pretty fun cuz you know stuff from Finland hasn't arrived and we kind of came a little bit early so the kitchen's a bit late. And I experienced my first earthquake 5.2 Richtors. I don't know if that's a lot or if that's medium. I don't I don't know about earthquakes.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was like if you're looking this on the map like I put it in here Athens and the earthquake was like really close. It was on the marathon or I don't know how to pronounce it but anyway it was like 40 km from here and if you haven't experienced earthquakes I it like it felt like somebody roundhouse kicked our house and it was in the middle of night and I kind of woke up and I thought like like is somebody trying to get in and I was like I don't have a baseball bat like what should I

do and I'm like listening to the silence outside cuz the cuz not even the animals are talking. Anyways it was interesting. So, and then personal update, I'm learning Greek at the tender age of 40, and I can say that it's it's much more difficult than it seems to be to my kids who are like four and eight. Yeah. Phil, when are you jumping in on this Dualingo streak?
I I would say that I'm already adopting the Greek speed and I will be there before the end of the year, but things are moving at a unique pace
because you're in Cyprus, right? Well, I will be. Yes. Before the end of the year, hopefully.
Got it.
Like I said, Greek Greek speed. There's a couple things to figure out.
You know, things work out here. People speak English, which is, by the way, a big plus compared to Spain. No offense, Spain, but in Spain or in France, when you try to speak English, they look down on you and speak back their native tongue. Here, everybody speaks English, which is kind of like refreshing.
I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's easy.
All right, Mishka, let's get to shills.

Shills. Shills. Shills. So we had blog post, newsletter piece and a podcast with General Catalyst and PDX partner talking about UA financing. So we get like super deep into it. General Catalyst of course funding customer acquisition fund. It's much bigger mainly you know larger products SAS services and then PVX that is really focused on games. So, it's an interesting conversation that will make you feel stupid unless you're a CFO, but I definitely encourage everybody who's in that position choose their funding to listen. And then we have an event alert. So, Phil the Criot and Malis the Greek are coming in to Cyprus. So, we're joining GDC wise executive lounge event. It's going to be on October 3rd, 2025. They are kind enough to turn a room in a wine celler in a vineyard into a podcasting studio. So, we hope to get a couple of drinks in and record with

local founders. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but it's going to be fun.
I love that you did a a podcast on UA financing. I think we we're starting to get a lot of questions on that.
Was that Jeff Cohen?
No. So, Jeff Cohen works at PVX Partners. That was Joe Va Catholic, CEO and co-founder.
Got it.
Gotcha.
All right. So, my quick shill is that I just dropped a Roblox RDC recap podcast into the feed. So, that was with Joe Fen from GameFam and Stephen Dpiano from Max Power Gaming. So, we covered a bunch of the key topics and takeaways from the big Roblox RDC conference. We're actually going to dive into more. I picked two or three of the topics that I wanted to get your guys' feedback on that was coming out. I would have gone myself and Mishka, you actually said that I could have actually interviewed some Roblox people. So, I'm super bummed. I am actually grounded from traveling for the next four or five monthsish. And I'm getting a lot of questions of like, Jen, why didn't you

go and why can't you travel and what's going on? So, in a transparent version of myself, I'm going to do TMI and overshare like why I'm not going. So, I'm going to be out September 18th. So, you get one more pad cast from me and then I'm out for a monthish. And so, here's what's going on. I have to take a little medical leave and have surgery. Now, it's totally fixable. It has extremely high success rate, but it's going to sound a little bit crazy. So, just just hang in. So, I talk a lot about leaky buckets. Like, if you've ever seen me do a trends presentation, like I have actually like a little leaky bucket when your KPIs aren't there. And so, I think I actually manifested this on myself. I have to have brain surgery. So, it is to repair a hole in the bottom of my skull that's only leaking brain fluid. And a little bit of my brain is leaking, too. And the doctor quote was, "You know, right here, your your your brain is pooching out of your skull just a little bit." So, I get high score on medical weirdness as this is super rare.

Yay. And I get two surgeons for the price of five because it is after all the US system where our doctors are amazing but they're expensive as hell. My neurosurgeon was super adorable and he described the surgery like this. I'm on a call with him and he's like we gently lift the brain, we take some fat and he's pointing at my stomach. I'm like you take some fat, we use that to repair the hole and then we put set the brain down and oh we also have to move your brain back inside the skull. No problem. It's just beginner brain surgery. Totally fine. Very cool. Pictures will be available upon request. Clearly, you can see I've entered the joking phase of dealing with this. Honestly though, I am still trying to wrap my head around all of this. Dante, right? Get it. That's a good one.
Oh, we got we got a lot in the chamber for when you're back.
So, you get me for one more week and then I'm out. Like I said, three, four weeks. I'll be back with my amazing Viking haircut. Like, I have to shave like half of my head. It'll be like super badass like I'm Lagatha from that

Vikings TV show.
Do you want some designs I can send you?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Send me some designs. It'll have to
go around my my my scar which looks like an upside down you know the Game of Thrones that weapon that the Dothraki use that you know goes up and makes a seat.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's like basically like what will be where my scar will be. So I pity you the audience for the next month. Basically, no one's going to cat wrangle these [ __ ] And I think I Laura, Laura, where where are you? I'm calling her in. So, that's that is my banter and update. There you go. Brain surgery. Here we go. It'll be fun. No big deal. No big deal.
We'll keep the chair warm for you.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's going to be the most daunting just when before they put you under. That's I can't imagine like that's always the case.
Yeah. I I'm not really one to have anxiety, but I did ask the doctor. I'm like,
can I have some Xanax because I'm not

sleeping so well right now. It's just it's just all like a lot of it's just mental. My poor wife. Oh my god, my poor wife is is the one I think she's taking it harder than me,
you know, cuz we're having to do like power of attorney and you know, list of like where are all the bank accounts, you know, who you know, all of the stuff like god forbid anything happened. You just have to do that to prepare even though again like the success rate is, you know, 90 something. Like it's like incredibly incredibly safe.
You told her where all the bodies are buried.
I did sadly. I'm like, "Okay, here's the crypto account that I didn't tell you that I had that I gamble and with crypto and
the secret bank accounts."
Yeah. Maybe the wife will be the host for while while you're out.
Oh my god. She She is ex Air Force. So Mishka, you would either love her or hate her. She's going to come in.
She would destroy [ __ ] Mishka with this sexist comments. Like you would just get annihilated. She would reach across there and strangle you. [ __ ]

Mishk.
Oh. Oh, that'd be so nice.
All the articles.
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So Mindshare, our favorite analytics provider in KPI reached out. Here's what I would clarify. Of course, they offer country level data. That was something that we were looking at in relation to green Freef Fire, which was just the default board they shared. And so that wasn't something that was supposed to be meant for them. That's something that I think Eric, you touch on a lot is that really you need to start to dig into

this data to derive actionable market insights. Still, sometimes there's value in the aggregate picture. That's something they offer. It's great they offer that for free. What I would still say though is that they predicate themselves on being a predictive company that this new KPI is predictive. And what I would say is I would invite any company that does predictive based analytics to provide point estimates on what it is they're predicting. And they clarified that what they tried to predict is players through launch. So what I would say is like what are the error bars? What are those results? And maybe they produce it, maybe they don't. I would be happy to share that information weekly, you know, from any analytics provider. This is something Adam and I talk about all the time. We need to figure out what is the signal and what is the noise when it comes to Steam games. This is one of the biggest paradigms we have to solve. Wish lists are one model that does produce an output. It'd be interesting to benchmark other predictive analytics versus that. This is something they do all the time in sports analytics. these different analytic models try to predict things. We can see what the error bars are. So that's an invitation for anyone that I

would invite and it's something that I'd be happy to keep track of on a weekly leaderboard, but I would say if this is provided, let's show the world. All right. Well, again, this reminds me of I didn't get a chance to look at last week, but this reminds me of kind of a GameStop tracks. I don't know if you guys remember that. That was a long time ago, but they had a
different a group within GameStop spot that was putting this system together and it was a good tool to actually estimate demand
back then, right? But even that tool became obsolete as the market changed. So what was interesting about this tool is that they did a consistent amount of coverage for each launch every time, right? Like preview, review, whatever, right? Two previews, one review. I don't remember exactly what the components were. So therefore, it was comparable between one launch and another based upon GameSpot traffic about like the potential forward demand. So it was somewhat predictive. However,
they shut it down because ultimately

people stopped going to GameStop and IGN and they started going elsewhere for information about their games. And this is the big challenge with a tool like this, right? So the only reason it worked was because it was predictive in the sense that there was correlation between different games because it was the same level of coverage. But once that changes and that dynamic changes, it blew up. So nowadays it's even worse because there's so much hype and [ __ ] delivered by, you know, whether it's influencers or some like complete viral thing that goes on on [ __ ] Tik Tok and all this other [ __ ] that these type of tools are going to be really, really, really, really hard to dial in from a prediction perspective from my opinion. Anyway, I think it makes it very very challenging in this world. So, for example, and they actually mentioned this is Hollow Knight got 0.016%. Like that's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent in terms of buzz in July when this data was presented, right? And yet it is the biggest game in September. Okay. So, like that's not

that far away and that is certainly not predictive, right? So, I look I like data. Data is data. I think I was looking at this data a little bit and it's really interesting from the perspective of like how much interest is on existing games versus games that are coming out, right? Like that could actually give you a good indicator as to how much dominance of existing games like [ __ ] GTA and Roblox etc. But I do not think that this is going to be a very much value from a perspective of prediction. I think this is just data and it's interesting somewhat value of like looking at but it's not going to be predictive and not that interesting. The market landscape is just too complex and there's too much [ __ ] going on from a buzz perspective to actually dial this in.
All right, that makes sense. So, the other one we wanted to go back and take a look at was NEI and Destiny Rising. I think we we didn't do a a good job of like researching the history as we were musing about it. You did it, Crest though. went back and looked right,

dude. The amount of money that was burned on this thing, dude. Unbelievable. Like, unbelievable. Like, they Netty's made a hundred million dollar investment in Bungie, first of all, which I don't think ever paid back because they did it in 2018, but they were acquired though, so maybe they did get that money back. Forgot have to look into that, but I meant to do that. But in terms of the game itself, right, so not only did they do this $und00 million investment, but presumably after they did this investment, they got access to the game for a mobile release. So they likely started development in 1920. So that is five years of AAA 3D shooter development, which at least cost 100 million, maybe 150, right? Like I mean, this is a lot of money that they spent building this game. And what seems to be clear is that they just threw this thing out to die, right? They have not supporting this at all. Like the downloads are like 1.6 million

downloads. They've driven like 6 million in revenue. It's like freaking mice nuts for something this huge in terms of a game. And to be clear, the quality is so freaking high. Like it is like insanely level quality. It is almost exactly the same as Destiny 2, you know, in terms of quality. So $6 million doesn't even pay for the [ __ ] food service over the last five years, you know? Like this is unbelievable unmitigated disaster and really like bad I think for Destiny as a franchise. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe it does I don't know support everyone like wants that now on the Destiny 3 or something. I don't know. But whatever. It is bad. Really bad. Really a bad look and too bad because I think the game has potential. So anyway, and what's likely happened is that Net Marble saw the metrics in early launch or whatever kind of beta they were doing and they were [ __ ] terrible and so they they just stopped support, right? That's what these guys do. So clearly the

monetization wasn't working because otherwise they would have probably supported it if it was going to be successful.
Who wants to talk about Neil's piece?
I listened to the last episode and then I read what Neil wrote on mobile gamer biz. So, he wrote a piece on Destiny's reception by the community. And funny enough, it was exactly what Crest was saying in the last episode where the community was basically overwhelmingly saying that this game is really beautiful and it makes them want to play the console version of the game and they want now Destiny 3 after getting this. So, it was interesting just reading this all these takes and it summarized exactly what Crest said in the previous episode. So, I just wanted to add that piece here that Chris, I think you're absolutely right with your first take. It kind of led me thinking, Jen, with this thought of like who is this game for then? Like, is it for the existing users who are playing, you know, the console version or the PC version, the Destiny 2, or is it for those who have

turnurned out and now there's a mobile version or is it those who have never played Destiny and this is the version to them? Is like like who is this game for was kind of was kind of the question. Yeah, everyone's jealous of COD Mobile from 2019, which was a codev game and Diablo Immortal codev, Wild Rift from League of Legends codev. So, you know, this probably gave them hope that, hey, if you take a core IP that's a western focused IP that a western PC focused dev can't tackle. All of these are devs that can't do it. You know, Activision can do it. Blizzard struggled, Riot struggled. So, we're starting to see these China based devs that figured out Western play patterns and they don't need Western devs anymore. This one, I think, is so kind of old that they hadn't quite figured out that the Chinese devs don't need the Western devs almost anymore. They're starting to be able to do it on their own. I think this is one of the biggest trends that we're going to see in gaming is, you know, Chinese developers starting to really take on more and more

genres and like licensed IPs from folks that are like, "Oh, well, let's just let you guys do it." So, to me, that's the biggest part of the story.
No, no. I think what's likely is they build their own IPs. They don't need Is that what you're saying? Because I don't think they need us anymore.
I think that you could license a western IP but not do it codev and just be like, you know, hey, thank you guys. We'll just take the license. But that's what this was. There's no [ __ ] way Bungie had anything to do with this game.
In the early days, I thought they did and they were being a pain in the ass about it. Just like
Just like Blizzard. Yeah. No,
just like Blizzard. Just like Riot. All of the Western devs.
Diablo Immortal has nothing to do with freaking Blizzard, right? That was a pure NIS thing, right? And same with this. This game is completely a Chinese game, right?
Diablo Immortal is codef.
No way. No, it's not. Stop. Just stop. It It's all [ __ ] Like it's all [ __ ] They have some producers in in [ __ ] Irvine that are like, you know, throwing things.
Whatever. Who cares? The product

managers aren't doing [ __ ] All the game development that happened in Netis, dude, they didn't
they they usually have Chinese language skills. You'd be surprised.
So, hold on. Hold on. I talked to to some of these people. I'm not going to even name the company, but it is one of those biggest games. And they said, like this is talking to the producers, actually producers, not product managers. said that that the Chinese basically outwork them. So all the time they're chasing like before they get time to to give a feedback on something when they go to sleep they wake up there's a whole new thing and they they can't keep up with the amount of [ __ ] that they push.
Yeah. Exactly. I do think like Crest to your point if you were to like on a spectrum say how much is Blizzard involved from Blizzard side versus some of the other games you're right the net's you know influence is likely higher than it was on Destiny or that it was on like League of Legends like Wild Rift when I was there. When I was on Wild Rift it was very like 50/50 and then I think what we're seeing is the Chinese developers
Yes. No, I mean

the results were Yeah. Team fight team fight tactics is like the exact perfect bulletproof point of this.
What do you No, no. TFT is a a completely different story. There is a Chinese skew in a western.
Yes.
Oh, I know.
And the and guess which skew is a top 10 revenue driver in China every single month.
Fight for the golden spatula.
Okay. If I were to put a percentage on it, just to be clear, I I think Diablo Immortal is something like 9010 like China to Blizzard, right? This probably is like 955.
But hold on to begin with because Destiny's always been a consolebased game. I, you know, I don't know of any particular relationship with China. Like you have to bet that this takes off in China for it to be successful. They could have never put something for the West in the P&L. That would be ridiculous, right? They must have had to think that this had an appeal to the Chinese market, I guess. Like why do they think Destiny was the right thing to take a shot at? Like we've also seen them take Command and Conquer Age of Empires. like they're just kind of like reaching their hand into the jar these

days and seeing what's there. Delta Force, I mean, that was a western IP.
Again, all these deals happen ages ago, right? Yeah.
Five, four or five years ago when things were like blowing up and A16Z was investing in all this [ __ ] right? And so is Lighteed, right? I'm just throwing them under the bus every freaking episode because
the view of Crest is not necessarily
I just want people to understand that they are part of the problem, right? That that they are the big part of the problem is that this became okay, right? and got this big berber of [ __ ] right, of making these type of decisions, right? So anyway, the point is it was just the nature of the beast back then, right? Let's do this, right? And so now everyone's unwinding it. And if everyone's so shocked that things are not going well, it's because they were stupid ideas to begin with, like you're saying. You know,
I want to bring one example here and I think cuz basically what I took away from this is that the Destiny was made for executives because they looked at all the numbers and like hey we want a piece of this fat pie and maybe for the Chinese audience which is it's not resonating Destiny mobile I mean or whatever it's called and then I kind of

looked at you Phil you said a couple of times Warframe in the last episode and I wanted to double clip on Warframe because in my opinion Warframe is a perfect example that kind of shuts the book on this [ __ ] And Warframe, for those who don't know, it's a sci-fi looter shooter, kind of like the first big looter shooter that was released 2013. So that's almost a year before Destiny. And we don't know how much Warframe makes, but Epic's core documents estimate that Warframe on Steam had $150 million revenue in 2019, making it the fourth most profitable third party game on the platform. We know that Tencent acquired Digital Extremes which is developer and the publisher of Warframe in December 2020 and the game is also available on all the consoles and switch probably lands it in total of like 200 $250 million a year game. So based on this data of course they made the mobile version and it seems like this game was sent out to die. I remember there was a whole

pre-registration campaign. I actually signed up early. it was, you know, downloaded automatically on my device. And it's weird, like I went to the the background of the story. So, it was co-developed with Finnish game studio called Nitro Games. Um, and they made the mobile version,
Auto Auto Fire,
a copy of Auto Fire. Like, no offense to Nitro Games. It's actually even a public company with like 13 people, okay? 20 25 for maybe 50. Anyways, they're great folks through and through, but I have no idea how they had like they they shouldn't have any business developing a billion-dollar franchise on such a small studio. So, it felt like the whole Warframe mobile was a deliberate self-sabotage or something like I don't know. So, basically, my point here is you have a great free-to-play PC console game, it get ported, the numbers are horrific. Nobody goes inside to understand what it is, but kind of summarize like, hey, we shouldn't do this anymore. So, all these projects that are coming out, they're basically

just not getting any marketing because they're showing Warframe and like, look, Warframe hit the wall. We shouldn't be doing anything.
I need to revise something that I said because this is actually a great example of this, right? Because I know for a fact that I said back in the day that this was a good idea for a lot of these publishers to outsource their mobile game development to Chinese developers. And I still believe that. like that is a good shot on goal for them because someone like Ubisoft, someone like Bungie, someone like Blizzard cannot make a successful free-to-play title on the marketplace. Period. End of sentence. Right? And so I agree with that. Right? This was the right shot on goal. What I'm trying to tell you is that these guys made the right shot on goal. They made an amazing game. They have really deep monetization design, but the shooter is not working. Like this is game is not working in the marketplace. like besides these core group of people that bought got the game initially who are monetizing reasonably well, you know, initially anyway. So, but this doesn't broaden it out. UA costs are all through the roof and stuff, whatever. So, maybe I shouldn't

have brought in A16Z light speeded on this one, but because but nonetheless, yeah, Warframe is a great example. Like, this was the wrong way. This is not a strategy that I would have recommended is to find find some small developer to build out a mobile shooter like this.
Well, well, hold on. What about the switch skew though? Why would they do a switch skew? Why was this a part of the strategy? Like it the the corruption runs deeper
than just doing a mobile skew. Like how in God's hor it's horrific.
It's horrific.
It's just like a cursorary glance of like, hey, maybe a hard rated Mish hardcore sci-fi RPG doesn't match with the Switch audience. Like
Yeah. No, that makes no sense either, right? I mean, Warframe is a great game. By the way, I I don't I don't want to discount that one. This is not mice nuts. This is an amazing accomplishment of what these guys have done with this franchise. This is like one of the OG free-to-play games that crushed it on PC and to I think much lesser degree on console.
And the one thing before we we wrap on that is CPIs and UA is in an extremely

different place than when COD Mobile launched in 2019. That was, you know, preIDFA. It's much more expensive now. It's harder to find these people. So, I do think that there is a broader, you know, kind of market around how difficult it is to promote and there and by the way, there's like all of these shooters out there. And so, something is going on in the mobile shooter market that just isn't allowing those to find success. And I think they're still competing with the VR games that we talked about last time. All right, I know that we want to skip the section, but Phil, come on. Like, you took out the point where you said that Minecraft had a 25% increase in daily active users. Oh, that wasn't a supporting point for you. That was
How was that point?
Because what we're talking about when we talk about these lifts is the area under the curve, the marginal uplift from where they previously were to where they are now. And so all you've shown me is that for one of the most successful movie franchises of all time and right now we're looking at mobile and console

DAUs from Sensor Tower, which has the video game insights data. It was a very small bump in these things. And so multiply that by ARPOW and has a very small uplift in revenue. And that is for the greatest most highest upcase Minecraft. You got this little little dinky bump.
So dude, next
my point. No, no, my point on franchises is you are not looking at the franchise. You have to look at all boats rising.
It is everything about the franchise. Yes, you're going to see some increase in games, but you're also going to see hundreds of millions of dollars in toy sales, softline sales, all of the other. That is my point that there is an uplift. It might not be like the magical I'm launching a game uplift that you would want to see.
There's a reason that when I go to Disney, I pay like 40 bucks for the Spider-Man Mickey Mouse ears versus the $30 normal Mickey Mouse ears. Like there is a reason for that I grab the Oreos rather than like the Dunkaroos. Like don't me wrong, you are right on a fundamental level. I just again this

line item is small
and it's disappointing that this is the best we can milk out of this.
They tried. They had a whole live op strategy around this too. That's usually the criticism.
And it's a live service with really active players base. So it's like this should be one of those like really good case studies as to the uptick, right? Like versus someone that comes out with a game every like six years or something and then it has no bearing whatsoever, right? Completely agree. I think Fallout Shelter is interesting. Remember, of all the things we've looked at, Fallout Shelter had the biggest spike because remember freeto play has uncapped spend, right? So now it's like you got to counter that as a part of your strategy. I think a better study of this would be like uplift in Marvel games. I think would be curious across the entire mobile ecosystem to kind of look at the GDP impact.
I wonder if that's even like a little bit less because there's so much Marvel stuff going on and the way that they do promote each and every you know character. I mean Marvel has struggled a little bit lately. The same is true for Star Wars. All of those games add those

characters in. I just think it's like diminished over time because there's so much of it. Anyway, let's get to the next topic. Newu has a new free games report that's out. It's called Global Games Market Report 2025. They have a free edition. If you go to their website, you sign up, you get it. So, this includes global forecast through 2028. So, they do a a typical outlook that Phil loves to yell at them because actually they do a lot of reforcasting and corrections throughout the year now, which I think is great that they do that. So there's platform insights, a preview of the first special focus topic, modernizing release windows, datadriven launch insights, release timing, early access, best practices, and how attribution unfolds after launch. So that is what is in the report. Okay, so now you want to get to a bunch of the charts. So we're at 188.8 billion in revenue. So that's up 3.4% year-on-year. From a player standpoint, the number of players worldwide is up

4.4%. Console is actually leading this growth, it's up 5 and a half% fueled by none other than the Switch. Uh there have been a few great releases as well. We can imagine once GTA 6 comes out, that's going to also bolster that. PC revenue is up 2 and a.5%. This is from growth in China and Japan outpacing Western markets. Phil, you love to talk about this, how China and Japan are just, you know, really driving a lot of those Steam and PC numbers. Mobile is slowing in the Asia pack region, although it's still the biggest segment. 100 little over 100 billion, up about 3%. Payers, so this is always interesting. Payers was up 5% to 1.6 billion. This is growing faster than total players, though the average spend per payer is slightly declining. So, you know, Cres, you always talk about looking at Roblox, looking at other platforms, and keeping an eye on payers. So, that's an

interesting trend. The last one is that Gen Alpha is reshaping PC gaming, making up a larger share of the platform's player base. So, this one is interesting. Offline after Ethan was on a couple weeks ago, we were talking about like this trend that Gen A and Gen Z are hanging out on Steam on Friday nights. they're picking a new game for five bucks. They play together and then it's kind of like a this disposable instead of going to a movie, you know, we're going to play a game and then every week we're going to play a different game. And so I thought that that trend was kind of highlighting here in this data point and it might be something for devs to keep an eye on is like how do you market and attract players that you know have this share of time use case. So kind of interesting. Thanks Nuzu for sending us all the info. Mishka. Oh,
wasn't it Nuzu that just said that Gen Z is no longer paying for games? Like, it's [ __ ]
AR. No, that was Scon.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that was Scon. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's This thing makes more

sense. Sana makes no [ __ ] sense. Just to be clear,
that point just to not to defend to clarify was primarily a comparison like April 24 to April 25 showing that decline.
I renew my objection to that nonsensical analysis. Don't you just miss when New Zoo would do those cloud gaming updates and esports? That's ancient is so much more fun.
No, they're hitting a lot of interesting topics.
Yeah, I know. I know. And and regarding that, Nuzu will be on the podcast next Monday and it's in the full version. So, if you have any questions for New Zoo, join the Deconstructor Fund Slack channel. If you're there, just just post any questions you would like to ask about the industry, the market, and I will ask them maybe in the podcast.
My first question, why didn't you adjust for inflation? This is zero growth.
I'm adding it. This is
Oh my god, it's like real growth.
2 and 12% that's inflation. And consoles

fake news.
Switch doesn't matter for anyone except Nintendo shareholders.
This is true.
And they would say, well, there are also exchange rate issues that were bringing something down. That's always the exchange.
I'm just throwing buzzwords into. So, Crest, we just talked a lot about Blizzard.
I'm going to make this quick because I don't know this guy and I I feel bad talking trash about someone I don't even know or ever heard of, but I guess this is kind of a testimony to my point, right? Walter Kong is now senior VP head of development of live games and mobile at Blizzard. Right. Which on surface doesn't seem like a big deal, but this guy is in charge of basically Overwatch. Right. Right. which hasn't gone very well to be honest. Let's be clear, right?
No, it's on up again. It's a better place.
It's the best it's ever been.
Yeah, it actually
on a monetization front, I don't think so. I don't I've seen the data. It does not look good.
The ship has been steered. You're not No, because Marvel Rivals was a huge threat. And not only are they emerging from that,
they're emerging from that stronger than

they've ever been with a clear vision.
All right, fine. Let's take this back and bring some data into it. And I will guarantee you that they are far lower than they were during the heyday of Overwatch. Anyway, my point is that this guy is now in charge of Warcraft Rumble, Diablo Immortal, and Hearthstone. So, he's increasing his responsibilities and capturing this thing. So, what what makes this scary to me is it feels like the mobile strategy at Blizzard is over, right? So, if they're not hiring new executives that actually know something about mobile, right, then they're basically just letting this guy manage these things into the ground. Like, that's what it feels like to me. You know, correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't know. I haven't heard any insight into what's going on, but they clearly are not prioritizing mobile by having this guy take charge.
It helps your case. Remember, they were sniffing out South Korea. Remember, we saw some deals potentially licensing happening.
Yeah. to shift like the RTS Starcraft license to one of those studios. So, I think that actually what you're saying

earlier is like if you can't get this right, ship it like they've done with Diablo Immortal and see what the East can do with it. I think it makes sense to and I guess you should give this to South Korea, right? I mean, they've culturally adopted this is like our baseball. Let's give it to these people.
Licensing strategy might make sense because I don't think Blizzard can do mobile. Like, I just don't think they have the capability because they have too much creative integrity to actually make mobile game that makes sense. So, I don't disagree with the strategy. I'm just saying that it just seems like the focus on mobile is kind of over for Blizzard corporate. So sad. A little bit sad.
Warcraft Rumble 100 employees was still on it like what a month ago.
Yeah. Well, they talked about Yeah. sunsetting that game that it's just running with no new updates, I think, was the last we read. I don't know if they still have that many people or not. I don't remember what the update said. All right. So, we'll see. We'll see. We'll keep an eye on our friends at Blizzard
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Moving on to games, we have to do our due diligence for Hollow Night Silk Song, which has been a monster release on Steam. We are looking right now at Alina Analytics, which has put together some infographics based on how the game has been performing. They're reporting 5 million unique players, 3 million copies

sold, 50 million in revenue for an Australian team. If you remember, this is a spin-off of Hollow Knight, which also was enormously successful on Steam. They had a peak CCU of 587,000 users on Steam. That is unheard of for a game of this size.
And remember, we keep learning about these games, these smaller titles, these smaller teams, which have been able to build an audience on Steam and ultimately have just like a very straightforward model for success, which is selling the game flat. Now, don't get me wrong, this this team left so much money on the table. I mean, Jesus, it's just painful. Special editions 20 bucks. They could have gone way higher, but
Well, not to mention, they gave they gave it they gave it away to Microsoft,
dude. They they gave it away on the [ __ ] Game Pass, right? [ __ ] that's just
huge.
I mean, just to put the success into context with some of the other games we've been talking about. Remember Repo? We were talking about Peak, which is another one we briefly mentioned, schedule one, the drug dealer one. This is 3 million copies. None of those even

crack 1 million. We're talking about 3x the sale of success versus other titles we've been talking about. And not only that, when we look at the crossover titles, it's a lot of these Soulsike games. And I think what's interesting about this is that they're starting to include a lot more lifesim elements. I'm seeing this a lot more games as these lifim elements are becoming interesting loops that are like cheap systems. Remember, we keep talking about productive systems. And I think designers are getting a lot smarter with these lifesim elements. And I'm trying to keep track of that because I always see Steam as like one of the forefronts of designs that might head over to mobile. So, congrats to them, but I don't think it means much. And honestly, it no, it does not validate this $20 model. No MTX, no freeto play. Sometimes I hear I hear the crazies come out whenever whenever this happens. I'm like, what are you what are you talking about? Yeah, it's great. The market can support a lot of different models. Awesome.
The premium religious, right? Or something like that. Is that
the evangelical?
I don't know anything about this. I just saw Reing about this game and I saw the headline news of service crashing. like

what is this game? Like how does it play? Like what does it look like? I have no idea.
It's a platformer.
That's like one way to describe it. That's literally what you're doing. But remember, you have a lot of Souls like mechanics. So it's leaning on that system which remember Steam has really embraced it. It's a really cheap system design where you have randomization elements and then you have lifesim elements too which extend the amount of hours that you can put in the game and give it a lot of replayability.
So like this will sustain an audience for a little bit. Like Balders's Gate is another example. I mean, obviously very different franchises, but again, systems.
Was this self-published?
So, it's an Australian team. They're called Team Cherry.
They successfully raised on Kickstarter previously. That's really what got this going. Remember, they had that Hollow Knight success. They were in the sequel territory. There was some hype for this. It was nothing in particular. Like, I don't think they hired a marketing firm or anything along those lines. So, this is still a grassroots level success.
Got it. Okay.
We'll probably talk about if it's self-published or not. What was the team size? What the development marketing cost were? you think they could have been and why did they sell so well?

Let's keep it simple. My argument for this week, I'll I'll add that edit notes is keep it simple is like gradually the team for success. We go over the numbers. We can talk a little bit about it and we can tease at least that we'll talk about if this storyline continues next week. We can do a deep dive into the developer.
Okay.
All right. Next topic is Roblox RDC. So, I already mentioned I recorded a podcast if you want to go a little bit deeper. So, here are the three topics that I wanted to get you guys' thoughts on. One is the DevX rate increase. Number two is rewarded ads, and number three is Roblox moments, which was basically adding Tik Tok like features inside of Roblox. Okay, so on number one, the rate increase. So, here's what happened. There is an 8.5% DevX or developer exchange rate increase. the rev share with developers has been extremely low when you add everything up. So when you start to take out platform fees and what Roblox takes and all of the other things, a developer basically only takes home about 21%. So

in this move of increasing the DevX by 8.5%. They're also removing or changing some of the other programs that they have in place around the creator affiliate program and the engagement playout. And ironically, UEFn is only an engagement payout platform. And you know, Roblox says it a little bit differently since there are AP monetizations. Also, they announced that 29,000 devs have actually cashed out money from the platform using the DevX platform. This was in a year kind of time frame. Reportedly, there are 3.1 million total devs, meaning that only about a percent take cash out from all of the developers. So, Phil, this has to be your number one. I mean, please tell me I'm not crazy. What do you think?
So many interesting things happened here. I mean, like, where do you start? So, I think what was interesting about the DevX rate increase was that it's the rate at which Robux converts into real cash. So, if you remember, like they get paid in Robux from the consumer, from

the player, and then they have that stored and then they can cash it out at that fixed exchange rate. And so, the way they've altered the developer share is by changing that exchange rate. So you actually have an incentive if they increase rates like this to hold on to cash because remember now cash that you stored instantly became more valuable which is interesting. And so I was like thinking today like oh man it's almost like they paid you out basically an interest rate for keeping the capital floating in the system which I think becomes really interesting. Like if you remember Starbucks they have so much of their capital floating around in gift cards just kind of swishing around and like you can't quite like write it off but you can kind of depreciate it. I think that shit's super interesting. But I think overall the question is like what is the appropriate dev share for them that maximizes Roblox's GDP because that is what they are after. They are after GDP. And if you remember there's this thing called the LER curve which tries to describe the relationship between tax revenue and the tax rate. And so if you have a tax rate of 100% you have zero tax revenue. And that's because no one produces right? No one would produce with a tax rate of 100%.

And if you have a tax rate of zero, you don't capture any tax revenue, right? Because the tax rate is zero. And so there's a maximum tax rate that will maximize the revenue that you can get. So this was originally proposed by an economist named Laugher during the Reagan administration. And so the question is is like you got to remember there's elasticity. So even though they're increasing the dev share payout, they're not writing this off in the P&L for an equivalent amount because they know that there's going to be a snapback effect where there's going to be a supply side increase in the amount of content that people are able to make on the platform. Like that is one of the most limiting factors is that there's only so much money going to the developers for them to reinvest in the platform. Like remember AdoptMe was a headcount of 50, right? And so the thing that's limiting them from scaling is like they need they need more revenue capture. I was just surprised they didn't make it a marginal tax rate like Steam where if you earn above a certain amount, the amount that's earned above that bracket is taxed at a lower rate. You basically get a, you know, superstar effect, so to speak. I'm surprised they didn't move down that and they're doing down this flat framework. That was my

biggest surprise.
Nerd.
That just became the GameConn.
No, no, no, Philip. Though, okay, hold on, hold on a minute. There's no [ __ ] way they would do that, right? because the majority of the money is being made by a very small percentage of the overall games. And so you start increasing the rate in which you're giving those developers, the bigger developers that we talk about all the time.
Totally. That would [ __ ] them. They would get no revenue, right? All their revenue would be gone if they start doing that [ __ ] You know,
they're increasing the payouts right now. I think it's just a question of how targeted you want those increased payouts to be.
Look, I think I think it's good visibility that they're increasing the payouts, but I'm just saying like they can't do a progressive M. Is that right? Progressive model. They can't do a model in which they pay out more percentage to the ones that are hitting a certain mark because that's where all the revenue is generated.
The Steam model, I guess.
Yeah. They can't do the Steam model.
So, so why do you think Steam does it?
Well, because Steam is fixed at 30%. Right.
Mhm. And this goes, I think, down to 25%. I forget the amount that it's triggered at. I think was it 100 million, 50 million? But it goes down to

25% as the second bracket.
It goes down, right? It doesn't go up.
Correct.
Correct. So that's what I'd suggest here is like why not keep let's say the exchange rate they have now for developers earning under let's say $100 million and increase it for people above a certain amount. So you're only giving the gains to your biggest producers so that like AdoptMe can scale.
Let me see if I understand this is when the rate goes down on Steam Steam is taking less of a cut. When the rate goes up on Roblox they're paying a developer more. So right
yes correct. Okay. So that just to keep it straight in my head,
the payout is increasing. The amount they pay out per Robux is increasing. So developers who are sitting on capital now have more that they can get paid out that it's worth more in the conversion.
Interesting. I do think that it's a consolidation. I mean, just like any of these platforms that we're seeing, it's like a pyramid scheme where at the top is most of the revenue with just a couple of games. Although Roblox is now seeing new games come in at the top with

steal a brain rot with crow a garden like games that hadn't been in the top like exploded to the top with your lovely egregious and predatory monetization capabilities making a lot of money. So it does feel more consolidated at the top. I don't have one any one of those charts. Maybe we should look that up to see like how many
look this model does not work for traditional developers like a 7030 model will not work right in terms of the amount of money right but this supports the overall like platform because it's just all about discovery engagement repeat right and they need more and more content right to come in and so this works for what it is right I don't think it'll ever change right and I guess we have a whole podcast about double A and AAA development that I haven't listened to but I just it doesn't make sense to do it.
Well, it's just difficult especially because those developers don't understand how to make games successful for this audience is the other thing like most of the successful developers are 20 who grew up playing Roblox games.

That's a great point. That was in the Voldeex episode like like they brought in a really really talented team and kind of essentially build an aggregator for Allbox games where they take these early hits and kind of add the PM the live ops expertise on top of it. But when we discussed that in the podcast they basically said like I'm paraphrasing but they don't know what makes these kids tick. Like they can't come up with original ideas. They can only take the existing ones which is interesting business model. Dude, because they're all old, dude. I hang I met with those guys. They're like They're not quite my
The founder The founder is like 12. Have you met him?
The founder of Voldex?
Yeah.
He's 20. He's in his low 20s. Yeah.
Oh, no. No. I met the other guy.
12 compared to me.
Like I'm an old man. I
Moving on.
Yeah. Right. So, rewarded video. I wanted to hit on this one because this is I think Crest you're going to love this as a way to monetize the mostly unmonetizable which are kids. So here's

what's going on. They already announced rewarded video in partnership with Google. GameFam talked about this on the podcast. They're in the beta for the program and so Joe was talking about this. Their experience has been you know like slow good early signals would be the way I would categorize what he said. So the launch of rewarded video is coming in a few months. So the gist is it's early. It's promising. I think this is going to be one of the biggest things that they can likely do to juice revenue that feels a little bit less predatory than what we're seeing in some of the moni the you know Phil's favorite techniques. This will be in a sense what I think solid and they're taking a page for mobile freeto play. I think from other people I've talked to who went to RDC, Mike Doom was like I felt like I was back at Zingga and all of the like PMs were, you know, there doing the data jockeying trying to teach and everyone like how does mobile freeto play work? How does ad monetization work? So I think we're going to see them really leveling up. Crest thoughts. I don't

want to be revisionist history here, but I just want to be clear on my point of view on this whole thing is that this when they started doing rewarded advertising or I found out that they were partnering with Google on this. This was actually the big thing that made me bullish is that they are unlocking advertising like it's something that the founder was hesitant to do but again brought this and created the opportunity. Now what I thought at the time was that banner advertising was [ __ ] stupid, right? Because that does not work, right? that does not work in a interactive content and I will argue that to the death, right? But rewarded advertising is a completely different animal and then partnering with Google was really smart because I think what they know how to do this stuff and so like working together to make it work within the platform makes sense. Having said that, having said that all there is a huge learning curve for these podunk small developers, right, to get these stuff in integrated properly within their game. So it's not like this seamless transition right to one thing and it's a big challenge for them but

again they need to monetize the unmonetizable right they have these huge audience numbers that they're not monetizing and so like any type of activity that results in trying to monetize that audience is great right and my understanding is that Roblox and Google Google's making it more plugandplay like much easier for people to implement and that's bullish but the next thing is even more bullish Yeah. So, just to wrap that up because Crush, you made a great point. You have to have a 100,000 DAUs on your game or experience to even apply to do rewarded video. So, they're not opening it to every single person. You've got to have kind of a minimum amount of traffic. And I have heard that they have reduced the amount of like clicks and setup dramatically less to make it much easier to set that up. So, the next one, let's move to Roblox Moments. All right. So, we're watching a video together. if you want to watch on Spotify video or on our YouTube channel. So, here's what Roblox Moments is. And I wouldn't be true to my marketing roots if I didn't talk about

this feature. Basically, it adds Tik Tok short form video to Roblox. But what a player can do is capture, edit, and share a moment while others then can click join to instantly try out the experience. So you actually get in a sense cap cut inside of Roblox where you can, you know, capture the moment of the game that you're playing. You know, share a moment virally on the platform, others can then join. Roblox is actually releasing the moment's API to developers and the source code so that folks can integrate it into their own experiences. Right now it is live. It's not getting a ton of traction. When I talked to Joe from GameFam about it, he's like, "Oh, we'll see. We'll see." You know, likely this is just in the early early stages, but I would have to imagine if you're a kid and you're doing what we all want to do is, you know, share your favorite moments and they make it super super easy that this is going to be a great kind of like in-app marketing platform in a in another self-expression

platform. So, Phil, thoughts, big deal.
I think we're missing the big story line with Roblox. I think Eric is so myopic in my topic on this like issue. Like, I think it's time like to start raising the alarm for them too. These guys are becoming aggregators. They're starting to control discovery. It's very clear what the product play is here for all of these, right? It's about the ecosystem. And not only that, remember, they own the engine, right? They own the whole [ __ ] stack. And if they own demand, they are going to work their way up the supply chain. This is value destructive for the industry. And don't me wrong, I am amazed at their success. Don't get me wrong, I cheer them on. There's a lot we could offer in terms of product advice for moments. This is definitely also a way to counter, I would argue, the rise of short form video, right? And this is something Ben Thompson Ashetry who's a great writer has commented that the feed is increasingly becoming a place where you serve any type of content and that used to be social content but it can be anything. It can be games, it can be AI videos which Facebook has been rumored to be testing with great success and I think Roblox views this the same way because they are not gamers. This is not

a company that is friendly to us. There was a Twitter video that went viral recently of someone's a day in the life of Roblox and it was the most pampered Googleesque experience that they're just completely foreign. It's not a gaming company and Sculpey had this issue and they fixed it. the market disciplined them. But when you walked in the office, there was not game art that was being celebrated everywhere. That came later, right? It started as a tech company, concrete floors, certain type of lighting. And so, I think we need to be extremely skeptical of Roblox from an industry perspective, even if we think they're incredible in their success, and maybe you should explore it. Maybe there's brand marketing, all that stuff can be true, but they are starting to represent a real threat, especially if people really do retain on the platform because they will aggregate demand and they will use that to control suppliers. This is a real threat. How how is that different from what I've been saying for like years on this podcast?
Oh, I still think we have to recognize that they're like on the march, right? Like they they continue to march and they continue to grow and they continue to have success. And I guess the question is like are are they going to slow down? Is this where they top out?

And the reason that GameFam is not like bullish about [ __ ] moments is because it [ __ ] them. It absolutely [ __ ] them.
Right. It just supports the it supports the platform. It doesn't support game developers. Correct. basically creating. All right, sorry. Let me step back a little bit. So, when I heard about Moments like 6 months, I don't know, a year ago or whenever I [ __ ] heard about they they acquired this company called Gilded way back in 2021, right? And this company was building this tool and technology for social like kind of like [ __ ] uh Discord. They're basically building a Discord and they acquired it to actually put it within their ecosystem. And so, this is could be huge, right? because there are billions if not trillions of minutes of interaction with Roblox's platform on [ __ ] Tik Tok and YouTube, right? Like they want to capture as much of that as possible, right? And once Manuel unlocked advertising, then now they're creating a [ __ ] platform. And I said I wasn't going to use the F-word, but it just keeps coming out
and the cookie jar.

Yeah, they they unlock advertising. Now they're building another platform in order to advertise that is actually a real platform is not banner advertising in stupid Roblox games, right?
Yep.
This is huge, right? This could be huge, right? And it just opens it up and I agree with everything just Philip said, but I don't think it's against what I've been saying. It's like this is not good for gaming, right? And this is certainly not good for the developers, right? Like they are technology company creating a platform to build up, you know, things. So most likely people will move from playing games to actually looking at Tik Tok [ __ ] on Roblox potentially anyway or that's the potential. And so from a stock perspective, just to be clear, from a Wall Street perspective, this freaking is gold. And if you don't think that people knew about this six months ago when this stock started [ __ ] going to the moon, right? You're kidding yourself, right? All these guys knew. And that's why the stock kept moving is because of this. And that's why when they announced it at the robot convention, the stock has done nothing, right? because it's already priced into

the stock. So anyway, you gun to my head. Are they going to be successful? I am not quite sure. Even though I'm bullish and I think Wall Street's bullish for a good reason, the fact is executing against this is going to be freaking hard, right? The techn technology side of it is really really hard. getting these low-end devices to be able to actually execute against this [ __ ] Like building out like these moments in a piece of crap like Android device circa 19, you know, 2020 is going to be impossible, right? But they're making an effort and Wall Street loves this [ __ ] right? Because at the end of the day, they have failed to monetize the majority of their audience despite all these numbers going up and to the right. The fact is that the only a small percentage of the audience is spending money and only a very very small fraction of a percent of the developers are actually making money on this platform. But again, this is all great for Roblox. And so what I can say with reasonable certainty for the next 12 to 18 months they will likely increase arpoo in North America and Europe. And that is freaking bullish right for the stock. So that's what Wall Street cares

about and that's why this I still would be interested in this stock at this even at this level because I think this is really interesting. So, is that clear, Bill? I mean, does that
No, no, that that that's fine. That's fine. I would say I actually don't believe in moments. Like I I recognize their imperialist skull. Like, I think that's I I mean, you have to just appreciate that like there's no saying that they don't think they can dominate and own. So, like that is what I would want to recognize and that's a threat to us. I think Moments is a struggle because remember it's going to be vertical rather than horizontal which is how most games are played. I'm not quite sure how you interface with it. And remember, it can't just be like an ad spawn demon of like brand advertisers. Like it actually has to engage with people and provide like meaningful moments for them to connect.
It's UGC. It's not for brands. It's like a kid going in and sharing a moment. I mean, unless they start selling that to an ad to a brand,
they have to start with like actually noble intentions of like we want people to engage here. We need to give the user value rather than just figure out how I can tack on an ad platform to this like

Tik Tok style video. Like they're now under the gun of Wall Street and like this has to be good in and of itself. This has to be entertaining in and of itself. How does this integrate in the platform and enhance the Roblox experience is something that I don't think they've clearly answered yet.
You and I are arguing the same point. Like because they actually have to put this Tik Tok thing in the Roblox app.
It has to be part of the loop.
Yeah. It has to be like a a a
That's correct. And that's
they don't they don't understand their own core loop. They don't understand how to game. Like they ran their first live ops remember platform live ops event earlier this year. Like this would be a great opportunity to do like a Pokemon snap style meta event. Any anything like you're [ __ ] game developers make a [ __ ] game like like do do what you're good at. Well, actually I wouldn't say that, but
so they have done the live ops event the last two years actually and then they did talk about that they are releasing the moments API and the source code to all of the developers to try and incentivize them to do exactly what you're saying you because you I agree with you unless it is baked in it is

very easy for a 10-year-old to go in to capture their own moment and share it. It's going to be difficult for that to happen. But if you're relying like I call this like a social gaming hub instead of going to the movies or the mall, Gen A is coming in here to be with their friends. Now, if you're giving them a tool to share with their friend and basically send them a Snapchat, you know, in or Tik Tok inside the game like, "Hey dude, look what I'm doing. I just teabagged somebody in my game. Come check this out." And then they can click join and come in their game. It is both amazing for a developer and scary as hell because you are about to lose a lot of your audience unless you go after that alpha of the Gen Alpha friend group who's going to pull all of their friends like all around the ecosystem. So, it is both exciting and terrifying. Anyway, we didn't get to Crest's
Oh, it's okay. The only thing I want to say is that everything I've been saying about Xbox is being pared by people that are coming out of Xbox. So this guy Pete Hines who came from Bethesda and Shannon

Loftess like all these guys are saying basically the same thing in nice like from a developer perspective and I think it's worth reading and just understanding that how the game pass ecosystem is basically destroying Microsoft.
Wow, what a legacy. What a legacy.
It was a good thought. Netflix for games was a good idea. It was never as a consumer. As a consumer, I it was a good idea.
No, we always do on live. You don't get away from this.
No. I I say if somebody would have pitched, hey, we're going to do Netflix for games. I'm like, tell me more. And it's going to have all these amazing
I would say tell me less.
I would say come back when I won't start now.
I'm gullible. I'm gullible. I could I could say yes. Why not?
Yeah. Subscription platforms,
consumers. Yay. Developers. Oh, that's the summary of the story, I think. Exactly.
That's it for this week. We will see you next week. Thanks for joining.
Ciao.

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