Unity Backpedals / Playtika Acquires / Next-Gen Console Leaks

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their game IQ taxonomy also with data.ai mobile games Publishers can track competitors prioritize features assess monetization models monitor market share explore demographics improve App Store optimization and much more you can learn more at data.ai or check out the link in the show notes and with that let's jump into the episode hello everyone welcome to another novik Roundtable I'm your host Devin Becker and with me I have some fantastic panelists as always as you all know the ever Lively Aaron Bush yeah Anil Das Gupta here and Jonathan anastas how are you guys all doing today great excellent happy to be here as always awesome awesome well cool I'm glad you guys are all doing well here we got a lot of great topics to talk about today uh Unity of course the topic on everyone's mind I think in the entire gaming industry at least the portion that they influence at this point some uh info on Korean blockchain week that I think was a pretty interesting event that happened recently playtika with an acquisition for some reason uh some

leaks around Nintendo uh switch to and Xbox future XBox perhaps and a question from our mailbag you guys got any good updates for us today Jonathan I know anything sure I'm uh dialing in from San Francisco or I'm here for TechCrunch disrupt very interesting to to dive into the conversations this week and see what's happening in the Broad tech landscape because that obviously affects what's going on in gaming everything from AI to fundraising but uh always good to be in San Francisco and coming off a Crazy Summer of uh of leading a Streetball league right where uh we finished the Summer with the first annual Clash cup where four teams played for 25 000 with our new Streetball commissioner Fat Joe yeah you know if you would ask me when I started my career somehow I'd be in business with Fat Joe I I would have I would have laughed and here I am when I saw that like dead I was like what the heck is going on but that's really cool

and um can you remind me what all Clash TV like what sports you all are into because I also saw you're doing like a fighting League or something too sure so our primary business is streaming Streetball classic New York street ball and also MMA there's a big audience crossover kind of germane to the gaming audience it's very interesting to promote some of our games this summer we're doing Esports uh tournament in NBA 2k one of our legendary League's record is in NBA 2k so we got like 10 influencers to play on the legendary record court and uh it was a lot of fun it was led by Jayla gaming and we had a great group of uh of Gamers and and NBA 2K creators great diversity great content creation it was super fun and I I love places where my worlds can come together my passions can come together no I can't possibly compete with that I'm afraid I'm like a lot of

game devs who just knee-deep in building um it's that time of year people focusing on getting this stuff ready for the food so um I'm in that camp that no fetch over me unfortunately definitely yeah no Fat Joe here either but nothing wrong with building that's what enables us all to be here um in in the first place uh yeah on the navic end I just have a couple quick um shout outs we we publish a couple deep Dives in the past week that I suggest uh everyone go and check out uh our first one was a new game construct deconstruction that we did on honkai Star rail um and really more broadly on mahoyo and it's growing Hoya verse and of course you know mojoyo is you know one of the rising stars of the games industry and it was really interesting to dig into like how this new game fits into their ecosystem you know the you know how much it's cannibalizing like what went right and wrong and launching this game and you know what it could mean for how the future of this company

um acts so that was really cool and shout out to partial monu and Jordan from from our team for for writing that that awesome piece and then um second by the time this episode publishes we'll also have published a second essay this week about the rise of dedicated or private Game servers you know such as in games like Minecraft GTA Roblox um and soon much more you know this is a small but growing segment of the industry but it's still really interesting and Matt Dion who of course everyone here you know knows from from this podcast as well he did a really great job spearheading that that piece too so two awesome pieces of like extra deep dive content for you this week recommend checking it out just go to navic dot Co and go to our deep Dives Tab and they'll both be there wait a stack more on my reading plate no definitely not and uh and definitely as always uh you know I say this a lot of times during the end of the episode but I always recommend make sure if you're listening to this wherever you

happen to find it YouTube Spotify wherever um make sure you're subscribed to the novice digest because it is it's free and it's good content constantly it's not just uh you know a bunch of ads with like you know call to actions and all that stuff it's actually all great content so make sure you check it out obviously a little biased myself sometimes some stuff in there for me but I think I think it's all great so definitely yeah well you should tell us about your you should tell us about your latest piece Devin because it was kind of your top takeaways from you know last week you were in Korea for Korea blockchain week maybe like one or two top takeaways from that you could share on the pod yeah I mean like I think I think the big important question for me was like how's everyone feeling like in terms of sentiment and stuff like that because we're obviously during kind of like a a bit of a bear market right where everyone's been called Crypt of winter whatever you want to call it where it's like just slow uh I don't think they really got that memo doesn't seem like right it's and I mean I think we all kind of expected there was going to be like still a push in Asia they just don't seem concerned like you know it's

like they would kind of mention it passing oh yeah whatever we're just building over here we're gonna do cool stuff and I think that was really really cool to see in person uh just the the enthusiasm and also even when they were talking about like hurdles like regulatory stuff or trying to deal with like stable coin stuff it was it wasn't like oh yeah we gotta all this stuff's gonna be a big problem for them it's like hey how can we solve this move forward or how can we use this and uh it definitely seemed like they they know their own area uh you know like there's certain regulations they have to deal with uh in Korea and Asia more broadly and they just we know that spot so we're just gonna build around all that and I mean you're talking about a country that basically makes it illegal to even play crypto games and is still pushing and so that I think that's amazing I'm I'm very excited for for Korea and uh in Japan especially as well and I think as southeast Asia in general it sounded like even from the sentiment there Hong Kong might be kind of a becoming more of a hot spot again as well so I think I think very exciting a lot of a lot of great talks from a lot of smart people

uh it was especially great to see uh Hilmar from CCP uh with the talk alongside uh someone from MapleStory like definitely like some big brains working on some cool stuff there so very excited about all that yeah I was going to ask as a quick follow-up before we dive into all the other topics um was there anything there that you know made you think it has like mainstream appeal are we still kind of in the figuring it out phase or like are you seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at events like this yet you know it definitely feels like uh the the early like a lot of the the stuff that Korea kind of did early where it would hadn't really figured out how to like make it more broad yet but it kind of worked for them you know like a lot of some of the free-to-play stuff in the early days uh around that uh in a lot of the MMOs and uh in Esports in general where it was like you know it's a thing they're really into uh but it hasn't become like a broader business model yet I think they're still in that kind of phase where they're like you know they're they're just gonna keep iterating until they figure it out and then eventually we'll see something that

works and copy it um and I think they're moving quickly through the like oh played earns cool like we're gonna keep some of that that we can think we could make work because you know there's lots of things to try and move towards nfts and other things so I I just see lots of Rapid iteration like you know companies like net marble will be like oh that game didn't work we'll try another one that could work we'll try another one uh and not just giving up after the first loss I mean these are big companies willing to take a few hits to push it Forward uh and I think that's just again that's Korea in general they look like they're willing to keep pushing until it's gonna work or until they least decide their bottom lines had too much and hopefully that that time doesn't come too soon I mean you've got even announcements from from crafting coming out afterwards about their big web 3 thing they're kind of robloxish sort of thing uh like they just keep coming and I know there's some announcements I think even or at least showings coming from Tokyo uh as well uh around this week as probably for this episode even comes out so I look forward to even more coming out from Asia in general like from bigger names like there's definitely Konami stuff there's

Square Enix there's uh uh at least a couple more that I'm forgetting off the top of my head right now that I saw Sega as well I think their game was getting a showing from double jump so a lot of really cool stuff I I think uh now's not the time to sleep on Asia unless you just really want to focus entirely in the west I guess yeah well I'm glad you got a chance to to go hang out on Korea seems like it was a good informative time definitely yeah so make sure to check out the uh the article as well for for a lot more other information than we gave here lots of good stuff in there and of course um you know we'll continue to keep an eye on that just whole region but in the meantime the destruction of all of gaming from Unity the the topic we can't not touch at this point even though we started to cover it last week what uh what's the latest going on with that fire let me take this one yeah this is the Hot Topic in the industry right now it's very fluid and ever moving and changing situations we can only give you the news as we understand it right now I think the big thing since last week is that

Unity have kind of issued a backdown of kind they have put out a statement saying you know we have heard you we apologize for the confusion and angst amongst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday we are listening and yeah they are they are there and we will share an update in a couple of days that actually was posted a couple of days ago and um we still haven't heard anything which is quite interesting so I'm wondering how they're trying to factor about it let me give you the facts before we move on to speculation so things that we know happened since um this last coupled in the round table they're co-founder David helgesen says we effed up the price increase uh you know that was he literally posted that himself on his own social media so that's quite you know uh the statement to say that they got they got it wrong what had happened there the early part of last week is a lot of companies decided to kind of Fight Fire with Fire and say well okay if you're going to be changing the fees we're not going to give you any of our Revenue so they were moving off Unity ads monetization and essentially boycotting it it was 19 last week and at the time arising it was up to 424 and I'm sure more and more

companies were moving on to that so you know they were really trying to sort of like you know hit them where it hurts in the monetary site especially given that Unity merger of iron Source you might remember that's something one of the big reasons why I love this stuff has kind of come together and also a head off I mean said that uh some of their changes of terms of service were likely to catch the attention of European antitrust Regulators which may be something they weren't so aware of and I think it is one of the big discussing and talking points which I'm sure we'll cover in a moment in terms of like the localities of what they were trying to do the only other things that we know definitely are happening a lot of devs have already stated that they will be switching engines I've seen a number of uh social media announcements for teams building you know saying yes we are going to switch over even those to be a cost to us etc etc um and Bloomberg reported uh two quite big items I think this happened at our company All Hands one was that um apparently has been discussed with the staff at Unity that they are exploring some changes some of these changes include the four percent cap on potential fees there was no cap before

which is I think one of the reasons why people were particularly upset although if you ask me that's still um you know not a failure should be charged and this would only apply for customers making over a million in Revenue installations counter towards you know wouldn't be played retroactively which I think was a big thing as well it's like well hang on a minute if if the navic game just sold two billion copies does that mean we have to pay back taxes on it just for our prior success you know the carpet been pulled out from under you and the other big thing is is that now there are some talks that although Unity are working on their own proprietary tools to track software installations they would in their interim period ask users to self-report the data it just seems Madness like oh yeah yeah we are game definitely was downloaded 10 billion times definitely not 10 in science and we're not sure how all this money came from which again just seems like I you know I have to watch my language here it doesn't seem the cleanest way shall we say of addressing this kind of situation so they're the updates that we know uh it will be interesting I guess I I can

say so you know I really wanted to cover this topic because I am someone who is at a startup building a mobile game using Unity as our engine of choice and you know frankly to see this kind of stuff being pulled it made me pretty angry I've got to be honest if you were in a situation that we don't have the luxury of being able to swap engines that it's simply not a choice for us so it feels like you know you're being completely victimized here at this power play that other people are kind of pulling where you don't really have a choice which I think is particularly unfair and I can say that that kind of criticism is shared I think through all walks and I think what I found quite interesting is it's not just people in my position but even people who know top companies you know are also pretty surprised I saw actually I think something of interest is I think the Miniclip CFO or CCO uh basically ran through a kind of the argument showing the numbers that would be run and you know what it would mean and justifying how bad it is and I think what that really shows is they obviously didn't speak to people at companies that high

up in the food chain which means it must caught a lot of people by surprise um and at the same time it is interesting that we haven't seen sort of statements from people let's say a king or play Ricks or people that do have a lot of downloads I'm sure there certainly were some discussions here there's some higher-ups in some companies but this definitely has been quite the shock and so it will be interesting to see what they come up with um you know I've got to say just to give my personal opinion before handing over to the rest of the panel I think the real big problem here is the trust issue right and frankly like do these people understand how you even do business right and you know boil it down to its purest format is that relationship and it's like if you're prepared to yank things from underneath people and completely change the terms about any prior warning even if they were to do a complete back then the damage has kind of been done right I mean what confidence does that give you with anyone working with them in the future capacity I I don't even think that they've ever thought this through their headset is even the thing I mean

what I will say that I found interesting is when the news first came up their stock price actually increased very slightly since then it's actually come back down a little bit still comparatively their stock price is exactly the same level as it was a month ago so this is neither been like received well by potential you know Brokers neither badly which I think is also a bit confusing because to me this sounds like a pretty terrible move to make but I'll take my own subjective opinions out of it I'd love to hear what the rest of the panel think on these latest developments and where you think this will end up yeah I can I can kick things off um I mean I suspect that new updates from Unity might even be announced before this episode airs and I suspect that they will partially backtrack um or just kind of re-architect how uh how it works maybe putting a cap based on percentage of Revenue or pushing the starting timeline back six months or 12 months something like that I don't know we'll see um I also thought that our Squad last week did a pretty good job also reacting

to what the difficulties may be for game developers as everyone's just trying to figure out what this means for for their business um but you know what I think wasn't hit enough on and what most people are like sleeping on is why Unity made these changes in the first place um and and last week you know on the Pod they kind of said it was you know to make more revenue and that's not wrong like of course it's always like a piece of it but the broader Nuance in my opinion has more to do with how Unity is fundamentally just a very bad business right now that's not an excuse for you know how they rolled things out but I think it's worth just unpacking like like what is going wrong that is driving such changes that impact the industry to to this degree and so so really to start the seat based model for developers using you know this game engine it's not a lucrative model it worked because Unity caught the mobile wave very early

and saw a lot of growth dominant market share and it put a lot of effort into making money with adjacent Services primarily supporting iaps which it does take a cut of Revenue on and therefore is more scalable and more recently you know obviously getting more into advertising we should double down with on with iron Source but obviously when when mobile the company's major growth engine slams to a halt mostly because of ATT and the fact that it's just a mature industry now the growth on that Core Business also creeps to a halt and um you know no growth which right now also means losing large customers on average um you know not adding new customers and you know that's not new it's definitely Excel maybe accelerating right now but that actually has been the trend for the past year or so and that's bad but what's worse is that you know from a Unity perspective is that you know the weak growth has also pulled

back the curtain on how valued destructive the business has been you know so for one like this is a business that has not been profitable At All by any real measure and slowing growth has not made the the company profitable to stock based compensation for this company has also been off the charts it's been over 30 percent of revenue for the past couple years or so which drives really heavy dilution um and then three it's pretty obvious that much of the m a the that the company did such as WETA which had paid over a billion dollars for a couple years ago that was all overpriced and pretty value destructive and then lastly you know if you piece all of those together it shows that like not only has the business been very bloated somewhat unsustainable um and poorly managed but it makes sense why that the stock is down you know over 80 percent from from its eyes and so that's really like the context of like

why Unity feels compelled to make a change because you know how they had run their business with the game engine before it works well everything was good but it didn't really work when everything was bad but when everything turned bad like it just exposed how like unprofitable everything else in the business was and how poor judgment a lot of the previous decisions that went into growth um were from a value creation lens um but you know it's not an excuse for like how horribly executed all of G these changes were um and you know unfortunately uh at least from my point of view that's kind of a pattern you know a year ago the CEO of this company was calling its customers you know effing idiots uh you know like he's the guy who um you know has created a pretty bad track record at Unity um with kind of the the Empire Building model which you know I'll also just

point out in seven years at EA before Unity it was very similar and you know the stock at EA over that seven years was flat that that whole time um at best and so um yeah I think there's just something pretty fundamentally wrong at the top with the way that this company is being run by now I suspect that with these specific pricing changes there will be like adjustments made but needing those adjustments in the first place you know shows that there are bigger changes than just adjustments that are needed that are more foundational to the business and we can speculate on what that is but really that's the bigger um bottom line to me when it comes to Unity specifically I would argue with that you know it's interesting to me I agree I think it's fundamentally probably more a Communications problem than it is a business this problem for all the reasons you laid out Aaron the the why that actually makes a lot of sense as Neil pointed out as the how that's the problem and the rough

parallel I kind of would make to this though it's a little bit different is Netflix rolling out the past the password Crackdown right it's like hey growth is kind of stalled we may have gotten as much penetration as we can get there was this weird little loophole in our business that we were allowing people to do things for a long time that cost us money and to go back to the stock piece and the comms fees a Netflix communicated it in advance before they did it right they floated it out for at least a couple of quarters this is coming this is coming right before it came and they could sort of solicit a little feedback and tweak comes and then also interestingly they stuck to their guns once it happened you know I know it's a little different like stopping cheating versus like actually changing your your core monetization is a little bit different but like the super quick like okay we're putting on we're putting on pause like we're gonna come back with

a statement actually puts you back on your heels from a Commons perspective and puts you in a position of weakness right like the you know if you talk about the stock price well that's no surprise it didn't go up or down right it it would there's upward pressure because hey we're gonna make some more money right making more money is upward pressure on stock but oh they might reverse it is kind of downward pressure you know the the market didn't seem to believe that there'd be a mass Exodus from it as a platform probably because it's difficult and slow to do that and so you didn't see the stock crater but fundamentally this is a Communications problem I might argue fundamentally it's not a business problem and potentially if I were guiding things there I would stick to my guns in in some way shape or form here with a move forward on increasing monetization like listen to the marketplace make some tweaks but I'm not sure for all the reasons Aaron laid out that like a complete reversal puts you back in a solid business position right

you're you're still in a revenue challenge place which which isn't good for anybody in the ecosystem so I I get the Emoji functional outcry and I get the epic failure from managing these communications well but the underlying why doesn't seem so crazy to me the analogy I thought you were going to get with Netflix was quickster and I was like yeah this kind of is due to these quickster moment in a sense um there are actually quite a lot of parallels with that yeah um good one too I think it very much is a business problem and a Communications problem I think that no matter what um Unity like if they're willing to make moves that they said they weren't going to make like a year ago it's like they're recognizing that they do have to make some pretty fundamental changes to their business model that you know even if it's better communicated no one's really gonna like it because it means that more money is going to be made no matter what um and so I think you know and

inevitably there always was a bit of that that was going to happen but but yeah the communications part major fail for for sure but yeah I think it's definitely definitely both but yeah I am personally curious if we'll see it like a a leadership shake up at some point I don't know if I'm overreacting to that too much but uh yeah I don't think he I don't think he you might be I mean a different point I was gonna say if that's fair enough on their their business fundamentals and you know their business they need to make profit too but I mean they are a bloated company they have over seven and a half thousand employees worldwide um do they need that many people this is also a company that quite frankly has a very poor track record they're keeping its own promises they are a company that has been caught in the cycle for the past three to four years of seeing a certain feature or you know cool kid on the the block trying to replicate themselves then under delivering if delivering it at all and and messing up

on it all the time or adding to this blow and I can give you multiple examples of that like they announced several years ago a bit of a kind of movie studio thing in unity probably after seeing the Mandalorian news Unreal Engine we've got to get on that then web 3 blew up and it's like are we going to have our own interim Marketplace that you can use they were even approaching a lot of developers about do you want to use this service and then cut it you know like I can tell you that two weeks after being asked to try it was cut so it was a classic case of left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing and unity which operates on the mobile platform has a pretty poor user interface library and coding things like that and it's something that's been promised to be worked on for years look I I don't want to get too emotional whether I clearly am and things like this but what I would say is that is fair enough but it seems to me that perhaps they're not maybe making the most obvious change first and foremost which is to maybe double down on what they're good at and having a bit of a clean out because I don't feel that they can be the most efficient

company in terms of operating expenses with that many people and like I say this continued perception not just perception but reality of under delivery so I'm I'll leave it there anyway for me yeah and they have done a couple rounds of layoffs over the past few months so I think it is happening and will probably happen um more If This Were sports betting you know like I'm interested in sports betting especially you know looking at where like where's the where's the long shot value like what are like the the random scenarios that are more possible than the masses are thinking and so I like it here my sports bet I would wonder like what are the odds that unity's founder the one who you know called out on social media saying we effed up um David helgeson I might be mispronouncing his name that he's you know back in the CEO seat in the next 12 months like what is that like a ten to one is that a 50 to one I don't know um but that would be if this were If

This Were Vegas that's a that's a bet that I would be a long shot bet that I would be looking at seems to me one of the fundamental things that Anil touched on is something that I've seen a lot of developers bring up but I think people are a little more business-minded maybe aren't thinking about this particular thing as much which is that the breach of trust like they may have had like a legal way to make a change like that like through the the terms of service but I think it's like very clearly the kind of thing that's just not ethical right like if they're talking about retroactively applying this to games that are already out and when they're just downloaded new but they you know not re-downloads but downloads that are fresh sales for example like if you sell your game now but it was made five years ago this still applies if you are basically just about done with your game or if you're like Anil and you have your game already out on the market and it applies to that they know you can't pivot there's nothing you can do at that point except for either pull your game off the store uh and just hope nothing you know changes or that you just like

you know suck it up and in that case it's like just such a huge breach of trust that I can't imagine going forward like maybe maybe they you know smooth this over and they get like a short term uh like small small hit right but long term like if you're talking about your business and you know this company can just rug you at any moment and start taking some of your profits just because they weren't making enough from what they're doing I think that becomes like a lot bigger risk as a business to take obviously yeah the number of options isn't super high right the unity is is a little more I think I mean correct me if I'm wrong with this nil since you've done it a lot more than me a little more efficient on mobile perhaps than unreal is unreal is a bit of a battery warmer uh most of the time and so obviously that's that's I mean that's becoming more and more competitive right as phones catch up you have the whole iPhone can run AAA games now thing and all that stuff uh but it's still they kind of dominate the market to an extent and I could see that maybe starting to shift if they really dig their heels in maybe not in this generation of games

right maybe is people because people are already like uh profits can take it from here like we already have all the battle over that 30 from Apple and Google and steam and it's just I don't know just more and more cuts and then you're talking about the free-to-play model just getting sliced and diced so I mean I'm glad the the people kind of hit them where it hurt in terms of the ads because that seemed like the smart way to actually make them care like you could complain on Twitter all day long and I don't think they would have changed their tune it was only when they started losing money on ads they're like oh wait maybe we can't maybe we should do something about this right yeah let me just add something to you quickly which is that I can think of one similar example in the games industry Nintendo when they had the Super Nintendo they were developing their CD drive with Sony which of course a lot to become the PlayStation with the Fallout from it and they spoke to developers at the time and into a big kind of issue with that developers had to pay this cartridge cost right so it's developed on Nintendo's proprietary Hardware you had to pay the speed to use their proprietary cartridge of which they would take a cut and do it and then they

were going to work Sony and you know they still wanted to have their cake and eat it so they kept on it and then Sony kind of broke away from that and said right but if you develop on ours you won't have to pay the cartridge free and we're gonna we will keep to our promise that we've been speaking to you about that you will only have to pay the CD fee and it wasn't an overnight thing but then when the PlayStation launched there was a reason why it's catalog was so extremely impressive and probably unlike any other developers pulled off because they did upset the wrong people and made them want to try something else um so I think you're right I don't think it's something you'd see short term but yeah I could see sort of three to five years time um a lot of developers using another engine it's been great for Godot let's say that much like I've never seen Godot talked about this much ever uh and I'm sure they're going to get a lot more donations or whatever and and support maybe not this isn't going to bring them like suddenly you know developing for AAA Studios or anything like that but I think uh for a small you know engine like that I'm sure this is gonna be a big boost we'll see I'm sure there will

be more Fallout to talk about about this next week as well so we might as well put a pin in it there uh but I'm sure it will continue to evolve hopefully in a good direction I guess we'll see you know we'll probably be back with this and hopefully with smiles instead of frowns but you never know with this company they haven't done a lot of super smart things to be excited about so uh fingers crossed uh you know throw down those those uh those odds I guess but uh yeah we've got uh another maybe iffy business decision from playtika with an acquisition of in-play labs yeah so this is you know much smaller news than Unity but a few days ago platika announced that it is acquiring in play Labs uh fellow Israel based company that currently supports two mobile games animals and coins and tiles of Fortune uh so animals and coins Blends you know Adventure gameplay with a social loot element and it's and it's done pretty well it's generated about 18 million in IPS since um it's 2020 release tiles of Fortune has similar

coin and raid mechanics and a match 3 format and it went live about a year ago and hasn't performed um nearly as well uh but apparently it's where much of the development resources of in-play labs are going and you know if you look at this deal from a high level view it's not crazy to see you know how platika can come in and try to help boost live Ops performance and long long term engagement that's always kind of their go-to game plan across you know a bunch of games that they acquire For Better or Worse um historically but really two things about this deal stand out to me and I think are just worth noting um one is that the deal has an upfront consideration of 80 million but a maximum longer term consideration of up to 300 million based on you know whatever undisclosed performance targets there are um and I just think it's interesting because that's a super wide range for an

acquisition um but it's also interesting because uh platika's last announced acquisition of UDA games in July also had some a similarly wide range of outcomes so this is now like a pattern and like a kind of like a new way that platika is thinking about making Acquisitions um uh that is more conservative and I guess you know over time if the Acquisitions hit it kind of pays for itself in some ways so I actually kind of like that that change instead of going like super super hard on big Act positions where you have just like really big dreams of you know transforming a game and making it much bigger and more lucrative than it is and you're paying a ton of money up front in cash and or stock making it uh more conservatively structured that's based more heavily on performance over time from a playtika point of view I think that's a smarter way to operate so

that's kind of takeaway number one uh takeaway number two what stands out to me is how much platika is just leaning on m a um you know obviously for playtika uh that like over the past year this is a revenue declining company and uh they're you know somewhat desperate to figure out their growth engine and organic growth via new games has been tough to come by they've kind of stopped development on a lot of like new internal games across their Studios because they just haven't been haven't been hitting um and uh but the reasons I'm kind of surprised that they're still leaning as heavily as they are on M A or that like one this is a 3.6 billion dollar company with one and a half billion in net debt and about two and a half billion in total debt so this is like a very debt heavy company to still kind of be um shelling out decent money for deals um and then second you know similar to a

lot of the other companies that we've talked about this is a business whose stock has shed enormous value at least as a percentage over you know the since the IPO the three or so years ago and so it's stuck as a means of like currency for striking deals it's not you know what it used to be and so you know the deals that it's striking lately I think are mainly um cash based um which you know given what the balance sheet is it's just it's just notable um and then and then lastly they're doing all of that on a more strained balance sheet um when their track record with M A has been pretty inconsistent at best um and so um so yeah we've talked about playtika and their acquisition strategy before but it's just interesting to see kind of as after a long pause where they had a lot of difficulties they've kind of started coming back with a new style these are smaller deals relative to what they've done before and are more

conservative and you know to their credit like this is a pretty profitable business even though um you know it's been been shrinking and not everything has worked out so they can handle the debt um but uh yeah I just kind of wanted to point that out I'm not entirely sure if that makes me more optimistic on you know playtika's long-term Fortune I think they're like the foundation I don't think these deals like transform the foundation of the business like they still have like like bigger bigger fish to fry and in my view but it's interesting to see kind of the steps they're taking to kind of turn the ship around at least partially so yeah that's my view on on this deal and kind of the string of events of late uh and their change strategy does anyone else have any quick thoughts on playtika uh more broadly or even this deal specifically before we move on I guess I'm curious then Aaron what your take is on where you think they go next do we see more Acquisitions from them do we see them

finally decided to release a new game what what uh what's your uh like maybe just a short-term future the next year or two um I don't really know to be honest with you I think as I've said in like previous episodes from my view like big picture platina platika has kind of been stuck between a rock and a hard place if your organic growth efforts aren't really panning out um that's tough but also if you can't really afford like big inner organic growth moves that's also tough and if you're kind of like struggle to really Justify both in a big way it's hard to kind of see like a larger transformation something that like really like turns the chart from steadily going down to steadily going back up and trying to hit new highs again at some point so I don't really see see that I think that this was a business that can definitely you know steady itself and um is quite profitable and some of like the deal making that they're doing I don't have great views on like the games

of like animals and coins I'm not I'm not really sure what to make of that but um I think that kind of their newer more conservative approach with some of the smaller deal making um maybe instead of like large moves some of these smaller moves can add up over time um and maybe they still can unlock some organic growth in some ways um but I still think they're stuck between a rock and a hard place to some degree do you think like these Acquisitions help them set up for a position where they could release a new game and grow through the user bases of those get like you know uh you know like promote the game to the players of those existing games because they've got enough pool to cross promote to like some different audiences to where they're not as dependent on some of the problems that you come from uh you know traditional user acquisition uh maybe uh I mean I mean I think some of the Cross play or cross-selling stuff has been on their mind for a long time I don't know how well it works especially just across different genres I don't think it works too well

um but yeah I mean even with like with in play which they just acquired they they have two main games in their second game is you know not very successful yet but maybe they see something there that plugged into platika's live Ops engine they can take it up a notch um that that's kind of my my guess um and maybe I mean that still is acquired growth but Acquired and then driving organic growth from it um maybe there's something to that but I don't have strong views on the game by game specifics of it I guess I was hopeful that the answer would be yes just because I would like to see some some you know some exact positions turn into new games it might just milk the existing customers I guess right I mean it still might be the case um I mean platika has definitely leaned on the milking side but I think they're smart enough to realize that you gotta unlock some of these newer growth Avenues in some sense so I don't think that's what they're purely betting on anymore by any means cool we're going completely in the opposite direction of this mobile stuff

console's been uh having some fun with a gift that keeps on giving the the Microsoft Activision Blizzard trial that uh seemed to leak everything under the sun apparently we've got everyone's email at this point so uh starting with Nintendo details yeah I'll take this one so yeah it's that time of uh part in the the console life cycle I guess where people start getting bored of the the current consoles we've got and we're talking about what's coming next I think with Nintendo it's long over two right the switch has been out for a while it's been rumored for so long that the the second one would be there and so yeah we we've now started to see that Activision Blizzard now have been told that that a new Nintendo console it will match Xbox One and PS4 performance which I guess is kind of like on brand for Nintendo they tend to release consoles they're a little bit I wouldn't necessarily say underpowered but you know they they're for a different type of Market they go more for sort of cheap price point and accessibility over them so that's kind of what we've heard there um and uh yeah this has been I guess

labeled at Activision especially for not really utilizing the switch so much missing out on some of their IPs like Call of Duty and would they be doing that next time and they've said that you know they basically they've confirmed that they would be interested in doing it but one thing they wanted to do is make sure they had access it to it early because of taking additional work to support it as pipelines and things like this get more difficult so the only information we know is that it does appear to be in development um yeah he'll be matching those two consoles previously mentioned so PS4 Xbox One performance and um yeah that's where we're going to go and it does appear that is going to be another sort of switch like console which is interesting I think one thing that is interesting to us sort of more neutrals is that in the past Nintendo used to have a home console and the handheld console separately right you'd get like the Nintendo DS and the GameCube you'd get the souvenirs and The Game Boy and then they combine it together with the switch and where they're going to keep going that approach or do something different it looks like they are going to maintain attain that so and that's all we know so far but I am curious actually especially

Aaron's opinion on this in terms of do you think that's enough because I sort of feel that like the switch too is I'm quite surprised that it's not already out to be honest with you like I feel like it it could easily have hit the market a year or two ago and it feels to me that by the time this consult is out is is that going to be enough because by that point if it's coming up with we're just about speaking a moment about newer consoles coming out is the golf not going to be really really big and it's almost a bit irrelevant we are starting to see the rise of other sort of handheld decks Stars has become a thing although nowhere near the numbers of the switches so I'm curious to get your take on it but that's what we've learned so far about the immunity console yeah I mean it's a good question um honestly kind of how I view this conversation is like we could basically have the same conversation like every five years you know based on like the new console cycle and probably what we would say would be exactly the same or very similar um so in this case uh like no I don't think it's really gonna

make too much of a of of a difference I think the timing will be fine um I think the uptick will be solid people who love Nintendo are going to continue to love um Nintendo um yeah I mean maybe they could have had like another switch Pro or something like earlier in the cycle and maybe this would play it play into that afterwards or something I'm not I'm not sure if there would have been a better way to play the full console strategy but I think that sticking with basically a switch 2 um of course we haven't seen it yet um but I think that's a really smart move and a lot of people are going most people are going to upgrade it's going to sell really well over the next multiple years and honestly it's just a great form factor right like having one device that can handle um the console side and the handheld side um is great for consumers but it also like is great for Nintendo too and being

able to build games for one dedicated device instead of kind of split between two and you know and then similarly like uh you know honing their services and their subscriptions and all of that stuff to kind of serve on one platform instead of being split and so I think from a hardware perspective it'll do fine Nintendo is going to continue being Nintendo I think that very little is going to change with the strategy Nintendo is gonna probably continue just getting gradually a bit more niche in the gaming world since they don't really truly innovate um but in terms of like first party content is going to be the same third-party content maybe you see slight changes but that never has been a priority for Nintendo all the online stuff they'll make gradual slow improvements but it's always going to be slow and and behind everyone else like it's I think it's just going to be the same same story from my point of view it could be wrong when they announce stuff but curious Dev and Jonathan do you

agree with that or do you have a different view no I think you hit all the key points I mean it makes all the sense in the world and and single device versus Multi-Device is is has a lot of advantages for a lot of parts of the ecosystem I have a couple of questions that like just theoretical questions right around uh the the unanswered like assumptions are on this so one is that if we're talking like PS4 level you know gameplay stuff like that the question I am able to come to is is that only in docked mode kind of thing right like I know there are some I believe some features of the switch that only work in docked mode because you can kind of get the uh maybe improved battery life or power or something along those lines so I don't know the exact technical reason they require that but I could see that being a thing right where it's like PS4 level power when it's plugged into your TV but when you're on the go it's like maybe closer to older switch level or you know somewhere in between or like more steam deck level because it just it does seem like that carrying around a PS4 probably would not be very battery

efficient one would imagine I I mean in heat wise and all that I mean it could be wrong maybe maybe they've engineered that absolutely possible they they've done some cool stuff with some of the stuff they've engineered but that seems like a definite possibility which of course then makes you wonder like if it's that big of a difference potentially you have to wonder if like game developers do have to worry about developing two versions in a way right uh do they just do a 30 frame version versus a 16 frame version uh stuff like that like there's definitely compromises they might have to make um and then the other kind of thing I'm thinking about is backwards compatibility they've always been kind of a little weird about that where some of it's just selling the old stuff to you again through these shops and things like that because if it's a switch too like that would kind of imply I think to a lot of people that there would be some level of backwards compatibility like it doesn't promise it but it certainly implies it right if that's the name but then you got to worry about the name because you saw what they did with the Wii and the Wii U but there's a lot of confusion with people thinking the Wii U was an add-on right so I gotta hope they learned from the marketing last time and it'll try and Market this in a way that people think this is like an add-on or something you

could do to your switch one to like boost it up and that is very clearly uh a brand new thing to meant to replace your old one stuff like that it's it's just a lot of those questions around their their kind of track record of stuff and whether or not they've learned the right lessons from some of that or it like for example if we're just gonna be rebuying all our own games again because they obviously saw some success with that with the with the emulations they'd be doing right like reselling the emulated versions of their older games you know through their Nintendo online uh like program that will give you like Super Nintendo games stuff like that uh I I don't know it'll be interesting to see like especially if they for example up the the quality of like the N64 games was like a big kind of you know issue with the uh the switch right now if they can emulate those well for example that could be a good selling point to some of that audience I don't know like a lot of question marks but of course you know this was not really a press release from Nintendo so certainly going to leave a lot of question marks but I I'm really interested to see a bit more info especially if it's looking to come out anytime soon like in the next year or two I would imagine they're going to have to ramp up for it at some point here I but it does sound like one of the

things that was the details here is you know they've talked to their game developers about this right so that's where these leaks come from is game developers have a heads up so I do Wonder like what is being cooked up for this um obviously Nintendo kind of needs a big first party title and I I I feel like sometimes the timing of their launch uh either for the game or for the console often tends to kind of lean on having a big launch title and making sure that that's ready I know that I've Heard lots of stories from Miyamoto about trying to rush stuff out to be ready for these these big launches sometimes almost having to delete the console launches stuff like that because they need one and it seems like the the late stage switch has really leaned into just remakes and stuff like that as opposed to trying to do big uh games after this this last Zelda which is exactly what you'd expect right from end of life cycle uh but in 10 years since the last Mario yeah there we go Mario Kart nine it's I mean I was we don't want the one from from mobile or anything like that right but uh I would really be interested to see they do have that Super Mario

Brothers wonder which is a pretty big deal to be launching this late if they're like launching that just before switch two then I would hope it has backwards compatibility right like a game like that you don't want to buy it and then next year be like oh well I can't play it on my new system so I don't a lot of question marks a lot of cool stuff but uh it certainly was not the only leak as I hinted before Microsoft had a little bit of their own get leaked indeed and you know once again I don't know how it works out that these lawsuits always have mistakes in the redaction and oops we forgot to do this or we mask that incorrectly but uh you know once again here we are and this is you know related to a 2028 potential update or you know complete redo of Xbox and then also some sort of mid-cycle updates you know this is high level stuff so you know whether it's changed since this or you know sort of laying out a big Vision has not come down to product specs or not will remain to be seen but it seemed like a bit of the of

the kitchen sink right you had sort of this Cloud hybrid Tech right where we're sort of like still betting on the cloud but maybe not betting on the cloud so much and kind of sticking sticking with more traditional console underlying architecture you know obviously like big buzzwords you know powered by Ai and machine learning and all the things that that can offer from you know in-game experience to monetization and all that stuff interestingly potentially a ugc game building function within it kind of all of the roadblocks engine so you know kind of high level like all the big bets the industry may or may not be making in the next couple years and then also some 2024 news around you know specific excuse which you know some changes to form factor adding some features to uh you know to controllers you know a lot of like the latest and greatest technology you know to me being you know primarily an Xbox user I I I like you

know where it's where it's headed if it comes to the marketplace and you know obviously all these things are potentially additive but you know it's more kind of rolling your eyes once again at like nothing is secret anymore when these lawsuits happen but you know certainly not not earth-shattering news for for Xbox but a lot for gamers to look forward to I think one thing that stood out to me um from this and obviously like uh Phil Spencer came out and said a ton of this has already changed and so who who knows like what is actually real and what what isn't but one part that stood out to me um was that they're building a new operating system that spans essentially all kinds of devices and that just you know continues to hint at like how Xbox thinks about its future differently from from other companies one operating system that you know can be taken to mobile it's a handheld you know console to the web

um Etc you know really leaning into ensuring that people can play Xbox games really Game Pass games um anywhere and everywhere and you know that's a long-term bet to make that happen but I think the technical underpinnings are are starting to at least show in the the road map in new ways and of course like this points to um new ways to play right like um handheld you know as mentioned well um you know I don't know if Xbox is going to create their own handheld device in the same way that Sony is with cloud or what that's going to look like in this next gen but clearly you know we were talking about the switch and how they unlocked this form factor where people can play handheld or you know on your TV the other consoles are going to want to tap into that in some way um and to play on anything play Anywhere um you know thesis is going to support that um and obviously there's more we don't know about you know the mobile side and

you know what they're cooking up or what what they're building that maybe they can't even necessarily launch you know on on iOS and Elsewhere for now but um so that was interesting to me and then of course just like as a nerd you know just seeing like oh like oh like what are the new Bethesda games like oh Oblivion you know remaster Fallout 3 remastered Dishonored 3 Etc and I was like yeah I'm sure a lot of this has changed but you know kind of thinking back Bethesda hasn't had like a like a big remaster strategy you know they've always just kind of been taking their time with new games so uh maybe this is like a new area that they'll you know unlock some growth in can be a mild you know push for Game Pass and such into the to the Future um I didn't think anything here was too too crazy of a leak to be to be honest because a lot of this was expected I just sort of Wonder with like the direction it's going with the the

operating system um the play everywhere like is this going to be a big win or is this another Xbox One Moment where they they kind of spread out what they wanted to be too far and at that time it was like we're gonna be your home everything device but you know Gamers didn't really care about that and non-gamers weren't going to buy an Xbox to be that device and that didn't really work and they had to backtrack uh so I I'm curious what kind of moments will it be in Xbox one moment or something uh more successful once it's actually live but those were my quick thoughts I think you're right you know philosophically what I'm sort of hearing here through both of these things that that's been Illuminating to me as a parent is I think at least I'm in the generation where like things are occasion based right you know even like as an early streamer all that stuff there were stuff that was for the big screen and stuff that was for the small screen and stuff that was for this

and you know a thread I see in this is you know it's handheld or it's you know console it's mobile or it's console and I I seen my son content consumption isn't occasional right there's just this completely seamless migration from like a big screen to a pad to a phone in a in a car to a home and the the true line is the content and not the occasion and there seems to be far less focus on the device of delivery or the screen size than like for my generation and I'm reminded of that in sort of you know hearing conversation about both of these platforms right that the idea about occasion in gaming and content consumption is just going away and I think it's really interesting to see what they're going to come up with but I'm a little bit surprised actually that they are even making new hardware I thought that the current Xbox might be the last and they would go completely Cloud so for me the leak of it being a

kind of hybrid uh Cloud Hardware mechanism makes more sense like there already is one version of the Xbox without a hard drive right already so they have already kind of experimented that this even goes back to the dometric days of it you know it was all going to be digital DLC only and that division but I think it speaks more to you know the the Netflix of games approach so um yeah I'll be honest I'm a a bit surprised that it's um maybe not as revolutionary as I thought it might be I thought they might use this has been the real opportunity to be like no now it is there is no Hardware you're going to get all these updates or it might even be another update of the current concert rather than going for a new one so I'm curious as to how often they'll go I suppose at the same time they because if you look at sales numbers the current round of Xboxes have done around 20 million compared to PS5 which is like 40 million so this is I think the first time in a while that I would say they've not and maybe it's a bit harsh for me to say they've not really been in the race but that's quite a beating I would say compared to sort of like the Glory Days of Xbox 360 where they they beat the PS3

but at least in America maybe not globally but they certainly beat them in their name um but yeah at the same time we've we're very complimentary about Microsoft strategy on this uh Roundtable and I think for good reason I think we all think that the kind of subscription for everybody is a very good approach and one that should ultimately win out and it's just a matter of time before we all get it and just play their games because why would you not do that um hence I'm a bit surprised about the hardware so I'm rambling on a bit here apologies for that but um interesting what it is I think it'll just be way more Cloud I think the the the OS being uh working across all platforms makes perfect sense doesn't sort of um yeah nothing just has to be as being a bad idea so it's sensible to me yeah this also connects to a mailbag item um that we've been sitting on uh for a little bit and it says curious you also did some digging in and around the Azure part of the Microsoft cloud gaming space I've always thought that Microsoft's end goal was to own the servers that power cloud gaming and everything is a means to that kind of

like how AWS sort growth because of Netflix streaming video um so I guess I'll connect a couple threads here um one with what you're saying in ill and two to this to this question um and uh really the core of it is that I don't think Microsoft is betting on a cloud gaming based future you know they're betting on an ecosystem of Hardware of other people's Hardware of the cloud of anywhere they could possibly um be to drive the kind of gaming experience that people might want and different people have different different needs or preferences um and you know as for the Azure part like yeah that's of course like a fantastic advantage to have and it's a way better business than than gaming is for for Microsoft obviously um and Azure will definitely benefit from any growth in Cloud streaming including the gaming side of that not

just from Xbox but even from PlayStation 2. I don't know if it's still the case but I remember three years ago or so it was announced that PlayStation was going to be working with Azure on its Cloud streaming abilities and I haven't heard otherwise yet so I assume that's still that still is a thing um but Azure is absolutely a competitive Advantage especially for being able to integrate your own Services into your own technology and making it more seamless and such over time but really like the truth of the matter is that cloud gaming still isn't awesome yet and it has a lot of limitations and a lot of these limitations are rooted in like actual physics of you know latency and such that like are not easily swappable and probably will not be solved for a long time um if ever you know some people think and so I you know I think kind of even taking this back to what you're saying Anil I think it actually is like super critical that Xbox like has to continue to lean on hardware for a very long time

because any other means means that it's not putting its best foot forward in like promoting like its games being played in the highest quality kind of way which of course um you know yeah it's like a luxury it is a bit of a luxury brand in that sense it's definitely cheap well I was just going to say something I want to say into Jets I don't disagree with you I think in fact that's a great rebuttal that that's very true actually so I think that's a great way to answer what I'd said there I was going to say that I do remember in the Bill Gates era Microsoft sort of company Mission was that they wanted everybody in the world to to be using Microsoft Windows on the PC and they basically achieved that I would say right and then they realized because they were so successful they did even more ballsy statement and they were like okay but hear me out there are some people that are playing with Digital entertainment but it's not running Microsoft Windows operating system so what if we made our own console now there's going to be a PC or a computer in everyone's home and it's going to be running our product and that's the real

reason why they went into Xbox and yeah yeah there we go there was a sort of dreamcastful I'll let Devin say that running Windows C and things like this so that was their big thing in trying to do that um and then but they didn't really win that battle right they tried their hardest they were quite successful but I think honestly there was even talk when um satina took over that they might even want to sell the Xbox division but I think they sort of found that they'd made this new division that was super profitable and lucrative even if it didn't quite fit into its original company vision and they sort of changed it so where I'm going with this is I wonder if now is their company Mission that no matter what Hardware you're running anywhere in the world it will be powered by a Microsoft service in the cloud and it is quite similar to their original concept that everything runs through them no matter what their Hardware is and I feel like that's where they're going and that's why gaming is a big part of it but it's not the only part of it but hey just a thought for me thrown out there it is interesting um and I think that like if anything

like Microsoft's overall mission and like the Gaming's Mission Xbox was mission probably are not completely um I don't want to say compatible because maybe they can both like exist at the same time but they're not like perfectly in sync and like a beautiful way um and if anything like if you look at kind of like what they're doing I mentioned the operating like building an operating system that works on every device you know kind of pushing that out and a lot of sense that's like the old Microsoft strategy that was very like Windows first we're gonna try to put Windows on as many devices as we can we're even going to create some of our own Hardware in new categories to push that forward um and that didn't really work and you know then Nadella came on as new CEO and said like if we're gonna take Microsoft to the next level like our strategy can't be Windows it has to be like serving the Enterprise in the cloud you know in as many ways as we can

um there and of course we'll still have Microsoft and windows as an operating system and sell Microsoft Office and all of that stuff but that's not the core like driver now and I sort of Wonder with gaming like um obviously they're not forcing their operating system on to you know other companies other Hardware necessarily other consoles and such but um but yeah it's not completely in sync with the overall Microsoft Vision I don't if it makes sense to be they serve completely different markets um and therefore should probably have completely different strategies but uh but yeah I think the operating system part it's still fair but at the end of the day it's still it still was really important how they can compete in Hardware um for the foreseeable future um and I think they're still kind of at a disadvantage there um until unless something really shakes up but I kind of doubt that's going to be the case so um I think you know they're not it's not

going to be a flip the switch moment of their strategy from no console from console to no console it's really like cloud is like a tiny thing so they're hoping it'll be more important in a hybrid and then maybe one day um play anywhere they won't have to worry about the hardware pieces I would guess but that is a long time coming if ever I'd guess yeah I've noticed um a couple of Trends I think all kind of Point towards not necessarily Cloud as in like playing a game off the cloud but isn't trying to get you to centralize your things to the cloud so like for one thing Windows has been pushing One Drive more like deeper and deeper integrated like I'm on Windows 11 and it's like actually difficult to not use OneDrive like they really make it a pain uh they also don't make it very good I've had a number of problems with files and whatnot but they're definitely trying to push people to get their documents in the cloud and they push that with like Microsoft 365 stuff for the office workers to have their stuff in the cloud obviously covid was like a huge boost for them like Microsoft teams gained some great traction Skype was pretty

much all but forgotten about teams kind of took its place you know alongside Zoom so they've definitely been pushing people more and more into these like sort of central online repositories obviously the Xbox stuff isn't doing that so much yet in the sense that like your saved game files aren't your OneDrive but I feel like that's kind of something that comes you know eventually where you know you're playing on your PC you're playing on your Xbox and all of a sudden they're both like centralized your saved game files in progress and your Gamertag all that stuff on your OneDrive or whatever you want to call it your Azure server like centralizing this stuff so that you are a little more dependent on them the operating system is more just a client to this bigger sort of uh Nest they're trying to build in the cloud and I feel like that's been more their strategy where it's like inching people in there obviously the big problem with trying to force people into the cloud besides just the the normal physics problems is just lack of good internet in huge parts of the country like rural parts of the country if if Microsoft tried to push entirely cloud-based gaming then they would either just like have to use an old Xbox

or switch over to Sony because they wouldn't they wouldn't have watch or I guess Nintendo but they wouldn't have a lot of choices then because they just they wouldn't even have the bandwidth to download a huge game even if like they could and so that's there's definitely parts of the country they just can't Target that way and so this is like a gradual shift and it's shifting more and more people into Microsoft accounts for everything into you know office apps in the cloud into obviously they failed with Hotmail and I don't know if they've managed to see much traction email gmail seems to dominate that but I imagine they'll make another play at that at some point and try and push that as well and so this that seems to me to be their strategy is to just get people to do everything with an internet connection to your account to their servers on the gaming server side though I've definitely seen like sometimes the progress fall back so like uh when Siege came out I know I'm biased know enough about it at least kind of bring it up a lot as an example but it uh it started out running on Azure servers they had a lot of problems it wasn't the best I don't think Azure was really super prepared at that time you know this was a while ago Siege I think is eight or

nine years old now uh Rainbow Six Siege to be clear and uh it had problems and eventually you know like I think they smoothed most of them out but eventually that game moved to playfab on Amazon servers and I'm assuming it's still there I haven't checked anytime recently but like obviously whatever was going on wasn't a big enough deal for them to want to stay there and so I I feel like maybe Microsoft still has some more uh progress to make on Azure service it might have been a deal as well that they were paying or or subsidizing costs or something for Ubisoft and that was why Ubisoft did it but Ubisoft is pretty big in the clouds and streaming and downloading space so I would think that's you know pretty important to them uh you know even though they obviously I could see them having stuff on Game Pass or something like that uh down the road but I don't know there's a lot of like short like hops forward but I still feel like they're so far from that like Cloud dream it's more just like can we get everyone to at least like use our stuff and attach it to either an Xbox account or a Microsoft account and that that's the dream for now yeah last thing I'll

say is it's hard to have your cake and eat it too um it's hard to have everyone it's hard to build your own ecosystem where you compete with everyone with games and time spent and also try to be the service provider in as many ways as you can for an industry so they'll probably have to you know just pick a path really um and and stick to it and it seems like Game Pass and the ecosystem around that is really their primary focus and all their efforts gonna go towards figuring out how that's viable in an ever-changing future uh but we shall see I would say the short-term guarantee is subscription models coming out of them right like yes that part's not going anywhere for now it's unless they come up unless of a better business model comes out that replaces it we're going to see more and more subscriptions from them uh you already saw that too where they changed like the Xbox Gold around and all that stuff so yeah I'm sure we'll see a lot more of that but I I doubt Microsoft will leave the topics anytime soon they always find a way to come back

even if it's through their court documents but we'll see what they got in store but anyways uh i i i as the last call but I I do feel like they moved to this Cloud stuff almost out of Revenge for losing the HD DVD versus Blu-ray War I like screw discs in man we're moving on but uh anyways I want to thank uh our great panelists as always some great conversation lots of cool stuff going on so maybe not so cool stuff that hopefully will get cool for the next couple weeks but uh definitely make sure to uh you know subscribe if you haven't already to the navic digest check it out there also if you are listening on YouTube make sure to also check us out on Spotify or I think Apple podcasts for on there as well you know subscribe on your native platform uh so you don't necessarily have to watch the video if you don't want to uh and also lastly of course as a reminder you just heard a mailbag question there make sure to get your emails in to uh podcast novik.gov get feedback comments questions as this person did you know whatever shoot stuff over it you know if we don't like it we don't have to say it but you know shoot

over whatever you want to say uh we love getting feedback from you guys it's definitely definitely helpful so make sure you do that but uh thanks again listeners as well and we will see you next week in the meantime enjoy your weekend if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast navic dot Co or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novik has to offer make sure to check out our website www.navic.com there you can sign up for the number one games industry newsletter navic digest or contact us to learn about our wide-ranging Consulting and advisory Services again that is www.navik.com thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode