Xbox’s Line of Succession, Sony Shutters Bluepoint, and Discord Doesn’t Learn | Games For Breakfast

[music] Good morning, Matt. AH,
GOOD MORNING, WILL.
Good morning to all of you.
Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show. We talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but where also I was up at 7:00 outside shoveling a bunch of the stuff you see outside of the windows, only the real kind, not the animated kind that is here. Uh we are currently in the in the Northeast in a lot of other places having some severe weather. So I hope everyone out there is uh staying uh warm, dry, and shoveled as best as you can. How are you doing, Will?
Good. Uh I got the So So actually you could see like the difference between where Matt is on the East Coast, where I am at on the East Coast. Matt got a foot and a half and I got an inch.
So it's
going great. I'll be shoveling literally after my meetings this afternoon. I looked outside and the plow had already blocked us back in.
Yeah, of course. Of course, because that's that's inevitably how it do. This

is this is in fact how we do. Uh yeah, but it's pretty good here. It's just cold. It's just cold. Can Can we double winter? Like I would like a spring, please.
We'll get one
in June. Uh but that's neither here nor there,
probably. You didn't come to games for breakfast this morning. Dear Janets, dear Brads, and dear friends watching over on Nebula, the rockiest of all of you. Um, no, no, no. You, you came because there is there is quite possibly a succession crisis over at uh at Xbox. And by crisis, I want to make it very clear, especially with the thumbnail that we had up. Uh we don't know. We're gonna talk about we're going to deep dive into all of this, but like we're what you're going to get here for our top story about the shakeup over at the Xbox division of Microsoft is going to be um

looking back at the industry in the last I don't know five to seven years with the with the Xbox of it all seeing sort of like Phil Spencer's legacy uh and and sort of what has happened between then and now. And now we'll then we'll sort of look at where this might go in the future with the new slashsem leadership that's going on there because the the thing I wanted to get across even though there's a silly succession uh thumbnail and both Master Chief and Banjo were looking very concerned um is that at the end of the day for better or worse the only stuff we have right now is sort of uh corporate corporate emails and messages and speculation based on precedent
and some LinkedIn posts I think
and some LinkedIn posts but but very um it it's it's very fresh and I I believe

today the 23rd is the first day that Phil is not doing the job anymore. Is that correct?
That is my understanding is that today is uh the first day of Phil Spencer's retirement uh from Xbox. Now, hopefully that means he's asleep,
right? I hope so. The dude's worked hard.
If if if I worked a job for 38 years, not possible right now. Um, but if I if I had worked a job for 38 years, I would I would take my first day off of retirement and sleep like the whole day. I would be like, great, I've done I have I have left
I've left everything behind. I'm going to sleep now. [snorts]
Great. I mean, and also sort of in these things and you could we'll have everything in the show notes. is a bunch of IGN articles and then actually what I really like is the first IGN article that is in our show notes um when this goes up later that has the full transcripts of everyone's emails both um uh Satia

Nadella uh who is the uh Microsoft CEO then it has Phil's who is the retiring Microsoft gaming CEO uh message on the outs then we have Asha uh Sharma who is going to be the new Microsoft gaming CEO And then we also have Xbox chief content officer uh up uh promoted to that role I believe. Uh Matt Booty uh which baller name. I I'm always a fan of of of saying that. Uh what the heck?
What what the what the heck?
I hear noise now. Does chat hear noise like an advertisement?
Nope. Uh here I was praising IGN's site and I was just scrolling down the article and then it's like hey here's an advertisement for some pharmaceuticals AND I'M LIKE AH BUT IT DIDN'T COME through to you
universal mute on all of those. Um
yeah insane.
Yeah. So that's like the short version,

right? So we're going to kind of break this down into three like major pieces I think. One, Bill Spencer is retiring. That's the first part. The second one is going to be who the heck is Asha Sharma because most of the gaming uh folks have no idea who Asha Chararma is because she was not who we were expecting to get this job if and when Phil decided that he was going to retire. And then the other question that sort of lingers in the room sort of unpleasantly is what happened to Sarah Bond because she was felt like she was doing the job and was going to get the job. But why why Sarah Bond no get job?
She was she was definitely the era parent and the protege to uh Phil Spencer. So I don't I don't fully know. Um she was very present in a lot of the uh most recent Xbox uh press conferences and things and announcements. Um and look,

longtime viewers of this show know that we have not pulled any punches with the sad state that Xbox seems to be in.
Um they've kind of gone full hog on the subscription model service and shot their console division in the foot in sort of on the way out. um that doesn't mean that they can't come back. That doesn't mean that, you know, maybe the a leadership shakeup is what is needed. But again, only time is going to be able to tell there. What we can tell you honestly is that Phil Spencer uh has been kind of whether or not I've agreed with everything that Xbox has done over the course of his tenure. Uh you cannot doubt that the man truly gave a crap about gaming.
Yeah.
Uh I think no matter where you are in a gaming division of Microsoft, you're going to be pulled in a lot of different

directions. And Phil seemed uniquely equipped to sort of straddle that line the best he could. In fact, I I credit, and again, speculation. I don't have insider nonsense things about this. This is just off the top, but I would posit that many of the positive things uh out of Xbox over the last uh you know, 15, 20 years, specifically, I know he's there 38, but he started like as an intern. um have been due to him sort of trying to wretch the ship in a direction that sometimes he could manage and veer a course and sometimes maybe he wasn't able to. Yeah.
Um I also think that perhaps because the last swing was taken whoever called it to sort of like move into the more of the the streaming model as opposed to like and like not having exclusives and all that jazz. Um, I think no matter who was the protege, Sarah Bond or otherwise, they would always be a bit ousted in this

particular era because if you're the upand cominging and the last three years while you've been up and coming have not been great,
um, that's a hard cell to put you into that role.
I agree.
And it and you can't help but also probably feel shafted by it, right? Like cuz here you are,
I can only assume trying your best like and you uh you get to a point where you just can't
Yeah.
you can't deliver anymore.
Yeah. So, let's let's roll back to Friday afternoon. Friday the 20th of February in the afternoon is when Phil announced that he was he was leaving which kind of an interesting I I guess it makes sense as like a timing right but like
will it's Friday it's Friday you got to get down with all of your weird news that might affect the markets on Friday
correct as the like at 3:56 p.m. Eastern, by the way. So,

like definitely a markets move, right? 1 million% a markets move to announce right then. Okay, great. Um, and I have not looked to see what Microsoft's, if anything, this is going to do to Microsoft stock. I don't I don't know it's going to do anything to it. Like, Microsoft's too big for this to be the thing that [snorts] Anyway, got the point. Um,
I'm just sort of looking at it right now. I just sort of popped in it again. I'm not a I'm not a stocks boy or a bondsman. Um, however, I I will say uh it looks like
when it opened today, it did dip a bit and it's kind of dipping a little more and now it's popping back up. It says it's down uh 2.73, whatever that means.
It's 2.73% of the total value. Yeah. Yeah. So,
who knows?

Yeah. Uh, so, okay. So, uh, Phil has a very nice touching, you know, I've been here since 1988. Believe in the new CEO leaving thing. It It does feel like well planned. This does not feel like a That's it. I can't take it anymore. I'm out.
No. Months. Months in months in planning.
Months and months in planning, which makes some of this kind of weird that Asha Sharma hasn't been surfaced to the public or the press as the likely candidate for a for the new CEO at all in that time to best my knowledge.
Um, yeah, that's that's a good point, Preston. Yeah. I mean, it is it is fundamentally not the same business model at all. It's like a weird subdivision of the company that makes the software that runs most of the world uh to to some degree or another. And

then also they make silly video games,
right? Um
yeah.
So I don't know like
Yeah. Well, I guess so like so with this sort of shakeup and with um with the new the new leadership team being in place of uh of Asha and Matt, uh I guess gut reaction. Okay, I I'm going to rewind for a second. Do you think like do you agree with me with the Phil is the kind of the guy who I felt like was trying to steer the ship in the right direction even if he failed a few times?
I I think feel right.
I I think that feels right. I feel like it is one of the few cases that we have remaining of no, this person literally started as an intern and now they're in charge of the company, which feels like it's a

steering like it's it's a point in Phil's favor for being someone who actually steered the company, right? and not like a [snorts] sort of the new wave CEO model of like ah yes reorganize I have a business degree right like
and it's interesting when we when we get into talking about asha which we will in a in a in a second uh there are sort of two schools of thought behind that style.
Yeah. Uh, and yeah, I mean, for for what this means, uh, uh, Neic, he was a gamer. Like, there's no no one no one doubted that Phil,
he didn't, how do you do, fellow kids? Here's my gamer score, right? It was like
he actually used the product that his company made and was proud of it and enjoyed it and wanted to make it better.
And he actively liked and still likes. We're talking about him like he's gone gone. He's still alive. Uh he also

really championed like gaming in general, right? Like he he definitely was, you know, on the company line and doing the stuff for his job, but also when a company when someone else did something good in the industry or some uh devs that he liked did a cool game or a cool thing, he would always sort of comment on it and be very, you know,
Yeah.
active in the high upend community of game publishing and game development.
Yeah.
Um and yeah, new guy. He could pull out deep cut gamer knowledge when he needed it. Now, this is the interesting thing. All that is great. Does that help you get your agenda across in an everinccreasingly difficult corpo structure of Microsoft?
I think no. And I think that's part of that's been part of Phil's problem is that Phil like has been struggling a touch with the

balance between being someone that who as the face of this company, the gamers can relate to and also being someone who can be like, "No, y'all really this is the corporate move." Right? which is I mean it's really hard to argue that Xbox has been doing well the past couple of years what with them getting like pulled out of Costco and other places right with them having price hikes and there not really being a reason to purchase Xbox hardware anymore and like a compelling one like I know whenever we talk about that people do mention like in the comments and in other places that they have Xboxes and like that's great and like if you're if you have one and you're happy with it awesome But I think it's hard to see the reason that someone would choose that specifically as their as a console to purchase now versus building a PC. Well,
well, like there's different user cases, right? Like if you're if if you're just

a specifically a console gamer, there's almost no reason specifically to do Xbox. If you are a
PC gamer, you can get all the games on PC.
Yep. If you want to game off of console, even like on a phone or a tablet or something, Xbox can do that. So, you don't really need the hardware. Um, I mean, the only use case is do you want to play Xbox games at your TV, not on a tiny phone screen that you're holding on your hand or
Oh, got phones, don't you?
Yeah. Uh,
or to put it in the way that your little cousin inevitably asks at every family gathering, "You got games on your phone?
You got games? You got games on your phone?"
Yeah.
Um, so someone brought up here, uh, oh, Blazing. Uh, I'm surprised that Matt Booty was not uh uh promoted to fill this role.

I'm not. Uh, and again, this is not getting into uh Asha and her history yet. Um, but I think this is why I don't think this is like any more crushing than any of the other stuff that's been going on at Xbox for the last uh year and a half, two years, because Matt Booty also understands this business and understands Xbox and understands gaming, right? like he's not uh actually I to be perfectly honest I don't know if he's a uh you know a as as much air quotes gamer air quotes cred as Phil had but he knows what's going on when it comes to at least riding the line of making a product that will sell well and also be cool and fun and art and nice right um I Uh, but I also don't think they want that

person. I don't think Microsoft wants that person or that kind of person, a Phil type person to be in the Xbox CEO role.
I agree. Um, I think there was probably a decent amount of internal struggle one way or the other and they just want a less headached approach uh to roll with more of what Microsoft is doing in general. That's if I had to posit why Matt did not get the the full bump up. If Sarah wasn't going to get it, then it would probably go to Matt. Matt's not getting it. I think if both of those people, both the protege and the other like actual gamer cred person uh and it goes to an outside uh hiring from the outside, then I think we kind of see the writing on the wall of what not what is valuable, what is the least friction for the

company as a whole internally.
I think yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. This reads like a Microsoft wants to bring Xbox back into the fold more tightly and to have it be more align synergistically with our business practices and long-term value uh oriented objectives aka it's not making any money. It's not helping the stock price, right? And those are like big long-term problems for Microsoft, right? So this is this is let's assume for the moment and we're not don't put the tin foil down. Put put it down. No. No. Put the tin foil down. Let's assume that Phil just wanted to retire because Phil wanted to retire because he's been doing this job for almost four decades. That's reasonable, right? That is a reasonable read of the situation. We're not going to assume anything else. take this opportunity to transition them

away from the Phil Spencer, I'm a gamer bro who happens to run one of the big three gaming uh console manufacturers in the entire world into, hey, we're actually part of a bigger company with bigger company objectives. It would be nice if those aligned with the things that the the Xbox division was doing, right? Um,
I think it's pro, this I don't even think is a full tinfoil hat thing. I don't think you're a person who works at a company for 38 years. Like there's Phil's still a pretty young dude, right? Like
if he started as a if he started as an exe if he started
he's 58 years old.
Yeah. He started as an intern like early on at like 20. Yeah.
So I can't Every person is different. Um, if I happened to be in the position where I was an intern and I uh was still going and I was basically near the top of the thing, I don't

I can't picture simply wanting to be done outside of any internal politicking being the thing that makes me leave because if I'm there 38 years, I love this. Like I love this. And yeah, people can change and we can age out of stuff, etc. But I I I imagine that it is for a combination of reasons. I don't think it didn't seem like it when we talked about the stories earlier in the year or last year that Phil liked being like rolled out when Microsoft would do something kind of bad for their fan base and Phil would have to come and spin it to try to not be as bad,
right? Yeah. I I I could definitely see that getting old very quickly. And it seems like they said that this this transition was months in preparation. So I could see something like the exclusives going away and the this is an Xbox campaign, Phil not being a huge fan of that, but having to tow the line and maybe you try to ride that for as long as you can. Again, this is all speculation, pontificating, basing it

off my own internal politics and and morality, which again no one needs to pay attention to. Um, but all of that is to say it feels like it probably was a combination of, "Oh, well, I don't like the way this is going. I told you you're not course correcting and now I just have to kind of keep going out and saying this is all good when I don't maybe fully believe it. Maybe it's time I retire." Like, um, I don't think it was a big blow up. I don't think it was anything like that. I think like all of these things there is nuance. Ah, shocking that we use that word. Um, and it felt like this was the time.
Yeah. Okay. So,
so that's kind of the past,
right? Let's talk about the future. So, the future is Asha Sharma who uh seen on the left here is the new uh CEO of this division.

And you might be like, "Wow, what's Asha Sharma done before this?" And the answer is concerning to a lot of people,
but not but this is the weird This is this so funny. So, yes. And
Yeah. Right.
But also completely not concerning to another group of people.
Correct.
And it's not just We'll get to it. It's not just the like full-blown spectrum on either side of this like correct. Will I'm sorry to interrupt you there, but
it's okay. Um, so uh Asha's previous job right before this
uh was [laughter] the president of Microsoft's core AI product division.
How's Copilot doing?
I know every worker loves C-Pilot.
Copilot's so good. Copilot's so good it

writes Microsoft code now and Windows 11 [laughter] good updates updates so good you have to update it twice
co c co-pilot's so good that the [laughter] I don't this can't be true I'm just making it up now but it feels like the most co-piloted question is how turn off co-pilot
yeah no I feel like that's correct right the answer is uh there's
hey fire off in the chat how you feel about Microsoft co-pilot
have okay wait hold a sec I'll Janet,
how was did could anyone provide a use case of how they last used co-pilot effectively?
I like I
I love this mistress Xbox. If if if it was Clippy 2,
if it was Clippy 2,
I would at least like like put up with it for the lols. Like if they just made their AI clippy, I'd be like, "Okay, [laughter]

yeah." Uh, okay. Great. Great. Yeah, that Yeah, that's correct. I I'm with I'm with Generic Flues. Uh, here on this one, Copilot is so good, it created a security vulnerability in Notepad. In Notepad,
I asked Copilot how to turn off Copilot,
right? Okay, great. Awesome. Um, so,
oh, here's something. Copilot is great for copying an article as I gonna click and save me three seconds, but other than that, I can't think of a valid use. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right. Um, yeah. Okay, cool. So, so no one no one likes Copilot is is the message that I'm getting.
No one here. Maybe there's someone that likes co-pilot.
Sure. So, Obviously tapping the person who was just recently leading the core AI product division to lead the Microsoft Xbox division

is a very specific move right now.
I also
also not giving that position to two of the people that have been surrounding with the gaming division for a very long time is also very telling.
Third part of the story that we're going to get.
I'm sorry I'm jumping ahead.
We're going to get there. I also want to be very clear because I think it's really important that like we we give this disclaimer. I have no idea what Asha Sharma's qualifications are beyond her previous work history that's been sort of sourced to the public uh as part of this. Right. And
she also works for Facebook uh for a while.
Facebook she she started at Microsoft went to Facebook came back to Microsoft is doing the
she did uh Instacart. She she's basically taken both divisions of Facebook and Instacart and turned them profitable.
Right. So she she has like Yeah.
To be very clear uh Asha Sharma is excellent at her job.
Yes.
And that is

whether whether we like the direction her job is taking society as a whole is a different category. Correct.
But she is excellent at her job.
Correct. So part of the problem is not is she going to uh keep Xbox afloat in the state that it is, is do we like the direction that Xbox is going to go when the person that they tap specifically is someone who has broad experience with developing AI products.
Now here's something. Oh, sorry.
And she knows this, by the way. One of her first statements um is uh that she is she is claiming um or sorry her her quote is as monetization and AI evolve and influence this future. We will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop games are and always will be art crafted by humans and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.

We must have great games beloved by players before we do anything. Unforgettable stories sto unforgettable character stories that makes us feel innovative gameplay and creative excellence. We will empower studios, invest in iconic franchise, and backb.
Heartbreak feels good in a place like this,
right? So like so she is aware and the PR team that probably helped with all of this transition a little bit is aware that there is definitely a lot of public skepticism over her moving over this move for her. Right.
Yeah.
And like why she particularly would be tapped to do this from that direction. And when you have to release an initial statement that's like, "No, I promise I'm not going to turn your beloved franchise into," and it's her words. Her words are soulless AI slop. She calls it soulless AI slop. That's a little worrying to me, right?
Wait, it's worried that she calls it out?
Uh, it's worrying that she feels the need to call it out right away. Yeah. Like, like,

would it be better if she didn't? Again, I'm not defending her position here at all. I I'll get into sort of my final take of it when we get there, but like I'm just curious like what if she what if that sentence in her entire and I urge everyone to go read her full email statement uh when she got this job.
Um I I if she didn't say that part, would we feel better or worse? Like
I think better.
Really? I can I think elaborate on that cuz I would feel much worse. I would I I think if I did it if she didn't say soulless AI slop if she said hey I understand I have a lot to learn about the gaming you know division as I'm coming from a different part of the company or like a more generic like I am onboarding into this role and I have a lot of passion for helping you know make things work and I'm eager to hear about that right like that would almost I

think feel better to me Then Pinky promised not going to make it so let's say I slop right by it like why did you feel the need to clarify that it should have been obvious that you weren't like in my mind it should have been obvious that you weren't going to do that. Why?
But I think her resume makes it increasingly not obvious she wouldn't do that.
Sure. Do you know what I mean?
Right. I don't and I I think that that's one of the reasons why this is like a very tough cell as a move is to bring in an exec whose AI whose resume reads like AI AI AI. Oh, so the thing that I it's funny the thing I took from this sentence is actually less the flood our ecosystem with solless AI slop and the art blah blah blah blah blah is the first sentence as monetization and AI evolve. Well, monetization has always been monetization. There's new monetization models, but you're still getting money off the thing or whatever, blah, blah. Uh, and influence this future. We will not chase short-term efficiency.

That is something that I hope is true because I think a lot of that is what poisons uh a lot of the wells here. Here's So, I feel like I'm I'm I'm trying I hope it doesn't come off as I'm trying to prop up this person. I just I have not ever paid attention to this person, so I'm going off of what is going on. Here's my worrying thing that is even more than that.
Sure.
She breaks down her three commitments she wants to uh have is is these three things. Okay. Two of them are real. The first one is great games. The second one is the return of Xbox and the third one is future of play. First, let's go with number one. First one, great games. Want to make great games. She even says she doesn't want to like milk like IP for stuff. She wants to do cool stuff with it or new stuff. She doesn't say cool stuff. Okay, cool. That could also be code for AI nonsense, but at least like she's saying she wants to make games that are good.

Sure.
Step one. Great. I want to read the whole return of Xbox second bit if I can because
absolutely.
It takes a weird turn.
Sure.
Second, the return of Xbox. We will recommit to our core Xbox fans and players, those who have invested with us for the past 25 years and to the developers who build the expansive universes and experiences that are embraced by players across the world. Cool. This is the next cool part. We will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to the Xbox starting with console which has shipped which has shaped who we are. It connects us to the players and fans who invest in Xbox and to the developers who build ambitious experiences for it. That's something I think a lot of Xbox uh consumers and players wanted to hear.
Yeah.
But the next sentence after that sentence, there's no transition. It's just the next paragraph.

Gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware. As we expand across PC, mobile, and cloud, Xbox should feel seamless, instant, and worthy of the communities we serve. We will break down barriers so that developers can build once and reach players everywhere without compromise. Again, on its own, almost okay sentiment, but when you put those two things together, if you pay attention to this space, you kind of see how they can't play well with each other. like th those are two different ideologies that you're trying to to to to mash together and they I think we've seen
and it
that they don't work together,
right? Okay. Okay. And here here's the other thing that may be shooting her a little in the foot. She may be a little hamstrung by this is um Xbox's brand image has become

increasingly cloudy over the past 10 years, right?
Oh, I'd say shorter than that. I would say I think the the Xbox One didn't do well, but the name brand recognition of what an Xbox was was great. I was trying to think of like the since the start of game pass I think is like really the big thing is like are are you what what are you right and so
I think there's a way to read the that charitably with the Xbox aka the physical object in the first part of what Matt read and the second part is Xbox the experience right that's my that's not what she said
that's yeah it's she's putting them next to each other in hopes that whoever is reading it on whatever side of that argument thinks the majority about it is both. It's very intelligently written and very very smart. But it also like if you read it more than twice, you're kind of like hold up a minute because again remember this tenant, the second tenant is the return of Xbox. What does that

mean to you consumer? Are you someone who is upset with the fact that the console division and the games that were supposed to be made for it seem to have kind of gone by the wayside or are you someone who believes in the cloud gaming and wants to make Xbox Game Pass ubiquitous on your phone and your PC and whatever and then you think that's more important. The way this is written tries to have your cake and eat it too, but I but because I think that both of those ideas just do not work well together. can't not even well at all together after you read it twice you're like what which are you talking about
right
uh and then the third one future of play uh it starts with we are witnessing the reinvention of play no we're not
I mean again I'm not going to I'm not going to harp on every corporate buzzword here but I do wish like at least the first first one great games clear second one return of Xbox not

clear but it's definitely one of two things and then the future of play is I don't know man like monetization and AI evolving influence in the future. So look she is with the resume that she has coming into a very dare I say toxic uh community. [laughter]
This is going to be tough. Um, and and this isn't even bringing into the fact I can't even imagine the pressures of uh in this particular again totally normal about all this kind of stuff. Um, coming in as not a uh sis uh white guy like
yeah,
the amount of pressure and the amount of
vitrial
extra [ __ ] that she's going to have to put up with is insane,
right? And I want to make I I I want to and I know I know
I am going to be preaching to the choir

here and to the choir on the comments and everything else. We should be questioning what she's going to do based on an incredibly [snorts] effective resume, right? Like we we've established that she's good at her job and like we're not going to be like, "Oh no, she's gonna sink it because not gamer or anything, right?" Like we
here's we've determined she's good at her job. Do we like her jobs?
Right. Yes. We [laughter] Yeah. I want I want to keep critique in that vein, not any other. Right. Critique should be well-earned and wellfounded, not random. I don't like her because X.
Yeah.
Unless it's I don't like her because some gamer choice she made like
Well, so then then like they did this whole thing. [laughter] I don't know.
And here's the other thing. They have they they also have Matt Booty, which

she seems like she's leaning on him for a lot of like that side of it. And that's okay. Like some of the best partnerships are people that don't have the same skill set. like if if she and and it's funny in every interview both with Phil and Matt and a couple other folks uh they keep talking about how she goes into situations uh and wants to learn about them
and then adjusts and does her job according to what she has learned.
That sounds good. That sounds like the best
possible version. I like it wouldn't make sense to have like two hardcore gamers with no monetization experience like or or very few, right? Like, and again, that's just because of the the nightmare system that we live in to get any of this stuff made and put across any of our desks regardless.
Yeah. Um, so look, there is a possibility that she is the exact person

for this job and she will listen to people in the space that want to um uh that want to help it and and she'll do the things she needs to do to keep it profitable, etc., and still do all the stuff that she tried to lay out in her message. There's also a possibility that that is just lip service, and we don't know what uh is going to come down the line based on her previous uh job experience.
Yeah. the the interesting thing that I am not the interesting thing that I'm not interested in diving too far into I want to call it but I don't want to make this any bit of the story. Um people have started like so into her gamer tag. Phil's gamer tag as you would imagine is a laundry list of games. And like I don't know if you've ever in any of your consoles, will that you've had either an Xbox or even a PlayStation back in the day. Do you ever like look at other

people's like trophies and things like that? I have just for fun just to be like, "Oh, what's so and so playing?" I'm like, "Oh, that's weird. I didn't know they played this much Red Dead or you know, whatever." Or you can have it all public. You can have it all private.
Sure. And people are trying to weigh whether or not she has the credibility for this job based on a very limited gamer tag that people are accusing of course they are of like not actually being her cuz she's booted up certain game. There's a couple I think it was a Polygon article or something else. Um and that just seems like overly speculative at this point and I'd like to sort of caution against that. If you believe that this is the best way to go about critiquing the credibility or fitness of a new CEO of a company who was chosen at a very specific time, and I cannot imagine it otherwise, with Phil Spencer's involvement, I encourage you to go to New York, shovel a foot and a half of snow off of it, and then touch the ice

cold grass. Just like that's not that is not the way, right? Like that's not it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh and then sort of the last bit
here if we're ready to transition. [snorts]
Where
where'd Sarah
Hey, where's Sarah?
Where'd Sarah go?
I have quick questions. Sarah Sarah's been here a long time. Sarah's been here as long as we've been doing this show.
I think so. Sarah's been one of the big faces of Xbox,
right? Like Sarah Bond was very much I I was Matt Matt doing the thing.
Oh no.
Okay, I think it cleared up. You hiccup?
I I [laughter] co-pilot's trying to shut us down. Clippy TR is trying to stop us from

talking about where Sarah Bond is.
Right. So, um Sarah was the Oh god, what was her official title? I don't even remember what her official title was. She's just Sarah. She's just been at Xbox.
No, she was um Hold on, I'll find it. I I had it earlier. Uh she was president. She was president of Xbox.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. So she was she was very much in as many things as Phil was for like every Xbox announcement and they were like all right so Phil's leaving and her his successor and we're like yeah it's Sarah. No wrong incorrect. She's leaving the company.
And the way that the emails rolled out to the internal team both from even even all the way up to um I have to find it

real quick. Uh um the full the full big daddy kingpit of Microsoft whose name I can never remember anymore. Uh
m Mr. Microsoft.
No, it's not Mr. Microsoft. Oh, uh Satia Satia Nadella. Uh he wrote he wrote an email. Phil wrote an email. Uh uh Asha wrote an email. Matt wrote an email. Sarah did not write an email and did a LinkedIn post eventually like hours later.
Yep.
There's no way.
Yeah.
That she is happy about and and and actually let's go into what she wrote because I actually think it's I think it's high deal with a with a Garbo situation. Pretty classy. Um, I don't know if I I need to read the whole thing, but it's also in an IGN

article we'll link here. One of the things that uh I do want to read though that I found in it.
Uh, with that, I've decided this is my time to take my next step both personally and professionally. We're living through a transformative technological era that will shape the next generation of our industry, and I'm energized by what's ahead. This moment also presents a unique opportunity for fresh eyes and new leadership to guide the team into this next chapter. Uh, I've had the privilege of spending time with Asha over the last few weeks as we plan this transition. Side note, in Spencer's I believe they said months. Um, so it's interesting that she says weeks here. Uh, and I've seen firsthand her deep commitment to our players, developers, and brand. She brings deep technology and commerce experience along with a strong track record of building scaling platforms uh that the world uses. Xbox deserves this. I'm excited to see her lead this next chapter for our team. I rem I remain as a special adviser to Asha and help ensure a smooth transition and set the organization up for continued success. Now,

can I be tinfoil Hattie just one more time?
Yeah.
If you go back and you read this statement. Hi. Hello. Uh you go back and read the statement. The only time a positive thing is ascertained is looking at the future. [clears throat]
She's excited to see where this goes. This person has a strong track record. Xbox deserves this,
right? Xbox deserve this is not a positive statement.
But no, I don't know. Like I don't know. uh uh presents a unique opportunity for fresh eyes and new leadership to guide the team into this next chapter. She doesn't say uh she doesn't say that she's like likes the next chapter, just that this team would go. Uh the closest thing to a positive is um

we're living through a transformative technological era that will shape the next generation of our industry and I'm I'm energized by what's ahead. But that sentence comes right after she says she's decided to take her next steps both personally and professionally. She could be talking about the next thing she's doing.
Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity for a lot of corporate double speak here.
I and the and I would not be picking this apart if it didn't come out so much later.
Yeah,
I think she is masterfully handling this. I'm very curious where she goes next. And I really like her side off. I think unless there's anything else we want to talk about with this story, I would like to end with Sarah's sign off here because I think it's actually a really
I think that's really good,
a good positive thing. As I prepare to sign off, I've been reflecting on these on three simple questions I've tried to use to guide my days. Did I bring my best? Did I help someone else? Did I help someone else succeed? And did I do my best work? Uh, I hope the I hope the answers have been yes for many of you. It's been a privilege to work alongside

this team. Um, yeah.
So, that's where Xbox is at.
As we close this bit out, what what do we think, Will, if we could put on our prediction hats? And actually, everyone in chat,
put on your
I don't care if they're real answers or wrong answers only. And Brad and Janet, what's Xbox's first big announcement after this? We have the corporate shakeup. What are they What's the thing that's going to bring us back? I want to know. Will, do you have any ideas? What do you think it's going to be?
I think it's going to be something that they can do without a ton of innovation. Mhm.
I think it might be cutting cutting like making something cheaper

somewhere that doesn't mean a lot. If that makes sense. Like making it cheaper to like do the lowest tier of online multiplayer with gold or something. like just like like an offering to help reinvitali revitalize the community because I think they're I think the thing that Xbox needs is for the core Xbox fan base to stick it out with them. And I think a peace offering of like, hey, it doesn't cost money to get on and play multiplayer with Xbox anymore, right? As opposed to where PlayStation's at. And like to have that competitive move might be something. That's kind of my first prediction.
Yeah, I'll piggy back off that. I think that um I still think they're going to try to make whatever their next Xbox be a hybrid handheld.
I agree.
I also think they probably have been paying attention to what Sony has been

side hustling with the Portal and if they want to go full cloud that is it's proof that it can be done.
Yep. I don't know if they will this generation, but it does feel like with even even the stuff we've been talking about with Nvidia and chips and RAM and all that stuff, it feels like that's kind of the the place that companies want to go is us renting time on their machines as opposed to us owning their machines. Um, I don't think Xbox goes back to exclusives. I feel like if that was something that was on um on the agenda that Asha might have brought that up in one of her three tenants.
Yeah.
Uh I think it was careful not to say that. I think it's going to continue to be a licensing brand. I think getting um getting Xbox Live on other consoles

somehow would be huge. even if it is just streaming.
Yep.
Um huge in the I don't think it's good. I think it's
but it'd be big for their bottom line.
Yep.
Um a lot of good stuff from chat.
Yeah.
Here I I tried putting up as many as I could as we were talking about it.
Chat's got a lot of good ideas here. Um so it will be very interesting to see where this goes. This is definitely a pivot for them and I'm interested to
see where it goes. Also, uh, PT Mount, uh, no one will be releasing. That doesn't mean that they won't announce that something's coming in 2029 or whatever.
Yeah, there are plenty of market moves that they can make. Also, uh, on that note, there the current price of RAM is lumpy internationally. So, there may be some arbitrage moves that help companies cut down
that I'm seeing, which is kind of an interesting just note that like that is weirder than we thought it was going to be. We already thought it was going to be weird and it's even weirder than

that.
Yeah.
Uh are
Well, this has been your Xbox update.
Yeah.
Let's move on to things that are not about a box. Well, they might be about a box, just not with an X on it.
Well, what if we did some advertisements for fake things that people can't buy?
Oh, I guess
we could do that and then and then move on to other other kinds of things.
Will, you're gonna go first.
Okay, I'm gonna go first. Ready?
Yeah.
Three, two, one.
Hi everyone. Will from Extra Credits with Matt from Extra Credits. But I'm Will from Extra Credits here to sell you on the concept of hope. I know it's a precious commodity right now, but we can we can live in the hope that despite initial about decisions that companies make that we we can we can have a little bit of hope. Just just a little bit. Not like big hope, not like pony Santa Claus

hope, like hope that it doesn't get significantly worse, right? You are allowed to have that and you probably should because there's an awful lot of cynicism and too much cynicism is internally toxic. That was really nice. Well, I think that was really really sweet and a good message taking us out of out of the story we just had because it could go either it could go two ways, right? like and I think that that's that's a way that's a way that it could go if if I may.
I hate this so much. Go on.
Hey everyone, Matt from Will and Matt's Extra Credits Games for Breakfast by Matt and Will at Mill Will and Matt Incorporated say, "Is hope not cutting it for you anymore?" Yeah, it was nice when it did, right? But have you ever thought to yourself to try fear? Fear attracts the fearful. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is a pretty good video

game. And no fear is a bad clothing brand. But but but fear that'll make sure that you don't get bit by a wild dog. I don't know what the who the wild dog is in the scenario that I'm was talking about, but it's P they're
Yeah. [laughter] Did we just do Did we just do a Dagger Heart promo?
I feel like we might have [laughter] in before we accidentally end up doing a Daggerheart oneshot later this year. It could be literal wild dogs. That's true.
It wasn't. But I do have this that I still need to read.
Yeah, I see shrink wrap on that.
I know. I just haven't had time.
Yeah, I I'll have to track down a copy.

I wonder if my LGS has it.
Yeah.
Anyway, uh yeah, chat.
No, Kyle, you're so right. I've lost my motocross audience. [laughter]
What was that?
Because I I g I gave I gave to No Fear.
Okay. I was like, I don't know what clothing brandet is, but I believe you.
Don't worry, buddy. [laughter]
You're not You're not missing much. Although, 14-year-old Matt would really disagree.
Sure. I'm definitely going to take clothing brand advice from 14-year-old Matt. Okay.
I was I was quite the hot topic back in the day, Will. I'll have you know.
Yeah. You're just a walking store.
Yeah.
All right. Uh okay. Now that that is over with, let us move on to other stories that definitely involve [snorts] here.
I just can't not use this thumbnail.
I Yeah, I feel like you're very happy

with the the Skeletor Discord logo. All right. So,
hey, side note, shout out to all y'all who watched uh the short uh that Will crafted and that I threw together through this little machine and that Scott drew um on on Discord. It seems like uh people are are heeding the call of of not not emailing our representatives, but cancelling Nitro and then messaging a nice letter saying why you're doing it and say you'll come back, which has been very nice to read in the comments. So, thank you for that.
Yeah. Um, lots of good comments on that one. [sighs and gasps]
Okay, so new, you know, Matt, I really wish the answer was nothing. Um, un unfortunately, uh, it's not. So, okay. So, we back up. Discord a long long time ago, by which I mean last year, in compliance with laws that were uh instituted in the UK and in

Australia, uh instituted age verification for those locations. They uh several weeks ago on a Monday on a Monday, by the way, weird choice, but on a Monday um announced that they would be requiring age verification for everyone. There's been some confusion on this point and I wanna I want to just take this second to like before we get too deep in this clarify wanting to ageverify everybody on your platform is not inherently a bad idea. And some people seem to think that us attacking the methodology by which they're doing this is us saying they shouldn't age verify people. That's not what I'm saying.
No, what we were saying was the other ways of age verification have worked well in the past. Yes.
Um, and it doesn't actually scan your biometric data and have it be fed into a surveillance state.
That's correct. Because in fact,

that is the methodology that Discord is trying to go with now, which is scanning everybody's biometrics and and or your government ID, right? because there's a chance that it says that your biometrics can't verify your age and that you need to pair them with a government ID. Except there's no way to know whether [snorts] or not it actually can't establish your age or whether they just want to link your biometrics to your government ID. That's not even tinfoil hat. You can't tell, right? Okay, cool. So, um, they announced that they were going to partner with a little group called Persona, which would be cool if it was the video game maybe, but it's not the video game maybe. It is instead a company that has fingers in a whole bunch of pies in which Peter Theal is involved. And Peter Theel is not a good human being.
You know, just look him up on your own time. We don't really need to chat about

him. Maybe maybe take a deep breath and prepare to scream when you do. But like Peter feel not a good human being. Okay, great. It gets weirder. Some
body once told me that No. Is that not where you
close close? Uh over the course of the last week, um people have been sort of poking this relationship between Discord and Persona with a stick. And some people have been poking Persona a little harder with digital sticks. and some loose data may have fallen out of Persona that Persona didn't realize was going to fall out, which is to say that Persona left an unsecured uh bit of their software open to the internet and people got in. And this is the company that Discord was like, "Hey, you should totally trust this company with your very important personal data because um

they'll totally not Oh, what's that? They they left it open to the internet. Oh, so now they're not going with Persona anymore." And that's sort of the big shakeup is that this may delay the March 1st roll out of this to some extent. Um, while they try and figure out what vendor they are going to go with, also they did figure out that their core demographic really doesn't like Peter Theel and doesn't like Persona specifically. So, they did get that message loud and clear. So, they're not having a good couple weeks. Actually, they're they're having really quite a bad couple weeks because everything about this makes them look like Looney Tunes idiots. And that's sort of the story.
Let's Let's have some Let's see if we can put a bit of a positive spin on this. Is this I would prefer chat. And I

know I I can't control you, Brad or Janet, nor would I ever truly want to. I would like Will and I can kick this off, too. I would like what is knowing knowing the world that we live in and how Discord has to operate. What what do we want Discord to do? What is the thing that could win us back to it? Because again like like as a product I enjoyed paying for Discord. It it worked very well for me. It it uh it's the community. We have a Discord for the channel. Like it's not like we're like not using it all together. we just stopped paying our nitros for it, right?
Yeah.
Um I would like to know what tact that they could do knowing that they still have to do something for Europe and the EU.
Yeah.
Like what what do we think that is? Um I'll kind of I'll kind of kick off something too while people are rolling that in. obviously ditching um

ditching any and all government ID biometric uh BS. Um, I think there just needs to be like and I I know this does also kind of would hurt them in a in a different way, but like in order to get full access to like a thing like Discord, I'm wonder like there's you should age limit like because as you were saying before even though the age limiting is also uh questionable because what if it's talks of politics and not just uh naughty stuff etc. Right. Um I do stand by like the tried and true like oh can you enter a credit card here then that is a good methodology as a baseline to stop. And someone said in the chat earlier you'll never stop fully kids from breaking into

online spaces or younger people teenagers etc. Like that's not going to happen. Y
what you can do and it's a slower roll is essentially make sure like that both parents and kids like understand the roles.
Yep.
Like being more communicative isn't going to stop people lying, but it will in my eyes limit that lying enough to make it safe enough
as opposed to the opposite. Like there's no perfect methodology, right? Like there's no way that anything like on either side of this argument that it's going to make everything 100% safe. I'm arguing that the net negative of the system that they are designing to implement with the biometric data and the scanned face IDs etc will be a vast net negative in comparison to the negatives that the other methodology would have.

I agree. Yeah, I think um Chad's got Chad's had a couple really good ones. Um, chat has uh the two the two really easy straightforward ways to verify your there are actually three really easy straightforward ways to verify your age that they could go with that would be pretty um not foolproof but reasonably robust especially given that as a reminder their facial biometric scan was fooled by both both Death Stranding and Gmod.
You could fool it using Gmod. Okay, great. Excellent. Um, number one, credit cards. Uh, if you've ever used a credit card, they can reasonably assume that you are 18 because you have a credit card. Right now, there's some argument for like kid steals parents credit card and blah blah blah blah blah, but that gets back to the whole like kids are gonna lie and try and get into places and like there needs to be some level of understanding that like if GMOD could fool your thing, then a kid could steal

their parents credit card and that's just going to happen. Um, number two, uh, verify using your phone number. Same problem, but phone numbers in general can verify in large parts of the world. And third, I like this one the best. I like this one the best. Verify by Steam account because my Steam account is 18 years old.
The issue there though,
it doesn't work for everybody.
Yeah.
Right. No, 100% doesn't work for everybody. but as an option, right? Some combination of those options will generally come up with something that most people are comfortable with, right? Credit card, phone number, Steam account, right? Or credit card, phone number, whatever, right? Some combination of those, I think, could shake out. And if they said, "Hey, we've heard your concerns about security and these are the steps that we're taking." Because that's not what they're saying. They're not taking accountability for this. They keep shoveling it off onto

partners, not recognizing that it's almost impossible to do the thing that they claim that they're going to do at all. Right? And they're keeping like, "Oh, our silly security partners screwed up because we set them up to fail. How could they?" Right? That's that's part of the problem.
The the Yeah, people are bringing up in chat like, "Oh, kids can have phone numbers, etc." Um, and that's very very true. But a parent does still have to get them that phone.
Yeah.
And and look, this is this is kind of why I go back to and this is the this is the correct yet impossibly difficult answer, and I say this never having raised a child, so I don't want to pretend that this is an easy task at all.
Yeah. is making sure that you're involved with what your kid does digitally.
Yep.
You'll never catch everything, but you

can be present and you can talk to them about what they're doing. You can you can interact with these things and these mediums and show an interest and not be overly nosy, but still know that they're you're there to talk to and be like a positive force should they need it and let them know that they're supported in their decisions and that there are places that they shouldn't go and here's why. But you know and again different ages have all different ranges of this kind of um discussion point and or logic. But something the only thing I can relate to um is not having a kid but being a kid. And at multiple points in my growing up and my age in different age brackets, whenever an adult interacted with me about something that was possibly scary or or problematic or or um that I I I was very lucky to have adults that were present in that way and like it became discussion points, not a blanket like absolutely never discuss

this ever again or this is just wrong because um and that's not everybody. I just think if companies like Discord tried actually fostering this as a full-blown community space, like actually spent a little marketing budget, etc. And who knows what their budget is. Again, I've said this before, maybe they'd be dead in a year if they don't do this and it's going to be crazy anyway. But like you make this part of the core tenant of the use of it. Like Discord is a phenomenal service for like community. Yeah.
And part of that uh you know the takes a village man like and but like perhaps the town or the the the principality or whatever where this village is could could do some some poster boarding about how to do this and do it in an effective way and actually dump some money into that.
Yeah.
Um again I'm not I'm not pretending that

this is the solution and it'll fix all the things. Of course it won't. We live in a world that has negatives tied to every positive we do, but the negatives are not all equal.
True. Um, and I think you look long enough down the road and uh, a full-blown surveillance state based on a lot of the stuff that companies like this are doing will be far more detrimental to your children than them sneaking on to a a Discord chat that they should not be on.
Yep.
Yeah.
Society, there's obviously edge cases across all of that stuff. This is a deeply complex topic.
Yeah. No. And and it is a deeply complex issue. It just feels like it's difficult to engage with the it is deeply difficult to engage with the rhetoric that this is a move about protecting children when it so transparently does not and so

transparently has ulterior motives. Yeah.
Right. Like I is is there uh is is there merit in discussing the safety of children on the internet as it grows and evolves? Yes. Does this move seem like it's involved with that at all beyond a veneer of like here's our rationale so you won't question what we're doing? No. No, it doesn't. It doesn't seem like that. And that's the problem, right? is that like I think there is a bigger, broader, better conversation to have about child safety on the internet that doesn't begin with Discord.
Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, okay.
We will continue to update as we hear things.
Yep. All right. Take a deep breath.
Why? What? I'm surely the news gets better. [snorts]
Okay. So, we're gonna we're gonna not
Oh, I just looked back. It didn't get better.

It did not in fact get better. Okay. So last week important Supreme Court decision and you might be like but but this is a gaming this is about this is about video games. Indeed it is. Dear viewer I will mention this only in the context of video games. Uh the Supreme Court of the US declared that the tariffs that were being leveled against pretty much every country in the world uh at the whim of the United States president under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. the EA.
Obviously,
we're not constitutional. Can't do that. That's not how that works. You can't do all those things that you've been doing. You can't unilaterally level tariffs against everything. So,
I believe they all are stopping tomorrow.
Correct. So, the big question is now what? Well, now uh this dude has just doubled down and decided he's going to do tariffs not

using that law, which theoretically he can do, but he used that law for a reason, the first one that got struck down. Uh because he didn't do it because he thought it would get struck down or his team thought it would get struck down. So, like while this does not end tariffs at all, um it does start laying precedent and groundwork for things to be dismantled and and deemed unconstitutional that are happening.
Yeah.
Will that happen? I trust this Supreme Court as far as I can throw it. So, who knows? But this admittedly, I would like to say they did a good job with this call.
Yeah. Um, now with these tariffs uh lowered, obviously um obviously companies are going to start lowering their prices where they can because Oh, wait. Well, they won't because a there's other tariffs going to go into place and then b that's never how a

company has worked.
Yeah.
This but but but I think this is this is a good point. So up until now there has been a veneer of potential um credibility when a company said sorry we don't want to raise prices but you know macroe economic conditions located in the United States market that's how you say tariffs without saying the word tariff um have caused us have caused it to be necessary for us to raise prices on these goods right that is going to have a harder time flying not that it had a lot of flight in it before before anyone's like, I didn't trust that at all to begin with. Sure, fine. 100%. They don't even get to use that as like a lip service excuse anymore, which is nice. Um, without further changes in the way that the US is doing business globally. Um, so yeah, this is this is kind of a it's

not a huge story. I didn't want to spend forever on it, but like worth noting that thing that caused all of the pain and suffer well not all the pain and suffering in the industry, but like a lot of it.
The reason why the Nintendo Switch is on here is because the Switch got hit specifically uh when the the the the terrace from this group got enacted which caused a bunch of turmoil in that space in the gaming space. The reason why the dragon kin is there or the dragon born is there is because I've just recently fallen down into the free update for Skyrim on the Switch 2 and now I'm playing it again because I have a problem.
Um uh so I wanted to go with that image as opposed to what the other just the straight up Switch 2 that other uh outlets have been using. Also uh just a quick couple caveats about this one. Uh while this is a victory, it can also be seen as a bit of a just more wealth distribution from basically taking it from poor and middle class folks and bring it to the top because what's going to happen with all the money that has been applied from these tariffs? What's going to happen? Is it just going to go back to the companies because that's not

that they didn't pay for it. I mean they they didn't directly pay for it.
Right.
Right. Uh and then there has been talk and again this happened just this morning so I do not know this. There is some discussion that Trump is going to be trying to send out checks to everyone in the country without congressional uh approval, which also could be interesting. Who the hell knows?
That's not how that works. That that one also not how that works.
Anyway, anyway, there's lots still going on here. This is just the beginning of this, but uh thank you broken clock for being correct uh and and marking this down as highly unconstitutional.
Yeah. All right, cool. Uh man, I just take a deep breath. [snorts] Take a deep breath. Let's talk about Fini real quick. If you're not familiar with Fini, Fini is a game publisher. I love Fini. Pretty much everything that Fini's published has been good. They published Tunic. They published Night in the Woods. Um
Night in the Woods is easily one of my top 10 games of all time.
Yeah, Tunic is one of mine. It's just a

It's a sublime experience. Highly encourage it. Fini, like many other uh publishers in the mid tier, uh advertises on behalf of their games in a wide variety of places. And one of those places is on Tik Tok. And Fini has recently been having a problem with Tik Tok. And if it were a different publisher, I might not give this as much credence as I did, but a it's Fini and I've seen their work. and uh full disclosure have worked as a streamer like getting keys from them for games that they've uh published in the past and uh they brought receipts they brought so many receipts to this conversation so we'll go with that they are completely uh being honest here ran an ad campaign for some of their games on Tik Tok and then began getting information from uh consumer rumors from users on Tik Tok

that there were other ads that Fini did not approve that were using generative AI to create ads that were not in keeping with Fini's brand guidelines that were racist, sexist, overtly sexual in nature involving characters that Fini did not want to sexualize. And they have gone back and forth with Tik Tok about this repeatedly because the hor the one of the many horrifying parts of this is that Fini cannot see these advertisements, has no control over these advertisements and has never given consent for these advertisements. They are all things that Tik Tok just generated on the back end to
So Tik Tok has two settings that sort of turn this stuff on. And Fing has since said and proven that they've turned these things off.
Yep. Um, also with the there there was a there was a user a usage update that read like a demon's resume I believe to Tik Tok Tik Tok a few weeks ago. I think that I don't know if it has direct um

connection with the US government or part of its subsidiary owning part of it anymore. I I don't remember what it is. It's all a nightmare slurry. But the um essentially when you agree to put things on TikTok and this is why I think I don't think they want this to like go to court in this way. I think that's why they're giving Fini and probably other people that are complaining like the runaround specifically is um you essentially give them license to use whatever you post however they want on Tik Tok.
Yeah. They So, what stinks is if this happened after that update, I'm fairly certain that even if Fini doesn't like it and it's probably not like Tik Tok is a huge company that doesn't have enough customer service and therefore like just doesn't it has a reputation of like you just can't get a hold of anybody real.
Correct. Lots of things are are done

automatically. Ban appeals are very difficult to get through. There there's a bunch of problems with Tik Tok and it's
uh and tact I don't even think par is is is a thing here. I you you have to do we read the contract because we post our shorts and stuff on TikTok and um one of the things I don't want to go too into the sauce because we've there are ways you can do things to your content uh that would make this harder to stand up in a court of law.
Yeah. Um, but at the end of the day, when you upload to Tik Tok, you are saying pretty much that they have the right to do this. So, I look, it's not like Finch is a huge company, but they should be able to get like they have a decent enough following. They should be able to get some sort of recompense or something or

say that it won't happen anymore. But, they've basically been told like, I don't know, maybe. And it's kind of getting a little bit
out of hand.
Yeah, this is super getting out of hand. Uh, and like I said, Fini brought all the receipts. Fini was just like, "You know what? Screw it." And published like all of the records of all of their conversations with all of the Tik Tok support agents. They're like, "Cool.
Here you go. We brought them all. Here's all the receipts." Um, and Tik Tok did confess that they that they were in fact generating that it was Tik Tok themselves using generative AI on material that Fini had uh provided as part of an advertisement campaign to generate new advertisements and then tried to victim blame Fini for it which was just this is yeah this is the interesting thing Tik Tok survives because it's too big to fail and the reason why I think that they put the stuff in their in their ula is because they're so big.
Yep.
One story like this does nothing to

damage Tik Tok,
right?
If slowly but surely the these stories keep happening with larger and larger companies not happy with a thing, that's going to be the only way that anything ever changes sort of there. Yep.
Um uh
so we'll see.
Yeah. Also, uh this is also interesting too. Uh this is the differential where you nail something down. It's trademark law versus copyright law, which are two very different things. And one of them can be handled in a blanket ula like what they've put in and one cannot. So, we'll see how it goes. Um
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Yeah. I get Yeah.
All right. Uh, next up, a weird story because most of you have probably never heard of Excel. Not the spreadsheet program,
not not Google Docs light,
not that Excel with two L's.

Excel is one of the largest distributors of um cards like trading cards in the United States and is the largest distributor in the United States of um Pokemon cards and the Pokemon Company just bought them which is kind of an interesting move. This is not this is like very big vertical integration for Pokemon, right? Like this is another big big step in them sort of controlling the TCG space. It it will be very interesting. I don't think it's more than like a hey, they did this weird thing. We should note it here, but it is a weird move that Pokemon would buy an entire trading card game distributor located in the US.
Nope. It's it's not weird. I think it's exactly what they would do. It's so funny.
Yeah,
it's it's
um
hey, seize the means of production or

whatever.
Yeah. Uh they have also said I want to see
cuz they're having a shortage, right? Like they're having a hard time.
They have always had a hard time keeping Pokemon cards on shelves because there is a deeply divided. There are two groups of people who want Pokemon cards. One of them doesn't have a lot of money. The other one does. The group that doesn't have a lot of money is kids. Kids want to buy Pokemon cards because they like Pokemon and they want to play with their Pokemon cards with their friends because the game is very kid-friendly and fun. The other group is adults and the adults have been buying lots of Pokemon cards. It like we did we did a whole story about how people were taking digital scales into stores to weigh packs in stores because they have no shame whatsoever. right? Like there's a big problem. So I would argue that like that's the source of the real distribution problem. Um but

yes, they are having one uh in terms of like getting enough product out there. So this kind of might help with that, but we'll we'll see.
Yeah, I mean it's going to be have to be a two-pronged attack if they're actually going to do anything to sort of curb it. Uh hopefully this means they that they can make more product and this will happen less. But the other attack of that is exactly what you said. They need to figure out a way to curb this terrible human addiction of turning a a game that is originally meant for children. I know many adults play it, but turning it from the point of playing this game to essentially gambling.
Yeah, I did bring this up and trying to
Yeah, I'll explain this real quick. Um so, uh if you look at a trading card, um there are two kinds. There are the regular matte ones and there are foil ones. Yeah, the matte the matte kind and the the foil kind. Okay. The foiling is actually an additional layer to the

card. So if you have a scale that is sensitive enough, you can discern whether a pack a sealed pack of trading cards contains an additional layer of foiling and therefore you know that there is a foil card in the pack,
making it distinctly more valuable than a pack that does not have a foil. So instead of going into Target and buying all of the packs to try and find this super rare shiny holographic Charizard, you can take a scale into Walmart like some kind of heathen and weigh all of the packs in front of children and then take the ones that weigh the most because they have the most chance of having the shiny Charizard. It's awful and abhorent and
disgusting.
Yeah. Um Yeah, it's m- a t. Yes, that's that's correct.
Matt with an E alongside Excel with two L's. We all get it.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay. Uh next up on corporate moves,

Sony is shuttering Bluepoint.
Remember a couple weeks ago we're like, man, Sony's doing okay. Every time Every time we praise something, all of a sudden
Yep. So, uh, if you're like, "Who the heck is Bluepoint?" [clears throat] It is the first party PlayStation team involved in the remake of Demon Souls and Shadow of the Colossus. You know, little things.
Demon Souls. I I the Demon Souls remake would be something that I would argue uh was quintessential in the launch of the PS5.
Um, and no, Bluepoint, Bloodborne. Bluepoint is a studio known for doing remakes at this point. That's not what they always did. Yeah.
Uh but Sony then bought them.
Uh this image is a play off that when they welcomed them to the family a couple years ago.
Um they were they were working on a what was reported to be a live service God of

War title which got cancelled in late 2025 and then they were like well I guess we don't need the studio anymore. Bye bye. It just soapbox moment. I can pretty much posit strongly that all of these studios that are being told to make live service versions of franchise IP isn't probably the thing they're the most passionate about. Maybe just throw it a wild just guesstimate out there. And every one of these companies, especially the ones like Sony in this case, that gobbles up studios to to to make it easier to make certain types of things, in this case remakes, when when the larger company tells the

smaller owned company, nah, do this live service game. Now, I'm not saying whether or not even Bluepoint could do it well or not. That's kind of not the point. The point is the reason why a lot of these companies are shuttering when they go to make live service games like this is I feel like we've been screaming this for a couple years now. There's not enough space for every live service game to make a profit. There's not enough people or time. And yeah, yours might clamor to the top of the mountain maybe and become a Fortnite, but I feel like there's only room for like one or two, maybe three games like that. And the chances of your again corporatelymandated thing that did not adjust from a smaller game that grows into a juggernaut natively is not going to be that game. So, the thing that really grinds my gears about this is that the people that make the decisions to make these companies, make these games that either

come out and flop or never come out at all before their studio is shuttered is the people that are making the decisions have no ill effect on them whatsoever. Who told Bluepoint who made them try to make this God of War live service game? fire those people. I guarantee you if you knock away a few seauite people with some golden parachutes and again that's contractually obligated. I know this is nearly impossible. Just make sure you don't do this stuff in the beginning of your company. You would be able to keep a studio up and make a game that would probably be profitable enough and you'd have people still having jobs in the game industry and bring something positive to the table as opposed to yet another corpse of a studio that made really good stuff. Um, it's infuriating and I I I understand completely that I am globalizing at a lot of different points here, but it's hard not to draw the comparisons when this just keeps flipping happening.

Yep.
Over and over and over again. It seems like it MIGHT BE THE LIVE SERVICE model if you are not operating on a mobile device perhaps. Look at what the market can withstand and have some forethought beyond six months from now.
This has been
Matt's soapbox of please just wise the hell up before more jobs are just cut needlessly.
Yeah. So, um I want to look at something real quick. Uh
tired. Interesting question. Feldar asked a question. What is profitable enough? The reason why I said profitable enough is
turning a profit to keep the to make some money for the company and keep the

studio going, maybe even help fund its next game. That's profitable enough. What a live service game is trying to do. Is this true? Do I feel this way? This is my opinion, of course. I feel like a live service game is never trying to make some of the money. It's trying to make all of the money by its very nature. It's trying to sell the most stuff for the least amount of stuff.
Yep.
Uh so I think because this is how products have worked since the before times, you can make a product that is good that people will buy and there is there's an internal balance, right? like you're not the company is not milking the consumer entirely making something that is basically a trick for them to spend the money on it and the consumer is paying enough for a product because they trust that it will be good in the thing that they want to buy. But when this goes out of balance,

inevitably it comes down on most times, nine out of 10, probably more than that, the consumers getting screwed and the people that actually made the thing for the company getting screwed.
Yep.
It's really funny to me like we we have we're getting I am not eagerly, but like waiting for them to announce that they're pulling the plug on on Highguard. Um because I'll be shocked if it makes it three more days. Uh which would be a month. Um because the curve of your player base is not supposed to look like this kind of log curve. Uh it's it's bad.
I think I think they're going to um shut down sadly High Guard after a month. I think they don't want they don't want Higher Guard shuts down before its first month.
Yeah, I I think so because it's current

I I think it is about a day away on the trend line from not crossing a thousand players on Steam,
right? And like
it's insane. I downloaded and I played I played a match um on the PlayStation because I didn't want to deal with the the PC BIOS nonsense.
Yeah.
Um it's perfectly fun.
Yeah,
it's it's fine. It's a It's tried to do a lot of things. Uh it's a little too busy in the in the mechanics of what it's tried to do, but it's one of those games where like there's nothing wrong with it. Like it's fine. It's serviceable. It's good. You could have a fun couple hours with some friends if you wanted to try it out. But I go back to my argument.
There's no room for it,
right?
It's not reinventing the wheel enough. It's not taking a mechanic or a type of play style or a narrative conceit by storm enough to break the mold. And you have these companies have to have someone internally to tell them no.
Yeah.
Like I we talked about this a week or

two ago where I I was trying to question was there ever a success in this market like a Fortnite level success that didn't start with a much smaller game that was sort of ground and moved up the process as companies acquired it. Like the idea of Fortnite, not what it is now, like the game that Fortnite is came from a different game entirely,
right?
And was sort of kept alive through various different like all of this different like
the the biggest actually this is I I can do this one. The largest, most profitable live service games are all based on mods of other games. All of them. League is based on uh Defense of the Ancients and Aon of Strife, which were originally mods for RTS's. Valerant and Counterstrike are both based on mods of the original uh

HalfLife, right? They all come from like the Halflife, Deathmatch, and Counter Strike. Team Fortress into Overwatch into the hero shooter. Correct.
You could you could pause that.
And then um because Team Fortress has its roots in Team Fortress Classic, which is essentially another um HalfLife Source mod. Uh and then um Fortnite is a battle royale and battle royale games, not entirely, but largely got a lot of their start in Minecraft mods.
Yeah. Feldar brings up a really and I will I love that analogy. I think that is incredibly accurate. Feldar brings up an interesting question. Are you not counting MMOs and live service games? So, I understand that by definition they are,
but the monetization model I think we're talking about is beyond this. An MMO,
not all of them, but the traditional ones that I used to play and I guess I'm currently playing. Gee, wow. Uh those are subscriptionbased. You pay monthly to access them. Also, the the two the three MMOs that are still around in kicking

predate most of these other things, right?
It's interesting because like and while Yeah, exactly. And while you could say a battle pass is essentially the same thing.
Yeah.
You also don't need to buy the battle pass to access the core game, but you do need a WoW subscription to access WoW. Yeah, there's a there is a difference in monetization that makes it feel different. But uh yes, and and yes, there's there's Arma uh as well for um the Arma mod.
And Marvel is just literally Marvel Rivals is just building off that, but with a stronger IP.
Yep. Correct.
Yeah. Um,
yeah, Runescape is sort of weird, but Runescape is also old enough that it gets the progenitor clause, which is this has been around so long that it doesn't conform to any of the rules because it's the reason that the rules exist.
Yeah.
It's like trying to talk about the books for Lord of the Rings or the uh A New Hope like the original Star Wars trilogy, right? They are old enough that

they are the progenitor of the thing that often has rules ascribed to it, right? or talk about Binding of Isaac when you talk about Rogue Legs or whatever. Anyway, uh we should move on because we got a couple more stories to do real quick before we wrap up.
Sure.
The first and foremost is Evo has had another ownership shakeup.
Oh boy. So, EVO has a complicated history of ownership. Um it for a while um Sony owned part of it and then it in its most recent um incarnation it was owned jointly by Nodwin Gaming an Indian gaming company and RTS and RTS um has now uh now owns all of it. What is also important to know is that RTS is now owned by um

essentially and I'm not going to get too deep into it by the Saudi Arabian government um by the PIF by the Saudi Arabian government. So now EVO is 100% owned through a series of steps by the Oh, I'm going to get the full name of the PIF right. I don't remember the full name of the PIF, but it's it's the PIF. Um, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. There we go. Um, so the EVO is now 100% owned by them through a series of subsidiaries and shells and the like, but RTS owns it and the PIF owns RTS. So, u, the PIF owns EVO, which is where we're at right now. And we've we've talked about it in the past. I don't know there's a lot of commentary here, but it does deserve mentioning.
Yeah, it's a good thing. Good thing EVO's highly profitable.
Yeah. Uh,

okay. Next up,
more Pokemon news.
I think it's a record.
So, we're talking about an Illustrator Pikachu card. Most of the stories that are dealing with this Illustrator Pikachu card are dealing with the person who sold it. It's not really interesting to me. Not really the point. The interesting thing is that there is a um it is a graded gem mint Japanese promo illustrator Pikachu card. It is the rarest card I believe in all of Pokemon and it recently sold for 16 million US which I believe is a new record um for single uh single trading card sales. Um, this is sort of a interesting thing to keep an eye on because people start spending a a lot of stupid money on

these things and the amount of stupid money that people are spending on these things is getting more and more ridiculous as time goes on. There is some interesting provenance with this Pikachu card specifically with this illustrator Pikachu specifically. That being said, it's not I don't know that Provenance gets you $60 million. Like, that's that's sort of just fascinating.
Deep breath, Matt.
I'm trying. I keep thinking of something to say and being like, don't say that. [laughter] Um, I wish rich people were more creative.

That's my take. Perhaps there is a more interesting use of $16 million somewhere somewhere else.
Yep.
Perhaps one that might benefit anyone e even even you f or or or hypothetical rich person whom I'm talking about more than this purchase did
correct also people are correctly comparing this to art speculation and moneyaundering yes the market value of this card even at its um even in perfect condition and graded as being in perfect condition is not $16 million. This is inflated, which is weird. So, there's some weirdness going on here. Someone asked about the most expensive Magic card. That was the one of one ring that somebody handed to Post Malone, and Post Malone handed him $2 million. Uh, that's a weirder story than this um in my

opinion.
Also, the person who sold this card, it's interesting because what they bought it for was I think 5.4 million or something like that. It's a any of these cases, it's a celebrity doing something go with a bunch of money that gets them headlines and people talking about it.
Correct. Why we're talking about the card.
But the the point is like and again numbers are hypothetical technically money quadruply. So, um, a couple I I don't know why double-digit millions gets me here. Maybe it's just the state of the economy like like and celebrity go to celebrity, right? like, "Whoa, I bought this card for this." And like even like the reason why I even like those stories of when these cards were bought

is cuz I believe they were purchased specifically from individuals like not like a trading company or something like that. Like this was a life-changing amount of money for people that these celebrities did. It's almost like a win-win, right? Like, but like the celebrity who sold this card for 16 million, to be honest, doesn't really need the 16 million. Or maybe he does. I have no idea. But like it's not the same.
Yeah. And there are other cases where like it isn't as inflated, right? there they're I I've seen some other stories about um celebrities and cards and like acquiring big expensive cards for their collection. Black Lotus in particular is a common one where the celebrity is just like, "Yeah, I'll just buy it from you." Like you you have it and you want to offload it and people aren't giving you a good offer, so I'll just buy it from you,
right? For a decent price, right? And

that's not this. This is just weird. This is just bizarre. This is just why, right? Even for a one even if it was a one of one graded perfect whatever and it's not. There are other illustrator Pikachus. This is the only known 10 but there but grading is also
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We could do an entire thing on why card grading is stupid but
or why grading a
Yep. Uhhuh. 100%.
Rebel rebel rebel rebel.
Um Yep. Okay. Goodbye, Pikachu.
Now we get to do something completely different. Are you ready for a good news story, Matt?
Yay.
Deep breath.
Slay of the Spire 2 has a release date. I'm going to be very abnormal about this. This is I have so many hours in Slay the Spire 1. I play Slay the Spire 1 on the highest difficulty. I'm bringing this up on Breakfast for two reasons. One, they did the really smart thing. They were like, "Hey,

here's a trailer. It's really cool. Game comes out in March. Please enjoy. This was last week. Great. Awesome. Do the shadow drop thing. Excellent. Number two, they introduced in the trailer something that no one knew about the game until that point, which is game house multiplayer. So, I come before you, humble audience of the breakfast table, with the following question. Who should I play multiplayer with? If you have creators or people you think I should play multiplayer, Slay the Spire with, let me know. Um, I am I am looking to set up collabs for early on in Slay the Spire 2's life cycle. I'm pretty good at Slay the Spire. I'm pretty good at teaching Slay the Spire, so don't worry about it if someone's good at it. As long as they like card games and they want to hang out and you think we uh gel well.
I like the first three of these. Obviously, Sawyer Matt. Yeah, I'll play at some point. Of course, uh, Design Delve. Uh, Jay, I'm sure we'll play if I can get this up here. And then the third one,
Obama. Yeah,

that could be the We could rotate. Yeah. Um, so, uh, well, we'll see. Um, we will we will figure it out. Um, but if you if you have suggestions, hit me up here. Hit me up in the Discord. Hit me up above Blue Sky with people you'd like to see me collab with on Slay the Spire 2 because I think it would be a lot of fun. So, hit me up. Do the thing. Um, and that's and and and independently, even if that doesn't work, I'm gonna be playing a bunch of Slay the Spire 2. I'm very excited for this. This is my, you know, how hype a lot of the internet got when Mugenics came out and everyone was like, "Oh my god, Mugenics is like the best thing." And I'm just like, it kind of misses me on a bunch of levels. This is that for me. This is me being very normal about this game, right? I have a powerful need to play this game. So, uh, please look forward to that. Um, where is Watcher? Are they safe? Not in this game, thankfully.

[clears throat]
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should go ask Mom Donnie, ask Mom Donnie if he wants to play Slay Spire, too. He's
I mean, maybe he's a little busy right now with the snow. I know that. Um
he's a little busy.
Uh as always, by the way, if you have comments, questions, concerns, feedback, we love getting hit up on Blooki.
Yeah, a lot of you a lot of you have been uh writing us in on there, which we very much appreciate, especially y'all over on Nebula who uh don't get to see the show live uh and are catching up on it over there. Thank you so much for that. uh you watching it over there means the absolute world. Uh also at this point in the show if you've made it this far uh I will do my uh ask that I do every time and the best possible thing you can do that doesn't cost you a dime is please if you enjoy the show and you've gotten to this point tell a friend to come watch it with you the next time we are on. Uh that is the most helpful thing you can do to help this show grow and have it keep going. just literally tell people here are these two internet dad uncle grandfather people who talk about things that you

think are either important and or slightly amusing and uh more eyeballs will always help out. So please uh tell tell your friends.
Yeah.
Um also um what was I going to say? The um I had one other thing. Oh, one last tiny plug real quick. Um, if you are interested in not the most critically thinking podcast I've ever done, but maybe one of the most inebriated
uh the on Valentine's Day, Jamie and I did a podcast after we came back from the theater um on Withering Heights. It's available on the only podcast about movies right now, either on the YouTube page or we'll leave a link in the show notes as well. Um, if you are at all interested in Emerald Fiddle's uh take on the air on the quoted Withering Heights film, uh, I urge you to check that out because it

got weird.
Can't imagine it not getting weird. So, that's good.
Yeah.
All right. And I believe that that means that all that remains to us is for Matt to do our sign off. The same sign off that we do every week to build a sense of camaraderie here with all of you. Uh Matt, please take it away.
Of course. Uh exactly. We do this every week to make sure that we bring each other into the week uh as a as a unit, as a as a little internet family, and make sure that we all are on the same page moving forward. Because as Will has already said, it's the same outro we do every week. So, since you all know it by heart, I ask you to join me in doing the same outro we do every time, starting now. Hey, Amber Glenn, you want to come play Slay the Spire 2 multiplayer?
It'd be great.