How to Fix Xbox - Kinda Funny Gamescast

If unwanted thoughts are taking over, don't wait to get help. Visit nocd.com to book a free call with their team. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kindofunny. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Wednesday, April 1st. No fooling. 2026. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, AKA New York Game Awards nominated, AKA Jim Selfie Poppy. His blessing. Eddie, oh yeah. Good day, Greg. Good day to you. Are we standing? We're still standing on business here. Soup sucks, Mike. Oh, soup sucks. I don't I don't. Great, great, great. Can I say it really quick? I've only ever. Mr. Pipe stew by Mike. I've only ever dipped my grilled cheese and tomato soup. I've never actually just gone. No. Chicken noodle soup. I don't like the look of clam chowder. I like the smell of chili. Chowder is absolutely not. Again, it can be overrated and still be whatever. And oh, sorry. Hispanic heartthrob, Texas treat chicken. No soup rocks. What are you talking about? Are you smashing? You think chicken noodle soup looks worse than clam chowder? Like clam chowder looks kind of. Hides a lot of it. I do. I'm trying to smells bad, I think. I like noodles. I like chicken noodles. Noodles will enhance the soup. But put some saltine crackers in there. Oh, nothing better than like being sick. It's just I don't want the I don't want the carrot. I don't want the celery. If I was just a chicken, the noodle, the broth. But again, I'm just getting to eat a vegetable. Just get into a fuh. Into a fuh. A fuh. You got to like a long. But I'm saying I'm getting close enough. OK, I'm getting there. OK. And of course, the best voice in the business, Paris Lilly. You know, I live in beautiful San Diego. And just recently, I went to a restaurant out in Pacific Beach that had clam and shrimp chowder. OK. Some of the best shit I've ever had. Oh, I'm sure. How you doing, Greg? I'm good, Paris. It's good to see you. I'm going to thank you for joining us for this very serious episode where we're going to save Xbox, everybody, because this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We run you through the biggest topics in gaming, whether they be previews, reviews, or just topics we need to talk about. You can be part of them. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Watch us live in super chat over there, just like Street Shadow is who says, I think you guys are ignoring ramen, udon, fuh, wonton soup. And I don't think I like ramen. Those are great. Yeah. Those are all great. But still, a really six difference. A really good sandwich there. Like I'm just saying soup gets KO'd all the time. It's just like my beef with fish. Just get out. Yeah, I'm not trying to like after this, you know, I'm going to be hungry. We're going to sandwiches, brother. That's my thing is like, I'm not trying to slurp my lunch. Yeah. I want to eat my lunch. Brother, your jaw hurt. Oh, you're sick. That's why you're eating soup. Yeah, it's like, no, I chose this life. It's like, at one time, I cracked a ginger ale with Tim and he said, you're not on an airplane. Yeah, exactly. This took out my wisdom tooth. Like, why am I drinking this? You know, I can chomp, chomp. Let's bulk up. Yeah. Just like our Patreon producers did on patreon.com. Kind of funny. Thank you, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney, the Psalm, Twining for making this show happen. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be topic of the show. Soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup, soup. How? To fix. Xbox, everybody. Of course, yesterday you saw us kick off How to Fix Week, where we did How to Fix Kind of Funny on the Kind of Funny podcast, because today's Gamecast is How to Fix Xbox. Tomorrow's Gamecast, How to Fix PlayStation. So we thought we would get together the best and brightest video game minds here to talk about what's going on with Xbox. Of course, boys, it's been a rough go for Xbox. For the better part of a decade. But it's all come to a head recently, February 20th, with, of course, Phil Spencer and Sarah Bonne leaving. Aashish Arma becoming the new executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft Gaming, stepping into that slot, and then the future now being wide open. But I would start with this question before we even get into opinions and things like that. Paris Lilly, does Xbox need to be fixed? Yes, it absolutely needs to be fixed. Do you think it can be? Yes, I do. OK. I have the answers. Oh, shit. OK. Oh, wow. I love that. Yeah. Michael, of course, a former host of the XCAST yourself. Xbox needs to be tweaked with some small fix. Not a big fix, but some small fixes do need to happen. Andy. I worry. I, you know, let. I feel like they strayed too far away for a while. And, you know, now it feels like if my if Microsoft today didn't ever owe or have a game console and today decided we're coming out with a video game console, it would fail. Like it would it would fail because people stick to where they're at. And I just I just worry that maybe we're too far gone. Maybe we were too close to the cuckoo's nest. Yeah. Yeah. Now that crushed it. Mm hmm. Bless. Does it need to be fixed? Yes. Yeah. Can it be fixed? Not so sure. OK. But, you know, I'm excited to hear people express their opinions on it. Exactly. I think we go around a lot of times with the news jumping into these conversations a little bit here and there, but never actually getting to go. So I'm glad we have a place to explore. For me personally, yes, Xbox needs to be fixed pretty clearly. Do they think they can? If I was a betting man, I would say no. And it breaks my heart. I want Xbox to succeed. This isn't me with an axe to grind. But I think there's a lot of things we're going to go through where the deck is stacked against them. Yes. We recognize from the RGV Andy Cortez. Real Grand Valley. We don't play no games. One caveat on what I just said is that they could. Xbox could be fixed if Microsoft didn't care about being, you know, they have the number one amount of money for shareholders. Like they have more money than God. Yeah. They could put a lot of money into this product they wanted to fix it. It would just mean that their CEOs would make 200 million instead of 298 million or whatever. So like that's the big caveat. Yeah. I think I'm 100% with Andy, where I think the biggest problem with Xbox is not Xbox. It's Microsoft. Yes. And that's where I get into like the, oh, I don't know. But I think the capabilities are there, right? Like if the people at the top of Xbox made the right decisions, I think it could be fixed. You're not bringing enough money for daddy and mommy. Like 30% return on investment is what they were looking for on all these things. Yeah. That's an insane number. No Microsoft. That's not going to happen. And yeah, you know, when we were pitching these shows and how they would go and we started firming up casts, like I saw such an open free form discussion here where, yeah, how to fix Xbox, I think we would go one by one. We'd all put out our plans. What in a perfect world we'd do, right? And for me, for sure, how to fix Xbox is to get it out for Microsoft. Now, is this an actual reality? That's a different conversation. But in how to fix Xbox, I would say, yes, you get away from Microsoft as fast as possible because I think that's what's the problem. But one man here said, no, no, no. We're not going to have a discussion. All right. We're going to have a presentation. Yeah. So ladies, gentlemen, and enbies, we turn the entire show over to the master of hype, the leader of the Confini X cast, the man who bleeds green on a daily basis and has been burned by this company before. It's no bike, Mike. Thank you, Greg. I appreciate that. Of course, to everyone here at the table, feel free to raise your hand, chime in at any time. We're going to have some fun on this presentation. I am very passionate about Xbox, as everybody knows here at this table. And that's listening. I believe in Xbox and Team Green. I also believe in games, in video games, and all the fun stuff. It doesn't matter where we're at. I'm playing games. OK. But let's have some fun. Barrett, let's take it to the PowerPoint. Let's bring up Xbox. So get it, take it a minute. All right. It's a good, good high quality image. A good image of an Xbox. Thank you. I Google it. Yeah. You can get a lot of that. You can like, there's an option. Even the latest logo. You can go for largest. Yeah, you can do largest. Yeah. As one does, when you're trying to be perfect, you need more time. I can see the low finest from way back here. OK. That's not good. I think you put out a tweet though yesterday. Perfect is the enemy of great, don't forget. All right. So just let him get there. How would I fix Xbox? Blessing out of the O.A. Junior. I ask myself, as I stare lovingly into my Xbox series. How many years ago was this photo? Now this child. This young man was eaten by the man that you see today. I've absorbed him like Demi Moore inside of the substance. I'm bigger now. OK. But how I fix it? Next slide. I wouldn't change a thing. I actually believe in Xbox and vision. And now I say this. I'll raise my hand. Really quick. I say this as Mike. Mike that's going to play this game is going to have a different vision on how to save Xbox. Mike right now at this table really enjoys and likes what Xbox is doing right now. And I believe in the vision. What is the vision right now? Let's go to the next slide. What didn't a year ago you said you were disenfranchised or whatever. You were going to do that. You were disillusioned. Xbox anymore. Not disillusioned. You were disillusioned last year about it. I went to the YouTube thumbnail department and I thought, you know what? I'm going to make some thumbnails. OK. I see all my other counterparts do in the YouTube space. OK. This is OK. The Xbox ecosystem is good. And I like it. I love the idea of being able to meet me where I am the player. Right. I want Xbox to meet me on my terms. What are those words say on the couch? Meet me at the desktop computer. Yeah. Meet me on mobile. I think that Sarah Bond and Phil when they were in third place, they had a vision of, hey, we need to get to more players. We need to meet them where they're at because they're not coming to buy our $500 plus console. And we need to make a move. And I believed in that move and I like that move. Right. It is the right move in 2026 and beyond to meet your players where you're at no matter where they want to play. Right. And so for me right now, I like the ecosystem. I like the idea of my games being anywhere. I love smart delivery. I like play anywhere where there's one purchase and it is on three different devices now at this time. That is great for me. Bear, what I don't like. Next slide. This is not OK. High-five rush. Right. Cutting down incredible studios and firing, laying off so many talented developers and people in your organization is not OK. When you are building so much momentum, I think over the past five years, that Xbox was building with purchasing and acquiring a numerous amount of studios. It was always Xbox doesn't have the games. Xbox has clearly the hardware. They have the vision of what they were doing. They just don't have the games. I love that they went out. They got a bunch of developers and they said, let's go make games. But what's not OK is laying off all of those developers. Why purchase them if you're going to lay them off? Someone's got to make the games. So teams like this, like High-Five Rush and Tango Gameworks, many other talented, incredible studios and teams from Forza over with Motorsport Turn 10 and others, that's not OK. Chat. Don't screenshot this out of context. Please stop it. Up next, you can screenshot whatever you want people. You got to be here. Up next, you should not have hated this as much as you did. OK? I mean, not the Series S. The Xbox Series S. Too many people hated on this console. And I appreciate it, this console. I like that they tried to beat people knowing that too many people are buying PlayStation. We got to get into the homes on a secondary device and having a cheaper alternative. Here we are in 2026 asking, hey, how do we make things cheaper? The Xbox Series S was that device. And people hated on that. Heartbreaking. Next one. What are the devs feel about it? This is exciting. I loved it. Now here we are in 2026 looking at the next console and the next vision. And Project Helix is very, very exciting to me. I love the idea of the dual boots. I believe in the vision of what you can do with the Xbox, Rog Ally, being able to have your Xbox play anywhere, titles along with Steam, Epic Games, Windows, Bootup. That thing is lit. It's very exciting. And we're going to talk about that on how Snowmike Mike would save Xbox because I like that. Now, this was just all a precursor to say, this is where Snowmike Mike is at right now. Because a lot of you are going to be like, ah, shit. Like that's crazy. Mike, this is where I'm at. There's a lot of questions. Parrots got a lot of reasons to be in it for a very long time. Parrots, lay it on me. Mike, I love the enthusiasm. Thank you. Thank you. I truly honestly do. But we got to poke some holes in this because I think you missed a critical component. Lay it on me. Why Xbox needs some fixing. They got to bring back value. They got to take care of their core audience. I think one of the first things they need to do is you need to figure out what you're going to do with Game Pass. This what it currently is doesn't work. So I think you're either lowering the price of it. I mean, there's obviously rumors of some new tier. I don't want multiple tiers. I think there's too many as there is, right? So I don't need them to add another one into this. I think you need to simplify Game Pass, make it affordable for people, make it approachable, bring back the slogan that we were saying for years on XK. It's just the best value in gaming because it's clearly not anymore going back to the point of really quick. Your like that Paris. Now let's go to the real game. I also want to go to the real topic. Bear, bring me to the next slide. Never mind. But if I did run Xbox, this is what I'd actually do. OK, there's a Mike in 2026 who likes the vision of Xbox, but there's a Mike in the boardroom that might change things. OK. Bear, go to the next slide. Paris, Lily, I 100% agree with you. You are correct, Paris. Game Pass has gotten too expensive. Game Pass has gotten too big. And there's too many layers and tiers to this. We need to go back. Next slide, Bear, Courtney, to two tiers. You are either in Ultimate, which gets you all of it, or you are in Console and or PC. We need to return to the $10 and $20 price tag. $30 is way too expensive. Anything above $10 for just Console is way too expensive. On top of that, we should be giving the players more benefits. You're right, Paris. The people who have stuck. The people with the mini iFITs. OK, don't. The mini iFITs. There's no spell check, Paris. And I had a little time, Paris, a little time. A little time. Don't worry about it, Paris. You've got to give people more benefits. You should be adding in wow subscriptions, ESO first, fall out on there. That's crazy, that's not the thing. Call of duty, anything. Any way that I can give back to the players, I should be doing that right now. Because you know what? When you give people call of duty points, they're going to go spend them. And then they're going to spend more because they want to be in that ecosystem. See if thieves, call of duty, fall out, ESO, and wow are all live service titles right now that are under the Microsoft and Xbox umbrella. That should be giving back to the players. No questions asked, right? And Paris, I totally agree with you. I think Game Pass has gotten too big. There's too many tiers, core, premium, ultimate. I don't know what any of that is. We go right back to ultimate and constantly into our PC. You pick which one you're in. Paris, you pick up where you were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So picking right back up where it was, and I appreciate you having the slides ready to go there, Mike. Yes. When I talk about taking care of the core audience, look, Activision changed everything. We already talked about that a million times. I think I see people in the community now that are just taking over, hey, bring back exclusivity. I just don't see it. I don't see it. But I think there's a compromise in there that can benefit both them trying to obviously generate revenue on multiple platforms, but making people feel like, hey, we bought this box. We're the Xbox people. We have this vast library of games over the past 20, 20 plus years that we've been curating. Make them feel seen. Make them feel like this is the best place I should be playing these games. And you do that by not putting games on PlayStation day and date. I'm not saying they don't go to PlayStation, because I think that clearly happens. Not making it about PC, not making it about cloud, making first and foremost, it's about that box that sits under your living room, and everything else is just supplemental. So like, one year exclusivity. See, I don't even know if you can go fast. See, I was going to put it for two year exclusivity. But at least some exclusivity. Exactly, at least six months. At least something that if I got the FOMO that I want to play Fable or Gears of War each day, man, I better have an Xbox if I want to play it right away, because it's not going to show up on PlayStation or Switch. I mean, sure, PC is obviously still going to be a thing. But again, PC should not be the center and the focus of their strategy. It should be that box. Obviously, I know, Mike, you probably got 20 slides on Project Helix, so hold my thoughts on that. But it needs to be about the box first and foremost. It needs to be about the people that have been investing thousands of dollars at this point into their digital library on Xbox, that when that next box does come out, they know all that stuff is going to go with them. And you keep that going. So again, I know everyone has opinions. So I'll shut up now. But I think those are the two key things that I think they need to, Oshah needs to figure out, first and foremost. Yeah, Barrett, if you'd go three slides over, you're going to see Master Chief there with the big lockdown on it. And yes, it is time to bring back exclusives if Mike was in the boardroom. I think we have to make a push. If you were to say, hey, Mike, I want you to sell more Xbox consoles, we need to get back in it, all of these games have to become exclusive. There has to be a reason for you to come over. And it starts with great games, of course, right? Barrett, go to the one right before that. I have a question for you. Yeah. How many slides do you have? Do you have a ton? I've got like 20. OK, OK. Because I think I want to let you cook, but I don't want to get into there and argue. I want you to get involved. I think so far, me and Parris are two things that we have a conversation about is game pass needing more game pass and exclusives. And of course, this right here, it all comes down to great games. We've talked about that. Phil talked about that. Exclusives are what drive the system sellers right here, right? And we can't be laying off Tango Gameworks and other staff members. If you make a bad game, you get supported and encouraged in Snow Mike Mike's world. You make a good game. You get supported and encouraged. You make an incredibly successful game that we believe in. You get supported and encouraged. I took away the game. He wasn't like Darth Vader walking back and forth on the other side. Because as of right now, we have gone from Xbox Need Games to let's buy a bunch of games. OK, now we have people making games. Let's fire them. That makes no sense at all from a trillion dollar company that has all the money in the world like we talked about at the start of the show. So go out there, support these teams that make a bad game. Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's talk about what went wrong. How do we fix that? Let's identify that. Let's make it happen. You make a good game? Hell, yeah. High fives all around. Let's get some bonuses. Let's support and encourage that. You make a great game that changes the world? Get them a, yeah, I don't care. Let's go support that. Because I need great games to force people to come over here. Because you're competing with PlayStation that has great games galore. And that's why people have gone over there the past two cycles. Do you want to jump in? You jump in. So I think, again, what I would come back to with this question, and if we were going and having this discussion, which we are, right? You're in the same pool as me, where how do we fix Xbox? And again, I want to be very clear. We are talking how we would fix Xbox. These are not the moves I'm predicting happen. I don't, you know what I mean? Like we can have that conversation of how much at the end of this, what we said will actually happen, what Aasha's working on, and what Microsoft will allow, yada, yada, yada. Because again, how do I think you fix it? You get the fuck away from Microsoft, so you can make the decisions that are pro gamer, right? So if we were stepping in, Mike, what you're nailing, I think that would be a big part of mine is simplicity. Yes. You know, it's funny you brought real quick. What do you mean by get away from Microsoft? I think Microsoft is still hung up on we got to make money on AI that everything else has to make money. And if you're not making money anymore, why are we fucking doing any of this with games? I don't think Microsoft's good. I think again, Phil Spencer leaving of his own accord, Sarah Bond leaving after the fact, this pivot and everything else. I think it is that like, as we talk about chips costing too much and the memory loss and all this different stuff that's happening, and God, are we gonna be able to afford the next console? I think Phil Spencer, if he, and Sarah, if they could have had the chance to get their vision of everything is a fucking Xbox off the ground, and like give that an actual marketing push, which we talked about in game Zaleigh this week, right? Sorry, I know, Paris, I'm gonna get to you, I swear. But like, let that actually be a pivot for Xbox when they said this is an Xbox. Hey, guess what? This is the actual thing we're talking about. We're on the Today Show. We're on Good Morning America. We're telling you everything is an Xbox. You watching this right now, you have an Xbox. We're driving this home to you, the mainstream. So the kids who want to play Fortnite understand that they can get through Game Pass like you're going for it right now. So in your argument, you want Ashish Sharma to tell Satya Nadella, let us do our thing. Kind of soft. No, I mean, in my perfect world, we're getting away. Yeah, we're getting away from Xbox. Okay. Microsoft isn't in this AI fucking race to the bottom that they're in all this. So there, because I think so many of the problems Xbox faces is the result of Microsoft saying, of course, you got to do this. You got to do this. The thing is, the one I'm hearing from, I think all sides here, right, is like, we are kind of like very idealistic. We are idealizing. We're living. I don't want to, I don't want to solve what you're saying, because I 100% agree with every single point you're making, Mike. But it also exists in a dream world. And the shareholders go, I don't give a fuck. Yeah, no, yeah. The episode is dream world. It's got to be a dream world episode, or it's just going to be what it is right now. Back to my reality, I think that you are looking at the death of Xbox in the beginning of Microsoft gaming. Because there's, go ahead. Hold on. Paris has been trying to get in there. No, no. And to that topic. Well, you were going to get there. The thing. Fine. Fucking bless. Oh, everybody. So there you go. OK, I'll go. Go and bless and please come right after. Oh, man, I shouldn't say that. Fuck right after me. My point on what you're saying, Greg, obviously, in this perfect world, sure, they could spin off or do something like that. But remaining under the umbrella of Microsoft, this is where Satya Nadella needs to give Asha Sharma the autonomy to allow Xbox to have flexibility, not have these ridiculous margins held against them so they can do some risky and creative things to be because it's about the brand. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I think when I think about Microsoft, Xbox is outside of Windows is probably their most recognizable brand right now. Sure. And I think that has more value than them trying to get 30% margins of return on something. Right. So I think it's about letting the brand be the brand again. Whereas to your point, it was slowly but surely starting to skir towards. It's just Microsoft gaming. And I think if they can just say, hey, sure, we're not going to make a ton of revenue off of this. Yes, we've invested a lot. But I think that investment means more to the brand for Microsoft. If I'm making sense, means more to the brand of Microsoft than it does. Hey, it has to. We got to get to return on investment in a short amount of time. And yes, the AI stuff and all that is completely screwed up everything. But they need to protect the brand of Xbox and they need to do whatever they can in the short term and obviously the long term to make the brand viable because I think the biggest problem has been people don't believe in the brand of Xbox anymore. Blessing. We've gone past it. And that's my thing. It's just like, I don't believe that Microsoft believes in the brand of Xbox right now. I don't believe that, you know, Asha needs autonomy. I hope she has that. I hope that's the reality of it. I hope that it isn't just, you know, I talked about this yesterday again on games daily, right? Of like the end of life hospice care showing up just to ease Xbox into the great beyond and become Microsoft gaming. We don't make hardware. We just publish games or whatever. I just need to see that proven. And again, I don't expect Asha to have proven that in the two months, a month and a half. She's been at the helm, obviously not. But it's this idea of like when Mike was at the beginning saying, I believe in the vision. I'm like, what the fuck is the vision of Xbox right now? Cause I don't think they know. And I think they're slowly going to start getting there and we can go to Asha's letter and have it be, you know, talking about second, the return of Xbox gaming lives across devices. Like project Helix is going to be fucking $1,200. And that's not going to win you back the hearts and minds of it where I think a $30 option to be streaming it on your phone would have been the way to future prove for this, but we didn't get there. And so now I really do feel more than ever they're adrift. And so Paris, you make great points about making the Xbox brand matter again and the 25th anniversary and fan fest. And like there's a way to do that, but I don't know how you're able to get the genie back in the bottle of, okay, we're bringing the Xbox series X price down again and project Helix is still a ways out or we're getting closer to announcing it and it's not, we're going to take an absolute fucking bath on that in terms of how much we're going to charge you to get it to you early. Like, I don't know, man. And that's why like into the perfect world again, it's got to be simplicity. Here is the game pass option for whatever that is, Mike. Here is the console. You know what? You complimented the series S, which of course, I loved my series S. I had that X screen for it. I use it all the time. It's been gathering, you know, dust on my shelf, even Megan in the chat said, thank you, Mike. It is what I could afford and had room for in my home. And I enjoy the damn thing. Parentheses, how was I supposed to know it was going to gum things up? L a l. That's where I'll jump in and say, please, I look at the series S as one of the wins of this last generation, right? Early on, I don't know where we're at anymore, but we were talking about that as outselling the series X in terms of numbers. The series S is the one that people show up and actually buy because it is the cheaper option. I remember buying it for my nephews, right? As a new console, because I looked at it and I was like, yeah, no, this plus I'd go to their mom and say, hey, get them game pass. Like that's such a powerful thing to be able to present easy to families. And I think I don't know where you're driving Mike with your thing. I don't know if you have a similar thing, but I think you got to repeat that. I think going into the next generation, value is the thing that's when to speak to players. We're talking about a generation where the PlayStation 6 is probably going to be what, $1,000 or more. Xbox, the Helix is probably going to be $1,000 or more. These are only getting more expensive. You need an option that's able to undercut all that and go, here, you can play console games for cheaper than any other console. And that's the power that Microsoft has right now. That's what I heard a lot, bless me. When I took it to social media to say, hey, we're going to do this. What's up? A lot of people drove home the value, right? And that is where that Xbox series S was a witness, right? Blessing. That's why I liked it so much of like, hey, I know we were hard on it on the development side. And maybe it was holding back certain titles. But like, I think on the consumer side, we needed that. And I think Xbox, even PlayStation, when we talk about that tomorrow, there needs to be a cheaper option that is a layup win, right? Like, it should be a way. We are having too many conversations of layoffs, money getting tighter around the world, just players in general battling 1,000 games a day coming to them and trying to say, how do I buy all of this? Where is that cheaper option to jump into? And that's got to be a win at the end of the day. I think the number one solution is you make a game called The Rest of Us starring a man named Joe. His name is Joe Miller. He's voiced by Troy Baker. And you bring back all the people pissed off about Last of Us Part II, you know what I mean? Like, that's the way you get them back. But you make it more traditional. You don't kill them all. Yeah, it's a different reality. In actuality, like, if now we're doing the idealist thing, which I'm way more happy about, because I really struggle to find a way out, a way to kind of be back as part of like the big three that are always constantly battling with each other. In idealist way, you take a bath and spend a lot of money on poaching big talent and saying, we're getting that one big exclusive. You're going to need to come play that over here. When you talk about Halo, Mike, I feel, I mean, Halo Infinite was exclusive for a long, like, is exclusive. And that kind of came and went. And that lost player base. And I don't know if, I just don't know if Halo has that sauce anymore. I don't know if it has that staying power. I like that you bring that up. Paris, they have a game. Yeah, Elder Scrolls 6. Imagine if that was exclusive. When I bring that up, right, of like, when I talk about Star Field, particularly when we talked about the X-Cast, right? I said this game needs to be a game of a generation, right? Because Xbox is right at the moment of, they're going to let go of all the exclusives. And they're going to open it up. And they needed to keep that tight. And I do agree. I think Xbox has to keep all their first party games exclusive. And on top of that, Andy, I agree with you. They need to go back to timed exclusives. If I was in the boardroom and it was Mike as the boss, we would go and battle for timed exclusives. What kind of fun it was? Now, Blessie, you brought up a great one. We brought up Final Fantasy. We brought up Dispatch. These are the games where you're like, oh, wow, they still haven't come to Xbox, right? I would go back to when Phil grabbed Tomb Raider. And I know that was a shock. That's the exact example I was going to give, because people hated that. If I was optimist, if I had all the money and we were going full ideal, I would say, hey, we're going here. And I'm going to back the Brinks truck up at a number of big third party games. And I'm going to make them timed exclusive for a year or more. And I'm going to make players go, man, like I'm missing out on great games. Xbox players missed out on a whole Final Fantasy line that were incredible games, right? And a lot of people started to move because of that. So yeah, for me, Andy, when I bring up exclusives, you've got to start doing, I'm paying money, and you're coming here. Let me get Blessie. Let me get Blessie. No, go to Blessing. So my pushback against the timed exclusive thing, right, is you, as Microsoft, as Xbox, you are the biggest publisher in the world, as far as the amount of studios that you own, right? Like, I think the Kojima exclusive that they got going on right now is like a promising in theory in terms of, oh, shit, we have a big name as to what Andy's talking about. I'm sorry, it's Poaching Big Talent, all this shit, right? That's an exciting one. But I look at the list of developers you have and go, you don't even need timed exclusives. You just make your first party games exclusive here. But they're not good enough. You and I talked about this. That's the problem is Xbox right now has been delivering seven and eight, and they're good and great, but they're not masterpieces. They're not drop everything, right? Imagine if Xbox right now was in the position where Fizzant was coming to Xbox. We would all be having a different tune of going, oh, shit. Like, man, Kojima is bringing a stealth espionage game to Microsoft and Xbox. That one I probably don't want to miss out on, right? And there's a number of different third party teams that we could go down the list and be like, if you were to back up the truck and say, give them the money, Satya, you would do that, right? And so I do think there's some give and take there. I think the first party games right now, like Andy said, oh, Halo was exclusive. Yeah, and it wasn't good enough. All of these games right now aren't good enough. Elder Scrolls does bring some heat, right? But Halo, Gears, Fable is a question mark. But like, so far none of those games have proven Greg will stop playing PlayStation and buy an Xbox for that, right? And so I think you got to start with third party, getting those time exclusives. Harris. So this is where I'm going to disagree with you, Mike. And we used to talk about this on X-Gas, like with Final Fantasy. I'm not a fan of the third party time exclusives. So as a fan, I just want the games to be everywhere, right? So when I think third party, no, I don't want to go back to that era of essentially gatekeeping a third party game on one platform. But to the other point that you're making about, I do think first party, you can do some time exclusivity with that because it's your IP. You can do whatever the hell you want. So bring in time exclusivity to their first party titles into the second part of what you're saying. It's about the quality. That's up to them. That's up to them and their studios and what they're doing with these games. Gears, E-Day should be a must play. Fable should be a must play. The next fallout should be a must play, right? So you have the IPs. You have the studios. It's up to them with their own internal, exactly to make them must play. And then you provide the incentive to buy your box and invest in your ecosystem by saying, if you want to play it as soon as it comes out, you have to come to us. If you want to wait till it's on PlayStation, you're going to have to wait a year or you're not going to play these things. Go ahead. I want to cut to ads. I'll come back to Andy. And the one comment I want to toss out is you say, Greg's not going to stop playing PlayStation to come play these games. When it's hilarious that in the past two years, I stopped playing on PlayStation because of Xbox Game anyway, right? Like it really was a service that finally won me over. The ecosystem. The ecosystems. The ecosystem. Everybody, of course, we wouldn't have an ecosystem here. Kind of funny if you didn't support us with your kind of funny membership. We wouldn't have spirited discussions like this. So please pick up a membership. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Apple, Spotify, Patreon.com slash kind of funny. You can toss us $10. We give you all of our content ad free. You get your daily exclusive podcast from me for 15 to 20 minutes called Greg Wake. And of course you get good karma for supporting an 11 person, 11 year old small business. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsors. You finally sit down to game. Just you, your controller and zero responsibilities. When your brain decides that's the perfect time to say, what if I'm secretly a terrible person and everyone can see it but me? And suddenly relaxing and enjoying yourself is impossible. Instead, your brain grabs onto that thought and will not let it go. Here's the thing. 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You made a big deal about waving your hand over there. I mean, I just kind of raised it really quickly. You kept saying, oh, pick me, pick me, pick me. I didn't hear you just say it like that. I was gonna say drink her over there. I was gonna say Paris doesn't like timed exclusives as a fan of the games industry and as a fan of gaming. But we don't care about fans of gaming. We care about, we want your money here now. Thank you. My PowerPoint here is Mike is in the boardroom and you've come to me and said, Mike, sell more consoles. We need to dig out of this hole more consoles. Time to exclusive are the answer. Yeah. I don't even think timed. I think just exclusives. And everybody keeps saying, oh, it's too, when it comes up in general for the real conversation. Oh, I mean, I didn't mean time. I meant the third party exclusive like the fan of games. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm talking, and you were talking originally about there. I think Xbox, my decree is, I think Xbox first party is going back to being exclusive under Aasha. My thing was four years. I would love to hear the pitches on which time exclusives you go after. I would be at Rockstar's door. I would be at Rockstar's door banging on the door. And I know that's a crazy one, but also Microsoft is a trillion dollar company. We got money to play with, right? And so it's like, my goal would be any of the biggest, baddest games each and every year I would be there going, how do I support you? When you're saying Rockstar's door, are you saying GTA or are you saying another different Rockstar? There's no, yeah. Well, of course, there's no way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you were CEO, bless, you would knock on the door instead of an email. You shoot for the moon. I think you shoot for the moon. And I think that'd be a fucking, maybe a moose of skin. That'd be an insane thing. But also, yeah, I ask because I do think that there are, I think there are examples of bad third party exclusives that have gone, I think Tomb Raider, I don't know if Shadow of the Tomb Raider, was it Rise of the Tomb Raider? That's what it was. The first one, yeah. I don't think Rise of the Tomb Raider helped them. That was a, that felt like a clusterfuck when they announced that. When you look online, I know I'm not online. I think time has passed. I think enough time has passed with the Tomb Raider thing, though. We're in a different spot now with the industry. What if I got Resident Evil 9? You would start going, damn, they're really making, they're making room at the table where I'm now questioning, I'm missing out on these games. And that's what Xbox is, all I'm saying is, that's what Xbox is. I think the Kojima one is a better example, just for the thing of like, it's not a franchise thing that people are already used to being elsewhere. It is like, damn, you got a brand new game from the, a new IP from this creator that I care about. I think when you start to do it, where it's like Resident Evil has been everywhere forever, now we're taking this exclusive, that leaves such a bad taste in all the gamers' mouths. Is, isn't the compromise, well, I think the compromise to everything you're saying is, like Ninja Gaiden 4 is a great example of this. Xbox published that, they helped, that game wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Xbox. I think if they're actively going out to third-party studios and working with them to bring a game to the platform, they absolutely should have some level of exclusivity with that because they invested the money into it. I think my thing was more of just about Capcom, Resident Evil 9 as an example, why are we making that exclusive and it's not everywhere. But I do think the compromise in all of this is the play anywhere aspect of it. They should go out and be making deals with more third parties to have Xbox play anywhere. I think that is an incentive for you to wanna buy it from the Xbox store. But it's one too, again, that they have. That last, the partner thing, we just did everything was play everywhere. I believe everything was play everywhere, right? And so it's like, they had started that train at SGF. And again, I think that is such a, Phil and Sarah, hey, we're getting this rolling in the ad, took too long to get rolling. But here it is and it won me over, but clearly they didn't get enough in time. So now what does this mean to Asha Sharma to come in and be like, hey, I gotta change all this? One of the things I look at right as far as, if I was to wear the CEO cap at Xbox, a thing to do, and we're talking about software, we're talking about games, we're talking about first party versus third party. I look at the first party lineup and go to your point, Mike, right? Like, have they been killing it? Not necessarily, but I think they have the IP to do so. And I think investment in those IPs is what you need to do. It's the way that we always joke about, I think it was Embracer that says, we need to exploit Lord of the Rings. I don't think you need to exploit one IP, but you do have a catalog of IP that I think if you dial in and narrow down and go, what IP defines Xbox and how do we support these IP as much as possible? You look at Nintendo, you look at PlayStation, and when I think of Nintendo, I think of Mario, I think of Pokemon, I think of a handful of games and they're investing in those games. When I think of PlayStation, I think of Last of Us, I think of a Chartered, maybe not in Chartered, but Spider-Man. Spider-Man, and they invest in the horizon, they invest in those, right? At Xbox, I look at Elder Scrolls. Elder Scrolls should be leading the charge as like, this is exclusive, and this is what defines Xbox. Halo, let's bring that back in the way that they're already doing, right? This is our identity. Our identity needs to be Elder Scrolls, Halo, I'll say Banjo-Kazooie, right? If you want to lean into kids. I think Call of Duty, Fallout, Doom, Forza Horizon, lean into those. You took too long to get the Fallout. Like, I think right now, the success of that show and that being so mainstream, if they were able to say, yo, Fallout 5, New Vegas 2 from Obsidian, whatever, even Remake is exclusive and you can only get it here. We own it. We're the best place to play, the best place to walk. This is the only place to play, right? Yeah. I saw some in chat say, you know, does Xbox need a Last of Us? No, they have Fallout. Like, they have VIP, you just need to nail them. That's why I'm not convinced of the third party. I would push back just a little bit of like, how have they not supported those, right? Like, those are the flagship titles that you just brought up, right? I think over the past, what, five years now, we've seen Xbox on the Metacritic side being like one of the highest publishers every single year, right? And it's like, it is gonna take time. You purchase Bethesda, you purchase Activision King, you buy, what is it, 14 new studios, right? And that takes time to develop those games. We talk about how these games are getting bigger and more time. It takes three years, five years, seven years to develop these games. When you purchase Bethesda, and they're now in the, oh, well, we're making Starfield and how our lineup is as we do this. It's like, all right, well, now I'm kind of handcuffed waiting on you. And as Greg would say, hey, let's start making other studios do that. That's exactly what you do, yeah. And the messaging has always been, hey, we don't come into Tim Schaeffer's house and make him make Banjo. We don't go to Obsidian and say, you gotta make this. And the people who said that are gone. And those people are gone. That is Microsoft going, you were too nice filled, Sarah. That is not what we need. We would be in a lot better position right now in terms of how we wanted to kind of forecast what they should do. If the big, long-awaited, brand new IP from Bethesda, Starfield came out and was a 10 out of 10 across the board, masterpiece level. We wouldn't be talking about Bethesda like this. We would be in a much better spot right now because we would go, the next one, people are gonna show up immediately. But now, I mean, I would even say going back to Fallout 4, which wasn't the lauded, like everybody loves this and it's the best thing ever sort of video game. I think we're in a weird spot with it now. Obviously Skyrim delivered and people love Skyrim, but we're in a weird spot with that. We're like, they're not even a safe bet. In terms of everybody loving the video game. They speak to a specific audience. You got games like Baldur's Gate 3 that pushed it forward. And now we compare these two. We go, you don't got it like that, right? We look at Crimson Desert. We look at Dragon's Dogma. Games that are in this fantasy realm that are pushing certain features of the game forward and you look at Bethesda and go, you seem to be a little bit behind. And it's like, what do you need to get there, right? I think all those roles will get us back in though. I hope, right? But I think like, I just think Starfield is too different of a game. I think that game is too disjointed as far as how you explore that world. I think Elder Scrolls brings it all back to basics. Hey, you see the mountain over there? You can boots on the ground. The mountain over there, you can walk there. Hey, the factions that you love and know, here they are. Hey, the quests, the vampires, the fucking dragons, all these things that you know are here. But we had Mass Effect and Mass Effect was a very similar thing. Let Paris get it. No, I just want to comment that I love this conversation currently because this is the problem. The problem is you got Bethesda, you got Double Fine, you got all these studios five, six, seven, eight plus years ago and we've not seen the results that we should have been getting from them. I think about Halo Infinite in this conversation a lot because that was the face of the Xbox Series X. Master Chief is literally on the box when they launched it and the game didn't deliver for various reasons. But the fact that your number one IP or at least it was your number one IP did not deliver in this generation is the fundamental problem right now. And to your point, there's a lot of people making those decisions are no longer here anymore. You have the IPs. You have to get them out in a timely manner at quality and make them must play. And the fact that they have not been able to do that up until recently has just, that's the problem. So I'm sure she's coming in and speaking of Asha Sharma and that is probably the mandate. We can't be nice anymore. We got to get results. And if until their own internal studios can deliver premier titles that Jeff Keely has in the game of the year conversation, Xbox is going to just be spending their wheels no matter what they do. You've got to fix the games. Yeah. If happy employees can't make 10 out of 10 masterpieces, we're going to get the disgruntled ones to enforce them to work on. Pour your anger into the arts. Yeah. Like I think obviously there are so many complexities into how studios pick projects, the projects they want to do and why you would give one studio project over another. I know we're bringing double fine. They're doing whatever they want. Right? Like I wouldn't literally do this, but I think an option would be to go, hey, we're knocking on double fine. We're giving you Banjo-Kazooie and going, hey, we really need one of these and we need it to be a banger. And like after you make this, maybe you can make something for yourself. But like we are dialing in to these IP. We need good games out of these because this is what we think is going to pop off. I mean, that is the fun conversation. Of like, if you were CEO, would you walk up to Tim Schaefer and say, you have to do this now? Because we talked about Phil and we asked Phil. And it's like, no, he didn't do that. So it's now the new CEO that would lead Xbox to fix Xbox, the person to say obsidian, Outer Worlds is great. Love that you did it about. No more. You're making fallout. Have a good time, right? Hey, Tim Schaefer, you're making Banjo. See if these team over at Rare, this is great. Keep it going. You're making something else, right? We need a Viva Pinata right now. I remember for the dark. Everybody wants Animal Crossing, right? It's like, we got to make these games. And as of right now, the question is, does the CEO want to do that? Will you be able to? I have to say this with all due respect to Todd Howard. Why? And maybe there is, but why hasn't there been another studio incubating a fallout game, a new fallout game, not a remaster or whatever. To me, when I think about these are the mistakes that fallout TV show, even if you didn't have the foresight when you were developing the show to start getting something going, you clearly knew after season one. And the fact that they're not talking openly about that and showing that we got, Greg, you already said it, this is the IP that people would be going crazy over right now. And we get fallout 76, which I love, by the way, but that's a live service game. That's a multiplayer game. People want a single player, new IP fallout. And the fact that we're not seeing the tough decisions, like you're saying, you're telling Tim Schaefer, hey, you're making banjo. Someone needs to tell Todd Howard, well, this studio with City and whoever, they're making the next fallout. And we're not hearing that. I mean, I think the answer there again goes back to, and this is so speculative. First off, we don't know. Maybe somebody is doing right. We don't know. But I imagine the perspective was what Mike referenced already. Hey, we're buying you guys, but we're not changing you. You are Bethesda and you are operating there. And so we'd love to do this. And Todd's like, no, we really want to do the fallout. All right, we trust you. We know you made great games. I think it's as simple as that. And it wasn't the business imperative to do it. And now the winds have changed. And they're so dramatic that by turning and saying that, that's great. But then how many years removed are you from getting the fruit from that tree? These games are becoming so big. Like when I think of a Bethesda title, right, that's a seven-year project in my mind. Like these are getting so big where the fans want it to be extra big. We say, oh, we'll take it smaller. But like when I think Skyrim, I want the biggest and the baddest game available, right? I want fallout to be the biggest and the baddest. And that means, well, guess what, Todd and his team, they're going to take about seven years to make this. And now when I do buy them and they're making Starfield, which is two years after the purchase, then we get to Starfield and it's not game of the generation. Well, now I have another five years until Elder Scrolls. It's like, oh yeah, you're just so far behind the ball of what the players want and what you need to fix the state where you're at. Can you imagine if they like just found a way to strong arm into getting X-Position 33 as an exclusive? Dude. And a lot of that, a lot of it comes down to me with like, you know, yes, you could spend seven years to a decade or whatever on the gigantic game that is, you know, ever, and it just goes forever. Every mountain, all that shit in terms of like budgetary stuff. But like, if you could also just come up with a fun game that has a story that fucking hits, that makes people go, damn, I wish I could play that, but I don't have that. And that's the kind of exclusive that I think you need. Yeah. Like, a clear obscure is the kind of thing you need to seek out more so than a resident evil requiem as an exclusive, right? I look at on the PlayStation side, they're doing, they started off the generation with like multiple of those, whether it be a Cana Bridge of Spirits, whether it be a Stray. Are these console sellers? No, but they were the talk of the town the years that they came out. And as Xbox, you have those connections, you have people that are on the ground floor, I know bringing in these third party titles, but within the last year, we've seen some of those third party titles fumble as far as what the publishing looks like. Like, why isn't that Wu-Tang game being published by Xbox? What's going on with that? Are we going to see that Kojima game come out under Xbox? But those are the things you should be seeking out. I mean, yeah, in reality, those are all rolls of a dice, right? And that's why it is so scary. Like right now in 2026, where you're like, hey, we're tightening up our belts. We're not going to go fund whatever, Perfect Dark, that Mad Max game contraband that they were making. It's like, hey, we've given up on that, right? In the ideal world, yeah, we'd be rolling the dice at the table. Is it a roll of the dice though, or is that like a team that you build and you have the skill to be like, this is good? Three months before Xbox 33, no one knew that game was going to be amazing, right? Yeah, but like, when did PlayStation... There was more apprehension than when it came out at launch. It was like, this is the greatest game ever made. Like, at what point did PlayStation Realize 3 was going to be a good game? You know what I mean? I think you have teams of people that go, hey, your job is to go out in the field and see what people are doing and make these games really evil. Research, yeah, like, not every game has a roll of the dice like that. You can see it happen in real time, this is something special. It is, there is that percentage of it that is... Yeah, but the straights don't know where near-action 33. And I'm not saying straights are at 33. I know... I mean, the PlayStation gives straight the push though, right? You make that feel like that would... You could get seven straights, but it wouldn't be enough to chip away at the deficit that you're facing, right? Sure. You need a, hey, I got Final Fantasy. I got Capcom to give me the next, Mega Man the next, Resident Evil. Every single game that you've ever won has to come over here because the only way to go, what, five to one, seven to one on a deficit like that is to start taking games that people really want and love. Sure. And then say, hey, come over here. I use Stray as an example of like a bunch of different games that PlayStation has done that with, whether it be Stray, whether it be... Rocket League. Rocket League, Roller Drone, Bug Snacks, fucking Seafood. Like, there's a long list of quality games that they've been able to find to go, oh yeah, we're going to get that exclusive. Plants are flagged on that. And that is a team that is doing that and reaching out to these developers. Those are good. I just, on the flip side, I just don't think those are console sellers or make somebody drop everything, you know what I mean? I do that. Even if you got 50 of them, it's still wouldn't... We've seen that with Game Pass, right? Game Pass partnerships, Game Pass titles with Indies, third party games that are on the smaller side of like... So many cross games. Hey, there are so many games here that, blessing and Greg on the PlayStation side, they got to pay $20, $40 on, hey, this is, it's over here included for $10 or less, right? And nobody makes it. Nobody made the move over there, right? It's like, you kind of got to go bigger than that, unfortunately. So do you keep Game Pass around in your, your taking over? Yes. Game Pass in my, in my world is still around. I think Game Pass is one hell of a value. I think it is a must have in your ecosystem here. Like I said, I'd go back to just Ultimate and Consolendor PC. I'd find a way to make it $20 and $10. Even if I'm losing money, I have to have this as like, get in board, get on this. And I'd still make first party games day in date with that. They would still be, still be the Game Pass you know and love. And then I slightly disagree. Online would be dead. You would never pay for online on my console ever again, ever again, especially with Helix. That's being a dual boot system. There is, I have the slide up there, or bear if you want to bring it up. Xbox Live, anything online is dead. You are not going to pay ever again for that, right? Because I need you to know that I have your back. I want to save you as much money as possible. And I'm making sure that you can play everything without worrying about having a subscription. I know. And to your point, Mike, sorry, sorry. And any minute. But. With with Game Pass, first of all, I agree with you on Helix. There's no way they can have a multiplayer paywall. And that just wouldn't make sense if it's everything that we think it's going to be. But the point about Game Pass, I'm fine with day in date. If they can make day in date more affordable. If they can't figure that out, like, look, if you need to take Call of Duty out, take Call of Duty out. But if they can have some form of day in date that's affordable, to be honest, just get rid of it. Just get completely rid of it. Make what is it, the premium tier or whatever it is and just say, we're essentially just another version of PlayStation Plus, where it does exist. There's the play anywhere aspect of it. There's a cloud streaming aspect of it. But we're getting rid of day in date because it is not it is not financially viable for us anymore. We can't support that unless we have a thirty five forty dollar tier. No one's going to buy that or pay for that. And honestly, I think having something that expensive that sure, it's an option. It just doesn't look good. It's it's it's bad press for them because no one's going to pay attention to the cheaper tier. Everyone's going to point to the more expensive tier. And it's just bad PR. It's so interesting you bring that up because like day in date is the only seller for Game Pass for me. Right. If it's not the first party games day in day included at a cheaper subscription fee than buying all these games straight up. Then it's like, what is the point of it? Right. Because all of these smaller indie titles, all of this, it's great for discoverability. It's great for families out there that want to try some games and jump around. But we all know people are coming because we don't want to spend seventy dollars on Halo, seventy dollars on Fable, seventy dollars on Call of Duty. I want the first party games that got to be included on that day and day. Do you think that is what percentage of players do you think that is? Right. I think it's higher than you think because I look at again, my I know I'm I keep using my nephew as the example, right. But I looked at his mom and was like, hey, Game Pass is going to be the way is going to be how he can play so many games. And they're not they don't care about day and day. Mind these kids don't give a shit. They're playing Roblox anyway. But they look at the catalog and they're like, oh, yeah, I can play split fiction with my little brother or whatever. Right. Like I feel like when you're saying the day and day thing that speaks so much to the hardcore game gamers, which I know are a lot of us, right. But when we're making all these things of we're going to cut online, like don't pay for that. We're going to bring down the price. We're going to do X, Y, Z thing. Some's got to give. And I think that would have to be the thing of like, oh, yeah, you're going to pay for X. Well, especially if you went back to your games being exclusive. If that would be the win, right? Of like, all right, cool. We're getting seventy dollars when you do want to buy the new Halo, the new Gears, whatever, and we're getting you Game Pass subscriptions service stuff. Yeah. And again, just being one of the companies that you have more money than God, you can afford to take losses on some of those smaller things that. That in gender, like full time, permanent fan bases, like you are creating fans for life if you give them wins here and there. And showing them like, we're not going to charge you for those little small things. We're not going to nickel and dime you here and there. Yes, everything else in the world is going up money wise. But Game Pass, we're going to keep it at 20 bucks instead of going to 30 or keep it a 15, whatever the hell it's going to be. You create fans for life. You create people that want to stick around in your ecosystem. And that is that that that that just brings in money tenfold in the long term. Like those long term fans. The brand. Yeah. You know, Super Chat. It's our coming in obviously throughout the show. Thank you so much. GM Padre said Xbox should be leveraging exclusive in game benefits. Alla Fortnite to make people go, oh, I get that here. Another cheeky suggestion could be conversion of game or score to reward points or some kind of thing. Oh, I have one of those. I'll show you in a little bit. The most important, I think, there in that is what Mike already brought up of the fact that the fact that Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, all this stuff isn't incorporated in some way. And it is the Fortnite Battle Pass subscription service, a crew, Fortnite crew that's in there. And it's like to your point, Padre, how do you get that message out from kind of funny games daily and into Blessing's nephew's head? Like, you know what I mean? Like it's back to the argument I've talked about with X Cloud and Fortnite and streaming that when you couldn't stream it on your phone anywhere else. And it's like the Ashley's kids watching me do that and being mystified. But it's like they don't know that you could do that with Xbox X Cloud. Like, how do you get that into a digestible, simple way that anyone can understand? And that's been Xbox's, I think, one of their biggest problems throughout this whole thing. Also, immediate when you bring everybody to your fan base and to your platform, you put back backpattles on the button on the standard controller. I mean, it will be interesting to see what the future of controllers is like, right? Because you see Nintendo Switch 2, they have that now. So it's like, man, is the next PlayStation controller is the next Xbox controller? Going to do that? It'll be interesting to make it standardize. So that that that the normal ass Xbox controller feels so good to play. It just doesn't have those back buttons and the elite ones fucking bumpers always falling apart. You know what I mean? Like the amount of time I have like three dead elites at home. And then the the rubber starts peeling off. It's just give me the standard ass basic controller with the back panel. But you got more slides you want to get through? Oh, yeah, I think we're having a great conversation. So I don't want this to derail it, but I'll finish out my slideshow just for fun. Z's OK. Want to bring up passion. Andy, when I went to social media, I got a lot of comments, a lot of negativity out there. I just want to say that a lot of gamers are passionate. Xbox fans are passionate, right? We all are passionate about this hobby that we love. It's our escape from the real world. It is where we forge friendships, memories and moments with ourselves and our family and our friends for life, right? It is something truly special. And I saw your comments on Twitter. And there's just a sea of negativity out there. Hey, there is just a sea of darkness. And out in that darkness, there used to be a light. There used to be a beacon of positivity in the Xbox world of hope. And that's why I think we need to bring back. Barrett hit the slide. My man, Major Nelson. Yeah, because when you bring up positivity and you see these people who are so passionate, but maybe they've been enshrouded in darkness and negativity for so long, maybe they're like me, they're scared, right? Blessing, you brought it up a couple of months ago. I was uptight at Xbox, right? We let the exclusives go. The question was, why am I buying this Xbox? And people are out there like me, right? Worrying about, hey, all these purchases that I made, are they going to go away? Is Xbox a dying brand that maybe I shouldn't be buying their hardware? Maybe I should be going off to other places and like, why should I invest in you if you're not investing in me? In reality, right now, Xbox is still a great place to play. There are so many positive things going on in the Xbox world. And yeah, if you jump ship over to PlayStation or Nintendo, thankfully, all these Xbox first party games are now not exclusive. They're over there, right? And maybe you're going to have a better time there. But for the players who stay, you do have something really special and great going on. And I think the diehards know that, right? But there's so much negativity in the world. There's so much doom and gloom that maybe they've gone a little negative themselves. But one man out there always brings out the light. Larry, one man out there always brings out the fun and the positivity. And he makes those people who have doubted it or maybe are worried and scared and negative themselves. He makes them go positive. Are you campaigners? Major Nelson. So, so, so, Mike, Mike, I have to tell you, I saw Larry at GDC, we had a conversation. He wants on the show. Larry Legend wants to be on. Yes, he wants to be on. Anytime. You got to do the one on one with him, man. I would love that, Paris. But I truly believe if you want to bring back some positivity, win back some brand recognition and some trust in gamers, you would bring back Major Nelson in a big way. I've put two people behind him, give him a team of three. I think we bring back an inside Xbox type vibe. Where a lot of people have gone negative on seeing CEOs, heads of gaming studios, all this stuff. Come on podcast and stuff like that. Hey, if you want to mouthpiece somebody, you can trust and believe it. You want that figure again? I'm going to give you Major Nelson and two others. And they're going to be the face of Xbox. They're going to be the one taking all the calls. They're going to be the ones coming out here to tell you what's positive, what's new, what's hot, what's hip in the Xbox world. And these are the people that you can trust in and believe in. And sure, they're going to be the mouthpiece. They're going to give you the corporate talk. But at the same time, when you see Major Nelson, there's something different about it that gamers kind of put it all down and go, OK, let me listen. Yeah, the one pushback I was going to give for Major Nelson, even though I love Major Nelson is that I think we do need younger people. Right. And like I love the idea of team of three. Exactly. And then to younger people, somebody in chat said that they could tell they could tell Roger Silhouette from him all the way. And so and then my final one is bringing the fun, right? We've talked a lot about the business side of things. But when Xbox gamers look back on their final slide here, Bayard, for everyone, it is the fun of Xbox and those memories. And it's very hard to capture what Xbox was on the 360 days, right? Xbox One versus 100. Bring it back. Summer of Arcade is fantastic and an amazing idea. It did an awesome job highlighting one game of week throughout the summer for five weeks. Well, guess what? Now there's a billion games and it is too difficult to highlight any. But Summer of Arcade is a fun idea that you can do on the storefront. I'll tell you this. Xbox Steam, any other storefront does a great job doing a lot of spring, summer sales, of course, idea in Xbox sales. You have fun steam next fest demos like they're doing that. And I know it's not the 360 days because there's not a hundred games to play. There's a million. But these are fun ideas. I bring up the Netflix one, the watch parties with your friends, right? We talk about Netflix and Xbox having conversations, right? This would be a fun way to bring people back, having them remember, hey, my Xbox avatar sitting down, watching a movie together. We have now lost a party chat vibe that we all grew up with. And I know on this audience, it's a little bit older. They know that we've gone to discord. We've now gone to team speak. We're on our own things. It's not quite the same energy, but it is still the same energy at its core. But something with a Netflix watch party would be fantastic for you who love achievements, your boys. Snowbike Mike would like to reward you. I want to reward the people who spend the time in my ecosystem. A lot of people want badges for their achievements. They want cool things next to their profile. I'd like to go even further. I'd like to give you a little piece of cheese. I'd like to give you some Xbox points back in the day, like we saw with PlayStation Stars program Xbox had this right of like, Hey, how, how much do I really lose? If I go people who are spending time and money and investing in my platform by earning achievements and playing games, how much is it to give them a ten dollar little free bonus? Great idea, especially trying to win people back from these ecosystems. Little, little five dollar best by reward zone card. I would love for you to do that. Right. And so at the end, you see down at the bottom right, a live stream, something really special is about to happen with this new project. Helix having a dual boot PC inside of it. Right. And we've already seen you can live stream from your PlayStation Xbox in the past, but I think there is something so cool and exciting that this is a PC. How do I maybe integrate with Twitch a little bit more? How do I get Jason Ronald and the team to work and have that go above and beyond just the, Hey, here's a camera on the corner and you're streaming from your Xbox, right? Because a lot of younger generations, they want to stream. They want to make content. I've told Tim many times, the young kids, I know, literally, they are asking for PCs because their favorite streamer content creator is on PC. Guess what? Your Xbox is now partly a PC. How do we go even further than that and make it as easy as a click and you can customize your own stream. You can go above and beyond and make it super difficult where it's not Andy going above and beyond, but like, Hey, I can click on this and have a cool Twitch stream for my friends to watch. I love this comment that says, to be honest, Mike, I feel like most of this has already been lost on the internet, but I can agree with you entirely. That comment came from AOL America online. I think, you know, yeah, you stumble on a great point here, right? Of like, I think something that would be an easy win for Xbox right now would be having faces. It would be, Hey, like, every, you know, however you want to term it, everyone in the world wants a community, whether that is IRL, whether that is being a kind of funny best friend, whether it is not being a console warrior to the worst degree of it. But I play Xbox. I'm excited for the Xbox 25th anniversary and whatever they're going to do. You see someone with an Xbox shirt, you go, Oh shit. And if it was turning it on and it was a major Nelson to Jeff Rubin son, a Tina, I mean, I mean, they're talking you about what's happening and what's cool and it is the, you turn it on. It is the official Xbox podcast automatically plays. And it's, I mean, here's the best games you could be getting right now. When it is rewarding, it's like making it feel not like every other storefront. Tomorrow we're doing how to fix PlayStation. A big part of it's going to be that they've lost the PlayStation personality for me, Greg Miller, right? And so it is that idea of like, whether I'm looking at Steam, whether I'm looking at Xbox, when I'm looking at PlayStation, when I'm looking at Nintendo, I'm just looking at another storefront, a digital wares, right? And so why not? You bring up how good Steam is at showcasing. Hey, here's this crazy sale for detective games or whatever. Like take that a little bit further in PlayStation. And of course, as always, has half asked it where it's like, here's Shuhei Yoshida's like list of games. Like, why aren't you actually doing that? Why isn't Shu an actual like back when he worked there? Obviously a little person pop up on the PlayStation store that is this curated list rather than some weird blog posts or some buried wishlist. Like surface that to the front that you have human beings that are gamers like you, person who maybe doesn't have someone to talk about games to, which is why so many people come and become a part of our community or a person who really just doesn't know you did only buy it for NBA. But suddenly they're telling you about whatever arcadey basketball game over here, you know, I don't know what he wants with AI, but I don't want it to be some fucking AI. I want to be a human being. Final one, Bear, if you go to my final slide here, of course, a lot of people have brought up, hey, I'm still missing that Activision backcompat titles on Game Pass, right? Where is the Transformers, right? But I would even go a step further and go, hey, if we're going to bring back the fun, let's look at some of these titles like Blessing brought up of like, what are we missing here? We're sitting on a Starcraft and a Warcraft and an RTS world that should clearly be brought back. We have a Heroes of the Storm that can bring in mobile players and have some fun. We're seeing a huge pop right now in an Animal Crossing, Pokopia, Tomodachi Life, like bringing Viva Pignata, Doritos Crash Course, one versus one over 100, these smaller legends, like these are great titles. Let's start figuring out how to bring them in, whether they be through Game Pass and backwards compatibility, or, hey, do we need to start making these games? Let's get on it, right? And so I go to my final part. I swear the last three slides of it. He's a slide. Where I bring up Game Studios and CEO Snow Mike Mike Calls. All right. And I bring up Playground Games first. This is a script that I. Bam! Forza Horizon. Forza Horizon in Japan. Oh, it's already in Japan. Oh, shit. My bad, my bad. New idea. Forza Horizon North Pole. Take the hottest driving sim and put it in the coldest place on earth. Mr. and Mrs. Claus are hosting the generations. Forza Festival with all the hottest elves, snowman and reindeer. I can see. You can hear the stock price dropping. What's that? You said reindeer? Yeah, that's right. All eight of Sandeer's reindeer are now the most aggressive driver, driver Tars on the track. OK, OK. Oh, oh, hold up. They were leasing fable this year. Scrap the North Pole. Let's go. Forza Horizon. Fantasy land. That's right. You ever thought about drifting in front of Cinderella's castle, taking her taking it to the red line with Jonah Ark? Yeah, Jonah. Is that right? Jonah Ark. Playground Games bring you to Forza Fantasy. Oh, OK. These are just games. I had ideas. OK. Then I would go out and make. OK. Jonah was a real purse. You know, I thought that I was going to be the last one you had. I was so strong. I thought you had like a, you know, it was like the honorable mention slide. I think. I want to get you out of here, of course, because there's still more stuff. Mike's playing drain sim after this, which is exciting. We've talked a lot about this. We've gone about there's been a lot of great stuff out there. B bar, like just wants to violate agreements. It says just make call duty exclusive. Yes, I know the contract, but void it. Do you think the administration will force anything? Just give Trump a made up award. Yeah, I would make call duty back to the three year cycle. I know right now they're going to try to get back to that, but we have gone back to back years. We've gone back and forth between just between modern warfare and Black Ops. I would really push to have these developers get some more time, figure out how we can get back to a three year, three different title line up right here. I think we are missing some sort of futuristic or jumping back to World War two and others usually the down years. But like we can't keep doing Black Ops back and forth. Modern warfare back and forth. We do need to get back to the three year cycle. I am always on board for like call duty yearly is a must for me. It will stay yearly, but I want to give them more time. I want to get back to. No, they already said. I thought I already said they were they're not doing that anymore. They already said that. Yeah, they said they said that. What? Yeah. That I don't think this is a three year, but they said they're not doing the. Yes, I just mean like a CEO, Mike, I would get us back on three years, no matter what. Like right now we're not there. We would be we would be there still. OK. The final subhead here, I have super chats and I called it. It's a lost cause, right? Lasers, a shark or I guess it's yeah, it's laser shark 47. Exclusives won't pull me from PlayStation. They're cooked. But then Chaos Killer X7 says current gen gamers are too invested in current ecosystem, Xbox needs a cheap box, streaming only plus premium console to get their foot in the door for next gen. Yeah. And it really is that question now of what do you do here? If you can't get exclusives to get somebody over, can it be services? Services worked on me because then it was easier way for me to play all my games. But as we often know, the way I play games, the way we all play games, isn't necessarily how everybody else plays games. Yeah, we talked about the Keystone puck back in the day of like, hey, what's that streaming? Puck, right? And then it quickly moved to like, well, why even make a puck when we can just get integrated on TVs and all your other devices? And that's the right cause. Like just get that Xbox app everywhere, right? But there's that conversation we still have to this day. People don't fully believe in cloud jet. Cloud isn't up to snuff in most areas for people, right? For me, yeah, I'm fortunate I have crazy internet and it does run well. And I can believe in it. But a lot of people don't have that. And like that's still a five, ten year window out of like cloud is here. Cloud can be that. And like I'm still I'm still of the mind of like even further out as far as what cloud looks like for that being the main way that people start to game. That's just a big challenge with internet and everything. But to piggyback off of that and to you, Greg. Yeah, like I think pulling down this conversation, I feel it as three pillars, right? It is exclusives. It is these these IPs that we're talking about, right? Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Halo, getting these back to being exclusive games. It is the services that Greg mentioned making Game Pass Banger. And then it is the box, right? Like if your if your competitors are putting out these thousand dollar boxes, if he looks is going to be a thousand dollar thing, right? How do we get an Xbox Series S S device to come out at a five hundred dollars at a six hundred dollars and still play all these games that people care about? That way you're making it affordable. You're giving them the Elder Scrolls exclusive games that people are going to show up for and you're giving them Game Pass that they're going to love. Right. I think in a weird way, I think Xbox is kind of poised to hopefully give us a banger next generation, but we shall see if Microsoft. Let's see Paris. Final word. See this goes this goes back to the beginning of what you ask. Can this be fixed? Some said yes, some said no. I think it can be fixed. I think the opportunity is right there in front of them. Well, I hope so, everybody. This has been a cathartic kind of funny games cast. Thank you all for joining us. Remember, we're here each and every week to have in the big topics and the big discussions tomorrow will be how to fix PlayStation. So get ready for that one. Of course, our live programming day is far from over because this is a live talk show network. That's right. We kick off the day with kind of funny games daily in the games cast. Sometimes we talk movies after that. Sometimes we talk about other stuff and then we go stream a video game. Mike's playing Drain Sim. He's been talking about this one forever. Can't wait for this one, Greg. It's going to be a good one. This one actually surprisingly good. If you're watching this later or listening later on a podcast service, remember, of course, like, subscribe, share, come to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where you can watch Mike play Drain Sim and do everything else, include get a kind of funny membership to keep the lights and mics on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Apple Spotify. And of course, Patreon.com slash kind of funny to get everything we do ad free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series we call Greg way. That's 15 to 20 minutes of me podcasting my heart out for you exclusively. And of course, get good karma for supporting an 11 person, 11 year old small business. For now, though, the game's cast is over. 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