Is Game Pass Killing Xbox? - Kinda Funny Games Daily 07.07.25

Summary

Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast Summary Episode: Is Game Pass Killing Xbox?
Release Date: July 7, 2025
Hosts: Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Tim Gettys, Blessing Adeoye Jr.

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Introduction

In this episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily, hosts Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, and Blessing Adeoye Jr. delve into a pressing debate within the gaming industry: Is Game Pass Killing Xbox? Released on July 7, 2025, the discussion navigates through recent layoffs at Xbox, criticisms of Microsoft's subscription model, and broader implications for game developers and the gaming ecosystem.

Main Topic: Is Game Pass Killing Xbox?

Industry Criticisms of Game Pass

The conversation opens with concerns raised by industry veterans about Microsoft's Game Pass subscription model. Raphael Colantonio, founder of Arkane Studios, has publicly slammed Game Pass, deeming it “unsustainable” (10:46) and questioning its long-term viability:

Raphael Colantonio (Arkane Studios Founder): "I think Game Pass is an unsustainable, unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by Microsoft's infinite money. But at some point, reality has to hit. I don't think Game Pass can coexist with other models. They'll either kill everyone else or give up."

Blessing Adeoye Jr. expands on this sentiment, linking Game Pass to broader issues within Xbox's business strategy:

Blessing Adeoye Jr.: "It's Xbox's business strategy... it's the capitalism of it. It's the AI shift... how there's a race to implement AI and cost-shifting away from actual workers."

Microsoft and Xbox’s Response

Greg references Phil Spencer's defense of Game Pass, asserting its growth and sustainability:

Phil Spencer (Xbox Boss, 2021 Statement): "Game Pass is very, very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow."

However, the hosts debate whether this optimism holds true in 2025, especially in light of recent layoffs and studio closures.

Impact on Developers and Studios

The episode highlights the struggles of several studios under Microsoft's umbrella. Blessing discusses the shutdown of Initiative’s Perfect Dark project and the cancellation of Everwild, raising concerns about Xbox's commitment to fostering diverse and innovative game development:

Blessing Adeoye Jr.: "I'm seeing Ever Wild get canceled... how am I supposed to look at the other failings that we keep hearing about and look at Xbox first party and be like, oh, well, the problem is that... games don't come together sometimes."

The closure of Romero Games, following the withdrawal of Microsoft’s funding, exemplifies these issues:

Blessing Adeoye Jr.: "Romero Games has fully closed following the withdrawal of publisher funding... making it another casualty of Microsoft's recent layoffs."

Sustainability of the Subscription Model

Barrett Courtney draws parallels between Game Pass and other subscription-based services like Netflix, questioning the long-term sustainability and potential pitfalls:

Barrett Courtney: "The trajectory of Game Pass and where Netflix has been... it's where Netflix has seen productions only last like a season because of the scale of expectation. That's where I get concerned about where Game Pass looks in a few years."

Greg concurs, expressing skepticism about the endless sustainability of Game Pass:

Greg Miller: "There's only one way this ends. And I don't know if it's in a year or in three decades, but Game Pass goes away at some point. This can't go on forever."

Personal Anecdotes and Other News

Hosts’ Weekend Updates

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. shares his memorable birthday celebrations, including a "brew boat" party (01:10), enhancing the episode's personable tone.

• Greg Miller recounts attending the Monster Jam World Finals in Salt Lake City (03:24), juxtaposing personal experiences with industry discussions.

Nintendo’s Development Strategies

The hosts discuss Nintendo’s approach to managing development costs for the upcoming Switch 2, highlighting Nintendo President Shuntaru of Furukawa’s plans to implement shorter development periods without compromising game quality (54:23):

Nintendo President Shuntaru of Furukawa: "Our development teams are devising various ways to maintain our traditional approach to creating games... develop game software with shorter development periods that still offer consumers a sense of novelty."

Final Fantasy 9 Remake Speculations

Speculations around the development of a Final Fantasy 9 remake are examined, fueled by Square Enix's 25th-anniversary celebrations and leaks from a GeForce Now database (58:54):

Jordan Miller (VGC): "Reports of an in-development remake persist... multiple sources claim that one is indeed in development."

Greg and Blessing express cautious optimism, though Blessing remains skeptical about announcements following anniversary promotions (61:25).

Conclusion

The episode wraps up by reiterating the complex landscape Xbox faces with Game Pass at its core strategy. While Game Pass offers significant value to consumers, its sustainability and impact on game development and studio stability remain contentious. The hosts encourage listeners to reflect on the balance between consumer benefits and industry health, emphasizing the need for sustainable business models that support both gamers and developers.

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Notable Quotes:

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. [14:22]: "There is a conversation as far as it being unsustainable... the AI shift... the industry maturing and money coming out of the games section of the industry."

• Greg Miller [24:16]: "When you have a parent company coming in and doing these things, it gets into this inky bit of like, all right, cool."

• Barrett Courtney [36:54]: "There's a lot of similarities between the trajectory of Game Pass and where Netflix has been."

Final Thoughts

Is Game Pass Killing Xbox? presents a critical examination of Microsoft's subscription service, balancing industry insights with personal experiences. The detailed discussion underscores the tension between innovative business models and the fundamental needs of game developers, leaving listeners with much to ponder about the future of gaming ecosystems.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

Today in the nerdy news, you need to know about industry leaders. Slam game pass. Nintendo's changing how they're making games and what's happening with Final Fantasy 9's remake. We'll evolve this and more because this is Kinda Funny Games Daily. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Kinda Funny Games daily for Monday, July 7, 2025. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, a k a New York Game Awards nominated aka birthday boy. Blessing at a. Oh, yay, Junior.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Good day.

[Greg Miller]

Greg, I know your birthday already happened, but I wasn't here for it. We were together. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I was at home. I was chilling.

[Greg Miller]

Happy birthday.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you so much.

[Greg Miller]

Is this a new coat or an old coat?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because it's a new coat to me.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's an old coat that a friend passed it on to me.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, nice.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I was like, listen, you said, I love it.

[Greg Miller]

I'll take all of these fat friends.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. How was your birthday?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was good. It was really awesome. I hung out with friends, went on a boat.

[Greg Miller]

I saw this. It was like a bruise brew boat or something.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes. They call it a brew boat. For my birthday. In recent years, I've been trying to find ways to like, what's something I could do that's going to be like a memorable experience?

[Barrett Courtney]

So what's the creative way to drink?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. Honestly, that's the perfect way to put it. What's the creative way to keep our friends together and so we can drink and have fun? A couple years ago, I went bowling. Last year, I got Covid. This year we wanted on the brew boat. And it was awesome. Right? They basically took us around the Oakland Bay for like an hour and a half. We had my phone connected to the Bluetooth. We're blasting music now. It was bring your own beer kind of situation.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. That's my main question. Because that was the thing I saw. I saw the Instagram stories while I was in Salt Lake City. I saw you out there partying. But so it wasn't like this was just. They were providing the boat. You provide the beer?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes, they provided a vote and they pro.

[Greg Miller]

You provided the cider and.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, well, here's the thing. I brought a big old bottle of whiskey and then reread the rules to the boat. Cannot bring hard liquor onto the boat.

[Greg Miller]

You cannot be hugging it before the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

One person who didn't read the rules. Yeah, because I have my friend Holly do everything because Holly knows how to organize things. And so, like, she read the rules for me. And it organized everything for me. I just put together the little party invite. But yeah, like, I ended up drinking. Thank God Belinda brought what? She brought like these canned, like, I think it was like canned margarita or canned wine or something along those lines.

[Barrett Courtney]

It was like a pogmosa thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And it really good.

[Barrett Courtney]

I wanted to try one, but I. I was too late to that.

[Greg Miller]

Too scared.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I did that. And then we went out drinking at a tiki bar afterwards. And that was like. That was on the third. I had like, I had two birthday parties.

[Greg Miller]

You got to love that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Cuz then on the 2nd, the day before, it was our last volleyball game of the season. And then afterwards we all went to have you been to the spot Espus, the Brazilian steakhouse.

[Greg Miller]

I know of it. I can't remember if I've been to that Brazilian steakhouse.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's so good.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I love it. This is my second time going. Went there as like a post volleyball thing slash birthday thing with my friends. And let me tell you, I fucking love this spot. We gotta like, we gotta put that on the list for like a team outing or something like that. Like team celebration.

[Greg Miller]

End of year, we go to Blessing's favorite restaurant.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You guys won't be disappointed with that spin.

[Greg Miller]

No, yeah. I mean, well, Brazilian steakhouses are always hot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Greg Miller]

They got the little like puffy cheesy bread things.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hell yes. It's fucking off the chain. How's your weekend?

[Greg Miller]

It was great. I went to Salt Lake City. I was at Monster Jam world finals. Thank you so much Monster Jam for sending the Millers out there, me, Ben and Jen. Because, you know, Ben's obsessed with monster trucks and Monster Jam and I want to do a kind of funny podcast about it. Unfortunately, this week we got to review Jurassic park, so. But, you know, I mean, next week I can do the kind of funny podcast about to get into the weeds about it. But it was awesome, you know, I mean, I. I've talked at length about how the dad I want to be and be that dad of like. All right, well, if Ben's into something, I'm into it. Let's do it. Let's. And this was the first taste of that. Of like, I don't know, I don't know. Thing one about like, I know the toys, obviously, we play the video game, obviously. But like, to be. I was my first time ever going to a monster truck show.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's awesome.

[Greg Miller]

And like being there, like the. The short encapsulation was like, we were there and it starts and there were teens sitting next to me in the suite and they were popping the way we pop for wrestling.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was gonna say, I feel like Monster Trucks and wrestling, even though very different, I feel like there's a crossover.

[Greg Miller]

There is. And it's definitely that energy and that excitement, fandom and all that stuff. But it was like such a family forward event. But then there were these kids there that were like, freak. Not. I say kids again. They were like 20 maybe, I don't know, somewhere between 18 and 22.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, that.

[Greg Miller]

In this row with us that were there independently and they were freaking out at the races, like, who's going to win? Or whatever. Because, like the. The number one thing I've learned about this, when I started saying I was going to the Monster Jam World Finals, is every like, oh, like, is there a season? Is there like. And I'm like, yeah, I didn't know it. I didn't really think. But the amount of people who think it is professional wrestling or it is Harlem Globetrotters or just like, what? Like, no, they race and they do these things and there's judges, like, there's all these different, like, actual competitions to Monster Jam.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It turns out that's really.

[Greg Miller]

It was. It was a blast.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Crazy. I've not met one person that's like, oh, yeah, I'm a fan. Right?

[Greg Miller]

I know, I know, I know. I think it's interesting because I think 98% of everyone there had kids with them. So I think it is that like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, you go there with the family, it's like a fun event to go to, super into. But then there's that 2% of people there that are like, no, I follow the season.

[Greg Miller]

These weird. Mike Minatis. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, like, I got a favorite truck that I followed from the beginning.

[Greg Miller]

But I mean, like, it is again, like. And I'll. I'm sure we'll get the podcast next week, but it's like, to fall into it and really, like, it was awesome to be inside of a sport and a fandom that like, oh, like, I know nothing about this and everyone surrounding. It's like when Roger got into WWE and like on that drive to Raw where we were catching him up on everything ever that happened and like to be around these people and it's like we rode the elevator with the original. The guy who was the original Gravedigger driver. Right. Because we were up in the suites and he was up there too. And then he's. But then it's like all of his kids now drive all the different gravediggers. So it's like this whole, like, family thing. And this is. It's insane how cool it was.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He's like the Rikishi.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. They'll soon be doing the bloodline gimmick, I'm sure, doing this. But yeah, it was. It was something special. And mainly to watch Ben's excitement. We got to do the. I want to edit together the video. We got to do the hey, you're not going to preschool, you're going to Monster Jam thing, where we drove by preschool and he goes, this isn't the way to preschool. It's because you're not going to preschool, you're going to the Monster Jam World Finals. And he goes, for realsies. So it was good. But enough about my son and the amazing weekend I had with Monster Jam. Of course. This is Kinda Funny Games Daily, where we run you through the nerdy news you need to know about in the world of video games each and every weekday live on Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, YouTube.com kinda funnygames and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, we'd love you to pick up a Kinda Funny membership. You can get one on patreon.com kindafunny, YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple and Spotify. $10 gets you all of our shows free. That's more than 80amonth. And it gets you your daily dose of me in an exclusive show we call greg way that's 15 to 20 minutes long. That adds up four hours of podcasts that are all for our members each and every month. However, no bucks tossed away. No big deal. You could, like, subscribe, share, tell your friends about the show. Leave a review wherever you're getting it. Hit that follow button. Hit that subscribe button. It would help us out. If you have Twitch prime or if you have Amazon prime, you got Twitch Prime. It's a free subscription to give away each and every 30 days. And if you're on YouTube.com kindafunnygameslive as we record, you could write in with a super, super chat to be part of this whole thing, just like Leopard Cut did. Who said? Greg, did you feel the altitude at Rice Eccles? That was the stadium we were in in Salt Lake City.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Rice Eccles.

[Greg Miller]

It's what they call, you know, it's like the name. Yeah, yeah. No, I did not feel the altitude there. I went to Salt Flats, though. That was cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Now you're just saying words.

[Greg Miller]

Jen made us drive.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I let it slide with a Rice Eccles.

[Greg Miller]

Mom. Mom did the whole thing of like. All right, I planned a fun excursion before Monster Jam. Let's drive an hour and a half to the salt flats. Oh my God. It was actually really cool. It was like you're walking on the moon. Another planet, I guess.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, you post pictures of this? Of course. I think I saw that and I was like, where the is Greg right now?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah. It's very cool. Of course, Everybody. We're an 11 person small business. All about live talk shows, which means kind of funny. Games Daily is far from the only piece of content you'll get today. After this show, it's the games cast where they're reviewing Tony Hawk Pro Skater three plus four. After the games cast is Jurassic World Rebirth in review. Woof. And then the stream is Dune Awakening with Nick and Andy. If you're a kind of funny member, today's the day I see Superman, everybody. It's happening tonight. I'm going to see James Gunn Superman. I am very excited. You can find out what my excitement levels are in the Greg Way. That will be published momentarily. Of course. Tomorrow you can get my spoiler free reviews of Greg Way.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, look at that.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Psalm twining. I wasn't on last week. It's a holiday. Yeah. There was Tamor had the, you know, audacity to get married on the same day. Xbox lays all these people off. Then it was the. Then I left for Monster. Yeah. Have we gotten to the bottom of Delaney adding the song? He's a sommelier.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, sommelier. Because I.

[Greg Miller]

Has he always been or is it new?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is a correct me if I'm wrong thing, but hasn't he called into the happy hour to give us like sommelier conversation?

[Greg Miller]

Right, but somebody else makes us drinks.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes. I think bartender. I think that's a different guy.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think we knew that Delaney twining was a small. I feel like we talked about it with him. Delaney, let us know if you're watching live. Let us know if we talked about. You talked with you about wine. Because I think. I'm pretty sure we did. I like remember this. But this could have been one of. The. One of the ones that you missed and I was there for.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Okay. If so, I need. I need some wine pairings which. What wine should I be drinking with my chicken wings?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, it sounds like a Delaney twining.

[Greg Miller]

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I'm putting out there. Delaney.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be the Roper Report. For some new six items on the Roper Report because.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Dozens some energy right there.

[Greg Miller]

It's Monday.

[Barrett Courtney]

I haven't done it in a long time.

[Greg Miller]

We're all back together. It's been too long. Number one in the wake of Xbox layoffs, founder of Dishonored and Prey developer Arkane Slams Game Pass this is the one, the only W Y [e-mail] that's Wesley Yin Pool Blessing. You probably didn't know that. I didn't Hot on the heels of the layoffs that have swept through Xbox, the founder of the Microsoft owned Arkane Studios has hit out at Game Pass, whose subscription model he called, quote, unquote unsustainable. Raphael Cole Colanti Colantonio.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There you go.

[Greg Miller]

There it is. Who founded and I practiced beforehand. For the record, that's how bad I am. Who founded the Dishonored and Prey developer and served as its president before leaving in 2017 to start weird west maker Wolf Eye Studios took to social media to ask, quote, why is no one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough, cough. In the parentheses Game Pass. When asked to expand on his thoughts on Game past, which Weird west launched straight into as a day one title in March 2022, Colantonio See, I got a second one. Nailed it, said quote, I think Game Pass is an unsustainable, unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by Microsoft's infinite money. But at some point, reality has to hit. I don't think Game Pass can coexist with other models. They'll either kill everyone else or give up, end quote. Colantonio's comment sparked a debate about the pros and cons of Game Pass in industry terms as well as for the consumer. Microsoft subscription service has been called many things over the years. The death of the video game industry, the savior of smaller developers who benefit greatly from payments made by Microsoft to secure their games and everything in between during the great Xbox FTC trial. I love calling it that great. The great. Never forget I lived through it. To decide the fate of Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard. The PlayStation boss Jim Ryan. Oh, then PlayStation boss Jim Ryan claimed that he had talked to, quote, all the publishers, end quote, and that unanimously they all hated Game Pass because it is value destructive. He also said Microsoft appears to be losing a lot of money on it, end quote. Back in 2021, Xbox boss Phil Spencer countered Game Pass doomsayers saying, quote I know there's a lot of people that like to write things that we're burning cash right now for some future pot of gold at the end. No, Game Pass is very, very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow. Colantonio's comments were backed by a number of industry peers, including a former VP of business dev at Epic Games. Michael Douse, publishing director at B Elders Gate 3 developer Larian said the biggest concern right now revolves around what happens when all that money runs out. This daos added is, quote, one of the main economic reasons people I know haven't shifted to its business model. The infinite money thing never made any sense, end quote. Blessing Greg, a whole bunch of layoffs last week. Crazy. We continue to see this. Before we went live, Samuel in the YouTube chat said Greg has been staggeringly quiet on Xbox Leadership the past week. Hope to hear some clear thoughts today. Samuel I was at a fucking wedding and then I had to go see monster trucks jump high.

[Barrett Courtney]

Ok, sounds like excuses.

[Greg Miller]

Greg, can you fucking back off? Are you even following me on bs? That's blue sky, Tim.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Excuses.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, it sounds like you're finding ways to get out of, you know, commenting on this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not one word.

[Greg Miller]

Listen, I'm just saying everybody got laid off, probably deserved it. No, I'm kidding, of course. What a fucked up situation this was last week. What a. What an outrageous number of layoffs to wake up to. What, as usual, the fucking insane world we live in of. This is what it's all led to. This is what capitalism has led to. Microsoft, Xbox felt like they had to buy all these studios to stay competitive to do this thing. And then this happens and it's just a complete clusterfuck of everything going on and outrageous and it sucks. And obviously my heart goes out to everybody affected by these. But for this blessing. Do you think Game Pass is a big part of this conversation?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think it's a part of this conversation because it's Xbox's. That's. It's their business strategy, right? It's what they've been trying to lock in on and focus on. It's a, it's the core part of this being an ecosystem. Not just a platform, not just a console, not just, hey, we're going to get those box sales of these individual pieces of software that we're making to sell the consoles. Like you see other content console manufacturers making Game Pass is a central part of this, but I don't think it's the part of this. I think there is a conversation, though, as far as it being unsustainable, because I think there could be validity there and I think we should get into that. But as far as, like, what the central part of this is, right, like, it is what you mentioned before. It's the capitalism of it. It is the AI like shift that you're seeing across the tech industry and how there right now is a race for everybody to implement AI as much, as much as possible and cost shifting to that and away from the actual workers that, you know, bust their asses to, to do their job. Right. I think it's that, I think it's what we've been talking about for months and months with both Matt Piscatella guesting on the show and then also the Lana Pierce video I reference all the time, right? The industry maturing and money coming out of the games section of the industry, right? And like, I think what that does, as far as the amount of money there is to go around and then also I think it's the Activision Blizzard acquisition, right? And like, the amount of scrutiny that that's put onto the Xbox division of Microsoft from the higher ups, the Satya Nadellas and like the people that are Microsoft, Microsoft looking down at the Xbox, Microsoft and going, yo, all right, we spent all this money. We need returns. Cut this, cut this, cut this. Like there, I think there's so many layers to this. But I, I, I, I think the, the Game Pass conversation is interesting because I think in the midst of everything that's gone on, right? Especially in the last week, and this even goes back to like freaking Tango. Gameworks being, I guess not temporarily shut down by Xbox, right? And then later on being opened back up by a different company. I am at a place with Game Pass where it is tough for me to look at Game Pass and like, I guess the core of what Xbox is and what they're presenting and what they're selling, it is so tough for me to get excited. And I think that's going to make a lot of people go, well, bless you. Play on PC, PlayStation, Nintendo. Like, how often are, like, are you, you're not an Xbox Die hard. You didn't grow up with Xbox, all this stuff, right? But I'm also somebody who, I've wanted to be excited for what Xbox is doing because I think from the outside looking in, right, like, it's felt very innovative. It's felt very, I think Xbox Game Pass. There's the phrase that gets repeated all the time as far as, oh, it's the best deal in gaming. And I think on the consumer side, there's a lot of truth to that as far as, oh, I'm going to get the bang for my buck. I'm going to pay a set amount of money and I'm going to get to play Claire Expedition. I'm going to. Or clear obscure expedition 33. I'm going to get to play Blueprints. I'm going to get to play the upcoming Gears of War and Doom, the Dark Ages and Avowed and all these things. No Man's sky. That inherently for consumers is such a fantastic deal. And I think there is room in space in a. A solid strategy that could exist as far as meeting gamers where they're at, where everything is going up in price, give people a way to get in to where it makes sense for them. I think for me, that all starts to topple when I look at the companies that you're supposed to be fostering, the studios that you're supposed to be fostering. And I'm seeing them topple one by one. I'm seeing Tango get fumbled. I'm seeing.

[Greg Miller]

Initiative.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Initiative. Thank you. Get Fumble. I'm seeing Ever Wild get canceled. I'm looking at a double fine and going, well, I know they have a game coming up this year. Is that going to be their last game? Because are you gonna just destroy them like in the next 12 months or something? Right. Like, I. There's this push and pull with Xbox and Game Pass and how that fits in with it, where I'm like, how viable is Game Pass going to be for me when the reasons why I show up to a game pass start to disappear one by one?

[Greg Miller]

In all this conversation about initiative, you know, you bring up, is Double fine on the hook or whatever after this Ever Wild, where do we enter into the con? And I'm. This is expanding and here we go. Where the whole show is one topic, but what are you gonna do? Right? At what point did we enter in and have this conversation about, well, what about when the games don't come together? And I'm not ever saying this, that or the other, blah, blah, but, like, clearly Perfect Dark wasn't gelling. Right. Initiative had been started to make Perfect Dark. They're working on it. I'm assuming we're off the rails. It's not working. Bringing Crystal Dynamics to try to fix this. Get it going. We still can't. We have to pull the plug, we kill the studio we created to make this game. And that fucking sucks. I hate the idea that that happens. I hate the idea that these people lose their jobs. I hate all of this. Right? But then there is this other side of, well, for X amount of years those people had jobs and I don't know, would the, Would the. With the. Would it have been better for Xbox to partner with a second party studio, pay them and have the milestones and then get to this point where they pull their contract and cancel Perfect Dark and then that second party studio scrambles. Try to get fun. Like, I don't know the answers here. And again, I think so much of this is easy as commentators, players, consumers to sit on the sidelines, say, well, I would have done this or I would have done that, blah, blah, blah. But then there is this reality of where we're at with the video game industry, where we're at with capitalism again, where it's like, this is such an interesting conversation to have in parallel to when people like, I can't believe games cost so much. And then somebody inevitably in the chat's like, you're missing the point. I can't believe everything costs so much. Why the fuck is life like this right now? Right? Where it's this idea of like, well, Xbox lost the console generation, so they moved this thing, which means they need to buy people, which means they're buying. They're buying things to stay going. But that's the, like, we can be mad at them for then doing all this, but then they're doing the thing they feel like they need to survive. I'm getting way down the line, but back to Everwild, a game that we've heard about forever, ingested forever. And at some point do you say you got to pull the plug? I'm more interested personally, what's going on with. Or what went on with the Zenimax Online Studios MMO RPG that got canceled where there was yesterday I saw a headline and read a little bit of like, Phil Spencer liked the demo so much that Matt Booty had to take the controller away. Like, that's how engaged. So why did that one get canceled?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I. Six months ago he was saying similar ish stuff about Everwild. As far as, like, he was asked in an interview, what's an Xbox title coming up that you're excited about? And he's talking about like, oh, yeah, I just visited the team over at Rare and like Everwild is looking like it's shaping up pretty well.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Granted, like is that lip service is that him being a CEO and just trying to talk up any project that could use talking up? Sure, probably. But I also think that to your question of these projects that may or may not have been shaping up because I'm right there with you. As far as we didn't know whether or not Perfect Dark was actually, we didn't have hands on with it, right. We just saw one extended gameplay trailer that like some people, like some people were like, eh, you know what I mean? And like Ever Wild. We never really saw anything about Ever Wild. I can't tell you what that game is, right? Like we didn't really know about it. And I'm not, I'm not above the idea that like, hey, projects get. Video game projects especially get canceled all the time and most of the time we just don't know about them because they're not announced yet. I think my problem with it is that I. It's been very tough for me to get excited about Xbox First Party as a unit when it feels like they are not fostering these studios to be the best that they can be. I feel like the, you know, we can, I can say the last 15 years, right? But if we're zeroing in on even just this generation, right. Like, I think this year we're at a great place with third party, right? Where it's like, oh, damn, we got Doom, the Dark Ages. That was pretty good. A lot of people, like a vowed. A lot of people, you know, love South Midnight, right? Like you got a thing going for you as far as finally pitting out good, consistent games. But in the last, however, calling them.

[Greg Miller]

Third party because they were like Bethesda and they're acquired and that's what you're.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Saying or first Party, sorry, I was like, wait here. But when I look at a. When I look at the cancellations that we just talked about, right. In the last week, when I look at Tango gameworks, when I look at like, I don't know, it feels like there's an amount of cancellations, an amount of things that a redfall amount of things that aren't shaping up up to be like the dominoes that we're talking about all the, all the time, right. I don't even think the dominoes exist anymore, right. Like, I find it tough to be in a place first party wise where I trust in the Xbox team to foster these teams. Well, like, it's not like they bought the initiative, they started the initiative. Like that is Xbox starting that up to go, hey, we need A quadruple, a quote unquote studio to foster it. A big IP for us. We want something that's going to like, you know, help be this.

[Greg Miller]

Like, we need a tent pole. We need a pole.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We need something big. And like, they did that. They spun up that studio. They talked about that studio.

[Greg Miller]

They had people, I'm sure, move from all over the world.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They revealed it as a perfect dark. And then they showed us gameplay last year and then they shut it down. How is that. How am I supposed to look at that? How am I supposed to look at the other failings that we keep hearing about? And look at Xbox first party and be like, oh, well, the problem is that, you know, games don't come together sometimes. It's like, well, for y', all, games don't come together. A lot of the time it feels.

[Greg Miller]

Like, let's bring in a whole bunch of chats because you're all. You're right on the money with where the super chats are. Remember YouTube.com kind of funny games to be part of this. Luis wrote in with his membership for 15 months. Thank you. And said, allegedly the layoffs across Microsoft are to pay for the AI infrastructure, which of course would make a lot of fucking sense. And back to what you're talking about at the very top of this, right? That everyone is chasing this fucking AI garbage. So of course this is going to happen. Which then falls into another chat I saw go by of like, if it was about the AI thing, it's not like Phil liking a game is going to be able to save it. They need to do this or whatever. However, though, I liked what you're saying right there. There it is. Christopher says Xbox is incapable of shipping AAA games at scale. They simply haven't managed their large IP and games well over the last decade. And I think you look at it, you go, halo. We bungled Halo.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Halo Infinite was not this raging success that put Halo back on the map and made it be this thing that everybody cares about, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I do want to. I do want to do the thing that I shouldn't do, right?

[Greg Miller]

Which is clap back and people can swing on them. I'm so sick. Is it Christopher? You want to go after him?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's what Rya Ausa says. Same for PlayStation. Jerry W92 says bless PlayStation canceled 12 games last year. My. Here's my thing. Nowhere in these news stories or in this article or in the headline of the show is PlayStation mentioned. If this is the PlayStation story, I'll say the exact same thing, right? Like, I feel like me and you, I can speak for myself, right? Like, I have similar misgivings about PlayStation, especially this generation.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God, this live service bush that's going to fuck things up for another generation.

[Barrett Courtney]

Definitely have never talked about it, though. Blessing, you definitely didn't put out an entire video about this idea of PlayStation. Side of all.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I made a whole video essay and I, I.

[Greg Miller]

What have you done for me lately, though? You know what I mean? Yeah, I didn't. Come on. I didn't stop Tam's wedding to scream.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's why I was laughing at it. Because I think people have a very different perspective when it comes to me and Xbox, where they just don't want to hear it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, I'll say a thing and it goes into one ear and out the other where they're like, you know, Greg's not said. I'm Like, I'm not said either. Right. And that's because both of us have been out. There was a Reddit article that pissed me off this last week to a Gary Wood extent. I was like, man, I feel like I'm gonna go on a widow rant here where like, like, there was a person that was like, oh, you know, blessed that he wants to play Peace Walker, but then talked about busting out his PS3 again. Like, you could, you could just play on Xbox Game Pass. Like, of course Blessing doesn't know about Xbox. Like, all the comments, all the replies are like, oh, yeah, Blessings never touched an Xbox. Like, oh, he's always hating on Xbox. I'm like, my save files on the PS3. That's why I want to play. Play it there. Right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think there's the. I think the fame boy ism, as far as. When we get into this conversation leads to quite a few things. I think for me, it gets in my head a little bit, right? As far as, like, I don't know how to talk about Xbox anymore. But then also, I think it fucks up with people's expectations as far as, like, their fan perspective and how that fan perspective connects to how they think about Xbox and how they talk about Xbox and how they want to perceive Xbox where if we're talking about the dollars and cents of it and we're talking, talking about, like, what has been happening both the last week and also last few years of Xbox, shit's not been good, Right? And I feel like we should be able to talk about, like, yo, shit's not been good. I look at Xbox Game Pass, and from a consumer perspective, getting Back to this conversation. I think I still stick with the idea of like, hey, man, for consumers, it's a pretty good deal, but for the industry, I don't know. Like, I listen to what people are saying, right? As far as, like these industry leaders, as far as this dude who Rafael Cole Antonio, who founded Arcane, talking about, like, it fucking up with people's expectations of these things. Right. And like, the idea of the infinite money that they have to use to fund Xbox Game Pass. And I hear that because I look at this and I'm like, listen, I don't know how this can be sustainable for Xbox. But also, like, I don't know, man. Phil Spencer keeps saying it's. It's sustainable somehow. So sure, he knows the dollars and I want to bring.

[Greg Miller]

I want to jump off of a lot of that, but I'll bring in El Captain 22, who wrote in and said, super Chat Game Pass hasn't grown enough to sustain itself. Sony fighting the acquisition brought big Microsoft into the room. They looked at the 75/billion for Activision slash Zenimax and said, yeah, we need profits sooner than your plan gets us. And that, I think, is this thing that goes back to the AI conversation or the rumor that that's where this came from.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Is the idea is. And that what I've said this entire time is that Xbox and Phil Spencer are committed to their vision as long as Microsoft allows them to be. Microsoft is the one with the purse strings who can come in at any point in time. When there's a dip in the other businesses, you to come in and be like, fucking turn a profit now why are we spending so much on this? Cut that studio, do this thing, blah, blah. Like, that's what you see when you have a parent company coming in and doing these kind of things. And it gets into this inky bit of like, all right, cool.

[Barrett Courtney]

Well, I.

[Greg Miller]

You can believe a CEO of Microsoft or of Xbox as long as you want to, but when it's the CEO of Microsoft, then talking to Phil saying, change all of this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Do you think Phil still has like, his hand on the wheel? And I'll say, like the team of Xbox, right?

[Greg Miller]

I think as much as you ever do when you have a boss, like, it's not like the buck ends with Phil. Right. That's just not how it is. Like, it is in terms of like, game decision. Sure. But then he has to turn around to Microsoft and say, here's what we're doing. And they go, where if this. I mean, I don't Think I don't necessarily agree. I'm not taking El Captain's picture as Bible truth of what's happening, but I do think there's a lot of that involved of like, cool, we gave you all this money and gave you Call of Duty, which you said is the biggest game in the world. Where are the Game Pass subscriptions? Where is the influx of cash? You're not making it. So, yes, we do go and trim the hedge here and get rid of some of these things that aren't working. Why is perfect Dark is how far out and it's not good. And we're working with an outside second party now. Kill that. What is going on with this game, do you think? What are the. What do you think that's actually going to sell? Kill that. I do believe that that's a very real possibility. Yeah. And again, it's what I've said the entire time as Xbox has gone this, oh, game pass route. I've always said it's how much leash are they going to get? How much rope is Microsoft going to give them until they either hang themselves or prove that this is the right thing and this was a great move and yada, yada, what's the end product.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Of this, do you think? Like, where do you.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, there's only. I mean, I feel like this is an outrageous statement, but there's only one way this ends. And I don't know if it's in a year or in three decades, but Game Pass goes away at some point. Yeah, yeah. This can't go on forever. And it is this infinite money thing. And it is to the, you know, this article bringing out this 2021. Phil Spencer. Right. I know there's a lot of people that like to write that we're burning cash right now for some future pot of gold to the end. No, Game Pass is very, very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow. That's what it was said in 2021. Is that still true in 2025? Was it true in 2021? They're not turning over their ledgers for us to go through and see. But I think that that has to be the case and that has to move. But I think it'll be in my head. Xbox. It's interesting about this Xbox business where you're like, I'm not interested in anything they're doing. Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Whereas I'm the opposite, where I'm so interested and I'm more Xbox than I've ever been in my life. I was, I Restarted no man's sky last night on my Rog Ally on Xbox, you know, Game Pass so that I can have to save both places, whatever. Right. I'm with you. Of like Xbox Xbox first party does it Isn't the reason I'm using Xbox so much. I'm using Xbox so much for Xbox game anywhere, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Or play anywhere. Whereas like, Obviously Outer Worlds 2 can't fucking wait for whenever stated, a K3 is going to actually come out. I'll be interested in. I whole lot hope that that could be great. But I'm not sitting there going, where is Halo? Oh my God, Gears. I'm not that Xbox guy. I'm Xbox services guy. Which is why it's a different ball of wax where I'm like, I love Game Pass. I think they're killing it with it. I love this play anywhere business. And I do really believe in that future if Microsoft gives them the chance to really get going with it. I do think this answers a lot of people's concerns in terms of $80 price points. Games only cost more XYZ and it suddenly does become. I know I've been saying it for years so it sounds like it'll never happen, but I do think it happens that, oh man, that game does sound cool. Well, you could play it right now and people figure that out and start doing that when they don't want to buy the new thing. And then maybe they do buy the dual box, whatever, handheld. Any of the million ways to get into the Xbox ecosystem. Yeah. What I do think is interesting, and this is the problem with where we're at right now, is that I totally get this conversation here from Rafael Colantonio saying, this isn't sustainable. I don't like Xbox Game Pass and us coming in and being like, hey, the founder of Arkane says, this sucks. Right. I think this is. And I. This is just me talking. As Greg Miller, a guy who talks to a lot of developers. I think that story would be different every time you talk to somebody else. Every other developer we were going to has worked with Game Pass, stayed away from Game Pass. I think they're going to have a different conversation where I don't want to give. I don't want to throw this opinion out, but I also don't want to be like, see, the founder of Arcane hates it. Where it's like, sure, but like, Weird west is the game from Wolfeye Studios that they're really referencing. I'd love to talk to him about what happened with Weird West. What in your not don't give me the dollar total, but like, do you. Are you mad because you feel like if it wasn't on Game Pass, you could have made more money from it? Did you think, did you Game Pass pay you too little for it? Did you not see sales elsewhere? Because like I was like listening to this and I'm thinking of all the. This is the other problem of you want to talk about PlayStation plus or Game Pass, you immediately fall into probably the shooting stars, the one in a millions, right?

[Barrett Courtney]

Where.

[Greg Miller]

Oh man, Rocket League, of course, off PlayStation plus, you know, but it's like I remember Little Kitty, big city, right, that launches day and date on Xbox Game Pass. But then I googled Little Kitty. It's. It's sold, sold, not played, sold, 100k in less than 48 hours. And so it's that thing of so many people you do talk to about Game Pass, see their game go to Game Pass for free. They get that amount of money, that chunk of money from game from Xbox that allows them to pay their staff, be in the black before they launch something that just games don't get to do most of the time. And then you go. And the popularity, the beat, whatever, people still go and buy it on their platform of choice. Even with me and the whole man, Xbox play anywhere. I love it. And I'm using the Xbox app on my PC. Everyone still looks at me like I have three heads when I mentioned that to a PC player because they'd fucking rather crawl through glass to get to their Steam account. You know what I mean? So it's like, I don't know, I think it's such a case by case basis of what people are actually seeing. And I've definitely seen other developers be like, we were on Game Pass and we. Savage Planet, right? Revenge of the Savage Planet, they were like, we were on Game Pass and we really thought that was gonna lead to people buying the DLCs for it or the thing. And it did not. And we, you know, I mean, like again, I would love to talk to them in an on the record, like, are you. When you made the deal with Xbox, did they say to you like, oh, you want this number? But we'll give you this number because you're gonna sell that DLC and you'll get like, like, you know, like there's that minutiae of it of like, do you feel like you got a bum deal or you really, like, is it. Did you see how much you sold elsewhere? And like, shit, we shouldn't even done Game Pass. We could have. There's all these different permutations of these conversations that get interesting, but I do to double all the way back to Kristoff. Right. Xbox is incapable of shipping AAA games at scale we have not seen. I. And correct me if I'm wrong, everybody in chat, keep me honest here. We have not seen, hey, we are Xbox. All our games are day and day on Game Pass, and we have not seen them say, here is the Halo that is on par with the Last of Us. Or. And I know this is insane, but a GTA like, sure avowed hit for some people, south and Midnight, but we're talking about games of a lesser caliber than Here is the Xbox franchise, which I imagine so many people would think Perfect Dark was going to be.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

That just hasn't happened in a way that people are like, like, I'm here for this, I guess.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't think that's ever gonna happen. That's right. Bear, I don't want to cut you off. What do you want to say?

[Barrett Courtney]

No, no, go ahead.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, no, I just said what I would.

[Greg Miller]

You go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You go for it.

[Barrett Courtney]

Kind of jumping off of that in terms of, like, if the Xbox brand has, like itself, the core brand. The core franchises haven't been the. The strongest thing in the last few years. You know, a couple of exceptions here and there. Like, I would make an argument for Indiana Jones or Doom or whatnot.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Barrett Courtney]

You know, Game Pass then relies on kind of like this ballooning of bringing a bunch of other things in to try to get more people in. And that the reason why I have my doubts about Game Pass is just the amount of stories that I've heard about a big company and another live. Live streaming subscription industry that is much more mature and has been around much longer, which is Netflix, and how Netflix kind of model definitely greatly impacts the sustainability of productions. You know, we constantly hear about a bunch of productions being, you know, greenlit, and then these things only last like a season because of, like this crazy scale of expectation that is put on productions. And that's kind of where I get concerned about where does. What does Game Pass look like in a few years? Does it start to look like the kind of ballooning that Netflix has seen? And again, this is not to say that all subscription models are inherently bad or are always going to lead into this direction.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Barrett Courtney]

But there. There's a lot of similarities between the trajectory of Game Pass and where Netflix has been. And that is really what concerns me because, you know, Game Pass being under Xbox and it being a Huge part of. Of Xbox's strategy. If Game Pass starts to struggle, does then Xbox really start to struggle? And when Xbox has made itself such a huge pillar of the industry, buying all of these different studios and companies, I just, I get a little bit concerned about all that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think it's that last part that hits for me where coming back to it, right when we were talking about what makes Game Pass successful, for me, that's more the question I'd want to ask for less so to the developers maybe to like team Xbox and answers that they would never give me, obviously. Right. Of like, what do you need to make this successful? I think as far as what you're talking about, Greg, right. Like, I think Game Pass as it exists to devs. It's a tool and how to use it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

All right, cool. We learned DLC doesn't work for this. Let's not release DLC next time because people. People might not be wanting to pay a thing that they got for as part of a subscription. All right, cool. Hey, maybe if you're doing like a rematch right now, is seeing a lot of success, maybe that maybe you could factor that into Game Pass. Maybe not. I don't know. It's tough to get. Get that AB test, right. You have to launch in another multiverse without Game Pass to actually check that stuff. Right. But I think to Barrett's thing of when you are acquiring all these companies, right. And like when I look at Game Pass, I. If I was to try and map out. All right, how does acquiring these companies lead to the success of Game Pass? Well, it is building out this consistent drop of a new game every month or every two months to keep people in the thing. Right. It is. Is putting Call of Duty on it at the end of the year to get that big spike. It is figuring out how to maintain the. Those monthly active users and maintain like money coming in through Game Pass by consistently putting games out. And I'm like, all right, cool. That means you don't need to put out a last list. I think that means you don't need to put out a and Spider man or Chartered or like those big prestige games that we associate with the PlayStation or like a Mario or whatever for Nintendo, right? Like. Like you can just put out games. The problem is that I don't know how many of these studios we're going to have left in a few years when you have these layoffs every single year. Right. Like we're talking about double fine. I think it's going to come to a part And I hope this doesn't happen. Right. But like in the next, let's say year and a half to two years, I think double fine is probably going to have to make a decision of are we going to fill our game with AI, like AI technology to like help get this thing made. Right. Generative ar, whatever it is, or are we going to shutter, like, do we shutter this business? Because the business of Xbox I think has just become the business of Microsoft. Right. Going back to my question of is Phil's hand on the wheel? I think to some extent. Right. Like I think before the Activision Blizzard acquisition, like I think Team Xbox had a lot more leeway as far as autonomy. Autonomy, right. As far as how they wanted to run things and you know, the, for them it was about understanding the video games industry and trying to be a player in the video games industry. And then you see fumble after fumble and then you acquire Activision and guess what? Microsoft big. Microsoft big Satya Nadella is like he's, he's now zeroed in. It's. It is all right.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, he's paying attention. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like now we got our hand on the wheel too. And when we got our hand on the wheel too, that means we are making layoffs. That means we are implementing the tech that we want to do as Microsoft a business. Like if we're doing AI, you're doing AI Xbox. If we're doing this, you're doing this. And that doesn't take into account how the, how the games industry actually works or how these dev devs might actually function. These devs are going to be more so I think having to assimilate to the systems of Microsoft versus what you'd want to do which is, hey, we're crying double fine. We're acquiring Ninja Theory to be double Fine to be Ninja Theory. I don't think they're going to have that for much longer.

[Greg Miller]

Final super chat to bring in on this one is Robbie Rob. Microsoft is a multi division company from, from their investment in OpenAI and pushing copilot and Azure for cloud computing. Xbox is just not as profitable. And again that's back to what you're saying right there, what I was saying over there. And so we continue to watch. We have yet another Microsoft Xbox layoff reported story at story number two. But before we get then I'll remind you, of course this is kind of Funny Games Daily. Each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy video game news. You need to know about Life on Twitch TV. Kinda funny games. YouTube.com kindafunnygames Podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, pick up the Kinda funny membership on patreon.com kinda funny YouTube.com kinda funnygames, Apple or Spotify. And of course you'll get all of our shows ad free and your daily podcast from me called Greg Way. Right now you're not using your benefits though. I'm gonna run and get a cup of coffee. Here's our sponsor.

[D]

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[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And we're back. Greg is taking so. Oh, Greg is yelling in the background Go. Blessing.

[Greg Miller]

Go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

As he's making coffee in the kitchen. I'm just gonna read story number two for y'. All. Romero Games reportedly met with Microsoft just a day before the publisher pulled funding for the studio and there was no mention of the decision that put over 100 people out of work. This is Ted Litchfield at PC Gamer. Greg is back with his coffee. Look at that. Right on time.

[Greg Miller]

You want me to read this or you want to read it? Oh yeah, go for it. You kill it. I knew it was going to be close, but it was like it kept spitting the stuff out.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

As reported by the journal, ie via VGC, Doom designer John Romero and Wizardry 8 developer Brenda Romero Studio Romero Games has fully closed following the withdrawal of publisher funding for its in development FPS. Former employees have stated that the publisher in question was Microsoft making Romero Games another casualty of the tech giant's most Recent round of cuts and mass layoffs. We previously reported on Romero's games statement on the loss of funding, but the Journal IE confirmed the closure and shed more light on the circumstances surrounding it. A former employee told the Journal IE that Romero Games had meetings with the publisher the day before this happened. There was no mention of it, though there are concerns at the studio given Microsoft's recent streak of layoffs and studio closures. Quote, it seems so far away from us, end quote. The employee said, quote, the title was pretty well developed at the time, end quote. Quote. Records show that Romero Games directly employed 42 people, but the Journal IE reported that the external staff working on the unnamed FPS project brought the total number of those affected to over 100. Romero games appear to have been gearing up for an announcement before this calamity increasing its output on social media. Kind of a follow up to, I believe the story on Thursday when this whole thing was drumming about Romero games. It sucks.

[Greg Miller]

Super sucks. And I think again, this is back to what we were talking about, right? Of like, you can have a start the studio from scratch, like the initiative, or you can work with a second party studio like Romero and have them all eggs in one basket on this. And like these are the kind of budgets and timelines people are working on, right? Where when the one contract that you're all hands on deck for goes away, there's nothing there to sustain you, to get you to the next thing, right? And we see shit like this, it fucking sucks. It's ridiculous. It's horrible. The fact that, you know, I think the call out, it wasn't mentioned in the meeting from the day before. I imagine this is Greg Miller, who's an idiot talking. I imagine that's the. Well, it's a publicly traded company, right? Like we can't tell you that you're gonna get laid off tomorrow when that would up the shares and all the stuff. And I think that's insider trading. I don't understand. Yeah, but you know what I mean. Like, obviously they didn't want the information getting out that way. So it's just, I can't imagine being in these meetings and smiling and nodding, oh, the game looks great, you're doing great. Talk to you later. And then the next day, like, you're all fine, tired, it's all done or whatever.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And a part of me just wants to be. Again, this is me not obviously not knowing the full context, but like me being like, why not? Why don't you just cancel the meeting? Yeah, just like, just don't do the meeting. But also like, yeah, I, I have heard this delay.

[Greg Miller]

Be like, we'll do it tomorrow.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What you doing? Tomorrow's crazy. But I, I have heard similar stories from like friends that work in the industry about like name names kind of the same. I'm not gonna name names. So like the same exact situation of like, hey, we had this game that was gonna be published or funded by Xbox and then they just pulled the plug. And it seems like a mess. And so this isn't surprising, especially given the news. But like, damn, you hate to see this.

[Greg Miller]

It's something we talked about up there and we can, I mean we don't have to beat the dead horse that is this conversation. But it does make you wonder like, what are you going to see from Xbox Studios going forward, right? If they are closing up and doing this, are they going to go so hermody with it where it's like we get Fable and you get like and I want to say even big titles, maybe you never get Fable, maybe they're the next round of layoffs or whatever. But is it eventually that you're getting like three then you got to bring in Bethesda and Call of Duty, cut off the fat in this. And they're not fat, but you know what I mean. Just the Xbox Studios, right, that aren't Bethesda, aren't Zenimax, aren't Activation, Blizzard King. Are you gonna see that dwindle and dwindle and dwindle till it's just four or five studios and then really it is. We're not even doing this kind of deal. We're not doing second party deals where studios are on the hook for us. We're instead just doing the game pass deal where we're just doing that. We're like, you know, it doesn't make sense what I'm doing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I understand what you're talking about. But for me it still comes back to the thing of what makes Xbox game pass successful. And maybe it isn't first party stuff. Maybe it is the clear obscurus of the world, right?

[Greg Miller]

Maybe it is the blueprints, the metaphor refantasio, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The metaphor refantasios of the world, right? Like, like I, I wonder what those margins look like and mean to Xbox when it is all right, when we put out a. A doom the dark ages, we make all of that money because that is internal. But also like, do those margins matter as much when you have Call of Duty and you have the big Skyrim game or you have like, I mean.

[Greg Miller]

If you are the shareholders. If you are Nadella, and you're coming in here and talking about what Xbox is doing. I'm sure there is. Do we need these. This many people working on video games when you can just work with independent, independent, quote, you know, second party video game people and get those deals to then get more. Because then you start looking at the books and how I imagine it balances out. Is it like. Sure. Like this big game? Let's just say Xbox published a big hit game, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Great. We're making money on that. But couldn't we have made even more if we didn't pay those people for five years, those hundred employees for over five years and health benefits and whatever. Get rid of all that. Just invest in the game and profit go up, I assume. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And for me, that comes back to the point I was making earlier, like when I was saying Double Fine.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I don't mean to single out Double Fine. I just use them as a representative for like any studio that Xbox owns that is like, I don't even know how to describe it.

[Greg Miller]

Smaller or unique or that should be scared. I love Double Fine. Tim Schaefer is a friend of the show and a friend of mine. Right. I worry for them, of course, because guess what? Double Fine are among the most artsy, fartsy people I know in a great way in the triple A space. So when they, when Xbox bought them, it was like, oh, that's weird that, like the day of the devs, the independent people are gonna go work for Xbox. And of course it's always, always, everything's great. This is a great partnership. Da da da. Barrett, help me. What was the Double Fine documentary series?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Psych Odyssey.

[Greg Miller]

Right. And they have an episode where this happens. And I think one of the people there talks about. It's like, like everything's great until they come to lay us all off. Like, yeah, that's a real threat to bring them in and have them be a part of this. Where it is that the, the weird Lighthouse game they're making looks weird as shit. It looks like. It looks like a Double Fine game. I don't expect that to be a runaway success. Huge, humongous hit. Right? I don't, I don't expect that. This is me just spitballing off of like the one trailer we've seen. I don't expect that to find the success that south of Midnight did, because I think south of Midnight, interesting. This is just me. I'm just putting on a marketing hat of Southern Midnight. I look at and anybody can look at and be like, oh, wow, it's like I'm playing a movie. Right? Whereas this is going to be. I'm a lighthouse. I'm running around like, I feel like the audience is smaller for that in a way. Right back to the artsy fartsy business that I love. That they do. Don't get me wrong, I would argue.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I do understand where you're coming from as far as I just say.

[Greg Miller]

Like, I don't look at that and go, there's 10 million sales.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And okay, that I agree.

[Greg Miller]

And I think it's that conversation then of like, well, does Xbox look at that? Fuck it. Does it even matter what Xbox thinks anymore? Or does it now matter what Microsoft thinks? Yeah, Microsoft's like, we need fucking hits, money and active users. You then come down and go, it's time to let Double Fine go. Like, can they buy themselves out and become normal? And I'm totally like, just making sure again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. But it's the same way where I look at media molecule under PlayStation and I'm shocked that Media Molecule is still around.

[Greg Miller]

Tundra Boy goes, was south of Midnight really a success? I don't think so. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying. I'm not saying they need to reach south of Midnight level. Success level. Yeah, period. But for me, yes, Media Molecule, of.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Course it's the same thing.

[Greg Miller]

Right. They all better be working on their LinkedIn over there. God damn PlayStation ain't gonna let that go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But it's more so the thing where it's like, I think for PlayStation and for. You'd hope for Xbox, but after this news, I don't hope for Xbox. Right. As far as, like, if you have a studio like that, you should know what you're doing with a studio like that. If you have a mini molecule or if you have a double fine, you should understand what they're making. And if you're allowing them to go forward with making Keeper, you got to understand that's not selling 6 million.

[Greg Miller]

Again, like, and I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But it's going to be fucking phenomenal.

[Greg Miller]

And that's the thing. And this is the whole fucking like every. I don't even know. I can't. I'm boiling it out too much. But it's the Spider man meme of a million. Spider Man. It's the end of Spider verse where everybody's pointing at each other, whatever. Right? Yeah. Because it literally is like, you should know Phil. And then Phil's like, I did. No, he should. It's like you go, it's like, you know what I mean? Where it's like, yeah, it's all gravy until the people on top go, no, no, it's not anymore.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's for me it's the Embracer thing and the Ubisoft thing where when the going gets tough.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We are exploding or exploiting our best franchise. We're exploiting Lord of the Rings. We're exploding Assassin's Creed. We're like. We are. They didn't say exploit, but what word did.

[Greg Miller]

They did. No, they did.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. We're doing this like we are focusing in on the top two or three franchises. A WB also the same exact thing. Right.

[Greg Miller]

And I mean, and that's the thing where it's like, like, well here, let's throw this in because it's serious. Put a free chat. But I, I think it resonates what they're talking about. Sirius 1675 said Fallout Halo, Gears is all I need. And I bet Microsoft is looking at Xbox saying that's all you need. Yeah, with a few exceptions they'll toss on some other things.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Forza Horizon here.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. But I mean just to boil it down of like everyone is saying this and doing this because everyone has realized, oh shit, we're not making double digit year over year profit anymore. We're not number ain't going up no more the way we want it to. So how do you make it go up? You go and do this. You chase AI, you chase live service, you do. And all that shit fails. And then guess what? It's fucking cut, cut, cut to the bone. To the bone. To the bone. To the bone. The best we can hope for. And this sucks, but it's also the industry, as long as I've been a part of it, right, is that this cycle of layoffs leads to all these other people going and making new studios that go make the cool new idea games that we all love. And you get a balatro and you get this thing and then there's obviously the runaway successes that we could all name of independent developers. Then there are so many that leave the industry and don't do games anymore. Make a game and it fails and they all, they lose in their intent. Like it sucks that it's. There's this much risk in our industry already. But that's why you're seeing these giant fucking corporations take these stupid risks, fail and then fuck everything up for everybody else. And I don't know. And I again, like when we sit here and have this conversation and I get so fucking agitated and so fucking angry about it. What's the solution? Well, the solution is that two decades ago, a decade ago, two decades ago, 15 years ago, we sat everybody down and said, hey, if you're investing in this company, it's not going above this line. And if it does, great. But we're not. That's just not real. That's not the fucking world we live in.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's a different form than capitalism.

[Greg Miller]

That fucking sucks. Canada is awesome funding video game developers all the time. Here's your money. If you don't make it back, you don't got to pay us back. But if you do make it back, you pay us back. Okay, cool. You know what I mean? Like, hey, that's a great way to make art, to make artsy fartsy games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What if. Hear me out.

[Greg Miller]

I'm listening.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

If you make your game manufactured in another country, we make it cost. We make it cost more to ship them in. We bring the jobs here, buddy. Bring the jobs here.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, that's the way to do it. I'm scared. Yeah, that's bad. Number three on the Roper report. Nintendo may use, quote, shorter development periods on some games to offset high cost. This is Oisin Kunicki at Gamespot. An exciting prospect for the Nintendo Switch 2 outside of just quote, Switch, but bigger and more end quote, is that I was playing my Switch 2 yesterday on the plane and at the end this gentleman older than me who had been doing like research papers and stuff, yeah, Asked me, how do you like your Switch 2? He's like, yeah, he's like, I'm waiting for Metroid. I was like, damn sophisticated. Outside of Switch, but bigger and more is that the tech under the hood should allow for some more hardware intensive games on the platform. However, bigger and flashier games could also lead to increased development costs, a concern raised in a recent investors call. To assuage his concerns, Nintendo president Shuntaru of Furukawa spoke of the ways the company is planning to keep development costs down, noting how it's considering shorter dev periods as a way to do so. Recent game software development has become larger in scale and longer in duration, resulting in higher development costs. The game business has always been a high risk business and we recognize that rising development costs are increasing that risk. Our development teams are devising various ways to maintain our traditional approach to creating games. Amidst the increasing scale and length of development, we believe it is important to make the necessary investments for more efficient development. We also believe it is possible to develop game software with Shorter development periods that still offer consumers a sense novelty, end quote.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

How you feel about that?

[Greg Miller]

Cool contrast. Yes. Nintendo, of course, always marching to the beat of their own drum. It's nice to be like, we are not going to change. We are going to be shorter. We are not going to go into this HD fucking thing, go on forever. Games take seven years because that blows up in everybody's face. Yeah, let's get you the fun toy faster to play with.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I went down a YouTube rabbit hole last night watching video essays. I watched one about Iwata and his legacy at Nintendo and then I read his book. No, I think I own his book, though, so I should read it. And then I also watched one from. It's funny, this is. I watched one from VOX from like seven years ago where they're interviewing Miyamoto and talking about, like, how Miyamoto makes games and all this.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And it's funny because it ended up with essentially like, like a trailer for Mario Run, like on the iPhone.

[Greg Miller]

I remember that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was like, oh, yeah, this was seven years ago.

[Greg Miller]

Damn.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it was a whole thing. But one of the things that was like a broad. Like, one of the big threads from both of them was just talking about how Nintendo does things, right? And like, it's them marching to the beat of their own drum. And then also, like, in the same breath, like, not not wanting to do industry trends because, like. Like, they're just like, what feels good? What's fun? Like, what's. What's gonna work for, like, what makes a Nintendo game a Nintendo game. It's kind of refreshing hearing, like, going back and, like, listening to Iwata GDC talks about, like, him making Smash and all this stuff and being like, yeah, and we wanted to take a risk, and so we took a risk and all this stuff. And I'm like, man, that's nice. That's a nice thought. To like, be able to be like, yo, let's make. Let's make our games have a short development period. So we're not gonna spend a billion billions and dollars working on one game and then it not be successful and then take 100 kind of things.

[Greg Miller]

Treat their IP well. They make their games quickly, they do interesting ideas, they iterate, they change.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, and I think it's necessary for somebody in men chat mentions $80. Right? Like, yeah, I think Nintendo is probably gonna have to find ways or maybe wants to find ways to put out games that are going to be $40, $30.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And so they kind of already Done this. There are so many spin offs of Nintendo IP that are more like, oh, here's a 2D Kirby game. Now here's a big 3D Kirby game. Oh, here's like a smaller Mario. Oh, here's a, like here's the Yoshi or whatever. Like Nintendo, here's the Yoshi. Nintendo scales. Now, granted, even when they scale, it all comes out at $60. But like, I would hope that maybe they can find ways to play with not just the scale and scope of their games, but then also maybe price them appropriately at the same time.

[Greg Miller]

Fair enough. Speaking of Nintendo, Nintendo number four fans think Nintendo accidentally reveals Switch Online's next wave of N64 games. This is the big man, Jordan Midler at VGC. Several popular N64 games could be coming to Nintendo Switch Online soon, according to details spotted by fans in a recent trailer. During a brief section of a video posted by Nintendo in May, several blurred N64 games can be seen in the background. While it was initially assumed these games were all the titles already included in the service, fans have pointed out that several of them are for games yet to be included in Nintendo Switch Online services. First highlighted by Amakuni vt, the blurred art could suggest that these games are planned for release on Nintendo's classic games library. The art could also be placeholder. However, in a video posted by Andre Segers, Segers shows off a few more of the blurred images and suggests what the artwork could be. It's speculated that the COVID art for Donkey Kong 64, Forsaken 64, Glover, and Super Smash Brothers is hidden behind the blur effect during the section of the trailer.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Barrett, don't fuck with me, all right? They're fucking with us. Don't fuck with me. I'm gonna tell you right now, smash 64, forsaken 64 and Glover will all be released. We're not gonna hear a fucking peep about Donkey Kong 64. I'm calling it right now.

[Greg Miller]

Can't get in the way of Bonanza.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The fucking Nintendo listens to this podcast and they know what we want. Yeah, they're not gonna give it to us.

[Barrett Courtney]

They're not gonna give it to us. They can easily just hit the Switch, put all of these games on here. It's also just like it's one of those things that I just have the knee jerk reaction, like now that GameCube is out for Nintendo Switch Online. Like I guess they were like adding stuff to NES and Super nes like after N64 was introduced, but I don't.

[Greg Miller]

Know.

[Barrett Courtney]

On the flip side, I need it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bonanza's coming out soon.

[Barrett Courtney]

I'm so excited. I just put together like I'm hanging out with my dad at the end of the month and he's another Donkey Kong 64 sicko. Like the, like you and I blush us. And I am like, I finally put together over the weekend, like I'm gonna have a new 3D Donkey Kong game to show him and have him play for the first time in decades. And like, I'm so, like, I'm more excited about that than Donkey Kong Bonanza itself. And I'm really excited for that game. So I'm just saying, you know what.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Would be good to timeout around then? DK64 put it out the same time. Too much.

[Greg Miller]

Too much Kong. Can't have the Mich Kong.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That is a lot of Kong.

[Greg Miller]

That Kong flopping around like that.

[Barrett Courtney]

No, there's never enough Kong.

[Greg Miller]

Is there ever enough Final Fantasy 9 rumors number five remake reports persist as Square Enix releases Final Fantasy 9 anniversary movie this is the Bald one. Jordan Miller, VGC the bald One Square Enix has celebrated the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy 9 with a new video as reports of an in development remake persist. You can watch The Final Fantasy 9 25th anniversary special movie, which shows off iconic scenes from the popular PS1 RPG. This is the latest in several celebratory releases for the 25th anniversary of the game, including new artwork, new merchandise, and more. All of this new Final Fantasy IX content has spurred on reports that a remake of the game could be on its way in 2021. A Final Fantasy 9 remake was one of many unannounced titles listed in a GeForce now database leak. These included several Square Enix games that would later be officially confirmed, such as the PC version of Final Fantasy 7 remake, a Chrono Cross remaster, and Kingdom Hearts 4. While a Final Fantasy 9 remake has yet to be announced, it's been claimed by multiple sources that one is indeed in development blessing. Do you believe?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I do. This is one of the last holdouts, I believe, for the Nvidia leak. And so the fact that we haven't gotten it by now is kind of wild. Unless it's been internally canceled, there's the chance of that. But people talk about it like the reports here. Sources saying it's indeed in development. I trust sources.

[Greg Miller]

The fact that they're biting so hard, they're leaning so hard into this 25th anniversary business would make you think, okay, yeah, this is going to end right with it's here's A release date, a trailer, an announcement. We're working on it. It's in production. Something of that effect. No.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I never trust anniversaries. I don't know. I feel like anniversaries never give me what I actually want.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, sure.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I feel like every game anniversary that.

[Greg Miller]

We get, someone dumbass Tim was like, oh, man, it's Metal Gear Solid 4's 10th anniversary. Whatever, 20th anniversary. They're going to announce it. Shut up, Tim.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This happens every single time with anniversaries.

[Barrett Courtney]

It was like it was the last zone.

[Greg Miller]

The fact that they're doing so much with it.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What? They exported the movie that was in.

[Greg Miller]

The game to YouTube.

[Barrett Courtney]

They were also posting new character art, I feel like, on a website for the last couple of months that people are getting all. All excited about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

The last big Zelda anniversary, I think is. What. What is you. You up? Bless? Or like, it might have been like the 35th or something like that, and just like, they did nothing. And it was like, oh, all right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, somebody. I'm looking this up, but somebody in chat says there's rumors of a cancellation by Nate the Hate. I believe Nate the Hate is one of those names that we. We believe when he says things.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, we do believe Nate when he says stuff like that, though. We'll stay tuned. But blessing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Final Fantasy 9 Remake existing or being canceled would be huge news.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It would.

[Greg Miller]

I don't need that anymore. I need the smallest news I need to know about. Where should I go?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You'd go to our last story, the WE News Channel, where you cover all the small news items you need to know about.

[Greg Miller]

Out number six, WE News. Persona Live is coming to the United States in 2026.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Let's go.

[Greg Miller]

Barrett, you going?

[Barrett Courtney]

I mean, maybe it's January, and January is always a kind of busy time for us, so we'll see.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Barrett Courtney]

But it is also one of those opportunities, Bless, where, like, maybe you and I go and maybe they finally announced Persona 6.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You think so? Because here's the thing.

[Barrett Courtney]

They always do it at the weird concert stuff, you know they do. It is weird, though, because they did now announce Persona 4 revival, and, like. But they have been working on Persona 6 for such a long time. So Persona 6 coming out before Persona 4 revival, which is now rumored to be like, 2027 maybe.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Really?

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, man.

[Barrett Courtney]

It honestly, even just based off that trail with how little we saw, it was like, oh, this game is early.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'll be honest. I can wait. After last year where they put out Persona 3 reload and metaphor Fantasio in the same year. I'm kind of personaed out for now. Like I can wait another year or two before another one. So take your time, but I'll be here for you when you put it out.

[Greg Miller]

Speaking of being there for you when you put it out today I was at the breakfast table and I got a notification on my iPhone that DC worlds collide. A free to play squad based role playing game set in the DC universe is out today. I'll let you know. I downloaded that right away. Yeah, good intro video. And then I started playing. I'm like, I'm don't need to play this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, no.

[Greg Miller]

You know, it's one of those like, you know, whatever. It's a. I feel like even if.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It'S whatever, it's a D.C. thing, right? Like.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, but that's. I mean that can only sustain me so long because it's what I. It's a. Not a tactics rpg, but it's a. Like a real time or. No, no, it's squad based, so it's whatever.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's just not.

[Greg Miller]

It wasn't even that like I'm. It was just like, I don't know. Fair enough. I don't need this. I don't want this to make a fucking real game. We make a real DC game. Please.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, listen, they're trying over there.

[Greg Miller]

They aren't. And then your final piece of Wii news is Resident Evil Survival Unit. A real time strategy take on Resident Evil has been announced for the iPhone and Android. So if you want to feel my pain, Resident Evil Fans. As a D.C. fan, there you go. That's what you wanted right out of the IP you loved.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, but they're used to it. Every other month there's a Resident Evil that's like, oh, it's a one. All right. I'll wait for seven. I'll wait for eight.

[Greg Miller]

I'll wait for C.J. says the D.C. game plays like Marvel's Mystic Mayhem. Exactly. I started that and fell out of that real quick too. So I was like, I'm good. I don't need to do this. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think I only know of these.

[Greg Miller]

Games because of you. I appreciate that. I like to be expert on shitty, shitty mobile. Super Mirror. Yeah, exactly. Thank God you stopped me from paying all that money that one time in that one Marvel game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. It would have been a waste.

[Greg Miller]

So thank you. I appreciate that. And I took your advice, you know, because you said by the. It doesn't matter. And that's WE news. Did I just close chat like an idiot. I did just close chat like an idiot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Are you looking for super chats?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, at the top there was a couple birthday ones. I don't know why I closed it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh. Keep meeting in to bring in, like, the party, like, party poppers.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God. Can you imagine how mad Barrett and Kevin would get at us? We were party popping.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, but I want to up the ante for the birthdays because I keep complaining that we don't wish people happy birthday.

[Greg Miller]

What we should do is get. Get, you know, Andy, to just make like we have, like, the banana thing where you get, like a happy birthday thing back there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Do we do. Do we just do a birthday segment every episode?

[Greg Miller]

I mean. No, no, no, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because they keep wanting us to say happy birthday every episode.

[Greg Miller]

Well, if they. If they. If they're gonna give. If they're super chatting for their birthday. Hold on, I gotta pull it back. Not so famous. Jamis super chats and says birthday tax kicking off year. And he puts in parentheses expedition 33 going to Nintendo SF and Marafuku Ramen for lunch. Shout out to. Kind of funny for all you do. And the lovely KFBFs I met at the parade. Keep freaking it, y'.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

All.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, we will. Thank you. Congratulations. Happy birthday, Arturo. Tron. Robo. Bartender says fried chicken pairs perfectly with champagne for hot wings. An off dry white wine would work. So I want, like, a Chablis. Well, I don't know. Give me what? I don't want to just say I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Want a white wine.

[Greg Miller]

I don't know. Give me a brand. Not a brand, but, like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I only drink red, so I don't know anything about white. I'm just a. Billy says, hi, y'. All got a new job, so I'm paying my new job tax. Keep up the great work. Thank you. We will. Congratulations on the new job.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Chardonnay. Is that a white one?

[Greg Miller]

That's a white one. That's a white one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then final one is Gene Sandoval, who says my DK64 memory is not being able to get the last rare coin to open the boss door. Taking a break from it and letting my cousin borrowed only to find out he saved over my save. Never be.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, that's tough.

[Barrett Courtney]

I think the rare coin is where you have to play jetpack.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think that was the same for me.

[Barrett Courtney]

And the other one is playing Donkey Kong Arcade.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. I only beat Don Kong 64 for the first time in like 2021, I think. 2020.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, we have that all saved.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Never beat it because wait. Oh yeah, is that all on the YouTube channel, isn't it?

[Barrett Courtney]

Probably Kind of Funny Plays, which does still exist. But yeah, we did a whole donktober around you playing and actually finishing Donkey Kong 64 for the first time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I also didn't finish it because of that rare coin. And so.

[Greg Miller]

Everybody, that's another episode of Kind of Funny Games Daily in the books. Remember, each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy video game news you need to know about live on Twitch, YouTube and of course podcast services around the globe. If you like us and love what we do, we'd love you to pick up a Kind of Funny membership. You could give us $10 in supporting the independent 11 person business that of course is going all day long with live talk shows. You get all the shows ad free. That's more than 80amonth. And you get your daily dose of me. That's four hours of exclusive podcasts for your eyes and ears. Of course, our day is just getting started. Up next is the Kind of Funny Games Cast where. Well, I'm getting a phone call. Is it somebody we need to answer from or. No, no, that seems like spam. They're going to review Tony Hawk one. No, three plus four. Then after that, Jurassic park in review. God damn it. And then after that it's going to be some more Dune Awakening with the Jabroni Boys. For now, that's the end of Kind of Funny Games Daily. Like subscribe, Share, and until next time, no, it's been our pleasure to serve you.