Xbox Game Pass Price Hikes, MAJOR Changes - Kinda Funny Games Daily 10.01.25

Summary

Kinda Funny Games Daily – October 1, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode, hosted by Blessing Adeoye Jr. and Andy Cortez, with guest Paris Lilly, centers on major changes to Xbox Game Pass, including a significant price increase, new subscription tiers, and what it means for gamers and the industry. The panel also covers news about Ubisoft and Tencent’s new studio, a Silent Hill remake, and more, but the heart of the discussion—and fan reaction—stays fixed on Microsoft’s Game Pass moves.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Xbox Game Pass Revamp and Price Hikes

Main Discussion: 06:23 – 37:47

• Major Price Increases ([06:23])
  • Xbox Game Pass Ultimate rises from $19.99 to $29.99/mo—a $10 (50%) increase.
  • Standard is now called Game Pass Premium, still $14.99/mo.
  • Game Pass Core rebranded as Game Pass Essential, stays at $9.99/mo.
  • PC Game Pass also jumps, now $16.49 (up nearly 40%).

"We might be past the red line at $30 a month ... This takes it to a point where now I actually have to think, is this worth it to me?" – Paris Lilly [16:31]

• Changes to Each Tier ([07:24–11:52])

  • Ultimate: Over 400 titles, 75+ day-one releases/year (50% more), Ubisoft+ Classics, Fortnite Crew, cloud gaming at 1440p, up to $100/yr in rewards.
  • Premium: 200+ games, includes PC access, unlimited cloud for the first time, new Xbox first-party games within a year of launch (excl. Call of Duty), up to $50/yr in rewards/in-game perks.
  • Essential: Over 50 titles (up from 25), PC/console/cloud support.

• Community and Host Reactions

  • This is the second price increase in 14 months, leading to major sticker shock and cancellations—"the cancellation page for Xbox Game Pass is crashing." ([15:47])
  • The new pricing challenges the long-touted “best deal in gaming” narrative.

"I find it tough to imagine people continuing to say that when you're talking about $360 a year." – Blessing [14:19]

• Effect on Value Proposition

  • The hosts and Paris agree: At $360/year, the value of Game Pass Ultimate is no longer obvious, particularly if you miss some first-party titles or are a more casual gamer.
  • Many users express, via super chats, intentions to downgrade or cancel.
  • Criticism for muddled and unclear tier messaging (“This muddies the message even more... it just really confuses something that for me, in my opinion was like, this is the surefire way forward for Microsoft...” – Andy [12:21])

• Is Day One Still the Deal?

  • Day one availability is now locked behind the most expensive tier.
  • Paris: “You’ve now made Day One on Game Pass unaffordable for the majority of people. That was the big ... wow, I’m getting your big first party games day one...” [28:25]

• Will Microsoft Walk This Back?

  • Andy wonders if this is an intentional “sticker shock” to later roll out a “smaller” increase and claim responsiveness.

"Can we see... the typical Xbox thing of, ‘we heard you, we f****d up, our price increase is only five bucks’? ... But really that price increase is still happening.” – Andy [21:02]

• Impact on Xbox and Industry Direction
  • Panelists predict only the most dedicated will stick with Ultimate. The casual base may revert to buying games a la carte or pick cheaper tiers.
  • Paris suggests that PC Game Pass is now arguably the best value, but that forces console players into a worse deal.
  • Skepticism that Microsoft will deliver enough truly “must-play” bangers per year to justify the cost, even as upcoming first-party titles are hyped.
  • Broader concern about pricing everyone out of the “affordable” console experience, just as PC gaming soars.

“Console gaming, it's cost and simplicity, and you are... messing up the reason why people are going towards a console.” – Andy [30:08]

• A Dour Outlook
  • Hosts connect the price hike trend to the ongoing wave of layoffs and studio closures in the industry.

"…this unfortunately will be another bad decision made that will lead to less money being earned, that will lead to more layoffs." – Andy [36:24]

2. Ubisoft & Tencent Launch Vantage Studios

Segment Start: 45:13

• New Subsidiary: Vantage Studios ([45:13–51:00])
  • Co-owned by Tencent (25%) and Ubisoft; aims to develop major series like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six.
  • 2,300+ staff, more “decentralized” and developer-led.
  • Hosts express skepticism about corporate promises of creative freedom, and joke about potential for future asset stripping or sales.

3. Silent Hill Remake News

Segment Start: 53:08

• Bloober Team Confirms Silent Hill 1 Remake ([53:08–56:49])
  • Bloober now has 2 first-party production teams, one dedicated to Silent Hill, another to a new IP.
  • Hosts briefly celebrate Bloober’s “come up” and success with recent releases.

4. Amazon Luna’s New Direction: Party Games & AI Snoop Dogg

Segment: 57:09–61:07

• Luna Shift to Party Games, "Courtroom Chaos" Starring Snoop Dogg
  • Panel is both amused and incredulous.
  • Memorable quote:

    "The game is described as a human built, AI powered improv courtroom game where players invent outrageous characters, spin wild stories and do whatever it takes to defend their testimonies before Judge Snoop Dogg." – Blessing [58:57]

  • Andy jokes no commentary is needed: “You just did it.” [57:11]

5. WE News: Headlines Roundup

Segment: 61:24–64:54

• Updates on Moonlighter 2 delay, new Wizards of the Coast office, Marvel Cosmic Invasion demo, Rock Band 4 delisting, Bop It video game, and layoffs at Funcom.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Blessing on Transparency:

  “What you’re offering has to be clear and straightforward, and you can't be getting into the weeds of things… It gets so in the weeds that I think it confuses people and just unentices them.” [26:57]

• Andy on Game Pass Shifts:

  "It's all about the Day One stuff… That's the biggest mistake on this, the thing that hurts my heart the most…" [27:53]

• Paris on Game Pass's Decline:

  "It's a bummer... It's a service that I've talked about... as the best value in gaming. But now I don't feel like I'd be justified in saying that anymore." [35:41]

• On Luna’s Courtroom Chaos:

  "…a human built, AI powered improv courtroom game where players invent outrageous characters, spin wild stories and do whatever it takes to defend their testimonies before Judge Snoop Dogg." – Blessing [58:57]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Opening/Spooky Season Banter: 00:00–05:17
• Housekeeping: 05:17–06:23
• Xbox Game Pass Revamp/Price Hike Deep Dive: 06:23–37:47
• Ubisoft/Tencent Vantage Studios Segment: 45:13–51:00
• Silent Hill Remake / Bloober Team discussion: 53:08–56:49
• Amazon Luna’s Party Game AI Snoop Dogg: 57:09–61:07
• WE News Lightning Round: 61:24–64:54
• Super Chats & Wrap-up: 64:54–End

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

• Critical, Candid, and Lighthearted: Hosts and guest Paris Lilly offer passionate, direct critiques of Microsoft’s moves, reflecting community frustration. The tone is skeptical, humorous, and occasionally exasperated, especially when discussing confusing subscription models and new, oddball announcements (e.g., AI Snoop Dogg as a judge).
• For Discerning Listeners/Gamers: This episode will be invaluable for those seeking trustworthy, unsponsored reactions to sweeping industry changes. Microsoft’s Game Pass move is dissected from nearly every angle—business, marketing, consumer value, and the existential question: who is this service actually for now?

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Summary Table: Xbox Game Pass Changes

| Tier | Price | Day-1 Games | PC Access | Cloud Access | Extras (rewards, perks) | |----------------|------------|--------------------|----------------|--------------|-------------------------| | Ultimate | $29.99/mo | Yes (75+/yr) | Yes | Yes (1440p) | Ubisoft+, Fortnite, $100/yr rewards, in-game perks | | Premium | $14.99/mo | Within 1 year* | Yes (new) | Yes (new) | $50/yr rewards, in-game perks | | Essential | $9.99/mo | No | Yes (new) | Yes (new) | -- | | PC Game Pass | $16.49/mo | Yes | -- | -- | -- | *Excludes Call of Duty

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Final Thoughts

The October 1, 2025 episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily delivers in-depth, unvarnished analysis of Xbox’s Game Pass overhaul, capturing community sentiment and skepticism toward the new direction. For anyone considering where their money and gaming time will go in the next year, this is essential listening (or reading).

Transcript

[A]

Today's stories include Microsoft is revamping Xbox Game Pass, Ubisoft and Tencent form a new subsidiary, and Silent Hill remake has been confirmed. We'll have all this and more because this is kinda Funny Games Daily. Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games daily for Wednesday, October 1, 2025. I'm one of your host Blessing Adioa Jr joining me is the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez.

[B]

I don't like the way time is moving. Bless you.

[A]

Don't like that. It's October. It's spooky season already.

[B]

It's too quick. Like, I. Like, I haven't had a chance to breathe this damn year, dude. I feel it.

[A]

Well, how do you feel about this spooky season? I know you don't like spooky things in general. You don't like.

[B]

As a kid, I was always the one that was like, I pray to God that. And it's something I could have just looked for. Like, I could have just flipped the calendar towards in the future. But it would be like, March or April, and I'd be like, man, I really hope Halloween is on a weekday because I don't want it to be on a weekend.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Thus opening me up for the possibility to go to a haunted house. No, thank you.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah.

[B]

I want it to be on the lamest day possible.

[A]

I mean, I still like haunted houses.

[C]

Not on Halloween, though.

[B]

Yeah. But, like, it's a school night. I'm very aware of that. It's just like, on a school night, I can't.

[A]

I mean, I got good news for you. This year, it's on a Friday.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

I guess I might be. Friday is maybe the funnest day.

[B]

That's when I have midterms.

[A]

Oh, it's tough.

[C]

Saturday.

[B]

What about. What about you and your spooky season?

[A]

I like spooky season. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, when I think back to the nostalgia of it, it's more. So I associate it with school. There's something going on in the background, y'. All. It's something. God, it's gonna fall. I associate it. Jesus Christ, he's struggling. I associate it with being back in school. Homecoming. Yeah. Midterms, homework, all that stuff. I, like, kind of lump it all together with just the overall holiday season. It's the start of the holidays, which I like, but also, yeah, I feel like, okay, well, I'm back in school. Things are turning orange.

[B]

What's even worse right now is it's just like the warm month.

[A]

Yeah. It's oh, yeah. In San Francisco, this is our some.

[B]

September, October, it's the warmer month and it sucks so bad.

[A]

It's.

[B]

And again by, you know, but you know the rules. If it's, you know, 71 outside, it's 85 inside, you know, And I'm.

[A]

I'm on the top floor of my building and like when I tell you he for sure rises in there.

[B]

And I'm just like, they weren't allowed you to confirm that.

[A]

Finally the scientists figured that one out. Yeah, they're like, yo, ring the bell. Let everybody know they're on the fucking.

[B]

Rises they were on.

[A]

I just be my bed just like laying there and that stuff. We don't really have have AC in like a lot of residential buildings. My building doesn't have ac and so I'm just laying there with the windows open, just praying to God I just. I don't pass out from like, heat exhaustion.

[B]

I used to. I used to date a girl here in San Francisco many years ago, and when she her apartment, regardless of the temperature, that damn radiator was turning on, doesn't matter how hot it is, doesn't matter how cold it is, every day it would turn on. And in the hottest of months, at one point, like, we finagled like a wall to. To stop the radiator. Like, we made a wall out of like cardboard boxes to kind of like shield us from it. And we had it pointed to the window so, like, the radiator heat would go outside. It was a disaster, dude. It was usher the air out. I'd be like, surely there's a way. And they're like, no, that's just the apartment. That's just how it is.

[A]

Yeah. Greg moved the big shark that we have in the back of the studio onto the set and then left. I thought he would say something. I thought he would turn it into a bit or something. He just moved it onto the studio.

[B]

Add to the theme, you know, the Halloween theme.

[A]

I get it.

[B]

Shark week.

[A]

I feel it. We should get into the news. We got a lot of news to talk about because remember, this is kind of Funny Games daily. Each and every week, they will run you through the nerdy news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify and Apple podcasts to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Some of your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Some housekeeping for you. Monday, October 6th is KFGD 2000. That's going to include three hours of shenanigans. I've been working on the doc for it. It's going to be a fun time. You're going to want to tune in.

[B]

I've been working on a graphic package for the last two years.

[A]

Last two years. Rod's been working on a lot of stuff for it too. Lot of graphics going on for KG 2000. Also. Greg Miller is now back on the set. I forgot we had this in the office.

[B]

We had this.

[A]

We have a name for this scary.

[B]

Doll for the audio listener.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Remember when we would move her around to make it look like she moved on her own to freak out Gary?

[A]

You know, actually it completes because I was feeling off centered because dark. Now it feels a bit more balanced out. I don't like that the doll's behind me though. I would prefer the shark on my side.

[B]

I don't like. I don't like it. I don't like the framing. Right there, right behind you. You see that framing.

[A]

Oh God.

[B]

Terrifying.

[A]

I don't like that at all. Some housekeeping. Some more housekeeping for you. Remember, we're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. So today after KFTD, you're gonna get. You're gonna get Gamescast, which is Greg in Paris's Fallout 76 preview. And then after that is Andy starting Ghost of Yote for the first time on stream. If you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg way is 15 minutes on if will be ever too old for games. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Karl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney. The Psalm twining today brought to you by Kinda Funny Games Daily, episode 2000 and our new merch. But we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report. It's time for some news. We have five stories today. Baker does it, starting with our number one. Microsoft Revamps Xbox Game Pass plans and hikes ultimate to $30 a month. I'm going to be pulling from Tom Warren at the Verge.

[B]

That truly is scary. That's a start to the spooky.

[A]

Yeah, it's a terrifying way to start the month. And I believe, Barrett, I believe we have a special guest for this one. Is that true?

[B]

Point blank?

[C]

I have not been notified by anything about that.

[A]

Well, on the calendar it says Paris might be joining us and so maybe look out for Paris. I thought you would have been told about that. My bad. I should have told. I should have checked up on that.

[B]

You gotta pull the stone back mic to Kevin and go. I thought you would have thought you would have been on top of it.

[A]

No, I'm not gonna ship. I can't be on top of something if nobody communicates. No, I'm gonna ship blame to Greg Miller because I think Greg put on the calendar.

[B]

I thought you would have known about it.

[A]

Hopping into the article while we see if Bear is able to figure that out. Microsoft is raising the price of its Xbox Game Pass ultimate subscription again and rebranding some of its Xbox and Game Pass plans. Starting today, Game Pass ultimate will be priced at $29.99 per month instead of 1999, a 50% increase. Microsoft is attempting to justify the price hike with a variety of upgrades across all of its Xbox Game Pass tiers.

[B]

I love the wording there.

[A]

Xbox Game Pass Core is being rebranded to Xbox Game Pass Essential, and the standard plan is now Xbox Game Pass Premium. Quote what's new for everyone across all three Xbox Game Pass plans is bigger libraries, including PC games across each of the plans, explains Dustin Blackwell, director of gaming and Platform communications at Microsoft, in a briefing with the Verge. They continue There is also unlimited cloud gaming, which is new to Essential and Premium subscribers. End quote Unlimited from here chat people listening at home. This article is broken down into three different segments talking about the three different tiers. So let's start off with the most expensive one and the biggest change here you got Xbox Game Pass Physical Tears from Crying Physical Tears Xbox Game Pass ultimate is moving from 1999amonth to 29.99amonth, which is a surprising $10 increase. While Microsoft increased the price of Game Pass ultimate last year without improving the subscription, it's adding a bunch of improvements this time around. Quote Game Pass ultimate will now include access to more than 400 titles globally. This includes the majority of our partners who want to continue to bring their future games to Xbox Game Pass, Blackwell explains. Microsoft is adding 45 games to game Pass ultimate today alone, including Hogwarts Legacy, a variety of Assassin's Creed titles, and many more Ubisoft games. Quote we're also now giving access to more than 75 day one releases each year, Blackwell says. Quote that's a 50% increase over the day one titles we provided last year. End quote Ubisoft Plus Classics is also now part of Game Pass Ultimate, a perk that provides access to a selection of Ubisoft games across console, PC and cloud on November 18th, Fortnite crew will also be part of ultimate, which gives subscribers the Fortnite battle pass 1000v bucks each month and more. Xbox Cloud gaming is also coming out of beta and getting 1440p resolution support and bitrate improvements for certain games on select devices. These cloud improvements are exclusive to Xbox Game Pass ultimate subscribers. Finally, Microsoft is also reworking its Rewards program. Ultimate subscribers can now earn up to $100 per year. That's 100,000 points in the store just by playing games. So that's Ultimate. Let's hop down to Premium. Formerly standard Game Pass Premium will be priced at the same 1499 monthly price of the existing standard subscription, but it will now have a bigger library of games to choose from. More than 200 games will be available on both Xbox and PC, giving Game Pass Premium subscribers access to PC games for the first time, including Diablo 4 and Hogwarts Legacy. Today, Game Pass Premium is also getting unlimited cloud access for the first time, meaning you no longer need a Game Pass ultimate sub to get access to Xbox Cloud gaming. While Game Pass Premium won't get access to Day one launch titles like Game Pass ultimate does, Microsoft is now making a clear commitment to bring new Xbox published games to this subscription tier quote within a year of launch. This excludes Call of Duty titles, but every other Microsoft owned Xbox game will be available. Microsoft is also expanding its In Game Pass perks down to the Premium subscription. Instead of being locked to ultimate, subscribers will get in game benefits in games like League of Legends, Call of Duty, Warzone and Tom Clancy's Rainbow six. Siege X Premium subscribers will also be able to earn up to $50 a year by playing through Microsoft's Award program. Now let's hop down to the lowest tier Xbox Game Pass Essential. Game Pass Essential will be priced at the same $9.99 monthly price.

[B]

I like that voice here, but like you're doing like a. Like you're doing promo.

[A]

You know I'm professional. That same 999 monthly price of the existing Core subscription, but but it will now include more than 50 titles in the library instead of the more than 25 games that were available in Core. You'll also be able to play all of these titles on PC or console and there's even unlimited cloud access which was previously only available through the Game Pass ultimate tier. Microsoft is also increasing the price of its PC Game Pass subscription today, moving from 1199 to 1649 a nearly 40% increase. Microsoft isn't trying to justify this increase with any added extras for PC players though. That's what I got for the article. Andy Cortez. Hey, Les, what's your immediate reaction to all of this?

[B]

There's just, there's a lot of different thoughts and I'm not sure what the best starting off point is, but, but you know, usually when you, when we see those console prices increase a couple months ago or whatever, I think my first thought is, okay, but they're killing it with Game Pass. And maybe that's like, it's not maybe, but that does seem to be the sort of avenue forward. And then now to get this and to see what everybody is mentioning, like, this is the second price increase in the last 14 months. Yeah, you know, it's, it's certainly not good. I don't feel good about this. I don't think this is a smart move from Microsoft. I think this muddies the message even more. This reminds me a lot of when PlayStation went to their online thing, which eventually people started to kind of get the hold of what was happening. But like the whole 75 plus titles on this one and 50 plus titles and you're getting Hogwarts Legacy here and also here, but you're not getting Call of Duty here. Like. Yeah, I think it just really confuses something that for me, in my opinion was like, this is the surefire way forward for Microsoft because we know that hardware probably is not doing great and will continue to not do great, especially with prices going up recently. I don't know, man, it just, it felt like you, you know, don't try to fix what's not broken. Not to say that Game Pass wasn't broken because we know several developers have issues with Game Pass. But I felt like it was the most smooth thing they had going.

[A]

I think it was the best marketing beat that they would pair it. And I, I think it's a marketing beat that's so good that you would have audience people parrot it. Right. People that aren't even working at Microsoft would say the same thing. It's the best deal in gaming. I think that was the biggest thing that they could hang their hat on to go, hey, at the very least, if you pay this price, you're getting all of these games. You're getting all of our first party games. Right? You're getting a bunch more games. Just this year we're talking about Claire Obscure and more games being on Game Pass. A lot of Game of the year contenders.

[B]

Silksong.

[A]

Silksong, right. Game of the year contenders appearing on game pass. And it was like, at the end.

[B]

Of the day, we saw this going for us.

[A]

Yes. At the end of the day, whether it was them saying it or people on Twitter saying it. Right. Us, the best deal in gaming. I find it tough to imagine people continuing to say that when you're talking about $360 a year. $360 a year. Is that enough to make people go, oh, yeah, I'm still getting the same deal. Right? Like, I think before you would do the division of, like, okay, well, if I bought five games or whatever in a year, like, game pass would make up for that. And if I'm playing more than that, then, hey, I'm making my money back. $360 a year for ultimate. For that tier where you're getting the day one games, I think that becomes a lot more tough to justify. I have a lot of super chats and a lot of people have a lot to say about this. I'll bring in Norman, who writes in and says, I don't understand what Microsoft's plan is for Xbox. At this point, it seems so uncompetitive as a platform. Why would you choose it over Steam, PlayStation, or Nintendo? Are they just mostly a publisher now? I got another one from Wilfredo who says, I've been paying for the highest tier of Game pass for as long as I can remember. I'm for sure downgrading or just canceling today. Alex Frazier writes in and says, 360 bucks a year is just not worth it. I'll buy the maybe two Xbox games I play per year instead. Trevor writes in and says probably will downgrade or bottom tier after being at the ultimate tier for a couple of years. $330 a month is crazy. I also saw reports on Twitter that people saying that the cancellation page for Xbox Game pass is crashing currently.

[B]

Oh, nice. That's always a great sign.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. The day one stuff, I think is the biggest. You know, the knife in the back, I feel. And we have a knife of our own. I don't know where I'm going with it.

[A]

That's what they call him, the knife.

[B]

But he's muted right now. He's muted.

[A]

Paris, Lily, welcome to the show. Welcome.

[D]

Oh, I'm not muted.

[B]

You don't hear me? I think. I think maybe Barrett had you muted just in case. Just in case.

[C]

It was probably the discord noise gig that was not picking up his laugh.

[A]

There you go. Paris, how's it going?

[B]

Not good.

[D]

Good with these prices.

[A]

Yeah, I know.

[D]

Go ahead.

[A]

I was just gonna say, I know you're, you're pre briefed on some of this news. Like I want to hear your, your thoughts, your perspective on this.

[D]

Yeah, I mean I got pre briefed on it and I'm, I'm hearing the essential tier. I'll go, oh, okay, good, good value here. Now PC cloud a part of that. Same with Premium. Okay, this, this sounds pretty good. And then it was like, but now here's the price on ultimate and yikes, it's, we're at the, we might be past the red line at 30 bucks a month. I remember just even joke. I was jokingly talking with a couple of people just a few weeks ago going, they're going to raise the price on Game Pass. We knew that was going to happen. I was thinking two, three, maybe five bucks a month. But to see ultimate jump 10 bucks a month to 30 it is. You just said it. I don't think we can say this is the best value in gaming anymore. Despite them adding in Ubisoft plus Classics, the Fortnite stuff, not everyone wants to take advantage of that. The whole point of Game Pass has always, excuse me, has always been day one, their first party lineup. You're getting it day one in the service and sure you, you're going to pay somewhat of a premium for that. But this takes it to a point where now I actually have to think, is this worth it to me? Is this, am I playing enough games from Xbox Game Studios and some of the third party indie stuff in here? Am I playing enough of these games every month that is worth it to me to spend $30 a month on this. I don't, I don't know if I can answer that question. Like I think about my kids again because they, they use the service a lot. I don't think they play enough games every month that they're going to want to spend $30 a month for, for ultimate for day one purchases that are coming out there like October this month? Absolutely. You're getting Keeper, you're Getting Ninja Gaiden 4, you're getting outer Worlds too. There's a lot of value in it this month. Obviously November, you're getting Call of Duty, but what about January, February, March? Are we still getting a consistent amount of quality games service every month that makes it worth 30? And do I have the time to actually play these amount of games? When Game Pass ultimate first started, I think, what was it, 15 bucks a month or something like that? It almost just felt like a no brainer. Sure, just go get it, if you have time to go play these games, great. Now you really just. The console prices have gone, everything has gone up. I have to look at this and go, is it worth it? To me as a gamer premium, there's definitely some value there, but you're gonna have to wait a year to get all the, you know, all the Xbox game studio new releases that come out for that.

[A]

Right?

[D]

Sure. You get PC gaming in that now. Sure, you're getting cloud gaming in that. But even that I think what is that? I guess the price didn't change on that. That's saying 15 bucks a month, that will be worth it for some people, but others it won't. You think about the essential tier. I don't know if you remember this was probably what, four or five years ago at this point where they were going to raise the price of Xbox Live to 120 and everyone balked at it and they, they reverse course. Well, here we are. This is essentially what you're doing now. You know, at a baseline you're paying 120 bucks a month for Xbox Live and sure you're getting some games in there and there, there is some value in there, but this, this hobby is just getting too expensive. I don't know any other way to say it. It's getting too average casual gamer, especially at the highest tiers. Now I to your point, you said their, their website is crashing on people canceling it. That does not surprise me at all because there's sticker shock with this. And now the onus is on Xbox to consistently provide quality titles every month to make $30 worth it. And God forbid they raise the price even beyond that. I don't know who's subscribing to this. It almost feels like this is now there to say, hey, we have it. If you want to subscribe to it, get day and day games, great. But we kind of realize most people are not going to do that and they're probably just going to purchase their games moving forward. I don't know who this is for anymore. At $30 a month, I think, I.

[B]

Think it would be one thing, Paris, if I had, when I look at this, the premium tier, if I had a whole lot of confidence in what their cloud gaming offerings were in terms of performance and stuff like that. But last I tried it, it still wasn't very good. And so that it just kind of feels like a little thrown in thing. Like if I was getting the level of quality that I've gotten from, that I've gotten from recently, you know, playing over the weekend, playing Hell is us on Nvidia GeForce. Now if I was getting that level of performance, I would feel a lot better about that being a perk. But right now it just kind of feels like an add in because I don't even think that the quality is necessarily there. What one question I want to ask though. Can we see, do we see in the future and the future, I mean in the next week the typical Xbox or gaming thing of we heard you, we fucked up our price increase is only five bucks. And then that makes us feel all happy inside and go, oh, they're listening to us. But, but really that price increase is still happening. Yeah, you're still getting, and was this, just, was this sticker shock thrown out there so that we feel the benefit from a possible price drop if that does happen? Because I think $10 is so ridiculous. Yeah, it's a, like, yeah, it'd be one thing if, if, you know, a $10 price increase. When I'm thinking of like YouTube TV going from 90 to 100, that's one thing that doesn't, you know, fuck up my brain a whole lot. But from 20 to 30 bucks is crazy to me.

[D]

I, I completely agree. And to answer your question, I don't think so. I, I, I, I don't, I think like the fact that even, you know, there's a blurb about Call of Duty not necessarily showing up in the premium tier after year. I think when you, you start to add up these acquisitions, you start to add up big games like, like Call of Duty. We know Fable's coming next year, a new Halo Gear Z Day, all this. I just want it like we, we've been asking this question for the past few years, for a while now. Is Game Pass sustainable? To see this jump that high, maybe they're just not seeing the value in it at the top tier. So that they are making it a very premium tier. Something that only the true enthusiast gamers are going to, to adopt and everyone else will just go back to the way it always has been. We're just going to go buy our games as we want to go play them. I, I mean, I don't know. Like I said, it's, it's big sticker shock for me. Like ironically enough, PC Game Pass did increase in price as well, and I think that's now 16amonth. That is probably the best value out of all of this because you are still getting day and day games on PC Game Pass. I know some Ubisoft games will also be A part of PC Game Pass as well. So in a way. And when you're seeing they're looking at this hybrid approach, we know the handheld is about to come and it's more a PC than it is a console. Maybe this is just the way now, you know, for the, for their next gen strategy and, and maybe the console gamer that wants to take advantage of this, you're gonna have to pay a premium, whereas a PC gamer is probably going to get more value out of the subscription service.

[B]

And on the flip side, luckily all these profits will go towards never closing studios or canceling games like it. It's such a backwards world.

[A]

Yeah. And the arithmetic, I think, confuses me and it makes me go back to Outer Worlds 2 originally being $80 and how. I think maybe that factors into. Into some of the. How you. They on their side maybe would have justified this because it goes back to what I was talking about before, where at the. When Game Pass was, let's say $15 a month, I think it was way easier easier to say, oh well, when I'm paying $60 for video games, I only have to have to buy only so many games before I get my return on that investment of Game pass. Now at $30, you are talking about, you're talking about having to buy like a good amount of games, right? And I think the, the Call of Duty factor in this also is something that perplexes me here because I would have thought that Call of Duty would have been the linchpin here as far as, well, people are going to buy it anyway for Call of Duty. You know, we're going to get Call of Duty in. I think the problem though is that Call of Duty, even if you have Call of Duty coming out at $70, $80, whatever it is, $30 a month. Like I, I think the, A large amount of the people that are here playing Call of Duty, I think there are those. A lot of them are hardcore, right? But also a lot of them I think are those gamers that are buying one or two or three games a year, right? They're playing Call of Duty. They're playing maybe some free to play games. Maybe Fortnite, maybe, you know what, like Battle Royale, whatever they're playing maybe NBA 2K, right? They're playing FIFA. Are those people gonna stick around for a yearly $360 membership or of a thing or are they going to pay or are they just going to one buy the game? Because it's like, okay, well this is. I'm just going to buy and Play this anyway or pay the $30 for a month. If you want to pay it, play it for just that month. It's hard me, it's hard for me to understand the balance of the arithmetic of who is this for? Like, maybe it is the. Hey, this is for our hardest of the hardcore. For the people that are going to play every single Xbox first party game, for the people that are invested, for the other games we have a part of the service, for the people that care about the perks they're getting for games like Fortnite for the Riot stuff, etcetera, etcetera. I just feel like that is such a deep bag of people that are invested that much. Right. Like, I feel like that is not a sizable, sizable, sizable audience on the Xbox side.

[B]

They may as well have thrown in there like and coupons to Red Lobster, you know what I mean? Like when I look at, at that $30 tier, like I, I'm expecting this massive jump and the offerings there are Ubisoft Classics, EA Play included, and then Fortnite Crew. Like it's just like where, where does this make sense? Yeah. And who thought that these add ons were, you know, justified? Now you're getting a thousand V bucks. Or like it's so. It's such a goofy thing.

[A]

And I think it's messy. I, I think the messaging, it's one of those things where when you do a subscription service and you have your subscription tiers, I think what you're offering has to be clear and straightforward and you can't be getting into the weeds of things. And I read that article, that article so long, the one that I just read from Tom Warren, who's breaking down the best that he can in like a just one article. Hey, these are the changes they're making. This is what you're getting with, with each thing. You're getting cloud in all of them. You're getting, you know, PC games here and here. You're getting, you know, you can play Call of Duty at the highest thing, but then at the second lowest thing, you're getting the first party games within a year. But not Call of Duty though. That's not included in that. And then at the lowest year you're getting 20. Whatever. Like it gets so in the weeds that I think it confuses people and just unentices them. Right. I look at this and I'm like, well now you're listing things that I don't care about. I don't care about the V bucks, I don't care about the I Guess I kind of care about the riot stuff, but plenty of people don't care about the riot stuff. You know, I don't know. There's a lot here.

[B]

It's all about the Day One stuff. To me. Paris, I think that's like. I think that's the biggest. I think that's the biggest mistake on this, the thing that hurts my heart the most. Because this. That's where. That's what I look at and go, wow. And you're getting all of the. I mean, it feels like, Paris, am I wrong? I think that every presentation we've seen recently is. And playable Day one, Xbox Game Pass. And you go, oh, that's so awesome. Because I'm paying. You know, at the time, I think I was paying 17 bucks a month for it and then eventually raised to 20.

[D]

Yeah, but see, Andy, that. That's. That's my issue with this. You've now made Day one on Game Pass unaffordable for the majority of people. The majority of people are not going to spend $30 a month for day one on Game Pass. The whole point of Game Pass from its inception was Day one titles. That was the big. That's what separated it from PlayStation Plus. That's what separated it from any other subscription service that we ever seen in gaming. That, wow, I'm getting your big games first party games day one through this service. And I spend at the time, what was it, 12, 15 bucks a month? Now you've essentially doubled that. And is. Is that worth it? Most people, again, with the rising cost of everything in this market right now, that's not affordable for most people. People are going to be way more selective about the games that they play. So instead of me just blindly subscribing to a subscription service, and when the games show up, they show up and I play them. Now you're going to be more strategic about it. You're going to actually think about, is it worth me spending $70 for Outer Worlds 2? Is it worth me spending 70 for Ninja Gaiden or Call of Duty or Fable or Forza Horizon 6? Because I can't afford to spend $360 per month on gaming. That's a lot for most people. So I don't know. I get they're doing what they got to do. Market conditions is the new buzzword for everything. But as we're seeing with this response, and I knew this is what was going to happen, people are balking against this. They are not happy. People are not accepting a 50% increase on their top tier it's just, it's, it's not sustainable, in my opinion.

[B]

I think about how, how Steam has been just, you know, barreling through a lot of numbers in terms of the concurrent players. And it's, we're constantly seeing more and more people playing on Steam and people, you know, leaning more towards PC gaming in a, in a real big major way. That's kind of always been surprising to me because what brings in console players is the simplicity and the cost. Yeah, and you're losing that, like you're, you're losing ground on that where it's supposed to be that you stick with console because ease of use, simplicity, not having to deal with downloads and drivers and all that bullshit. But also you are spending a third of what you would get on a really good PC to look to try to get some sort of facsimile. Right. Like you're not trying to get a one. For one thing, I understand that I play on PC and I love paying the premium for that quality. But like the whole thing with console gaming, it's cost and simplicity and you are, you're fucking that up. Like you're fucking up the reason why people are going towards a console as it is.

[A]

I'm fascinated to see how they try to justify it with the game releases of the next year. You know what I mean? Like going back to the outer worlds. Two thing of that going, you know, going at $80 and then that coming down then to $70. If that translated to the rest of the first party library that's coming up, which maybe it's still, maybe they still will pull that trigger. Who knows? Then you're talking about, oh, well, if I'm spending $360 for games that are to get day one access to games that are $80, I really only need to play five games before I make that back that we're not in that world right now. You know what I mean? Like right now games are still coming in at a little bit less than that. And even like, you know, if I was to do the division of 360 divided by 70, right. Like that still comes out to, let's see here, five. Like you got to play over five games, but you then have to look at Xbox first party and go, all right, deliver at least six must play games.

[D]

And that's my point next year, that's my point.

[A]

Deliver at least six games that your entire audience looks at and goes, we gotta play that. We got. We cannot miss out on that. And like, ideally, more than that, I feel you need More than that, it's.

[B]

Either delivering these Day One titles, Paris, These, these, like, these have to be absolute must hit bangers. Or you can also continue to go the Expedition 33 route, the silksong route, where you are partnering, partnering with these major third parties and getting these Day one releases. Like that also has to be that.

[A]

They got to be, they got to.

[B]

Be crazy aggressive now on that front, if in order to justify like more.

[A]

Aggressive because silk song was $20.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I'm paying a $30 a month subscription to play a $20.

[B]

3350.

[A]

Yeah. Like, you know, you, if you're going to do that, then yeah, you have to deliver on that front even more so than you've been delivering this year because they've been killing it this year. But you're going to need to deliver more going forward. And then, yeah, those first party games have to come. You are going to have to have a sizable amount of them and they're going to have to be fucking bangers.

[B]

This shit's like got to have Hulu included or something for that.

[A]

You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, it's got to have like, it's got to have like Disney plus with ads or ESPN plus with ads or some.

[D]

But see, I think that's what they were attempting to do with the Ubisoft classics and the Fortnite stuff by adding additional value in it to somewhat justify the price increase. But to what I've been seeing everyone saying online and we've been saying here, not everyone wants. I don't play Fortnite. I mean, my kids do. They probably would take advantage of it. Advantage of it. But that's not something I'm going to use. The Ubisoft stuff, I'm very selective on those. The games I would play out of that selection as well. And I correctional something I said, I think I said 360amonth. I meant a year obviously. But it, it still holds up that the whole point again of Game Pass was the fact that it's going to allow me to try things that I wouldn't necessarily have played before or I was iffy on. I can at least jump in and see if it's something for me, you know, genre like, like you now I need five to seven games a year coming from Xbox Game Studios or whatever partner games that they have that I know I want to play and that I'm excited to play to justify it at the top tier at ultimate and you know, we'll see. I don't, I don't know if that's even possible that I don't know if it's sustainable year over year, I guess is the point I'm trying to make.

[B]

You got to include all the white craft in there too, or some.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Oh, yeah. This next year will be. I think this next year will be the year we see if they're able to do that. Because going back to that last Xbox showcase, Phil Spencer said, hey, we're going to see games from Forza. We're getting the Forza Horizon game that's finally taking place in Tokyo. You're going to get the next year's game there. You're seemingly going to get maybe a Halo based on Phil Spencer saying, like, you know, we're going to see the return of an iconic franchise. And I think he named one more game there that I might be missing.

[B]

It probably got canceled.

[A]

We'll see. But like, well, this is the year to do it. If you're going to be like, yo, we got this. You're presenting next year as that year where you're bringing the. So, Paris, do you have any final thoughts on this topic?

[D]

I mean, my final thoughts on it is just simply. It's a bummer. It's a bummer, man. It's obviously a service that I've talked about and you know, you know, planted my flag on for, for years that it's the best value in gaming. But now I, I don't feel like I'd be justified in saying that anymore. It is now the onus is on Xbox to show why $30 a month for your ultimate tier is worth the price of admission. Because, you know, first glance, it does not seem that it is. You would probably be better off downgrading to either PC game pass or going to the premium tier or just getting out of game pass altogether and. And being very selective on the games that you purchase moving forward.

[A]

Fair enough.

[B]

The Epic online store gets free game, gets a lot of free games every month. It's a good alternative. I mean, they're never like new shit, but it's always like, oh, wow, what. What a banger. You just delivered my final thoughts on this. Bless. Yes. And thank you, Paris, for joining us as well. Is like I. We've already seen so many lives of hardworking, creative people get flipped upside down because they get laid off from a job that they weren't expecting to. And these are people that move their whole family and these are people that are. That maybe already weren't doing great financially be just because of how pay is in the industry. And I think this unfortunately will be another bad decision made that will lead to less money being earned, that will lead to more layoffs. And then more executives speak saying due to the current financial climate, we had to lay more people off. And it's always your fault. And I'm just, let's, you know, what's today? October 1st. Let's say November 14th. That's the day I'm putting on it. There will be another layoff announcement. Like, I, I'm just already.

[A]

That's gonna get clipped when it happens.

[B]

I'm just anticipating when it happens on.

[A]

November 14, people are gonna look back.

[B]

It's gonna be, it's just like, it's so sad. Bears. It's so sad.

[A]

Paris, thank you so much for joining us, man. Appreciate you.

[D]

Thank you. Talk to you guys later.

[A]

We got a whole lot of more news to talk about, believe it or not. But before we get there, I want to tell you about patreon.com kind of funny and YouTube.com kind of funny games where you can go and get the kind of funny membership, which we just increased to $30. Psych. It's not. It's only $10. $10. $10.

[B]

Don't look at me.

[A]

Where you can get the kind of funny membership where you can get shows like this ad free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

[E]

Kind of Funny Games Daily 2000 is happening on October 6th. I can't believe it. We are 2, 000 episodes into this daily weekday show. Thank you so much for your support over the years watching us live on YouTube, Twitch, podcast services around the globe. Kind of funny.com store is where you want to go to get this shirt to celebrate kinda Funny Games Daily 2000. But on top of that, it's not just the celebration of kind of Funny Games Daily. It's kind of funny games overall. We're bringing back some retro merch. Look at this. One of the fan favorite shirts from back in the day, of course, inspired by a portable handheld system we're not going to name, you know, specifically, but you get what we got going on. And one of the most requested unreleased shirts that I used to wear all the time. You're now going to be able to get kind of funny.com store. But hey, it's not just about merch. It's about celebrating 2, 000 episodes of Games Daily. October 6th. We're doing a mega episode of Games Daily. Be hyped, Be there. We have segments, we have guests. We're trying to get 2, 000 super chats. What's gonna happen if we do that? You're gonna have to tune in to find out. We'll see you there. October 6th. Get your shirts. Kindafunny.com store.

[B]

Hey, gamers, we're gonna be getting to super chats and all that fun stuff here in a second as well as the rest of the new stories. But I need you all to turn your attention to the Twitch chat right here in a few seconds. And that means everybody over there in the YouTube chat as well, because there will be a merch giveaway happening. Because if you got to be in the Twitch chat to win, though, and Greg's gonna be sending through a little giveaway right now. And I don't know if a lot of people even know this, but Bear, can you bring up our merch website whenever we're live on Twitch, you can click any item on the merch website and there's like an add to cart button. But then right below add to cart, there's gift to Twitch chat and you can click that button.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

If you're feeling super generous and super nice for some reason, you click give to Twitch chat and bam. You'll do a giveaway in the Twitch chat. Holy cow. And that's a level of integration.

[A]

Shout out to so deep.

[B]

I mean, that's cool. And finally listening to me about the merch store, the amount of months I've been being like, fourth wall. Do fourth wall. We got fourth wall.

[A]

Listen. I've heard it in the meetings.

[B]

You've heard it in the meetings, you know. So Greg will be putting through a merch giveaway here in the Twitch chat momentarily. So be ready to type exclamation point enter in the Twitch chat whenever you see the little thing pop up. So just a little, just a little info for you all. It's. It's going right now. You gotta type in exclamation point, answer.

[A]

In the Twitch chat, type it in.

[B]

Exclamation and point enter some more super chats for you.

[A]

A lot of people had a lot to say here, so we're just gonna run through them. Gary III writes in and says, with Fortnite Crew, I actually saved $2 a month. I think if I get 3, $360 worth of value, I'm still okay with it. But that price hike next year may get me Spartan 2842 says I've been paying for Xbox Live since the beta and game pass since day one. After 20 years, I'm done giving Xbox money. I feel Stupid for staying this long. Oh, don't feel stupid. You're just playing your video games. Video games.

[B]

Oh, don't feel stupid.

[A]

Yeah, you're a consumer. Hey, you don't have. First of all, you don't have to have loyalty to a company. You're just paying the company to get.

[B]

What you need out of us.

[A]

Except for us, because we're a small.

[B]

We're not millionaire executives.

[A]

I just want to apologize. My card keep getting dec. Fine. I had to put a different card in. I don't know what was going on over there. Also, heads up, Barrett Paris is going to call into this episode eventually. There we go.

[B]

Oh, thanks, Greg.

[A]

Also, do we know Greg's not a millionaire executive? We don't know. Bander SN says a Steam account was always the best deal in gaming. Let me tell you, in the last couple years, as I made. Not wrong as I. I've made my transition into being a quote unquote, PC gamer, filthy person, whatever. Yeah, that Steam store is great. That's. And I'm sure Steam has its own issues, but I love Steve. I love my.

[C]

Steam's got a lot of issues as well.

[A]

I'm sure Steam has a lot of issues because Epic Games store try to like come through and you know, give people better splits. And everybody said, fuck you. Like everybody has issues out here. But I do like the deals I get on the Steam store. Buying indie games for $5 and chain is great.

[B]

Every. Every day you get that Steam selling, you're like, oh. Or not every day, but oh well. Giveaway the winner who won? Timmy, buddy won the giveaway. Congratulations.

[A]

Steam stills are damn near every day though. Like, I swear to God, every other day I see a new promo for like, oh, we're doing the Roguelite Month. The Roguelite Month. Oh, here's Cozy week. Oh, you know, here's. Here's card deck builder, Cross farm Manga sim cross Manga boobs. Here's the deal for the manga boobs. And I'm like, wow, so many categories.

[B]

There's a lot of options here.

[A]

So many they're even bundling them in to one. Wow. If I go on. Hold on, I'm open up Steam right now. If I go. If I open up Steam and go to the Steam Store Autumn sale right now.

[B]

Oh, autumn sale. See for me, oh, I see Tokyo Game show sale with a lot of stuff.

[A]

That's the other thing is that they'll have multiple different sales in a day of like big category sales. So it's the autumn sale. It's The TGS sale. Hold on. Can I scroll through more?

[B]

How awesome would it be if it was just like totally targeting us? And for me it said like Hispanic Heritage Month sale. I was like, whoa, Blessings. Doesn't say that. The fuck?

[A]

That's weird. Some more super chats for you. Jim Tasty says, I wish I could pick and choose the perks. I just want day one games. That's it. None of the cloud streaming, etc.

[B]

A little ala carte, you know, I agree with that.

[A]

My appetizers, that's my thing is like I would.

[C]

That's not profitable, you know, that's. That's not going to raise up the, you know, the, the value of the wallet.

[B]

So they need another jet.

[A]

Because I would pay $20 for just the day one games. Like, just give me the day one games and online access. I want those two. I want online. Actually, I ain't playing games on my Xbox online. Just give me the Day One games.

[B]

Yeah, that's all I want.

[A]

I don't care about anything else. So I feel what you're talking about there. Zeke Speak says, I mostly use ultimate to play co op with my partner. She's on the couch. I'm on PC and library sharing means it's two games for one. With this though, I may go to buying us individual copies. Alex AP says, don't forget you can game share games and subs, people. Rogue 930 writes in and says, paying the birthday tax for my birthday yesterday. I have two kids so I can't buy a lot of games at full price these days. If I play 10 games on game Pass a year, it still has great value for me. Happy birthday, Rogue Birthday. Happy birthday. Fran writes in and says, this is always what a service like Game Pass was worth. They've been underpricing for years, but have trained people. Otherwise was never sustainable.

[B]

Was that Fran Mirabella?

[A]

No, because they paid in like euros or something.

[B]

Well, well, I'm living in Europe now.

[A]

Unique writes in and says, dropping a super chat for the Paris Cameo. I'm going to stop there. I'm going to cut it there because there's just too many and we got to move on with more dudes in the show. But thank you guys for all your super.

[B]

Thank you. We'll try to get to the rest of them, hopefully.

[A]

Story number two. Ubisoft and Tencent form a new subsidiary, Vantage Studios, to lead development for the Assassin's Creed, Far cry and Rainbow Six franchises. This is Connor McCarr at Eurogamer, the breakout game development Business co owned by Tencent and Ubisoft finally has a name, Vantage Studios. Eurogamer understands from a source that it's starting operations today and will be responsible for new games across many of Ubisoft's biggest IPs, such as Far Cry Rainbow Six and Assassin's Creed. Vantage Studios is composed of 2,300 employees across multiple Ubisoft game development teams, including those from Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Sofia and Barcelona. The studio will be run by the duo of Christophe Durren and Charlie Gilmont. Vantage Studios operate under a less centralized model compared to Ubisoft property, with each development team having more ownership over its own respective product. This, in theory, would allow developers to be more fluid and pivot according to industry changes in player expectations. Per Eurogamer sources, the formation of Vantage Studios comes as a climax of a tumultuous period for Ubisoft, which reportedly was considering this new venture with Tencent in January of this year following years of lacking performance. This new venture would bring many of Ubisoft's biggest IPs under a new roof was officially announced in March, with tencent taking a 1.16 billion euro stake in the new business entity. As for Tencent's involvement, the Chinese company will have a 25% stake in Vantage Studios and will act in an advisory role to the subsidiary's leadership team. However, Guillaume and Durand will retain control over both creative and business decisions. Ubisoft hopes this will allow its teams to have a better degree of creative freedom, per a source familiar with the subject. How other studios, most notably Massive Entertainment, will operate going forward currently remains unclear. Eurogamer understands the publisher wants its devs to operate in a more decentralized way, with developers taking more ownership of the titles they're working on.

[B]

If this in any way Blessing puts the Division 3 in jeopardy, I will fight someone.

[A]

Fair enough.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Fair enough.

[B]

I'm putting on the record like, do not fuck with the Division 3. I need it.

[A]

I'm gonna say it right now. You're gonna have to fight somebody. You might have to get Eve on the phone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Pull up him it.

[C]

I. I don't think that's a priority for them.

[B]

I was mentioning on Games Daily the other day. Bless. You know when we get this whole, you know, the Saudi public investment fund buying EA story. Yeah. I was like, man, I miss when we only had to worry about 10 cent.

[A]

You know, like, you know, and Tencent were the big bad guys when I.

[B]

Had to main ones that I had to worry About. And it was like, yeah, bad business practices and workers rights. And, you know, there's, you know, that. That's. That's where the main concern is. And now, yeah, it's.

[A]

It's. I'm gonna give a wrestling reference. I apologize, everybody. But it's legitimately the equivalent of, like, us being Cody Rhodes and you're going up against Roman Reigns, and all of a sudden you hear the rock music.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Oh, man. Now we got a big, bigger batter guy to worry about.

[B]

Oh, chopped up. A journalist.

[A]

Corey Cutney says, remember Vivendi? Oh, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Oh, my goodness. So, you know, I think this story has a lot of lip service from a lot of the people doing PR and everything, mentioning what will give people more ownership of the titles and more ownership of their creativity. And I think all that sounds great if it is actually the truth, you know, and I hope that people at Ubisoft and these developers are given a bit more freedom. But. But we've heard that a million times.

[A]

Yeah, well, who do. Who do we think they're going to.

[C]

Sell Vantage Studios to?

[A]

Because this feels like a.

[C]

We're carving this out car.

[A]

I don't know, because, like, I think the Tencent being involved makes me think that, like, this is the deal.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, hey, Tencent, like, let's see if we can squeeze some money out of this, turn this into, like, an actual organized thing. And then once that doesn't work, we'll see. Once that doesn't work, guess what? They might get embraced. They might get embraced, man.

[B]

You know, speaking of being embraced, like, things have been kind of quiet on the Embracer front recently.

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

Like, I just.

[C]

They got a big game coming out in a couple months.

[A]

What's that?

[C]

SpongeBob SquarePants.

[B]

That's when they're really gonna kind of come back into the fold. That's when they make their announcement.

[A]

We're back, guys. Y' all thought spongebob. We spent billions of dollars buying all this, all these studios, and we got spongebob coming out.

[B]

You thought we were done ruining.

[A]

Yeah, because, like, what do they have? They have, like, Tomb Raider. They got Lord of the Rings. That's the thing is, like, all the stuff that they were working on, I feel like, is all that they're just quiet about. Anyway, and we had a new story yesterday that, like, a Lord of the Rings game might be announced imminently, like, in the next couple weeks maybe.

[B]

Oh, man. It could be with Hogwarts. A third person in the open world. I'm Ready to be embraced.

[A]

Grain of salt.

[B]

I wanted to be a brace.

[A]

Take that with the biggest grain of salt.

[B]

Let me go to Meanest Teleth and oh, my goodness, I can't wait.

[A]

It's like, what's. What's Eidos Montreal working on? Are they giving me another dsx? I don't think so. Give me another Guardians of the Galaxy.

[B]

If you woke me up from a deep slumber and said, andy, is Eidos Montreal still around? I don't know what the answer would have been.

[A]

I mean, that's fair.

[B]

Now that I know that they're still open, that's good for them.

[A]

Yeah. Now Idols Montreal is one of those studios where, like, I feel like we all have those favorite studios where they're not like the talk of the town, but we care about them. You know what I mean? Like, don't. Don't hurt these guys.

[B]

I care about all these studios. Yeah.

[A]

It's just like Idols Montreal is one.

[B]

Of those tragedy every month, every week.

[A]

Because I'm such a. I love Deus Ex Human Revolution. I gotta pronounce that out because I remember back in the day, I told my friends who aren't really like gamers, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm playing this game called Day of Sex. And they're like, it's called Day of Sex. And I'm like, no, Deus. Deus X. Like Deus example X. But I loved Deuce X. Human Revolution and mankind divided. Like, those are such me ass video games. And so, like, I got this connection with Idols where I'm like, one day.

[B]

And then you think about it, that's like one day. We're a decade ago.

[A]

Yeah, dude.

[B]

Like, that's.

[A]

Yeah, dude. I mean, 2016 was mankind divided.

[C]

Yeah, it was like right before I started at ign. Like, I remember I was working at Vans and Nick Scarpino came into that vans that I worked at and all he wanted to do was talk about mankind divided.

[A]

God, music, not change.

[B]

Really.

[A]

We're gonna do a Me and Nick stream through the Deus Ex games.

[B]

That will be the last time you ever want to stream with him.

[A]

Nick. And bless a Deus Ex.

[B]

A Deus Ex.

[A]

Colon. Deus X.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

We make it a series. Everybody will watch it and love it. We put it up exclusively on a website. You got to pay $10 a month for it.

[B]

You really just want to end your friendship with him, huh?

[D]

You will.

[B]

You will feel have. You will be so frustrated by this experience.

[A]

No, I mean, me and Nick, we always have a great time together and you put us, you put me and him in a DSX together. Come on.

[B]

He's just not the dude that you want to bring around to, to like, love something together.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

If you, if you show, if you're like, oh, I really want to show you this because, like, I love this and I think you'll love it. You will only leave with heartbreak.

[C]

But it's not like trying to convince him to love.

[A]

Nick already loves dsf.

[C]

He already loves those games.

[B]

Yeah, but he'll be looking at his phone the whole time.

[A]

It's the way that, like, he'll be googling.

[B]

Small wonder.

[A]

Every. Every six months, me and Nick, we connect on psych, right? Like, every six months, Psych comes up in conversation.

[B]

It's on Psych.

[A]

That's the sequel to When I see him.

[B]

It's on Psych.

[A]

Like every six months, meeting him, talk about Psych and it's like, oh, damn. All right. That's the blessing and connection. We got Psych together.

[B]

See you next month.

[A]

See you next month. We'll talk about it. Story number three Blooper team confirms Silent Hill one remake is in production and won't rule out a Chronos sequel just yet. This is Robert Perches at Eurogamer. Polish horror specialist Bloober team has revealed that The Silent Hill 1 remake, which was briefly teased by Konami in the summer, is now in production. In an investor call yesterday, Bloober team CEO P. Peter Peter. Bobby and I totally butchered that name. Peter Peter. And Vice President Carolina Nowak commented, quote, we have two first party production teams, one of which is working on Silent Hill one and the other has begun work on a second project. Bloomberg currently employs approximately 250 people. Chrono Sales seem to be encouraging as well, but the company is not currently committing to a sequel or post release content quote. At the moment, apart from marketing updates, the company is not actively working on development, neither a sequel nor dlc. But we do not rule it out in the future and we're definitely thinking about developing this ip, end quote. The second party team Blooper mentioned, the team that isn't remaking Silent Hill one is apparently working on smaller projects, five of them in fact, which sounds like a lot, but they could be ports of existing games or games that are smaller in scope. Indeed, Bobiano talked excitedly recently about making horror games for Nintendo consoles, which led to suspicions that The Silent Hill 2 remake will make its way to Switch 2. Blooper is also making a game for Netflix codenamed Project N. Which Bobby Eno and Nowak said was a relatively short project. I expect it's one of those five games the second team is working on.

[B]

They're still doing Netflix stuff, huh?

[A]

They say they are. I don't believe it.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

You're never going to see this project Endgame.

[C]

Remember when they were like, when Netflix closed down their biggest studio that they acquired, and then like a week later they were like, we're investing more into video games? It's like, no, you just did the opposite of that. What now you mean by this?

[A]

Hear me out, though. Hear me out. Stranger Things. A blooper team game. Blooper teams of Stranger Things.

[C]

I. I feel like they already did a strange.

[A]

They can bless his day.

[B]

Here we are.

[A]

Think about everybody.

[B]

I mean, this is great for the Silent Hill fans. I'm pumped for them.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

I think. You know, I don't know if there's been a bigger surprise than this year. Maybe Expedition 33 being the biggest surprise, but the fact that a Silent Hill 2 remake came out and was pretty much universally loved.

[A]

Everybody. Yeah, really.

[B]

Like, I. I expected this to.

[A]

You said this year?

[B]

Yeah, that was last year. Silent Hill 2.

[A]

Yeah, that was like a year ago. Almost exactly. Yeah.

[C]

You think they would release 2 and F in the same year? That's crazy.

[B]

Oh, I forgot. F just came up.

[A]

Yeah, just come out.

[B]

It's October.

[A]

It is October.

[B]

It is. I don't like it.

[A]

That's why we got this baby doll.

[B]

But, yeah, I'm. I mean, look, I. I'm stoked that Bloober team is kind of finding their groove. I don't think Blue. I don't think Kronos necessarily reviewed as. As highly as I thought it would. I played it and I was like, ah, this isn't working out for me necessarily, but, you know, it's awesome. The Silent Hill 2 remake was amazing and people loved it. And for them to be saying, yeah, let's keep on going back and we'll work on. We have our different production teams. Let's work on our own original and let's continue to remake some big classics to continue to kind of fund the studio.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I'm rooting for Blooper team. Yeah, I got respect and go back to the whole Iowa, Montreal, and how, like, I care about that studio. Bloober team is a studio where I've played none of their games, but I'm seeing the come up from afar and I'm like, you go get them.

[B]

250 people that's awesome.

[A]

That's. That's great.

[B]

Doing it.

[A]

Let's move on to story number four, where I need you to lock in on this one. All right, let's lock in on story number four. Andy, I need. I need your jokes. I need your jokes to hit for this one. All right, story number four. Amazon has completely redesigned Luna with party games, including an AI Snoop Dogg courtroom title. This is Jordan Midler at Video Games.

[B]

I can't add anything to that.

[A]

It is that.

[B]

You just did it.

[A]

Amazon has completely redesigned and reimagined its game streaming service Luna with a focus on party games, including an AI powered Snoop Dogg game. Amazon Luna launched in 2022 and since launch. Since launch and since launch has seen a steady stream of high profile titles on the streaming platform. Amazon has now announced that the service is being refreshed with a focus on party games as well as core titles. The biggest change to the Luna as part of this revamp is Game Night, which Amazon pitches as a way to get players who aren't interested in traditional consoles invested in games. Game Night will be included with Amazon prime at no additional cost and lets players join the game by scanning a QR code on their phone. All Game Night games are designed to be played together with family and friends for maximum laughter and connection. Amazon says. Finally, a reason for parents to not tell their kids to put their phones away. Right. I said that right. A reason for parents. I see. Not to tell their kids to put their phones away. End quote. Game Night will include titles developed by Amazon, the most prominent of which is Courtroom Chaos starring Snoop Dogg. The game is described as a human built, AI powered improv courtroom game where players invent outrageous characters, spin wild stories and do whatever it takes to defend their testimonies. Hold on. Defend their testimony?

[B]

You've been accused of murder. You have to. You have to do your best.

[A]

Defend the testimonies against Before Judge Snoop Dogg.

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

I'm crying, actually. Oh, okay. I just want to read that one more time because I want to get it clean.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

In case we break this out, I want to clean. I want to get clean, clean, clean. The game is described as a human built, AI powered improv courtroom game where players invent outrageous characters, spin wild stories and do whatever it takes to defend their testimonies before Judge Snoop Dogg. End quote.

[B]

End quote.

[A]

According to Amazon, Game Night will launch with more than 25 multiplayer games from. From Game Night. Optimized takes on favorites like Angry Birds, drawing guests, exploding kittens, which I love. Exploding kittens. And in Flappy Golf Party. What the Party Ready. Adaptations of board game hits such as Taboo, Ticket to Ride, and Clue. That's the end of the story.

[B]

That's a good story.

[A]

I'm crying so many tears.

[B]

That's a good story.

[A]

Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess you don't need to make any jokes.

[B]

I thought, man, I really thought that.

[C]

This was all just gone.

[B]

I'm hot because I feel like every couple of months or so, I see the tweet about, hey, you're running out of time to turn your Amazon Luna controller into a functional Bluetooth controller for other devices. Yeah, because once we take down that shit, it's just going to be a piece of plastic that can't be utilized anymore. Yeah, but I mean, hey, they're coming back with a. With a fury and a vintage AI Snoop Dogg, baby. Yeah, that'll.

[C]

That'll fix that service for sure.

[A]

What are two money makers in this world? AI and Snoop Doggy Dog? Come on, you want to make some money? You get those two together, man. You want to make some money and a really bad product. You can't Snoop Dogg and A Hide together.

[C]

Moments like these remind me how much I just fucking hate life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Capitalism, baby. Andy, this Snoop Dogg courtroom game might be big. We gotta play.

[B]

We gotta do.

[A]

Let's play. No, we have to do.

[B]

I think we have to now.

[A]

I. I feel like we should be.

[C]

Morally obligated to not interact with that on content whatsoever.

[A]

And I hear you, Barrett. Like, morally. I hear you, but come on, it's courtroom Snoop Dogg. Yeah, it's Snoop Dogg as a judge, and we present cases to him.

[C]

And moments like this, like, at this point, it's journalism.

[A]

I feel like this concept is journalism. We're doing it so that we can report back. Yeah, hear me out. You know what I mean? If I wanted something smaller, though, say, the tiniest news, I needed to know about where to go.

[B]

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

[A]

Story number five is we news. Moonlighter 2 has been delayed. Originally scheduled for October 23rd, Moonlighter 2 will now launch into early access on November 19th, where the developers feel it'll face less noise in the crowded holiday season of releases.

[B]

Damn developers. Just calling every other game noise. That's crazy.

[A]

Oh, my God. That's nuts. That's nuts. But also, yes, please get out of October. Yes, please, game developer, or this is from game developer Hasbro, is opening a new Wizards of the coast office in Montreal that will serve as a game development hub and could create around 200 jobs over the next three years. According to a news release. The office will open in 2026 and operate in Montreal as Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. Absolum, Excuse me. Is getting an animated adaptation from Super Monks Absolum. Absolum. That's the cool looking beat Em up game.

[B]

Heck yeah. And they got I'm blinking on her name. But she has done a lot of music for Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodborne. She's a composer, one of the many composers that Fromsoft uses.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

She's doing a lot of the music on Absolum.

[A]

Nice. Marvel Cosmic Invasion demo is out now on PC. FIFA, in partnership with Solace and New York based game development studio Enver has announced FIFA Heroes, a fast paced Arcade 5 versus 5 football game coming to various platforms in 2026, including PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, iOS and Android devices.

[B]

Is Rematch Crossplay yet?

[A]

That's a really good question. They said during the interview that I did with them that Crossplay was coming soon.

[B]

I feel like whenever I see a new update from them, it's always just like, hey, we're, you know, we're fixing. And it's like, no, no, no.

[A]

People in chat say, yes, it is, it is, it is. Oh, okay, dude, I dropped off Rematch so hard.

[B]

We gotta get back to it.

[A]

I'm for sure down to get back to it. Rock Band 4 is getting delisted on October 5th. Bop it. The video game is now available on mobile and PC. What the are we doing? I got a review code for this. Bye Bop It. And I wanted to try it out. I never got around to actually booting it up.

[B]

The soundtrack though. I think it. I think for the Bop it video game. Yeah, for the Bop it video game. I think some. One of the dudes who writes for the music for this also wrote for 2049. Read only memories or 20 whatever. Oh, I'm blanking on the name. Really, really great. Like kind of game composer. Just music composer. I'm hoping somebody just throws me a little. A little help in the chat because I'm blanking on the. The composer name, but I'm pretty sure I saw on Spotify, you know, a new song for the Bobbit video game. I was like, oh, that's awesome.

[A]

I'm trying to find. I can't find any.

[B]

Too mellow. Too mellow.

[A]

Oh, real. Yeah, I was doing music for the Bobbit video game. That's cool. Trying to find any review. Weirdly, I'm Seeing reviews from, like, last year. So maybe this is a port. I can't tell what's going on here, but I'm gonna check out the mop. Video. Video game haul Report back made of scare VR has been announced for PSVR2, Meta Quest and Steam VR. And finally, Funcom has announced an unspecified number of layoffs. And that is it for we news. Sorry to end on sad news there, but damn, that's the industry that we live in. I'm gonna hop into super chats one more time, see what y' all are saying. Shark89 says, Watch out. Bless the doll moves. Is that true? Bear, give me my one. I believe it did my one. No, it's been there. It's. That's the same spot because it looks like I have, like. It looks like it's an extension of my hair. It looks like I have a ponytail right now.

[B]

Greg will figure out a way to make it move, though.

[A]

Dude, that'd be genius if you, like, installed wheels at the bottom of it. Like remote controlled wheels.

[B]

Oh, don't even say that. I could already hear Kevin being like, we could do that. We could figure it out.

[A]

Story Motors writes in and says, please rise for the honorable capital S. Oh, yes, he's fresh. N double O, P O, double G, Y D, O. I mean, it feels.

[B]

Like it was a show at one point.

[A]

Snoop Dogg as a judge?

[B]

Really? Maybe it wasn't, but. Or maybe I'm just thinking of, like, judges that aren't judges on TV shows. Remember when Matt Batson was supposed to get us on the Judge Steve Harvey show?

[A]

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

[B]

We all. We were close. We had two rounds of interviews.

[A]

Is that still on tv? Is Judge Steve Harvey still a thing that's going.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Or was that a flash in the pan?

[B]

I have no idea.

[A]

Random drinker writes in and says, we need a blessing in disguise. Cosplay episode. I have to see Andy as Verso, and I want to run my fingers through yalls hair.

[B]

My friend Burso. That's too mellow.

[A]

Holy cow. Yeah, put your microphone to that.

[B]

Too mellow. So good.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, I love. Danesta writes in and says, b hole and a hole. My favorite duo.

[B]

Ah, great.

[A]

Anthro metal, right? Santa says, maybe I'm weird, but I just don't care about day one that much. I got game pass for the catalog and to play again and play a bunch of games at a time. Ugh.

[B]

Do you. Do you.

[A]

You Kebab says Xbox released a gen AI ad for Game Pass. Yesterday.

[B]

This sucked ass, by the way. This was awful.

[C]

It was like them pretending to be in the or like an AI video of kids in the 50s predicting what video games will be like in 2025.

[B]

I, I hate AI with kids like the most. Probably like I hate it all but whenever people do like babies talking, I'm like this.

[A]

Yeah, no, let's not do that.

[B]

It I, ah, it's just a. It just bother. It just feels so wrong.

[C]

And this is why we got to bump up the prices so we can fund, you know, the. The marketing budget y of making AI slop because we, you know, probably cut all of the marketing people on in the company. Look, this man's eyes that are just keep flickering weird.

[A]

Yeah. I mean this is very not shocking because it's Microsoft and so like of course Microsoft is going to put in AI in things. It is like disheartening. I hate it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, I think that's it for super chats. Let's hop into counterflame dot com. You're wrong.

[B]

I have a couple you're wrongs and they were the people are. You're wronging me on the stadia controller being the one that will eventually go defunct. Not. Not the lunar controller. I could have sworn it was a looting controller because I still have one.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was like, oh, I. Maybe I should update that thing. And it's like, oh, totally different brand.

[A]

Wow. Red Hudson writes in this one from yesterday. Pretty sure Jesus died on a cross. Bless. Fair enough. I don't know why I said that yesterday. What'd you say? Ah, don't worry.

[B]

You know, there was allegedly thrown around, I believe.

[A]

I mean I just threw in a random. Allegedly. Usually I just said.

[B]

I just say protect yourself from.

[A]

Here's the thing. It's like all the proof we have is just like one book, you know. But like I don't. But I think there's more actually I'm not going to get deeper into.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

What up?

[B]

This doesn't matter to the show at all.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, the tour is doing a 14 city tour with Matt Johnson, Jane McCarroll in person, San Francisco that are coming San Francisco. I got, I'm in. I got to do this when.

[A]

It'S.

[B]

At a drafthouse and it's going to be you Drafthouse website.

[A]

You.

[B]

Th Thursday. No. Yeah, Thursday. November 13th. Oh shit. That's soon.

[C]

That's in a month.

[B]

Get me in. I'm in one more year.

[A]

Wrong. This is from Gondor's. Condor regarding the Game Pass prices. After US Taxes. After U S Taxes. Sorry, I'm thinking about soup dog. After US taxes, this works out to about $385 annually. PS Plus's highest tier after taxes comes out to about $171. I could get two of the latter. I could get two of the ladder for less than a full year of Game Pass. I mean PS plus and Xbox Game Pass are different things, but I for sure hear you as far as at.

[C]

This point with like Game Pass Premium, are they super different? Especially if they're not getting day one.

[A]

Stuff for Game Pass, Game Pass Premium being the standard one being like yeah, I mean it's starting to seem more.

[C]

And more like the same service.

[A]

I agree. I guess I agree with that middle one for sure. I think I. I guess I still see, I still see the main appeal of Xbox Game Pass being the getting those first party games day one. But I guess that is. That's just getting. That's getting lost now. Like that's not the appeal anymore. I don't even know what the appeal anymore is.

[C]

Too big of a promise for that cheap of a cost.

[A]

And that is it for kind of funny dot com. You're wrong and you get those tickets. You getting those tickets buying them right? You're buying them right now. You just said. There you go. This has been kind of funny Games daily each and every week they run you through the nerdy news that needs to know about live on YouTube, Twitch and a podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. Enjoy the games cast next and the stream after. But until next time Game Daily.