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Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast
Xbox Game Pass Ranting, Fallout 76: Burning Springs Preview - Kinda Funny Gamescast
01:12:14
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- [00:08]
A
What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games Cast. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside the best voice in the business, Paris Lily.
- [00:18]
B
Hello, Greg.
- [00:19]
A
Hey, Paris. How are you?
- [00:21]
B
I'm good. It's always a great time when I get to come back and be on.
- [00:24]
A
Gamescast and to do it back to back. I'm worried if you have enough juice because you came on Games Daily with a fire to take you to this Xbox game. Pass. Price change. Ultimate. All this jazz you were talking about out there, can you still bring it for Fallout 76 is my question.
- [00:41]
B
I think I can. I think I got enough left in the tank.
- [00:44]
A
I want to get into all this. And we're going to have a meandering conversation about Fallout 76, clearly about Xbox as well. Because this is the kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday, four, sometimes two best friends gather on this table, coming to talk about the biggest topics in video games. Whether they be reviews, previews are just things we need to talk about. We cover it live on Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, YouTube.com kindafunnames and podcast services around the globe. If you especially love what we do here, we ask you to pick up the kinda funny membership. $10 a month gets you all of our content ad free. That's more than 80 episodes. And of course it gets you your daily dose of me. Greg Miller. That's right. 15 to 20 minutes from my car, adding up to four hours of exclusive podcasts each and every month. And on top of all that, it gets you good karma for supporting a small independent 11 person business trying to make it out here in a crazy media landscape. No bucks to toss our way. No big deal. Like subscribe, share. Ring the bell. If you have Amazon prime, you have Twitch Prime. We'd love it if you gave us your free 30 day subscription. Of course they don't remind you about it. It doesn't auto renew. So maybe you're driving your car right now. When you get home and you're done listening to this podcast, go link them up, give it to us. We'd really appreciate it. Of course, like I said, we're talking about 5 Fallout 76, Burning Springs, Paris. I mean, first note, it's just. It's too close to Horizon. Burning Shores. I can't I. Somebody.
- [02:12]
B
It's so funny you say that. I was thinking the same thing.
- [02:15]
A
A lot of times I jotted my notes and I deleted. That's not right. Google, what is it? Springs. Burning Springs. Okay, get your super chats in on YouTube.com kind of funny games with your questions, your comments, concerns. I know Mr. Hawks will be doing it, so you must all do it as well to give me your questions about talking to Walton Goggins in the game. Of course though notebooks talks away. I already said all that jazz. Remember that the housekeeping goes like this. We're an 11 person small business, all about live talk shows. So far you've already gotten Kinda Funny games daily. And the news that Xbox game pass price hikes and major changes are here after this. The one, the only the Hispanic heartthrob Texas treat. I'm not doing the whole intro. Andy Cortez will be playing Ghost of Yote, starting it for the first time over on our stream. If you're watching later, catch that archive YouTube.com kinda funnygames if you're a Kinda Funny member. Today's Greg Ways 15 minutes on if we'll ever be too old for video games. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Karl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Psalm Twining. Today we're brought to you by Kinda Funny games daily. Episode 2000 on our new merch. But we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be topic of the show. So Fallout 76, Burning Shores, the largest expansion. Yeah, yeah. Here's my question. Paris. Now, granted, we're on the Xbox set. I'm wearing the Starfield jacket.
- [03:36]
C
Burning Springs, by the way.
- [03:37]
A
Burning Shores. Springs, Springs.
- [03:40]
B
Springs.
- [03:41]
A
Horizon. Burning Shores. Fallout 76, Burning Springs. Yes.
- [03:45]
C
There you go.
- [03:47]
A
What are we doing here? My question for you, Barrett, and I'm sorry for Paris, is that now that we're here, granted it's day one. It's rocked. Is both this news and you assume The Outer Worlds 2 reviews Ruined by this game Pass news. Is this all. Is everyone to talk about this every time we talk about any of these things now?
- [04:10]
B
Unfortunately, I think so.
- [04:14]
A
That stinks.
- [04:15]
B
I mean it was so funny knowing, you know, the embargo for both of these, the game Pass news and the Fallout. I go, wow, they're literally just neutering the fallout 76 news. No one's gonna talk about this because everything's gonna be about game pass.
- [04:28]
A
I was gonna say, yeah. If you're the folks working on Fallout 76, you gotta be like, oh great, that's you time this the exact same point there. Yeah. That's gonna help us really get what we want to get some juice behind this, get it going, have people excited about what's going out in Fallout 76. Dang. A dark day, but we'll do our best. Of course we went out to New York City, nyc, the Big Apple. Different days. They wouldn't let us be there together. I saw Danny.
- [04:55]
B
Turns out it. No, it turns out we were there the same day. I found that out. But then I had already because I'd left super early. So I missed you. But we were actually technically there at the same time.
- [05:06]
A
Sucks. I could have seen you. Could have touched you.
- [05:08]
B
Yeah, no, I was looking forward to it.
- [05:10]
A
Paris, I'm going to give them the rigmarole here. All right. Of what Fallout 76 Burning Springs is of course coming out December 2025. Fallout 76 Burning Springs takes players to a new region in its largest update since 20. In this free update for all Fallout 76 players, explore post nuclear Ohio, meet new characters and factions and take on all new bounty hunting missions hosted by Walton Goggins. As the Ghoul featured from Prime Video's Fallout television series. It goes on and on and talk about story you're sutton southern east or southeastern region of rural Ohio. New places to explore, new quest lines to follow, new events to take place in and yeah, form your posse to your posse to collect the Appalachia's most wanted in an all new bounty hunt missions hosted by none other than the Ghoul. Paris, we got to play a lot of this, a whole bunch. What was your immediate top level takeaway?
- [06:11]
B
My immediate takeaway was I like in the Burning Springs area in the Ohio area, this had more of a Fallout 3 new Vegas look to it. And even when I got a chance to talk to John Rush and Bill Lacoste, the creative director and the production director for Fallout 76, they kind of confirmed that that was, that was somewhat on purpose for the look of felt different enough from everything else that you played in Fallout 76 that it felt fresh and you wanted to go explore and see, you know, what enemies and enemies you would encounter and things that you would discover in that region. But I mean it's more Fallout 76, which you know, definitely isn't a bad thing, you know, for people that are really, you know, committed to to that game and in that community. But you know, so far so good. I mean I'll be curious to see more of the bounties that that you're able some of the more high level bounties that you're going to be able to get from the Ghoul, because I think that's going to be the big feature to to come out of this update, interacting with the ghoul, seeing some of these mass public events are going to higher tier bounties. So it was good.
- [07:22]
A
Yeah, I'm in the same boat, I think. And actually, you know what I put out here is I put same old Fallout and I put old in all caps. I like Fallout 76, right. I booted up the PlayStation, was tinkering with it before I came in here. I have 90 hours in it. And if you're a kind of funny member, you probably remember the majority of those happened last year in that lead up to me re reviewing it or reviewing it in 2024 in the round as a group. And so I played a lot of it there and really enjoyed myself for what it was. But I think what's interesting about this is that it is not changing Fallout 76, which of course is a silly thought to have, but it is that idea that if the core hooks of Fallout 76 and Fallout Old Fallouts to that level didn't work for you, it won't work for you here. Luckily it did work for me. But I did find myself playing this being like, man, I can't wait for The Outer Worlds 2. And I do wonder, even though December will be two or about two months after the release of Outer Worlds 2, if this will still scratch that itch and get me back into it. Because even booting up my PlayStation and jumping back in, it was the thing of like, all right, what was I doing? And I haven't played the Ghoul update even like, I need to do this and I need to do this. I'll be fascinated. But I'm with you that like this new section of the map does feel different and does feel more Fallout. You know, they. The way they peppered this one in of to get you going, they dropped this in with max level characters already. Probably max, you know, level 300 characters already.
- [08:50]
B
300, yeah.
- [08:50]
A
We were ready to go do take on any challenge. And so you already had started the quest line and it was. We had to impress this guy to get further into it. So there were challenges similar to your dailies or your weeklies, but they were for the quest line on your map and running around and doing those in the new section, whatever. But I, you know, was over there and ran into, wait a second, what's this briefcase I found. I found a briefcase in this section. And then it was, oh, okay, I gotta find this very specific building. And I'm looking around and I couldn't find it and there was nothing. No quest Marker on my map to do it. But eventually I found this one door lit by a thing. Went in, talked, and I was like, this is the experience I want out of a fallout. I don't want it to be just go kill 76 things right over there and come back to me.
- [09:34]
B
It's funny you bring that up. I was losing my mind trying to find this building, and I just. I gave up. I was like, we only have so much time.
- [09:42]
A
And that's one of the pushing pulls that's always so interesting. I was talking to people about this after the fact of demoing a, for all intents and purposes, an MMO rpg, an online rpg, whatever you want to call it. You know what I mean? But this one was I cool. You're level 300. You've got the amazing new weapons that we're putting into this thing. Even though you're just starting out, you can fast travel to all the places that you haven't been to yet, but you're so. It's like just bam, Zapping around the map, killing everything in one hit. Not really getting the experience of, all right, here's your bounty. Go off and find it. It was more like, oh, it's there, there. Kill the guy. Okay, do the thing. They have these, as you mentioned. There's a number of different bounties that you can just pick up from the ghoul. But then there are the big bounties, which are like, you have to pay. I think it was 5,000 caps is what I put down to get it. You put it out. It's a. Once you put it out, it's an event on the map for other people to come join on you, and you go and off and do it. And that, I think setup is very cool of gearing up kind of Guild Wars 2e of like, we're just gonna create a world event and go off and kill some stuff. But again, you do it here, and then it would be. I have it down here. As Brenda the Irradiated. It was a headhunt, right? She's supposed to be this badass with her badass army. And we just started. It's like, I don't. I didn't count the numbers. If it's 6, 7, 12 players, but it's just all of us around it with the coolest gun in the game, just shooting her to death. Like, she put up no fight, no struggle, no challenge, and went down. I was like, this will play differently. When I'm coming in with my schlub of a character that's only level 76 or 90 or whatever, but it was still an interesting way to be tossed in and see some of this stuff.
- [11:19]
B
Yeah, 100%, because I had a scenario where we were kind of almost in this pit area with these death claws and all of us, you know, 300, and we're just op. And I'm just sitting back with a missile launcher and I'm just destroying this thing. So to your point. Yeah. What we got to play. We definitely weren't getting the true player experience because we're already at the high level. But, you know, as you know, there are people that have been playing Fallout 76 since the beginning, and they're at that level, so that's the experience that they're going to see. But one thing I did want to circle back to that Fallout 76 has done, even outside of this update that's going to come in December, is they've. They've updated the camp. The camps. The building of camps.
- [12:04]
A
Yeah. That was their big summer update, right?
- [12:07]
B
Yeah. And I actually think that, in my opinion, is the bigger thing for. For the overall community, because like I said when I was talking to John and Bill, you know, they're super excited about that because that's just allowing more creative freedom for the community to create these elaborate camps and bases. And, you know, look after this game, pass increase. We see Phil Spencer's camp, you can go nuke that thing to freaking hell. It's. It's. That is what I. I like Fallout 76 for. And I think this Burning Springs update gives us a new area, gives us some new things to do, but it's really that collaboration of that dedicated community of Fallout 76 and adding those kind of updates like the Gone Fishing update. Yeah, they're going to continue, you know, to update that. They're adding new bait, new fish, things like that, because they want this thing to continue to evolve and support the community that way.
- [12:56]
A
Barrett, I just dropped you a link for the camp trailer. Can we play with the sound up? Because this is something they mentioned as well, and I know was their big summer update I didn't come back to.
- [13:05]
D
Welcome back to this very special episode of Camp Revamped. Today, we've got renovations and innovations happening all across Appalachia. With relaxed building restrictions, you can snap, collide, and free build with abandon. Neighbors needn't be jealous.
- [13:31]
A
They can do it, too. Law.
- [13:38]
D
Law never changes. Lucky for us, the workshop does. With a streamlined new menu, you can find and place anything you're after with ease. Do it your way. Don't let the markers of good taste stop you. No more blocks to build them. The only ones you'll find are in the defense category. Not the type to build from scratch, honey. Prefab is at your fingertips. Ain't she a beaut? Your creativity is what makes this post apocalyptic hellscape great. So build to your irradiated hots content.
- [14:20]
B
And we'll see you on the flip side.
- [14:31]
A
So yeah, if you hadn't jumped into fallout 76 pre the camp revamp, the idea was that it was pretty rigid on how you could build and what you could build. And for me, someone who does not like base building, it meant that I never actually committed to my base. There were times where I, I, I, when I unlocked the vault itself I was like, oh, I'm going to use this as my base. And I just put a vault in the middle of the area and I couldn't put it. So it' just this block sitting not even in a wall in the ground or anything just outside of it. And then I went in and I was like, I'm going to build everything inside. And it was such a clunky, I couldn't put this there to get that to do this that I just have this horrible base inside and then all my generators outside and it's just ugly and horrible. So when they talked about this during the presentation that piqued my interest. And it's the same way of like I said, you know, last time we did the touch in review and played a whole bunch of it and streamed a whole bunch of it. It was before the Ghoul update was last December slash January. Mr. Hawks will keep me on and so I haven't done that either. So it's like any other classic games as a service where I'm like now there's like three pretty meaty updates and I wonder when we get to December if I will be in that lull. Whatever end of the year where it's like, you know, we've done game of the year stuff. I've, I've played what I'm going to play. I'm through the big releases now. I want to go in here and drop a bunch more hours, make my character into a ghoul, really get going on a campsite and then yeah, run out into this burning Springs update.
- [16:00]
B
Well, I, I think an interesting point that you're bringing up because this is not coming out until December because it does have some, some ties to the Fallout TV show for season two. I, I believe in, you know, let Me know if you disagree, but I think it's fair to say that this was they didn't have anything ready for Fallout when season one came out. They didn't realize it was going to be as big of a hit as it was. So what was the quickest thing that they could get up and running to and into players hands by the time season two came out? So 76 made the most sense because there was no way they were going to stand up a whole whole new standalone Fallout game in that time. So while I'm very appreciative of this and I like the update and I like everything that they're changing in this, clearly they're anticipating season two being as big, if not bigger than season one. And to your point, someone's going to watch that and very similar to like we've seen with the Last of Us. They'll say, well, is there a game? Oh wow, there's a game that I can actually jump in and experience this for myself. And I had asked Bill and John about this as well, which is probably my only disappointment. But it just is the timeline of 76. They can't have a direct tie in to season two because technically the ghouls obviously are all been around this entire time. So you can just drop him into this. But this time period is way before the television show happened, so you're not going to see Lucy or any of these other characters show up in the game and do anything. And you know, he's a little coy about maybe we might have some other Easter eggs that tie into season two. But anyone think you're going to get a direct parallel to season two? The ghoul is going to be it, handing out those bounties and showing up in various places in Burning Springs.
- [17:43]
A
Yeah, this is a fascinating vein to tap into. I'm glad you did. Yeah. If you're unfamiliar and I'm not getting through like the wide swath, but 76 technically started in 2102. 2021-02 being the year the show is 2296. So you're looking at almost two years between them. And that's why obviously the ghoul could be here and believably be in Ohio and then eventually make his way all the way out to where this is. But more importantly, I think yes, this is an amazing way to try to capitalize on what clearly caught them, I think, off guard last time around, which was we all watched Fallout Season one, myself included, and that's what made me start back up. 76 is that I was like, man, I want to play Fallout. The show is doing such a great job of making Fallout a TV show that I want to go back to the games. And I, I kicked the tires on New Vegas. I think I toyed around with starting a Fallout 4 new character and I was like, you know what? No, let's just commit to 76. And that's where I went. And you saw story after story on IG and GameSpot VGC about all time peak concurrence here. This is crazy, this amount. And if you are Bethesda slash Microsoft, you know, they were sitting there kicking themselves not having something more meaty for you to sink your teeth into. So yeah, holding onto this and launching it right with season two in December is a brilliant maneuver. Let alone having Walton Goggins crossover with it and hopefully bring people in and get them to jump in and try it out and go for it.
- [19:09]
B
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- [19:12]
A
I want to get into questions you have I've seen in the chat. I want to get into more thoughts about Walton Goggins. I want to. Apparently we were going to end up talking about Game Pass, I'm sure. And I want to see what Paris has been playing. But before we do any of that, I'll remind you that this is the of Funny Games cast. We couldn't do without your support. Head over to patreon.com kindafunny YouTube.com kindafunny Games Apple and Spotify, you can pick up a Kind of Funny membership and you can get all of our shows ad free. Get your daily dose of me and get good karma for supporting a small business. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsors.
- [19:44]
E
Kind of Funny Games Daily 2000 is happening on October 6th. I can't believe it. We are 2000 episodes into this daily weekday show. Thank you so much for your support over the years. Watching this 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.
- [20:57]
A
And we're back. Like I said, you can super chat to be part of the show, but you can also sound off. I have a free chat and a super chat that I think are related. Arcade Broke says, is it a new section on the map or do you have to teleport to it? Meanwhile, a Super chat from Mr. Hawks, our fallout expert says Wastelanders was a massive overhaul, adding NPCs and stuff. They say this is the biggest update. Is it just due to the map edition or is there more? So you're both talking about the map, Mr. Hawks. It's because of the size of the map they're throwing up for Ohio where they're just in for. For you, Arcade Broke. They are just zooming out the map over here and adding in a whole bunch of stuff in the northwest of what you'd be getting in this Ohio and I guess just due west as well. But up over here you have this Ohio section. A whole bunch of new landmarks, a whole bunch of new things, new areas to explore. But no, it's not like, like Fallout DLCs of the past where you would teleport to the pit or something like that. This is on the map and so you are going there and doing it. Back to you, Mr. Hawks. No, it's. It is. It's the size thing, I think. It's not that they're adding in crazier NPC. I mean there's new NPCs obviously, but it's not. It's not. I don't think it's nearly as big as the Wastelanders overhaul Paris. Is that the vibe you got to.
- [22:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, same. It's just adding that section on onto the map is probably what they're really talking about as far as it being the biggest update.
- [22:15]
A
Yeah. So then, yeah, you get into again, what we were doing out there running around the wasteland. And I think again, the pistol resistance here is Walton Goggins Ghoul. It's worth pointing out that we got a special message at the preview event from Walton Goggins being how excited he is to be a part of this, blah, blah. But because he had just laid the lines down, his ghoul looked like the ghoul but did not sound. It wasn't Walton Goggins his lines yet or whatever, which was fine because I'd rather get those when I'm there and seeing him record it and have false teeth in to do his whole speech, I thought was pretty dang cool. But even as you walk up, this is what you're gonna see. You see Walton Goggins is ghoul sitting there with a pile of bounty posters for you to do. These are the free ones. You can just take. You can go out, you can get a bunch of caps. These are the ones that are more what you'd expect of a Fallout 76 single player mission. Obviously you can play with other people, but you take it, you get added to it. You go over there, you kill a bunch of people and you kill that person and then congratulations, you've done it. Then like I said, there are these ones that are the head hunts that are the ones you have to throw down the caps for, be challenged for get better gear. Get the. This is where my notes are here, what we're talking about. Four Star assault rifles and all this other jazz you'd be getting, right? The big stuff that you're going off and getting off the head hunts. Paris, do you think this will be enough to make you commit into this, to come back to this, to actually go through Fallout 76 and go for it?
- [23:35]
B
Yeah, I feel like exactly what you were alluding to previously before the break, I think season two is going to come out and I'm gonna want to jump in and. And experience this and play it more. And even what we got to play, I definitely wanted more of that. I wanted to kind of see where some of those quests were going to go. I'm very curious to see what some of the higher tier public event bounties will be like as well. I had actually got a not a full armor suit, but a partial armor suit. So it was cool to be able to do that running around through the wasteland as well. I. I'm very interested to see how the greater community will embrace this as well. And then like we talk about the. The camp updates, seeing some of the crazy concoctions that people are going to be able to lay down with that as well. So yeah, I definitely think there'll be an interest, especially in the December time when we're going to normally be kind of winding down anyways.
- [24:24]
A
Yeah, that's how I feel too. I could easily see it being, you know, once it's out there, I'm going to want to run over there and have that first off interaction with the ghoul, continue that game, get the bounty hunters, but then go off and like every time there's a new map to explore, a new thing to do, you know, that fall feeling of coming up on a place and like, you know, location discovered, that's always so key to what makes these games special. And going through and discovering them together with your friends, if you want to, or off on your own is interesting. I don't know. So, you know, in my time with Fallout, like as a Bethesda RPG super fan or whatever, right, I never craved a multiplayer Fallout. And so then even playing Fallout 76, that was still a very solitary experience for me, where it was like. Like when we'd get it in there on a stream and then go off and do one of the big event, like, hey, we're all shooting those things. That never has ever felt like Fallout to me. So even we're making fun of these end game missions we went on of like, okay, cool. And we're just beating the. Out of Brenda the irradiated. It's like, this is how it's always kind of felt when I get teleported in and like, what's going on? We're just shooting this thing. Okay. Like the Discovery and the little things and the little missions that'll what I think in December is what I'll actually get back into. And I like this too, of one of the missions I was doing. I was setting up for a heist or whatever, and I was like getting people together and doing all these different things and I had to get them on my side. And I was kind of half paying attention. I was paying attention, but like, all right, whatever, whatever, whatever. And the one person had sent me to go talk to somebody, but of course I ended up killing that person because that's what I did. And when I came back and told her I killed that person, she wouldn't work with me. And she walked off and it was like, oh. So then I had to go to the guy who was. I was organizing this and be like, yo, it's just us. I couldn't get this woman to come. I thought that was like a nice little tweak that I honestly wasn't really expecting from 76, because I still think of 76 as being not the full blown Fallout, not the full blown Bethesda rpg. And that's taking away from what it's done. What it did with the last update that I thought was a very, very cool one with us dealing with the ghouls. I like that they're are getting more of that in here. And I think Paris, back to your point, giving it more of a Fallout 3 new Vegas feeling to it, which is something they were very clear about during their opening presentation, that this is more Fallout 3 and New Vegas inspired.
- [26:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And. And that's, again, I think that's where it ties into, you know, not to spoil anything, where season two seems to be headed for the TV show. Yeah, they kind of want an area there in 76 that'll probably replicate some of that, so. Yeah, we'll see.
- [26:59]
A
Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting deeper into it, but like I said, right now all I can see is outer worlds, too. I need outer worlds too. Paris, where's your hype level right now for that?
- [27:09]
B
My hype is pretty big. I'm really looking forward to. You know, we obviously talked about it a few few episodes back, you know, during the preview, so that kind of just, you know, kind of wet the appetite a little bit. Like, okay, I want to see more of this. I want to. I want to see more of where the outer worlds too, is going to. How. How big scope all these things, RPG elements, just all of it that potentially The Outer Worlds 2 is going to have. So. God, we're less than a month, like, literally. Yeah, a month away, which. Wow, it's coming up pretty fast. But, yeah, hype level is pretty big on it, for sure.
- [27:41]
A
Yeah, I've done that this week. I did an episode where I built my two characters I want to start as. Yeah, that was one month to the day. So I am constantly checking my inbox looking for any kind of update on a code, because I would love to do that and be off on to the races on that channel. But, Paris, what have you been playing? What have you been up to?
- [27:59]
B
So interesting enough? My. My real job. I've been in a lot of security conferences and doing, you know, adult work.
- [28:07]
A
Okay.
- [28:07]
B
Yeah, yeah. Stupid, stupid job and responsibilities. But what I did get to play was go say yote. Yotai. I never say it right.
- [28:16]
A
You're fine.
- [28:17]
B
You're fine. But loved it. Absolutely loved it. I obviously didn't get a chance to be on a review with all you guys, but I was very similar to you 9 out of 10 for me. Me, I really loved it. I thought, I thought they improved like the things that I was hoping they would improve on from, from the original. They did. You can definitely tell. Sucker Punch took lessons learned from the first one. Applied it to this. I thought the story had me engaged. It didn't. It went in directions. I didn't think it was going to go, you know. I know some people thought it was straightforward, but maybe not so much for me. Yeah, I loved it. I highly recommend it. I guess tomorrow everyone's going to be able to jump in and start playing it. So. Yeah, definite. Another look, another great game for Sucker Punch. For sure.
- [29:00]
A
Talk to me about how many hours did it take you do you know, off top of your head. I know.
- [29:03]
B
So, so interesting enough because now I've been able to play more after my initial. I'm in the 40, 40 hour percentile up in there somewhere. I want to say to complete was about 32, I want to say.
- [29:16]
A
Okay, okay, okay. So you're committed. You're still. You're just out there hacking at it. Yeah, just everybody.
- [29:22]
B
Exactly. Just effing around doing stuff. But yeah, I think when people get there and I played it on PS5 Pro, so I played it Ray Tracing Pro mode, so 60 frames, all the bells and whistles on lighting, all that stuff. Great experience. Look played. Played and looked really, really good. Highly recommend.
- [29:39]
A
Okay, so then has that been dominating all of your time?
- [29:44]
B
Yeah. Okay, so, okay, first and foremost, I suck at Silksong. I'm not good. And I played a little bit.
- [29:52]
A
There's no shame in that.
- [29:53]
B
No, I know. I was like, this is hard. I'll come back to this later. So I haven't.
- [29:57]
A
Which means you'll never come back. Which means you'll never. I know, right?
- [30:00]
B
I know. Like I said, with just day job work stuff, I. I focused on, on Ghost because, you know, I know we had that extended review period and I'm kind of embracing for the storm that's about to come here over. Over the next few weeks. A ton of games coming off of Gamescom. I did, you know. I know you guys did some stuff with Nvidia as well. I did. You had that whole GeForce Now Blackwell update. Yeah, so I was in that. So I was messing around with that. Playing stuff like cyberpunk and all that with all the bells and whistles with cloud streaming on. It's very impressive.
- [30:32]
A
I was going to say, how's your experience been with that? You know how much we obviously love cloud streaming here and you know One of the parts that is not lost. But as Xbox tries to justify the price increases and stuff, here it is that, hey, cloud's coming out of beta and hey, it is going to stream with the ultimate tier. On a better thing. What are you finding with Nvidia's version?
- [30:51]
B
So here's the thing with this, and I actually meant to bring this up when I was on with Blessing and Andy. We're talking about the game pass stuff. It is great that Xbox is including more cloud streaming and updating to 1440p. Yeah, fine. On select games. Not all games. They're not. They're not even close to GeForce Now. GeForce now is just the premier cloud streaming service. The fact that I'm essentially having RTX 5080 in the cloud, so I'm playing at 4K. I can play at 120 frames per second, DLSS for the ray tracing, HDR, all the, all the bells and whistles enabled. It was so good doing that early access on Blackwell. Like I'm playing cyberpunk. You would not know that I was cloud if you just walked in. You would have thought I was just natively playing the game. That's how good it looked and played lag latency was minimal on there as well. I get. I have, you know, gig connection, Internet, all those things. But even when I was testing some of the various stuff when I was at Gamescom, you know, at the Nvidia event, just seeing how impressive that that technology is getting. Xbox has a long way to go with that. I. I get. Maybe they're probably waiting until next gen to enable more of that stuff. And 1440p is pro, the best they can do currently. But if your cloud, like even now, if I'm playing an Xbox game on cloud streaming, I play it through GeForce Now. I don't play through it xCloud, because GeForce now just plays it better. I mean, it's just as simple as that.
- [32:16]
A
Yeah, GeForce now is something that's slowly taking the office by storm. I have it set up, but I've been. I was on the Ghost of Yotei, not. I was gonna say Slog. That's not. I mean the grind where I was trying to get that ready for review and then since then I've just been binging skates, so I haven't. We've got it all set up out there and the ultimate passes and the ultimate subscriptions. But yeah, I've heard such great things that I haven't ventured all the way in yet. So I'm glad to see you're still loving it. What are you, are you playing across your devices? Because I know I have it on my Mac. I have it over there on the Rog Ally like are you where, where are you primarily using GeForce Now?
- [32:51]
B
Yeah, so I've been doing it two, well, three places actually because you can do it on Steam Deck and even on Steam Deck you can get like up to 90 frames on the Steam Deck OLED because you know it supports it screen W. I, you know testing wise I was doing it on the PC but I have also done it on the, on the living room as well on the big screen.
- [33:09]
A
Nice.
- [33:09]
B
Plays just fine. No, no issues at all. So it's been pretty, pretty solid. Again I, I get there. There's a fee. It's not included with something like, like the Xbox is doing with Game Pass but you know, it's a great entry point into cloud gaming and it kind of shows you the future potential of where it could go.
- [33:27]
A
Yeah, because I'm trying to, I want to jump into explaining, I'm trying to dial in the exact thing because. Cause you can just tell me what I get wrong. The deal with Nvidia GeForce now isn't that you're subscribing to a subscription service of this many games like Game Pass. Instead you're basically subscribing to use their. If you go ultimate 50 90s in the cloud that then dial into all your libraries. Right. Cause like when I set it up I gave it access to my Steam, to my Epic, to my Xbox. And so all of those services are then put into this cloud PC so I can play any game I own with the same save and X, Y and Z. Right.
- [34:07]
B
It's games that you already own. Like you said from Steam, Epic, gog, Ubisoft Connect, Xbox is PC Game Pass. So you're essentially connecting PC Game Pass and playing those games through there as well. And, and just to be you know, 100 technically clear, it's an art. The Blackwell update is an RTX 5080. Thank you. Not a 5090 but trash. Very, very impressive.
- [34:29]
A
Yeah, nobody would ever play with that.
- [34:33]
B
And depending tier that you purchase time wise and all that you can get like the ultimate tier which unlocks all the bells and whistles that we've been talking about. And then there's some lesser tiers that kind of limit the amount of hours that you can actually play on it, you know, per month, things like that. So you just have to go in and look and see what works best for you. Obviously the ultimate tier would, would be the best one and I apologize, I don't have the, the price of that off the top of my head right now, but like I said for the service they provide. Oh, and you can also now do where you can install certain games that are not not quote unquote a part of of the of the Steam service. Like again, I'm last minute doing this, but there's certain games that you can actually just install and play. There's also the discord like the Fortnite feature where you can instantly like a friend invites you into Fortnite, you can instantly just fire it up and you're just jumping into Fortnite playing with them via GeForce now as well. But again, I'm not sure how the pricing tier works on that. But again the technology of what they're doing is very impressive.
- [35:35]
A
I mean look right there. I'm using it right now to boot into my Starfield safe.
- [35:38]
B
Yeah.
- [35:39]
A
All right, we got to play more Starfield. That's what it's all about, everybody. So then, Paris, yes. I realize it's a dark day for UXbots all right out here with the private. But the next thing I'd want to do a Paris Lilly check in on is where are you at on basically the eve of the Asus Xbox Rog Ally X or the standard one where how are, what are you feeling right now as you get ready for that?
- [36:09]
B
I mean I'm looking forward to it. Again, going back to Gamescom, I got extended time with, with both the X and the I'm just gonna say the black one and the white one, you know what the hell I'm talking about. So I got to use both. And I actually was very impressed with, with the the Xbox Ally, the white one, the seven, the quote unquote version because I was playing force Horizon 5 on it, you know, played Balatro some other games. It was fine. I mean it played. I mean loading for Forza. Horizon was kind of long on it, I noticed but other way and I played Silk Song a little bit on it as well. It was fine. I I think, look, I am not a fan of the prices at all. I think a thousand bucks and $600 is too much. But it's the unfortunate reality of just where we are in in the current market right now. But I do think the Ally One, the white one is probably going to be the one that sells the most again just because of the price and I think it does enough for what people are going to want from it. Whereas the X is going to be the more enthusiast device, obviously terabyte drive in it playing games at 1080p. It has the Z2 Extreme AI chip, things like that. I'm looking forward to it. I want to see. I think my biggest thing is how curated is this Xbox full screen experience, which is a mouthful to say, of course. How is that going to be in comparison to what I'm used to with the Steam Deck and Steam os? Steam. The Steam Deck never forces me to go to the desktop to do anything. I can load all my games, play all my games just fine. I only go to the desktop. If I choose to go to the desktop. Will Xbox and Microsoft be able to replicate a similar experience with Windows? What we played so far has been in a controlled environment. I'm curious to not have someone sitting over my shoulder while I'm playing it so I can just tinker and see what I can break and all these things that I want to check out because ultimately it's not going to be so much about this Asus device because eventually it's going to come to all Windows PC handhelds. And that's what where I think they're trying to go with this where it's just, just here's the Windows slash Xbox gaming experience. You press the button once you're in it, you never have to go to the desktop. You can bring in Steam, you can bring in Epic, all these other things. Play all your games from this uniform UI and off you go right now. And until we obviously get more hands on and get to the final review period of it, I know I still prefer the Steam Deck, that that's my go to handheld device because of the UI and the ease of use. And let's see if Asus and Xbox can get there with this Windows experience.
- [38:55]
A
Fascinating. Yeah. You know, I'm already a Rog guy and so like I'm of the same argument you have of. I already like the interface of my Rog Ally X which is just Windows, which I know is so preposterous. Everybody hates this apparently, except me. But I love the idea of just the screen works so well for me. Tapping on the Xbox, tapping on Steam, downloading my things, my icons are all there, whatever I need. You know, even now with Nvidia GeForce now having it all right there. I'm more worried about the. I love the idea of this Xbox interface. I love it freeing up memory and RAM and all the stuff I don't understand getting me into experiences faster But I'm more like, well what about when I need to do something on this device that isn't Steam and isn't Xbox like so I'm gonna to get Nvidia GeForce on this, am I going to need to boot into a Windows thing to go to with and then how, how on the nice Xbox layout is it going to know that I have that? And like these are my questions of how I'm immediately going to try to break it.
- [40:00]
B
And, and I think it's fair to say day one that's going to be cumbersome. They, they, they're still going to have a lot of work to do on refining those. So I'm, I'm not expecting perfection at launch, but let's see what it looks like three months from now, six months from now now you know, as more people get hands on and they get more feedback on this because I think to me this is clearly the alpha look at the next generation of Xbox. Whatever this next console is going to be all that. I think we're getting an early look at where they're headed with this because they're bringing in third party digital stores. They're becoming more PC centric than they are console centric. How is all that going to work? It has to be easy to use. I think I've said this to Jason Ronald a million times. I just want to the button and I'm playing the game. That's. I don't want to tinker, I don't want to have to do anything else because even though I can do it, I know the average person that's not what they want from a gaming experience. And that's again where I bring Valve into it. Steam got right. Valve got that right. With the Steam deck. You just press the button with the Steam deck and you go play your games.
- [41:05]
A
Yeah, I think even today with the Rog I'll have the option or. And I'm using The Razer Blade 16, the Razer Gaming laptop they sent me that I actually really like of. But it's that idea of like when I hit and I'm gonna screw it up. I think it's the, you know on when I hit one of my buttons that I, I want to be the Xbox. Yes. When I hit my Xbox button on my controller when I'm connected to those things and it brings up the over hub. It doesn't bring up. It brings up both the Xbox menu but then it also brings up the the over and I'm like why don't want to be in this menu when I close it. But then it doesn't work anymore on the Xbox menu. I'm like, this sucks. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this one hurdle, like, I'm with you. Like, I'm still of the mind that I wish this was just an Xbox handheld. I. You know, as much as I'm enjoying my foray into PC and Xbox game anywhere and everything, and how that's changed, how I've played a lot of different things, just being able to do it that way would be so much nicer.
- [41:55]
B
Oh, 100%.
- [41:56]
A
Yeah. Okay, good to know. Well, embarrassed here. My wire was hanging out. Was it going crackly crack, crack, crackity crack crack. You told me.
- [42:05]
B
Yeah, a little bit.
- [42:06]
A
You could have told me to hold up. Thank you, Barrett. By the way, Paris might call into games daily tomorrow. I didn't tell him that you were gonna call in. Yeah, I told Blessing. Blessing saw on the calendar. I was like, good, that's taken care of. Because there's 50 other plates spinning. But, yeah, never, never that. Never got to bear it. I apologize again, Bear.
- [42:24]
B
And I was in all caps in the chat going, answer, discord, let me in.
- [42:28]
A
Why would you let me in? Look, when bless brought it up, I.
- [42:31]
C
Brought Discord up, and I didn't see you jump into Discord for a while, so I'm just same.
- [42:37]
A
It really is.
- [42:37]
B
Well, I was wait. Well, we want to get technical. I was waiting to see where it says live to see, like, the little KF control show up. And I never saw it, so I just.
- [42:46]
A
I didn't.
- [42:46]
C
So we were just waiting for each other?
- [42:48]
B
Yes, we were.
- [42:50]
A
What else you want to talk about, Paris?
- [42:54]
B
Let's talk about this game pass stuff, because I don't know what you think. Obviously, I ranted on kfgd, but what do you think about all this game pass stuff?
- [43:02]
A
Oh, man. A great question. I think, in short, Paris, gamers are babies. No, I'm kidding. It's a bummer, right? It's it for the. All the naysayers for through the years here who have been talking about game pass is unsustainable. Game pass is unsustainable. You get to this moment here, and it's like there are so many questions about it. As you would expect with Microsoft being a corporation and being a business, Today's announcement was very businessy and very corporate, and I think it would have gone a long way to have a Xbox podcast with Phil. They say all this stuff, but then there is a conversation of like, so why is this happening? Why are we taking day one titles and putting them here? Is it that we're not finding the return on investment and so this is how we're trying to make it. Is it just that there's more money going? I mean they have this. What is it they. Today's thing is like we're putting 75, we're guaranteeing for the next year 75 day one titles on Xbox Game pass Ultimate. And so it's like awesome. But we never threw a number around like that before in the before times of like how many you were get. So I think going a long way of like hey, we're doing 75 and that's this much more. And here they are like, like let's, let's. They said keeper and they said this and it's like yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean like you Xbox aren't putting out 75 day one titles like Xbox published games. So what are the ones you're adding here that are beyond that to make me go? Because I think then that would have been not an easy pill to swallow but an easier one to be like, oh well I know that I wanted this game in in December and then these two in February and I see that those are coming right now on this announce. So I know that I can already knock those off what I was going to pay before. But like right now you're asking, you're giving bad news which there's no way to increase prices on anything and not be a bad news. But I don't think you gave enough ammunition to people who want to defend you. And it might be the fact that it's obviously marketing agreements. You can't talk about games that are coming out in July yet because or whatever you know, throughout the dates it might be that and you just have to do it. It might just be that that this is one of those that yeah, they know they're going to lose a lot of people. They know that the they're going to have a membership dip here as people mass unsubscribe. We're talking about on games daily that the unsubscribe page is broken because so many people are using it apparently. Like they understand that's going to happen. And then maybe it's just this war of attrition that cool Outer Worlds 2 is out in a month. Are you buying that or are you re upping for game pass and doing the I'm just going to re up for game pass this month month and then lo and behold something happens in November like I'll keep it in December and that, you know, like there are so many variables to this that more than anything right now what I'm interested is in is something you guys talked about in Games Daily and it's is Xbox going to weather the storm? Whenever it comes down to this kind of stuff, whether it be the launch of the Xbox One, the announcement of the Xbox One or a change in your business plan, and this is anywhere, not just Xbox. Are you committed to the vision? Are you committed to these 75 games you're saying you're going to provide on Xbox Day One that you go, yep, we're going to tank. We're going to have double digit losses and I'm throwing that, just pulling that literally out of my ass. My hand was behind me. We're going to have double digit losses of Game Pass ultimate subscribers for this fiscal quarter. But we know that in the next year we're going to prove why this is worth it and why you should come back. And if you sit there and do the arithmetic of the amount of games you were going to buy, but you can get here, even at $30, it's a better deal. I'm fascinated to see what they do there because right now they've done this 75 games, the Fortnite thing, the Ubisoft thing, you know, they're at, they're doing value ads with now. You know, the cloud. You get first priority getting in. You get the highest quality. They're saying a lot of stuff, but that's not what excites people. The games are what excites people. And so then you do this thing now of like, all right, you got to shut up and prove that it.
- [47:15]
B
But see, I think that's the other part of this. And I, I talked about a little bit with Blessing Andy. I do think next year is going to be pretty freaking big for them. It's the 25th anniversary year. They're going to be loaded. So I do think in the short term actions will speak very loud for them. What about 2027? What about 2028? Are you keeping the momentum going? What about, all right, now you've launched this next generation of hardware. What's, what does that launch lineup look like? Like, does it make sense for me to want to stay subscribed at your highest tier during this entire time? Or does it make sense? Look, I'm not going to do day and date anymore. Or do I just go to PC Game Pass for day and date? I don't know. But maybe now I no longer do day and data at these prices, maybe I go down to premium. Because if you look at the premium tier, it's pretty good for. In comparison to what you might see out of PlayStation plus or something like that. Right, That I can see. But like I said, you know, earlier, that is not what sold people on Game Pass. What sold people on Game Pass was day and date, was your big games coming day and date to the service. And now you put it at a price tier that people are going to be very hesitant to want to consistently stay subscribed to. I honestly just don't see it.
- [48:36]
A
Yeah, the consistency is, I think, where you'll lose some people. But I also think that, like, you bring up the premium and the essential tiers, whatever, there is this conversation that again, we're not privy to and you imagine they are with all their data and all their things of what are people using Game Pass for?
- [48:54]
B
Right, right.
- [48:54]
A
So many times we do shows like this. We talk to people like Mark Marus and Dean Brown and A.J. kelly and Peter and Antony, like every in these chats that are as hardcore and crazy about games as we are, when in reality, how many parents and college students and whatever have subscribed to Game Pass because they just want a Netflix of games or they just want this one game and they are at the tier that is below this and their price didn't change, but they're now getting an added value. And then there are the whales that are us that are gonna go, well, if I was gonna buy Outer Worlds and I was gonna buy this, and I do okay, yeah, this technically is a better deal, so I'll stick around for it or. Or I'm going to come in for the 12 months I play those things and leave and nickel and dime it and this that the other. And like we all forget about subscriptions to some point. So it's like you get them through the door even for one game and then maybe stick around like, I don't know.
- [49:48]
B
Yeah, yeah. Which is all very possible. I think my thing is, and again, I bring my kids into it is they use it, especially my oldest daughter, more for discovery. Yeah, that's probably the biggest perk of Game Pass. They discover that gym of a game that they never heard of and like, oh, I'll try.
- [50:05]
A
Right.
- [50:06]
B
Are you going to get that same experience in the premium or essential tier, or is that something that's still going to be more exclusive to. To the ultimate tier? And to your point, these are the questions that they're going to have to answer honestly over the next 12 months of. All right, we know in the short term people are going to be mad. They're going to cancel. We're going to see headlines are going to be blazing for the next couple of weeks about this. But can we weather the storm? Get into 2026? 6, get to Forza, Horizon 6 and E Day and yeah, whatever Halo thing might come out and all these other indie and third party titles that we've, we've partnered up with to be in the service to show that, yeah, this is worth the 30 bucks. Even though at first glance I, I don't think it is. I, that's just, that was my first reaction when I heard the price. I was like, yikes, that's a lot. I don't see a lot of people wanting, especially in this current market, to spend that amount of money every month on this service, despite how much I've loved it over the years. Best value in gaming and all that. To me, that's, that's the red line. Seeing, seeing that 29.99, I go, this is too much. And if you go back to the X Cast days, Mike and I and Gary, there was the rumors of the family plan. Yeah, that clearly is not happening.
- [51:24]
A
That never happened.
- [51:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [51:26]
A
I think it'll be interesting because I think there is an argument to be made for, and this is something you guys talked about in Games Daily that, well, how many times am I turning my Xbox on a year? And so if you're one of those gamers and it really is Forza and it really is Outer Worlds and it really is Halo and Gear, then it, maybe it is that you're just doing the arithmetic of, well, I'll save the 40 bucks and I'll subscribe for this one month and then I'll, I'll bounce. I'll do it for the one thing and bounce. And I don't know if Microsoft looks at that and again, how many people are. It's always that thing of how many people are actually stopping right now. How many people are actually doing this in turn. We see it and it's the site's crashing or whatever, but it's like they know what they expected to lose. They see what they're losing right now. And then they also know if they believe enough in this vision that they're going to say, no, no, we're committed and we're going through. Or as Andy was talking about, you know, in a week, back, back off this and be like, you know what? Hey, we're stripping these Things out and trying to get it back to that, whatever. But it's an interesting time.
- [52:28]
B
Yeah, it, it, it, it is an interesting time because like I said, the hardware itself, you know, has, the prices have gone through the roof for, for various reasons, obviously. Then we're seeing the subscription services, their prices are going up, obviously. We just talked about the handheld. Those prices are, you know, pretty high as well. At what, what's the breaking point, I guess is, is what I'm saying. At some point people are just going to say enough, enough. And they're going to vote with their wallets and they're not going to subscribe to this stuff or they're not going to purchase these things. And that, that is probably my concern. We already know how awful the industry is. We're seeing all these layoffs, studios closing, things getting canceled. I don't see this helping, I guess is my point.
- [53:08]
A
Sure.
- [53:08]
B
You know, does this do even more harm to what's, what's going to be going, going towards, you know, as we head into 2026 and beyond? Obviously, obviously, you know, Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be big next year. I didn't even mention Fable. Fable is going to come next year. We'll see what Wolverine and, you know, Soros and all these other games. Where are people going to decide to put their. They're going to invest their money and time into. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. Is Game Pass going to still be worth me investing into? Because you only have so much time to play these games, so to the point you're going to kind of map out, I want to play this, this, this and this. Not to mention whatever the hell Nintendo's going to have too. So when you're, you're that kind of gamer that you only have so much time, there's only so many games you're going to play. Do I, do I want to subscribe to Game Pass or do I just want to go buy my games now and I'll just play them as they come? And to me, the downside to that is now there's going to be games that I might have discovered through Game Pass and given a try that I'm just, I'm not going to do it now because it's just the cost of entry is too much.
- [54:14]
A
Here's my thing about that argument, and I don't. You're not wrong. Again, I'm not trying to say you're wrong. My thought on it is though, I just think it presents you now with A choice more than anything of like it does Dungeons of Hinterberg, a game I really, really vibed with last year. Two years ago, from Game Pass, right? I saw it at gdc, didn't even give it the time of day, but it came to Game Pass. I tried it or somebody suggested to. I was like, oh, man, I really, really like this. I vibe with this, right? I feel like if the headlines would have grabbed me or the trailer would have grabbed me, it would have been the normal thing of. And I don't have Game Pass. Ult this timeline now where Game pass ultimate cost $30. I was like, oh, I'm gonna pick this up. I feel like before I would click that buy button, if I saw that it was on Game Pass, I would go, well, this is a bad example because I'm sure that game was like 30 bucks on its own. Maybe, maybe 25, maybe 20. But again, the arithmetic of it of like, well, let's say it's 20. I can buy it for 20 right now or for $10 more. I can do ultimate for a month and have access to something else I want to play. Like, I, I don't. I think the pop of having a Game Pass, your game is on Game Pass, day one, when we get to Game Awards, when we get to the next developer direct, when we get to SGF next year, and Xbox does the big thing and it's all day one with Game Pass Ultimate. Game Pass Ultimate. Those are all arrows in the quiver, right? To make you go, shit, maybe I should pick up Game Pass ultimate for this. That, you know, again, what's $10 worth to you? And then what's $120 worth to you? But it's the argument over here. I said saw a second ago in the live chat. I'm sorry, is saying, man, at $30, I might as well just buy the full price game. Well, by that argument, like, that's $40 you're losing, and maybe I'm now doing the girl math thing of it, but you're, you're, you're losing $40. So if we multiplied 40 by 12 months and we're talking about $480. Now, granted, that's you buying a $70 game each and every month. I know that's not necessarily what's happening. It's just there's a lot of sky is falling right now because money is tight everywhere. Right? But I appreciate, I appreciate all this duro in the, in the live chat goes. Even If I paid $30 a month this year, I easily have Gotten my money's worth, right? Dean Brown. Xbox is my primary console. Turn it on every day. I have a PlayStation 5 too, but game Pass gives me constant games, new and old. I'll probably stick with ultimate for now. I've only bought two games this year. I'm not saying these two are everybody, but nobody is everybody. Where I feel like. Like, for me, when I heard this news, I was like, ah, $10 extra. That sucks. And I was like, well, it's giving you Fortnite and the Fortnite Pass or whatever. Fortnite crew. And I'm like, I don't play Fortnite. I have my thing where I fall into Fortnite once a year, maybe once a year and a half. I. Today I immediately, I went to xCloud, opened up fortnight, and I was like, how do I link it? I was like, this is complicated. And I read it was in November. I was like, damn it, they got me. I didn't even read the fucking full article. But like, for me, even though, full disclosure, my Game Pass ultimate is a code that Xbox gave me or whatever to try it out when they did the thing. But if I was on the outside, I would be like, well, I know I'm gonna need V Bucks eventually, so I would keep it. But again, different financial situation for me than maybe for you, than maybe for whoever. And da, da, da. I'm not. I am not. I want to. I think we're doing a very good job here of keeping each other in check. To be clear. I'm not. I was joking with the beginning. Suck it up gamers. I just think everybody's got a different use case scenario here, so I'm going to be interested, see how this nets out and what Xbox was expecting.
- [57:36]
B
Well, yeah, and to be clear, and I guess full disclosure myself, Dean Brown.
- [57:40]
A
Says, for the record, I still think the price rise isn't good, even though I choose to stick with it. Yes, Dean, exactly. I'm right there with you. Of like, this sucks.
- [57:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, 100%. But just full disclosure, even on myself, yes, Xbox has given me codes over the years, but my kids, I pay for that. So that's what I'm, you know, I'm looking at it from that standpoint of. Of, is this still going to be worth it? Look, for them, they'll be like, keep it because they're not the ones paying for it. But the second that they do, you know, they're going to look at it differently. And to your point, like people in the chat and I've Seen comments on social media. There are people out there that still see the value in this and trust me, I see value. It is just the sticker shock of that price in comparison to what it was even two years ago that it's going to make you second guess this. It's going to make you actually think, do I want this? Yes, yes. The, the hardcore gamer, you probably would still want to get ultimate because you're going to get, you're going to pull all the value out of it because you're going to play all these games. You're going to have a blast. It's more of the people that don't have as much time, that are more casual, that are playing. Is this worth it for them? For people that would, sure, you could downgrade to the lower tier, but now you're not getting those day one games. But you're going to have people that are going to want to play Fable, that are going to want to play Gears E Day. They're not going to want to wait a year, year to go play those games. They're going to want to play them right away.
- [59:01]
A
So, but here's my question about all that. And I hear you. And again, this is where I'd love to be. In the Xbox data center where I like, do those people actually exist or are we making them up? Because this is always the argument when it's like, well, what about when a grandma walks into Walmart and tries to buy they don't know the difference between a PS5 Pro and a PS5. It's like, does that situation really happen? Because I feel like I didn't even try crossing the bridge to explaining to my friend in Missouri with the three boys when they saw me playing Fortnite. You have Fortnite on your phone? How? And I was like, I'm not even gonna, I was like, Xbox has this. I'm not gonna jump through the hoops to try to explain Xbox Game Pass to you where it's like, I feel like the ultimate group is the ultimate group and that if you were so dialed in that you're like, well, now it's too much and I'm gonna go down one. Then if you're that dialed in when they do launch Forza and you're like, I want that. Day one, you go up the month and you come back down. But I, I, I don't know. I just think the casual gamers aren't subscribed to Xbox ultimate already, nor maybe not Game Pass in general, period. I don't know.
- [60:05]
B
And you very well could. Could be the case. Obviously, they, they see the data, they know the numbers. Let's put it this way, they didn't wake up yesterday and go, you know what? We're just going to make it 30 bucks and see what happens. Yeah, they're going off of some type of data that's telling them that they should be doing this where there's sustainability or, or lack of interest from the majority of, like, maybe they're seeing the majority of people were already at the premium tier. So. All right, well, we don't need to keep this at 20 bucks anymore. We're going to raise it. We'll add a little more value to it, but we're going to raise the price. And the people that love ultimate, they'll stay. If they don't, they'll go down to premium. If they don't go to premium, maybe they'll just go buy their games at 70, 80 or pop. Now, I, I don't know. To your point, we'll obviously see how this plays out. I just know the initial sticker shock. And like I said, when, when, when I was told that this was happening, I was like, oh, okay, tomorrow's going to be very, very interesting. And we're obviously seeing this play out in real time now. So, you know, they're doing what they obviously they need to do. I think Phil Spencer said multiple times over the past year he needs to run a sustainable business. So they're doing what they got to do do. So we'll see. And people will make decisions that make sense for them. And I think, to your point, Greg, it's a choice. You don't have to get Ultimate. You never did. You're free to still go by the outer worlds, too, if that's all that you care about. You're still free to go buy Call of Duty if that's all you care about. But if subscribing and having access and discovery to all these games and the perks that come with it makes sense for, for you, people are going to continue to do it, but it's an individual choice ultimately.
- [61:46]
A
Yeah. I think that's the thing where it's interesting. I want to bring in. I saw people calling out Matt Piscatella that we should call him right now. Matt's busy. He's been on this show to talk about. He's got some good tweets about this. But I do like this conversation here. Over in the YouTube chat, Daniel says, why pay $30 for one game when you can buy, buy it double that and have it forever. And I think that that is a arithmetic that definitely works for you, Daniel. But I would go the other way of why not do that that because then you'd have $40 in your pocket for date night groceries, period rent. Like I think we're talking about this varying scale of people who want to play games and who they are. Like in the time we are. Right. $40 matters. And yeah, there's the arithmetic of, well, I could double forever. Like maybe you never play a game again. Barrett, how you doing?
- [62:32]
C
Well, yeah, there, there's also the, you know, you guys have been talking about this of just, just like the amount of time of investment to make that 360 a year worth it. And I just don't know if a lot of people are there, you know, with like how much they've got going on in their lives as well. So I think that's another thing to think about. And I also just want to shout out this BS thread that's Blue Sky Tim from Frank Caaldi that Matt had also reposted. I think it's a good little required reading. Again, talking about the sustainability of businesses like this, which is something I've talked about on shows before and we've talked about several times, especially looking at like Netflix, what Netflix has been doing, and just kind of the general concern we have of the sustainability of business models like this, especially when they're being used as the this will be the thing that pays for everything else that we do in production. It's like, all right, well, if you.
- [63:35]
A
Don'T mind, I'd like to. I'm going to read the thread if you don't mind. The one thing I liked from Matt was this. When this all started popping Today, he goes $30 a month for Game Pass ultimate is a hefty price jump According to Circanas Q3 2025 Future video games Custom Survey. I mean, I think he meant customer. The top reasons cited by Those in the US who have unsubscribed from Game Pass were at 58%. Couldn't justify the cost of the subscription within my budget. But like the service right underneath that was a 40% one. Price was too high for what was available. 32% would rather put the cost of subscription toward the game I would rather own. And then it goes on for a couple of the percentages there. But to close this out, let's read this Frank Cafaldi thread from bs. That's Blue Sky. Frank goes I used to work for a company called Game Tap. We were probably the first Netflix for Games started around 2006. It didn't go well. I used to think the idea was ahead of its time, but maybe. And maybe it was. But I also think times have changed and this no longer makes sense. Our big thing was pushing that we had over 1000 games you could play infinitely for something absurd like $10 a month. The way we hit that number was balancing newer PC games with about half the catalog being emulated. Old console and arcade style stuff. As part of the content team, I looked at player behavior closely and it was pretty consistent. People would sign up boot Pac man and Sonic and other games they remembered, sample them for probably less than 10 minutes and basically never play them again. What we saw is that players did drastic. I'm sorry, did basically one of two things. They either played the larger AAA PC game to completion or they channel surfed and rarely stuck to anything. I presume the latter got bored and bounced, but I don't know that I. But I don't know that I had that level of granularity with the data. As content providers, the only levers we had to pull were continuing to add more content. So we just kept pushing new games, sometimes like 10 titles in a week, which was incredibly expensive from both a licensing and tech perspective. The new signups from those didn't keep pace with the cancellations. The company as a whole also way overspent on licensing D deals. Parentheses. God, I wish I copied some of those contracts. And parentheses creating original video content, executive salaries, and even starting an IGN clone for some reason, which didn't help, but probably wasn't what killed the thing. We also created original games and banked really hard on the promise of episodic content. We funded Telltale's Sam and Max for a while, a missed MMO that saw almost no crossover with other titles. And American McGee. Oh my God. American McGee's grim. Remember American Mc McGee, which was the final episode, had, if I remember correctly, less than 200 unique players. I think by the time I left, subscriptions were like $5 a month and still bleeding. What the data told me was that people didn't particularly need access to a lot of games at once. They just wanted to play specific. They just wanted to play specific titles. And if we didn't continue meeting those specific needs, they'd leave. Let's keep in mind this was 2008, which was a very different time. Boxed $60 retail games were still king. Indeed, digital games on consoles was in its absolute infancy. Steam was barely a thing. Pay DLC was Horse Armor Games as a service didn't exist outside of MMOs, and the iPhone was only just introduced. Games were still expensive investments, individual libraries were small, and yet they still didn't want to pay $5 a month for hundreds of titles stuck on the PC. Granted, Sherrim, I think there is an audience who wants to be fed whatever content you put in front of them. Like a it's a video game Golden Corral, but it's still a small one. And I don't think the business model works unless your your overhead is tiny. Anyway, just posting all that for no particular reason, no idea why I'm thinking about it today as a caveat. I was nowhere near a position where I understood the intricacies of the overall business. These are just my observations from looking at player behavior and subscription numbers.
- [67:29]
C
And someone in the chat says Game Tap didn't own any of the games or licenses they were putting on this service. So not the same, really.
- [67:37]
A
True. Very fair.
- [67:39]
C
But I would also argue that like, what is the actual percentage breakdown of what Xbox is putting out? That is their stuff versus how much shit is on Game Pass. You know, like, it might not be Game Tap, but it's a combination of Game Tap, Netflix type of thing. You know.
- [67:59]
A
Barrett, I couldn't work it in better. So I'm sorry, I'd like to Game Tap that ass. This has been another episode of the Kind of Funny Gamescast. Thank you Paris, for making the time to be here and hang out with us today. Where can people keep up with you?
- [68:11]
B
You can keep up with me over at Gamer Tech Radio. You can keep up with me at my YouTube channel, which actually I have an interview with John Rush and Bill Lacoste about Fallout 76, so you should go watch that. And I'm on social media. Vicious696.
- [68:27]
A
Love it. Of course, everybody, we're kind of funny and we're here each and every weekday on the Gamescast with the biggest topics of we need to talk about. Your programming day starts with Kinda Funny Games Daily with the nerdy news you need to know about. And then we stream video games. Andy is starting his Ghost of Yotei playthrough right after this, so if you're listening or watching somewhere else, make sure you head over to YouTube.com kindafunnygames to catch the archive. If you're on the Twitch Live page right now, guess what? You just get to hang out. It'll be great. And no. But until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.