Latest / The Game Business Show / Wolverine lifts PS5, but Xbox struggles despite Gears of War launch

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Wolverine lifts PS5, but Xbox struggles despite Gears of War launch · The Game Business Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: This week we talk to video game legend Bing Gordon about his new book,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: US data leader Matt Piscitella chats GTA,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: consoles and the state of the games industry,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: and we find out about making games better for blind people.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to The Game Business Show.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I came across this saying a few months ago,
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: which is,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: if you're not paying for it, then you're not the customer, you're the product.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's sort of in reference to social media and media, right?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, a lot of modern media is about traffic.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's about attracting as many people as possible to reading this article,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: watching this video,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: listening to this podcast, all so they can deliver for their advertisers.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: The advertiser is the customer, not the reader.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of really love this movement we're seeing towards media charging
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: the reader or the viewer, whether it's via Substack or Patreon or whatever.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's good because then suddenly the onus is on these writers and creators
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: to produce stuff for the audience primarily and not worry too much about having
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: to have a click-baity headline or write something that's a bit sensational
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: or misleading just to get a click.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what we're about at The Game Business.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: We do have advertisers, but we limit it, and we really want it to be about you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're all about.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why a year ago we introduced a paid tier to The Game Business show,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: which includes an extra podcast,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: a newsletter every week, plus access to our live events for no additional cost.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're sort of doing okay when it comes to paying subscribers but it has stalled
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: in recent weeks.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a fan of us,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: if you like the show, please do think about becoming a paid subscriber.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know that that's a lot to ask of people right now and a lot
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: of people it's just not realistic and that's actually why we do our main shows
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: for free because we're trying to help the business and not a lot
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: of people can afford things right now so that's why our shows are free.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're part of a company, this is expensable in a lot of places.
• 1:45
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• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: if you're a leader in one of these companies,
• 1:47
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• 1:50
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• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we do have sponsorship options as well.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's not really my side of things.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: George Corner on my team handles that.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we only allow one an episode.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: There isn't one in this episode.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: There isn't one in the next episode.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: So hit up George on georgeatthegamebusiness.com if you're interested.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before I dive into this week's episode,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: just a reminder that The Game Business Marketing Awards is a thing we're doing.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: You can submit your entry to the awards via our website right now,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: and there's links to doing so in the email.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Also, there's some more details on what it's all about.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: We just want to celebrate cool marketing campaigns.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: I used to do it a lot on MCV when I used to work at MCV Magazine,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: but we don't really talk about it these days since the end of retail,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: and I thought it'd be cool.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's been some interesting campaigns this year.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this episode, we've got a bunch of stuff going in it.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've got interviews with Bing Gordon, Matt Piscitella and Jenna.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to begin by talking about Bing Gordon,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: the VC and former chief creative officer at Electronic Arts,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: has written a new book with his daughter, Chloe.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: The book is called Everybody Wins.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is out this week.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a chance to chat with Bing about it.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: The interview was long.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was well over an hour.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we will release the full thing.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: as the book is out this week,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I'd best share some of the interview with you today.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: I asked Bing, what is this book about?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: What can we learn from it?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: What can we expect from it?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what he said.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: I figure I've done probably maybe 40,000 notes giving sessions in my business career.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of the same themes come up.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so the book is organized around themes.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: So Everybody Wins is the title of the book.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the themes that it turns out most people are not motivated by competition.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: They're motivated by cooperation.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: EA Sports,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: for example,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: with Madden,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: we thought it was all about,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm better than you are and I can prove it, which was a tagline once upon a time.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then we found out when we started getting older people
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: and more emotionally sensitive people into the games business that
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: for most people losing has a lot more emotional weight than winning.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my first example of an everybody wins game was in football.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: So we'd build a football game to basically prove who could win, and that's a teenage boy thing.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: But your teenage boys, when they lose, they go, yeah, now I'm gonna get even, I'm gonna man up.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: But a bunch of people,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: when they lose, A Words
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: With Friends player,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: when they lose, Just like real life, and they stopped playing.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the lessons in a big arcade football game was, yeah,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: I just scored a touchdown,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: but you can come up and punch me out and get away with it because there were...
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there were no penalties.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: So we could both win on the same play.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: I get the points and you get the emotional satisfaction of wiping me out.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's this whole notion of...
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think career scores are that kind of thing.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: So in Fortnite, you could finish 99th and still win some points.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's...
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I find an awful lot of times when I'm giving notes,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I start out trying to take it back to consumer behavior.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: so often people,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: when they're designing or they're strategizing,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: they do it in a vacuum and I try to get them to tie it back
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: into what they would actually do with their mom or their brother or their kid
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: in real life.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: So everybody wins is another idea called win fast, win first.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: We learned that in the mobile business where you got to get somebody to level up
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: a few times in the first session or they won't come back.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: We also learned that in Madden Football,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: there was a year where we were competing with a Sony game.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: And at one point,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think Chip Lang,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: who was a young prodigy in EA Sports Marketing, said,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: have you actually counted the number of seconds it takes to run a first play
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: in Madden?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, what do you mean?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, well, just try, put a stopwatch on it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: We realized that people get the game,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: they would unrack the shrink wrap,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: they'd install the game,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: and then they'd look at nothing but menus for a couple of minutes.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we realized again and again and again that in life,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: as in games, most people want to front load a sense of victory.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: They want to get a sense of confidence to build resilience before failure.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a book I found myself taking a collection of in-person notes and speeches
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: that I've done and tried to figure out how to make it into a single artifact
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: that people could consume that I could hand out.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: And as I said before, I'm kind of a fanboy of authors.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a time in life where I thought that's what I wanted to do is be a writer.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then as a broke kid, I finally made enough money to afford some time off and a typewriter.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I kept dithering and dithering and dithering.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: And after about a week of that, I thought, you know, I forgot.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Writing is really painful.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And writing is really painful.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's so much easier to create content in an interview format and then get
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: a transcript and then edit it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that first draft creation is so painful, which is another interesting thing about AI.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: AI is in the business of much easier creation of shitty first drafts.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And creating a shitty first draft as a writer is really hard,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: especially if you're self-critical.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think is one of the key takeaways from it?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think there's like an overreaching sort of...?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, for different customers.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's for people who have gamers in their lives they don't understand.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: This gamification is a high life skill and applied everywhere.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: And, hey, moms,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: if your child is off gaming when they should be doing homework,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Think about that as a parental life enhancing moment
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: and understand how what they're doing connects to real life one way or another.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's for game designers.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: I hope people who are worried about employment in the game industry realize
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: that gamification broadly is an enormous growth business.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the companies that I work with in education,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: in medicine,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: in health and fitness,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: in commerce, in agentic design, All wish that they had game makers on the team.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I used to tell companies back in the early 2000s,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: if you don't have somebody in the executive suite who grew up playing Nintendo,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: you're probably not as good with consumers as you think you are.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's still the case.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think that people who channeled game-making lessons are more valuable than they think.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of an unlock.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's the glorification of game-making skills and how it can be applied everywhere.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: So many people think about games as this narrow lane, as movies is a narrow lane.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: So gamification is to video games as storytelling is to books or storytelling is to movies.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And storytelling turns out to be a wildly valuable skill.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Bing there.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody Wings by Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon is out this week.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now onto my favorite topic, which is video game sales.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: The US September games data has come in from Sakana and it was a big month for video games.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: There were lots and lots and lots of new releases
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: and there were some really positive numbers in there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And some negative ones too.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: The PS5 sales spiked a little bit on the release of Marvel's Wolverine and Xbox sales were down.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Switch sales were down.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: There were lots of new games in the charts,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: including the likes of Onimusha and Fire Emblem and Blood of the Dawnwalker.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Surprisingly Halloween.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And to talk me through the numbers,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: but also what we're expecting around the launch of GTA now that we're
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit closer to release,
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've invited Takana's games chief, Matt Piscitella, back on the show.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Matt is, of course, a regular and I know that you all love him.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so here he is.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Matt.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hello.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's good to talk to you again.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you've noticed, but the business is a little crazy at the moment.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's quite calm.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't notice anything.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oddly,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: just before this call,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I had a chat with Sean Layden,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: and we were talking about how this period of utter,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: we've just gone through Bioware,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: we've just gone through all these sort of quite shocking stories,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think everyone's looking at GTA playing, please save us.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, no pressure, but please save us.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I've just had this Sakana press release come in.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: one in three US console and PC gamers plan to buy GTA 6,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: which confused me because I'm not quite sure what the other two are planning to buy.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that sounds like a lot.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: It is a lot.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: First off, though, congratulations.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: You've been on a hell of a run with guests.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: With uh you know your your appearances in person
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: in places I don't know what happened this week
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: but um like been really great uh watching everything you've been doing these last
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: few months here um so just congratulations on everything with the show um
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: and my other question for you that wasn't a question this is my question have you
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: in all of your experiences and all
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: the time you've been doing this has anyone ever worn a suit better than sean laden
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: that man Can wear a suit.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: That is like, he is clean every time I've ever seen him in person.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, oddly, the interview I just did with him was wearing an orange t-shirt and a baseball cap.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I like this version of Sean as well.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: But he still pulled it off.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: The guy's got swag, man.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah,
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: we had to get in on the action of all the Grand Theft Auto fun when it comes
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: to public press releases.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you saw the other one floating around yesterday about
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: that work tracking company saying,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: They've seen this huge increase in the number of planned work absences for the day.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to see just a whole bucket of press releases come out.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, ours was around purchase intent in the US.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: It is at a record high for Grand Theft Auto 6 because of course it is.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's rare to see purchase intent for any game, you know, exceed the mid-teens.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: This thing is, you know, on a whole nother level, of course it is.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, purchase intent is just a vibe check at a certain point in time.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: Based on what players are feeling,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: and that can always change based on marketing or reviews or influence or whatever.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: But coming into this launch,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: absolutely off the charts in terms of historical intent among those people who play
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: on PC and console.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I've read some of your comments,
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: so I kind of know what I expect you're going to say here,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: but what are you advising companies to do?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Are you saying, like, don't bother?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't put your game out anywhere near this thing?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you saying,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: hang on,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: there's,
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: there's 60, 70% of players actually who aren't necessarily looking to get GTA?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, no one asked me before they had moved all of their games.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone just got out of the way of this game, out of...
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure it's well thought out and planned and considered very carefully,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: but really at its core, I think it's more fear than anything.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And in that respect,
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: like everyone's moved their games into the same windows
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: that have become more competitive on their own.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: So by trying to get out of the way of Grand Theft Auto,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: they've just gotten into the way of several other titles that are coming out.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like when you look at the September Sales charts or even release charts,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: that was just such a crammed month of releases.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: October was also pretty tight.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's loosened up now, of course, because now everyone's moved out of this window.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: So what they've left is this huge open space in November for Grand Theft Auto VI,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time Remake, and World of Warcraft Forever.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: And those three things,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: which are on different platforms entirely,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: now they just have this window, which- Yeah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: Cool, I guess.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, but really, like,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: if you have a cozy sim or,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: you have a first-person shooter,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: is Grand Theft Auto 6 really your direct competition?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Or, you know, or is Fortnite still your competition?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: I get it, but I think it's been more irrational than rational, but people disagree.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: you had Call of Duty on the show recently,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: and they talked about,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: with Call of Duty,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the things,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: it's about people hanging out and playing together online,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: and GTA 6 isn't about that.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: GTA 9's about that,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: but GTA 6 isn't about that,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: and so they sort of see themselves as playing a different role.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: But, and by the way, Zelda and GTA are now called the Ocarina of Crime.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's the...
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, is that it?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's actually pretty good.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that's fine.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I think a lot of it's down to coverage,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't know how important it is these days,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: but I do know that, like,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's left of the press is just going to be,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: you're putting out press releases about GTAs because everyone's talking about GTA
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: and everything.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: the BBC interviewed me recently and they were doing some preparation for a load
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: of coverage they're doing around GTA and it's the entertainment team
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: and they said it's all GTA for the next few weeks.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's probably an element of,
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you're going to struggle for coverage, but I think certain games Won't.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's, you know, I think that's what you're basically saying.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're different, you're gonna still find those groups of people.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the RPG specialist websites aren't writing about GTA.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: The Nintendo websites aren't writing about GTA.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember the Red Dead Redemption launch?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Were you at Warner at the time?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember where you were.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the impact it had on, like, Alan Wake and all that kind of stuff.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think ever since then, people have been quite terrified of Rockstar.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens if you go too close to it, fly too close to that sun?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Correlation, causation, I don't know.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: Certain games just don't have the mass market appeal of others.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Anyways, we could go into whole rabbit holes about that.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've always been after 20 years of over 20 years now looking at this stuff.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of audience that has It has a lot of different tastes and wants and needs.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not a monoculture in gaming, haven't been in a long time.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's opportunity for games to find audiences.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's very difficult.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's getting harder all the time.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I think for the vast majority of games, Grand Theft Auto is not your competition.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's still Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, and that's never going to alleviate any time soon.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: Have their own takes on all this stuff and I get it.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is obviously the question nobody has answers to is,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: will GTA 6 bolster console sales beyond launch?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Will it lift the market for everyone and boost sales of other games
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: or will it just suck all the oxygen out of the room?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Will lapsed players or even new players come in for GTA 6 and stick around
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: and play more games or just drop out at that point?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: These are all questions we don't have answers to, but do you have a best guess?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so, I mean, you can look historically, right?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: If you look at 2013,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: which was forever ago,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: but when Grand Theft Auto V launched, there was a moderate bump to hardware sales.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't earth-shattering or massive.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: It was moderate, you know, teens bump over baseline.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: They had some people showing up that hadn't invested in PlayStation 3 or 360 at the time.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you look at that and go, okay, well, maybe we get a moderate bump this time.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: The challenge now is,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: you know, back then you could walk into a store and pick up a bundle for cheap.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: And now you've got to pay six, seven hundred dollars for a new box.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then you got to pay, you know, $80 or $100 for the game.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: So the costs are far different than they used to be.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: And back in the day in 2013, you didn't have the big live service games.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't have the competition from mobile like you do now for attention and all
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: of these other areas where people are focusing.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe it's less.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, we had that reveal, right?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: The Netflix reveal.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: we saw a moderate bump on PlayStation in the US hardware unit sales,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: according to Serkana data.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: Around that time,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: it was the same time NBA 2K was doing some stuff,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: so it's kind of hard to parse out exactly what percentage of any lift is
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: from one game or another if there's competing games out there.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: But at the same time that happened on PlayStation, Xbox sales fell.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: So do people not know the games coming out on Xbox?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Are Xbox's bigger problems kind of dwarfing potential incremental demand because of GTA?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Those are questions.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: We also don't know the answer to.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: But generally, I think we're going to see a moderate increase.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: But because of the price points,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: because of the availability,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: because of how different the market is now than it was back in the day,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: there certainly is more uncertainty.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's something you could...
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yes, certainly more so.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or a thing with GTA V,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: because I went,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: obviously,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: this is about a year ago when GTA was coming out last year,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: and I was looking at, oh, what could it do?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a GTA V. GTA V was the second GTA on that platform, right?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: PS4 was the first on PS3 and 360.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's going to be a GTA which drove users to a console,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: the second one might have some impact, but it would be the first one.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: But even that was hard for me to work out looking back at that.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're going back nearly 20 years and you're sort of getting It's
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: a completely different ecosystem.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And GTA is obviously a bigger beast today than it was in that time.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously there's been this build up and hype.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I mean.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of anticipation, a lot of waiting for it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't had a new GTA on a console since two generations ago.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's mad to think, really.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Ajeet and Grand Theft Auto V has been a best-selling game for 13,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: now 14 straight years in the US.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: Online had the third most players in the US on both PlayStation and Xbox last year.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: So the property hasn't gone anywhere.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: So the question to me is like, okay,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Grand Theft Auto VI launches,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: does it have the biggest two weeks in gaming history and then completely fall off
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: because there's no online component or recurring component?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: Does that pull in more people over time?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if it does fall off,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: do those people like,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm done now,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: put their console back under the TV or do they,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know, play James Bond or Call of Duty?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: Or do they start up online, right?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do they start playing
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: Grand Theft Auto online and they start building shark dollars
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: or whatever?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think the work for the data analyst such as yourself will really begin after November 19th.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, talk about Xbox.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: It really, so same thing happened in the UK, by the way.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I know the difference in the UK and the US numbers for September was that
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: the data windows That's the other thing.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: But PlayStation 5 did pretty well.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Nintendo Switch 2 did pretty well in the UK, but not so well in the US.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I know the price rises around that point.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: But with Xbox,
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was surprised at how much it was down,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: both the US and the UK, because that's the Xbox's strongest markets, those two.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so, I don't know.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I did wonder if there was another reason why those numbers might be
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: the way they are,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: outside of the fact that it's just been a bit of a brutal time for consoles
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: in general.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it seems to be just on another level with Xbox and everything they're doing,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: all of the new programs they're putting into place,
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: at least in the sales and engagement data that I look at,
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not seeing that have any impact.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: Positive impact,
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: like the disk to digital program hasn't changed their sales
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: of new physical software trend at all.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: No matter what they do in terms of the console side saying like Gears is going
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: to be exclusive, that hasn't made any difference in terms of the hardware trend.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, like the hardware trend keeps getting worse.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they've lost some distribution in the US.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: So like, it just seems like everything they're doing Is not having a positive impact.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: And now, you know, they took Call of Duty out of Game Pass on day one.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: in the engagement data I'm looking at through our player engagement tracker, I mean,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: basically you just,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: you lost a ton of engagement on Xbox because it's no longer on Game Pass day one
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: and you got no benefit.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it's just, I don't know what they do.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's just, it's really hard to find any Signs of positivity or hope on that platform right now?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Gears of War.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, half a billion dollars it costs to make that game.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sitting there going, Did it do anything?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: In the UK,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: because they got their hardware data in,
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Xbox was down 2% over September and 22% down over October last year.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's the Xbox hardware sales.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: In the month, they finally released an exclusive Xbox game.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about the engagement numbers.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many more people turned on their Xboxes or something.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of hardware sales, not only did it not move the needle, the needle went down.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you just feel like the momentum is so against
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: that it's almost like they're trying to push both uphill and they just can't do it.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe for the next generation.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the $1,200 to $1,800 Xbox console.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what you do.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: They're still the biggest publisher around.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, of course.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: But for how long?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: Everything they're doing seems to be,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's getting Twitter likes from the most passionate part of their fan base.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: But other than that,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: in terms of the actual results,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not seeing anything right now yeah and I'm looking really hard
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: and you know gears is beautiful what a it is a gorgeous game I know that is
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: a gears ass gears of war game and it looks great uh but yeah you kill
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: the you know you make it exclusive you kind of chop the legs out from
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: under its potential as an individual title in order to try to boost your platform
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_03: and that I don't know, at least in the short term, it hasn't made a difference.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest,
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: one of the key things about Xbox I've always said,
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't mean this like they've put out lots of good games,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: they've not put out a lot of great games,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: and this year, I think Gears, this is what I'm reading, has been as a great game.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think Modern Warfare 4,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: by the sounds of it, is a significant Improvement on where we were last year.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: World of Warcraft Forever from people in the beta telling me that this is
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: a pretty special thing.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it certainly feels like Microsoft anyway,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Xbox as a sort of a whole,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: as a publisher, are getting there with the quality of the games.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: They are obviously the same old franchise Which I wonder if that's part of the problem.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that's always been the key thing for me.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about business models and we can talk about all that kind of stuff.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: But the key element in video games,
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: as we know,
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: is the game's got to be,
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: you've got to do something, you've got to create a Strauss on it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever I asked him, like, He goes, you make hit games.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's a really, really dull answer.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: But Xbox hasn't made many hit games.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was quite pleased to see that they're getting some good review scores
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: and some good ratings from fans as well.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not seeing anything in the numbers as of yet.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it's a long-term play, what they're going through.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: But so go on, you say what you're going to say.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: No, it just reminded me of the mission statement when I first joined Activision in 2005.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: It was, we make great games that sell.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then later on,
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: they turned it into this really long,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: convoluted engagements and delights and all this stuff.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: But really, like, ultimately, yeah, like, those very basic statements still tend to work out.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: But anyways, go ahead.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was going to ask if there's any early indicators around Call of Duty,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: because the only indicator I've got is I've got the physical weekly sales for
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: the UK.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it was basically the same as last year.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Last year, as we know, was a disaster.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Switch 2 version didn't do much at all in the UK.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Final Fantasy Resonance, is that the new Final Fantasy game?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sold more copies on Switch 2 than Call of Duty did.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that didn't seem to do anything.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if you saw any early indicators.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: I was just looking at this this morning.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: We have our player engagement tracker, which,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: we have a large panel of players and,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: we snapshot what they're doing every few minutes and then aggregate all
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: that information to see what they're playing for how long and where.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Anyways,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: I was comparing the launch window,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: the public launch window, the full launch window, not the early access or whatever.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: But like, hey, here's the games available to everybody year on year.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so last year, We had,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: with the Game Pass Day 1 launch,
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: according to our worldwide engagement tracker data for Xbox,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: we had about 28 percent of players last year on Xbox who turned on their Xbox on
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: that day and played Call of Duty.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, good chunk, right?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: This year, on the same day the game was fully released, that was 14 percent.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So that engagement rate was cut in half because the game wasn't available
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: on Game Pass on day one.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now on Sony,
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: it was very similar,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: a point different, just slightly lower than last year, which makes sense.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it wasn't on PS Plus day one last year, it's not this year.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Relatively similar engagement.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: And PC was actually boosted a little bit in terms of our Steam tracking.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was somewhere on a much lower scale because PC is a whole different thing
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: when it comes to engagement rates,
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: but we did see an increase in engagement on Steam.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: Ultimately,
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: the PlayStation platform in terms of the percentage
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: of PlayStation players playing Call of Duty on launch day was higher than it was
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: on Xbox in terms of the percentage of Xbox active players that day playing Call
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: of Duty.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: PlayStation's returned to become like this lead platform for Call of Duty
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: because they've pulled it off at Game Pass and Last year there was all
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: that conversation.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: You remember it like, oh,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: we lost 300 million or some crazy number because the game was on Game Pass
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: on day one.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you do the backwards math on that and you go, okay,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: what they probably did was take the total number of people who played on Game Pass
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: and multiplied it by the cost of the game, like piracy math, which whatever.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: But in any case, like...
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: We've seen this dramatic downtick in terms of the daily engagement rate on Call of Duty.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: You're on your own Xbox because it isn't on the subscription service.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't see a whole bunch of Xbox players buy the game this year because it wasn't available.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's a gap there because still 14% of people played, so you had some gap there.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: But it wasn't like they maintained the player count.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: All the people who played on Game Pass last year went out and bought it this year.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: That just doesn't look like that was the case at all.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: So what did it buy you?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: All this really does is,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: in my opinion,
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: looking at this,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: is you've hurt the value proposition of the one key differentiator of your platform,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: which was Game Pass.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: So you've removed some of that value proposition there,
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: you haven't improved the value proposition anywhere else,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: and you've raised the price significantly a couple of times.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's a bad combination,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: especially leading into a holiday.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is it an indication that more people might have bought it this year,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: or is it a bit too early for that kind of thing?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: We'll have to see.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't have that data in yet.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we had Call of Duty on the show,
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: and actually when I asked them what went wrong last year,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: they said the game wasn't good enough.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: That was there.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not only good enough, it just didn't connect.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably the more accurate sentiment.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was their analysis of it.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: It just wasn't what fans wanted.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when I asked them,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: and it was quite a good answer,
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: actually, when I asked them, what would success look like this year?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, look, it might not be, they didn't say it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's not exactly like this, but the numbers might be whatever the numbers are.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: But really what we've got to do is put out a good Call of Duty so that
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: the fans aren't disappointed in us anymore.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then we can rebuild that trust and regain that enthusiasm and build over time.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously they're talking about Modern Warfare 4 being an end of an era
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: and they're being Doing new things for the future ones.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought it was quite good answers to that sort of a question.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that that does the case.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I agreed with you when you said it earlier in the year.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, yeah, I think there's bigger problems at Call of Duty.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: There isn't Game Pass.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: you can see that in the drop in engagement figures,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of players they're getting on a month-to-month basis.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can see that it's losing momentum.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's still obviously a juggernaut.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, absolutely.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: But like the bouncing around between the studios, kind of the...
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: The other studio didn't do it right,
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: we're doing it right this time,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: and boots on the ground, and oh,
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: we're getting boots off the ground in this back and forth over the years and sniping
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: at itself as a franchise.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: And look, man, I got a personal interest in this.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: At Activision,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: the day we launched Call of Duty 2 on Xbox and like saw the numbers coming in
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: and went,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: oh my God, this is like, you know, the 76% or whatever attach rate we had on that.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, like I've got this game in my heart.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: And when I hear like that kind of thing's happening or like, oh,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: there's a Call of Duty tax from journalists on the reviews or whatever,
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: it's like,
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was in my interview, yeah.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, man.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are we doing here?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: I did feel a little bit...
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I did was surprised about that, because I basically...
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke to a journalist who...
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: I said they don't cover Call of Duty as much as they used to.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked this,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: it's Andy Robinson of EDC,
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: and he said, well,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: we do cover it,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: he said, but,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: we don't cover it as much as you used to,
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: because sort of influencers have been the domain of Call of Duty.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: they've become such a dominant force in terms of sharing that news that Activision,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I guess, have leaned into that.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I brought that up in my interview.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't having a go.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, is it the space where you go now for that kind of thing?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then they brought up this Call of Duty tax.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then I looked back on it.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, Call of Duty review is generally pretty well.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty well.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Last year's didn't.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, last year's didn't as high as usual.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the Modern Warfare, Black Ops, What was the one?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Was it seven?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Seven, yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then Modern Warfare 3 didn't.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: So those sort of quick sequels that they did didn't do quite as well.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the ones after beforehand didn't.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't quite sure.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: This one's great.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's reviewing extremely well.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: People are really into it.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's just very strange.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: They seem to be like swinging from we're so back, we're so up.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, hopefully, hopefully, you know, they've got a new plan.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a movie coming out and they say, we hope they do really well.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a bit early, I guess, to tell how this one does.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about Switch 2 quickly,
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: because we talked about how you didn't think necessarily that the Netflix reveal had
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: a big impact on PlayStation 5 sales.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Did you see anything on the Switch 2 sales around Ocarina?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing you didn't based on the Ocarina Direct they did,
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: based on the fact that Switch 2 sales were down in September.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, nothing that jumped out at me.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: And of course,
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: like when you're looking at like a weekly sales number or whatever,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: like it's very hard to kind of pick out the components of what would influence that.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: But nothing jumped out.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: As I asked the question,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I realized it was kind of a stupid question,
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: because obviously they showed a new Switch 2 Special Edition that isn't out
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: until November.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when that shows up, I'll see something.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like when Marvel Wolverine's PS5 showed up.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you see that in the sales.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: It pops, like when a Special Edition shows up and people actually buy it.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: And people are going to buy the hell out of the Zelda one,
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: and I'm sure on eBay you'll be able to find one for four grand if you want.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: I bought a third
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: Switch 2.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Off of that Zelda thing.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very much that target audience.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was disappointed to see the Switch 2 drop, mainly because it did quite well in the UK.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: So in the UK, it was up 17% year on year in September over here.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: that should be a surprise to me because I think the price rose from September 1st.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: And like early on, early on in the Switch 2's life in the US, like stock was never a problem.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: It was widely distributed.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: So like we still have that elevated early.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like early run for Switch 2 we're comping against.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's no longer the fastest selling console ever.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's, I don't know, I don't know.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even want to say it because then I'll see something on a message board.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: But it's no longer the fastest selling in the U.S.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: They're still doing very well,
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: but yeah,
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: the comps are weird on Switch 2 because it's rare that such a successful device
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: in its first year in market is widely available and doesn't have supply constraints
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: or whatever.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not seeing anything to be concerned about in the Switch 2 numbers at all,
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: and I'm sure it's going to pop with Zelda.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, the price increase took effect.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: What they did was pretty smart.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: They dropped the world bundle and they went to a standalone skew, maintained the price point.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: So effectively on shelf,
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: there wasn't a significant price change, but yeah, it's less value in the box.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: that's going to have an impact,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: especially in like a short-term window following that implementation.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I did wonder if,
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: was there a new Mario Kart World bundle that showed up as well at the end?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't sure if somebody was telling me about that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't see anything.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, maybe not.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, September was an odd mix, I thought.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: There was a new IP.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, War Dogs obviously took a lot of people by surprise.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Blood of the Dawn Walk I did think was going to do well, and it did do well.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: But Halloween?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: What was that about?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was worldwide, by the way.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just in the US.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: And across platform, like it wasn't even just a Steam thing.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like that was a, it was a console thing too.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: It just had a nice pop.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was right in there in some, on some platforms globally in the Top five.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: If there's one thing that caught me off,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Control Resident and Silent Hill wasn't up there,
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: but then it was towards the end of the month that game,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: but those games.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: seeing Halloween do so well,
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I did wonder if I thought, is there some sort of secret from it?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, was it a particular It was at a slightly budget price.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: But if you look at the whole list, right,
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: you look at the top 10 list from the US where you have things like Ace Combat,
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: you have Dawn Walk,
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: you have, I mean,
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: the variety of, like,
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: a bunch of new games moved into September, right,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: because they wanted to get out of the window for GTA,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: like we were talking about earlier.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: But all of those games, they were different.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it wasn't all of the same game, different genres, different variety.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: It was beautiful to see the variety.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Of different types of experiences and all of them found audiences.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's what we should be focusing on.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like every big publisher's like, no,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: we're just going to do fewer, bigger and to hell with like EA to hell with racing.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: We're just going to make sports and battlefield like,
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: man, like there's so much opportunity there for these smaller ones.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: If, if you can control your costs, which of course is the problem.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Which is the big question,
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: which is honestly all we've been talking about now for 18 months is how can you make
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: a game,
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: sell a million copies and that'd be fine,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: but people are finding ways,
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: you go back to Star Wars Zero Company,
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: end of August, you know, it took a little longer to get to a million than some.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Onimusha, but it got there.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Onimusha did very well.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: The Dawn Walker did very well.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you say variety.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: going into the month where I did a little bit on the show, I said,
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: the thing is people talk about September being highly competitive and congested.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of these games are targeting different groups.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think Fire Emblem Fortune's Wii fanatics are choosing that over War Dogs.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the secondary audience, right?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got an audience of people who really want Fortune's Wii, They'll get it.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: But if they,
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: if they're maybe also like Western RPGs,
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: like the Dawnwalker, maybe they're choosing one now and getting one later, maybe.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: But so secondary audiences, I think primary audiences will go with the games they love.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's Halloween and Silent Hill, maybe Control and Wolverine.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's some sort of crossover.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: But broadly speaking, there was a lot of different stuff.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, and I agree with you, basically.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it was great to see so many of them do well.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: we thought maybe one might emerge as, well,
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: one did emerge as the successor,
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: but like one would particularly come out of it on top.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Actually,
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: lots of companies,
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think, would have come out of September with a bit of a smile on their face.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's encouraging in a market that's lacking Encouraging things to see.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: it also kind of showcases this shift that we're seeing away from
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: the traditional big publishers towards,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: the mid-tiers are,
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: well, now the big ones like a Capcom I don't think is a mid-tier anymore.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: But you know what I mean?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like these publishers that aren't the Ubisoft's EAs of the world because You know,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: we're kind of seeing those types of companies going through all kinds of things,
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: whether it's, yeah, EA,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: Ubisoft,
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_03: now Warner Brothers is apparently going to be going through the ringer because
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: of its acquisition.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: there's opportunity there for,
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: like you said, like some of these smaller teams and smaller games to really thrive.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that is encouraging, although also depressing at the same video games.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: So what you're talking about there is the big AAA companies like Microsoft.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Microsoft and EA are the best two examples.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: They've done it recently where they're going,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: right, we're going to focus in on the big bets, right, the big plays.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not entirely sure focusing in on franchises that might be past their best is
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: the ideal scenario.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I completely,
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: much as I hated what happened to Bioware and Mass Effect, you go,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: look at EA,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: look at,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: EA Sports FC doesn't get out of bed for the sort of money that Mass Effect sort
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: of would probably make them.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where they go, right, that's our bet.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that leaves all these other companies to go,
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: okay, then we would get out of bed for that money, actually, quite happily.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think what I'm,
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've talked about it on the show a couple of times,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be really fascinated to see if companies like EA
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: and like Microsoft Maybe we should open our brands up for licensing opportunities.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should,
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: because a lot of these smaller AA studios,
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: AA budgets, I don't think they're AA quality necessarily.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: These sort of smaller teams that go, you know what, we're struggling for attention.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're struggling for cut through.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: And our game is quite similar to Dead Space, right?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe what if we could, AEA, could we do a, we'll fund it?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: And could we have a,
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: I always want, we had people like Velen Studios come on and talk about that.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think that would be an interesting opportunity for those franchises
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: that are dormant, fans love them.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there's probably a lot of passionate game studios out there,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: they're independent,
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: that would take that and probably do it,
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: working out ways to get those games out faster and on a cheaper budget,
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: but still delivering on the quality.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I've gone off on one.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, no,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: it's similar to, like,
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: the Disney model and how they shifted when they,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: when they stopped doing things like Disney Infinity and started partnering
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: with teams that wanted to make games.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know,
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: things like Galactic Racer are the result of that reaching out they did
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: to smaller teams and saying, hey, you know, we have the IP, bring us your ideas.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: And we've seen some of the benefits of that.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so it would be beneficial.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: But like with the big publishers,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: it's what,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: every 10,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: 15 years we get this, we get this like, oh, we're going to do smaller, bigger bets.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then it's a few years later, it's like, oh, no, we're indie friendly now.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: We want to fund teams.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then a few years later, oh, we're going in bigger bets.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, golly, like this back and forth we've been doing for 20 years.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's true.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's very true.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the number one game, Marvel's Wolverine.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's difficult to get a read without knowing what Sony was expecting,
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: but it's bigger than Yotai, right?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Smaller than Helldivers 2 for launch.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you've got the numbers.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Were you sitting there thinking, hmm, when you saw that, or were you, do you think it did well?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think, hmm, I think that's good.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: It sounded like, whoa, and it sounded like, hmm.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to make a really tough headline, Matt.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you look at,
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: if you look at the weekly sales cadence of things like accessories and hardware,
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: like the Wolverine DualSense was the best-selling accessory of the month.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: we tracked those by individual SKU,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: so that Wolverine controller best-selling accessory, the bundle sold out.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: There wasn't huge quantities,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: but they sold it out,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: and that really helped boost PlayStation 5 sales that particular week.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: So in terms of,
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: like, An old school, here's an exclusive game and we're going to sell some consoles.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to sell some accessories with it.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think, yeah,
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's about as good as you could hope for,
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: for an IEP that, you know, isn't the level of a Spider-Man.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: I thought it was, I thought it was fine.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_03: I thought it was like, good, good for them.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't review as highly as it normally, as you would expect from a Sony first party.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sure did.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, so I mean.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of that's also like,
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: especially from like the influencer community was very mis-targeted and overblown
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: on it.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: But of course it is because that's just kind of what they do to drive
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: that engagement, which is fine.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: But from a general player perspective, like it seemed to do the trick.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like if someone just wanted to run around and slash things and have a good time,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: you know, a popcorn movie video game.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, sure.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm with you.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: When people say to me, it just tells you where to go all the time.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, good.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, good.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, great.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: I could do with that, actually.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for holding my hand.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: I could just do with it.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: I could just tell me.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: I did that with Spider-Man 2, to be honest.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: I just went, where do I need to go?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Show me the direction.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm a 40-year-old and I don't have time to wander around aimlessly and look
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: under every barrel.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sometimes you want an Elden Ring and sometimes you're just like,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to go hit this button a lot and drink this half bottle of wine and try
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: to forget.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: In that respect, hey, it worked out pretty well.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: What happened to subscriptions?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Every month I'm getting used to the subscriptions are up,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: subscriptions are up, but they weren't.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: In September, they're just down 5% first drop in 18 months plus.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: What happened there?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the first year on your drop in a while.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: Tough to say.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: It was pretty broad in terms of the downtick in spend.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: So, is this a, you know, people adjusting their spend?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: Is it a, you know, waiting for certain things to happen?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Is it some subscriptions that people started up a year ago,
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: they decided not to renew or something?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, is there some Call of Duty's not going to be on game pass day one impact?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like, Not super clear yet.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to need some more time to see the trends and see if it was a blip or something more.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: consumer dollars are in a real pickle,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: especially in the U.S.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: at the moment,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: between all of those cost of living factors that are impacting everyone globally.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're starting to see consumers in the U.S.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: really focus more on essentials,
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: shifting their dollars around things like,
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: you know, if you look at the mobile numbers from Sensor Tower, Yeah.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: They've been hit pretty hard,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: both from a combination of people changing spend,
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: but also because of those storefronts opening up and some dollars entering
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: the ecosystems from outside the in-app purchase environment.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: Not my wheelhouse, but that's what my friends over there tell me.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: So like, yeah.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_03: And of course,
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_03: Grand Theft Auto and Zelda are going to make that problem disappear for a couple
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: of months.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: But what happens in January and February?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's when we're really going to see things,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: where things are netted out, including subscription.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it might take a little bit longer because actually February is
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: the other month everyone's run away to from GTA.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_03: Fair enough.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's the people that move forwards and then there's the
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: fabled God of War,
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Tomb Raider, whatever, February, which also seems like a mess.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: And actually those do seem a little bit less variety there.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more crossover.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because what big AAA studio brings games up, right?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: The people bringing games up are the ones that are a little bit more agile
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: and budget conscious, I guess.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we've gone through most of it.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is there any like data point that you think that,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about or nobody's talking about and we definitely should be?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my, I mean, let me look at my notes here.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: I wrote some notes down.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, well, okay.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: The only other thing I thought we might get into is the whole decompiling,
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: recompiling, jailbreaking, Hmm.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk about that next week.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, go on.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're doing that next week?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll let you get to it next week.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm interested in your take on it.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Go on.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: It is terrifying.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: It is very concerning.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how you stop it, if you do.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: And what,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: the average player,
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: like right now,
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: it's very much isolated to like the core group of sickos who are really into it.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: But if that does break out in a mainstream way,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: if people go, well, wait a minute, why am I buying this game?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: I can just play it in a browser through this vibe, decompiled, recompiled version of this game.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: That could have...
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty big implications that I don't think anyone's got their heads around yet.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting question,
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: and so I have,
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: not to spoil next week's episode too much,
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have been speaking to the anti-piracy groups in the industry a little bit,
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: and they are being,
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: some of them are being quite corporate with their answer,
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: some of them being a little more candid,
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: but it's weird,
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: they're looking at that and going,
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: that's a concern, but because the lid is on piracy in a way, right?
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's happening, it happens.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: But since the R4 days, they've managed to keep a little lid on it.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: There seems to be an element of people just aren't pirating on a mass market scale.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what you're saying there is, what if they start doing that?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: But at the moment, they're not.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think their biggest issues are people Bot farming and all that kind
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: of stuff is there sort of where their things are.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: They are concerned.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm trying to get a sense if there's any panic coming from
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: the platform holders,
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: obviously because the PS5 has been jailbroken now
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm not surprised it's happened in an AI era.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: But while it was interesting Was one of the answers I got, I'm ruining next week's episode.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't skip next week's episode, please.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's one of the answers around what AI might be doing to help combat it.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, it's an interesting topic.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because then Xbox announced Xbox Labs,
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: which seem to be sort of them leaning into that rather than anything else.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: Led by Scott.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like Scott in the email.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: Who's Scott?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I later found out who
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Scott was.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: I emailed them when they sent me it to me.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: They sent it to me like an early embargo version and I said, great.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Who's Scott?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Scott.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Scott's got it.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: Scott.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Scott's on the case.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, from Star Wars?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: Star Trek?
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, come on, Xbox.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: Just like, come on.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: But what I liked about that is, look, I'm being mean.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a cool thing they're trying to do.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I did think to myself,
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: surely Xbox Labs,
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: which is experimenting with AI tech,
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: surely you already had a division that experimented with AI tech.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just another press release excuse.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess for them,
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: any disruption in the market might be seen as an opportunity for them to find
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: a place for them platform-wise, which is...
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: It might be interesting for them.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm intrigued.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Last time you came on,
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: you announced you were moving to this model where you had,
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: the charts you were putting out had like, what's the word I'm trying to find?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Projected volumes?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Projected volumes in it.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: How's that gone?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: Have you had a few companies that are being a little bit more secretive
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: of their data at the moment?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the vibe I'm getting from Any chance on receiving these days?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it's global and it's the big publishers,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: the big traditional publishers that are moving to a fewer bigger model
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: and are limiting their slate so they no longer really need
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: the deep detailed benchmark looks because they're not,
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: you know, they're playing in some very defined spaces, usually the ones they own.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it's happening here, it's happening in Europe.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: People are getting a little bit cagier about that stuff.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: Now, in terms of like what we're doing, I feel pretty good about it.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, anytime you project anything, you're going to have a range of error.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: Your outputs could be dependent on the quality of your input.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: In video game projections in particular, there's a lot of art that goes with the science.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: No one's told me that the projections we're doing are shockingly wrong.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I take that as a positive.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think relatively speaking, in terms of the rankings, I think we're pretty close.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's going okay.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to get dicier over time as physical becomes less and less important
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_03: as trying to find engagement to sales correlations becomes tougher to do.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, it's just the nature of the beef with numbers, you know that.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just, yeah, I just,
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: it always drives me nuts,
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: this industry,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: because we can never really,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: and I guess it's because we're such a disparate industry that does
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: so many different things,
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: but we can't seem to align on certain,
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: you see,
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: same with the piracy thing that, again,
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to spoil next week's episode too much, but,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: some of the anti-piracy people said to me,
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: everyone's got slightly different It's difficult to do certain things
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: to combat piracy because some publishers care more than others.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've got this thing with data in that,
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: in the movie industry,
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: not only do we know how well films do at the box office,
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: we also know how much it costs to make the film.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: I get it.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's weaponized by fanboys and idiots online that want to go,
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: hey, ha, ha, your game didn't sell very well, like kind people like to do.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it also shows us all, oh, this is where we need to be looking.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: These are the budgets we need to be aiming for for a title of this And there's,
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: so useful information,
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: for particularly this rising number of small and mid-tier game developers out there.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe not rising, but increasingly important.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, I hate the fact that we're this secreted with our data.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of like, you know, we have a secret sauce we don't want people to know about.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's also like, well,
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_03: we want to protect the stock price,
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: but also a lot of these companies are going private now.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: They're just pulling back because they just don't have to or they're not interested
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: in the other data in the marketplace.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then you have the ESA,
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: which hasn't really filled that particular role of trying to provide that level
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: of guidance as they focus on their lobbying efforts.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: So the IDGA was doing some stuff around this a long time ago.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they're still doing that kind of thing for helping folks around.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's...
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's way too secretive.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: There are lockdowns on every piece of information.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: The reason we've never shared digital sales from our panels is because we're not allowed to.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's just one of those things.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: It would be great.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: It gets out there anyway.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, we don't want to share it because blah, blah, blah, this will happen.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: But then you get the projectionists out there,
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: like the Alineas of the world, that are happy to share all of it.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: And all the Amperes that do it as well, via me a lot of the time.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you can just get the information that way.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure it might not be completely accurate,
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: it might not be completely correct, but the headlines are still happening.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's great, I guess, for the data companies.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Gives you a reason to exist.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: But in a positive, I mean, Sakana always did, but like some of the more estimated ones.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: It frustrates me.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's the funny thing, though, is like all the data that's public is usually estimated.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so therefore,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: by some measure,
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: in some increment,
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: incorrect,
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: just because a range of error on projections and the data that's real, Is in public.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, it's one of the challenges.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I always feel like I have to be so cagey online.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, well,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: that's not quite how it is,
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: but I can't actually say it's 16% because,
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: you know, then, Then I'm not saying anything to anyone soon after that.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: Anyways, it's a really kooky, dumb business world that we're in here.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Years and years ago, Shatoru Iwata talked about doing the digital stuff because he was trying
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: to reassure retail.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: He said, look,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to share all the data with you so you can see and you can work out what
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: to do with your business and how we can work together by showing you how many
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: of our sales of box games are digital.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then Nintendo are the least open with that.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like, oh, that wasn't that intro anyway.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, sorry, Matt, it's my usual rant.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just find it hardly since launching The Game Business, data is a lot more data out there.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I find it harder to actually work out.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I want to know how well certain types of third party games are performing on Switch 2.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I want to stitch up Nintendo,
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: but because I know that Nintendo are trying to push that.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be interesting to measure that and see what games are working,
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: which ones aren't working and where audiences are.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that would be really useful for readers.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: But who knows?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I get it.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, part of the reason I I'm out there on social doing stuff is like,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: I want to try to bring some level of like, okay, you're on the wrong path here.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: This is the better track.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: But because I can't be specific with a lot of this stuff,
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: you know, I
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: get, I get, I did the same thing.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: I used to do it occasionally on X and I would sit there and go,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: well, you know, it's, that's worked out well
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: for you sometimes I've seen.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mute conversations on X.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I post something and immediately mute it.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's just like, I don't want to know.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a few times I've got the information wrong,
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: but often it's when I get sent a report and they've put the data wrong in the report
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: and then I've gone, oh, that was okay.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then I get an email from them and then I have to go sheepishly.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: But now I just make sure anything that I say will be published on The Game Business now.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not putting it out on social media.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_03: Smart.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: I should think about that.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: A famous one was everyone was saying all of Horizon's sales in Europe were basically
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: the bundle and everyone's just getting a cheap PlayStation bundle and
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: then nobody's actually buying Horizon.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well,
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've got the bundle split here in front of me and I know that,
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: okay, the bundle has done well, but I can tell that That's not true.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm trying to sit there, but I can't share that.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my data.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sitting there and I'm trying to sort of,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: and they go, why won't you just tell us the numbers?
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: But trust me, you're on the wrong path on that analysis.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's partially on the wrong path.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, sorry, I've gone off on one.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's nice to hear the similar Kind of pain points from my own life
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: because there are very few of us out here talking about this stuff, right?
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's nice to know you're not alone in some of these things.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a pleasure having you on.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: I always love having you on.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure we're going to get a lot of angry fanboys about everything we just said.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: But to make it be known that we love all games consoles and this all comes from
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: a place of trying to help the market succeed.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: We want everyone to be successful and everyone to be employed and everyone to have
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_03: the games they want to play and be happy.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_03: And any C-suite executive that wants to hit me up on LinkedIn
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: about how purchase intent doesn't equate to sales,
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know already you don't have to send me that DM.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: I understand.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I keep saying purchase intent is a vibe check,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_03: so don't yell at me about where we rank your game on purchase intent charts.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_03: That saying, that's...
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's your caveat, there's your little, there's our terms and conditions at the end.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, thank you so much for joining us.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the data is going to be really followed, I think, over the next couple of months.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sure we'll be talking again soon.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right on.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right, thank you to Matt there.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now for one more thing.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: At Gamescom,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: I met up with Jenna,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: who is a prominent video game accessibility expert and also a producer for live
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: and interactive audio description at Descriptive Video Works,
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: which is a subsidiary studio at Keywords.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I spoke to Jenna about video game accessibility,
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: in particular around blind and people with low visibility.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I think it's a surprising conversation.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an area where I imagine a lot of people think about,
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: particularly when it comes to building their games.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going to share this with you now.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Here is Jenna.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Jenna.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have quite a unique job, right?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about it.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little unconventional, yeah.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, in short, we help make video games more accessible for blind people.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: But in long,
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Descriptive Video Works,
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: which is a keyword studio,
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: helps add audio description,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: which is a narrator that talks between any of the existing dialogue to describe
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: the visuals that are on screen.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Most of what we do is for TV and film, but I am our resident expert on video games.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is there much demand for it?
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are you getting an increase in it?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, actually, yes.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, technically the demand has always been there
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: because blind people have played video games for as long as video games have been
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: a thing.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just,
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: it's never been easier to be a blind gamer when the game itself isn't itself
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: a barrier to playing it.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the more that that demand and,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: if I'll excuse the pun,
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: the visibility towards blind gamers increases,
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: The more those accessibility features get added to new titles.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a common misconception about it?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: I assume there is.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I often run into the misconception that blind people or that,
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: by extension,
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: players with disabilities just won't play games or won't even try to play games.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, the opposite is true.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: People with disabilities are going to buy games,
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: they're going to try games, they're going to play them.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a matter of, will a disabled person play my game?
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's more a matter of, when they do, how much is that title going to disappoint them?
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: And our job is to make sure that it disappoints them, not at all, ideally.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: But there are many common misconceptions that people
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: with certain disabilities won't play games or won't be interested in certain titles
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: or won't even want to try a game, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: In reality,
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: we want to bring as many games to as wide of an audience as possible,
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: and that includes the world's largest minority, people with disabilities.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was just going to say, like, obviously it's a very good thing to do.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: But is there actually a good business reason for it?
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is there like a big address in the market?
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: Consistently,
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: when there have been surveys conducted between people of the general public
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: who self-identify as having a disability versus gamers who self-identify as having
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: a disability,
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: gamers comprise a larger percentage of the population of people identifying
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: as having a disability as compared to the general public.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there are more disabled people playing games than those who aren't.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is a very large market share,
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: and even though I'm sure video game studios have the data on which people are using
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: which accessibility features,
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: how often they're turning them on,
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: how many of them they're using,
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately,
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: as I'm sure you know,
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: studios are rather opaque with data like that,
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: so that doesn't normally get publicly released.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: But we can infer what that data says by looking at the development habits of studios
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: who have intentionally They've intentionally built in robust accessibility features
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: and then looking at what they do with subsequent titles.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in every single AAA studio that I've worked with and that I've seen,
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: every time they have chosen to continue and increase the breadth
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: of accessibility features that are in their games.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: We can read into that a little bit and infer that what that means is that
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: the features that they built in with their last game made them more
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: than enough money to justify expanding those accessibility features.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have yet to see,
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: or I personally have yet to see,
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: a studio regress in the offerings of their accessibility features.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: What are the biggest roadblocks?
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: Potentially putting people off, sort of doing these things.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the money?
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: For some it is.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: It does oftentimes cost a little bit of money to get over the initial hump
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: of getting these accessibility features in the game.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the advantage of it is that if you are working with the same engine
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: between titles,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: oftentimes you only have to build in a lot of features like mine once.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: You only have to build in the infrastructure for it once.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can just keep doing that.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that looks great to players and it builds so much loyalty because Players
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: with disabilities are unfortunately very accustomed to disappointment when it comes
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: to trying new titles because even though we've seen an increase
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: in accessibility features over the years,
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: the fact remains the vast majority of new titles are still closed off to a lot
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: of players with certain disabilities.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that means that when they find a studio who is willing to ensure
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: that their needs are met,
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: that they can actually play the game,
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to have an unending loyalty from that fan base and they are going
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: to buy every single one of your games and every single one of your expansions
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: from there on out.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: What stages should developers, studios, publishers be thinking about doing this?
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is it from the start or is it something they can do at the end?
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a good question because the accessibility feature that I help build in is
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: a little unique in the sense that audio description normally comes very late in
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: the development process.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the norm.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of accessibility features should be considered extremely early in development.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are specific features that we know from experience are an absolute nightmare
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: to effectively retrofit.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: Things like a screen reader, control remapping.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are some things that are much easier to do it if you do it early.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'd recommend engaging with an accessibility QA service or an accessibility consultant.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: Preferably a wide variety of consultants to tell you what your game might need even
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: if you're at the early concept building stages.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: They will be able to give you more pointed recommendations for things like,
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: ideally,
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: audio description,
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which is written very,
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: very late in the game because by the nature of our work it has to be done
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: when visuals are at or almost completed.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't want anyone to think that,
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: oh yeah,
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can wait until three months until release and then I can start on accessibility.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, the vast majority of that has to happen really early.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: so many games are live service these days constantly being updated all the time
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: and changing.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that an added complication for you or does it not change as much as I imagine it does?
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's a boon actually.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is nice because it is a great opportunity for oftentimes older games to build
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: in new accessibility features that maybe they didn't necessarily have time for prior
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: to release.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we've seen this with the Elder Scrolls Online, we've seen this with Sea of Thieves.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Both have put a very noble and concerted effort
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: into building more accessibility features into their live service,
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: which also just makes good business sense because it is effectively expanding
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: the game to audiences that previously just couldn't play it
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_00: because every single accessibility feature added is a barrier removed
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: for someone out there.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a new customer out there who is subscribing to that live service model.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every time they make updates, that's a new chance to remove more barriers.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: Can AI help?
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is AI the tools that sort of help enable some of this?
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of a...
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a complicated question.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think, yes, potentially it could, but it's not there yet.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: In my field,
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: in audio description specifically,
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: there have been quite a few attempts at generating or at writing an AI model
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: that can generate and or voice audio description.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we've reviewed a number of these attempts.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: There have been some studies,
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: there have been some large tech giants that have tried it,
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: but none of them have really come close thus far to the quality and
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: the knowledge base of human narrators.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: In audio description specifically,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: there's a lot of rules and AI models for some reason are terrible at adhering
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: to those rules.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say it can never happen.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: We are very open to the idea of an AI assisted workflow in the future,
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: but it's just not there yet.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: And until we get to that point, it is extremely vital to maintain quality for our audiences.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously,
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: smaller studios have less resource,
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: let's say, and capability to do these sort of things.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: What would you recommend for them in doing this sort of thing?
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to quote an accessibility giant in the industry in that we only have
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: so many blueberries that we can put into our blueberry muffins.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you do have to decide where those blueberries go
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: and how many resources you have effectively.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's an entire Game Accessibility Conference talk on that that's available
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: for free that I would highly recommend.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: But smaller developers,
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: just do what you can with the resources that you have available,
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: and you'd be surprised what you can achieve for something Something that is low
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: to no cost or low to no effort,
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: using tools or resources that you already have in the game or
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: that you already have available, you just have to ask the right people.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the right people are disabled consultants who will be able to point you in
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: the right direction.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Where would you like to see,
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: I guess this is quite a broad,
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine I know what the answer is,
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: but where would you like to see sort of Not just the stuff that you do,
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: but accessibility features in general.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: Where would you like to see that in five years?
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe where do you think it will be in five years?
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, good question.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the future is bright.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: In my line of work we've seen a steadily increasing interest in audio description
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: and by extension a steadily increasing interest in making games more accessible
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: for gamers who are blind or low vision.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: But ideally,
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see some games come out where it's not even a question whether it's going
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: to be accessible.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a matter of myself and all of my friends who are blind get the privilege
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: of getting excited about the same game at the same time
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: because we know we're all going to get to play it.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a privilege that we normally don't have access to.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_00: Normally,
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: when new games get announced,
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: players with disabilities have to tamper their excitement.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can watch a trailer and you can get super hyped about it,
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: you can watch it with any amount of interpretive services to ensure
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: that you can digest that trailer and know what's in it.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't let yourself get excited about it because you know,
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: deep down in your heart, you might not be able to get to play that game.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want there to be a game or a series of games or a franchise
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: or something five years in the future where during the first announcement,
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: we all know we're gonna get to play that game and we can be excited about it.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's not an unreasonable ask.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: Jenna, thank you so much for your time.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've been a lovely interviewer and I adored being able to chat with you.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Jenna there.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly lots of food.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: For thought from her and indeed from everybody in today's episode of The Game Business Show.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a packed show.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really have time to go on news roundup,
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: but the news roundup will be in the newsletter attached to the show.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: So do read that if you want to remind yourself all the goings on from the last week.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you for tuning in.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: We will be back,
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: with more news analysis, insight and interviews in the days and weeks ahead.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not a subscriber to The Game Business,
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: paid or otherwise, you can become one by going to thegamebusiness.com.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: And every time we put out a new episode, you'll get an alert about it.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: But that's it from me today.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, thank you for tuning in.