 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you the listener Thanks to all of you including Kevin Paul Teeson and Ali Sanjabi coming up on DTNS video games are in the cloud But should you play them there? Let's find out Welcome to our special DTNS video game round table show in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt in Salt Lake City I'm Scott Johnson, and I'm Roger Chang the show's pretty and we have guests today pretty excited about this We're gonna be talking about video game streaming services with the following wonderful human beings Please welcome to the show Trisha Hirschberger TV host and streamer. Hello, Trisha. Welcome to the show. Hi. It's so wonderful to be here Thank you guys for having me. We're gonna chat all the things. Yeah, we're gonna get we're gonna get into it Pretty pretty pretty hardcore here and thankfully we also have with us Max Scoville senior writer and host at IGN Welcome back Max. Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Yeah, it's good to have you as well We're gonna we're gonna dive right into this because one of the big seismic changes in Video games in the last few years is arguably the shift toward Subscription services in a lot of ways you're seeing video game companies and publishers move the direction That video did or music did Before and it's now time for video games to shine in a bunch of different ways Sometimes it's just hey I want to subscribe to all your video games and sometimes it's why don't you stream something to me and Some people are doing it through TVs other people are doing it through consoles and some people are doing it on their phones so it's all a little bit weird and We're gonna try to break down what these different services are how they work together some of our opinions on each and what you might be paying If you decide to sign up for one of them the big one out there is obviously Microsoft Xbox game pass which Features basically three flavors. There is the PC game pass There's Xbox game pass and then there's game pass ultimate if you buy PC alone or Xbox alone You're gonna pay nine bucks or 10 999 And if you want the whole thing the whole shebang and have those two ecosystems crossing over with each other and sharing saves You can pay 15 and you also gain at least their current beta version of xCloud to their game streaming service Sony has their PlayStation plus tiers Which we'll get into a little bit more detail a little bit later We'll talk about how that maybe stacks up to what Microsoft is doing as well and Nintendo switch online which just got a bump in content the other day. So that's sort of interesting There's also others like EA play. They have a $5 a month program You can pay a little more to get more services out of that Coincidentally also included in game pass a little bit of a perk for the ultimate users And then there's some side stuff like Ubisoft plus and we might even talk about g-force now and a few others The focus entirely on just a streaming model But we do live in the time of this is happening. This is going and whether or not it will be successful in the long term Well, we're gonna talk about that a little bit. First off, let's just throw it out there Trisha, do you think these services compare well to each other as currently? Constituted like do you how do you think the the Xbox? Offering with game pass and game pass ultimate stacks up to with with Sony's answer with their there, you know, they're three plus tiers The short answer is I think game pass ultimate has been doing it a little longer And therefore they do have the edge But ultimately when you're comparing game pass ultimate to Stay play say PlayStation Plus premium and I'd love to get Max's take on this I feel like they're inherently different services. So Microsoft is coming at it with the angle of you know Almost game pass is that's that is what you're buying into and the hardware itself is seen as secondary, right? So you're getting the service. That's what you're buying into hardware secondary Whereas PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Plus premium is still very much an add-on where you're someone who already has a PS4 or PS5 and you're getting this as an add-on to add to your game library get your extra perks get your discount, etc And so the two of them just inherently your different models I think that Microsoft does a much better job of letting you play on multiple different devices I know PlayStation has an app that lets you do some streaming to a PC But in my experience, it's been a bit of a mixed bag not quite as reliable Whereas, you know Microsoft that this is what this is the strategy They've been going with now for years And so they're they kind of are king of that castle if you will but again, I'd love Max's take on this I would too like this the way Microsoft works. They've got a lot of back backbone in this game They've got a lot of back end I should say and in some ways that gives them an advantage But Max do you think Sony with their offerings at least currently or at least giving a little bit of competition in the space? Are they not quite there yet? It's weird because you know Trisha to your point I think Sony's sort of been doing this longer but in a different shape like PlayStation Plus started out as a kind of Make good for the fact that originally it was free to play multiplayer online on PlayStation on PSN Whereas Xbox you had to play for Xbox gold and then when Sony started charging for that They decided to kind of throw in a few extra games a month and early on PlayStation Plus was was phenomenal You'd get you know that you'd get new games that had just come out that were just you'd get them for free with part of your You know part of your monthly fee for you know for playing online with your friends And then that sort of got copied by Microsoft with games with gold Which they're sort of slowly phasing out that lives in kind of a weird a weird spot right now But I think as far as game pass being the thing that Microsoft's really putting their way behind at the end of the day Yeah, I don't think they care where you're playing I mean they're demonstrating by that by the fact that you can you can do x-cloud on an iPhone like they're not at you Know Microsoft is they make software they make operating systems They make the the the thing you're using to engage with the hardware that it's the direct interface rather than the actual hardware itself Whereas Sony is a consumer electronics company. They want to say what a cell playstations They want to sell dual-shot controllers and you know, it's a different approach for both of those the thing that that bugs me about What happened to PlayStation Plus is they recently introduced the tier system, which I think is just It hasn't been messaged. Well, I think it's just there's a sort of you know There's the there's the classic sort of like in and out menu and then there's the 17-page like New Jersey diner menu and it's like in and out You're like I'll have that one and the other one you're like flipping through trying to choose your options And in the case of PlayStation Plus, there's a fair amount of fine print to read And to sort of figure out what you're what you're getting and the the premium tier is awesome It's got a lot of really cool stuff in there But as far as sort of you know having to sit down and be like just pull the trigger on on picking one I think game pass ultimate is a is a much sort of it's easier to bite the bullet on that one And it's also it's interesting that Microsoft is often criticized for their naming conventions You know they went from Xbox to Xbox 360 back to Xbox one and Xbox one X and then series X and series that like It's a mess and I don't know why they do it the way they do it It drives me absolutely crazy whereas Sony's like hey But if we just called these one two three four and five and it makes perfect sense to me yet on this services end Microsoft has a very simple offering if you're PC only here are those games if your Xbox only here are those games And if you're both here's this opportunity and those all make really easy sense when you see those offered in the Sony case And this is a relatively recent change over there at Sony went from being plus to these three tiered plus premium back down They're confusing you don't really know what to do and I know a lot of people they're just like well, which one's around 15 bucks I'll do that and it's the middle tier. Okay, great That'll get me most of what I want and they don't really understand that upper tier And I like what you said by the way about Microsoft sort of saying well We don't care where you play our games. We just want you to play them So they sell them on Steam they have approached Sony and Nintendo about putting some form of game pass on their devices And those people of course said no, but but it does seem like a different Movement to say well, we want services and games to be what you want from us. We don't care so much about the hardware I'll take either of you on this. Do you guys think that's the right strategy like in the long term Who who wins out in this in this different approach? I Mean I have thoughts on this and I'm probably gonna sound like a fangirl and I'm not meaning to because I Absolutely am console agnostic or platform agnostic when it comes to where I game But I do think game pass ultimate has been rocking that strategy for a while and I think it's paying off hardcore for them I think it's been real a really successful move that they went to a couple years ago And I mean I have to say, you know dropping day one Launches on game pass ultimate has been huge bringing in Bethesda offering EA play with it Like it's they're really appealing to a wide variety of gamers And I think they've brought a lot of people into the game pass ultimate ecosystem So given more time, maybe PlayStation Plus premium would you know eek that out, but I like Microsoft strategy I think it's I think being hardware agnostic for people is a smart move, especially given You know that not everyone has access to super high-end hardware So giving them still the ability to play those triple-a titles some of those more demanding titles I think it's a good move. I do too. Yeah, Max. Do you have a take on that? How do you think that'll suss out in the long run? I mean, there's a few things that we haven't had on one is that as the long list of Recently added first-party Microsoft studios like there's the whole ongoing sort of active acquisition But on top of that they've got you know Bethesda. They've got you know, they've been they've been like investing in studios Which means that they can just say hey, here's our here's our brand new game It's it's their day-and-day for your subscription fee Whereas Sony's first-party offering has always been phenomenal, but I feel like they're a little bit a little bit more I don't know They're really hesitant to give that stuff away because they still want to they still want to sell games sell some copies They very recently one of the sort of very nice guy Sony things that happened in recent memory Was if you bought a PlayStation 5 and you were a PlayStation plus subscriber out of the box You had access to like the greatest hits of ps4 games It was like you know the last of us was God of Wars all this stuff that maybe you maybe you missed If you didn't have a ps4 at all like that is it that is a hell of a bonus to sign on for And then just recently they were kind of like no we sold 30 million PlayStation 5 Maybe we don't need to do that so much and so they kind of yanked that away meanwhile You know some of the biggest games Coming out this year are going to be you know day and date on on game pass because Microsoft owns the studios that are making them. Yeah, if there's a dividing line there for me It's this it's that they've got these they're stacking third-party developers into their own teams They're getting their own you know their own kind of mega powerhouse development Behind everything they make that's a big strategy that goes long time. That's a 20-year strategy or more But not only that they are the company that says when our big game like starfield comes out Very highly anticipated game that comes out day and date on game pass You can also go buy it on steam You can play in these other places buy it on our own store if you don't want to do game pass But however you want to do it day-in-day game pass and it will always be on game pass. That is a perpetual piece of content that will never leave whereas Sony's not offering that with any of their tiers if they have a brand new game come out They'll say last of us three that comes out as a $70 product or more depending on your where you live And there is no playstation plus gets a day one They'll get it later when it kind of hits classic status. I think that's a big dividing line for them at the moment Well part of part of the reason they can do that is because microsoft is run by sachin adela Who sees it as a cloud company that makes most of their money off microsoft azure? And so they don't have to charge for every copy of windows And while they can't quite do exactly the same thing with gaming they have more flexibility To say you know what we we don't have to make every cent we can off of each one of these because this is all running in azure And people who provide the games that are going to be on these services Also probably have a good chance of running on azure. And you know what else is running on azure? Sony's services that we've contracted in so it it doesn't replace the need to make money off the gaming But it definitely gives them a little more room to maneuver Yeah, for sure Uh, let's ask this question Uh, the high price of new games. We're in a new era Everyone's sort of it's you know embracing it now. Nintendo just announced that tears of the kingdom is going to be 70 bucks We're going to have to get used to this new reality. I think for triple a games and their new price Do you think high prices in games even though, you know, they've been a little bit resistant to inflation over the over the decades Um, do you think that will help the growth of subscription services across the board? No matter who's providing it? Let's I'll throw this one over to trisha. Do you think that's a that that makes sense that I don't want to go spend 70. I'd rather spend a little bit per month and just sort of experiment I definitely do I mean like I was saying earlier when it comes to people that might not have the funds to get the super high end hardware The same thing goes with these $70 triple a titles, right? And when you think about it is, you know, if I have xbox for pc, let's say And that's $10 a month that seven months of xbox of game pass for pc That I could be getting Instead of that triple a title You know and still play that triple a title on day one and maybe if I finish it before seven months Try some other stuff for the same price. Um, I think it makes a lot of sense I think it makes it more accessible for a wider variety of people and again You know microsoft kind of bringing those people into the fold and we haven't mentioned this about playstation plus premium But to their credit and I wish I wish game pass would steal this They do the limited time trials for new games as well So for someone who might be hesitant to buy a $70 title If there is a time trial that they can test it out before they drop that 70 bones That's great too. Um, so I do think it's doing a lot for these subscription library services To be able to offer that for a more accessible price point. Yeah demos are back is the way I look at it It's back and one form or another we are happy to have demos back in our life That's one thing that bugs me about playstation plus premium is I feel like the demos It's like you're paying extra and it's it's obviously it's an added value But at the same time it's still it's still marketing like I kind of wish that that was just you know If it's the demos used to come it was like a free thing There's a cd that came with your with your magazine or whatever, but again magazines for subscription models So maybe it's just the same logic as that um, the church's point about the you know about uh Spending 70 bucks for a year and getting to play a bunch of games on xbox pc Conversely if you are horrified at the thought of paying 70 bucks for a new video game But you're a game pass ultimate subscriber and you only play starfield for three months You just paid 75 bucks for it. So it's kind of like what's the moral of the story there? Yeah, the one the one really important thing everyone I don't I feel like isn't come up enough in these discussions But the one thing I do like about game pass and to some degree what sony's offering and others is that there is a bunch of Let's call it middleware for lack of a better term But let's call it b-tier triple b titles for example that are maybe 40 or 50 dollars That used to have their own little place on shelves, but in this digital space It's not as easy to get those games in front of people and you may look at and go I don't even know what this is not an ip. I recognize not a developer. I recognize So i'm just gonna pass my gonna spend 50 bucks But under these systems I can experiment and go Ooh, I found an india. I had no idea was so good And I might actually pay for that long term somewhere else And I like a rebuy it on steam to play it on my deck or something This happens to me constantly because game pass playstation plus and so on are saying Here's some stuff that you probably aren't gonna buy So try it out and then you find these little wonderful games these little sleeper hits you never knew existed Absolutely scott some of the stuff that's come out of id at xbox is just chef's kiss and I think outside of kind of the gaming industry Uh, you know professionals and outside of the journalistic space you may not have had a chance to look at them So Right on code totally agree with you scott the best sort of like I don't know public secret Is the x or is microsoft rewards? Which gamifies trying out new games and like I have a friend who not only has been paying for his game pass subscription Through just playing game pass. He managed to rack up enough points that he bought a he bought a series s And a spare controller and it's just like it's if you play enough games and you get enough achievements It feeds it feeds back into your you know your points or whatever and it's it's wild that you can You can kind of have this sort of perpetual motion of of game pass and like sony has a A reward system, but it's all kind of like cosmetics. It's like, you know, you can get Little collectible bonus trophy type things. I don't think any of that can actually be paid towards You know renewing your subscription, which you know again point for microsoft there Well, we want to hear where everybody in the audience falls on this sort of thing Uh subscription versus individual titles. We know you have opinions So send us your emails folks feedback at daily tech news show dot com All right, let's talk about game streaming. We mentioned xcloud, of course, which works really well Um across most of the platforms it's available on and they are still in beta But I feel like they're getting close to calling that thing 1.0 Um, but they offer users gaming without expensive hardware You don't have to have a big fancy pc or a brand new 500 console to play it Um, you don't need anything specific other than a subscription So the way it works with microsoft's uh ultimate is to let android or ios users play games Written for xbox one x and s or pc or whatever on their tablets phones and smart tvs or junkie old notebooks By the way is a great way to extend the life of your of your crappy slow notebook, but the question is Can game streaming be a serious option for gamers at least maybe Maybe the question is that time here yet or we have a way to go I know I will sometimes Use xcloud to to preview a game Play 15 minutes make a save and decide whether I want to keep playing and if I do I'll download it because I want that like on the hard drive Piece of mind the internet's not going to go out kind of thing. There's still a little bit of that in my head But I wonder if you guys, uh, you know, if you if you think max this this is this is just me being old And the the kids are going to be the same exact way, but I might be old too. So I don't I don't know I was I was completely completely doubtful of of cloud gaming Like I remember what was the one that uh Was it gone live was it online one of those those two that was that was 10 years ago and like trying it back then on Maybe even dsl. I was like this is this almost kind of works Okay, whatever and then fast forward 10 years and I was like kind of thought that that's how it would be and You know rest in peace stadia, but the first time I tried that I was like Oh like this is if you're on if you're hardwired on a fast enough connection It's the the lag is or the the difference between playing locally is pretty negligible And it's that same kind of magic moment of like the first time you watch Netflix on a browser as opposed to Getting a paper envelope with a piece of physical media in the mail You had to send back like it was it was pretty cool. And I think that it's definitely going to be a thing In if if it isn't already a thing It's gonna it's it's that's where it's going But I think the infrastructure hasn't caught up and a lot of people don't have a stable enough interconnection internet connection to really Um You know make it a sustainable option But yeah, like jumping in it into x-cloud and just sort of like You know taking a game pass game for a spin or like again If you want to be like just a real little sneak and just get those rewards very easily as opposed to having to download the games You can just you know pop them in the you know the cloud and then you know Kill three sheep or whatever it is. They're asking you to do that day and then you get the extra points there But it's it's it's fascinating. It's also um, I think it's the easiest way to play Fortnite on a mac Yeah, since they're having that whole like weird war over there I actually I wound up playing um, I played fortnight on my laptop on german hotel internet And it was it was uh preferable to playing it locally on switch It was It was neck and neck it was a little bit a little bit choppy But it was actually more manageable to play it on like a large, you know screen and yeah, I don't know It's it's I think it's cool. I think it's phenomenal. I think it's really cool Um Still not my first choice on how to play a game, but I'm happy to exist there Weird thing the the playstation 3 is so not backwards compared or so hard to Backwards compatible emulate whatever you call it that you have to you have to stream PS3 games That's the only way you can play ps3 games on a ps5. Um, which is yeah, it's you know, it's weird I want not weird. I know that that stuff was inherently kind of complicated But um, it is a little funky to think that they've got this service where you can do all these games and download them But hey, you want to play these ps3 classic titles or these psp titles Uh, they don't have any beat on there. I don't think yet, but uh, you've got to stream. I'm sorry It's the only way to do it and you just don't realize you're streaming it on microsoft Azure servers while you're doing it. Which is pretty funny Uh trecia, do you picture yourself ever feeling 100 cool with uh, just putting your hands and streaming and Putting your whole life and streaming and saying, okay, give me the games I believe that you will not have any problems or glitches for the full four hour stream I'm about to do I mean, it'd be hard for me to exist without collector's editions of stuff sitting in my house on display Um, but if we did move hypothetically to an all digital future, I love the idea of cloud gaming I love it. I feel like you're getting a great gaming experience ideally In more people's hands and more gaming for everyone makes my heart very happy. However, it's so connection dependent Um, I've had demos of various cloud gaming services over the years that have just blown my mind and been amazing And like max said is negligible to playing uh locally on your hardware And then I've had some real stinker cloud gaming experiences So it it really is so connection dependent and especially with timing dependent titles, right? So there's certain titles if there's if there's a little bit of input lag not a huge deal You can still play get a great experience if it's something like I don't know if I'm playing spirit fairer on my pc And then I've got to go somewhere else and want to pick up where I left off on my phone But then be able to come back to my pc. Totally fine. Great experience. Thank you microsoft Um, but I can't imagine trying to play like god forbid a like hi-fi rush or something that's rhythm dependent, right? And needing to have that very specific timing over cloud gaming. I don't think we're there yet I love the concept of it. I hope for a future in the next. I don't know 20 Years maybe I don't know where cloud gaming can be at the same place Or it's that premium of an experience like we have now on local hardware But uh scott you mentioned earlier being able to test out a demo Through cloud gaming, uh, and then locally download it for your more premium experience when you decide you've wanted to make that investment That's that's the sweet spot right now. I agree that that to me is is the the The middle bit we're in the middle place, right? We can't go full that way quite yet The full stadia method is not here yet or stadia would be doing gangbusters. They would have succeeded wildly in my opinion Uh, and we can't go back to what we were doing before. This is definitely a thing So I think both sony and microsoft have done a pretty good job of straddling the middle and saying Here's multiple ways to do this and we're going to let you cloud save through all of it So you're not going to lose any any hours that you spent here if you want to play it over there So that's all in place. So that's a good step and the other good step is saying Well, let's make it so that that this content is Available in any of the ways you might want to play it And we still got hard drives on our hardware and your pc still has hard drives Like we we know that you still kind of want to do this I think that's really smart for them not to try to jam it down our throats Which they kind of tried to do with the xbox one announcement Because they were already leaning this way. We're just all now embracing finally some of those ideas And they were pretty bad at presenting on this, you know, if we're gonna be honest, but It's interesting now. Do you do you see parallels trisha? If I if I was to ask you if you see any parallels between I don't know the netflix model And where we're at now. Is this netflix 2007 2008 but in gaming and we have that much growth to go through Or do you think it's not a fair comparison because we're just talking about static video versus, you know These interactive medias Well, yeah, I mean that's what I was going to do is the big difference between something like a netflix experience Is that we have to be able to give active input and the timing of that active input is important So from a you know back end tech standpoint, it's obviously very different and therefore from the consumer Experience standpoint, it's still very different. So Hopefully we'll get there. I I personally am a big netflix fan for consuming content So I hope that I hope that gaming gets to that point But amazon luna is doing it right now where you can buy the luna controller with the hopes that that will reduce about half of your input latency Um, because it's communicating directly with the service instead of having to go to your device to the service back to your device and You know through um, so I think I think that it's something everyone's aware of that's in the cloud gaming scene Um, and we'll we'll just have to see when the tech catches up with the experience that they're selling They're marketing a premium experience and I don't know that that's what people are getting at Whereas netflix is delivering a premium experience right and max we there's a There's a future in gaming that we may be not quite be able to see it I don't know if you remember what it felt like when everyone said that we would all be getting digital and forget about physical copies of Stuff with very few exceptions of you know collectors editions or something We're there and I'm all in but I remember being very resistant to this concept of I'm not going to have a disc I'm not going to have a thing to put on my shelf now. I could care less. I love how de-junked it makes my life Uh, I try to remember that when I think about these other weird ideas that we might only be streaming games one day Which seems a little insane to me today But maybe we're maybe this model happens again and we're and we're there Yeah, I mean the the fear of I think physical media enthusiasts is that one day your digital copy will just stop working Which is you know, that's a valid concern It's an even more valid concern if you're playing through a subscription because they pull stuff off of the library Or they change what's available, which is a that's a huge pain to just sort of be like Oh, I'm going to play this thing and then it's like I've had that happen with game pass where I install a ton of stuff And I'm like I just you know, it's it's just adding to the backlog What have you and then I try to load it up and it's like you have to buy this Because it's not a game pass anymore. Sure tough tough luck, buddy too bad Yeah, that's too bad because the third party stuff is mostly affected by that obviously because the first party stuff should stay in perpetuity but I think maybe that's also why microspying all these studios and really ramping up their development because they want to be able to say These are not only day-in-day game pass games But they're also not going anywhere and they're also from companies like obsidian entertainment who makes no garbage They make nothing but wonderful games and now we own them So you'll always have them, but it still happens. It'll be like spirit fair is a good example That's still on there and has been on there forever And I love that game, but I'm terrified they're going to pull it Because it's not their game. It's somebody else's so there are these caveats, right? And who knows where those go or where they take I think a great great thing to remember in when you talk about parallels is that The music streaming was considered to be something that people couldn't do I don't know if you remember e-music, but they had a situation where you could subscribe And download a certain number of tracks and they were DRM free That was the that was the big feature and then spotify came around in 2006 and people were like Yeah, but who has bandwidth to do that? You know, how are you going to listen when you're walking around? It's not like, you know 2g gives you enough speed to stream music That of course seems silly now, right? It's all good and you can still download some tracks Locally on spotify and apple music and all the rest But you don't really think about it that often at the time that netflix launched streaming Everyone said well video is way different than music. You have to have sync between the sound of the video That that kind of lag just is going to kill it. There's no way people can do video bandwidth improved and Now people stream netflix is like trisha said a premium experience So there are different things to happen for game streaming to get that to that same point You have to reduce the latency to almost zero. You have to get rid of things like jitter and judder Uh, but those are the kind of promises that 5g and 6g make I wonder if it's the mobile internet That becomes the place that has like the really optimize low latency services that power this Whether that's it or not, whether it's 5g or 6g or something else I do think the latency there's enough motivation to get that latency down that it'll happen and and then these things are going to proliferate sure, uh Like the idea too that we might all have multiple versions of a streaming game service at one day at one point And we're less worried about the tribalism of sega versus nintendo or in this, you know In this day and age microsoft versus sony. There's a lot of tribalism around gaming. I don't have to tell anyone that I don't think but uh The idea that that people have multiple streaming services for video content say netflix disney plus and hbo max I have all three of those because there's a bunch of stuff on all three. I feel like I can't live without Do you see a future where that's the same got to have game pass got to have sony's thing And I got to have whatever nintendo's doing And whatever other players out there because how else am I going to get these exclusive games like as much as we've moved away from Less overall exclusivity, especially in the case of microsoft Maybe sony hasn't budged as much but a little bit they put stuff on pcs now and I can there's a couple of their games on xbox So maybe even they've let loose a little bit nintendo's a weird egg and they control everything that they have but But there is a future I feel like where if the infrastructure is there then we will just Like we do with these streaming movie services. We'll just use them They'll be there and we'll all pay money and we'll feel okay about it Do you foresee? You know max or trisha do you do either of you foresee a future where you're just not buying a new video game anymore You're only just paying monthly for your games It's super dependent on what you play. I think max you brought that up earlier But you know if you just play starfield or you just play splatoon 3 all the time You're probably not going to invest in these various different libraries If you only play fifa save that money just get ea play you're doing great But if you're someone who's a variety, you know, you like to enjoy a wide variety of games Then you it might be worth it for you to invest in the various services So I think it completely comes down to what what type of video games you enjoy Yeah, I think it's been gonna be wild when and this this does this seems like a when rather than an if When there's an option to just Just pay a subscription fee to call duty Like because there's a lot of people who that's the game they buy every year That's all it is and this next year is the first year when there isn't one coming out because they're you know It's become so much of a service like it's just patches to war zone and it's you know Uh kind of gradual updates and that's really that's the thing is kind of in tandem with Subscription services. We're also seeing games as a service Which is at a whole other a whole other arms race that's happening where it's you're you're competing for people's attention you're competing for people's time and You know, I mean you look at A whole bunch of games as service just just kind of closed up shop like, uh, I know there's rumbleverse knockout city ea killed apex mobile What have you and it's um You know, it's because you can you can only really play one game at a time and for games that are You know competitive it requires you to practice a fair amount. It's not just like oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go play fortnight and beat it. You don't beat fortnight It's just you know, it keeps it gives you more and more stuff to do and you you know You try to up your stats or whatever it's it's that's That's a whole other conversation to have but I think like I don't I think people are They're always going to be people who are going to buy games in some capacity But I think we're going to see like we're maybe weirder subsubscription models come along where it's if you only want this thing Like I mean ea plus play whatever it's called is the kind of beginning of that because you know Like Call of Duty, there's a lot of people who are just there for madden or fifa and that's you know It's kind of a if they can cut out the The console maker like if you know people don't want to shell out 500 bucks for a new box to play one game And instead they can just play one game on their phone or their smart tv through an app That is money going directly to ea as opposed to any middleman or you know third party That seems kind of like a no-brainer there. Do you either uh, either you think that Mobile services has currently constituted. Anyway, apple's got it's it's a arcade subscription service which I use and Sadly, I don't use it as often as I pay for it But it's there Um google play pass, uh as well. These are these are I won't call them up and coming but they're Established services that are mobile focused and while they don't either of them Don't currently offer a streaming style service. They let you download games that are otherwise premium games Uh in apple's case, it's they're only available there Sometimes the remakes of older games that perhaps were you know cost you money in the past But you're playing them as long as you're subscribing you have access Access to those games It feels like that's smart for them to do because they need to have some skin in this game And it is the most played platform for games whether we hardcore gamers like it or not mobile is a threat I I still feels like though that's real tenuous and these other companies are going to figure out ways to dominate those platforms Curious of either of you have any we'll start with trisha any thoughts on on mobiles Um role in this moving forward I mean you really have to be into mobile gaming. I feel like to go with google play pass or apple arcade Um because again, it's that how many games do you play if you play one game all the time I don't know that you're going to want to invest in a mobile library However, uh, if you if you're an android person and all you like to play is android mobile games Then have at it. Enjoy all those games. I'm not a huge mobile gamer So I don't foresee a world where I would be paying for a variety of mobile games But you know in especially in different parts of the world Mobile games are where it's at. So max. I'm gonna hand that over to you. I don't know if you play a lot of mobile games Not not really. That's one thing. I've just it's never really clicked for me. Um, I mean It's less so than ever now that I'm not really commuting or Riding planes as much. So it's I don't know. Yeah, I've had apple arcade for a second I love that there are a handful of, you know bespoke Games that make use of the actual device you're using which is has something special to it, but Uh, yeah, I mean the mobile market is an entirely different beast I think there is definitely some there's it's kind of the the console pc market and the mobile market are kind of You know bleeding together in certain areas. You see this with uh, I mean fortnight is a big one There was a point in time where the thought of playing a Game like that on your phone, you know, you think like a your phone is is, you know Bejeweled or candy crush or whatever right and consoles is like that's the that's the big world You're running around and jumping on motorcycles and shooting people. It's like this is You know now it's the fact that mobile is capable of that. It's really not I don't know what's holding it back from from doing the same stuff at this point Yeah, I think it's interesting too that the that mobile Has embraced one aspect sooner than these other services and that is a family plan of some sort or a way to get greater value out of it for more people And apple does that they include apple arcade in with their Music subscription, which also includes the news subscription. I believe whatever it is. I'm paying for every month the bundle the apple Yeah, the bundle and I think that is a bundled service is actually a really nice ad For a service I was going to get anyway, and it's costing me about the same Um consoles have been slower to do that like there are three tiers for sony's Plus now and there are multiple tiers depending on where you want to play for game pass But none of them account for Any sort of like hey do you want to do this with a household of five people? We'll make you this deal and you can all log in as these these different names and download stuff separately and have all These saves like I feel like there's an opportunity there And they haven't done it yet. Maybe the pressure isn't on I don't I don't know but that could be that could be one interesting effect of what mobile is doing If that side of it bleeds over into the console side I want to see more of that. Um microsoft I want to know one thing really badly microsoft is testing out game pass family plan The only place they're doing it is in ireland and columbia, which seems like I i'm not an expert on this stuff, but it seems like a very arbitrary territories to try this out in but I mean happy for anybody who's there who gets to take advantage of this That seems having a family plan for gaming seems like really really important Uh because you know, you don't want your little brother playing your starfield file Like you don't want that seems I gave I gave a game pass like subscription to my My nephews and there's two of them plural and I felt kind of bad about that afterwards I'm like are they going to be kicking each other's ass because one of them wants you know Mom said it's my turn on the xbox or whatever Like it's it's it's a thing and uh, that's one where area or nintendo like they're doing their own little thing in the corner They're like every month you get maybe some forgotten nes game or like finally you can play minish cap on a portable device again Uh, but they're also like yeah, you can you can share with your with your family because that's always been a family first company And I think they understand that which is very cool. Yeah, I agree I wish they understood more about how consoles and stores worked and things like that But that is a topic for a different time as well um to kind of Round things out here. I thought it might be kind of fun to pick what we would pick today So that listeners can kind of make a decision. I guess what they what we would pick in various environments So let's say we're console gamers and we are and we want to we want the best possible possible bang for our buck Obviously depends if you've already got one of these consoles that may make the decision for you But if you had to vote for the best thing and going right now Max start with you who has the best console service subscription service right now. I'm gonna say game pass You think so too trisha. Where are you at with that? Yeah, I mean it's so hard. It's so platform specific You know what types of games you like to play and where you like to play them But a game pass for xbox. I think would be the win for me as well On pc. I'm tempted to say the same although. I think g4's now is real good Uh, there's it's a strong streaming competitor. Um, I really quite like it But I also think it's very specific to a certain kind of gamer and it's a little less mainstream But even there I would probably say game pass Do you guys agree? I would say game pass ultimate over game pass for pc only because it gives you a little bit more options In case you do want to take your game on the go Like you paused it on your on your pc and you want to take it on the go or something like that I agree. I think having ultimate is the way to do any of that Plus I like both places and I spend a lot of time in both places and having all that stuff synced is If it used to feel like magic now it feels required and I don't want to ever not have it Uh, how about how about you max anything on the pc that the jumps outside of a game pass that you would recommend to listeners I'm not I'm not a huge. I don't play a lot on pc, but again game pass seems pretty solid I think depending on what you're interested in those are areas where Maybe that's where ea player ubisoft plus are You know good options to choose from like we're talking about this is ea ea play is what is it five five bucks a month Five bucks by itself and if you if game pass just includes it if you get ultimate There's also a fin dollar version of game pair of a of ea play that lets you have early access And day and date releases So they've they've got some they got a little bit of granularity there as well But I it's best use case. I believe is an add-on to game pass if I if I was to make it hard Casual gamers they run into a little bit of a different problem Although as this streaming stuff starts to converge It's less and less of a problem because even if you're casual no matter what you're playing on you You'll be able to stream from some service But I think apple arcade is a decent value if you're in that ecosystem nothing wrong with that They also make it so every one of those games has to support a controller All of them have to do cloud saves and all of them have to play on The mac The ipad and the phone So they've got you know kind of a good continuity going there if you're in that ecosystem I would also make a big Thumbs up for just about all of these options where possible on m1 or m2 max The silicon max are really running everything really well including stuff They used to run poorly on intel through steam and other services Um, so I would recommend most of what we've talked about today on those devices, especially in the case of game pass ultimate Streaming to a mac is a no-brainer. It's really really easy But if you're feeling like a casual player, you're really not sure about that android has their thing apple arcade's okay And um, you know the mac the mac, you know still not like a powerhouse game machine But it's it's a machine that is much more capable now, especially if you're getting something with the new apple apple silicon stuff in it I hope that helps somebody out there listening to today's show and having you guys on was fantastic today A big round of applause for our moderator scott johnson as well I don't know about that There we go. Well, thanks. It was an honor. I could talk about this stuff all day, of course Tom already knows that so having a chance to sit and to talk to some like-minded about it and and hopefully inform people A little more about how this is all shaping up has been a pleasure. So thank you so much for letting us do it Tom Before we go scott where can folks find more of what you do? Well, I just finished a big huge three hour episode of core last night And so I'm going to point people toward a video game podcast I do on the weekly called core You can find it at frogpants.com slash core where me and my co-host Go over all the big news and the little stuff in gaming including the things we play every week It's a big meaty show and it's a lot of fun and we make people laugh apparently So check it out and let me know what you think you can find it wherever you find your podcast Just search for core trisha hershberger a pleasure as always. Thank you again for sharing your knowledge with us Where can folks find more of what you do? Thank you for having me Tom. It's always such a good time Um, you might see my face if you follow a lot of pc gaming news pc building news That's some launch events coming up soon As well as on all the socials at that girl trish. No, I in the girls So just that grl trish and I try any day. I'm not on set hosting I really do try to stream on my twitch channel twitch.tv slash trisha hershberger So hit me up somewhere online and stay in touch fantastic max scoval. Uh, pleasure to have you back as well my friend Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. Uh, where can folks find more of what you got going on? I'm over on ign.com. Uh, you know the various media tendrils of ign its apps and Channels and whatnot. I host a weekly playstation show called podcast beyond which exists in audio form and in video form Whichever you prefer, uh, there's considerably less Game pass worship on that show We try to say nice things about playstation plus but uh, you know, it's plenty good stuff playstation stuff to talk about these days So check that out if you're interested. Excellent. Thanks again everybody and uh, special thanks to drew tober One of our our top dtns lifetime supporters. Thank you drew for all your years of support Folks, uh, we need patrons. Uh, we we can do these special round tables because we have people who are patrons So if you're hearing this on the free feed, you've got a couple bucks a month You'd like to get some extras. Maybe things like this earlier Uh, sometimes then then they are elsewhere by all means, uh, go check out see what the free stuff is There's even some merch perks in there. You might get a hoodie. You might get a coffee mug patreon.com dtns You can also catch the show live monday through friday 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 utc find out more about that at daily tech news show Dot com slash live back tomorrow with our special monthly dtns weekend edition all about photo news We'll talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program