 Back to the Xbox podcast, otherwise known as the future of Xbox featuring Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond. What is going on? Are they going third party? What games are happening? Are the Xbox schools in down or are they making it handheld? We have no idea. But this is a big event, a potential industry changing event. So without further ado, let's go ahead. Let's welcome in your Nintendo Prime. Go ahead and take the shades off here. Still don't have my contacts. I got to put my glasses back on. Uh, yes folks here in about 14 minutes, the official Xbox podcast begins. It is supposed to be over on the Xbox YouTube channel. They do not have a link to it up so it sounds like they're just going to go live with it. Kind of weird. They didn't preset it up ahead of time but it is what it is. It is supposed to be literally right here. You guys see it. It's supposed to be right here. So we're going to do our best to react to it and all of that effect. Actually, I think I'm going to switch up something here. I'm going to switch the monitors up. I think I want the podcast on. Yeah, we're going to switch the monitors up here. Let me do my other monitor because this monitor actually has an issue and then I don't want that issue to come through to you guys. So let me switch up this a bit. I'm going to go back to this view here. Actually, you know what? No, I got to change it in this view so I can't see it once I'm in here. The display. We want the display. No, not that. Where's the actual display capture? There we go. We want it to be this one and move over here, move this over here and then we want to make this full screen obviously. This is where we're going to do it and I want to make sure that when we do this we actually do it in a non-chrome browser. We'll bring up Safari because Safari is nice and smooth here on Mac because I'm on Mac. So we'll bring up Safari here. Come on. I'm on full screen. You little punk. Why aren't you full screen? Actually, you're not changing sizes at all. There we go. There we go. Anyways, we'll bring it up here when it's ready to go plus. When I'm looking at it, it looks like I'm looking at it to the side so it actually lines up with my stream. That's another reason. And then I can bring this over here and I can have you guys all here with me. I can shrink this down. I can bring the live chat over like I want and everything actually just works, right? Just works the way we want it to be. All right. You guys are awesome. Thank you for choosing to watch this with me. Obviously there's lots of channels streaming this today. So there is a lot of places that you could watch this. I know a lot of people are like, what's the link? What's the link to the official Xbox one? They haven't given it. It's not out yet. They're literally just going to go live. So how are you guys doing? We have a lot of people here. Thank you for subscribing. Joey Helfen. How are you doing? Need Nintendo to hurry up. Don't worry about Nintendo today. Let me see here. February 15th is on the right. It came from 4chan. I have no idea. No idea. Let's see here. I talked about everything I needed to talk about and Jeff Grubb was not, by the way, Jeff Grubb never gave me a date. I don't know what you're talking about. Jeff Grubb is not a source for a Nintendo Direct happening this week. I want to be very clear. If you're going to say Jeff Grubb got the leak before, there's no leak on 4chan when it comes to this. Jeff Grubb had no source for it happening this week. Anyways, I don't want to get into that, guys. I mean, I know you guys can't help but bring it up, right? A lot of people disappointed. Let's see here. Where can we listen to the podcast? Again, don't know. It's supposed to be on the Xbox channel. They do not have a live stream set up for it. So it's just going to happen. We're just going to refresh in 10 minutes and hopefully it's here. It's literally where they said it's going to be. They said it's going to be here. So everywhere online, if you look up like, hey, where can I watch the Xbox podcast today? All of it just links directly to the Xbox YouTube channel, including the official Twitter accounts. So even the Twitter accounts, the official ones out there haven't put out anything on where exactly you can watch. It's just on the Xbox YouTube channel. So we'll get there when we get there. I think you're handling everything the best you can and the excitement you may have gotten the better of you living there. Well, I put out a video if you guys want to take the time to watch it later. It's pretty lengthy. One has a new rumor in it from Jeff Grubb. I actually talked to Jeff Grubb behind the scenes before I made that video. I wanted clarification before I covered it because obviously I know the general sentiment is going to be goalposts are moving. So I really wanted to get some insight into Jeff Grubb's source and everything. So I can't go into what was said privately, but it was enough for me to be willing to make that video. And then obviously a majority of the video is spent talking about the rumors, mistakes I have made, copying the mistakes I have made, the methodology behind things, how we're going to change things in the future, how there's going to be a lot more clarity, how we're going to actually be covering less people for rumors. That might actually make some people happy that we're going to be covering less people, how we eliminated a couple of people as well. And so yeah, it's there's a lot. There's a lot I had to say and I felt like I said it in the most concise way I could do it. So if you guys want to take time to watch that video later, I would appreciate it. Necro can't strike your chin. Oh, what a hoot. Ah, geez. Yeah. For those who don't know, one of the people that we've been citing for rumors made a public threat against my channel that if I cover any more of his rumors in the future, which by the way, we're not going to be as far as I'm aware, he's got a lot of proven to do for me to cover any of his rumors again, but we were threatened to have our channel copyright striked, which is actually not legally possible. Copyright strikes are a legal matter and you can't just tell someone to not cover things and talk about things you say publicly. If you say thing publicly, it's in the public domain. It's literally against the law. He would be breaking the law if he copyright strike me. I would actually have a case for a lawsuit against him if he tried to copyright strike me, but I'm not going to do that. I just think it's funny. I think it's hilarious that anyone's threatening to copyright strike me for covering what they said because they're having a hard time dealing with the backlash over what they said. I feel for them. Dude, you guys know any of my longtime viewers know I got a lot of haters out there, right? I get a lot of flack. I get attacked a lot. You got to have a you got to have a very thick skin and you can never take it personally. And it's hard. I talked about yesterday on my live stream how it's easy to take your work home with you and take the hate comments home with you and you are human and it does affect you. But when you are out in public, making public statements, making public videos, you need to have almost a skin made out of like, I don't even know, battle armor because you have to understand what's coming your way. And if you can't handle that and you handle it in a very immature way because you're really like it's overwhelming and I'm sure for him right now, in particular, it's very overwhelming since he was the primary source for today. He's probably getting like the level of hate I'm getting is like minuscule compared to what he's getting. And so people are being really nasty towards him. And I feel for it because I've been there. I've been doing this a long time. I know, I know what that backlash feels like, especially that first time when it really catches you off guard. Like how nasty the internet can get really catches you off guard. So he lashed out at me because he probably blames me for bringing extra attention to him. I take responsibility for the things that you say online, man, I mean, that's just that's my feelings. Got to take responsibility. You got to own it. And while he put out a tweet owning it, turning around and then like saying I own this mistake, blah, blah, blah, and then turning around and lashing out. I think his pride, his ego is hurt its life, but I don't want to dare him to copyright strike me. Honestly, I don't wish any ill will towards him. And I think, I think he's just trying to do his best out there. He might have a bunch of legit information and be a real insider, but we're not going to be covering him anymore. And it's not because of what he said and it's not about his idol threats. It's that I don't trust him. I don't trust him as a real insider anymore. That's it. He'd have to earn that trust back and he earns that trust back by getting a lot of stuff correct. And that's that. If he starts getting a bunch of stuff correct and he turns out to be legit and have a lot of legit information, I will gladly cover him in the future and I will gladly wait for those copyright strikes to roll in because they're not legal. It's pretty insane that he made a public threat over something that's against the law to do, but it is what it is. I think he just needs to calm down. I think he needs to take a day and get off the internet and calm down. That's my personal advice. If he happens to be watching this live stream, I really hope that you just sit back, take a break, calm down, let this blow over a bit and move on. You know, like sometimes you gotta take a step back, two steps back to take one step forward. That's just how it goes in life. Um, anyways, a lot of you guys don't even know what's going on because a lot of the stuff happened on Twitter. So, uh, we're talking about Zippo here. No, no, I'm trying really hard to like not point fingers. I don't want people going to attack the guy. He's got enough going on. He's got enough going on. Uh, follow up three for switch. Sure. Uh, let's see here. I don't know who we're talking about. Yeah. It was Necrophilipa Lima from Nintendo Universal, Universal Nintendo. I don't want to like, guys, please don't go seek him out. Please don't go like, say shit to him. He's getting so much shit today because, hey, he's got to own. This is, this is what happens when you say you have sources and you say, you know things and then you report on it and other people cover you and then it comes out and that thing doesn't happen. You gotta eat it. You gotta eat shit. It is what it is. Uh, and some people have a very hard time eating it because they don't understand what the internet's about to do to them. Um, I know what the internet does to me. If my sourcing is wrong on stuff, the internet eats me alive. So I know that it's got to have a very thick skin out there. Um, so I know that he's probably going through a lot emotionally. I wish him well. I hope he takes care of his mental health. And I really encourage my community to not go after him, even though he made a very, very, in my opinion, asinine, illegal threat against me and my channel. So. But you live and you learn. I mean, you should be happy. He's going to get what he wants because I already wasn't going to cover him anymore. So he always getting what he wanted, whether he asked for it or not. So, um, maybe it's going to hate on again because he screwed up last time too. I mean, Nate, the hate's probably getting some backlash. He never gave an exact day and he wasn't like it's definitively going to happen this week, but it was pretty definitive about being a partner showcase. We'll see if Jeff Grubbs, correct. And this Xbox event caused it to get pushed. Cool. But, you know, we'll see. I, I, you know, I like Jeff Grubb, but he's not always right, but he is right sometimes and we'll see. We'll see. We'll be flipping over to this any minute. I'm just waiting for the podcast to pop up on the Xbox page. We're just waiting. We're literally just waiting for it to pop up. I'm going to load the official Xbox Twitter over here as well. Cause they'll probably tweet it out there as soon as it's live too. So if there's a different link that's not the Xbox one, uh, let's go ahead and get that open as well. Uh, Xbox, uh, the official Xbox. Yeah. So they'll probably tweet it out here too. So we'll have that open just in case they give a different link. That's not the Xbox one. Yeah, it should be any minute now. Like we're one minute away. It's still not up, but again, I don't think they preset up the live stream, which is interesting to me because they could have had like a, you know, a million people waiting to watch. So I'm very curious why it's not up yet. Very curious, but they're choosing to just go live live. They're choosing to do what I do with my vertical streams. You just instantly go live. There's no preset up. Oh, we had a $5 super chat. Sorry, I didn't see that earlier. Uh, if we had a $5 super chat, I missed it. My bad, uh, came from Michael Kuhnate, at least to me. Great video earlier today. You mean the one I dropped like 10 minutes before this one? Before we went live? Yeah, hasn't been up very long, but it just took me a while to put that video together. I wanted to make sure that I said what I needed to say. I didn't say too much. You know, me and Andrus restart sat down and had a very long productive phone call today. Um, sorting out some stuff, uh, making sure that, you know, I don't go too far with the things I'm saying because I don't want people, um, to, I don't want to rally troops to do things. Uh, I also want to make sure that I'm not making excuses for myself. Uh, I'm not. I make mistakes. Um, and while I don't, I didn't lie. I definitely could have been better. I could have been better. Um, there's, there's the super chair there. Found it. Thank you so much, Michael Kuhn for the $5. Um, let's see here. I like how Nintendo, uh, may have moved their event because of Xbox, but didn't move an inch from PlayStation. Now they're showing the same day. Well, look, this Xbox event might be industry changing and it should be up right now. And yet I'm refreshing and not seeing it. Oh, Xbox. Did you forget that you have a podcast today? Oh, Xbox. Did you forget you have a podcast today? I'm literally refreshing guys. It is not up. Let me see if anyone else has it up on YouTube. Like player essence. Is it up? We found it up. Wait, he found it. Where is our cast business thing? Renna found it. Let's go. Where is it? All right. Let's go. Let's go. Oh, geez. It is up. It is up. Okay. Um, hold on. Maybe it's just a video. It might just be a video. Hold on. Here it is. Got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. It is a video. It is that's why it's not a stream. It's a video. Okay. Let's go ahead and switch over. Let's turn off our music. Uh, make sure we're at our max quality here. We'll go to, uh, actually this monitor only goes to 1080p. So we'll go to 1080p here. Ready, guys? Here we go. Here we go. This is it. It's 22 minutes. It's not very long. Here we go. Hello and welcome to the official Xbox podcast. I'm your host Tina Amini and we have a very special episode today as you can probably tell by the fact that I'm joined by Phil, Sarah and Matt. Welcome. And we're going to talk about some updates at Xbox. We want to talk about game exclusivity. We want to talk about Activision Blizzard now that they're part of our portfolio, how that might be an impact on Game Pass, and we want to talk about hardware too and how all of this fits into the strategy at Xbox. So where should we start, Phil? Well, when we originally had planned for the show, starting back in December, um, I think we probably would have started with Activision Blizzard. Maybe talked a little bit about the exclusivity with some of the news coming up and then hardware, but we've, we've had some unforeseen news that has come out. So let's just go in and tackle the exclusivity question because I know it's on the minds of a lot of people. We hear from the community and that's an important input for us. So we've made the decision that we're going to take four games to the other consoles, four, just four games, not a change to our kind of fundamental exclusive strategy. It is we're making these decisions for specific reasons. We make every decision really with the long term health of Xbox in mind. And long term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators. I remember when he says four, it's like, that's just what they're doing. We're always looking to run as a leadership team and to grow. And we think this is an interesting point in time for us to use what some of the other platforms have right now to help grow our franchises. So we're going to do that. So these four titles, what are they? Can they, can you say? I'm not going to name those teams that are building those games, have plans that are not too far away, not too far away, you know, game teams, but a lot of their announcements with the partners. So I don't want to take anything away from those teams. Not too far away. I won't be talking about the titles specifically, but I think they come out. It'll make sense. Can we say if either of those titles are Starfield or Indiana Jones? They are not Starfield or Indiana Jones. Well, what was the criteria and how the team was thinking about selecting those four titles? Let me start a little bit outside of that, and then I'll get to the four specific games that we're talking about right now, because the the fundamental decision driver for any decision that we make, anything we're going to talk about today is the long term health of Xbox. That we're running a growing platform that is reaching more players that our games are having as much success as possible. And I do have a fundamental belief that over the next five or ten years, exclusive games, games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry. And that's not some great insight, because if you look at the last ten years and what the biggest games are today, it's a natural place. Whether it's one console, a Nintendo, multiple consoles, mobile console and PC, you see big games landing on multiple platforms. And we want to be a great platform for creators that are trying to realize that potential. But now back to the specifics of the question on these four specific titles. We looked at games that are over a year old. So they've been on Xbox and PC for a while. A couple of the games are community driven games, new games, that kind of first iterations of a franchise that have reached their full potential, I'd say, on Xbox and PC. There's always growth. Franchises that obviously want to continue to invest in. Parting part of having the ability to continue to invest is that the business, I don't know, the fourth one is franchises continue. Three of them are easy to call. I don't know what the fourth game is communities behind them that they can have confidence that they're going to exist in the future. So two of them kind of community driven games that will end up on other platforms and give us the ability to continue to invest in them. We think that's great for the business and great for the community. Sea of the East is like an MML. So I'd say two of the other games are smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that. But games that our teams really wanted to go build, that we love supporting creative endeavors. You guys have any idea what the other smaller game could be? And as they've realized that they've been on Xbox and PC, we see an opportunity to utilize the other platforms as a place to just drive more business value out of those games, allowing us to invest in maybe future iterations of those or sequels to those or just other games like that could be grounded. Sure. And when we don't damage Xbox and we can grow our business using what other platforms have and to help us with that, we're going to do that. And that's really the story behind these four games. And last thing I'll say, looking forward, you know, I think there are there is an interesting story for us of introducing Xbox franchises to players on other platforms to get them more interested in Xbox. We think there's a good brand value for Xbox there. So four games, no promise beyond that. So if you're on those other platforms and see these four games coming, please don't take it as some signal that everything's coming. It's not. And we're going to learn. So when you are thinking about the future and the concept of live service games, games that can benefit from bigger audiences, new audiences. He's afraid to say the wrong thing. The future titles and how you're applying that criteria there. Yeah, there's really no fundamental change to how we think about exclusivity. We just came out of Developer Direct. Oh, Psychonauts 2, yeah. Where we showed great games that are coming to Xbox and PC and cloud, which really makes them accessible to, you know, hundreds of millions of people. So it's this kind of we're really focused on a couple of platforms and what's going to show up there. But our key of play the games you want with the people you want, anywhere you want, when anybody play, when everybody plays, we all win. These have been part of our strategy for years and will continue to be. Our focus is on how do we continue to grow the game industry? You can see when he's talking sometimes, he's shaking a bit like he's nervous as part of that, because he's Xbox is a hardware platform. He's trying not to say the publisher of great games and Xbox as a platform for the world's best creators. And then knowing that, how do we think about our first party games and Game Pass? Yeah, well, to build on what Phil just said, one thing I would add when you were talking about growth is just that we've sort of seen this inversion over the last five years, where it used to be that the platform was the biggest thing. And the games would sort of tuck in within the platform today. Big games like a Roblox or a Fortnite could actually be bigger than any one platform. And that really has changed the way that we think about things. So in the midst of all that, I think we at first party can come back to sort of some core principles. First, that all of our games will be on the Xbox platform. Second, all of our games will go into Game Pass on day one. And third, we know that Game Pass will only be available. All games are going to Game Pass. So there's sort of starting points for us. So they wreck some of those rumors. As Phil mentioned, there are games today that you can play that only can be found on Xbox. And at the same time, we want to bring more of our games to more players. So we're going to continue to look at that. Kind of moving aside, though, from some of those and thinking more about what does it really mean for the player? To me, the two key things are cross play and cross save. Those things allow us to deliver on the promise of Xbox, which is play with your friends where they are, play on the devices you want, play the games you want. So that is really only possible at a practical level when you know that your saves and your player are going to be able to move across all those parts. So not all of our games today are necessarily built to take advantage of that. There still will be some games that don't as we bring more teams into the Xbox family. There's some catch up to do as we get there. But that cross play, cross save is like so fundamental to what we're doing. And I think it's something that we as first party get such a good benefit from being so close to the platform. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things like you said, all of our games are always in Game Pass. And so I'm excited to announce, you know, with the coming together that we had with Activision Blizzard King, that Activision and Blizzard Games are coming to Game Pass, starting with Diablo 4 on March 28th, which I'm super, super excited to share today. And it's all part of our commitment to make Xbox, the Xbox experience and the games that we build as widely available as possible. So now the 34 million Game Pass members can all enjoy the fantastic experience of Diablo 4. Amazing. Can we come back to the point, Phil, you mentioned at the top, this isn't really a change in strategy for us. Can you recap for me how it isn't? Yeah. And I thought both Matt and Sarah did a really nice job of talking about what we're doing on Xbox, where we're going. You know, if you if you take a platform feature like Xbox Play anywhere, which has been a promise that we've made on our first party games, that you can buy our game once. You're going to get play across Xbox and Windows. I think you can buy that $60 horse. That makes it possible for you to play. There are some interesting micro transactions where they are, but to know that you actually have multiple entitlements to the games. I think that's a technology I'd love to see applied to more platforms. But it is this view that people are going to play Xbox in multiple places, whether it's play the games you want with the people you want, anywhere you want, whether it's content, community and cloud, whether it's when everybody plays, we all win. Like we've had different taglines, different strategy. Kind of words that we've used, but always with this view that Xbox is a platform for creators. So I'm not the only one catching up on like the nervous investments in X cloud or investments in franchises like Minecraft and now Call of Duty and other large franchises. So I'm not the only one getting that kind of vibe. This has been a strategy that we've been on for, I'd say, a decade. It's not about one device. It's not about games in service of a device, but rather the devices that people want to play on should be in service of making the games as big and popular as they possibly could be. Because really a healthy creator community on Xbox, a healthy creator community in gaming all up is the thing that all of us as game players should be voting for. Because that's the thing that will lead to the best long term success and growth in this industry. And my understanding just from listening and learning from you three over the past few weeks, just understanding what's happening with Xbox is that we see trends with player behavior where people are playing on multiple devices, that is the reality. And we have put some games out on multiple platforms before. So my understanding is that that's been good for players. How does that come back to the business with all of that in mind? Yeah, as you said, we have shipped games on other platforms. In fact, realistically, if you look with the addition of Activision and Blizzard and Xenomax, we're one of the largest game publishers on PlayStation. We're one of the largest publishers on the Nintendo Switch, especially when you put Minecraft into the equation as well. And now we're one of the largest publishers on mobile platforms as well. And that's not something that we want to back away from. We want to continue to be building great games that millions and millions of people can love and that they can play those games where they want to go play. But we do understand the business success that Xbox has to have. Us as leaders in this business, the system today, the system that all companies that we play video games from is a world of you got to be growing your business growth in our Xbox business is critical to the long term health of Xbox. Many people know I've been on Xbox for over 20 years. And I want to make sure Xbox is in the best position for the next 20 years. That means healthy player community, healthy creator community and healthy business. So when we look at opportunities to allow more people to play, more people engage, more people to buy, more people to subscribe, it's all about putting Xbox in the best position. And our hardware is a critical component of the experience. Somebody has on Xbox is hardware that your team builds and that people plan, but that's not going to be everybody. We fully accepted that we're going to have Xbox players across all kinds of devices. So I think a lot of people think about 2023 is this incredible year for gaming. And in a lot of ways it was. There were some really amazing releases that I think we all enjoyed. But what were the signals behind the scenes that maybe indicated how we wanted to look at the future of Xbox and how we kind of keep up with the industry? Yeah, such a good question. And I think it's as people who care about the industry, which I assume is people who are watching this, it was an amazing year. Some great launches, some of the games that I think will stand the test of time and people be talking about a decade from now. But it's an industry that didn't really grow. And what happens when an industry doesn't grow? You end up with some job eliminations, which we had. We had even our own hard decisions to make about building a sustainable business for ourselves, but in no way were we alone in that. When you think about a healthy industry, I want players who believe that they will find the best games on the platforms that they love. I want people who invest their career and working here to feel like this is a place that they can be successful. And that really is down to being part of an industry that is growing. If you listen to Lisa Sue, the AMD CEO, she'll say that AMD powered consoles are likely to decline in 2024. I think there's an amazing set of games coming in 2024. But if we don't get to growing as an industry, the industry will struggle. And today there's really two choices on how do you grow the industry? Do you say I have a fixed number of players, players that we have today? And do I find new ways to monetize those players to get more money from the players that I have? Or do you think about how do I expand the business I have by finding new players and adding those to the base of players that already play? Our focus on Xbox for the last decade has really been on that ladder point of how do we make sure Xbox is growing, growing for our players, growing for our creators? So those people are finding success on our platform, which will grow the Xbox business and put Xbox in a position to be very strong for years and decades to come. Matt, earlier you were talking about these growing gaming communities, how they're incredibly large and comparable on such a different level when we think about console audiences, like you mentioned Roblox, you mentioned Fortnite. So how are we, we're obviously thinking about our responsibility, our hardware responsibility is supporting the growth of gaming communities. How has that actually shown up for the players? Are there other games we can speak to from our portfolio? Well, as Phil mentioned, I mean, two of the biggest ones for us, Call of Duty and Minecraft. I mean, they are driven just from the bottom up by the communities of people that play those games, which is so great. I think think about it for the player community. It comes down to where are the friends? Where are the people you play with? And then equally important is where have you built up your library of games, right? Where is the where have you invested? Where is that library? I think those two things probably are some of the biggest influences on where people choose to play and what devices they choose to play. When we think about on the other side, the developer side, just any game developer wants their game to find the biggest audience possible. That's just the nature of building a game. You want people to enjoy and participate in what you've made. And I think we're in a unique position to deliver on that just because we are the platform. We build hardware. We've got a first party games group. And then we've got a system that ties that together that brings together your friends, your progression, your achievements, all of that and I think that's really what is contributed to the momentum. I do like the Xbox accounts. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you look at just step back and look at the history of the industry, we've moved from a place where it used to be that someone built and launched a game to accelerate hardware to actually the things we do with our hardware and with our platform are all in service of making those games bigger. And we think about that across all of the investments we make, the consoles we build, the investments we do with things like cross play, cross progression, the things that we're doing with cloud. How do we actually give more options to game creators? They can have the greatest success. I think one of the fun recent examples about this is actually Power World. You know, Power World was able to launch. They were a game preview. They launched in Game Pass. They also simultaneously launched in Steam. And through the combination of those things, you know, PocketPair was able to have this outsized success. And it was the largest third party Game Pass launch ever. And that's all because we give creators options on how they can launch their games. We've got subscription, we've got retail, we've got free to play, we've got game preview, we have the consoles, we have our experience on PC, and they can access all of those things. And when we step back and we just look at the performance of our platform all up, we know it's working. We're at the highest level of users on console, the highest level of users on PC, the highest level of users on cloud ever. We have double digit growth rate on PC and cloud, places where we're enabling creators to actually reach new players beyond the console ecosystem. And that's why we're leaning into it and doing more because we see all those signals. So we're talking about the role that hardware plays for creators, for the games and those communities. What about the role that hardware plays for us as a business for Xbox? When we look at our hardware, it really is. And Phil said this earlier, it's where you get like the most flagship seminal experience of Xbox. And it also represents a developer target. Our developers can build the specs of our hardware and we invest to make sure they know when they do that, that the games are going to grow great on our hardware, but they're also going to be able to be accessed across any screen because of all the other investments we make. So we're giving them an easy way to access as many players as possible. And we actually have more creators right now building for Xbox than ever before by nature, thousands of them by nature of those investments. And we got more to come. There's some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we're going to share this holiday. And we're also investing in the next generation of hardware. And what we're really focused on is the larger technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they're building. And then when we're talking about hardware, too, there's these other considerations that are really important to our community, probably to each one of ourselves as well. New hardware to the library, because I want to dig in on that a little bit more and as we talk about cloud and the wider entertainment industry, there's conversations about streaming, how is that impacting how I own my content that I've invested in. So what can we say about our stance around game preservation? Yeah, you know, one of the highlights for me of being in this position was getting to stand on stage when we announced the back compact coming to Xbox One. Like, it was fantastic. People were reading the teleprompter before I could read it. Slow reader and just feeling the energy in the in the in the auditorium as we're saying that online. You know, one of the cues I think us as being part of Microsoft take is looking at windows and how windows over decades has maintained software compatibility with things that are built on it. Like, I can still go back and play some of the games that I love playing on windows from decades ago and it will still run. And we try to bring that same view to consoles. It's harder in console because the line between what the hardware is and what the game is and consoles is traditionally it's it's tighter, which makes compatibility. You end up doing these generational compatibilities that we've built. But I will say compatibility, the ability to not only play the games, but my saves are still there with our cloud save systems to try to keep the services up as long as we can so that people can play is a tenant of what we are as Xbox. It's at our foundation. And when we look at future hardware generations and what we're going to support, making sure that we respect, which is the word I use, respect the investments that people have made in Xbox going forward is fundamental. And the fact that you get entitlements when you buy a game from us on both windows and Xbox also means you have the ability to play that game across a multitude of devices, which I think furthers the compatibility of the games that you own. Can we go back to what Xbox stands for today? I think we've pretty much covered all of the elements, but if you could break it down for me. You know, when you play on Xbox, what we're saying is is you're playing on a platform where you know the biggest games in the world are always going to be. You're playing on a platform where you get to access games and all of the games from our incredible range of studios. OK, it's an interesting statement day one. And you're playing on a platform that's dedicated to you, like player first features, cross play, cross save, cross progression, backwards compatibility, being able to play your games in your library anywhere you want because of the investments that we make in cloud gaming. And so you're playing somewhere where you're investing and you know you get to take that. That was definitely an opinion. And across all of the screens where you are. And I think most importantly, Xbox is a place where you know when you're investing in Xbox, you're investing somewhere that is dedicated to making games more successful and creators more successful so that they can invest more to bring even better experiences to you all of the time. Yeah, just that investment in the studios is so and we feel that as part of first party with the platform proximity. You know, it's kind of amazing now to look out across all the studios we've got and just be reminded that we're now one of the biggest development organizations in the industry. What does that mean for players? It means that the biggest games are going to continue to come to Xbox. And this 2024, the year coming up, we've got more than 10 major releases coming up. Great stuff. Hellblade to Diablo expansion. We've got about our about Indiana Jones game. And there's more in development, which I think we're going to be able to share more about at our June showcase coming up pretty soon. Confirm June showcase. Well, thank you all for showing up on the podcast today. And we'll see the rest of you this June. Yeah, thanks, Gina. Thank you. Well, there's basically only a few things we learned. There's basically only a few things we learned. We learned. Well, let's just get into exactly what we learned. We learned one. They are planning four games this year, seemingly this year to come to PlayStation and Switch. They said that those games will be announced in events. Shortly in the future. So Nintendo Direct, I don't know. Like they seem to be hinting that other platforms are going to handle the announcements of those games. So I'm kind of thinking that some sort of direct or some sort of showcase or a PlayStation thing, some sort of event from PlayStation or Nintendo is going to happen that's going to announce those four games. And they said two of them are community driven. And I kept thinking for community driven, see if these is the obvious, right? See if these is community driven, grounded maybe isn't grounded a community kind of game. Someone, someone brought that up in the chat. I think grounded is a very community driven game. So as Halo, you could argue, argue Halo as well. I don't know that they're going to go with Halo, but I think grounded is is a pretty big community driven game. So those might be the two. And then they said, besides that, there'd be two smaller games. Well, we know one of them was thrown out there and Pentamint or something like how you pronounce it. I can't remember exactly. Anyways, that's one of them that's already been tossed out there. I wonder what the other smaller one could be, like a Psychonauts 2. I saw someone mention that would be really cool. I wouldn't mind a Psychonauts 2. And obviously they were saying that this is like for now. They were like, we're only planning four. I'm like, yeah, well, for now, because what do they say? What are the big key things they said about these games? They have been out and they have existed on the Xbox platform for a year or more. That was one of the things Phil Spencer said. So anything coming out this year, obviously isn't going to be a multi-platform this year. But what about a year or two down the road? Will they bring Indiana Jones? Will they bring a vowed and other games like that? Multi-platform down the road. So they kind of set it up for, hey, we don't need to talk about this again until another year from now or another two years from now, right? So it's very interesting what that strategy is and if they're going to stick with that. The other thing we learned, I mean, they just came right out and said it, they're releasing new hardware this holiday. They didn't say what the hardware was. They didn't say if it's a refresh, a revision. They didn't say if it's going to be a pro. Obviously we know about the leaked documents with the Trashcan Xbox Series X that gets rid of the disk drive. That could just be what's coming out. We know there's rumors out there about them working on a handheld. I don't know if that's going to be the generation or next. But the point is that they did literally just flat out say they're dropping hardware this holiday. So it could be an Xbox mini, right? I have no idea. So they literally just said they're dropping hardware this holiday. Okay, I think they said that by the way to let people know we're not done with hardware. We're going to keep hardware coming. I think that's why they wanted to announce that here. And then the only other thing is really they confirmed something that some rumors were kind of off on. They said that there were some rumors out there that were making it sound like that we're going to be certain games from like Activision Blizzard that won't be coming to Game Pass. And they just outright said everything's coming to Game Pass. They repeated it like five times that everything's coming to Game Pass. So Call of Duty, it's coming to Game Pass. According to them, if it's their IP and they own Call of Duty now, it's coming to Game Pass. Everything's coming to Game Pass. So they were very emphatic about everything coming to Game Pass. Obviously the next Call of Duty won't be announced till June, right? They also, I guess the last thing is they announced a June event. They said they will have a June event. They're already just announcing it right now. They're doing a June event. So for those people that like transparency, you got some. You got some transparency. You know when the next big Xbox event is, it's going to be in June. You know obviously that four games that we can pretty much figure out or come close to figuring out are going to be going multi-platform. You know all the big games coming this year are going to stay on Xbox and PC for now. The rest of it was all fluff, right? The rest of it was just a bunch of fluff talk. There wasn't a lot of beating around the bush. There wasn't a lot of, you know, it was just a lot of fluff. So I'm almost glad this wasn't like a one hour long podcast because it would have just been like 50 minutes of fluff in 10 minutes of news. Fingers crossed by yourself and Nintendo are working together soon. Who knows? Who knows? Am I wearing a green for the Xbox event? Well, two things. I felt like what I'm wearing right now was appropriate for two reasons. I don't, I have an Xbox sign back there. You guys see that. And I have an Xbox series X and S. So I can zoom out a frame here. Back, you know what? That didn't work. Here, I'll stand up. Back here, behind this, hold on. Back here, right here. See, I got a series X and a series S. I got both here. So, I obviously enjoy Xbox because I own both versions. I only own one version of the PlayStation 5. But the big thing is, one, the Milwaukee Bucks are playing today and I'm a Milwaukee Bucks fan. And yeah, it's green. So it kind of was like a double whammy, right? Like I'm a Milwaukee Bucks fan and I have a green jersey. So why not wear it for the Xbox thing today? I don't have like a lot of Xbox shirts. Look, my channel name is Nintendo Prime, right? We cover a lot of Nintendo. So for me, it's a lot of it's just, but it felt appropriate because I wasn't actually wearing this until when I realized I was streaming this today and I'm like, oh yeah, I should probably wear this. So thank you for the $2. I do appreciate it. Let's see here. What's your guys' response in the chat? At Nintendo Prime in the chat, if you want to get some of your guys' response to what Xbox just said today. What Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and who's the other person? I forget who the other guy is. Matt Booty? I think it's Matt Booty. If you guys want to get your responses in at Nintendo Prime in the chat and I will read it off. Andrew said, in my honest opinion, Phil Spencer could have tweeted, it's a nothing burger. Yeah, most of this could have been clarified, I think on social media. I don't know they needed a 22 minute fluff piece that said nothing other than the four things I outlined and those four things could have been said in two minutes. This was basically a nothing burger. There was four pieces of information in here and no can be wrong. Those four pieces of information are important, right? There's only four games. Oh, sorry. Five pieces of information. Five. We gotta remember, they actually de-confirmed some things too. They said Starfield and Indiana Jones are not going multi-platform. At one point those were both rumored to go multi-platform. So you can argue there's five pieces of information. Four games that are being imported to other platforms, to our community-based, to our smaller games. Starfield and Indiana Jones are not being imported. Everything's coming to Game Pass. When there were rumors that maybe some games might not, like Call of Duty might not come to Game Pass, everything's coming to Game Pass. That's the third thing. And then the fourth thing was, oh geez, that they're releasing a new hardware this holiday. They didn't specify that it's like a new generation or anything, they didn't specify it. They just said we're releasing new hardware this holiday. And then number five is that they have an event in June. Those are like the five pieces of information we got out of it. We didn't need 22 minutes for it or 23 minutes, it's 22 minutes of 54 seconds. We definitely didn't need it to be that long. If you want to argue six, you could say Diablo 4. They gave a date for when Diablo 4 is coming to Game Pass. So I guess you could say there's six pieces of information. So if you think about it, six brand new pieces of information in 23 minutes isn't bad. It's just everything they said in between that information was a bunch of crap that nobody cares about. Oh, Xbox is really healthy. Xbox is really growthy. The growth in our PC and our streaming base is really, really good. This and that, the entire Xbox community includes people on other platforms. There's a whole bunch of fluff that nobody watching cares about. That's like business meeting stuff. That's like what you would bring to like a business meeting, an internal business meeting. You would talk about those numbers internally, right? That's an internal business thing. Gamers don't care. They don't care that you're growing on PC and they certainly aren't excited to hear that you're growing and streaming. Gamers tend to not really be into that. So I'm just pointing out that for me, they delivered six pieces of information. It was filled with a lot of fluff. And one thing that I kept catching consistently, they seemed nervous. Well, I don't want to assume anything, but it almost felt like there's something that they're afraid to say. And they danced around it. And they were kind of nervous, so even the host a little bit. Now maybe that's just, I look, I'm a Nintendo guy, so you can get my bias out. It did feel like they were maybe dancing around something that they're not ready to announce yet. And I don't know what that is, but it could just be a hunch and I could be dead wrong. Do you think that rumor about the delay is still true? The one from Jeff Grubb? I mean, look, I talked to Jeff Grubb today. He seems very, very, very confident in his source, like extremely confident. That was one of the things I talked about with him was like how confident he was in his source. He's extremely confident. So take that for what you will. I don't know. I don't know if the delay is a real thing or not. I mean, look, it happens next week. I guess we can presume the delay was real, but that's still a presumption. It's like Nintendo's ever gonna confirm it. I'm sorry, I missed it. Who and why I made a threat against this channel? We can get to that later. What does the new Xbox hardware mean for Switch 2 in 2024? Probably nothing. Switch 2, I don't think it's launching this holiday. I think it's gonna launch before this holiday, so they'll avoid that whole mess. Cause I think PlayStation is planning to release a pro version this holiday as well. So Nintendo can release something earlier. That's why I think like a summer release for Switch 2 makes a lot of sense because it avoids lining up with what the other companies are doing. They can just do their own thing. That video was for stockholders. And that's weird. Can't they just talk to stockholders? Can't they just send out information to stockholders? It's so weird. They were hiding something. To me, they seem nervous. Like if Nintendo was like that in a thing, I would think they looked nervous. That was, but I don't know. I could be reading too much into it. It's just something I noticed. It just felt like Phil Spencer was breathing really heavy at one point and like almost shaking a little bit. Even the host started doing it at one point. Sarah Bond, she kind of kept her cool the whole time. I will say that Sarah Bond didn't have like no flinch. She had like a stutter where she said the wrong word and then corrected herself. But in terms of like her mannerisms and like she was like a rock, just not even budging. So credit to her for that. But Phil was definitely looked like he was holding back on something. I don't know if it's that they're planning that more games. Like if the four games are just a four now and they don't want to say that right now and they're trying to like avoid saying it's a four now and they're actually planning for like most Xbox games one to two years later to come to all platforms. But they don't want to announce it right now. They're trying to avoid backlash if that's what's happening. I'm interested to see what the new hardware is going to be this holiday. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know what Xbox is doing, man. At all. It'll be interesting to see. Like, I know we technically have a hint because they had that leaked trash can Xbox. Five pieces of information from which included four games coming to other platforms makes it objectively not a nothing burger. No, it wasn't a nothing burger. It was just a lot of fluff in between. It was very maybe corporate. Maybe corporates the way to say it. It was a very corporate 23 minute podcast. Panama's day. Dude, I can't pronounce your name. Yo, Nate, don't feel bad for Necrophilipe drama. Attacks like these are part and parcel of being online. This Brazilian here is on your side though. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the find the rubles. I don't know what I don't know what currency they use in Brazil. But thank you so much. I do appreciate that. Jeff Grub posted a reply like 15 minutes ago asking one of the directors. Oh yeah, he's having fun with it today. That Jeff Grub has learned like the best way to deal with critics is just have fun with it. I gotta learn that too. I gotta learn to have some fun with it. Let's see here. I missed. What did they say? Well, I already went over it twice or three times now. All the things they announced in this thing. It was like six different things they announced. Only two games for now are confirmed. Not coming outside of Microsoft platforms. All the rest is still nebulous. Halo included. Sure. I mean, the Sea of Thieves is like one of the like high-five Russian Sea of Thieves seem to be like for sure. There's so many sources on it. And then he says, you know, a community game. And I'm like, okay, that's Sea of Thieves. It's like their number one community game is Sea of Thieves. Like everyone knows it. And that's a game that yeah, could have a long life on other platforms. It was pre-recorded. It was pre-recorded. You can go watch it anytime you want. I can see it right here. It was just a pre-recorded video. It was just a pre-recorded video. Let's see here. And maybe because they were so nervous. That's why they didn't do it live. Saw a post on Go Nintendo for Mitsui's claiming those four games are High-Five Rush, Pentamint, Sea of Thieves and Grounded. So we figured it out. Hey! You know what? Check please. Check please. Shout out to the Nintendo Prime community. So if those are the four games, we figured it out before it hit. We figured it out before it hit. So High-Five Rush, Pentamint, Sea of Thieves and then Grounded. Shout out to my chat. You were the guys that told me Grounded because of another community game. So there you go. We got it. We nailed it. Supposedly. Supposedly. For Mitsui's making this claim. It's still technically a rumor. Xbox hasn't said it and they haven't been announced. Xbox hasn't said it and they haven't been announced, but that's what it sounds like it is. It sounds like it is those four games. And shout out to my community. You guys figured out, I totally forgot about Grounded. That was the one I wasn't thinking about. Those other three, we had kind of heard. I hadn't heard about Grounded. So thank you guys. Is the directing one to five hours? I would say there's no direct today, bud. Valheim could be the community-driven. I mean, sure. I mean, look, even when Famitsu says that, those are still rumors, right? We don't actually know. We don't actually know. And the problem with them being rumors is I wanna make another video today with some Nintendo news, but I just got done saying in my video I would not combine rumors with other news anymore. And technically that's rumors. Dang it. So I can't put that in with my news. I gotta cover those on their own if I cover them. Those four games. Oh man. Assuming they're all coming to Switch. That's another thing. Is that the assumption that are coming to Switch or not? Let's see here. Wonder if Microsoft's playing on one year exclusivity on their games. I noticed Phil Spencer mentioned four games have been on Xbox for a year. Yeah, he said a year or more could be, or at least a year, I think it was his words. Anyways, could be the confusion around Starfield. I mean, yeah, he straight up said Starfield and a little lot. Indiana Jones are not going multi-platform. Now that's just what he said. But that could just be for now. There could be missing words on that sentence, you know? People buy High-Fi Rush on Switch. I actually think High-Fi Rush is gonna be really good on Switch. I think that's a really good match. I think that's a really good match for the community on Switch. I think they're gonna find a nice audience for High-Fi Rush, absolutely. Let's see here. Red Falls community driven. Oh boy. They're trying to salvage that game. You don't want to be on YouTube. It should be on YouTube right now. Oh, you're talking about the Direct. I don't know anything about the Directs, man. There might not even be one this month, man. I have no clue what's going on with Directs. I thought you were talking about the Xbox event because that's what the stream is. It's not, that's already up. That's already up online. Let's see here. Xbox kinda trolled all of us. I mean, look, they have like six announcements. That's not nothing. It's not really a troll. I think what people were hoping, and I'm gonna be honest, because like, I'm an Xbox fan too. I literally showed you guys. I have Xbox, I play Xbox. I was kinda hoping we would get probably something that was unrealistic, which was true clarity on the future of Xbox. And I don't think we got that today. I think what we got is, oh, we're still making hardware. We're still making all these games. Oh, by the way, we're also everywhere. We're also amazing. We're also bigger than ever. We're also this, hey, we bought this company. Look at us. We're awesome. And it's like, well, that's not what we're talking about. When people think Xbox, they think that system that's underneath my TV. They do not think, oh, people playing Minecraft on Switch. No one's thinking about Xbox when people are playing Minecraft on Switch. I'm gonna tell you that right now. I'm gonna tell you that right now. When my kids are playing Minecraft on their tablets, they're not thinking about Xbox. I don't like, they just made it more confusing. I don't like that they frame that everyone that plays a game that Microsoft has published is an Xbox consumer. I don't like that. I think that is a complete misnomer and a complete abuse of the term Xbox. And I think from a corporate standpoint, I understand it. But from a gamer standpoint, that is not what Xbox fans wanna hear. Xbox fans think of the actual system called Xbox. The one that has Xbox on the box, right? They don't think, they're not playing on a PC thinking about Xbox. Like I didn't, they kind of just kept with the confusing messaging. And what we wanted, at least what I wanted was clarity. I wanted a clear messaging. Yes, we are going to bring some of our games multi-platform. These games are gonna be at least on our system exclusively for one to two years. We won't be all of our games. It will be some of them. It will be a case by case basis after around two years of exclusivity. But we do still believe in the Xbox platform. We not only have brand new hardware coming out this holiday, we have a next generation hardware set for the future. And we also have Greenlit, a number of other hardware projects that we are now digging into. We don't wanna get into the details on this right now, but that is something we're doing. We also believe in the Xbox gamer, the console gamer. We know that exclusives matter to you. We wanna make sure that we're delivering a reason for you to be here on Xbox. And instead they're just kind of like, eh, the best games are everywhere. But also, we're gonna have exclusives. But the best games are everywhere. You know what it feels like? It feels like when they were trying to market Xbox one at E3. You guys remember when they were trying to market Xbox one and they asked Don Matric, hey, is Xbox one a video game platform? Well, I like to think it's more like a entertainment platform. You know, we got TV. I mean, you have TV pass-through that is very bad. Like, that's what it feels like. Yeah, we don't think exclusives are that big of a deal. If you look at the biggest games, they're everywhere. They're bigger than platforms. But also we're still gonna have exclusives. So keep buying Xboxes. It seems like they're torn in two directions, right? Like, hey, we've been a traditional console for a long time, but also we recognize if we wanna be really profitable, we gotta go do this other thing. But if we go do this other thing, we're gonna piss off the most loyal Xbox users. So we gotta still be like about this, but we're really trying to do this and they conflict. And so our messaging's gonna keep conflicting. That's what it feels like. Like, Microsoft wants to go in two different directions. I think Phil Spencer wants to go traditional consoles and Sarah Bond wants to go everyone. I think that's probably what's happening. Just my personal opinion, of course. I don't know how they actually feel. But it feels like they wanna go in two separate directions. But it's whatever. And the whole time I kept thinking, like when Sarah Bond dropped that line about how all the best of most popular games are gonna be on Xbox. And I'm like, I don't know, man. This is a game that sold 60 million that's only on Switch and Wii U called Mario Kart. Not sure you heard about it. There's this other game that just sold 10 million. That's Spider-Man 2. That's over on PlayStation 5. Hey, there's this game called Tears of the Kingdom that's sold 20 million. That's only on Switch. I kept thinking like... The whole time they kept talking about how like, you're seeing the strategy that exclusives are slowly going away. And they're not wrong. Sony literally just talked about how like they wanna expand their multi-platform capabilities. So they're not wrong that that's happening. But then like you just look at Nintendo and you go, or you just release so many damn exclusives, people buy your system to play your games. Then you create your own market. That's Nintendo strategy. Nintendo strategy is like the stark opposite of what Xbox is doing. Like, no, no, no. We're gonna release so many exclusives you have to buy our system because you're gonna wanna play them. But anyways, I continue to be a multi-platform gamer. It is what it is. Very, the six pieces of news they delivered today are very direct and like this is what it is. Everything else in between is a lot of fluff and confusion. They're trying to, you know what they're trying to do? They're trying to be a Pokemon. They've been playing too much PAL world over there. They're trying to be a Pokemon. And that 23 minutes was trying to hit us with confusion. They casted confusion on us. Phil Spencer, confusion. They were trying to, they were trying to through the camera hit us. I don't know, did you get hit with confusion? Are you confused? I don't know, we gotta skip your turn. That's what it kind of felt like. At least to me. Maybe I'm the one that hit with confusion. Everyone else is fine. Yeah, Tom Machin did, that was really bad back then. They're about as clear as their console naming conventions. Yeah, I don't know what is up with their naming conventions at all. They're just as bad as Nintendo. Maybe worse than Nintendo. I agree that the podcast had a weird nervousness around it. That's what made me pick up on the year statement. The Xbox is planning to bring more games, but didn't want to mention that. Yeah, it's like one of those, I can't guarantee it, right? Like we have to go off what they said. They said just four games are going. But it's kind of like a man, look at how nervous he looks. It's almost like he's afraid to let slip out. And it's like, this is a prerecorded video. What are you afraid of? You just edit it out. But then here's what happens. I think I know why, I think I know why. Because even though it's prerecorded, so they should be able to get rid of all that. They don't want it to look like there's a cut. Because if it looks like there's a cut, then it looks like they cut out something Phil Spencer said. So I bet you they actually did this all in one take, but they did this one take like seven times because they kept screwing up. Because they wanted this to look like one take. That's what I bet. That's why it's only 20-something minutes. I bet you they did this one take so many damn times it was over the weekend, I'm sure. And they just did it a bunch, a bunch, a bunch until they didn't make the mistakes. And that's probably the nervousness because they kept like screwing up and so then they had to redo the whole thing. Because they didn't want to show any cuts in it because if they showed cuts, then people would assume they're hiding something. Anyways, we're gonna end this stream here. It's gonna kick you guys over to the Nintendo Prime podcast. Don't worry about what the title and thumbnail is for the podcast. Immediately after ending this stream, I'm gonna go change the headline topic and change the thumbnail on the podcast. We are still having the Nintendo Prime podcast tonight. I hope you guys really enjoy that. I hope to see all of you there. I'd love to see 300, 400, 700 plus on our podcast tonight. That would be great, even if you're just there to shit on me. I'll take it. You guys are awesome. We'll catch you later.