Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Mafia 3 and Gears of War 4 Reviews - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 90

Episode Date: October 20, 2016

We review Mafia 3 and Gears of War 4 and Greg Canessa joins us to talk about the history of Xbox Live Arcade and why mobile games suck. (Released to Patreon Supporters 10.14.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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After that, just a few bucks a month. No long-term commitments. I know how you're scared of those things. Love and sex stuff. Monday 9 a.m. except for right now because it's on Hades for a little bit. Anyway, no hidden fees. Go to dollarshake club.com slash gamescast. That's dollar shape club.com slash games cast. What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 90. Oh. Of the kind of funny games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller.

Let me tell you folks, you got a hell. Oh, blah, blah, blah. You got a hell of a show. You got a hell of a ahead of you today. What the fuck was that? I broke. I was like, I had to rewind. It's been quite today. Yeah.

Yeah. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. We were the coolest student video games two seconds ago. What's wrong? Are we yelling at him? Listen,

we got quite a show for you, you piece of shit. No, but seriously, we are recording this show super out of order. It's going to be kind of a weird show. We already shot Topics 3 and 4 with a very special guest. Greg Kinesse. Nailed it. You nailed it. Greg Knessa, who is.

the most fascinating human being in the entire world when it comes to video games. He is the creator of Xbox Live Arcade. He was here to have us check out one of his new things he's working on, SparkCade, his new game. Which you'll hear all about it. And my God, it's all very fascinating. Very, very cool stuff. And the longest topics in games cast history, between topics three and four, you're getting an hour and 55 minutes of content. There you go.

And it's damn good content. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to prepare that, let you guys know that that's happening. in the future. The first couple topics here probably going to be a little bit shorter. At least maybe one of them for sure. One of them for sure will be. We're going to be doing reviews of the Mafia 3 and of Gears of War 4. Gears of War 4

probably going to be a shorter topic. But we're just letting you know that so you can prepare yourselves and whatever. You're getting some real good stuff later. Of course, this is the kind of funny gamescast where every week we get together talk about video games and all the things we love or dislike about them. then you can listen to it for free on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or you can listen to this for money at patreon.com slash kind of funny games but you get it early and that's a great old time for everybody and it allows us to do cool things like have this studio or by calling nice haircuts. Or Greg nice haircuts. And this line right there and that line right there.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's wrong call? Can't place it. Zeno Saga? No, no, no. This is a kingdom arts. Zeno Blas, oh, same thing.

It starts in Zeno. Zeno something. Is it Zeno drifter? It definitely wasn't, very, is it Zeno phobia? Zeno saga. Zeno saga. Some issues there. Where do you call on Zeno Gears?

It was definitely rushed at the end, but I got that in ninth grade. And I liked it. Zeno Saga, I remember I bought the first episode one. It was like some German name. And it was literally, I remember putting it into my PS2 and it literally just wouldn't start. Really? No, no, I like the cut scene that began. that game is fucking. I feel like it's over now.

Cosmos. It's like, I'm like, I can't. I had to give a one. I couldn't even do it. I got to go. I got to go. That was the end of the. My really good friend, Curran, one of his favorite games of all time. Zeno Gears. Really? It's a great game. Then he got Zeno Saga. It was like, no. No. But anyways. I knew that it was Zeno Blay, but I called it Zeno Saga. So I was close enough and you knew exactly what I was talking about audience. It's all the same. You know, Kernel is starring right now in a video over on YouTube.com slash kind of funny. You should check it out.

He proposed to his girlfriend. It was fantastic. Does he make any Xenoggears references in that? He doesn't. I mean, maybe if you think real hard, you stretch, I'm sure someone.

He squint. I'm asking all of your favor right now. I need you to go over to YouTube.com slash kind of funny to find the proposal video. And I need you to try to find something that you can stretch to reference Xenog gears and leave it in the comments of that video. I'll appreciate that very,

very much. Anyways, let's get right into it here because the ring rules all done. You guys know all that stuff. Mafia 3. You've been playing it. You've been playing the balls off mafia 3.

Yeah, I played it for about 25 hours, I would say, so far. You played it last night, so you even above the 25 hours. Yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You and I were both excited for this. Codes came when I was in Montreal. How is it paying out? It's okay.

God damn. We talked about it on PSI Love You, but for those I didn't hear it, I mean, obviously, I'm happy to talk about it again. I think that Mafia 3, presentation in terms of its story, it's voice acting, its characters and character development, I think it's fantastic. I think that they really nailed that. I think there's a lot of compelling characters.

For those that don't know, it does take place in the same world as Mafia 2. Vito Scolette is actually, who is the protagonist in Mafia 2, is actually one of your associates in Mafia 3 is in the game. It takes place in 1968 in a place called New Bordeaux, which is New Orleans, just their fictional version of New Orleans. And you play as a black man named Lincoln Clay, That's important because the Deep South is incredibly racist in the 1960s. He comes back from Vietnam.

He's a decorated soldier. He's also a special ops kind of guy. So he's a lot of special training and stuff like that. He comes back. He has an adopted kind of family that took him in when he was younger. Push comes to shove. It's very early in the game. I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

So if you don't want any spoilers, you can just go away for 15 seconds. You want me to do the head tap again? Don't do it. Don't bother. Just go away for the next 15 seconds. Muted it for 15 seconds. But the very close to the beginning of the game, his family's killed by the mob, and he has to, he basically goes out on it. He doesn't have to, but he goes on a revenge tour, basically, to seize the assets of this particular mobster through all of his lieutenants and capos and then to work his way up to the top.

So the whole foundation of it's great. It's just that everything else isn't great. And the game is a little half-baked. A lot of technical problems. What are some of the technical problems you're running into? Because I talked about on PSLV as well. I saw the Reddit gift of the car on the overpass, turning off of the overpass and then just continuing to drive as if there was an invisible road.

Nothing too weird in terms of like gameplay things that you wouldn't expect to happen necessarily. Not fault to the world. No, the games crashed probably four or five times on me. Like just crashed in the middle of whatever and I have to restart wherever, you know, the last checkpoint. That's one thing. There's severe and significant lighting issues. in the game. I've never seen it. I've never seen anything like it in my life actually.

Kevin was coming in this too based on the couple hours he played. Yeah, I played many video games. The lighting is all fucked up in this game. And some people are saying that they're not having problems of that. I don't know. Maybe you're just playing it on a different console on PS4 or with whatever patch we launched with. I have no idea. I haven't looked at. The lighting's fucking terrible.

And the sun rises. It's like you're on the service of mercury. Like you can't see anything. Then like the sun goes down, you're in the bayou or whatever, and then you just can't fucking see. It's just dark. Now, I understand you're in the bayou and it's supposed to be dark, but it's a video game. I need to be able to see, like, where I'm going is there's a problem when you go in and out of buildings where, like, sometimes the lighting just doesn't turn on inside a building. So, like,

it's just dark. There's just a lot of weird. It's too real. I just don't really understand, like, I've never seen a game botch lighting like this. Like, I don't, so I don't, that's one thing. From a gameplay perspective, uh, the AI is stupid. Um, it's extremely stupid and easy to manipulate. because you're doing the same things in the game over and over again. So the structure of the game is very similar to Mafia. Actually really kind of similar to Godfather 2 if anyone played at the EA game, which I actually think is a, you know, I have to say a much better game. I played it, what, now, seven years ago or whatever,

but in terms of gameplay in terms of what you're doing, I actually remember really liking Godfather 2. I could really give, you know, not, I don't like Mafia 3's gameplay hook as much. The basic thing is that New Bordeaux is separated into segments, you know, little sectors, basically. you just control by a different lieutenant or capo. And then within there are different rackets that you have to take over to draw the capo out. And the idea is really cool because you're basically doing monetary damage to their take, which is an interesting thing that the rackets are controlled so that there's a take of $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, whatever it is.

So you're going around like murdering people or like stealing money or like destroying trucks and like ammo and all these kinds of things. And every time you do a little spin thing that happens in the corner saying like you've removed this much more money out of their pockets and this much more money out of their pockets. you get it down to zero, then you can attack the racket. And it's a nice idea, except for the fact that, like, you just do the same thing over and over and over and over again. It is just so fucking monotonous. There's no variety to any of it.

This is what I talked about before with you, right? Like, this is the thing that the game sounds like a PS3 game, or you know, a PS2 game. It sounds like Spider-Man too, right, where there's all these limited interactions to go be the hero. Granted, a different thing, but you understand what I'm saying, is that like they have this giant open world

they have this cool story but there's not doing interesting things with it. Yeah it like there's at the at the at the core of the game is is something really interesting which is like I like it like I was talking about the bayou before the bayou is at the south end of New Bordeaux and it's

probably half the map these kind of it's like a delta you know and and and the these disparate elements are like you know running weed or moonshine or doing all these things and you're constantly going down there to like deal with them. And it's cool.

It's a nice idea, but there's just no real variety to what you're doing. In a game like this with a story this good and a voice acting cast this good and a plot kind of idea and setting this good, the gameplay must serve the story, but it doesn't. It's basically a distraction. I'm playing through the game just to get to the story instead of playing the game because I want to play the game. And I play it very meticulously where I'm finding all the collectibles and the Playboy magazines and the Vargas paintings and all of these little switches and stuff like that.

that you used to take over call boxes basically is the whole mechanic there. But it just comes off as very half-baked. And what I'm interested in is like how much of the game, you know, a different studio was working on this game in the beginning. I'm curious like if any of it was taken from, you know, I think it was 2K Prague or something like that and they were shut down. And then Hangar 13 was basically opened up in Nevada, which is just north of San Francisco. And I'm not saying Nevada.

I'm saying Novato. And they made this game. And I don't know if it's like all theirs or some theirs or what. I don't know the whole situation. but it reeks of a game that is just didn't wasn't given enough time. It didn't, you know, I was kind of saying that I wasn't worried about the quality of the game for 2K to not release the codes early. Now I understand completely why they didn't release the codes early and make the game available to reviewers because the game for the first five hours is really, really cool. And then it just doesn't go anywhere.

The story's interesting. That's a movie. Yeah, exactly. Like the story's really cool because you're working like intimately with a CIA agent that you worked with in Vietnam and all the gangsters are really cool. these like different characters. A guy named Uncle Lou who's kind of like, he's always on the radio and he's like this super Southern fucking dude. But he's like a criminal and you always hear him on the, you know, does he see me on the street

coast? Maybe I'll buy you a whiskey or something like that. And it's like, it's like all like all the characters are great. But like, you know, these guys are getting blackmailed or these guys are like, you know, running ammunition and these guys are running shit from Cuba and and like or Haiti. And like there's all these like weird shit going on that's like really cool. It makes a much more dynamic story than Mafia 2's. And I thought Mafia 2's story was really cool.

And I think Vito's inclusion in Mafia 3 as one of your lieutenants is fucking awesome. I think that's really cool because I think Vito Scarletta's character is an interesting character too. But and also getting out of the Italian kind of thing where it's like the black mob, the Irish mob, the Haitian mob, all these kinds of different things. In addition to the Italian mob, in addition to the Dixie mob and all these kinds of things, it's cool. Like there's all these gangsters that are like, you know, interacting with each other. This game had a lot of potential. It just it didn't reach the potential. and all the little cool ideas in the game,

like the little gameplay tweaks are neat, but they're also a little half-baked. I was talking about the call boxes before you find these fuses. There are way too many of them in the game. I don't know why there has to be. I literally have 180 of them right now. And you use three at a time to hack these call boxes, basically, and then it gives you information on where enemy locations are,

where collectible locations are, makes the game easier if you do them. And then there's this other idea where, like, and I really like this idea. So the game plays up a lot of its, It actually opens with a thing of saying like there's an overt racism in this game. Like completely overt. You've never seen it in a game like this.

And they're basically saying like it's because this is the way it was. Like this would have been Lincoln Clay's experience. You're talking about it. It opens with this letter from the developers, right? And they're basically like, we don't agree with this. This is not what we would say or how we would act. But we think it's important to include this. So you understand the historical reference in where we were.

Super fucking racist game. But that's the story of the game. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying like there's an interesting story and a boldness to this particular. game that I don't think is met with its story. And there are nice ideas where, like, if you're in a white neighborhood and someone sees you commit a crime, the cops will, someone will call the cops and the cops will show up immediately.

If you do it in a black neighborhood, the cops don't even care. Like, the cops might come. And like, sometimes you can just stand there and sometimes they just don't even come at all. But there's like these weird things where, like, someone will call cops on me almost every time I steal a car. But if I, like, bash into a store and steal cash in front of them and, like, knock someone over. They're like, I'm going to call the cops, but no one ever calls the cops.

Not once. I've been in a hundred of these stores. No one's ever called the cops, right? The cops are easy enough to manipulate, too. Like, you can just hide. Like, they don't really look for you very carefully. You can really, you, hitting left on the deep head lets you whistle. So if you're behind covers, someone's like, whoa.

And then, like, walks over, you just stab them. No one else sees it. Then the next guy comes over, you just stab them. The next guy comes over, and it's like, then once in a while they will see you. And it's just, I know I'm rambling, but it's just an inconsistent experience. And I'm really diving in because I really like mafia. And I'm really diving in and trying. Like I said, I'm finding all the fuses, all the collectibles,

doing, you know, but at the end of the day, like, it's just kind of a muddled mess. Here's my question. I think it's fine. I don't think it's bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not, it's not as good as Mafia 2, which is shocking. And it's, it had this potential to be a very great, a great game. So why are you still playing? That's, you, you talk about it, you sound like a defeated guy. And usually when a game doesn't pan out for you, you, you just, you know, leave it. And I feel like, you're still doing this, but you're not enjoying. Because I want the story. You know, like, I want to see what happens. Like, I want to see what happens the Lincoln Clay and I want the story. And I like the idea of like if you even, it's very

literal. Like if you go into, and it's a cool idea. If you go into like a part of the start menu, it's like it basically says it has like six lieutenants and then three capos and then the guy at the top, right? And who's Marcano, I think his name is. And you like each lieutenant, each of the two lieutenant pairs are attached to a capo. And so like once you hit the two lieutenants and all their shit, then you can actually go after that particular person. It's kind of like a neat idea where it's like you're drawing them out and like slowly whittling their take and ruining their control of the city. It's a nice story of revenge, but it just, it's mona, it just, they didn't, it needed another, like, year. It needed, like, a design. I think that, like, one of the things

that it lacks is just doesn't have any design. Like, there's no design there. There's no, you're not doing anything different. Like, to take over the rackets, you're doing the same thing over and over and over again. There might be a different story tweak or something like that, but you're basically just, you can slink through and no one sees her, you can just go in guns blazing. It doesn't really fucking matter, you know, the game's not hard by any structure of the imagination. and the cool little things that you can do are also a little muddled. Like you have three different lieutenants that work with you,

which is you have this woman, this black woman who runs the Haitian mob. You have this guy named Burke who's like an Irish mobster and then you have Vito. And you assign them different things that you take and they get mad or happy based on it. So there's a cool little system there

and they can actually turn on you and then you have to actually go kill them. And I'm trying to keep them all happy with me. So I'm like distributing things equally. Between them and hopefully everyone's cool with it. Burke's getting a little max. He hasn't really gotten anything. Fuck that guy.

But to me it's a particular situation where like there's a lot of great ideas, but there's nothing there to bind it or execute the idea like the ideas properly in a way that would make it like an eight or a nine instead it's like a six or a five point five or something like that. You know, where it's a shame because it's a really cool idea and I just can't recommend it because I think that on a gameplay level there are so many better games than this on this open world, driving cars, shooting shit.

I mean, granted the thought of. Do you think this game would have benefited if it wasn't open world, if it was a bit more linear? No, I don't know, because the complaint about Mafia, too, is that it had this open world that was empty. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't done. The 2K check or 2K Prague, wherever the fuck made it was, was, uh, they had this really nice idea, this nice narrative and an interesting gameplay, but, but the world

was just drove through this thing. Now I feel like the world's even bigger, still empty. And, well, there's a lot of collectibles, but there's no, there's no life there. There's no, I don't feel like anything matters in the world. I feel like the, I just feel like it's an open world to be an open world. And maybe it would have been more like the getaway and been better if it brought you from pointing it to people. I don't know that would have fixed, alleviated the problem. Maybe it would have because it would have forced you to do the story.

But then who would have cared because it's just games like the getaway don't really exist anymore where it's like you want more than you're getting. I don't know. I just think it's, it's just disappointing. And I want, I wanted more out of it. I know some people out there are enjoying it. I think it's great. But the vast majority of feedback I've gotten from people on Twitter, et cetera, from other people in the industry is that you're absolutely right.

Like the game is just kind of fucked on a technical level. And it's just half baked on a gameplay level. And so I really was duped by this game. That's my own fault. 100%. But I went in and I was like, this is going to be great. There's no way this isn't going to be great.

They worked on it for so long. Mafia 2 came out years ago, you know? Yeah. They learned their lessons. Yeah. But they didn't. I'm actually, I'm surprised because I agree with what you're saying in the sense that I saw your tweets about the game.

And I kind of looked into it and saw what everyone else was saying. And I don't think I've seen a game that isn't either universally liked or disliked. That's just kind of like it. Everyone seems to love the story and hate the gameplay. And I can't believe that everyone lines up with that. Like it's when you look at any of the major sites reviews or even just like random people's tweets and stuff, I'm like, man, like everyone seems to be really on the same page of this of like, yeah, that's six to seven area for it. Yeah. And then we were talking about, you know, earlier in New Year, Doom, but that's the release Doom and it released Doom and they didn't get coached until the game came out.

And we were like, should we worry about it? And it ended up being that Doom is one of the best games of the year. So with Mafia 3, I was like, they just want to control the narrative. Like, they don't care. Like, they're going to sell games and it's coming out on a Friday worldwide release. They're going to sell the games over the weekend. They don't really care. And what ended up being that, it's, I was wrong.

I think that they held it because they knew. You know, like that, they absolutely knew. And I don't quite understand. I mean, they have to reach their metrics and they have these release dates and all these kinds of things. But I think that given a little bit more time and a little bit more maturation of the ideas there that this game could have been fantastic because they have these really they have this story these characters but they just they it's it's like two different games it's it's really weird it's

it's all like that's exactly the way to explain it's just two different games it's like this very milk toast open world game with this really really one of the great stories and games i remember i mean that's kind of like like where i'm like wow these characters man are really great the voice acting is fucking awesome the cia agent lincoln clay the father james whatever's name is the priest uh all the lieutenants It's all the mobsters. This is a really robust kind of thing they got going on. And it's just not served or serviced by the game. And so what I said on PSI-L-U reigns.

I don't think this is worth $60. I think it might be worth investigating at $20 or $30 if you want. But I certainly don't endorse it the way I thought I was going to. I definitely had assumptions about this game that were not met. And the reason I'm playing it all the way through is because I want the story. And I'm also, I look at the games I played this year. I played 55 games or something this year by my count. And I've only beaten a dozen of them or so because I'm moving on from one game to the next or some games are not beatable or whatever like if I'm playing Pac-Man or something.

I mean, you're not beating that game. But I want to sit down and really like beat it. And that sounds perverted, but I want to sit down and beat it in that way too. But I want to beat this particular game and move on. And then, you know, but it's kind of funny because in the back of my head before we got mafia, I started to fuck around with Tomb Raider on PS4. And that game is just so superior. You know, there are different kinds of games, but I'm like, Jesus Christ, if you have $60 to spend right now and you're looking at Tomb Raider or Mafia, I couldn't. I've only played Tomb Raider for five hours,

and it's obvious as the day as long. You want to get Tomb Raider. So I'm like, I want to get Mafia just out of the way. So I don't have to worry about it anymore. I don't want to stop now. I put so much time in it. But I'm certainly,

I've told myself now I'm not going to be so meticulous like getting all the collectibles and stuff like that. Because that's half the time I'm spending anyway, just running around like a fucking moron looking for Playboy magazine. Just like real life or adolescence. Yeah. Although it's pretty cool. The collectibles are cool.

You're getting real record late. The music's cool. A lot of great late 60s music that you're finding records and real record covers, you're finding real playboys, you can actually read some of them, some interviews in them and stuff, it's cool. You got the tities in there? Oh yeah, yeah. I remember when I wrote the guide for Mafia 2 at IGN. It was so awkward because I was at work with this is the

girl's tits on my fucking TV and I'm like, this is the game. So what are you doing under that blanket? So yeah, that's my conclusion on Mafia 3 is it's just super half-baked. It could have used way more time, way more design, aesthetic. And I don't mean that from a graphical standpoint. technical issues are inexcusable. The AI sucks. The game's not hard,

which I like hard games. And I just feel like there's an obtuseness to the structure of this quest. There's just nothing's right about the gameplay. Almost nothing. I mean, I don't agree. A lot of people are saying the driving sucks. I don't think the driving sucks,

but again, not, it's not Grand Theft Auto. I don't think we're looking at this being like, this is going to be like Grand Theft Auto, but it's certainly not even in the echelon below Grand The Auto in terms of open world games. So there you go. Now next topic. Gears of War for

I kind of want to get your guys is review discussion in quotes. Yeah. This is probably we're not ready to be the most in-depth thing ever. But I'm going to call this review just because you're probably not going to put

too much more time into it. But we did do a thing where you guys played five-ish hours. 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. launch night, Monday night. So six hours. But there was like some technical difficulties or whatever.

No, we still started on time. We just, we couldn't do because of the servers we couldn't do co-op on separate screens. We just played split screen all the time. So you played a fair amount of the game. You played through the co-op of the campaign. So I just want to kind of hear what you guys' thoughts are on this.

And again, this might be a shorter topic because we got some longer ones coming throughout the rest of the week. I had a great time. It's what I want. I mean, it's Gears of War. You know what I mean? Like, and I was telling you before we came on, like I was, I was worried about this topic being short because I feel that's what it is. You know, we invested all this time in it.

But it was Gears of War in the way I've always enjoyed Gears of War, which is me and a friend or friends when we play. Because you and I played Gears of War III together with Casey. and I think Charles back at IGN. And then I had done Gears of War II with Levi Buchanan. And for me, Gears has never been the story. And that's why,

like in the stream we're playing. And Kevin started asking us questions off there about what's going on. And we, and not only in what we were playing, but clearly we were dicking around, reading the chat, making fun of each other,

having a good time. But like, in just the gears lore. And I was like, there's emergency day and the locust. And what was that mean? Like, it got to the point where I don't really know. And like, Marcus popped up. And I was like,

this Dom? And he's like, Dom's dead. I'm like, remember any of that happening because that's not what it about the game is about running through and chainsawing enemies in half and having cool moments and shooting shit and then bitching about the driving and hanging out with your friends and like that what monday night was that exemplified where it was me and calling me and calling a couple beers we were just running on a plane had a great time playing

the game that and that's what gears of war has always been amazing at like the gameplay is awesome playing years of war is fun like running around taking cover it's satisfying holding b and running up and mail, you know, chainsawing these people in half or whatever. And like, I thought they did a really good job this time of enemy variety in terms of, that way they're big hulking guys and then we'd be playing. And then when I started getting bored with them, they introduced like the, you just the swarms of people that just run at you, at which point it was hold B for extended periods of time and just chainsaw dudes in half over and over and over again. And then like the giant crab guy and all that. It was like, yeah, this was fun. I had fun.

But like, to your point is I had fun in that night. I don't, I'm not, I'm not sitting here going, man, I got to get back and beat Gears of War IV. whether the campaign's going. Because again, we were yacking over at having a good time. I thought the voice acting seemed better. These characters were more interesting than I was interested in. Marcus and Dom before because they were so overblown. I think Laura Bailey's performance is really good from what I heard. The guy who I kept saying, uh, looked like John Cena. He was a fun character too. And I liked him being, you know, uh, Marcus's son and how that all plays out and stuff. But it wasn't, I'm not like on, oh man, what's going to happen next? I had a great time.

We ran through and killed a bunch of stuff and that was fun. So in terms of the big kind of spectacle moments. I've seen a lot of people online talking about. There's a scene with the plane kind of going down and you have to like shoot down, whatever. It's like a huge, it seems like a big set piece thing. It very much reminds me of like action movies and like cool, like crazy stuff. When we were doing that, Colin brought up, this feels like an old school boss battle. Yeah, it felt like, I mean, that reminded me, for some reason, I remind me a contra. And I don't know like, like, like, like, what you're like what? There you go. I, I, I, I feel like to me it's, it's, it's, uh, that particular part was awesome just because it reminded me of those segmented boss battles from old games

where it's like shoot the guns and then shoot the middle thing and then you like the plane crashes and you you jump your bike over it listen like i like gears of war and i think that um i think it's a cool series and i think it always had a really cool look and a really cool uh you know interesting plot with the locust and um where they came from and um this kind of battle against them and i've always really been impressed with uh the third person kind of cover-based shooting i think you know i often talk about uh call of duty as being kind of the more and for me being the marquis of first-person shooters in terms of feel, in terms of like being what you should copy if this is, like, if you make a shooter, why once you make a shoot that feels just like call of duty?

And I think gears has always been a similar thing to me. There were games that obviously inspired it or not, you would assume inspired at like Kill Switch and stuff like that. But really, Gears of War was, was and I think is the marquee for third-person shooters. Now, there are other ones that I love. I think Vanquish feels great and stuff like that. But Vanquish is arcady. Gears of War is heavy.

And I think that that's usually an insult for me. I like games that are a little quicker, but I like the particular heft that I think Gears of War shares, and Gears of War IV obviously has that, the idea that your characters are heavy, the idea that the enemies are spongy. I like that kind of stuff, the risk-reward gameplay of really using like a Lancer to throw 50 bullets into an enemy, but you might only have 100, you don't see any bullets around you, so you might want to run up in melee and with your chainsaw on the Lancer, but that exposes you to attack, and you really can't take how much damage.

so without falling and having to be revived. So I really enjoyed going back. It's the first time I had played gears since we played it. We played through Gears 3 five years ago. And I was looking forward to Gears 4. And I think it met my expectations. I'd like to go back and beat it if I can, if given the time. But, you know, again, it takes, you know, it's the 25th anniversary of all the, the

logists gone. So I don't really give a fuck about any of that stuff. I mean, like, I was really excited about the gameplay because I do think it's a master class in gameplay for that particular genre. And I think that it met those expectations. Unfortunately, we had to play in split screen because the network was not working for us. We could play horde mode, but we could not play. We could not play co-op on two different, our different Xbox ones.

So, yeah, so I think it's, I think it's great, you know, I think it was a lot of fun, and I think that it's getting a lot of hype and people seem to really be enjoying it. And, you know, I'll be interested to see what the coalition, you know, they used to be Black Toss Studios, but I'll be interested to see what the coalition does with it moving forward since this is kind of their beat now. Gears Awards kind of their thing. And I think it's a really important franchise for them. I think with Gears 4 kind of being well received and working, it seems like it works pretty well out of the box.

I mean, it didn't work for us, but it seems like, you know, those are server problems. Yeah, you know that they happen on launch. I feel like, and I've said it before with Halo, kind of seeming to be on the decline. I feel like Gears of War, and I mean that in a relative sense, Halo is still huge and people love Halo, millions of people love Halo,

but Halo's kind of declining as I think gears is kind of coming, coming into the fore and being something way more important for the Microsoft ecosystem. Yeah. And I think that, because I think that, the jump from bungee to 343 seems to have soured a lot of people and specifically with the master chief collection not working and then the new Halo kind of not meeting people's expectations

and we talked about it very anecdotally about how I just felt like there was much less buzz I mean we worked in the game industry a long time where Halo 3 and Halo 4 are fucking huge and I just don't feel like that was the same with the new Halo game whereas with Gears of War I feel like it's always kind of been a little bit lighter on the marketing and a little bit lighter on the expectations and so when Gears 3 came out, Gears 2 was huge and Gears 3 was this big kind of thing. But with Black Tusk, or the coalition taking the franchise over when Microsoft

bought the IP from Epic, because people have to remember that it was a Microsoft exclusive, but it didn't have to be. That game could have very easily been on PlayStation. It was just not, and now it's never going to be. Which is fine. But I think now people see this and they're like, well, the coalition seems to be treating this with a lot more care

than it seems like 343, frankly, was treating Halo in terms of the fidelity of the game. And I think that's going to pay dividends for that particular studio up there in Vancouver. So I feel like there's something I play here with gears that's going to be very important for them moving forward. And I saw a lot of, you know, in the five hours we played it, I really enjoyed it. It felt like gears.

It was that gears experience that I want. Yeah, you know what I mean? And that was the thing. But now, you know, being somebody who doesn't enjoy multiplayer forever, I'm way more stoked to get to the week. Keep playing Dragon Quest tonight. And you jump into Tomb Raider some more this weekend and then kick the tires on Res Infinite and some VR stuff.

There's just so much going on. Yeah. That for me personally, I'm pulled away. I don't see myself ever getting back to gears. I mean, I think this question might not even be applicable these days. But, you know, back in the day, you look at the PS2 to PS3 generation, like when a franchise would make that jump, like God of War, two to God of War, three, there was that huge difference. And even when you look at like the Uncharted franchise, uncharted one through three and then uncharted four,

even that did, I think, felt bigger. Do you think that this one that Gears of War IV did the same compared to Last Chance's Gears? Maybe. I mean, to me, not, you know, I played the, you know, Gears 3 again. I didn't play Gears of War Judgment. But Gears of War III was my last time playing Gears of War 3. And I felt like it was somewhat similar in scope. I don't know. What I was saying to Greg and I don't remember, I played so many games. I can't even remember the ends of a game I played a year ago. Nonetheless, Gears of War 3. But I felt like there was a lot of backtracking in this particular years of war or a lot of stagnation in this particular. I don't mean that in a bad way where it's like you're in an area. You're just running around. We're going to post up here and we're to fight a couple waves of guys and then move on to the next thing. And I felt like, I mean, obviously every shooter has those kinds of things, but I felt like multiple times where I'm like, why are we like, when I don't want to swear like, there's like literally a part in that old house, right. You're like, you said that and I was like, no, we have it. And then I like, I was just in this room.

You're right. I was. Yeah, I was like, we're just going back through the same places again. And again, we're just smart and asset use. My one complaint about, you know, because I think Gears Award, I think people are going to love Gears Award four, especially their Gears War for, especially their Gears War fans. but the one complaint I have is that I hate when games shoehorn shit into the games that don't belong. There's a motorcycle riding segment in the game. That's not very hard.

We died a couple times. It's a little, it's fast. It's a little twitchy. But I'm like, why is this in this game? Like, I don't even understand what this, like, this could be a cutscene or it could just show me riding the bike. It doesn't serve any purpose. Games need to focus more on doing what they do well. And Greg was telling me like, well, Greg brought an interesting point, which is like, well, do you feel the same way about Encharted when you're running away from the truck or when you're driving the truck around?

I'm like, well, when you're driving the truck around in Uncharted 4, yeah, I feel like that was needless, because it gives you this idea that you're exploring this open place that's really not very open at the end of the day, because it's funneling you into a certain place. But when you're running away from the truck, that serves in, and you're shooting behind you. And Uncharted 3, it is, I think, right? Two. Two is the truck. That's served the narrative.

So as long as something serves the narrative, I think it's fine. But that particular thing, I'm like, this doesn't, gears of war, coalition, gears of war is about gunplay. It's about putting guns in your hands and letting you shoot, you know, the enemy. the swarm and these robotic enemies and all these kinds of things and the locust back in those old games and using cover and being smart and being very careful with the way you're moving around and dealing with these spongy enemies. It's not about riding motorcycles. That's the problem video games have always faced though, right? I always talk about it where you play the last level of video game and it's always like, why developers, and this is from the beginning of time of video games,

why do developers insist on leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth by shoehorning in some kind of boss battle mechanic that you've never dealt with before? You play all. All of Devil May Cry and all of a sudden you're flying. Yeah. What the fuck? Yeah. And it's just like, why would you leave me with this impression? But then it's the other one of like if they don't put stuff in there, is it going to be too monotonous of just shooting stuff?

Are they going to be told they didn't do enough? They didn't push it far enough. It's that very delicate balance in line you have to walk. Yeah. So I think that my impressions of the game are very positive. It meant my expectations and I would like to get back into it. And it reminded me because I really do like chord mode and I would like to play more of that. But again, there's just too much shit coming out.

Especially with PSVR. Like that's really just complicated the issue. exponentially. So, you know, who the hell knows about me going to get back to it. But I mean, obviously Gears of War IV is great. So topic three, Greg. Yeah. You have a special friend here. I do. His name is Greg as well. Hi, Greg. Hi. How are you? I'm good. How are you, Greg? I'm doing great. Is it weird? Is it weird? Is it weird? Tim, this is Greg Knessa. Colin, this is Greg Kness as well. You should meet him as well. Yeah, we've met. Okay. Well, not on the episode, though. In the episode, it has a matter. It's just a matter.

I know, recognize it. Here's what happens, Tim. Thank you. Here's what happens, Greg. Now, Greg, for the record, before we even get into who you are, first and foremost, you're kind of funny fan. Absolutely. You actually watch this garbage in a shirt.

Can I swear? That's right. I can swear. Yeah, yeah. That's a fucking looting. Yeah, yeah. You know, yeah. We cast off those shackles a long time ago. Yes.

So, I, have we had we ever met before you came to the studio? I don't think so. Yeah, right? Maybe on one of those IGN tours when I was in there for other reasons. Sure, sure. Like a handshake and a pass off. Handshake, exactly. You have this lineage here in the video game industry.

By the way, this is totally going to be a Steinbeck intro as you're talking about. This is, this lineage in the industry. We're going to start that topic here. But as a kind of funny fan, you know we value nothing more than our transparency with the audience and our clarity and our ethics and all that jazz. Absolutely. So what happened is Greg came through to show a mobile app called Sparkade. And it was to number one, show us the app and see if we thought it was cool. but also to talk to us about maybe hosting an event around Sparkade doing a live let's play

and doing this thing in front of an audience of our fans if they want to come out to it. That is happening. That is happening. It's in December. You check the Twitters. We'll have details on how you can RSVP. However, two things. I liked that as an event, sure, but I liked Greg so much that I told him he had to come on the gamescast.

Number one to talk about his long lineage in his career. Number two to talk about the fact of being a fan, the first thing you did is like, thank you for taking this. I know you guys hate mobile apps. I know you hate mobile games. And then you said something that clicked for me where you're like, and I admit, most mobile games suck. Yes. So we're going to talk about your career and what it is.

And then also, though, why mobile games suck and why Sparkade doesn't. Now, all of that I'm saying and telling you up front because that's not part of the, let's play and the dealer or the sponsorship or the event or whatever you want to call it. This is not in any contract. You are here because you are cool. You are here because I'm actually playing Sparkade. And I am not as good as I thought I was going to be awesome when I came out. Just like all normal guests, you hit me up.

You're like, yo, do you want to have him on games cast? He's cool. Like, this would be a fun conversation. I'm like, fuck, yeah, let's do it. So I just wanted all that out to begin with so that nobody thinks that we're trying to pull a fast one on you. We start talking about the Sparkade event eventually. Never. Okay, good.

So, Greg. Explain, you came in here and I'm like, this guy with his bullshit mobile game. Great. Here we go. Can't wait to see this garbage. And you're like, oh, I also founded Xbox Live. Who the fuck are you? What's the elevator pitch for you in the video game industry?

Yeah. So, so, I mean, so. First of all, I just have to say, thank you guys. It's an absolute honor to be here. I legit am a huge fan. It kind of funny. It goes way back even before that to podcast beyond. I was a huge fan and listener for years.

I've listened to do hundreds of episodes. I feel like I know you guys. This is, you know, this is like the first time I've ever met. So it's a total honor of privilege being here to talk to you guys. So I just want to say that up front. I'm a, I'm a video game lover. So first of all, I'm a passionate, hardcore gamer. That's always where I start, because at the end of the day,

when I go home, I kiss my kids, put them to bed. Excuse me, I'm like spitting. But what I do is I go home and I play games. I play, I'm a hardcore gamer. So I play console games mostly. Yeah, that's what the hardcore do. Yeah. Fuck your PCs.

I play, you know, I play at home. Yeah, PC Master Race, right? No, I actually, I'm a console gamer. I go back, you know, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, you name it. I play, I have all the consoles. I play everything. And so maybe not every genre. I'm not a huge sports fan, for instance, sports gamer fan.

but, you know, I play most genres of games and love it. But my career, I'm super lucky because I am one of the rare guys, one of the one parts per million that actually aligns his passion with his career. So I've been fortunate enough to spend my entire career working in video games, 25 years. I most recently, probably, I guess my greatest sort of claim to fame, I guess, I was a creator of Xbox Live Arcade at Microsoft. So I spent many years at Microsoft seven years. worked on the OG Xbox as well as Xbox 360,

saw it through to the launch. And I was, again, the creator inventor of Xbox Live Arcade, did that. Left there, went to Pop Cap. Worked at Pop Cap games. You guys know Pop Cap, right? Jewel and Zuma, PVZ. Work there.

Basically, evolving that company past, this is pre-EA days. This is back in the 07, 08, 09 times, evolving them past sort of PC downloadable games, which they were really known for kind of in the early days, and getting it. into sort of more digital console, you know, XBLA, PSN, as well as retail. And the Vita.

Don't forget the Vita. I know PSN covers it. It's Colin likes to point out, but I like to point out that it came to the Vita. We shipped pop gap games on PSP. We did, we did Peggle DS. You guys remember which Q Entertainment did? You guys remember at Mizsukuchi-San. I got to go to Japan a bunch of times and, you know, collaborate with Q on a special

version of Peggle, which was super cool. Then from there I went to Blizzard And was the GM of Battlenet So was kind of the Holy shit The guy that sort of went over and Was you know At the time they were it was pre-launch of StarCraft 2

And they wanted to They had a vision to sort of reinvent Battlenet The classic you know Legacy gaming service from the 90s that StarCraft 1 and Diablo were on And sort of bring it forward This is 2009 bring it forward to The era of Facebook meets Xbox Live And so they had a big grand vision to kind of integrate in with all their games and eventually even go beyond that.

And so I headed up that effort, staffed that, you know, that team and led that charge for a number of years. And we integrated in with Starcraft 2, launch Wings of Liberty, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, starting with Cataclysm, and full integration with the next generation of Battlenet and then, of course, Harstone. Then from there, I flipped over to the other side of Activision Blizzard and worked at Activision. So for several years, I was their head of mobile gaming for Activision. They tapped me. They didn't have a mobile business at the time, and they had said, hey, you know, we wanted to, they tapped me. Bobby tapped me on the shoulder.

No, they actually just asked me if I wanted to, you know, work on mobile games and lead up a new effort for them, which was the time, remember 2011, we all had iPads. We didn't know what the fuck was going to happen, right? Like, is this going to be this legit platform for gaming? is our console is going to go away. Is like, are we connecting controllers to iPads? Like, we didn't know what was going to happen, right? And so Activision, for various reasons, decided, hey, you know, we really want to be like,

Let's try to figure this out. Let's try to figure this shit out because, you know, in case it's like kind of a hedge, right? In case console goes away, you know, we got to have, we've got to have relationships with Apple, Amazon, Google. We don't have any relationships with these guys. Like, we got to get in. So I worked on, was lucky enough to work with some brilliant people. Actually, a lot of people who's working, who's working,

you're familiar with in the UK, we started a studio called Blast Furness, which was little, because you guys are big PSP and Vita fans. Yeah, we are. A lot of the guys that were at Rockstar Leads came over and worked with us on Call of Duty games for mobile. So the guys that did Liberty City Stories, and you guys remember those. Oh, yeah, yeah. Rockstar Leeds, they came over and Mark Washbrook and Gordon Hall and some of those guys

worked with us, and we did Call of Duty Black Lobbies. We did Call of Duty heroes. a sort of free to play game. We did a number of different games. Too bad they couldn't do Black Ops to Classified. We all remember that. Don't we. Never forget.

Oh, amazing game. Made in apparently two and a half weeks. That classic. Yeah, that was, yeah, that's a story of itself, that game. We could talk for hours. But anyway, so we did, we tried some stuff. We tried a lot of stuff there. We did Pitfall, the remake of Pitfall as an Infinite Runner.

We did wipe out. We did a bunch of Skylanders games. Basically did that for a few years. And then came over to GSN, which is where I'm at now, which is a division of Sony, doing Sparkade. So, yeah. Kevin's whispering, Mike. I don't know why he would whisper.

Mike? You can just yell Mike. You can just do this. Stay close. All right. It scares everybody at first. You got it. Then you fall in love with it.

Okay. We got it all good, Keff. I'm kind of a loud talker, so I'm sure you probably hear me down the street. So you created Xbox Live. And I like how he just drops it and walks away from him. I created Xbox Live Arcade. So tell me a little bit about that. So Xbox Live Arcade obviously super important in terms of the genetic legacy of the industry.

We take it for granted now. But the idea of this kind of more indie platform and stuff like that. But obviously Xbox was way ahead of the curve on that and console. So tell me a little bit about where that came from and how that came to be. Because similar to what you're working with now, there was a stigma about those kinds of games back then and there isn't anymore. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the story of XPLA is actually a pretty interesting one. It was a product that almost didn't exist and shouldn't have existed, to be honest.

It was not part of the plan for Xbox 360 at all. So it was an idea that I concepted in late 2003, and it was really a product of a number of things I was seeing in the industry at the time that were unrelated, right? So you had rewind way back to 2003, right? You had PlayStation 2 killing it out there. You had OG Xbox trying to establish itself. We had just launched Xbox Live for OGXbox, which was very limited, right? It was voice chat and multiplayer gaming. Halo 2.

It was Halo 2. And Rainbow 6, 3. We should define that entire thing. In Rainbow 6, yes. There was a couple really good games there. And you had that weird green dashboard thing that was like not software upgradable. There were a number of things at the same time that were going on in the games industry that had precipitated sort of the vision for this.

One was iPod and iTunes and the iPod were just starting to take hold. And for the first time ever, there was a legitimate path for users to get digital content downloaded directly from their PC onto their device. That was a foreign concept up at that point. Remember, 2003, we're talking big publishers, AAA. You watch your game. It's got to be this development budget and it's got to be this huge marketing campaign. It's got to be $20 million. And you got to work with Activision or EA or Take 2 or you're fucked.

Like you're not getting on the console, right? So there was no indie movement. Steam did not exist. There were no digital platforms. App stores, Google Play, iTunes, no, no, none of this stuff. We were the very first. So the only path on the consoles was through a publisher. There was no indie movement.

Retro gaming existed, but was really hard to make money. So you had Midway, Namco Museum. You remember PS2, PS1, Namco Museum 1 and 2 and 3 later. You had Midway arcade treasures. You had some people trying to bring back retro, but they were not making any money because it was really easy to download maim The maim movement had started up in 99 So I love that shit like I grew up in the arcades, right? And so you know I used to go to you know golf land and you know play miniature golf and then spend three hours in the in the arcades

I used to have my my birthday parties as a kid at Chuckie Cheeses and we got unlimited tokens and so I grew up Loving retro games and so so that was happening digital content distribution and then I was just frustrated I was of the Xbox team and I was frustrated with this path, you know, this, this weird convoluted path to try and get games on a console. It was unrealistic and dumb. And then the last thing is you had casual. So casual was a web portal thing, right? It was Pogo and MSN games and remember the gaming zone and all that stuff, all these

like games flash games and a web browser and you like a $20 download, you know, and those are cool games. But there was no way in hell you were ever going to see any of those games. on a console. Like, just no one, no one wants to play these games,

right? Oh, that's bullshit. So, so wrote this business plan, this crazy idea, which was totally

not part of the plan for Xbox live. There was the book of Xenon. You guys may have heard. There was like the three page, 33 page, three hundred thirty three page thing that Robbie and,

you know, and Jay Allard and so forth had written. I have no idea what you're talking about. What is that? This was like a, at, at,

Robbie Bach talks about this in his book. if you ever read his book. Like it's, at Microsoft, they write these kind of concept documents. Basically, it was like a vision for the 360 and what they wanted to do

with the console program after OGX box and how they wanted to evolve it to sell 100 million units and what the plan and the vision was. The three-pager then becomes a 33-pager

and a 33-pager, which they had called the book of Xenon. Zenone was the code name for 360. And so at the time, they had this incredible vision, mostly led by Jay Allard,

to be honest with you. I mean, he's the guy, he's the father of Xbox 360 and the father of Xbox Live as far as I'm concerned. He was the guy that had the vision of, okay, we have broadband in the box. Where can we go with this thing? Multiplayer is just the beginning. Like all the stuff, the achievements, the marketplace, the leaderboards, the, you know, all the cool stuff. The party chat, all of that stuff. All the stuff we take for granted now.

All the stuff we take for granted now was all novel concept stuff. Like no one had ever done this stuff in history. And so my idea was why. don't we take and leverage this pipeline? Let's leverage this little pipe that we have, this broadband pipe that wasn't being considered for real downloadable content. And let's actually leverage it to download full game content for the first time ever onto a console. And it was, at the time, in 2003, it was like, really? No. And why would people want to download small games and Indies? Who cares about their games? And casual, no one will have to play bejeweled on a console.

That's dumb. And it was a lot of Detroit. tractors, a lot of people that couldn't see retro games, no. No one wants to play that stuff. People only want to play Call of Duty. People only want to play Madden and those big games. And so it was an uphill battle. It was a total uphill battle. The business plan was two-phase. It was do a test concept on Xbox, OGX-X-box. And if that worked, we would do full dash integration. And the master plan was really to fully integrate it into the console for 360. And so we launched the, we launched the OG Xbox version in 2000. It was actually the same day as Halo 2. Probably the version that you don't remember. It was on a disc. I don't know if you guys remember this. It was on a disc. It was on a disc.

And it was we literally like had a hell of a time getting this disc in people's hands. We were polybagging it like magazines. Yeah. Giving away trade shows. It had Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man as a pack-in. And it was weird because we couldn't software upgrade the OG Xbox, right? We couldn't upgrade the dash. It was not Flash E-Promer.

upgradable, whatever call that, which is basically you can update the dash, right? So that basically meant that you had to, you could stick this in the tray, close it, you'd get this dashboard that had all these games. Every game had a demo, every game had a free trial. Games were $10 to $20, you know, $10 and $15, $510 and $15. They were all 50 megs or less, so they were easy to download. But the wonky thing was there were like 20 games, the original service for the OGXbox, but you had to have the disc in the tray to access the content that you downloaded that was on your hard drive.

It was like totally not optimal. But, you know, we tried this thing and we launched the same day as HALA 2. Of course, we got drowned by that. But Jay Allard had announced it at E3 that year, and we'd never seen any reaction from the crowd like this. It only had been a few E3s. Kevin's giving me the eyes, sorry. Yeah, okay, sorry. I'll push you in closer.

You keep talking. I keep thinking that I'm going to slam my mouth into this thing. But, sorry. Okay. I'm pushing you. I'm going to fast. Okay, closer. All right.

Oh, this is great. Oh, wonderful. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's great. Oh, my God. That took a turn for the absurd. The absurd. I liked it.

So anyway, so we did that. And we saw a, so almost nobody saw this thing, the OG Xbox version. Sure. But of the people that did, we saw a download to trial, trial to purchase conversion rate about eight and a half to ten times that of what we saw in, say, the PC industry. Like, we knew we were on to something because people were, we had an amazing download rate. I mean, people were downloading these demo trials like gangbusters. We had up to 50% initial download adoption. Of the people that had stuck the disk in, people were downloading six to eight of the demo.

and they were converting to purchases at eight and a half to ten times the rate that we were seeing in the PC space at the time. So we knew we were on to something. And that ended up being the initial sort of validation for being able to go on to 360. But even then, again, that was just the beginning of the story because it wasn't part of the master plan. And when you're at a big company like Microsoft or a Sony, frequently the little engine that could type of products, are not the ones that end up getting a lot of the mind share. And you typically have a lot of their larger organizations or some politics involved. And they're, let's just say that Xbox 360 Xbox Live Arcade had its share of detractors.

So it was not a foregone conclusion that we actually were able to execute it and get it on the unit on a 360. We actually had by the time we had determined, okay, this is actually something that people want. the success. We launched in November 2004. And remember, Xbox 360 launched November 22nd, 2005. So we had a year, all right? So we spent a few months. We validated. We were able to prove it. Almost immediately we knew that this was something we wanted to do. The business plan had outlined a two-phased implementation, right? And so I immediately went and said, all right, I want to do the 360 version. Well, we had, little known, like when you're doing consoles, right, some of you guys may understand And there's the hardware and all that manufacturing, you know, China and all that stuff.

But there's also tons of people that are working on the back end platform and they're working on the system software that actually goes on the device, right? And a lot of that nowadays, you have broadband and there's day one patches and everything gets updated day one. But back then in 2005, you really had to have a really stable base operating system flashed resident on memory in the device to actually make sure the 360 didn't fall over at launch. And so the system software team was already well underway. They'd been working for years on getting 360 ready for launch.

And since we were launching in 2005, November of 2005, we had to have the final software tested and ready in August of that year. So here I am. It's December. We're a month in, just even on the Xbox Live Arcade, OG Xbox experiment. And I want to integrate it into the dash. There's no plan for that. The book of Xenon, the vision had a marketplace, but it was a, a,

really small marketplace. It was like hats and swords and, you know, gamer picks sort of stuff. There was a plan for achievements. There was a plan for leaderboards, but there was no digital content distribution service implied at all. And so, long story short, went out to Jay Allard, December 10th, 2004. A date that will live in infinity. I'll never forget this day. It's probably one of the most, you know, most important in my career probably is the day that we actually when it was a Friday. And I sat in Jay Aller's office. I'll never forget it. And I asked, Cam Feroni was there, who was the head of the Xbox Live sort of software development team at the time. And Jay was in charge of the whole project. And I remember sitting there next to his,

he's a huge Eugene Jarvis fan. So we had a Robitron 2084 machine in his office. And so I sat next to his Robotron machine. And I pitched him once again. He'd seen it before. Xbox Live Arcade was a concept pitch that I pitched to five executives at Microsoft, and they all shot it down. They were like, thanks, but no thanks. No, that's dumb. No, it's in conflict with our interests, whatever. No one wanted to fund it. Jay was the one to fund the initial OG Xbox experiment with a team of seven people and a small content development fund back the previous year.

So I went back to him and said, hey, Jay, it's working. Can we do this? and I pitched him this, these sort of gamer scenarios about how there was the male gamer and the girlfriend that might be interested in more casual content. There was the guy that might be interested in indie content. And, you know, I painted these scenarios and I basically asked for funding to integrate. And the guy that was sitting there, Camperoni, who's an awesome guy, but he was under the gun, right? I mean, there were eight months from shipping the software had said, hey, I don't have time for this. Like this is cool, but I thought we're out of time.

Like what Greg wants to do, he wants to integrate into the dash. It implies a bunch of stuff that we don't have in the system. Like we don't have a demo trial thing. We don't have a cloud storage license key thing. We don't have any of this stuff. Like, I can't do this. No. And Jay looked at me.

He thought for a moment and I'll never forget it. He looked out the window and he said, no, this is actually something we have to do. This is a key part of where we want to go. with Xbox Live. This is a key part of the long-term vision for the service. Cam, you will work with Greg. You will figure out a way to get this done. You know, he basically overwrote him in the meeting in front of me and said, you will figure out how to get this done. Greg, you have your people, because I had asked for a few more people in another content development fund. You'll make this happen. And how badass did you feel? At the time, I just felt relieved.

I was just out of maybe you feel scared. Yeah, I know. That would be my thing. Oh, shit, I got to make this happen now. I, I'm sure I did feel. feel scared at the time. I mean, I just remember a tremendous sense of relief because we thought we were on to something, but yet at that meeting gone the other way, Xbox Live Arcade would not exist. And had it not existed, I mean, literally, I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here, but if that did not exist, I don't think the indie movement would be where it is today. I don't think the app stores would be where they are today. I don't think PSN and Wiiware and all these other things would have happened the way they happened. So no way, especially because of the year lead that Xbox

360 had on Wii and PS3. So you could see that. I mean, Greg and I talk about it, but PlayStation 3's app store on digital store used to run on a browser. So that's how, that's how like what they must, they saw it. They probably saw what Xbox didn't and like, we got to do something. We got to do. You know? And that's why you have super rubba-dub running on a goddamn browser on PlayStation 3 in 2006. So that's what's so fascinating to me about Xbox. Because we're more obviously, I mean, candidly and everyone knows, we're much more PlayStation-centric. But we play Xbox. We just played gears not, not too, you know, a couple days ago for a five-hour stream.

We just reviewed it too in the topic before this one. Oh, that's right. Yeah, we're going out. We're recording out of order. But what I love about Xbox, when I'm interested in Xbox, because I owned an original Xbox. I bought it when I was freelancing for IGN when I was in college, and I bought Halo and all the stuff.

And Rainbow 63 was a really seminal game for me on that console, getting me online because I didn't play online games. I played Dreamcast a little bit like NBA 2K and stuff like that. But being able to even go online with that, and I was a freshman or a sophomore in college, and I would like have this kid live down the hall for me and he was like really smart with computers. We'd be able to plug in the T1 lines from our,

from our dorms into the thing. But he had to like type all the shit into the Xbox to make it work. I think it wasn't a computer because we were using so much bandwidth. And then I was paranoid it was going to get shut down and stuff like that. And I was serving games when I was in class all the time because my connection was so great. And when you really think about the genetics of games, like you were saying before, Xbox is really started with Dreamcast. It really started with Dreamcast.

But yeah, exactly. But which is I think an understated kind of thing in the lineage of my Xbox. It's really it started with Dreamcast. But with Xbox and Xbox 360, there is so. much important shit going on with broadband internet and the original Xbox, which didn't seem very intuitive. And then with Xbox Live, Marketplace, achievements, digital leaderboards, all those kinds of things. It's really, I don't think Xbox always had the goods with the games. I mean, that's always been my case. I think they have some great, a few great exclusives and stuff

like that. But they had the goods with how we play games. And I think that that was a really important thing. And I think you're actually even seeing that a little bit with Xbox One now as well. Some of it didn't work out the way they wanted it to. But anyway, it's just on the side. I've always appreciated that about Microsoft and Xbox. Yeah. Yeah. I do think, you know, we all have our contributions to the game industry. And I mean, the games industry, you know, we're what we're 30 years in on this, you know, I have nothing but the most tremendous respect for Nintendo and what they've done and their accomplishments and what they brought to the table.

Sony, likewise, has brought so much to the table over the years in terms of whether it's portable gaming, whether it's the PlayStation and, you know, the popularization of Eastern content and the Western market and so many contributions. I do think that Microsoft, just, again, looking back and just looking at Microsoft's contributions so far to the industry, I really do believe it's on live and on the networking side is its principal contribution. The box is great. The games are great. I love gears. I love Forza.

I love, you know, a lot of their exclusives. Absolutely. Halo is great. But, I mean, if you look at the major contribution to the industry, it's been Xbox Live. It's been advancing the ball forward in a time when the industry needed that. They need that leadership. they need that kind of Steve Jobsian, you know, no, we're going to put broadband in the box. We're actually going to push this forward and we're going to drive the whole,

propel the whole industry forward. And whether that's digital content distribution like marketplace, like Live Arcade, whether that's, you know, achievements, gamer score, leaderboards, voice chat, you know, all the things, multiplayer gaming, synchronous, you know, multiplayer gaming, which is, you know, again, largely been popularized due to the push that Microsoft made in the early 2000s. I think it's his principal contribution. Yeah, okay, have they had some missteps along the way since then? Yeah, I mean, you know, clearly, I mean, I think we all know that the focus on digital, you know, the entertainment box and the home and all that stuff is probably TV.

Yeah, probably a step too far. But you could see based on according to your stories and things we've read and I'm really into the kind of the history of the industry. So I read a lot about this stuff as well. It seems like Microsoft's always really pushed forward and actually got away with it over and over and over again because it worked until that moment. And so you can see how it kind of backfired on them with Xbox One. But you could see also how they drew that conclusion, you know, based on they got, I don't want to say they got greedy. They just got bold and bullish with connect integration, with the cable box integration, voices, you know, voice control and all that kind of stuff. It's like, you know, but you can understand since they were pushing this rock down the hill in it, which is like it was working over and over again.

And they were watching their competitor really react to that because even when you look at PlayStation Network, which still isn't very good. It's better on PS4. People are like, it's not good. People that join on PS4 that played an actual. Xbox 360, we're like, this network sucks. And I'm like, you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. None. Go on PlayStation 3 in 2008.

We'll talk about, you know, terrible networks. But you've always seen them play catch up with trophies, for instance, which was a total, you know, like a me mea cop on their part being like, weird. You're talking about that. I mean, cross game chat, something that took even longer than trophies to get in, do parties and do all this different stuff. It's unbelievable the things that we, again, like we were saying that were taken for granted that Sony really had to be reactionary to. I think Sony always had the goods with the games. and I think that that mattered, but I don't think that,

I think you're right because the games aren't ubiquitous because uncharted is only on PlayStation. What's ubiquitous is the idea of a network console, the idea of a marketplace that's digital. So when Xbox 360 launches, because I was poor in college, I was writing, I had my,

what was I playing in 2005? So I saw my PS2, my, no, I guess PS2 GameCube Xbox. So I was still working with those things. My roommate, Doug,

who I think watches the show. Do it, got his Xbox 360 and was obsessed with it. Remember I'm playing King Kong. With the, thousand gamers more, baby. So easy to get that. That was my first thousand.

And I wrote the guide for it actually based on the PS2 version of the game, which I think was identical in some way. But what were the games that mattered? Because to me, Xbox Live Arcade and like summer of Arcade and all those kinds of things, really actually in my mind began, that ball started to roll a little later. Like it didn't seem immediately obvious that the marketplace, you know, was this viable thing. Really until like it's really shadow complex, limbo, like all these things are the ones that really come to mind. Geometry Wars.

Yeah, Geometry Wars is a great one. Geometry Wars. Yeah. That was fucking great. That was our killer app. Yeah. So that goes back just to rewind a little bit, you know, again to that sort of

inception of XBLA. So remember, rewind 2004, 2005. What do people know, right? There is no indie movement to speak of. There's garage games doing Marble Blast Ultra. There's Wick Fable of Souls. There's a handful of games that came about in response to XBLA. And we actually funded and bootstrapped initially in 2005.

But when I was writing the business plan, it was about what I called dimensionalizing the ecosystem. So there's a couple of principles that I really believe strongly in. No, no, you're doing great. I'm actually angling. Yeah, this is actually a better. This is better, because now I'm in direct line. So there was a couple principles that I feel very strongly, and they're just personal passions of mind, right? One is curation. We can talk about that. Another is dimensionalizing the ecosystem. So when you're building a gaming ecosystem, particularly when you're educating the populace on something that they aren't familiar with, right? You're completely from scratch, something new out of the sky. You know,

Steve Jobs talked about, talks about this a lot at Apple. Like, people don't know they want an iPhone until you show them the iPhone and then they're like, oh my God, this is fucking awesome. How can I ever survive without this device, right? Or your Android device or whatever it is. No one's saying that about the Android devices. Oh. But one of the things you have to do is you have to make sure there's a little something for everybody. And so you got to remember that when we're trying to create a new platform from scratch, from ether that does not exist. It was about creating a little something for. everybody to attract a broad variety of people and throwing in a combination of things that were innovative and that people had not seen before, but also some familiar things, some familiar beats. And so when we went out and built up the initial content portfolio for Xbox Live Arcade for 360, which was our big bet, we had 20 games planned for launch day, 20 for launch window, 10 for launch day.

And so there had to be a little something for everybody. Now, I'm a student of the games industry. I grew up since I was a kid playing games. So what was I inspired by? I was inspired by Game Boy and Tetris. I wanted a Tetris. I wanted that pack-in that was like instant validation. I get this.

I'm done. I want this thing. I understand how it works. Perfect. I was super fortunate. The beautiful thing of working at a company like Microsoft is you have amazing talent everywhere that you can tap into. We happen to have on my staff, Alexei Pajtanov. Alexi Pagentoff is, of course, the creator of Tetris.

He just happened to be on the staff. He happened to be on the staff. He happened to be on the staff. Janitor. He was... He was... We got the Tetris guy. He was just little known fact, this is, you know, games, the games industry is so small, right?

And we were super fortunate because back in the days of Ed Fries and Microsoft game studios, the Eboo, the entertainment business unit, right? That came about before Xbox, Oji Xbox, it was a PC gaming business unit, right? They did, they did Age of Empires, and they did, you know, these puzzle game collections, Hoyle and all these little games for PC. and Alexi was hired in in the late 90s to actually work on these PC puzzle game compilations. They didn't do very well, but Alexi was still very talented. He was kind of like looking for, you know, looking for new projects.

So I said, I have the creator of Tetris working on my team. Like, hey, I am inspired by Tetris on Game Boy. Like, hey, maybe we can't get, we didn't want to do Tetris for various reasons, but let's try and create our own Tetris. And so I went over I talked to Alexi This is back when I was just A little engine that could Remember it was just me

And it was literally just me With a PowerPoint deck And then pitching executives And then it was seven people For the OGX box version Which was still nothing And then we grew to 11 I went to Alexi and said

Hey do you have any ideas For a really cool puzzle game I want the equivalent of Tetris and Game Boy Can you come up with something And he came up with Hexick And so Hexick was Alexi Pagetnov creation

Of course we had planned on that being the pack-in game that was included, and it was in every hard drive for the 360 launch. Fun fact, that was the very first Xbox 360 game to ever be certified. So because it was pre-launch, it was the first one through the pipe, it ended up being this awesome project that was both a super fun game and also critical to the development of the 360 and Xbox Live infrastructure, because we didn't have any games. It validated the pipeline for certification. It was the initial poster child for gamer score and achievements. And it allowed us to test all of those systems internally and make sure they were working, make sure they were fun. So we had a hectic.

And then we were able to go out, and this was privilege of my job. I was given a bucket of money by Jay and said, hey, what do you want to do with this? And so, of course, I go naturally to some of the places that I love and some of the games that I love that I grew up with. So what I do, I go out and try and dimensionalize the ecosystem. I need some retro. What are my favorite games? Gauntlet, joust, Robotron, Smash TV. Midway, how about we do those?

Done. Boom. Those are four of the games. Popcap, loved Popcap games. I want a couple of real casual games in there. Let's do Bejeweled and Zuma. Went out to Pop Cap, they signed up. I really want to do some pushing the envelope, sort of indie game stuff.

That's where Wick Fable of Souls came from, Marble Blast Ultra, some of the cool sort of indie games we had there at launch day or launch window. Cloning Clyde. If you guys remember, some really, really talented games. guys that were just, remember, pre-Steem. These guys are little indies trying to make it, garage games, little companies that had no distribution. They were literally trying to sell on their own websites at the time, because there was no Steam on the PC, trying to do $20 downloads. They came, it was the easiest sell in the world. They were like, oh my God, you're actually going to let us

sell on console? I mean, yes, absolutely. We'll do whatever you want. So, and then we got to also work with some of our own partners. And this was the super fun part to answer your question. about what was our killer app initially, Bizarre creations. Bizarre creations was our PGR partner. And so, of course, I go to, you know, Ed and then Shane Kim and some of the other people that were running Microsoft Game Studios at the time and said, you know, who wants to do an XBLA game? Now, of course, not everybody within Microsoft Game Studios was a fan of XBLA, so not everyone was like on-team XBLA.

Some people thought it was a distraction. Some people thought it was going to cannibalize the whole games industry and shut everybody down. There were a lot of detractors. But for the people that were Ken Lobb, there were certain people internally that were fans. And they opened some doors, made some introductions, and that's where Geometry Wars came from. So Geometry Wars is a little game, little offshoot from the Uber awesome dudes of bizarre creations in the UK. You know, super talented people, right?

You meet game creators for a job. You guys have amazing jobs. You get to meet game creators, you know, and talk to them and interview them. You know that these people are not just like, they're not creative only with a racing game. They're creative people, right? And they love working on projects big and small. You know, these guys were heads down working on racing games for years. And a crew of them, they were like, you know what?

We just want to do something quick and fun. It ended up being one of the coolest unintended side effects of XBLA was it provided this creative outlet for game creators to actually try and experiment with little stuff. Go blow off your steam there. You got an idea. Let's try to make a work over there. Exactly. And we'll make a little money on the side.

But it wasn't even about the money. It was about the creative expression. And so long-witted way of answering your question. The ecosystem at the outset was a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It was more of an emphasis as a proportion now in hindsight on retro and casual than it was on indie. The ecosystem needed time to gestate and develop, right? And really the part that I'm most proud of is what happened in 2006, 2007, 2008, in the heydays of XBLA, when you give, now it's not about people, you know, shipping their old games, or it's not about the stuff. that was on casual games and all that stuff.

That stuff was still cool. But really, it was giving the Indies and the indie industry a time to go, okay, this is legit. We can form up a studio. We can form up a business model. We can self-fund. We can go attract the funding. That takes a year or two years.

And then when you started seeing limbo, braid, Castle Crashers. Oh, Castle Crashers. You know, you started seeing these games come out, you know, Shadow Complex. These are the games that I'm most proud of on the platform. And that was the moment in time when I think, the industry really XBLA I think came into its own I think the industry started to recognize

the accomplishments and I think it began to transform things now honestly it actually started to fall apart again like late in later years because I think Microsoft again lost its focus I think it's all come full circle now that Phil's back in charge I think things are coming back around again and now they're refocused on Indies

and things are getting better again but there was a period of time where I think Microsoft lost their way and the service got messy and, you know, it got imprecise. And that's where, you know, again, I think my, I have to give props to Adam and the team at at PlayStation because they identified it. They saw XBLA for what it was, in some ways, even more so than some people at Microsoft did. And they said, wow, you know, some of the most creative, talented, innovative shit going on in our industry is the Indies. And let's embrace that. When we go next generation, you know, they were playing catch up with

PS3. Let's be honest. I mean, PS3 and PSN was playing catch up pretty much the whole way. Part of that, there's a long story behind that. I'm sure you know all about it about, you know, Japan was controlling it for a long time. And then the San Diego guys were trying to help out, but they weren't in control. And it was in two places for a while. And they finally got it.

It was too late. Like, they made a ton of progress towards the end of PS3 when it came over to the states. But for a long time, Japan thought they knew what they were doing. And, you know, there were some issues there. Yeah. And I think they basically acknowledge that they don't now that the center power is actually just south of here. They shifted it over to San.

Mattel and boom, you know, they've made such amazing progress. But, you know, in the time between PS3 and PS4, you know, you saw, I got to give props, right? Sony, Santa Monica and, you know, some of the first party studios, there was flow. There was some interesting stuff there that was, you know, John Haidt and the guys that were doing some sort of first party, you know, PSN network, the competitor to XBLA was trying to do some stuff. Not just, oh, two years later, XBLA ports, but they were trying to do some of their own stuff. That's where it started. on incubating things. Sony Santa Monica in particular,

right, of bringing people in and working with them and trying to make their game the best it could be. Yes, yes. And there were a few people that were leading the charge there,

and they got some bandwidth and some budget, they did some great things. But in PS4, the time between late PS3 and PS4 is when Adam and the team just went, that's actually a competitive advantage.

And of course, Microsoft got distracted on some other things for a while. We know that regime. And then they were all about, you know, Madden and Call of Duty and,

you know, entertainment in the living room and television sets. And that's when XBLA kind of veered off and they went, we're actually now

Jonathan Blow, you know, let's go grab Firewatch, let's go get, you know, let's go get the key talent,

the Lorne Lannings, let's go get the people. And then they, you know, the PS4, obviously the, the famous now press conferences at E3,

when they announced the two consoles or pre, before that, actually, before E3, when they announced the conferences

and Sony, you know, Sony as an active part of their presentation was like indies, you know, our XBLA, I didn't call it XBLA, but I mean, them and then what Microsoft had, which is, hey, here's your Madden and Call of Duty and television set. Talk about the Halo network we're going to make for you. Sports.

Sports and more sports. I love that. That sizzle reel is still the best thing ever that those guys put together. But it's come full circle again, right? And this is where, I mean, I think, you know, I've talked to Ryan McCaffrey about this. We did an I, JAN on XBLA, but I haven't cut that out. We didn't want to promote that back. My reach was, you guys are still friendly.

No, we're fine. Everybody should listen to that. It's great. But, you know, my call out to Phil and to Aaron and the guys is, you know, XBLA was actually been decommissioned as a brand in the Xbox One. I don't know if you guys know that, but I mean, certainly you do. I don't know if all your listeners do and fans do, but that's crazy. Like, like, I don't, I was searching for another example of a brand.

And it's probably the most successful. You're talking about a multi-hundred million-dollar business. Like, XBLA wasn't this little side note. Like, this was a multi-hundred-million-dollar business. I mean, you talk about the later years in Minecraft and all the things that happened on that platform. It's probably the most successful brand in modern memory in the games industry, certainly, that has been decommissioned.

And it solves lots of problems that Microsoft has right now. And so if you look at XBLA Wednesdays and Summer of Arcade, you know, the ability to promote the curation, the discoverability, in the AppStar, which is another huge passion to mine, like, discoverability is such a huge problem in our industry right now. We talked about that on this show over and over again, which is a huge problem, the glut of garbage on these networks now.

Totally. And XBLA was that signpost, that badge of quality, like when you, especially some of arcade, like if a game made it into the slotting there, you knew it was going to be good. And you know, you need that, that curation, you need that, that brand to really represent that this is something that you should pay attention to and also cut through the BS in the marketplace, right? You've got games like inside, which are phenomenal games. Inside is absolutely phenomenal.

Probably my game of the year so far. I would say so. And it is absolutely a 10 out of 10. And it is merchandised. Where is it in the marketplace? It's merchandised underneath best case. It gets a little blip alongside Destiny the Collection and Gears 4 and Forts the Horizon 3.

maybe one time out of 100, maybe it appears there. And most of the time it's search results only. And to a bigger question with that is what would surprise me about that. And I don't know if you have any insight in this, because you're talking about using your bucket of money to go and buy these games or at least get some exclusive windows with them. What surprised me with Inside specifically was, and I guess this is kind of a mixture between the old Microsoft and Phil Spencer's new,

or old Xbox, Phil Spencer's new Xboxes, I was shocked when Inside's trophies popped on Exophase and PSM profiles literally two weeks after the game launched. And I'm like, you guys didn't even pay to keep this? Like that was a that was like we're gonna wait two years we got to plug in the Xbox some point play this game and then it popped up and I was like that show me a different kind of thing too where I was like this was literally on your stage at E3 like this was a game you guys were talking about and you have it for a month you know like don't you guys so it seems like that's changed a little bit too it has changed I mean it's it's really come again I don't work in Microsoft anymore so I mean I know Phil I love Phil I love Phil and his team I love Aaron Greenberg I worked with Aaron back in the day. We did we had a lot of really fun stuff together the Pac-Man World Championships a bunch of other stuff. side stories if you want to hear about him someday. But that business, as far as I can tell, is come full circle, right? So it went from we were ahead, XBLA 360.

We were ahead to, wow, we're firing on all cylinders to we got a little ahead of ourselves. We started jamming a bunch of stuff in there. And we also got a little ahead of ourselves in terms of being too aggressive with terms. And that pissed a lot of people off. And then what happened was, you know, meanwhile, Adam and the team at Sony are like, we're over here. And they did some smart things and they signed some exclusives and they did some stuff. And then Microsoft's come back around because of Phil and his leadership and they've refocused. And it's about gamers and not about entertainment.

And they have now a state of, they have a developer program in ID at Xbox. And so it's very developer facing. They're still focused on indies and incubating indies and such now. I think they've now kind of taken their looks a little bit and kind of refocused and I think they realize how important Indies are. But they haven't squared the circle yet in terms of rounding it back around to the consumer experience. And this is the part I still think they have some work to do on is from a consumer experience, a dashboard experience and a marketing standpoint. They haven't said, okay, here's our brand, here's our curation, here's our discoverability, here's our summer of arcade, here's our promotion. here's all of the consumer facing side of that.

They've addressed or partially addressed or on their way to addressing some of the developer community stuff. And so, you know, I think Phil's orientation. And again, I'm not Phil. You should ask Phil. But I mean, Phil's always been of the mind, at least from the days that I know him,

Phil's always been of the mind of, you know what, this exclusive stuff, like paying for exclusive, just in general, this with AAA. Like I don't, I think he's thinking, okay, first party exclusives, gears, forza, you know, that stuff. Really important, right?

important platform differentiators, but in terms of multi-platform exclusives, at least my observation just as a gamer, no expert knowledge here, is it, they seem to be kind of moving away from that. Like it's about games or it's about games for everybody and games, you should be able to get to games. Like you, you know, you having this indie game that premieres over here and I have to wait a year to play Firewatch or I have to wait a year to play, whatever, that's just, it's just dumb. So like, why do that? And so I think a lot of those, you're seeing kind of the end result with an inside or with a witness or with a firewatch. You're seeing the end result of some like back behind the scenes

sort of business development deals. Yeah, well, Play Dead especially could probably because I could have sworn because you were talking about the terms. I know Sony was getting aggressive with the terms and I thought that the story was with Play Dead that they wanted Limbo exclusively. Didn't they, wasn't Limbo first pitch to Sony and Sony was like, we want the IP?

Inside? Yeah. No, was it inside or was it? Limbo was an XPLA exclusive. I know that, but before they, before my, I might be confusing with Inside, but I thought Play Dead pitched Limbo to Sony first. And Sony was like, and Sony, people could out there can back check me. I don't know. I

think Sony usually wanted IP or whatever and was and they were like, well, we're not giving the IP up. So then they just went to Microsoft who didn't I guess have the terms that battened down yet. And then they both seemed to be having from the experiences from the people we've talked to, like the experience was more difficult with with Sony at first. And then I got like you were saying, got easier. Yeah, because then there was no, there was no publisher, you know, the idea of like you needed a publisher to publish still on Xbox Live Arcade in some way. You could sell published with Sony and then it was it seemed complicated it seemed like a war of I could hear that I roll yeah it seemed like a war of escalation and then de-escalation and we've heard it from you know

our other friends uh Dan who you know who represents Axiom verge and other guys the complications with the first parties on these digital platforms were extreme it was and you know anytime you do it's it's tough and of course I have my own perspective on it my I mean my perspective all let's tell you is does it like it's hard anytime you create a new business right and especially if a business is new, disruptive, and successful, right? XBLA was never part of the plan, so there was no financial expectations behind it. You know, there was no, it wasn't baked into the plan and the Xbox Live revenues and all that stuff.

So we launched XBLA in 2005. We did our entire first year's numbers in three weeks. So three weeks. And what is the ripple effect then at Xbox? And the ripple effect? It was just the beginning of the fun, believe me. Because anytime something like that happens, it's unintended consequences, whatever, but it happens. It's a very challenging situation. You think it's all just

crack and champagne and awesome, but it actually isn't. You have detractors that are trying to, well, they were trying to kill it beforehand. Now they're trying to grab it. They're trying to take it for their own P&L, right? They're trying to grab the profit loss statement, sorry, the financial lingo. They're trying to grab the money. They're trying to own it, control it. They're trying to steer it in certain directions. There were a lot of people, I actually, mentioned earlier the detractors right there were a number of detractors throughout the organization around the concept of xblai amongst the detractors were people that thought that we were going to blow up literally destroy the retail model of console retail gaming for 60

we're going to erode price points and we were going to kill the entire industry and kill the console business there were literally people that said that at microsoft pre-launch um there were other people that thought that we had no business picking content picking game content that we should that we should be sort of you know agnostic so there were a lot of of detractors. But when you launch and you have that much success, there's a tendency to pull it in a bunch of different directions internally. There's everyone that kind of wants to use it, not everybody, but there's a number of different people in positions of power that want to do different things with it. One of the things was, you know, we had, remember, we're only two years,

three years into the console business at this point. This is 2004, 2005. We just launched Xbox 360. We were, we just got live launched in 2002. We just got EA on our platform in 2003. I mean, we're like a year in on our EA relationship, right? And so we had, not to just pick on specifically on EA, but I mean, as an example, there were people that were legitimately concerned that if we mismanaged digital distribution of content or not give the publisher whatever they wanted, that we were going to piss them off

and they were going to abandon the platform like they did with Dreamcast or not supported or whatever. And so that was a legit concern internally. At hindsight, it seemed silly, but at the time, it was the mindset of people. I understand that now. I don't fault anybody, but it was those were the times. And so when I was there, and the one thing that's cool is because when the creator is actually there running the team, there's a lot of sort of default like deference to like, hey, well, you know, Greg knows who's doing. So he's going to pick the games and he's going to pick what's on the platform, et cetera. But then when I left, I left in 2007.

And when I left, it got pulled in a bunch of different directions. And so there was a lot of stuff we had in the pipeline. We had over 140 games in the pipeline. We'd shipped the first 75 while I was there. So we had a lot of games. And we had, again, the magical time not correlated to me. I had 35 people, some of the best talent in the industry working on this, right? Amazing people.

That was a generation we got the Castle Crashers, the Braids, the Limbos, the Shadow Complexes, was that 2008, 2007, 8, 9, period. It was very focused. And then what happened was you began to see it because I left and then there was a vacuum. And then it started to get pulled in a bunch of different directions. And that's around the same time that Microsoft, there was always going back to 99 and the original pitch for the OG Xbox that you've all read about and heard about. This goes back to Bill. And Bill wanting to be, it's an entertainment battle for the living room thing and entertainment's got to be part of it. And, you know, it's all of that stuff.

That never died. It was always an undertone and Xbox every step of the way through OGXbox and 360. Robbie Bach was always keeping an eye on it. Of course, the guys like Jay Allard were like, yeah, sure, we need to win with gamers first. And we need to stay focused on games and gamers. And that's why I think we had that magical moment for a number of years where we were able to stay focused. And you had that integration between hardware, software, and services that, you know, they talk about a lot with Apple. Like that seamless integration of all the different components were the key to success.

I think 360, frankly, was the high point of that. You then begin to see after, not just me leaving, but there was a change of the guard with a lot of people, right? Peter Moore. And why, though? But, like, why do you leave and why do you see this start? Is it just that you're on to another adventure or was it? Yeah. I mean, for me, it was, it was, I'd spent seven years at Xbox.

I'd seen through two generations of consoles. I'd gotten Xbox live arcade off the ground and saw it through. I'm a builder, not a shepherd. I mean, just by personality. I'm more the guy to create something new and manage a team, staff up a team, manage a team, launch it, do something really innovative, see it through to a point to stabilize it and then go build something else. And so for me, I wanted to go build something else. I tried to do that at Microsoft, just candidly. I tried to do that a number of times.

My predisposition was, oh, I got to leave Microsoft. Microsoft is amazing. But there was a ton of people on Xbox. 360 was a hit. We had a ton of people come in. Everybody wanted a piece. Everybody wanted to direct it. There was a lot of push-pull.

And, you know, we had that moment where Jay was in control and Peter Moore was there and everything was aligned. The stars were aligned. We were launching. We were executing. And then this undertone, this undercurrent of not Phil's regime, but the other regime. Like that was, it's about we. It's about casual. It's about connect.

It's about entertainment living room and TV and DVRs. And that was the, from my perspective, it was after I left, but my perspective, that began to take hold. And what sacrifice there was the focus on games, gamers, indies, focus on, you know, some of the live features, I think, got deprioritized that we want to do that were gamer features in priority, in favor of doing connect features and we remote sort of stuff. You mentioned when you came on, you know, you're a hardcore gamer and that's why Xbox loses that, PlayStation doubles down. on that and that's why there's this different thing with PlayStation 4 Xbox 1. Bingo. Bingo. And at the same time, all that was happening. And in my opinion, they were defocusing Sony. And it's fine, the yin and yang. It was exactly inverted when we were launching with 360. And PlayStation 2 was really, they were really cocky and they were commanding a bunch of sort of crazy terms from developers and doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes.

And then the Ken Kuduragi and the PlayStation 3 and you'll get a second job. And all this stuff. and we were just sitting there going, like at Xbox, we're like, oh my God, we would never do that. And then shoes on the other foot. Five years later. That's what I was going to say is that it seems to happen in this industry, not that I know any other industry,

like I know this industry, but it seems like it happens in this industry over and over again where someone just fucks it up. Like, it doesn't even seem to be, it doesn't even see, like, the innovations on the original Xbox were great, but it didn't stop PlayStation 2 from selling literally six times more, right?

So like it was, you know, it's like, it's the cartridge one with N64 when they're like, but you have all these relationships to these publishers, they don't want to put their games on cartridge, so it's not going to make games for you anymore. Like, you didn't have to do that, but you chose to do that. And it's the same thing with Dreamcasts with no piracy controls. It was the same thing with PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3 with the second job,

and we can sell 10 million units without ever putting a game on it, and all the shit, the crazy shit they were saying about it. George Foreman girl. Yeah, and then, and then it's the same thing with the Xbox One reveal, and it's just, it's a cycle that I've, that doesn't take a deep, fucking thinking mind to identify where it's like, it seems like it's not someone else with being coming in, stealing the thunder. It's always someone just tripping and falling on their face and there's just

someone else standing there or shrugging. I guess it's like it's us now. I'm just going to keep walking. I think a lot of it's just human nature. A lot of its underdog mentality, right? When you're behind and you're like, you know, whoa, this is a more survival instinct. Like you got to, you got to catch up. You got to, you got to do something. And you are at a console generation border and you have the, you have some innovative ideas and you are, it's a survival instinct kicks in. You're like, we have to be successful here or we might have to have jobs. Like that kicks in. And I think, you know, certainly. with PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3

and us going to me like, oh my God. And then I wasn't there for the when that happened on the other foot, the other shoe dropped, but effectively what it appears to be for me, and I know some of the people that were in the room, not all of them, they lost their way. And at the same time, PlayStation retrenched

after PS3 in some of their difficulties and said, we need to stay focused. We want to innovate here, here and here. We want to embrace Indies. We want to do this stuff. They executed. Microsoft didn't. and we are where we are today.

Now, that mistake, unfortunately, now it's been recovered, but that mistake is a generation, and that mistake is 30 million units. So we're talking, I mean, I don't know. I'm speculating on what the Xbox One install base is. I think it's 20, 25 million, whatever. Yeah, not enough.

I don't know, but it's never going to catch up, right? So, but I will, again, I will end this story on a positive note, which is with Phil, it's back, right? Because that guy is a gamer. He understands games. He's brought back a lot of the guy. that were responsible for the women, men and women

that were responsible for 360. A lot of the people were still around, you know, the errands, you know, Albert Pinellos, a lot of these great guys. And they are, I mean, look at, look what happened when he took over. I mean, he's like, okay, back compat. Okay, refocus on live. Okay, back to the backwards compatibility was such a coup, man. I still, I still can't.

I just was like, they, I still say that was the biggest moment at E3 that year. I remember talking about it there, whatever, the specific thing of like, you guys are actually sacrificing collection dollars and third party dollars in collections and all these kinds of things to just do something very consumer friendly that your opponent is just not going to do

because of their investment in Guy Kai. So it was a very strategic, I think it was way more strategic than people gave it credit for. Whereas it wasn't only good for Xbox consumers. It's something Sony literally will not do because of the $400 million they spent to make sure that they don't have to do it. Because they want you to buy the game again.

With Guy Kai Kai. Yeah, with PlayStation Now or whatever. The one question I want to ask you, I know this topic's running long, but I don't care because it's fascinating. We were talking about unforced errors in pushing the ball too far. I'm curious as an industry expert and a veteran of this industry. What do you make of not the modular consoles because they're not here yet?

We might get those in the future, but the iterative consoles that we're now going to get in Scorpio, which I still don't really fully believe is not the next console completely. But the Scorpio and the Pro, what do you make of that? Because I feel like this is, with Pro specifically, I feel like this is, I don't know who's asking for this console. Scorpio, I feel like is Xbox saying like we lost and we actually need to reboot as quickly as possible.

So what do you make of all of that? Yeah, I mean, in general, I mean, I would say a couple things. I would say, first off, it is truly about enabling gameplay experience that could not otherwise exist. I completely agree with your comment. Again, I'm a fan. I listen to your show. I know your guys' perspective on this.

I wholeheartedly agree with what you've been shouting from the mountaintops ever since the PlayStation conference. That it is about, it is not about graphics processing power. If you want to do that, go be a PC master race guide. Like, great. That's awesome. but it is about enabling experience that we cannot otherwise have. Where I get excited is VR.

Where I get excited is the crackdown demo where they were like, check out this cloud processing power and you could never do this if you didn't have this cloud processing power. Now we haven't seen that game come out yet, but I mean the promise of that is interesting to me, right? People using the tech in a different way

to make the game better. Yes, exactly. People using the tech in a different way to make the game better is where I feel like it's at. This whole iterative console thing. I think the way it's being presented to the, to the gamer is confusing. I think it's, it's amazing to me. Like, we're 30 years in and in this business. You think there's just kind of a playbook on like how to market things. Then we see Wii U and the naming mistake. We see the

PlayStation Pro. We see, we continue to see us make the same mistakes over and over and over again. The benefits of console gaming, again, for me, maybe I'm old school, write me off. I don't know. But I grew up in the N-E-S-N-E-S-N-E-S days, you know, cartridge gaming, Game Boy, stick it in, turn it on, play. That's awesome, right? Now it's like, okay, I do this thing, I turn it on, I boot the thing, I stick it in, it's a 50-gig install, I got to patch it, I got to configure it, there's a firmware update, and I got to, and there's three, I go to the store, and there's eight consoles, I know which one to buy. It's just confusing.

I don't understand why we don't just simplify and just get it to the user experience. to be more about simplicity and customer experience. I'm a huge fan of Apple's because I think they do a great job of this. In a couple of things, a couple of ways, right? First, vertical integration of hardware, software, and services, right? It all comes from the same place. It all works together. That's a key principle. Second principle is curation, which, again, we can get into more. Yeah, we're starting to, we're getting close to the next time. But the third is simplicity. And you go to Apple's website, there are no more than eight products that they're ever selling at one point in time. It's not about, and they're a whole, they're, you know, one of the world's most

successful and biggest sort of technology companies, yet they've, they're the masters of simplicity, explaining complex concepts to people in very simple terms. And so I think the console industry still has a ways to go to learn from companies like Apple in terms of how you message and communicate to the user from a marketing standpoint. From a product standpoint, again, it comes back to the experience for me. And it's not about graphics processing power. I think what, I think what's going on right now is confusing. I love the concept of Scorpio, but Scorpio feels to me like,

and I don't know, because I don't know what it is yet, but based on the promises and based on the E3 reveal and the tarflops. Yeah, and based on my faith in Phil and team, if it truly is six terraflops and it is high quality VR,

Oculus style or Vibe style plus VR out of the box without a side car and 12 cables and all this shit that you have to deal with right now, it's a mess. Like if it truly is that next leap, then I'm in. I'm all in. But it can't be about 4K HDR thing about some TV I'm not going to buy for four years and some nuanced little thing that it doesn't. Blacks are blacker.

There isn't, yeah. And what's that going to do? That's great. But what is that going to do? And there's like five people that have that TV that can even show that. So I don't, I love, I mean, I saw actually Forza Horizon playing on the PC with HDR on it. It is amazing. Native 4K. It's fucking amazing. But it's not, it's not this leap forward, right? all grew up in the eras where the earlier generations were like, wow, PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 2, wow. PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3 in the HD era, wow, huge leaps and bounds, right? This is like Maslow's hierarchy.

We got through all the days of like fundamental food and shelter and, you know, sticks and caves, and now we're in these levels of the upper levels of the pyramid where we're talking about refinement. It's less about graphics fidelity now. It's about capabilities and immersiveness and experiences that you can't have elsewhere. And so that's my answer to your question. Amen. It's really about the experiences that we can provide.

And until it is, don't come out with another console because my consoles are awesome right now. Agreed. I'm completely good with this. And the one part I love is the back and pat idea, not just back and pat on Xbox One, but the idea of back and pat, meaning my library comes with me. XBLA, obviously, is the creative XBLA. I love the fact that every week I go in, I'm in the preview program, and more and more of my XBLA games

are lit up on that right side that I can download. I have obviously, I work there I have 150 XBLA games, right? And just a couple at a time, they're lightened up. I didn't lose Joust. I didn't lose Robitron.

I didn't lose Castle Crashers. They're there. So I love this concept of being able to carry my collection with me over the years and having it cloud-based so I don't have to worry about my local storage

or do I have a 2-terabyte or a 5-500 gigabyte or whatever. Like I recently made the leap to two terabyte on, actually on both my consoles because 500 gig was too small. Like I was not buying games digitally because I don't want, like, I play a bunch of games at one time and like eight retail games and I was now uninstalling things I was still playing because of my file size. To get two terabytes, I'm not doing that anymore. So I have enough where I can load up everything and still have some casual stuff and some digital stuff

and still have some room to spare. So I'm now getting past that point, but irrespective of that, Not everyone has the privilege of being able to buy a 2 terabyte hard drive like I do. So having that cloud-based experience that transcends generations is super important. And I'd love to see Sony do it. I'm not super in on streaming. I've heard streaming tech pitches for 15 years. I've yet to see a successful implementation of it. PlayStation Now included, I'm not a big fan of that.

I'm a big believer in ownership of games. I don't want to renter. I'm an owner. So I like having game collections. but digital is a great substitute for that. Like give me the game, just make it cloud license, right? Absolutely. So, love it.

So here's my problem with you as we switch topics. Hardcore gamer is how you introduce yourself. Yep. Created Xbox Live Arcade. Worked at Blizzard, did all this different stuff. And now you're out of here making mobile games. And you've heard us before. Colin, way more aggressively than me.

Just the mobile games. Come on. What are you doing? Yeah, I mean, so mobile games, believe me, I totally understand your frustration and skepticism around mobile games. I have it too. To be honest, with you, most mobile games suck. I just say it straight off the bat.

Most of them suck. This is my biased perspective, talking as an individual. I just want to be clear about that. Again, this is my perspective as a hardcore gamer. I play dozens, hundreds of mobile games. I play them. I've been playing them for years. Most of them blow.

I'm a huge handheld gamer, like portable gamer. So I have 3DS. I have a 3DSXL. I have two Vitas. I have huge PSP fan. I've been playing portable games since the Game Boy. I've got GBAs and GBSPs and all kinds of stuff. So I've been playing portable games.

I love portable games, right? Gaming on the go is a cool use case. This device, you know, this device, I'm on my phone with me, but this device is an amazing computer that's in your pocket. It's one of the most powerful computers around, right? Honestly, it has graphics processing. capabilities. Good taste in phone, Greg. Yeah, there you go. It's very nice.

I like that, Kevin. Oh, yeah, we got the exact same one. Twins. Us Greg stick together. Nice, yeah, that's right. Greg's an iPhone sevens. So, but there is, there is no reason why this device, which is a multi-purpose device, sure, so is a PC. PC gaming is thriving. PC gaming exists and is great. And you also do spreadsheets and you also work on it and you also check email.

So it's not about dedicated device. versus multi-purpose device. I think it's a misnomer. It's really about this is an awesome device. There is no good reason why you can't have amazing game experiences on this device. The problems that are facing our industry

are not about device capability. It's about other stuff. It's about the business model. It's about the lack of curation in the industry, in the business, and it's about creators. It's three things, right? So creators, you need to have the top talent.

You need to have the creative, innovative talent in the industry, in mobile building awesome games. There are examples of awesome games, right? We all, you guys played Monument Valley. Like Monument Valley, there's Monument Valley, there's, you know, Harvestone, there's, there's examples of good games on the device.

Sure. So. Plants versus Zombies is one of my favorite games in the last 10 years. Yes. And that's inherently a better experience on a mobile phone or an iPad than it is even on the PC. We originally designed it for the PC. It's a better experience. We actually improved that. I was there at Pop Cap when we did that.

We actually did that in my group. That is actually, we came out the iPad version. that was like 2008, and we actually realized very quickly that it was a better touch interface. Touchingverse was a superior interface to the PC. Popcap had the design culture to understand that, right? And a lot of companies don't have that design culture. I'm a huge fan of design culture, obviously working at Popcap, working at Blizzard, which are two very strong design cultures. I'm a student of design-driven and design-led game development.

The game creators have to be on these, building these games, number one. We haven't seen a ton of that. although you were starting to see it. Number two, it's about the business model. The business model has fallen into, you know, call it what it is, it is what it is right now. We're seven years in on smartphone games, right?

It's still in its infancy, right? We haven't seen the, we haven't had the 30 years that we have on the console and PC side to see this evolved. And that's a very important to note that this is still in its infancy. But the industry has fallen into this rut

of free to play is the only thing that works. free to play inherently is a very limited it like is a is a is a business model that has has had examples of some success but it is also very limited in terms of its application there are lots of genres we all are familiar with all the genres of game genre how many is 15 20 game genres it free to play is good for like three or four of them that most game genres actually the majority I'd say game genres are not conducive to free to play and so So what's happened is free to play, you're in this weird space right now where developers and publishers need to make money.

Price points have eroded. So premium content has failed, right? It's been tried for a number of years. Price points have eroded. You're not even getting XBLA prices on this thing. You're lucky to get three bucks. And when you get three bucks, there's no recurring business model. So you had a lot of people come in very early on.

And this came from, this wasn't invented with the smartphone era. Of course, you know this was invented in Asia many years ago. with Nexon and Cart Rider and a number of different, you know, companies, Shonda and other companies in the East, and that's been broad over here. But the microtransaction free-to-play business model works, of course, because it casts a wide net, lowers access barriers, lets you attract a broad variety of users, but then it actually provides a recurring sort of annuity, what we'll call an annuity revenue stream, right? Stream over a long period of time. That business model works, and people, the top 20 is all free-to-play games, right? but it works for social casino games. It works for builders, you know, these Farmville type games.

It works for Clash of Clans. It works for pack opening games, you know, like deck builders. But that's it. I mean, if you look at it, where's Pac-Man? Where's Tetris? Where's word games? Where's racing games? I mean, aside from CSR, which is more of a simulation, like it really, it doesn't work for

most game genres very well. And so we're in this weird stage where, the publishers and developers want to make money. They're sitting on a bunch of IP. There's only one thing that works. And so they're trying to jam a business model and a play pattern that doesn't fit into business, certain genres of games onto those games,

and you're creating crappy experiences that don't achieve the goal. They don't make the money. And then the developers and publishers go, well, I guess we'll just build a social casino game or a free-to-play builder game. And so you're not seeing the creators. You're seeing the limitation

of the free-to-play business model. The industry needs more business models. It needs more monetization methods to make the industry viable so that we as gamers, we meaning as gamers, get what we want in terms of content, and we as platform providers slash meaning the Apple Googles, as well as the developers, publishers, get what they want in terms of making enough money to make the entire ecosystem viable, right? So you see these, you see these, these phenomenon going on. The third phenomenon is curation.

And this is one that I'm personally very passionate about. I've been speaking about curation for the last decade plus going back to the XBLA day. And you just talked about the last topic. And this is what Colin's always talking about. And me to an extent too, of course, that there's too much. It's happening on consoles now what's happening on the mobile space. It's happening all over again. And that's what's particularly frustrating to me.

It's most acute in the app stores, frankly. But it's happening in the in the PC space with Steam and in the console space. but this is a known issue and this is an old issue. This is not a recent issue. When we came up with Xbox Live Marketplace in 2005 for Xbox 360,

we knew that this was an issue. Remember the old blades, green blades? We knew this was an issue. I remember the design meetings in 2004 we were in where we were talking about Marketplace and we were talking about the structural limitation of not just on the technical side, but the user interface

just could only accommodate so many pieces of content, above 300 pieces of content, 400 piece of content. The thing just fell apart. And there's always this kind of somewhat lazy, we'll just rely on a search engine. Like, hey, just type it in and people will go and they'll find the stuff. That's just bullshit. I fundamentally disagree with that comment. And so you see this happened. It happened on 360. There have been steps to mitigate. You saw this on PlayStation Network. They tried. There were things like XBLA with Arcade Wednesdays with PlayStation Network promotions to try and surface content. Then the app stores came along.

And of course, there are no entry barriers, right? Because it's free to play games and it's two people in a garage can publish and there's no oversight. There's no, at least with consoles, you have a certification process and you have, you know, you have to go through some hoops and you have to have some sort of a publisher agreement either with a big publisher or with a Microsoft or a Sony, you know, to kind of self-publish, if you will. But you have to have to have some sort of structure and you have to be a legit entity. in this space, you don't. And so what do we see? We see over a million apps in the app store with little to no curation. And so what is the gamer to do?

I mean, I talked about this in 2005. I used to use the record company analogy with XBLA. Like, it's not the gamer's responsibility. It's just same as is the case with a radio listener. It's not the individual's responsibility to listen to 400,000, tracks to try and find the Alanis Morissette or the offspring or whatever that they like.

It's up to the record company and the radio station to identify you know what? We've listened to all the shit. These guys are good. This is Alanis Morisset. We're going to put her on the radio and you're going to listen to Alamos Morissette and you're going to like Alamosmorset. Well, even more than that, like the specific songs. Right. And I think that that like that

and they choose which song from the album, from the artist. And with the games, it's the same way. It's which game from which dev on which platform. Yeah. Yeah. And we know a lot of this stuff now, right? We know a lot of this stuff, but yet we somehow are not, as an industry, we are not good at being able to surface the proper content at the right time to the right customers. And so with Xbox Live Arcade, we said, you know, it's not up to the gamer to wade through 25 shitty, shlocky poker games. We're going to pick the one poker game that is

the best poker game and we're going to put it on XBLA and we're going to feature it. And then you're going to go and play that poker game and you're going to like it. It's cool, right? I'm not saying I'm completely opposed to choice. If you want two or three choices, that's completely cool. And of course, on indie games and unique things, you want to surface those. You want to surface the best ones. But it's our job as an industry and as curators of these platforms to wade through the stuff.

That's part of our responsibility. The app stores have done a poor job. And by extension, the console manufacturers, I think, have done a poor job of curating their portfolios and surfacing the great games. And this exists in an Xbox. It exists on PlayStation. It exists even on Nintendo, even though they have a lot less content. And then it's certainly on iOS, iOS and Android are just a disaster.

It's just a disaster. Yeah, and that's what I've been saying. And that's, you know, we had discussed mobile gaming some time ago. You know, I've played good games on mobile for sure. I mean, we all have. I do fundamentally think that the touchscreen is not going to work for a lot of different games. Like you were saying, maybe not every genre can fit. And they've tried novel solutions with digital analog sticks and all that kind of stuff,

but it just doesn't work. So, but that aside, the problem I have with it is, like, mobile gaming to me seems to be infecting other parts of the game industry. And when you, when you've, like, trace the provenance of the infection back to this one particular place, which is like the free to play, the race to the bottom, the erosion of talent, and like you were saying, the erosion of price points or whatever, and also the miseducation, I think, of the gamer that doesn't no longer want to pay for anything, even though AAA games are cheaper than they've ever been.

$60 AAA game is way cheaper in real money and an inflation-adjusted money than when Fantasy Star 4 came out in 1995 and was literally $100, which is more like almost $170 today for a game that you put in your fucking Genesis. And no one was bitching about that, by the way, because it was because it was it was what it was. I'm not saying we should play. Yeah, Neo Geo. I mean, Neo Geo was out of control, right? Like there was a different. I mean, not that Neo Geo took off. Inflation adjusted $4,000.

Yeah. So to me like, so my main problem with it is like, you're right. Speaking of the provenance of that, the provenance of some of these models do come from East Asian companies that we're trying in different ways in the PC space and stuff like that. But the fact is to me that we look at PlayStation Network now.

We were talking about it again on PSIW yesterday. They launched like 30 games last week. Now I understand that like or this week, I understand that PSVR is, you know, makes up for half of those games and fantastic. But why, like it seems like everyone's like let's get a glut of games out there, free to play is this model that seems to not work

for almost anyone on console. You have like for every Paragon, you have probably 10 games that failed. Dust 5-1-4 was a great example on PS3. They all for sure that game was going to work. It sucked and it didn't work. And I look at the pricing models too and I'm like, you know, I'm reading things where you're talking about like I read on, I guess it was pocket game or whatever. It's something like 650,000 games. Games.

650,000 games that you can download on your iPhone. Yep. Like that's more games to many, many, many, many times over than I've ever existed on every other platform combined. right, multiplied by 25 probably. I mean, that's how many games we're talking about here. Now, I look at that and I'm like, there's no respect for quality, there's no respect for curation, all they want is money,

they just throw everything at you and hope. I was reading something where they can remove 50% of the catalog of games and not affect the bottom line at all. So this is what you're, this is like what you're talking about, a conversion rate of a whale, you know, basically paying for 90% of a game's budget, all these kinds of things. I'm like, this is all unsustainable and we don't want this on console.

We don't want this in handheld. People are throwing around things where like, well, they're like, well, look how big mobile gaming is. A third to a fourth to a third or a fourth to a third of revenue right now is coming from mobile games. I'm like, there are literally two billion pieces of hardware that can download these games. And they're like, but Vita and 3DS only do two or three percent. I'm like, there are literally 70 million of those in the world combined. And if there were two billion of them, I think that you might have a different thing.

So I'm like, I'm not impressed by these numbers. You know, like these numbers don't impress me. They actually depress me. That the console space and the PC space with many, many, many, many, many times fewer hardware. where it's making much, much, much more money because people want, you know, plans versus zombies too, not that you were responsible for that

because that was long after you left, I'm sure. All I wanted to do was pay for it. That's all I wanted to do. I remember, it's the last game, mobile game. I ever downloaded it. I was really excited about it. I downloaded it. All it kept doing was trying to nickel and dime me.

And I'm like, I just let me give you $20. I'll just give you $20. And it's like, no, we don't want you to give us $20. We want to ask you 17 different times every hour for, you know, a dollar here and a dollar. And I'm like, just let me buy it. So I look at it and I'm like,

yeah, they're at Monument Valley, all these games, people enjoy, and I respect that. But I also look at it and I say, this thing seems to actually just be infecting the way we play games everywhere else and setting weird expectations for price points and all these kinds of things. Because to me, when someone's running around whining that they spent $60 on the Witcher 3 in 2015, a game that probably would have cost us $100-something on, you know, an equivalent, on a cartridge-based console. I'm like, I don't know that that's the hardware maker's fault and I don't know that that's the hardware maker's fault and that's not CD Project Red's fault. that might actually be this bleed over from the fact that no one wants to pay for anything anymore. And where do we go?

Where do we find those problems on one device? And so I look at it. I'm like, so how do you deal with those particular problems? Why are you crazy enough to jump into this? It's, as is normally the case, it's a multifactorial problem, right? It's not any one thing. There's no silver bullet. I think naturally the laws of economics apply and that you have 650,000 games.

And over time, if given enough time, enough people start, losing money, that they exit the space. There's industry consolidation that happens, big fish by small fish. You end up with a few larger companies that production qualities increase. This is what we've seen over and over and over again six or seven times in the history of our industry, right? Production quality entries, the bar rises, the users consolidate, marketing budgets get bigger, and you have large franchises emerge, right? That can happen and could happen here, but it takes a long time. The quicker solution, is for one of a couple of things to happen.

Either the platform providers, and this is where I believe, again, as someone who worked a long time at a platform provider, I know for a fact that platform providers can control this and influence it. You need to have the platform providers start to care and say, you know what, this is a shitty user experience for our users. We are going to crawl into the app stores.

We are going to curate. We are going to feature. We are going to promote. We are going to improve the user interface and the user experience of our stores to better surface content, to pick hits and to not certify crappy games. So the platform providers can greatly assist this.

Again, I look to console manufacturers, again, that have more direct control over their platforms, even than Apple and... Because Apple and Google are large corporations that have a lot of interest, not just the games industry. There's a lot of other sort of huge things going on of those companies.

And so it's hard for the little gamer guy that's passionate about the games area of the store to, like, control, large corporation. I'm not letting them off the hook, but I'm just saying that that's a reality. Phil Spencer and the guys at PlayStation and the guys at Nintendo can actually, they have more direct control over their stores. They can help this problem, right? By bringing back brands like XPLA, by bringing back an arcade Wednesdays, by featuring games, by fixing their stores and improving their stores. So there's certainly a store component of it.

There also is a component of this that is business model based. And this is one of the reasons why I moved into mobile is not to do free to play games. I did free to play games. I did paid games and free to play games at Activision. That was fun and it was good educational experience. But really, I don't love that. So, you know, the reason why I moved to GSN is to do Sparkade. Sparkade is about introducing an entirely different business model to the app stores

and introducing this concept of gaming competition, you know, competition around mobile games, classic games, games that you know and love, for free or for money for cash as an alternative business model, an alternative modernization model for the industry that is not premium, it's not advertising, and it's not free to play. You know, free to play meaning premium, you know, microtransaction based, pay to win sort of stuff. If you want the square block in Tetris, give us 50 cents. We've all seen where that's gone, right? And people, again, I get people a lot of credit.

There's a lot of admirable attempts to apply free to play mechanics to play patterns that just, weren't designed for free to play. But, you know, I, I don't, I don't love that. I don't love what it means. To your point about it creeping over and spilling over into console, it's something I'm concerned about. It's something I'm concerned about as a gamer because you see the desire for companies, again, large for profit companies. This is all who we work for. It's like, well, you guys don't, but I do, you know, and these, you know, with a profit objectives and targets. And I totally get it, right? That's how the industry works. Like, without those companies, the industry doesn't exist. So we all have to have to understand that there's a business side to the games that we all love

and passionately play as fans, right? So, but they see what's going on over here and whether it's free to play games coming in and, you know, arc or, you know, pick your game that's coming over DC Universe Online or whatever, coming over or a subscription model or DLC, season passes. These are all things that we're seeing now where there's add-ons to increase and provide recurring revenue streams for what now, what has been, a one shot, put your game in a box, sell it for 60 bucks, it sells a ton, then it's dead, and there's no, you move on to the next game. Like, there's appeal to having this community that continues to monetize over years. And, you know, the best examples are League of Legends, the Movers, right?

League of Legends, Dota 2, Counterstrike Go to a lesser extent. But, I mean, you see these big games with these massive communities. You're talking about 60, 70 million daily or monthly. the users, massive communities, free to play games, but monetize extremely well, and the companies do well over a series of years. They get to continually, you know, kind of cash in on that investment they made in the platform, the infrastructure, and building the game up. So I think that part's here to stay.

I think the always companies finding more and more ways to monetize their games and gaming content is here to stay. I don't think there's anything that's going to change that. I think the difference between, for me, between console games and what's going on in the mobile space right now is that you have, in some ways, the console industry is just more mature because it's where, well, it is more mature. It's been around for longer. And I think you have an established base of hardcore fans that love the games. You have a well represented set of genres, games that we all know and love that we've been playing for a long time, great brands,

well-established franchises. You have a gamer that is willing to spend $60 at GameStop or wherever for a premium experience, take it home, stick it in, play it for a bunch of hours and be done. And they're also open to incremental monetization, right? And that's a very well-established category. This category, again, I will remind you, is in its infancy. That's a 30-year-plus business. This is a seven-year business with, honestly, four years probably before like free-to-play is kind of about. It's like four years old.

Think about where we were four years into the console business. We were like at Odyssey II. Maybe we're at 2,600. I mean, like, we're way early days. And so I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic about games like Sparkade, which introduced sort of a different business model. You know,

let's create micro communities and monetize sort of competition, mobile competition. I'm optimistic about things like the new Mario game, like Super Mario Run, where they're saying, and we haven't seen it,

but they're saying demo levels and then pay for content is kind of what I'm hearing. I don't know if that's true. You can pre-order right now. You can pre-order right now. You're putting your money down and it's one price price.

I hope to God. I hope to God, hope to God, that Nintendo takes advantage of this and goes first three levels are free, it's 15 bucks. Like, I would love to see that.

Like, buy the game for 15 bucks, you get the rest of the levels. I would love to see them do that. There is yet to be a company that has thrown down like that. Square tried with the Final Fantasy games. But they were kind of more retro, you know, kind of old game content

sort of re-represented. They tried the $20 price point. But there is yet to be a new, well-known AAA franchise that people know and love, that is new content, designed for the device where someone threw down and said, buy my game. I would love to see it, you know? And then I said, the final point is, remember, this is right for innovation,

just like console is right for innovation, and PC's right for innovation and disruptive business balls, right? We're beginning to see VR. We'll see AR soon. I'm super excited. I'm a huge VR nut. I love, I have an Oculus rift at home. I love Oculus and Vive, and I'm looking forward to my PlayStation VR, although I can't find one. It's sold out everywhere, and I missed the five-minute window. It's available for pre-order. I just checked on my phone on the way over here, by the way, and they said there's a limited quantity for walk-ins at GameStop tonight,

and I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to go run over there and wait in line for six hours. But that's the potential for disruptive innovation. I point to Pokemon Go as an example, right? Pokemon Go, obviously, you know, you might love it, you might hate it. It did something that we've never seen in our industry, right? It brought tens of millions of people that are not gamers into our space with a totally disruptive and innovative sort of take. The gamers has problems, of course, but it did something very disruptive.

And I don't think we're at the end of seeing the disruption that this device represents. We can strap it on our head and we can play VR with this. And there's so much we can do with this device. So based on everything you've said here and then what you're saying with, and Xbox live arcade a second ago. And if you missed the first, the topic before this one, right? This is Greg. He's been industry veteran.

He's a really cool dude. We might be doing something with Sparkade, his app later on. Actually, we are. We're doing a live event kind of thing. You can come watch us play it. That's its own business deal. This is not part of the business deal. He's here because he's a cool dude.

And we're talking about Sparkade because I actually am playing it and like it a lot. Thanks. I just want to get that out there. The ethics of what we're talking about. So no one thinks that this is some weird money deal because we want to do that to you. And if you think that you can just stop watching kind of funny, I don't go away. So for Sparkade though Is this for you

The collection of everything you're talking about? Because I feel like this is your answer to All right the app store sucks at curation and discovery So fuck it will do it ourselves Because it's a game Sparkade you get And it's a portal and it is a friends list And it is this competition And it is this you know

I'll bet on myself when I'm using in game currency or this It's not free to play And right now at launch there's five games Like there's you pick And again I'm sure this goes back to what you're talking on Xbox Live. These are probably the five games you like of Pac-Man, Solitaire, Scrabble, Tetris, and Wheel of Fortune, right?

Like, is this like your answer to like, well, everything's fucked? I'll just build it myself. You know, the running joke in our businesses that I talk to people about all the time I run into. Like, we all kind of grow up in the industry. If you've been around the industry for long enough, if you get to know everybody, that's one cool thing. And the other cool thing is that you kind of go to different companies and you end up

just sort of learning from all of your previous experiences and your future products are just an amalgamation of your previous successes and failures. So there's a lot of things I've learned. And so I came to GSN specifically to do this. I'm not, GSM is known for more at social casino and bingo sort of games. I'm obviously not that guy. I'm a hardcore gamer.

So, you know, I didn't come here to do slot machines on a phone. I came here because of the unique opportunity at Sparkade represents. Really, it is about an amalgamation of all the things you just mentioned. So it is about a couple things I've seen in the industry. Very similar to kind of that inspiration. if you watched the previous segment about XBLA and sort of the inspiration for XBLA,

there were a few things that were happening in the industry that I call, you know, a perfect storm of opportunity that inspired the creation of XBLA, right? We talked about the casual games and the indie movement and iPod and digital distribution. I saw something similar here with the state of mobile games today, the state of competition today where e-sports is, and what is being done or not done on mobile and some of my frustrations with mobile that have inspired the vision behind Sparkade. So it Sparkade is in the nutshell.

This is a single app that you download that is free to download from the store. We launched on iOS last week. And it is, by the way, we've been working for two and a half years on this. And by the way, this is not, you know, casual social mobile casino people working on this. My team is Blizzard,

X Blizzard, Rockstar, you know, Disney, all kinds of people throughout the industry that have come specifically to work on this because it's so different from everything else is out there. It is play the games you love, the classic best franchises that we grew up with competitively for free or for real money. So it's Pac-Man, Scrabble, Tetris, Wheel of Fortune,

other games that you love, classic franchises, known play patterns, single app you download with all the games inside of it. You're not going, it's not an app store, you're not going, we bring the games to you. So all the games are special skill, versions of those games. So they're built specifically to embrace skill gaming with a level playing field.

So suggesting competition. So the core concept is simple. Colin thinks he's good at Pac-Man. I think I'm good at Pac-Man. Let's throw a buck down. You pay $1 entry fee. I pay $1 entry fee. You play a game of Pac-Man.

You post a score. I play a game at Pac-Man. I post a score. The high score takes the $2. That of a small commission that we keep. That's our business model. So that's it in the nutshell. That's the elevator pitch on the thing.

And there's the in-game currency if you don't want to use roomline. And there's exactly. And the whole thing is free because you can play as much as you want without paying a dollar because it inherently is skill competition. So that game of Pac-Man is built for skill. So every participant in the tournament gets exactly the same mazes and exactly the same challenges in exactly the same order. But every tournament instance is different. So it's a different set of mazes, a different set of challenges, for instance.

but you can play, we give you practice tokens. So you can play that whole thing, pay an entry fee in tokens, play the games against people in the community, earn some tokens, and then there's a whole Xbox Live style metagame around it. So there's a profile, there's achievements, leaderboards, collectibles, friends list, friends challenges, whole bunch of stuff.

We've created a whole like game service infrastructure around competition. And real quick, I have no friends. So please, at game, A game over reggie on there if you want to play Tetris. Absolutely. I'm Silver Surfer, so if you want to add me as well. Get in now. You can get any name you want.

Exactly. We just launched. And there is a land grab. So that's it. It's the game. It's really single app. Games curated that you know and love all in one app. You play the games within there.

It's known franchises and known games that you already understand because you're a lot more likely to want to play for cash. if you know what to play Pac-Man or Tetris in some random bowling game or something that you've never heard of. And then it's about that social framework and medigame that we've created around it. So the business model,

how are you making money from this then? If he bets a dollar and I bet a dollar and he wins and gets $2. No, he said that they take a rip. So it's not... We take, exactly. Okay, so... The prize pool was like $1.90.

And so we keep 10 cents. Got it. Like, it's a very small percentage. How is it... I mean, I know you guys are very early. It's very embryonic, but how is it doing? Is it working?

Are you guys seeing positive data? It is. So we've been soft launch for a number of months. So we did a very, it's, so doing like betas and stuff on mobile is very different from console. Like, you know, console, like we're able to like, you know, do alpha version, beta version, password protect access, give early access to press or, you know, community of people, whatever.

Mobile is different because you have these app stores and they're live. And so we took a very console-like development process to this where we actually did a, like a friends and family and an alpha, and then we launched in Canada first. You do these early kind of precursor steps to, A, make sure that your features are where they need to be, that the games are balanced. Yeah, tested on the Canadians.

They don't want to test it. The servers aren't falling over. The Canadians have been great. And then B, we are also trying to sort of test and optimize, like, everything. I mean, like, this is a very complex project, so there's a lot of stuff, like, there's different tournament formats and flavors.

Like, it's not just one format. It's like there's different entry fees. $1, $2, $3, there's different commission percentages. There's different tournament formats like head-to-head, open-ended, you know, progressive, unlimited entry. There's all different sorts of tournament formats, different games, balance on the games, the meta-game, the social area. There's a whole bunch of stuff to test.

And so it's been a very complex project because you have to build a platform. You've got to build the games inside the container. You have to build the app container itself and all the features around it. So that's why it's taken a long time to build. We tested it for a number of months. and what we've found, we've actually seen really great results, which is why we launched in the U.S. last week. So we're seeing, and we've also spent a lot of time talking to gamers about what they want.

And that's probably the more important point than talking about the metrics, is really talking about what gamers want. We've seen from talking to gamers over a long period of time now. We've been, again, working on this for a couple of years. We've had a lot of rounds talking to people. And what they've said to us is some people are into this idea of the concept of playing a game, competitively for money, some aren't. But all of them have said, um, the people that, of the people that are, they're saying that it's not about getting rich. It's really about the fact that having

a buck on the line makes the game more interesting. Little skin in the game. We know this, right? Playing a golf tournament or, you know, fantasy football, whatever. Having a little cash on the line just makes the game more interesting. You're more likely to pay attention. You're more likely to want to win. It just makes, it's trash talking, your buddies. It just makes things more fun. How do the, the legalities work with that? Like, and with the, the money. Is it, from a credit card that you put into it? Or does it actually take from your Apple account? It's a great question.

I'll answer this one as I bought money last night. Yeah. It works like buying PSN money or whatever. So I go in and like I was like, it says do you, I was like, all right, I'll play for money. And so I went in there and it was like, do you want to put in $5.15, you know, I put in $10 and I put in $10 and I just put it in that way. And like if you look at mine at the top they're right, like I'm already down to four

bucks because I've been losing. But I've been trying and I had a couple things still going, right? Like so I have that little wallet. But then the blue coins are my in game currency. if I was someone I don't want to put any more money in. And we don't sell that in-game currency. The currency, in-game currency is like practice tokens. We're not making money.

It's not free to play game. We're not making money off the free tokens. We give you a certain amount a day, like as a daily bonus, just to kind of encourage you to play and get comfortable with the thing and practice the games before you hop in because you want to kind of practice, practice, practice, ramp up at Tetris. Then you're like, oh, man, I'm in the zone. Now I'm going to play for a buck, you know,

and you hop over and then you practice, practice, practice. So we kind of wanted to create that. That's a good strategy. I just jumped right in a lost money. But the cash, the cash is like a checking account balance. You deposit credit card, PayPal, whatever. The money's yours. You can withdraw it at any time in any amount.

There's no restrictions, no gimmicks. You can, I got three, four bucks, hit a button, goes back into the PayPal account, or we'll even write you a check and mail you a check, if you prefer to do that. From a legality standpoint, a very important point, these are games of skill. So the law says, basically,

as long as a game is a game of skill, not a game of chance, where luck is not the determination, factor in the outcome of the game, it is legal. So, and we operate currently in like 40 states and Canada and we'll soon some bunch of international territories too. We're working on the Android version right now, by the way. We launched on iOS.

Don't even bother. But, but the, but the, the, the, the, the legality is based on, it's the same stuff that goes back, again, fantasy sports, you know, bowling turn, bowling leagues, chess tournaments, golf tournaments in our society, just in sports. sports, et cetera. These have been legal for 100 years plus, like carnival games, carnival hoop tosses. It's well-established legal precedent that you can do this as long as it's a game of skill. And so all of the games here have been modified in minor ways to make sure that they are games of skill. That's an important point. So Tetris is a good example. Like Tetris is almost out of the

box a pure game of skill. Like almost a pure game of skill legally. The only thing that's random about Tetris is the block drop. So you play in your marathon mode and the order. in which the blocks drop down is random in a normal game of Tetris. All we do is we say, all right, the four of us are in a four-player tournament and Sparkade for Tetris. We're going to play classic mode. It's a three-minute timed experience. It's asynchronous, meaning you play when you want to play, you play when you want to play,

you play when you want to play, you play when you want to play, I play when I want to play. Right. And so when I play, all four of us get exactly the same blocks in exactly the same order in that three-minute period. And so it's what you did with the circumstances that makes you a better player or an inferior player. That's actually more, honestly, that's actually a more interesting game of Tetris. Because when we play Tetris, I'm getting bad drops. And that's why I lost the last tournament we played.

That's why he lost all those games in a row. So it was, we have to go back. It begins. Yeah, we'll, we'll settle this. We'll settle. It's parcade. But then the next person that does another tournament, like there's literally hundreds of these things going on a minute. They have a different set of blocks in different order.

But everyone in their instance gets the same set, right? That's interesting. It's dynamic. It's a simple solution, but an obvious one, a good one, like to level the playing field and keep you guys out of legal trouble, I guess, as well. Yeah, it's just kind of what you need to do to be able to, you pay an entry fee into the tournament, then you win a cash prize at the end. And the cash prize is, by the way, it's not winner take all the time.

And head to head, it's obviously winner take all. But in the multi-way, there's like a pay table. So, like, if you're top two rank of four. I won 15 cents. You'll be in the money, you know, et cetera. And there's a bunch of different formats, as I mentioned. So it's not just like right now we just launched. So we just have kind of the simple like play a game get a prize.

But like going forward, we're going to have like, you know, there's progressives and open ended and reentries and fixed prize and a bunch of different sort of formats that we can add. In addition to if you layer in sort of different terminate formats, different entry fees, different difficulty levels of the game. And then with each game, we've created multiple. play modes. So we didn't just roll classic Tetris. We rolled a classic Tetris and then we rolled a power up mode. It's not

a free to play sort of thing because that would be unfair. If you could buy, it'd be paid a win. It wouldn't balance a game. That wouldn't make sense. But what we did with Tetris, for instance, is there's like a power up, like a thermometer on the left hand side. And through your three minute game, the faster you do Tetris is and you actually score,

you're charging up this thermometer. And there's three like power ups, like a weaker power up, a medium power up and a strong power up. And it's all in the strategy of how you decide to play. Like you can decide to charge up your bar real quick, you know, play a bunch of the weak power-ups and maybe get three or four of them in in the three-minute period, or you can choose to wait for the score-doubler and maybe get that in twice or save up and like do the Uber power-up, then you might not get to play, use it by the three minutes. So it's all

about, again, adding strategic play depth while keeping the game a level playing field. And we've done that with all the game. So Pac-Man's got like random mazes. So you're not just playing, you can play classic with the blue maze and the thing. It's not pattern-based, but. you know, it's more on ghost behavior, which is more deterministic. But if you play our challenge mode, it's random mazes that pop up. Everyone obviously gets the same mazes in the same order, but different mazes, and we've added like eight different challenges. In working with Bandai, Namco Bandai, we've designed like eight different challenges,

like teleporters, conveyor belts, floating bonus tiles, gates, more like a tuton common, like key and gate unlock mechanism that kind of randomly appeared. not randomly, but they appear as part of the setup in each tournament to kind of keep you on your toes. It's about skill challenge, right? You think you're good at Pac-Man. All right, I'm going to throw the teleporter at you. Then I'm going to throw the bonus tile thing at you. And it's about the test of metal.

Like, who's a more flexible and adaptable Pac-Man player? We did that with all the games. I assume the answer is no on this, but I'm curious because of all the stakeholders and stuff. Do you guys want to bring this to console? This idea seems like something that you guys could do on PSN and Xbox Live. I don't know that Sony and Microsoft would necessarily be down with that. Plus Band 9 Amco can release Pac-Man by itself without having a middleman on those platforms. But they could do that on iPhone, though, too, and they probably have.

That seems like a good place. That seems like a sticky place to have something like that. So is that something you guys are interested in doing? Or are you going to do it? So I have to just answer by saying that I would love to do that. I don't have anything to announce necessarily. but I would say that Sparkade is a con, I'll answer it this way, Sparkade is a concept that could be applied to a lot of things.

Sparkade is bigger than an app. It's a platform we've built to be extensible on mobile, obviously, but also to potentially be applied to other platforms, right? You could see this on PC. You could see this on Steam, you can see it on console. Yeah, I guess PC is the natural place where to go next. You can see it a lot of places. And it's, yeah, right, exactly.

That's another PC Master Race comment. No, my nephew is PC Master Race guy. We talk back and forth about this all the time. But he's 16, you know. He's a little bit more than what real gaming is. But this is a concept, again, that could be applied to a lot of things. Now, would Sparkade right now is built for mobile, right? So it's built for touch.

It's built to optimize a control and display for touch. It's built with franchises that are big franchises on mobile. on mobile and there will be more, by the way, the five games that are in there just the beginning, right? We have another dozen games in development. We have several big franchises that we have not announced. We have partners lined up and you see our launch partners. I mean, we've got everyone from Bandai Namco to Hasbro to EA and Tetris Company on board. These are big publishers that are partnering with us on this thing. It's a major initiative for us and our parent company, Sony. This is something that could be extensible. Now, if it appeared on another platform, you'd obviously

have control and display differences, theoretically. You'd also have content differences, right? So you may not do these games, or you may do these games, and you may do, hell, you could do shooters, you could do racing games, you could do fighting games, you could do a lot of games. You know, not every genre works. Just like I, same comment on free to play, just to be straight up with you and your audience, like, I don't want to talk about the size of my mouth. Like, I'm trying to do a different business model for, you know, we're trying to do different

business model than free to play. My criticism of free to play was it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really, or my observation about free to play is it doesn't necessarily apply to eat all game genres very well. This doesn't either, right? So there's this applies to great kind of skill-based games or games that can be made into skill games with minor modification without without changing the essence of what the franchise is and the brand is very important to me is that we not fundamentally change the essence of the game. But there's also luck-based games. There's long form, you know, story-based games,

RPGs, other things. This wouldn't that wouldn't be a good fit to this, obviously. but who can get to level 50 in Skyron faster. But this lets you take a Pac-Man or a Tetris or Scrabble. Games that struggle on free-to-play. I mean, I was making any comments, but I mean, they're just not natural fits for free-to-play. They're free-to-play of games are great from the respective companies, but they're just not, they're like $1.99 experiences.

They're not the Clash of Clans, like annuity revenue stream, right? This enables us to actually monetize those games better in partnership. And then it also allows us, and one point I forgot, to mention, it allows us to create an opportunity around micro communities. Like, we've all seen what's happening in our industry right now. I mean, you guys, look at you guys, look at the success, Twitter streaming, YouTubeing. This is the future, right?

The future of our industry and the future of media is about communities and talking directly to the communities, right? We've seen this with mobas, with League of Legends, with Dota, with other franchises. We see these huge communities, e-sports, and filling staple center. Let me be clear. Sparkade is a precursor to that. I'm not saying this is a big e-sports thing where we're going to have pro leagues tomorrow

and we're going to have Philip Staples Center with Pac-Man. I don't think that's necessarily the case. But what I do think is an opportunity that we should all care about. And I think is frankly awesome. And our publishing partners agree, I think, is the opportunity for Sparkade to create micro-communities

around these awesome game genres that have nascent communities already in them, right? Pac-Man, come on. there's been a Pac-Man community for 30 years. Scrabble, it's got the national championships, the National North American Championships that happen every year. There's a huge board gaming community. Tetris, same thing.

There's a huge enthusiastic fan base. But there's no organizing principle around competitive play online in any form, on any platform for those franchises, with rare exception. Sparkade is an opportunity for us to create those communities, right? To actually organize competition. You can imagine where this would go. YouTube, Twittering, Twitch streaming, you know, Tetris, Cache. games on all of a sudden

there's a commune. One thing leads to another. There's a pro start to emerge. And now we are talking about something that has a potential to spawn tomorrow's e-sports games. Right? That one of the reasons I think you're here on top of just being fascinating though, is that when you came in to show it to me, and again, it was like, okay, I'll take this demo and I'll see what it's about or whatever.

It was the idea of once we got into it, it was cool, and you talked about the friend system, it did, I mean, you watch ConnerG Live ever so often, right? I'm like, I'll play a multiplayer game when I find one I like, and this is the one where I'm like, yes, please send me friend requests. And yeah, that'd be an awesome stream of for an hour. I'm just going to go through and you guys send me messages and I play you. And I can see that happening.

I have to buy the don't buy the dongle or if we get one to live here. Yeah, but we don't bring it in every day. We need one that's here every day. And it's the ability to do it. But it's like, because it is speaking to me in a way that, nope, you know, we played gears co-op. That was great. I have no desire to jump in and play horror mode with our fans just because I'm not that kind of gears player. That kind of Tetris player?

Fuck, yeah. Tetris, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the huge opportunity for us. Whether or not it goes there, you know, ultimately, I mean, I think it will. I mean, I think the fact that, frankly, playing a game, even a simpler game that's more accessible, is easier to understand from a comprehension standpoint, just someone opening up a random stream and playing a random game. I already know how to play Tetris. It's fairly simple.

The fact there's cash on the line and the fact that it's skill-based, meaning I can observe you, check out how you did, and actually apply that directly to how I play is really, really interesting on a number of different levels for streaming, right? and for just YouTubeing and stuff like that. So, you know, I think personally that there's a huge opportunity for us to go there. I mean, this is why we added friends challenges to the shipping version of Sparkade, because, again, this is an amalgamation of everything I've worked on, right? XPLA, you can obviously see a lot of XBLA and Xbox Live in this in terms of the metagame and the, you know, the achievements. It's got a full achievement system and leaderboards and friends lists and all that stuff.

You see that. One of the things I learned from Blizzard and Battlenet is the importance of being able to allow immediately off the bat, private matches. So not just, because the main mode of this is you actually play, we have an intelligent matchmaker that it's called a fair match system that's the centerpiece of the entire thing, right? If you're playing and you're this random person, you hit a button and you're matched against somebody else, the person's got to be around your skill level. Otherwise, the whole thing falls apart, right?

Like if you get owned 50 times, like you're not going to, five times, you're just going to abandon the thing. It's got to match you against people at your skill level. So the skill match system is something that GSN has worked on. We have a web-based skill business. It's been around for 17 years. We've leveraged the technology from there and then applied some of my learnings

from the matchmaking system. We built a blizzard for BattleNet to this. Another thing we learned from StarCraft launch, StarCraft 2 launch, was we didn't have private matches at first. We had a bunch of people trying to, we didn't really have Twitch streaming back then, but at the launch, but we had YouTubeing, we had other sort of location-based tournaments and events,

and we scrambled for a number of months before we were able to patch together some sort of a private match mode. Boom. We launched with a private match mode. So instantly, people can actually play head-to-head matches against their buddies

for free or for money. Either way. And then you can instantly stream that stuff off the bat. Yeah. There you go. He's awesome, but I think the app is honestly awesome.

Yeah, I hope we can have you back to talk more about the business side of the games because I like picking your brain. It's fun. Thank you. Yeah, we should do that outside of just all this. Yeah, man, you have been fantastic.

I appreciate, guys. I'm sure I'm probably. It's totally gone way long on your podcast. Oh, it's awesome. I love talking about this stuff. And one of the things, again, I'm a huge fan, but one of the things I've always appreciated by you guys in particular is that you dive into the, you're not just talking about, hey, this is a great game. It came out. Let's review it.

But it's like diving into the history of games and the business side of games and the overall sort of infrastructure that makes our industry work. And that's what's always so great about being a fan of yours and listening to your work. Cool. Thank you. So I appreciate that. People like yourselves and the stories behind the games are always more interesting than the games. You know what I mean? Like I love infamous, obviously, but like sucker punch and how that happened and where it came to be.

And like what, you know, what Nate Fox's inspirations were amazing? And you talking about how you walked in and how this conversation in a room about Xbox Live Arcade. That's awesome. So cool. So we'll definitely have you back. We appreciate you. So Greg, what do you want to pimp out to the best friends out there? Yeah.

So I mean, you were talking to me, not him. You. Okay. Greg. Greg and Greg. So everybody calls me, Knessa. Hey. Give us the one shot, Kevin.

Stop being on your phone playing it's working. There we go. Thank you. So first and foremost, just download Sparkade. So it's S-P-A-R-C-A-D-E. It's on iOS right now. Please come check it out. Kevin just booed you from off-camera.

That's what that was. Oh, boo? He's an Android guy. Oh, Android. Oh, okay. All right. Android version's coming. It's in development.

We will be following up with an Android version. to look for it probably the first part of next year. So it's going to, again, my team, I know, I know. I'm sorry, I apologize in advance, but my team is small and we had to prioritize what we did. Apple's been a great partner. They've been an awesome launch partner meeting with us for two years on this. So it's been great. Android version to come, download Sparkade if you're on iOS.

Please check it out. Again, it's free to download. There's no risk whatsoever. You only play for cash if you want to. And so it's completely free to try out. and to play as much as you want, frankly. It's not just a try. It's not a demo trial, by the way.

You can play a thousand games of this thing and just using practice tokens. So if I never wanted to ever bet any money ever, I can for free get Tetris Pac-Man. For example, play tournaments against people in the community or your buddies forever. Send Game Over Gregory for your request and challenges. And then beyond that, you know, check me out on Twitter.

Greg Knessa, one word, G-R-E-G-C-A-N-S-S-A. So just check me out. periodically I try to pop on when we have, you know, new games or, you know, I'm also just, again, I'm a gamer, I'm a foodie. I, you know, I love VR. I love electric cars. So, you know, check me out. There you go. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. This is a fantastic episode, of course. Thank you guys. Honored and a privilege to be on your show. You're welcome. Anytime. I really appreciate that. And thank you to everybody in the community for, for, for, uh, for listening to me, Blather on for quite some time here.

Show him some love for sure. He definitely deserves it. Until next week, I love you.