Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Xbox's Phil Spencer Joins Us! - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 81

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

We finally sit down with the legendary Phil Spencer to have agreat time talking about video games. Follow Phil at https://twitter.com/XboxP3 Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:02:10 - Housekeeping 00:02:55 - What is Phil Spencer playing/watching right now? 00:12:13 - Xbox Showcases 00:17:00 - Preserving Video Game History 00:24:49 - Elden Ring 00:26:25 - Phil’s Shelf 00:27:50 - Working with Nintendo 00:40:27 - Bless Who 00:48:00 - Phil’s Most Important Moment in the Industry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. You are your greatest asset. It's time you start investing in that. Visit betterhelp.com slash Kind of Funny and take care of you. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddy's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games. Greg Miller. Someone help Coco.

Texas treat, Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping him to shreds. He's the Globetrotting headshotin from Twitch di TV, Andy Cortez. I've been dealing with a nose hair for the past couple of days, and I do not, I can't locate it, Tim. I can't locate it. Of course, we have the new face of video games blessing at Aeoye, Jr. I got bit in both eyes by a snake over the weekend, and I'm back. I'm back and I'm stronger than ever.

You see the comment on the podcast where somebody's like, why are they making fun of him? Is he okay? They really thought you got bit by the snake at both eyes. I live in daily, I guess there might be snakes here, but like that I didn't get bit by a snake as far as you know. That is good. That is good. And joining us for the very first

time on the kind of funny games cast. It is Uncle Phil himself, Phil Spencer from Xbox. I got nothing. I got nothing. Like you guys are, you got these lines teed up. I get bitten the eye by a snake. I probably do have a nose hair, but I'm like,

I don't know. So make fun of Pete. That's the easiest entrance. Just make fun of Pete. I'm afraid of Pete. Pete's a lot stronger and taller than I am. So I doubt. But it's great to be on the show. Appreciate you having me on for the first time. Looking forward to it. Yeah, it's very, very exciting. Do you get to hang out with Pete a lot more now, given this whole relationship situation? I talk to him more. I mean, obviously we're still,

I'm in the office, but we're still not flying very much. I've taken one trip out to Bethesda for the roundtable thing that we did. So I'm really looking forward to spending more time with the teams. Right now I'm kind of doing calls with all the studios, talking about roadmap and stuff. And sometimes Pete's on those calls. Todd Vaughn's on those calls. Some Jamie's on those calls. So I say the paint's still wet in us working together, but just an amazing team.

And Pete's a great guy. You got to like Pete. Gotta like Pete. That is the truth. And you know what else you got to like this here show, the Kind of Funny Games cast that you can get each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com.

If you want to get it as a podcast, just search your favorite podcast. podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast and we'll be right there for you. If you want to get the show ad free and watch live as it's being recorded and get the exclusive post show, you got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games just like our Patreon producers, Omega Buster, Tyler Ross, Delaney Twining, Julian the gluten-free gamer, James Hastings, Casey Andrew Elliott, and Tom Bach have done. Thank you all so very much.

And thank you all for writing in your questions for Phil that we'll be getting to later in this show. Today we're brought to you by Honey, Senheiser, and Titan, but we'll talk all about that later. Don't want to waste any more time, Phil. Let's get right into it. What are you playing right now? I'm still playing a lot of Destiny 2. I don't know why I care about the solstice armor, but I'm on the grind, getting my solsticearm. I don't know why, but I am. I was playing Sea of Thieves. I love the new update. I saw Greg was on playing a little bit of that. I've been playing a little bit of the Psychonuts too. I got an early build from Tim. in the team and I kind of stopped because like I like the game a lot.

I want to play the finished game. So I went back and finished Psychonauts 1, which was like time travel going back and finishing that game. But just really looking forward to that game launching and everybody getting to play another great double-fying game. So playing a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff to play right now, which is fun. So my question immediately becomes,

how do you balance that, Phil? Like how do you go? You are on the grind for Destiny like so many other people or all of us playing whatever game we're playing is like games as a service. But how do you balance that within the fact of, oh, I also have a build of Psychonauts too. Oh, I also have this other thing I need to look at for whatever. Like you have so many games you need to be playing for work. How do you balance with what you want to play versus what you need to do for work?

Yeah, I'm pretty regimented between the stuff I'm doing for work during work hours. And when I go home, like, that's my time to just go play. I've got my crew that I play with at night. And I don't do a lot of work stuff. I don't play a lot of debug builds at night. And I've always been somebody who plays a lot of. video games. It's just kind of been part of me since I was little. And I just keep work stuff while I'm here, kind of during the work hours. And I have to keep it separate because I never want

my love of the hobby of playing to kind of impact. It's also my job. And I need to keep those two things fairly separate. And I know sometimes like when I'm playing people online, they'll want to ask questions about work. And I'm kind of not in that mode. Like when I'm just in the, I mean, you and I have been in parties before and I'm not like PR guy. I'm just kind of somebody else playing. So that's how I do it. I'm pretty regimented with my time. That was the first thing you said to me too when I joined your party that one night to play Cathies with you. You were like, cool. And by the way, I'm an old man and I sign off at 10 o'clock. I was like, dang, that's a regiment. That's what I'm getting started at 10 o'clock. You're signing up. Yeah, go for it.

One thing I wanted to kind of point out, I think before we signed off, Before we started to this stream, Phil Spencer said, hey, I'm very open, you know, like, feel free to ask me about anything. And Greg, I kind of want to touch on this is that Phil mentioned he's playing an early build of Cyclonauts too and said, I want to wait for the finished product. I think Phil is maybe hinting that the game is completely broken. This is a bombshell. Big breaking news. You're giving up the free headlines today to get a studio. The studio is in shambles.

The studios in shambles, everybody. Huge. Crazy. Tim and the team. I've been a shape of a fan. I mean, we worked, we were in Psychonauts early. early, early. We didn't end up publishing the original game, but just the work they did, Happy Action Theater they did for Connect. I thought was one of the best Connect games out there.

Obviously, brutal legends, stuff that they've done over the years. And it was nice to get to work more closely with them, give them the time that I thought the studio could really use to build an absolutely fantastic game. The game's done. Now it's just about kind of printing boxes, get everything, we're not doing it physical, but getting everything ready for the launch of the game and feel good about it. Yeah, it's just, I want the achievements. I'm kind of addicted to that little achievement pop. So when I'm playing the debug build, I don't get that.

That's my thing. I respect that. I am weak. What are you watching right now? You know, I don't watch a ton of TV. That's kind of my, maybe where I get away with how many hours. I get a lot of questions about how I can afford to play so much in terms of time. And I have two daughters.

They're both out of the house now. They're in college. It's my wife and I. It's our 30th wedding. anniversary this year. So happy anniversary, Kelly. Yeah, thanks. It's awesome. But so we watch a couple shows together. We love Ted Lassow. Can't wait for the new season to start. But I kind of have like one or two shows that we watch together. And then I play games and she sits in she'll read or she'll play some games. But yeah, I'm not actually much of a video. I'm a gamer. That's what I do. So you bring up

Ted Lassow. And I don't know if you have any thoughts, but do you have any thoughts on Snowbike Mike, who is our host of Xcast and his similarities to one Ted Lassa. I think Snowbikes awesome. I just want to say that like the amount of positive energy that dude brings to the show is just fantastic. And congrats to you guys for like giving him a platform. And I think he does such an awesome job moderating. I will say there's some similarities between he and Ted Lassow, but only the best similar. Like only the best traits Mike picks up.

But I just really, I'm a, I believe we're in a fantastic, uh, that's about bringing joy and happiness to people. I love people who are positive about what they like. And Mike's just always been to me one of those guys. When you just can't not be excited for him and his excitement of video games, when you listen to him. And I just think that's so good. So I always thought it was really cool that you do listen to as many podcasts and,

you know, and are as in the kind of ecosystem as it seems like you are. Greg's always telling me every once in a while like, oh yeah, like Phil DME, you'd listen to Gamescast or like, you know who Snowbike Mike is. Like how much of your time is listening to different types of podcasts like that? And how frustrated do you get listening to us be completely idiots all the time? It's speaking of Kelly again, I didn't realize I was going to make this about my. So my wife and I actually went to high school together. So she's seen my life as a comic book reading, you know, a video game playing person's kids since I was a kid driving my Ford Pino.

And she likes to tease me that I found the one job on the planet. that I might actually be somewhat qualified to go do, which is this job. So we talk about consuming things about video games or reading comics or whatever. It's just, it is just who I am. So I love, I take two dogs. I take them to the park on the weekends. I sit with my headphones and I walk and I listen to podcasts. And it's where I get caught up.

I always get a lot out of the questions that you guys tackle. It's always really helpful to me because it's easy for me to get stuck in a bubble of the things I'm working on, the people I work with and being able to break out of that bubble and get perspectives from other people, even if it's perspectives I don't necessarily agree with. I think it's really useful in my position to not just listen to the echo chamber, which is me talking and hearing it reflected back and to hear what others are thinking about. So when I'm listening to you guys and I see the things that you're tackling, the things that you find funny even, but the questions that you have, I find it just very useful in my position to have those perspectives as we're trying to chart our

path forward. But is it not maddening? I have like I, when I'm not on games daily and I listen to the games daily and I hear them go like, oh, I don't know who made that. I'm like yelling it in my head or like, oh, I know. You hear us and we're like, well, clearly because of X, Y has to happen. That's not how games get made. That's not at all how it goes. I don't, like I don't want a soapbox on this one. I will say it is sometimes surprising to me like how this industry works, the business side of it. I think is pretty important.

You guys are knowledgeable about that. Like I hear in your conversation, I'm not just playing to you because I'm on the podcast with you guys, that I think you know some friends that are friends of years that are devs and you've kind of seen the business side. Because sometimes the things that will get frustrated is when somebody asks, I wonder why this doesn't happen. And you kind of,

well, if you knew how the business worked, and that's not like some kind of cabal that knows how the business works, it's pretty transparent. Like you would know why certain things, what's a good example? Golden Eye. Golden Eye is always the perfect example. Why don't I just go remake Golden Eye? That has a question you guys have tackled. But then if you kind of tease that apart and all the mess the

rights are with the bond and like it being on N64 and how do we go make those things happen. But so I think it's helpful when people kind of do some work to understand how the industry works. If I get frustrated sometimes, it's questions that like one or two Google searches might give you the answer for something and people don't do that. That's frustrating. I was really thinking Phil's answer was going to go, it is amazing how uninformed you all are. You've built an audience just by talking nonsense.

And you're kind of funny. You know, one thing that we talk about a lot, like since we have so many shows that talk about games and from the various places, whether it's games daily, that's more the news focused or games cast, which is more just our experience playing games. Like one thing that I've always been really interested in

is the showcases and the production of a press conference or a showcase or whatever. And being able to have you, somebody that is on the stage, I kind of, one of the faces of the one of the biggest type of game showcases, what is your thoughts on video game showcases in 2021? And like, what do you, what do you think who's doing it well? Who's not doing it well? And like, what do you want to see more of or less of in the future? Yeah. Yeah, I was. I usually don't talk overly positive about the work that our teams do. I think it would be a little bit rooting for the home team.

But I would say I was really proud of the feedback that the teams took from last year's gameplay showcase that we talked about in May, that lacked gameplay. The feedback on the end of July show of 20 and how the team internalized the community feedback that we got and built the Xbox and Bethesda's showcase of this year and how they executed on that. I mean, I'm just, you know, the guy that comes out on stage and reads a teleprompter, like I kind of have the easiest job of anybody in the show. But the production value, I thought the pacing, we did a little thing earlier in the week with Satya, where we did kind of more of an industry and analyst thing. We released some of that stuff. Then we did the showcase.

Then we did the extended thing with Paris. And I thought the three beats that the team lined up for that worked really well. And obviously, you know, we looked at how Treehouse works and like some of the work that Nintendo has done. around going a little bit deeper on some of the games, and that was a motivation for us with Extended. I think Sony has done a nice job in, like, just having Corey or somebody come out with a controller in their hand and just playing, and we took some feedback there

that we need some more kind of extended sessions of people, seeing people what it would look like from the perspective of somebody playing. Maybe that stuff seems obvious to everybody who's watching this. Definitely should have known that all along. But the fidelity in our games has risen to a level where I literally think you could just do six, seven, eight minutes of gameplay and put some of the storytelling elements in. And you don't actually have to get in front of that with kind of too many talking heads or other stuff.

And I think the industry has done a good job of moving along, obviously embracing what it means to work in a hybrid. There's no people in the audience. I miss that. I hope next year that we do something with at least some live audience. I didn't love that about this year just because it's different walking on a soundstage than it is walking. out with a theater full of a bunch of rabid community members who are just going crazy and are excited about games. So I hope that part comes back.

But the work that goes in, you know, you look at a show like that. It's like nine, ten months worth of production work that goes in to putting together a 90-minute showcase. And I'm going to applaud anybody that has the kind of bravery to go and try that in a new way and land something. It's just, it's remarkable that the industry got those things done, always learning. But I'm just, I'm proud of the work. that the industry did.

Now, real quick, you brought it up, so I'll do it for this extended showcase business. I'm glad you got to work with Paris once. Stay away from them, all right? It was a, you know, Alana was great, and then she has to go work at PlayStation. If you steal Paris, there will be problems, Phil. I don't want to say anything on camera that'll get me in trouble with the law eventually, but if I got to replace another X-Cast host. It was so good because he had a green room in the back, and there was a,

I almost took a picture of Paris-Lilly green room, just like this. It was right outside of his green. There was a sign on the door. Like, how I control him with this forever. But he did such a great job. It was awesome to have a movie for a show. Becoming a diva. Like, I wanted green M&Ms.

What the hell? Exactly. All green, everything. Or like one show away from that. Phil, I was going to ask. I was going to ask real quick, are there any, one thing I really love about you and your social media presence is just how kind of, loving you all of our of all games right like you'll talk about on playing this sony game this nintendo game is really great are there any sort of dream collabs that you would love to do that

you probably think it's probably impossible but in a different universe i would love to see maybe this character in that game or vice versa you know and this is just maybe my lack of creativity i don't think about games that way like i i kind of think about first i'm a gameplay first it's just how I've always felt when I kind of dissect a game that we're working on. I always want to know what does it feel like every five seconds, like what's that loop and how do I feel? And then I kind of go to story and character. It's just my kind of mode.

I will say in terms of collabs all up, and I'm going to go to things that are kind of things that we've cared about for a while. I love crossplay. I love the ability to kind of talk to anybody who's playing anywhere, play with anybody who's playing anywhere. I'm not trying to get on the kind of Xbox thing. But the collaboration that I'm really excited about is just players, being able to play with each other regardless of where they are. I think some of the limitations

and friction that we put for kind of general consumers that come into gaming are only understood by those of us that have been in this industry a long time of why does this work with that? And even trying to explain it to somebody at this point kind of is a challenge. I will say, though, thinking more about the question, I do worry a little bit about losing our art form and the history of it. And, you know, when I think about, like, old ROMs and maim and these things of, like, where these old games are going to go as the hardware that's capable of running these or running those games or kind of interpreters and emulation systems,

I really wish as an industry we'd come together to help preserve the history of what gaming is about so we don't lose the ability to go back. I think about, like, what the Paley Center did for TV of, you know, Paley early on saw that TV industry was getting ready to throw away literally the tapes that these old TV shows were on. And he said, hey, I want to archive those because at some point, somebody will want to go back and watch the Ed Sullivan show or something. And those things shouldn't be thrown away. And as an industry, I would love it if we came together to help preserve the history of what our industry is about. So we don't lose access to some of the things that got us to where we are today and built this industry.

That would be a cool thing. Expanding on that a little bit, WebNet wrote into patreon.com slash kind of funny games. and asks, what is the future of games preservation at Xbox and how will Microsoft preserve game history as the team develops cloud-focused titles? A bonus question is, will Dance Central 1 through 3, Dance Central Spotlight, or other Connect games ever get backwards compatibility support for Series X and S?

Yeah, Connect is hard, just because we don't support the device on that. And that's, like, one of the things about games when you get to real bespoke hardware. I go back to, like, Steel Battalion or something, like, you know, a game that I'd love to see. And you can actually play some of those games with control. On the preservation, one of the things that the cloud does offer us is the ability to throw more hardware at some of the emulation scenarios to make it possible to really emulate. Like, we were kind of not lucky.

Teams did amazing work. But when the team figured out had to emulate PowerPC instruction sets on an X86 set, which was how we went from 360 to Xbox 1 backcompat. Like, we were kind of lucky that the Xbox 1 had enough processing power to pull off that emulation of, again, a power PC. on top of that x86 chip. When we're in the cloud, we don't have to worry about the local compute capability to emulate some of those older systems. Most of those older systems are pretty low spec. So it's not a huge issue.

But I do like that we're able to kind of elevate it beyond just the device that somebody has in their home. And I have nothing against somebody buying a retro console and running things in their home. But for the preservation. And it's one of the things as we look at the cloud and why we continue on our back-compat work, which we are still working on, It's because I want those games to still be playable, and not even just from an Xbox standpoint.

Like take Sackanauts. We were just talking about it. I want somebody to be able to play Sackanauts, regardless of what controller they want to use or what platform they originally bought it on. I want that game to be accessible, and people should play that. After they play Sackanuts too, and they love it,

and they say, well, why is bacon in the game? And what is that? Where did that come from? You go back and play Sackanuts, one, and see where the kind of origins of those things are. So the cloud does make some of those things more possible for us. Then another follow-up from that, Amen writes in and says, my question pertains to the role of legacy IP within GamePass.

Like so many other Xbox fans out there, I was incredibly excited to see a new fable reveal that last year's Xbox game showcase, almost immediately afterwards, I hopped on a Game Pass and did a play-through of fable anniversary. Does the ease of access to legacy IP installments within Game Pass incentivize the rebooting of older franchises? Not only you bring an exciting new game to market, you're re-contextualizing the importance of previous iterations available in GamePass. and thank you for injecting gaming with so much positivity and excitement.

Oh, that's nice. Thanks for that. Absolutely it does. I mean, a little bit even as a taste maker of seeing what, like take prey, which I think was an amazing game when it came out, but a lot of people missed prey. It's a little too scary for me. But seeing now-

Thank you. Thank you. I'm not a scary game player. But seeing more people playing something like prey or dishonored or you can go back to Fable, you can talk about those games. And us, as we sit back as a creative organization and watch what people are interested in, it allows us, it gives us just more data to think about things that we might pick up and take forward with new ideas and new teams that might want to go do that.

So yeah, GameBass has definitely been a great source. It was amazing when Bethesda came in and we were able to put so many of the kind of old new games or new old games, however you want to say it, in the Game Pass. And going back through the legacy that we have with some of the IP, you know, even thinking about things like Rare Replay was a really interesting thing for us to, go do and letting people go and experience some of the old rare IP. We'll stay on that because I think it, GamePass gives us a business model where that makes sense.

It doesn't have to be a gas version of a game. It could just be, hey, this game sits there and people enjoy it in the service. You mentioned Rare Replay. Is there another studio you'd like to do like a similar kind of collection with? Fossa. Like when I think of Fossa and Jordan Weissman and the stories of like, there's nothing, like, this is not a preview of something we're getting ready to announce. But when I think of the work that Jordan did,

we think of Shadow Run, Crimson, Mech, like there's just some fantastic deep stories and worlds there that we didn't do a good job as a company managing the Fossa acquisition and kind of how that came about and the studio ended up, it was just not a great, not our best moment as Xbox in managing a studio. But the team there and the creative work, that they did with some of those franchises was so strong. And being able to, there's some rights issues with some of those and things,

but just, if you ask me just kind of flat out, if there was a studio in our past that I'd love to see us be able to open up that catalog and allow more people to play, Fossa is definitely at the top of the list for me. You also mentioned bespoke hardware and connect and stuff that's kind of come and gone and hard to bring forward in terms of legacy games. Do you guys have like a planned like VR or AR any sort of peripheral device that you think could work with Xbox in the future given that that is such a difficult thing to work with nowadays? Not really. Like we're watching what happens on PC.

As it relates to VR specifically, the best experience I've seen is Quest 2. And I just think it's untethered, kind of the ease of use, be it untethered in its capability, just doesn't, to me, require it being connected to an Xbox in any way. So when I look at a scenario like that, I think about XCloud, I think about the Xbox Live community, I think about other things of how can we bring content to a screen like that, whether we do it something like that through first party or third party partnerships, I think is kind of a second step to do we think that the games that we currently have that we're able to run on our platform would work there.

I think about our hardware roadmap and I really love evolution of Liz Hamren's team, our hardware team and the work that they've done, we're definitely thinking about different kinds of devices that can bring more games to more places. But we probably, there's probably some work we'll do on controller. I think, you know, Sony's done a nice job with their controller. We kind of look at some of that. And there's things that we should go do.

But probably not in the just, more bespoke accessories place right now. We just watch what happens on Windows and another place and see if there's a unique opportunity for us right now. I don't think there's anything that's obvious to me. Phil, you've played Eldon Ring. Yes.

That's pretty cool. Do you still got that dev kit? No, no. It was, well, you know, Miyazaki is somebody have a ton of respect for. In fact, I think I have assigned Securo. I think it's right there. And somebody, every time I go to, I say every time, most times I go to Japan, I like to go by from and just sit down and talk to him about what he's seeing in games.

I remember sitting down and looking at game, watching his games on mixer and just like the discussion with him around as these services, Twitch and other things were evolving and just seeing how quickly he internalizes new paradigms coming to games, rolling that into his future ideas. The guy's just brilliant. So I can sit down with them, and we've obviously been talking to them about any game that they're building. We need to make sure we have a great platform for them and seeing builds of the games and talking to them about creatives. I mean, that's one of the most awesome parts of this job, is to sit down with our own teams and third-party creatives. I know most of the games that the teams are working on for the next three or four years because we need to be a great platform for those games. And getting to see them iterate creatively, giving them feedback if they want. If not, it's fine.

They're a lot better at designing games than I'll ever be. Is it's one of the most rewarding parts of the job. And I think Miyazaki-San is just one of the most special designers in our industry. And I'd love spending time with him. You mentioned the Securo thing on the shelf behind you. How much thought is put into the shelf behind you? Has there been moments where you're just like, I know what I'm doing and I shouldn't do this right now. Do you do it anyway?

It's, it's probably a mistake. stake on my part. Like I think about the whole t-shirt thing. Like my t-shirt thing started because one of the E-3s was right near Father's Day. It might have been on Father's Day. And my dad and I played Jumpman back on our C-64 together. I found a Jumpman t-shirt. I wore that. It became like a thing. And stupidly, I kind of ran with it. And then obviously this time around I did the Series S behind me and I did some hiding. But this back here is really just a collection of things from people I know in the industry and friends and

that's about it. Like I'm not trying to signal anything. Don't lie to our faces, Phil, all right? We can all read between the lines. We see it. We know what it means. Like this picture up here is Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. We're not buying Led Zeppelin, right? It's my favorite band.

So we see that switch though. I see that switch up in the corner. Pizza bagel. The switch was a A gift from Nintendo. Like Doug Bowser and the team, they're obviously right up the hill from us. We're both in Redmond, Washington.

And it was a gift from them. I have another one that I used to play at home, but that was one that they gave me early on when it launched. So that's what that's from. This show was brought to you by Honey. We all shop online, and we've all seen that promo code fueled Tana's at checkout. But thanks to Honey, manually searching for coupon codes

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I wanted to ask Phil about the relationship Xbox has continued to establish and grow with Nintendo and its platform. What was the process like to bring Banjo to Smash Brothers or to have Xbox exclusive games and characters like Cubhead appear in Smash and be on the Switch platform? Can we expect to see titles continue to grow and more Nintendo stuff, blah, blah, blah. Whatever you want to say about this,

I'm really interested in how that all happened. First of all, and I don't just say this because it sounds good. I think Nintendo is just such a special part of our industry. They bring so many players both into the industry, but also continue to excite people. And they're so unique in what they can do. I mean, let's face it, they're selling tens of millions, 100 million handheld devices in today's world,

and it doesn't even have a cell chip in it, right? It's not an LTE device. They're the only company on the planet that could go do a bespoke mobile compute device that isn't actually Android or iOS, doesn't make phone calls and have the success. They're just like a special, special company. And I have a lot of friends that have worked there for years. And frankly, they're so close. There's a lot of shared DNA between the teams.

Ken Lobb and our team here was a Nintendo employee a long time ago. And as I said, there's people up there. Firokawasan, the CEO of Nintendo and I talk fairly often. He's a gamer. It's fun to talk to him about games. So it's really just about building a trust relationship that there's no hand behind the back. There's no ulterior motives. Let's just go do things that help grow the industry.

My top line is, and this will get a little businessy, so I'll apologize. But this is an industry that's $200 billion a year. That's the size of the gaming industry right now. And it's growing. Last year, it grew by 19%. And when I think about our opportunity, whether it's Sony, whether it's Nintendo, whether it's us, whether it's any of the publishers, whether it's Valve, any of us, I think the biggest opportunity ahead of us as an industry is how do we keep growing as an industry? How do we keep together growing? And I don't see the pie as a fixed pie that we have to grow in order for our slice of the pie to grow, somebody else's has to get smaller. Like when I look at an industry, we're the biggest media and entertainment industry in the planet, bigger than movies, bigger than TV, bigger than music.

like gaming is just such a massive business with such huge growth right now. I think as an industry, the more we can work together to remove some of the friction and some of the kind of arbitrariness of this industry just makes it better. I'd say the same thing about focusing on safety, focusing on inclusion. These are all huge opportunities and they're good things for humans. Then they're also good things for the business. So an opportunity comes to work with a Valve or work with Nintendo or work with Sony on something. If we think it's going to help grow the industry and we can all benefit from

that together. I think it just makes a ton of sense for us to go do that. Do you have any stories about Banjo specifically getting into Smash? Specific. So one of the things we do with our studio IP is we really let Rare go and drive that directly with Nintendo. Obviously, they have, you know, decades of history between Rare and Nintendo. And that's something that Craig Duncan and the team drove directly. I'll get asked, like, hey, do I have any issue with this? Obviously, I wouldn't. I think it's awesome seeing banjo and smash, but that's something that we rare would go and drive. And the same thing, as you look at some of the Bethesda stuff that's happening out there, some of the work

they're doing with Doom and some of the, whether it's Nvidia and some of the other stuff, I really want to empower the creators. I know Matt Booty and I are pretty in sync, we're very in sync on this. Empower the creators to feel and truly they own the franchises they're working on. They own those characters, those stories in those worlds and let them be the the kind of captain on the ship on those things. And I don't want me to be the one who's trying to come in and trying to match make in certain scenarios. So that was something that Craig and the team at Rare drove directly with Nintendo, and I was more than supportive.

I thought it was awesome. I get into some more Patreon questions here. Mizuki says, Hey, Phil, I looked around a bit and couldn't find an answer for this. So I'm asking it here, what's the story behind your gamer tag, P3? So it's not a great,

it's not a very interesting story. You're like, oh man, this is not going to be what you wanted it to me. I am, my name, my actual full name is Philip Wesley Spencer the third. And growing up, my dad was always Phil Jr. And I was P3 because my grandfather was Phil Senior, so Phil Senior, Phil Jr. So growing up, we'd be at family things. I was always P3.

So when I got to create my gamer tag, I'm also lazy. So the fewer characters I can type the better. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's Phil the third, P3. That's where it comes from. Now I have a question for Tim. Tim, since that story is from Phil Spencer.

are we still allowed to make front of Fran for being Fran Mirabella the third? Oh yeah, FM3 definitely. Well, these FM3 underscores, so that's a whole other thing. There is a funny story on this one, just quickly, quickly. We were, I forget what show it was.

One of our E3s where my gamer tag was going to show up, this was before I was in my position. And there was some, somebody had some weirdness about it looking like PS3. So they actually create, like something because the graphic had already been created with P3. So I ended up as like PB and jelly or something because they could put the B over the three and just like superimpose the graphic over it, which I thought was totally silly

that somebody thought my Gamer tag would look like PS3 and that we were sitting that and that it meant something with Sony. But anyway, that's a funny little story from E3's gone by. More importantly, there's some random PB and J out there getting all these messages. Like I don't work. I'm talking about it. Does it feel like it's an E3 of days gone by? Like, is the industry in a different place now where what you just said kind of feels a little bit more like there's competition,

whereas now I feel like everything's a little bit more collaborative? I don't know. I mean, there is clearly collaboration. I think to some level there always has been. I think you're right. I think there's more collaboration, more kind of relationships than maybe the, there have been in the past between the major platform holders. I think that's true.

I'll say it. Like, you know, I watch state of play. I watch Nintendo shows. I want our shows to be, to do well for people to talk about them. So I think in a hopefully a positive way, I look at the bar that others set when they're out there, what they do with their products. I'm really a product person first and foremost and try to feel like what do these products feel like. I like being inspired and motivated by what other people do. So I definitely watch all the shows.

and say, okay, how do I feel we stacked up from like presentation and entertainment value, those kind of things. And I want everybody to do their best work. And I just want us to do great work and be kind of counted up there as one of the best. I think that goes so far. And it's what we always talk about about you and about Xbox now in the way that, you know, the fact that you're able to be in front of the brand and be like leading it, right, and talking about it like a human being.

Because I do go back to, I remember at IGN in 2010 doing interviews. with people from Xbox, people from PlayStation, and them, you know, when you'd get to saying, if you're a PlayStation guy, getting ready to say something about Xbox, the other guys, and vice versa for Xbox, right? And it's like, such a weird thing back to what you're talking about, a PB&J, right? I know. Everybody knows what you're saying. And they, like, why are we, you're making a bigger deal not saying it.

I think the fact that you are so open to talk about what you play elsewhere, what other people are doing or what you're watching goes so far to, you know, prove, I think, something we learned a long time ago about YouTube, right, of, like, Like, it's not so much about competition. It's about collaboration. And what can you do to move the space forward? I think that's exactly right. And I think the companies that have been and gone, the companies that have been around and are here,

and the companies that are getting created today that will be the leaders of this industry in the next decade, like, they all have a role to play. And as I said, I think the biggest obstacle to gaming success is our own industry and focusing on making it safe for everybody, continuing to grow, to moving obstacles, some of the still stigma around what does it mean to be a gamer, even that whole term of why is somebody a gamer and not a gamer, like, what does that mean? I think those are the things that are in front of us. It's not whether one company is like going to be our demise, I think as an industry where we have the control. We can navigate this industry's growth together better than we can independently. I believe that.

Something I've always found really interesting is there's E3 week and, you know, that's changed and transitioned over time. But the idea of there is this season of everybody coming out in a short amount of time doing their thing that's that is part of one hole, but really it's individual things. And then the end of the year having the game awards, I've always loved that it's this one moment where everyone shares one stage. Yeah. Is that thought about differently, like what you're going to bring to that show versus an E3 type show? Yeah, yeah. The production timelines are now long enough. We have pretty good sense of what we're doing at the Game Awards already.

You just have to, and even what's going to be at E3 next year, not that everything's necessarily going to land exactly, or we won't have some surprises. But our roadmap for when we're going to talk about things is probably planned out next two or three years. And you're right, like you, Game Awards and Jeff's done a really nice job building that as an important beat for the industry. We're obviously not trying to sell something right then. We're kind of in the

middle of the selling season for the stuff that's out. So we try to be a little more forward looking and some of the things that we're trying to go do. E3. I love E3 week. I hope the industry continues to support it in some ways. I'm not sure. I hope my plan is for us that as much as we can, I like the consolidated news week. I think it helps us as an industry rise above some of the din of everything that's going out there and get picked up by some outlets. that maybe wouldn't focus on gaming without that concentration. And definitely E3, we're starting to look at, okay, what's coming this fall, what's coming in the next 12 months?

And that show is turned into more of, here's our timeline. You saw it with the showcase this year. Here's what's in June. Here's which in July. Here's which in August. And yeah, the Game Awards are a little kind of more forward-looking and maybe a little more theatrical, just given the way the show's set up. Before we move on to the Bless Who,

Do you have any final questions for Phil here? I really quickly wanted to say that I love that you teamed up with Greg in Sea of Thieves and I am inviting you to come join me, Tim and Snowback Mike, for Halo Infinite whenever that comes out. We hope you become our part of the team, Phil. Awesome. I love that would be great. I love playing online. Like I said, I love just hanging out with people who enjoy playing video games.

I love to play Infinite, definitely. Blessing you're invited to. You're invited to you. You didn't invite blessings on. Yeah. Phil, I'll go one further. I know how it is. Phil,

I'll go one further and remind you that the war for Wakanda expansion is coming to Marvel's Avengers. And if you would like for me to pull a character to 150 for you, we can do that. We can help you out. Just like put it on the table for you. I do have to say Greg and I dropped in a party. It was like a couple weeks ago. And I asked him, hey, what are you playing? I wasn't expecting like the first thing.

I mean, I knew he's like, I'm watching the show. I knew that Avengers was. something that it was like the first thing. I don't even think I had the question to come out of my mouth yet. You like, Avengers, that's what I play. That's my game.

Stunned silence. I was like, I've been invited to Phil Spencer's Xbox party. I'm hanging out. He's like, we're playing C of Thebes. I know you play this? What other multiplayer games do you play?

And I'm like, Marvel's Avengers. Dead silence on this entire group. You can boot it from the party. No, no. No. And, you know, the team at Crystal, it's,

I have respect for all games and what people are trying to do. It wasn't what I expected. But more power to you. You want to level me up a character? I'll go play. I think one thing about it is with Greg, it's getting into that meme territory for sure.

And it reminds me, Greg, of that Final Fantasy 14 meme that's like, did you know that you could play the DLC for free and all this stuff? And it's like this gigantic sort of letter that all the Final Fantasy 14 fans put out there. Greg is the same way with Avengers. I love it. Just let everybody know it's coming back. Don't worry. A mega threat level mission next month.

pretty, or this month, I'm sorry. Awesome. Everybody should go play it. Love to go to me, guys. So here on the

kind of funny games cast, we like to do a show called Bless Who, a little game show within a show that we normally have as the post show. But since we have Phil here,

I thought it'd be a lot of fun to do a special version of it. Barrett, please hit the theme song. Bless Who is Bless Who. Yeah, what's up? Welcome to Bless Who, the Gamescast quiz segment

hosted by yours, Shirley. I'm joined today by Greg Miller, Andy Cortez. Tim Gettys and Xbox's Phil Spencer. Fellas, are you ready for messy mashup? Yes.

The rules are simple. I'm going to read to you a clue which will be the description of a game. The answer will be the name of two games matched up together. Whoever gives me the correct matched up answer first gets the point. For example, in this game, sneak through top-down corridors while defending the planet from alien invasion. The answer there, of course, would be Metal Gear's of War. Players who say your name to buzz in, each player gets one guess at a time. This time around, we have a maximum of five rounds.

Whoever gets two points first gets the win. To clear it up for Phil, it's always sort of a play on words. So if it's like, what did Tim Schaefer work on? In an underwater game, it would be psychonautical. Like psychonauts and subnotical. There's always a little play on words. Just tell me how much money I owe at the end of this. This one does have a modifier.

This is the Game Pass edition of this one. For each of these prompts, one or both of these games will be on Game Pass currently. If you guess the correct mashup, you get an extra point if you can tell me which games are the Game Pass games. Are you ready? Yes, yes. Number one. This 2D action platformer puts you in the shoes of our favorite bounty hunter. This time, take your adventure on the go.

Don't play alone, though, as this launch title comes packed with 45 different mini-games for up to four players. Remember, you say your name to Buzzin. Oh, Tim. Tim. Metroid fusion frenzy. Correct. Damn it. Can you tell me which of those games are on Game Pass?

That would in fact would be Fusion Frenzy. That is correct. That is two points for Tim right there. That's what I need to know, Phil. Blessing, I'm sorry. As a host, I have a question for you. In the middle of that, Kevin came in to pick up some phones and kiss me on the cheek. So it's not.

Just game pass. I'm sorry. It's any kind of game in the world matched up with a game pass game. One game has to be a game pass game. At least one game is a game pass game. I apologize. Number two. I said first to two points.

I'm just going to go through the five because I realize that Tim just automatically got two points there. I forgot how quickly that could happen. Number two, get ready to enter your giant mech in fast-paced action, where while running and first-person shooting will be your key to victory. Andy. Fallout. A Titan Fallout 4. Incorrect. Get ready to enter your giant meck in fast-paced Greg.

Titan Fall guys. Incorrect. Get ready to enter your giant meck in fast-paced action where while running and first-person shooting will be your key to victory in multiplayer matches. Explore an open wasteland inspired by Nevada and make friend or foe. Andy. Titan Fallout New Vegas. Correct. Can you tell me which of those games is a game pass game? Well, Titan Falls part of the EA play. Play thing. The A play, I am going to count is game pass. Oh, okay. Both of them, right? Yeah, yeah. Because that is funny.

Yeah, New Vegas is there. Both of them are on game pass. That is two points for Andy right there. Right now the scores Andy two, Tim two. I'm just going to be horrible. Keep going on. This is like, I'm just like watching the show. It's good.

You're walking your dogs. Brilliants might strike you and you're going to feel so good. Oh, yeah. It's a eureka moment. Number three, in this asymmetrical multiplayer game, fear becomes reality as one player plays the role of a serial killer hunting down four other players. You'll need to survive in this post-apocalyptic zombie infested world. With up to 60 players, there are no checkpoints or saves.

When you die, you lose everything and have to start over. I know it. In this asymmetrical multiplayer game, fear becomes reality, as one player plays the role of a serial killer hunting down four other players. You'll need to survive in this post-apocalyptic zombie-infested world. Andy. No, shit. Never mind.

With up to 60 players, there are no checkpoints or saves. When you die, you lose everything and have to start over. I'll give you 10 seconds. If you can't guess it, I'm moving on to the next one. Andy. Andy. Dead by Daisy. Correct.

The answer is dead by Daisy. Can you tell me which of those games is on Game Pass? Dead by daylight? Incorrect. both games are on game pass you get Dead by Daylight and Day Z on GamePats. Xbox GamePass, the best game, the deal,

the deal of best gaming, you know, trying to say, God dang it, I can't get any points on the board. Greg, Greg, I know you were stuck on State of Decay. I had, no, I was dead by daylight. I couldn't come, I didn't even think of Day Z. Yeah, because I was like, I was like, dead by stated decay, no, that doesn't make sense.

I had Friday, it was a 13th, so I was like, if that's what happens, you get hung up on one game, and if it's the wrong game, you're in trouble. Right now. the score is Andy 3, Tim 2, Greg and Phil, 0. Number 4. Stranded on the shores of a mysterious island, you must learn to survive. Use your cunning to kill or tame the prehistoric creatures roaming the land. This next generation, most player shooter features addictive 4V1 gameplay. One player controlled monster must evade, Greg. Ark Evolve. I'm going to give it to you.

That's good. That was good. The answer is survival evolve. Yeah. Well, he gave it me, Andy, so shove it. All right. I don't know what you want to do, Andy, all right? I'm not going to apologize to you. Craig, which of those games are on Game Pass? Arc. Correct.

Arc is the Game Pass game. Greg gets two points. Nice. This is the final question. This is the final question. This is number five is the last one. I do have a bonus round if he do run into a tiebreaker. Number five.

This is an epic action adventure through a vast, ruined kingdom of insects and heroes. Explore twisting cavern. and more in this 2D hand-d-d-d-drawn-style game with Souls Like in Metroidvania elements. Once you're done exploring, saddle up for a bike riding, frisbee throwing, goose-petting,

friendship-building, treasure-hunting story-driven adventure for one-to-two players. Andy. Andy. Hollow Knights and Bikes. Correct. Hollow.

Wow. Wow. Oh, incredible! Which of those games are on Game Pass? It's definitely not Hollow Knight. Uh, Knights and Bikes? Incorrect. Hollow Knights and Knights and bikes are both on game.

Shut up the front door. Yeah, man. Best deal in gaming. Best dealing game right there. Andy wins with four points. It's eight and Greg and Tim to Phil, unfortunately, zero. Though,

Phil. It's a hard one to jump into. I can give you one more shot if you want it. Oh, no, no. I'm just humiliating myself at this point. Let the man go. We kept him past his heart out. No, no, it's fine.

It's fine. It's fine. I do, I do want to add, Phil, with one more question, because I think this was a really good one from Ryan Powell, Higgins. I remember reading an article back in 2014 talking about Phil when he took over his head of Xbox. In the article, it said that Phil's most important moment in Xbox history was the launch of Xbox Live. Is this still the case? In terms of the impact to where we are today, I would say yes. I'm really excited about the cloud work that we're doing. I think it has multiple

years to get to a point where it's like it's as transformational as it can be. So I think as like many things, that will play out. But when I look back with, you know, the bringing online to console in a big way, the way that Jay and the team had set that up, Jay Allard, I just think there was some really foundational decisions that they made that were pretty critical to what we're doing today and maybe a little bit of where the industry is today. So yeah, I still think that's probably the biggest thing. But we're striving to make an impact with the work that we do now, and I guess time will only tell. But yeah, I still think Xbox Live for us is a pretty critical moment at the time of Xbox.

I know Phil needs to leave in like 30 seconds. Phil, just a yes or no answer. Did you think Game Pass would be what it is today? I did. Now, that makes, I'm not like the smartest guy in the world, so it's not like I saw everything. And I just think it made sense. And the side that I think is now starting to come out more is from a creed.

creator standpoint. Like from the player side, like the value, the discovery, I thought all of that, my friends, a shared library with all my friends, all that stuff, I think was just really going to be important in it, and it has. A creator, if I'm building a game right now and I'm not one of the biggest kind of anticipated games that are out there, my biggest issue is discovery. How do I get the discovery of the games? I'm sure you guys hear it from people all the time. It's why they want to talk to you guys get on the shows. So the things that we're able to do, and the, The goal was that Game Pass actually becomes a great discovery platform for games and that we can pick some games that we want to highlight. We used to do this with our summer of arcades and other things, which were these little kind of curated moments. And that's what Game Pass has turned into for us is an opportunity to go take the ascent or take, you know, take a game that's coming, that we want to go and put it on a pedestal and have people see it because we think there's something that's special about it. And that was the part that I'm really happy to see the vision has kind of come into focus. And it's been great to hear more of the creators talk about that ability that the platform is giving them. And that's our goal. Like, because there's so many games that get created, so many great games.

And it's just hard for creators to find the customers who might love their game. And if we can be a help with that through Game Pass, I think it's time well served on our part. There you go. Phil, thank you so much for joining us for this. going to have to have you back. We're going to have to share you with the Xcast boys at some point, I'm sure, too. You stay away from Paris Lily. You stay away from them. I need blessing to give me the answers to the questions, too. So I don't like a fool, more of a pool. You got me. I'll feed them to you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. No, great job with the show. I really appreciate you having

me on. And like I said before, I always appreciate the positivity you guys bring to every time you you guys show up on the show. And it's just a good thing for our industry and keep at it. Well done. Thank you so much, man. Hey, well done to you too, Phil Spencer. You're doing a pretty good job. I appreciate that. Thank you. All right.

Thank you so much, man. Everyone, let us know the comments below what you thought of this episode. Until next time, love you. Bye.