The Vergecast - The right to repair – and play games anywhere

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Today on the flagship podcast of sneaky gaming strategies: 03:45 - Verge producer Will Poor reports on a right-to-repair bill in Oregon and what's next in the right-to-repair movement. The right-to-repair movement is just getting started Status of Right to Repair legislation state by state, via repair.org iFixit explains parts pairing Jessa Jones’ iPad Rehab Apple Is Lobbying Against Right to Repair Six Months After Supporting Right to Repair The current draft of Oregon’s Right to Repair bill 33:13 - Tom Warren breaks down the news from Microsoft’s gaming chief about Xbox games coming to PS5 and next-gen hardware. Microsoft’s gaming chief on Xbox games coming to PS5, next-gen hardware, and more 1:00:49 - David Pierce and Alex Cranz answer a question from The Vergecast Hotline about the crackdown on password sharing for streaming services. Netflix might ruin password sharing for everyone  Disney Plus is finally cracking down on password sharing in the US Hulu is cracking down on password sharing, just like Disney Plus and Netflix The Vergecast and Decoder are live at SXSW this weekend, March 8th and 9th. SXSW attendees can see both shows live on the official Vox Media Podcast Stage at the JW Marriott, presented by Atlassian. Learn more at voxmedia.com/live. Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of sneaky gaming strategies. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting in my basement doing Legos, which is a sentence I have not been able to say for a long time and I'm very excited to say. So Liam James, our producer, got me this Polaroid One Step Lego thing for Christmas this past year, which is part of, I'm sure you've seen this, but Lego doing all the stuff with old technology and everything from the set of the office to the McLaren Formula One car, taking all of that stuff, putting it into Lego form, and making it available for adults. It's all, I think, like, ridiculously expensive to the point where I have not been able to talk

myself into actually buying one of these things for myself, but I've realized it makes an awesome gift, and I hope more people give me these cool Lego sets as a gift. So I'm going to spend some time putting this thing together. I realize today I've been kind of intimidated by it. It's, let's see, it's 516 pieces, and it is 18 and up, and you would think I would be able to handle that, but I feel like I'm rusty with Legos. It's been a wilder. It's been a while, and the idea of actually sitting here and putting this thing together is both very fun and kind of intimidating. But I have an afternoon, I have shows to catch up on, it's going to be awesome. I'm very excited. And pretty soon, you are going to see this thing in a background when

we record the Vergecast, I promise. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're going to do two things. First, we're going to talk to Will Poor, who has been kind of immersing himself in the world of right to repair. It's a really interesting time in the world of right to repair. There have been big bills that have gone through. There's some real momentum for the idea that you should be able to repair your own gadgets, but there's still a lot of work to do. And it's not clear that all of the pieces are actually going to start to come together quickly in a way that makes this stuff really work the way that it seems like it ought to. So Will has been talking to tons of people. He's going to come and give us kind of his first report on what he's learned so far. Then we're going

to talk to Tom Warren about Microsoft's news from last week. So we talked about this a little on Friday's show, but Microsoft made what seems like a relatively small set of gaming announcements last week that kind of hide this huge vision for the future of gaming and the way that things are going to change in the gaming industry in a really big way over the next two years. Microsoft might be wrong, it might be early, it might be late, but it is not betting as small as it would have you think. Tom knows everything about what's going on here, and he's going to help us figure out what the real story of Microsoft and Xbox and gaming really is.

All that is coming up in just a sec, but now I get to go do the thing that is my favorite with a Lego set where you open it up and just dump it on the ground. and kind of see what happens. This is where I inevitably, like, lose six pieces that turn out to be very frustrating for hours. But it's like the beginning of a puzzle, right? You pour it out, you kind of take stock, and you see what you have. This is either going to take me an hour or six months and you'll never hear me again.

So wish me luck. This is the Vergecast. Let's go. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA. since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics.

New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. So last year was a big year for the right to repair movement. There were three major laws. We had one in New York, Minnesota, and California, all of which passed and all of which said a very basic thing to electronics makers, that you have to let other people repair the products you make. That means giving independent repair shops or even individual people.

access to the same parts and tools and information that you, the manufacturer, give your own repair shops. Or to use just one example that I'm confident we're going to refer to one million times throughout this story, if your iPhone breaks, the Apple store shouldn't be the only place equipped and allowed to fix it. Last year, in the midst of all this, we had Kyle Weins, the CEO of I Fix It, on the show, to talk about just how big a deal the California law was in particular. With the California law, we're up to 20% of the U.S. has passed the right to repair lot. At the time, Apple had just signed on to support that law, and soon after, pledged to abide

by it nationally. So on paper, this was a big victory lap moment for all of the right to repair people. But now it's 2024, which is the year that these laws are actually supposed to go into effect. And we wanted to know what that means, what's actually changing out there in the world of electronics repairs. Like, if your iPhone breaks this year, are you better off than if your iPhone broke last year, our producer, Will Poor, has been looking into that question for a while, and he claims he has

answers, of which I am always suspicious. Will Por, welcome to the Vergecast. Hello, thank you. Do you have answers? I do. I have a lot of answers. I talk to a lot of people to try to understand what's going on here. I talk to repair shop owners, activists, lawmakers, and big companies like Apple and Google. And, you know, shocker, the answer really depends on who you talk to. The advocates for these laws, the folks who have spent years trying to establish the idea of repair as a right, they're pretty jazzed. Yeah, it was an absolutely monster year for right to repair. That's Nathan Proctor.

He runs the right to repair campaign for the public interest research group. He said last year started with a disappointment. That big New York bill got watered down by the governor at the 11th hour. I think we just went all out last year. We really put everything we had into it. And then Minnesota passed the broadest right to repair bill we've seen yet, even broader than when New York did with fewer loopholes. then Colorado passed an excellent farmer right to repair bill, which was the first of the nation on that.

That was an extremely difficult fight. Hang on. Did he just say farmers? Are we talking about farmers? We are. We absolutely are. Right to repair is this huge deal in agriculture also. It's not just consumer electronics. That's because John Deere and a whole bunch of other companies have gotten super, super controlling about who can repair their tractors. John Deere is like the apple of the tractors, right? I'm remembering this now, that they're like, like super mad about anybody who wants to repair their tractor. They are the leader in this space. They're a huge problem for farmers.

And it's a huge deal for agriculture because farmers' livelihoods depend on the stuff. You know, it's not like most of our phones where this is an annoyance, but it's not make or break. So this kind of thing comes up in sort of higher-stakes situations like agriculture. Wheelchairs is another place where this debate is happening. Other kinds of medical equipment. So it's a lot broader than just consumer electronics. Anyway, here's the rest of the Nathan quote. And then California just absolutely overwhelmingly passed.

And people know or might know that Apple endorsed that bill, which I think is just a sign of how much momentum we had. That Apple endorsement was notable because for years, it was the go-to example of a big, powerful company lobbying super hard against repair laws. So the endorsement was evidence of industry warming up to independent repair. which is just not how things felt for a long time. In all the years that we've been on right to repair, you know, we've heard just absolute throw spaghetti at the wall kind of arguments against it.

The big categories are safety, security, privacy, liability, intellectual property. I remember vividly when Aham's lobbyist... That's the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. claimed that if people were able to fix their own dryers, like, you know, clothes dryers, that, you know, they have a latch and the door. And what if the door latch came undone because you didn't do the repair right? And then your child put their arm in there and got it ripped off by your dryer. So right to repair means dismembering children. So this is wild.

This one the whole way I did not expect. But this makes me think of the thing you always heard from Apple and others about, like, if you try to take your phone apart, you're going to blow up the battery. burn your house down. That's kind of the consumer electronics version of this. And I think maybe equally realistic as someone who has blown up a battery trying to take my phone apart in the past. It happens. But yeah, I mean, this is how far back the safety argument against right to repair goes. And this is a drum that all kinds of manufacturers have been beating for a really long time. But they're starting to, if not, give up on the safety argument, at least roll it back a little, it sounds like? Yes. Manufacturers are giving up on some arguments that just have not panned out for them in the past. You know, the times are changing. Apple in particular has started to publish repair manuals on its website. It has this self-service repair program, which The Verge and lots of other people have pointed out feels a lot like malicious compliance because it's super expensive and complicated. But in general, Apple is playing ball with these new laws. Apple announced more

DIY options in December. You know, these companies are getting ready for it, you know. So I think that like it's clear that to some degree that there will be compliance. Like they're planning for it. They think that's great. I'm glad that they're not all going to fight. Okay. So this all lines up with roughly where we were with Kyle a few months ago.

We have some laws. Not everything is perfect, but the people who have been fighting this for a long time. And like you said, they've been fighting for a long time, are pretty happy. But I don't know. You're setting this all. up in such a way that it makes me think there are those who should be psyched who are not psyched. Yeah, yeah. So here's the other shoe dropping. I really wanted to talk to repair shop owners about this because they're the people that the advocates for these laws say that they're written for. And I did.

And truthfully, they're not expecting a lot of material improvement here. One owner I talked with was Jessa Jones, who runs a repair and data recovery shop in Western New York. And she echoed pretty much every other shop owner I talk to. Basically, she thinks the laws are well-intentioned, but they don't address some really critical things. For example, there is this very basic practice that any repair shop should have at their disposal. I would like to be able to have a filing cabinet where I put any phone that is here for parts or pieces or donated or old or something I buy. I want to be able to put it in a file cabinet where at any point in time, here comes a matching phone model that I can go to my file cabinet junkyard of parts, and I can take out a perfectly

fine working, let's say, true-depth camera out of this phone and install it in that phone, and I can take too bad and make one good. But she can't do that with iPhones. Take the true depth camera. That's the iPhone's front-facing camera system. She can order a new one direct from Apple. It's about $185 for an iPhone 15. Making that part available technically puts Apple in compliance with the current repair laws. But if she opened up her file cabinet junkyard and swapped in a working camera from a dead iPhone, face ID might just stop working. That's because the motherboards of modern iPhones keep track of some other parts within the phone.

And if you swap in an aftermarket part, or even a genuine Apple part that Apple didn't sell you, your phone might start acting up. If I replace your battery with a quality aftermarket battery, you can know, longer, go into your settings and see your battery health. You lost a function. That's terrible. That's wrong. And that's what's happening now. So let me just real quick make sure I understand what's going on here. Yeah. It seems like what you're saying is if I have a perfectly good iPhone where most of the parts are still working and then I have another perfectly good iPhone where most of the parts are still working and I take one perfectly good part out of one iPhone and put

it in the other, there's a pretty good chance it just won't work. Yeah, and this is what's so, like, mysterious and galling about Apple products specifically. Apple products full of genuine Apple components do not play nicely with one another. People have done this famous screen swap test where they'll take two modern iPhones, swap the screens. So two working phones, two working screens, and all of a sudden, those screens won't work properly anymore. Weird. It's super weird, and it's because of this process of software locking components to the motherboard. It's called parts pairing.

And it makes repairing iPhones, um, minefield. IFixit has been keeping really careful track of which parts cause which problems when replaced. Some parts lose functionality, others trigger these warning messages that you can't dismiss, and there's no telling how the next iPhone is going to behave, or even which parts could break retroactively down the road. You get into this really difficult and seemingly pointless sea of problems where you don't know what is just serialized, serial number paired to your logic board, and you have to harvest it from your device versus which ones of the guts can you use that came in the phone you bought on eBay. So it's very challenging.

The skeptical part of my brain here says that this is purely malicious on Apple's part, that Apple has a big repair business, that it has lots of reasons to uphold, and this is one basically impenetrable way to win that fight. But just for the sake of satiating the other part of my brain that doesn't believe everything is a conspiracy theory designed to ruin customers. What is the good reason for parts pairing? Is there a theoretically good reason for parts pairing? Sure. I mean, Apple and other manufacturers will tell you that there are lots of reasons why at minimum it's helpful to assign like a digital serial number to each specific part. That's a super basic thing that helps them keep track of inventory and all kinds of stuff. And even more than that, there are these kind of

wonky calibration related reasons that make it helpful for your phone to know which specific part it's talking to, like which one came off the manufacturing line. So there's a lot of sort of nitty-gritty stuff that is completely invisible to the end user and completely benign. But it's also just way too easy for a manufacturer to do really frustrating, really visible things with this technology too. And in the case of iPhones, it really does seem designed to kind of nudge you towards Apple's parts, towards Apple's repair shops, towards that very polished Apple experience. I think that Apple is best thought of as the kind of mom that cuts your steak when you're 30. It's just like, let me help you with that. Let me help you with that. In their

heart of hearts, they truly just don't want for you to have to live the sad life of someone who has an iPhone with a cracked screen or a cracked rear camera glass or maybe the waterproofing isn't as tight as it used to be because you replace the battery with some shop, you know, they don't want for you to have the hint of any kind of negative experience. They want to cut that stake for you. It's an amazing analogy because A, I kind of do want that in my life, right? And you can see how, right? There are, there are upsides to having someone cut my stake for you. for me. It does make me feel better. But also, it can be both well-intentioned and problematic all at the same time, right? Like, I think there's a cognitive dissonance of all of this that has always

been hard for me to wrap my head around, but that's a pretty good analogy for it. Totally. And even if you remove apples like secret private heart intention out of it, it is just a practice that ensures a really clean experience and then occasionally is super, super frustrating. And this is increasingly common. We've talked a bunch about Apple at this point. I think Apple is the most obvious, just because it's sort of clear how it works. Apple has Apple stores and the genius bar, and the whole repair process is visible to people in the way that it's not for most other companies and products. But if I'm not mistaken, parts pairing is kind of everywhere, right? Like, I have this vague memory of people being mad about the Xbox disc drive being a separate thing but paired to the Xbox

somehow in some similar way. Yes, and PlayStation's do it too. TV. These very commonly have certain paired parts. We talked about John Deere tractors earlier. It is a tough thing to keep track of because it's not something that manufacturers advertise. It's sort of down to the repair community and advocates to kind of ferret this stuff out, generation by generation of these products. So it's a tricky thing to track, but it is out there. But also everyone I talked to reiterated over and over again that Apple is far in away the leader in this space. They are just, everyone is looking to them for innovation in how to do frustrating parts pairing type things.

And, you know, the other thing is that Apple sold 230 million iPhones last year. So it's, you know, this is a super ubiquitous practice for that reason alone. Especially in the U.S., like, it's easy to forget this around the world because the iPhone is not so dominant elsewhere. But in the U.S., there is a one and two chance that if you own a phone, it's an iPhone. Totally. And I guess that is true. Like, as Apple goes, so goes so many. at this point, I guess, including the repair industry.

Totally. And so if you talk to any repair shop in the U.S., that's like that iPhone dominance is the thing that keeps them up at night. For them, the right to repair story often just feels like the Apple parts pairing story. Yeah. And there's a long history of Apple policies dictating everybody else's, especially in the U.S. on this stuff. Did you talk to Apple about any of this, by the way? Apple is like theoretically in support of all this. Did they talk to you? Not really. I did reach someone from their comms team, but they didn't want to talk to me on the record about any of it. I think anyone listening to The Vergecast knows how we all feel about that overtime. So let's go back to Jessa for a minute, our repair shop owner. What does she want?

What do people who own these shops want to see happen? Like, what does a victory for them look like in this space right now? Yeah, well, I asked Jessa that exact question. I would like to see the resumption of. aftermarket technology being accepted by the phone. You know, a lot of times, like the batteries, they are better than the ones that you would get in the phone. They have a little bit of a better capacity. They last longer. They're really robust by now.

These have been out for a long time. And I don't think that it's the right message to send that it's inherently untrustworthy, untoward, or shameful to put an aftermarket part in instead of a branded part. And as frustrating as these legal battles have been as she's watched them, she still sees promise in that route. I do like seeing these bills that have been passed. And I do think that parts pairing is a really, probably the most important part of the story. Okay. So we have all these new rights repair laws, but it seems like most of them don't address parts pairing at all. And it increasingly sounds like parts pairing is the most important part of this story. So where are we actually at here? Well, we're at pass more laws, basically. Let's get some more laws.

Yeah, always more laws. And that might happen this year. Good afternoon and welcome to the Senate Energy and Environment Committee. I'm going to open up a public hearing on Senate Bill 1596. And while you read that, I'm going to go over here. So right now, Oregon is considering a repair bill that targets parts pairing way more directly than any of those existing laws. I've been following the public hearings in Oregon, and I talked to one of the bill's chief sponsors, Senator Janine Salman. I asked her, you know, what it's like to get a bill like this one over the finish

line. And the first thing she pointed out is that this is the fourth attempt for a repair law in her state. The first time it was a very broad net. It encompassed a lot of product. And then when I got involved, the scope was narrowed and it became the consumer items, the cell phones, the laptops, and such. and it did not even move out of the House. The third time was last year. It did move out of Senate energy and environment. There was a delay in our floor session because there was six weeks where there was a pause due to a Senate walkout. So it died. And then California then passed their bill. And then we started working right after the session to really fine tune and look at Oregon's policy what we would be bringing forward. So it's a grind, but the fourth law has been introduced with parts pairing language

intact. I know that the advocates feel very strongly about that. That was something that was either never introduced in other bills or was amended out or compromised out. Okay, but it's in there this time, right? What does it say exactly? It says that manufacturers, like Apple, can't use parts pairing to interfere in a repair. They can't reduce the functionality or performance of a product, and they can't display misleading alerts or warnings about replacement parts. I'm guessing Apple is not psyched about that specific language. Apple has asked us to remove it, but I strongly believe that it's a consumer loss to do so. Can you, I would love to hear anything you can tell me about your conversation with Apple directly or indirectly. You know, I've engaged with Apple many times. I met with

the Apple lobbyist and we kind of went over like, hey, these are the issues that we see could potentially be changed. They were introduced in California. So I took all of that in. The second meeting, I was told to come alone. That paints a picture in of itself. Yeah. That's amazing. Some truly cloak and dagger politicking. Yeah, it's ridiculous. So to their credit, Apple has gotten a little less cloak and dagger about all of it. A spokesman did finally testify. publicly at a hearing a couple weeks ago, though he was basically just there to say, please leave parts pairing out of this. I'd like to begin by saying that Apple agrees with the vast majority of Senate Bill 1596. However, it is our belief that the bill's current language

around parts pairing will undermine the security, safety, and privacy of Oregonians by forcing device manufacturers to allow the use of parts of unknown origin and consumer devices. So the line here is basically just that aftermarket parts are a crapshoot. They could be good, they could be shoddy, they could be dangerous. Parts pairing is Apple's way of steering customers away from questionable components, like explode batteries. They're super worried about security features like touch ID components. Apple could be required to allow third-party biometric sensors to work in our devices

without any form of authentication, which could lead to unauthorized access to an individual's personal data. So this is a slightly different take than we've been talking about with some of the parts pairing stuff, which is, I think the I have a working Apple. thing and I want to put it in another working Apple thing is one version of parts pairing. But I have to say, I find this slightly more credible, the idea that you shouldn't just buy any battery you find on Amazon. And I mean, you and I have both bought crappy things on Amazon.

Remember all those hoverboards that exploded? Like, maybe protecting people from themselves is not a crazy idea. Do you buy that argument? It's funny, we're coming back around to the safety argument. Yeah, you're right. Kids in dryers. Yeah, for perspective, disembring children. But you're right that batteries are an easy punching bag because they fail and sometimes they fail catastrophically.

So as a DIY repair person, you absolutely should do your homework and find a trusted supplier of an aftermarket battery. Or you should go to a trusted repair shop. As for the kind of rogue fingerprint sensor that can hack your phone, I talked to a security expert and they said it was possible, but really far far. It sounds scary. It's a good, like, visceral example. Yeah. I mean, it falls really neatly into the category of what advocates refer to derisively as fud or fear uncertainty and doubt, which is just a very diffuse tactic for people who want to scare you away from a thing. It kind of does go back to the issue, though, of just finding a good repair shop and a good aftermarket supplier that's not going to sell you a super sketchy part. And that is just a leap that Apple does. doesn't want customers to have to make, basically. So that's Apple's take on the Oregon bill. But the other notable thing about this bill in particular is Google used it as an opportunity to come out fully in support of right to repair, including all of the parts pairing stuff

in this Oregon bill. And they're basically using this bill to loudly say, yes, you can have a hardware business without controlling what goes into that hardware after the fact. I can't speak as well of that because that's simply something that we do not do. That is Google's head of consumer hardware, Stephen Nicol, on a call with me last week. You can have that quality, you can have that safety with your repairs processes that we implement and not be concerned about it. We work with really good repair providers. We also make the process as simple as possible.

So we're not as concerned. So obviously, Stephen knows that taking this more relaxed approach means that more aftermarket parts are going to find their way into Google products. But here again, he just didn't project any worry about it. We want you to have that best experience. And so, you know, we believe that best experience means authorized parts. We know that other parts are out there, third-party parts for various aspects, right? But continually, we believe if we put out this experience and we make authorized parts available, accessible and affordable, you're going to select those, right? So that is basically where things stand at the moment. Google and Apple both support the basic

concepts in these repair bills, and now they are duking it out with lawmakers over specifics like parts pairing, which is not super satisfying for shop owners like Jessa. It's slow moving, it's precarious, but everyone involved is starting to reach the marrow of this debate. And along the way, Senator Solomon is noticing that same shift that Nathan Proctor and other advocates are seeing in the industry. This really slow but steady realization that opposing repair laws just isn't a good look. You know, having folks that have been at the table but are now neutral, having Amazon neutral, having Intel neutral, Microsoft, OBI, which is the Oregon business and industry, which has been in opposition, is now neutral. So this policy is coming, and I'm really

excited to be one of the ones to bring that forward. Gotcha. So to be clear, getting to neutral is the win because all those groups were in opposition. Yeah. It's an absolute win. This goes back to something Kyle said to us last year, which is basically that the big shift was making it very hard for someone to credibly, loudly be against right to repair. And it does feel like that has shifted, that we've gone from sort of a reasonable people can disagree way of thinking about this stuff, to right to repair is the right idea. And we can argue about the details of it, but this is clearly how it should work. And I think at this point, that particular battle does seem like it has been won. It absolutely has.

And everyone I talked to said the same thing that 10 years ago, it was perfectly acceptable for a manufacturer to say, no, we know best. We own this entire process. This is how we operate. There was no pressure to even give lip service to this idea. And if nothing else, there is now a lot of pressure to give lip service to this idea. You have to at least pretend to care now. Yeah, and now it's the whole battle is going from pretending to care to, if not actually caring, being forced to participate in ways that are really meaningful. Right. And figuring out how all of this is actually supposed to play out in the real world. We're still at the phase of if my phone breaks, where am I supposed to go and what am I supposed to do? But that's a much more interesting next phase, I think, than am I allowed to fix my own phone? Yes. It also seems like that is leading us to the next question, which is basically like, how is all of this supposed to work in the real world? Because I'm also increasingly aware of the fact that everything we own is technology and everything we own breaks in new spectacular ways. And so we're going to need this big, vibrant repair ecosystem.

And we've figured out, like, very little of it yet. But at least we can get to the work of figuring out how it's all supposed to work as opposed to figuring out whether we're allowed to do it, right? Absolutely. And it's a very good point that, like, as... smartphones go today so could go a lot of different things in the future. Yeah. So I wanted one last perspective on this, which is the Zoom all the way out, why is this going to matter to everyone in the future perspective?

So I called up someone who thinks a lot about how to keep all of this technology working for us. My name is Stacey Higginbotham. I am a policy fellow at Consumer Reports. Stacey spent years reporting on the Internet of Things. So when she looks at a technology like parts pairing, she sees trouble. ahead for a lot more than cell phones. We're adding software to a lot more products that historically haven't had software in them. A good example would be your home appliances. Your current home

appliances may not have like a Wi-Fi chip in them and they may not have a lot of software that allows them to do cool features, but your next one probably will. Those companies are learning from what Apple's doing and they're going to be implementing similar sorts of software pairing techniques to make these devices less repairable by third parties, but also just less something that the consumer themselves has ownership of, if that makes sense. And that's the big risk here, I think, with software pairing, is that it's not going to stop with your phones. It's going to go to everything because as we connect our devices to the internet, they get not just radios, they get software and cool features. And you're going to lose control over a lot of that going

forward. Okay, so you've just brought up the like big, huge galaxy brain size question behind all of this, which is do we actually own the stuff that we buy? And like, we cannot get into that now because dear God, the things it will do to me and this episode. But that does feel like this question, right? All of this boils down to like, is my iPhone, my car, my dishwasher? Like, is that mine to do with as I please? Or am I essentially operating? something under someone else's purview. Exactly. And iPhones are just far enough out ahead of all of this that it is easy to look at them and start to go like, oh, what if the whole world worked like that? And so that's what

we're doing right now with consumer electronics like iPhones. And it's what a lot of this right to repair movement really boils down to in the end. Okay, so someday, very soon, you're going to come back here and we're just going to get deep in our feelings about ownership. And I'm going to yell about Kindle books getting removed from Kindles, and it's going to be a whole thing. Yep. But for now, you mentioned more laws. We're going to cover right to repair a lot this year. I actually think this is, like, one of the big sort of trundling along in the background

stories in this industry, and you're deep in it now. You're going to keep covering it for us. But set the stage for the rest of the year for us a little bit. What does 2024 are going to look like in this space? Well, we're going to have to see. It's really hard to predict what happens with all of these different bills. So I'm going to be following what's going on in Oregon. that bill that we talked about just passed out of committee.

It's headed for the full Senate in Oregon right now. So we'll see what kind of legs lucky number four in Oregon looks like. I'll keep track of other state bills. And I want to just keep talking to repair shop owners and DIY folks because parts pairing is really important for them. But there's a ton of other stuff that they're grappling with every day that is very closely connected to the right to repair. That has nothing to do with anything that regulators are trying to tackle right now. So there's just a lot more going on here. And as you say, I think this year is going to be a big year, both for the laws and for people

asking those even larger questions. Fair enough. How should the people get in touch with you? Like we said, you're going to be covering this all year. If you run a shop and want to talk about it or just have feelings about your iPhone screens, how should people find you? Oh, email me, william.pore at voxmedia.com. And I will check back here when I learn more about all those things.

Awesome. Thanks Will. Appreciate it as always. Yeah, absolutely. All right, we got to take a break, and then we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about some big and slightly confusing news from Microsoft. We'll be right back. Hey, I'm Matt Bichelle, comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your 4U page, and I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait, don't swipe away. It's called, that sounds like a lot. You read through headlines, and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot. I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it. And I'm going to get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying. Maybe an actor. They go, feminism has gone too far.

You go, why? Because the Sadie Hawkins dance happened? Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do stuff. You're the one with a charmed life. Could be a politician. Basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs.

We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube, or you can listen wherever you get your podcast. This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things.

One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life, worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin.

Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm.

We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning and we assess that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain, drops every weekday afternoon. Welcome back. So we talked a little bit about this on Friday's show, but Microsoft made some big gaming news last week. That was also kind of small news. The company announced a couple of new bits of information about how game streaming and GamePass are doing, but also said that it's going to take four games, which have previously been Xbox exclusives, and make them available on the PlayStation and the Switch.

In and of itself, this is not like earth-shattering news. It's a couple of games in a couple of new places. But there's something bigger going on underneath all of this. And The Verge is Tom Warren, I guarantee you, knows what it is. Tom Warren, welcome back to the Virchcast. Hello. You have had a week, my friend. I have. It's been an Xbox week.

I feel like Microsoft likes to do this to you every once in a while, where they're just like for five straight days we're going to ruin Tom's life. Like, Tom is his birthday, so we're just going to mess up his week for all the times that he's messed up our weeks. Yeah, it's kind of him. Yeah. So, okay, so let's talk about the news, which will take us not very long. And then I want to talk about all the stuff underneath the news, because this is very much sort of the tip of the iceberg above the water kind of moment for Microsoft at Xbox. So I want to talk about all of that.

But the news of this podcast, which is just the funniest way ever for Microsoft to release this news, what new stuff? What new stuff did we get from this Microsoft announcement on Thursday? Yeah, I mean, the big news is obviously the stuff that's been rumored for weeks or months now. And that is that Microsoft bringing four games, which they're not actually naming. We'll get into that. But four games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch. I don't think every single of those games will come to both as far as I'm aware. But yeah, four games on multiple platforms, essentially.

Now, obviously, Microsoft does publish, you know, Minecraft. and games like that and they're going to be publishing Call of Duty now because of Activision Blizzard on multiple platforms but I still think this is still although they downplayed it

I still think it's pretty seismic like it's you know putting your Xbox exclusive games that people have purchased on Xbox onto rival platforms is definitely a strategy shift even if they framed it as just for now we're just going to take some learnings out of it

and stuff but that was the big news and then they kind of soften the blow of that because obviously they knew it was going to be pretty controversial amongst Xbox fans like Doom and Gloom with the fact that they're working on a next generation console which you know you'd expect them to be right but they're saying it's going to be you know some giant technical leap so we'll see what happens there other than that there was the first Activision Blizzard game Diablo four coming to Game pass a sort of reaffirmation of game pass being you know games being day one on game pass and then just this kind of light sort of theme throughout it of bringing the games to players where they're at.

They're very much that multi-platform thing. Right. So and that seems to me like the big picture underneath all of this. And my sense is Microsoft would very much like you to think that it's just sort of running an experiment, just trying some things, seeing what happens. Let's just put some games out. Who knows what'll happen? But underneath you get the sense that this is like this is a moment for Microsoft that is much bigger. than it would have you believe.

So, like, dig all the way down to the bottom of the iceberg here. Like, what is this sort of big picture thing that Xbox is trying to do? You got this leaked memo from Phil Spencer that I think kind of seems to lay it out in bigger picture terms, but even that might be downplaying it slightly. Like, paint me the biggest version of this picture here. So I think we have to, to paint the picture, we have to understand why they would even do this in the first place, right? Because it sounds, if you said this a year ago, people would be like, no way. they're not going to bring exports games to play station.

That's just like, you know, conspiracy for you or whatever. But if you look like, so two years ago, they all see announced the acquisition Activision Blizzard. At the time, they had 25 million game pass subscribers, and they announced that. Since then, we've never heard anything more about how many game pass subscribers they've had. At the time, they were kind of pushing game pass as the reason to buy an export series

S and X. They launched the series S as a $300 console that was kind of the game pass console, right? You buy that to get the game pass subscribers. that was the way in, right? Sales of those consoles haven't gone as well as Microsoft hoped. We've seen that they're still lagging far behind the PS5, and GamePass has stalled.

So Phil Spencer admitted that in late 2022, so probably about 10 months or so after they announced that $25 million. And I think you can fairly safely assume that the fact that we have not heard much since then is not a sign that it has massively turned around. Not good news. But the one thing we didn't mention with the news is that they actually said 35, million now. Oh, interesting. Okay. Which was pretty much a spot on what analysts said. They said 33.3 million. So it's like very close.

That includes Game Pass core, which used to be exports live gold. So that is an interesting part as well. But when you take that example of GamePass stalling, Microsoft needs to find revenue growth elsewhere. If they're not selling the consoles and getting that user base up so they can sell, you know, the micro transactions, the games, all the in-game content, everything else. you need to find revenue from elsewhere, right? You still need to grow. Microsoft needs to grow, especially when they're putting so much money on the line for these studios.

So I think that's the main driver behind this. And you're right, they're framing it like it's a test, right? They're going to learn. And I'm sure, yeah, they'll learn a bunch of stuff, but they've already been publishing on PlayStation and Nintendo for years now. So there's not a lot of learnings that they're going to pick up there that they don't already know.

So if I'm Microsoft, it feels like you take kind of the last couple of years and you can do one of two things. You can either say, we believe that streaming and cloud and Game Pass is the future. We think we're early. Microsoft has a really long history of being slightly too early, two really good ideas. But we are going to keep pushing on this. And they've talked a lot about how they're in third place. And this is the way to win the next generation.

And so if you're Phil Spencer, there's a version of this story where you say, the only way out is through, right? Yes. The other side is to say, maybe this isn't working. And then to say, okay, let's go back to something that feels more like a way that you can actually make money in the gaming industry. And the two ways to do that are either make games that people buy on lots of platforms or make a gaming platform on which people buy your hardware and play your games. And it feels like Microsoft is wanting to say that it's still on the streaming is the future side of things, but it's kind of like trenching back towards this like very normal way of running a gaming business. Yeah, and that's a good point.

The cloud stuff is also a big part of this as well, because they kind of bet on cloud being bigger than it perhaps has been or will be potentially in the next sort of five years. Essentially, they've also had this vision of exports everywhere, right, like on every screen or whatever, which we've heard them say in this Leap Memo. It's always been that vision, like on PCs, on consoles, on cloud, you know, getting into mobile devices through streaming. That's always been that vision. They've just kind of tweaked it to now include PlayStation and Nintendo. switch as targets for that for that vision. Something that I haven't seen anyone's kind of picked up on or I haven't written about it, I probably should.

But if you think about this, when you publish a game on a rival platform, say like Blizzard, they publish like Overwatch on multiple platforms, you sign in with your Blizzard ID. To get into that game, that gives you cross-progression and all sorts of account linking stuff. Once if Microsoft does that with its games that it brings to PlayStation Switch, like it requires an account where you get some of that Xbox ecosystem, the cross saves, and if you do want to buy an Xbox, then all your saves are there, all that sort of stuff that they constantly talk about. And what happens if they do eventually then start sending subscriptions to give you in-game stuff or like perks and stuff for those games? I don't know exactly how that will work

in terms of the platform holders allowing that, but it's a possibility that these could even be like Trojan Horse games for something like that down in line. Because they know they can't get game passed natively on those consoles because Sony's going to want their 30% cut. Nintendo is, just like Microsoft would if it was the other way around. But I do feel like there's a possibility that they might be able to work around some stuff with the account stuff. We'll see. That's interesting. And so maybe I'm not giving Microsoft enough sort of vision credit there, that maybe they're not just pulling back to we have to sell people video games because that's how you make money in the gaming business is by selling people video games

and we have to do it any way possible. That they can do a little bit of that while also still pushing on this Xbox everywhere, every screen should be an Xbox kind of strategy, which like, it'll actually, I think, is the right strategy. I think it's, again, it seems like Microsoft is early here and whether it can survive how early it is remains to be seen, but it does feel like that ought to be where all of this goes. And maybe Microsoft isn't giving up on that entirely by doing this. No, and I think a part of it is also that they, obviously GamePulse is pretty disruptive. It was definitely something that kind of shook up that. the industry a little bit. It definitely made Sony respond, right? They responded with

subscriptions beyond what they were offering. And I do wonder if that's kind of Microsoft's plan here as well, is like to try and shake up this idea of exclusivity. Because obviously we saw the Sony president announced just hours, funny enough, before Microsoft's event that they wanted to aggressively pursue multi-platform, or that's the way they say it. But I think the way that you can really understand that is PC, because he did mention computers in particular. So I think that's more them saying they want to be day and day on PC more often. Because there's money to be had there, right? Hell Divers 2 came out recently, and it's doing massive amounts.

And I think this is Microsoft kind of saying, Sony, you should probably do this as well, you know, like do it on PC. And I don't know whether we'll see Sony do PlayStation games on Xbox any time soon. But the other part of all of this, if people are all publishing on different rival platforms and stuff, is just VALV's just sitting there sort of laughing, right?

Yeah, true. They've got all the exclusives they want, right? They're getting the PlayStation ones. They're getting the Microsoft ones. They're not getting the Nintendo ones unless Nintendo does PC games, which I do think they should. But they are building, quietly building the Steam Deck and Linux platform to rival Windows. And that's one of the last touch points of Windows for consumers is gaming, right? If Microsoft loses that, they lose a lot of consumer in, really, if that goes away.

So I think there's definitely a part of that as well that Microsoft's looking towards, they're seeing what Fowles doing that strategy. there's a possibility that we could have gaming consoles that are Steam decks, right? They are basically a game console now, so you can plug it into your TV. Well, and speaking of that, we were sort of anticipating potentially getting some big hardware announcement. We've been waiting for the Xbox handheld for what feels like years now, and we didn't get one. But you asked Phil Spencer about it, and I would describe the answer he gave you as the closest thing to saying, yes, we're building a handheld, that he could possibly say without saying the words, yes. were building a handheld. Was that your read of what's going on? Yeah, that was my, because he said,

like, unique hardware, right? And positioning the hardware teams to sort of design in a way that they haven't before. And obviously, they're going to have to create unique hardware if they are putting more of these games across the player. You need to have the hardware be some, some sort of unique things. So that doesn't seem too surprising. But yeah, I did ask him, because he always likes a bunch of people's tweets about handheld. So I'm like, it's such a funny strategy. I love it. It's so obvious, right? He's obviously trying to say some. thing. But I think part of it is they obviously have to improve the window situation on handhelds,

so there's competitors to Steam Deck. But yeah, like the Xbox handheld itself, I'm very curious if they do that and when and on what sort of platform that runs. Because I think the most ideal thing that they could do, which they could technically do, it's just whether they could put all these things together, is have it run Windows, but never expose Windows. Like Steam Deck has Linux and doesn't really expose it unless you want to go into the desktop but then have it run the virtual machine of Xbox OS on top

so you can get Xbox games on that because then you don't have to worry about the PC GamePast store and the Microsoft Store which isn't very good on PC and then you get the best of both worlds right you can still play Steam games on it as well like that would be if you wanted to sell me a Steam deck that was running with that would be I think a lot of people would buy that I think so too well and this goes back to one of the strangest Microsoft strategies to me and I you and I've talked about this before but I'm curious how you

thinking about it now, which is Microsoft never seems to be able to decide whether it wants to make its own hardware. And it kind of vacillates in and out between betting really big on surface and doing some really interesting work and really changing the PC industry and then this sort of pull back from the innovation there, which, you know, caused Panos Panay to leave and some other machinations going on there. But it seems like if I'm Microsoft and I am all in on the hardware business, they should have built more Xbox stuff by now. So it seems like there's there's one way to read that that's like, well, these two things are too obvious to have not been together by now. If Microsoft actually cared about doing this. And if you're taking the Windows strategy,

you just kind of are happy running on partner devices rather than trying to build your own. But then it is pretty obvious that they're building a handheld. So what do you make of this? Does Phil Spencer want to build this hardware or is he trying to start an ecosystem of hardware that he can just put his games on? I think ultimately they probably do want to build the hardware. Okay. There'll probably be some sort of combination of the surface team doing that or helping out with it. Because they kind of help out with some of the export stuff anyway. And a lot of the lab testing is kind of shared.

But yeah, I do think they'll build it. It comes back to the question of what platform would it run on? And I think that speaks to probably why they haven't done it before. There's been that weird, like, oh, this is weird split between exports and PC stuff. And Microsoft always tried to kind of force the console stuff onto PC, but PC games don't really want that. They use Discord and Steam. and they don't really care about an Xbox party chat or whatever. Like, that's not a thing.

Right. And it's just, I think that is reflected internally. Like there's, like the old days, what was that org chart where like Microsoft business units will point in guns at each other. Like, I think that's still kind of exists a little bit. There's still fiefdoms and stuff, you know, like, I do think that exports hasn't been able to do exactly what it wants on Windows because the Microsoft stores there, you know, there's a control of Windows that's away from exports.

So if they can break down those barriers somehow, like they're going to have to if they want their gaming business to survive on Windows at least anyway. Because Valve is doing some impressive stuff. And I don't know, that's the biggest threat, I think, to Microsoft gaming stuff rather than Sony. When Microsoft talks about its competitors, Phil Spencer and others, they talk a lot about PlayStation and Nintendo. Yeah. But they don't talk a lot about Valve. Like, how much do you think Valve weighs on Phil Spencer's mind as he considers the future of X? I think more so these days, although he probably wouldn't admit it, but I think you can just

see, like, obviously Steambeck isn't doing huge numbers right now, but it's starting that category of devices. But it's like beloved. Yeah, and it's beloved. Game, like, capital G gamers, like, love that thing. And I think, I feel like if I'm Phil Spencer, the thing I've learned over the last decade is I have to keep the capital G gamers happening. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, like, it's becoming, it's something that's had promised for like 10 years and now it's like an actual reality. Like people are actually playing these things. They're not just some random OEM from somewhere like that's creating them. This has got the full backing. And in Proton on Linux, that's the main. That's the key, right? It's getting those games like not emulated, but you know, like translated onto Linux.

So yeah, I feel like if they can tie it all over together internally at Microsoft, then they could pull something off like the windows underneath and the Xbox on top. But there's licensing stuff. Like they publish to say when they bring their game to Xbox. It's on a console, right, not on a PC. Interesting. There's a lot of stuff to work for if they're ever going to do that. I don't know whether it ever realistically happen.

But that would, I still maintain that if they did pull it off somehow, it would be a killer device. It does feel like this is a year where if everything goes right, Microsoft's vision for this could come sort of to fruition in really interesting new powerful ways, right? It has Activision Blizzard, so it has this big new, I mean, title in Call of Duty, but also. this big new pipe into mobile in a way that Phil Spencer has been telling you for years is really important. With all the changes coming to the app stores, Microsoft might have an in to be able to do more stuff. The handheld thing could start to happen. It just feels like if Microsoft's vision of kind of Xbox everywhere and being this platform across all different screens, like it does seem like a lot of things would have to go right, but you can sort of see how the pieces would start

to fit together, right? Yeah, no, you can. And you mentioned mobile and I think that's like, that is a key one for them because they're also going to be publishing a bunch of like Call the Jew mobiles is huge. So we've had to be there as a king, Candy Crush, all the rest. They get them really big entry point into mobile. And they obviously were trying to leverage that to build a store on iOS and Android. But then obviously the Apple changes. And Phil mentioned, I specifically pushed him on the Apple changes for Exports Cloud

Gaming because I think that's kind of a precursor, I'd say, to the mobile store. because they've been trying to get that app on there for years now and they've had to do a progressive web app instead. And it's interesting that he said, we can't monetize exports cloud gaming, even if they were to do an app. So obviously, whatever Apple's changes are under the hood,

they're not good enough for Microsoft. And it's also interesting that those changes and what Apple's doing in iOS 17.4 by removing the PWA apps means that exports cloud gaming is basically just going to, it's going to be a link now. It's not even going to feel like a slightly native. app. So that puts them back a step back as well, in the EU markets at least anyway.

Yeah, Apple's ability to claim it has opened up the App Store while seeming to not satisfy anyone who wants more open App Store has been very impressive. Is he still thinking about mobile as kind of the center of what's next in the gaming ecosystem in the same way? I feel like a few things have shifted, right? Because for mobile, for Microsoft, when they were thinking about it, it was more cloud, right, before ABK, to visually click, Blizzard King. But now the cloud has slowed down and people aren't really as interested in it. And handhelds are emerging, right, as the kind of mobile now, almost. I feel like that's, that shifted things a little bit.

It's definitely shifted our thinking. Like, we thought that cloud would, you know, grow like Microsoft did. And I think targeting mobile native games in iOS and Android is still a ways off. Like, they have these big ones, but they still need to build a bunch of different. different games there. So I don't know that it's necessarily changed. I think it's just definitely pushing more towards the handheld than cloud to get to that sort of mobile state or this idea of exports everywhere.

Well, and to that point, actually, one of the things you asked Phil that I thought was a very funny way of asking the question was basically, would you rather continue to pursue the next Minecraft or the next Powell World or the next version of these individual games, not gaming platforms, but games that are sort of universes and platforms unto themselves? rather than trying to get more game pass subscribers. And he said, he gave you a really wishy-washy answer, which is basically like we'd like both, which like, of course.

But it does seem like we might be entering a phase where, rather than I have access to, you know, these 10 AAA games all in one place, we're kind of entering a place where the AAA game is the platform. Like that's what Fortnite is becoming. That's Minecraft is that. Roblox is that maybe that's the next turn rather than I have a bunch of sort of disparate games all available in the same app,

and Microsoft is going to, like, all you have to do is look at the money, and that's what it would tell you to chase right now, right? No, I agree. I kind of pose the question to him as, like, that's my thinking that they'd rather have another Minecraft or a Fortnite, you know? Like, these are essentially social platforms that teenagers hang out in, right? Just to chill with their friends. So who wouldn't want that?

And the amount of in-game revenue, like, that's, like, a big chunk of the Xbox content and services revenue, right, is from all these in-game purchases. So I'm sure they would love a massive hit like that. And Power World was obviously a big one for them. Having that just not exclusive to Xbox, it's just the fact that Sony doesn't allow those early access games on their platform.

But having that available on Xbox, I feel like that's probably been pretty enlightening as well. So, yeah, I feel like they would still prefer to have one of those big games than, you know, another million game pass subscribers or whatever. because they'll probably get the games of past subscribers on the back of that anyway. Right. Yeah. I mean, and I think what does seem to be true is that making one of those that is a big hit is a lot harder and a lot more finicky than it gets credit for. So he's probably right to kind of hedge his bets a little bit there. But it certainly seems to be true that if you can get one of those handful of spaces online where people actually want to be and hang out and spend time, I mean, you've caught lightning in a bottle and you should chase that kind of to the ends of the earth.

Yeah, I think it's the thing that they're tracking internally as well. It's like it's the engagement right there that everyone tracks these days as well, the time spent in a game, the time spent on the console rather than we've sold X amount of consoles, which is great, but that's a funnel into your software. And if you don't have the games to keep people sticky in there and they're going elsewhere for, you know, whether it be Netflix or whatever for their entertainment needs, it's keeping that sticky experience to keep people spending and keep people playing and all that sort of stuff. So that's definitely the way that they're looking at internally.

Makes sense. So, okay, last thing, and then I'm going to let you go. The four games that are coming from Xbox to other platforms, Microsoft has not announced, but you know, because you're better at this than everybody at Microsoft. Sorry, everybody at Microsoft. What do you make of the four games that Microsoft picked to do this with? And then also, you asked Phil about Starfield and Indiana Jones,

kind of these bigger name games, the sort of central franchises. Do you think we're going to see those at some point here in their future? go down the same road? Yeah, so the full games are kind of interesting because Sea of thieves, obviously, like, it's a pirate game, which would be kind of funny to watch Xbox fanboys and PlayStation fanboys battling out in the seas, right?

She'll kill each other and... It's actually kind of perfect. Virtually murdering each other. So that's going to be quite funny to witness. And I think that one makes sense, right? It's a multiplayer game, a live service game. You do want those games across as many platforms as possible because when the numbers dwindle,

then it doesn't make for such a good game, less people playing it. So that one makes sense. Similar sort of thing for Grounded as well, similar sort of multiplayer sort of experience there and stuff. And then you've got like high-fry rush, which I think is probably one of the ones where it's like less obvious why it should go on other platforms. But I think the way they kind of launched it,

it was like a shadow drop after an Xbox. I think it was like developer director that they had. And it didn't really have much fan of it, but it's like a great game. I think Phil described as like a hidden jet. which is true. And they want more people to experience that. And it could, I guess, get people to think differently about Xbox games or Xbox as the platform,

that sort of thing. Same, kind of same thing with Pentiment as well. And the interesting one about Epitement is that we should have known that it was going to go on Switch or PlayStation all the time. Because in Microsoft's blog post, when they first announced it at the bottom of it, they said Xbox console launch exclusive. So, AKA it's going to go elsewhere. Like they had it there plain as day all along. But yeah, beyond that, these are the four that they're talking about initially.

But beyond that, there are bigger questions around Starfield, obviously, Indiana Jones, other games. There's a bit of a backlash as well with the exports fans at the moment about Starfield and some of the reporting around it and Indiana Jones. So I just want to be super clear that Microsoft is considering both of those. It was considering. It still is considering. It's not off the menu.

It's not on the menu. It's not been finally decided or anything like that. So those still could come. They might not, we don't know yet, it's not a finalised decision like these four titles are. But I think the important thing is the fact that they were even considering it shows you what their ambition is here, right? The talk of Xbox, every screen's in Xbox, Xbox, Xbox, everywhere, all that sort of stuff. If you add it all together, you can, you know, and you look at their finely crafted messaging during that podcast, if you read between the lines and you look at very no bias or anything like that, you could pretty much see what their strategy is, right?

let's go slowly, surely, maybe some learnings, maybe we'll launch day and date certain game in the future, unannounced games, all that sort of stuff. They're toying with all these sort of ideas. Nothing is final, but I think it does come down to the fact that they're even thinking about that stuff. That's the interesting part for me. I think that was the bit when I heard that they were like thinking about some

these things, then you know it's a bigger strategy shift than the way they kind of teased it out on Thursday. Yeah, and you get the sense that Microsoft is trying to do a huge, thing without anyone realizing how huge a thing it is, which Microsoft has learned the hard way. When it makes giant noises about how it's going to change every industry forever, it goes badly. So this time it seems like they're trying to make just as big a change, but so quietly that nobody notices. Yeah, and it gives them the room to adjust as they go, right? They could have some plans for certain games to come in the next six months.

And the problem everyone also has to think about is that this is going to cost the money to support this to do the work and it's not something they just go, okay, we're going to put this game from here and then, you know, Monday they publish it. This is planned months in advance. This is like a big project internally. So it's not, it's not something they've just thought, are we're going to do these four games. But yeah, it does, it does give them that freedom to sort of tweak things as they go, look at what the fans reception, look at the sales numbers, all this sort of stuff. They'll have people pouring over all this data with MATLAB for hours and hours, I'm sure. But yeah, like, I think it still speaks to that there's something bigger going on,

for sure. All right. Well, I suspect it's going to be a big year, so we're going to have to check in a few times. But Tom, thank you as always. Appreciate it. Thanks, ma'am. All right. We've got to take one more break, and then we're going to get to the Verstcast hotline. We'll be right back. This week on Networth and Chill, we're diving into another edition of Am I the Asshole, Finance Edition? And trust me, these money dilemmas will have you questioning everything. I'm breaking down real stories from real people who are navigating financial situations that range from mildly awkward to absolutely unhinged, and I'm giving you my unfiltered take on who's in the right and who needs a serious reality check. Because let's be real, when it comes to mixing relationships and finances, someone's always asking if they're the asshole.

Learn how to set boundaries, protect your wealth, and avoid becoming the villain in your own financial story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash you're rich BFF. All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge11. The email is Vergecast at theverge.com. We love all of your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every single week.

We've been getting a lot about the Vision Pro, and if I'm being honest, I'm excited about the idea of talking about something other than the Vision Pro. So if you have questions about anything on earth other than the Vision Pro, please send them in 866 Verge11, Vergecast at theverge.com. This week, we have a question about passwords. Hey, Virchcasters. My question is kind of simple. Do you think the recent slate of crackdowns on Netflix, Hulu, etc., on password sharing will achieve their goal of getting more paid subscribers? Will people just throw their hands up and say it was fun while it lasted?

You know, like many families, friend groups and the like, you know, mom and dad pay for Netflix and Max. I pay for Hulu, Disney, plus, and Amazon. And we've had our little happy Netflix-Amazon sharing ecosystem. system. Now that I can't access the Netflix account, I kind of refuse to get my own partially out of spite and partially out of my budget, genuinely not alive for it. So I'm wondering, do you think there'll be more people like me who say, you know, F it and just do without or more people who will suck it up and, you know, get their own subscription? Who do you think is going to blink first, us or the services? Thanks. Hope to hear you guys answer this question on the show. Appreciate what you do.

Of course, we have a question about passwords and we have a question about streaming. Who else, but Alex Kranz. Alex, welcome. Hey. Okay, so first of all, I want to know, does your family have a who pays for what streaming arrangement? Because my family 100% does. And I'm glad to know that others do too. Yes, but it's really just I pay for everything.

And then my mom, when she wants to watch things or my sister, they like text me and are like, can I have your password? So it's just everyone mooches off of you. Yeah, they're just all mooches. But I guess it's like reciprocal. I mooched off my mom for, you know, 18 years. That's fair. This is your way of paying them back. That's beautiful.

Yeah. So what do you think? I realize I have a pretty strong opinion here that I can't base on anything. But I'm curious what you think. Well, the data suggests that consumers blink first, that we blink before the companies do, right? Like, Netphilic has been successful with their password sharing crackdown so far, which is like a major bummer because I really want them to blink first. But now that. that Hulu's doing it, now that Disney Plus is doing it, we're getting more people in on it.

At some point, that's going to stop, right? At some point, people really are going to stop saying, no, I just don't need this product. And Netflix has been like really successful because it's Netflix. Hulu might not be as successful, even though everyone should go watch Fargo. It's great. You know, a lot of people will be like, I don't need to watch Fargo or whatever new FX show is on. I don't need to watch Bluey. That's the Disney Plus one, right?

Yeah, like that may happen, in which case, yeah, suck it. Streamers. Stop trying to, like, crack down on all of us. Just let us do what we want. Yeah. That's basically where I land, too. I think it seems to me that it's clearly going to work from a technological perspective. Like, I think when Netflix started doing this, everybody was like, oh, this will be easy

to get around. Like, spoiler alert, super not easy to get around. They have more or less done the thing they set out to do. And from that perspective, it's clearly going to work. and anyone who wants to lock people out is going to lock people out. They're getting very good at this. It's very sophisticated. It's just going to work.

I do think that if you're a streaming service, the very last thing you want to do is give people a reason to say, do I actually watch anything on here? Yeah. And like, to your point, right, there are streaming services that I pay for. Like, for me, weirdly enough, it's actually Disney Plus. I don't use Disney Plus that often. I don't really know why. Like, I like all the stuff that's on there.

It's just not when I sit down to watch something. It's probably the fourth app I open. And so for me, the most. the minute it becomes sort of in my face whether I want to keep paying for Disney Plus, I'm probably going to say no. And I think what's about to happen to a lot of people is it is going to be put in their face. Do you still want to pay for this? And I think you're right that the answer for most people for Netflix is yes, right? Like I watch an alarming amount of Netflix.

Most of it is not stuff I couldn't live without. There are very few things on Netflix that feel like core to my personality and life. But it's just where I go to watch stuff. And that's pretty powerful. and also only Netflix gets to be that thing. And so for me, I feel like Disney Plus can probably get away with it just because it has some of that same, like, core content to some people. But, like, Hulu is actually probably a good example. Like, how much stuff is there on Hulu that if Hulu suddenly went away from your life, you would be, like, devastated without?

I really liked Fargo. Fargo is really good. I'll give you that. Look, the new season was excellent. But I agree. Yeah, like, Hulu is one I probably, I might churn on, right? I might subscribe when I need it and unsubscribe when I don't. Yeah, my big galaxy brain take is that it is both going to work and it is also going to

like speed up this crazy consolidation that is happening in this industry right now, where having the account is going to be the way that you win, right? Like having a login that I have, which for lots of people, they're not going to have a login anymore and they're going to have to make a new one. And making people make a new login is hard. And you lose a lot of. people when you make people do it. And so I think it's going to take all of these like not quite Netflix streaming services and it's going to make their lives much harder in service of

trying to get more people. So I think it's going to consolidate. That's why they're doing that thing where they're bundling, right? True. That's why Paramount Plus you can get that now through Amazon because they acknowledge that most people only want that for either their Taylor Sheridan or their Star Trek fix or to watch the Super Bowl poorly. Like, so. So, So I think they kind of recognize what's going to happen, and a lot of them have made peace with it. And Netflix can get away with it. Netflix is shown it works for Netflix. So Netflix is going to keep doing it. And it'll be fine until one day you say, do I need to watch that many K dramas? Maybe I can watch something else on another channel and be done. Right. Yeah, we're definitely in a phase where Netflix kind of continues to flex on everybody and everybody is trying to do a Netflix impression. And it seems less and less likely that it's going to work for a lot of these companies. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see.

In the meantime, we still should have been angrier about this the whole time. And I am angry about it now, and we will continue to be angry about it. Just find a great website where you can download a file, and then you put that on a software program, and stuff happens. I don't want to get too into it. But you can work around it. At the end of this, Alex's Plex server will be the only streaming service left, and it will be great.

Just pay me money. Don't actually pay me money. Nobody, please don't come and shut me down. I do not share it with people for money. That's wrong and immoral. Well, we're all going to jail, but thank you, Alex. Appreciate it. You're welcome.

All right, that's it for The Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who was on the show, and thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at Theverge.com. Lots of right-to-repair coverage, lots of Tom's stuff, especially his interview with Phil Spencer, which you should read, all of. It's really interesting. We'll put some links in the show notes, but, you know, Theverge.com. It's a website. We like it. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other games you'd like to see port its new platforms,

You can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com. Or keep calling the hotline. 866, Verge11. Hearing from you is my absolute favorite thing about doing this show. So keep them coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Puerg. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about more AI news, mobile world Congress,

and a whole bunch of other stuff. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.