Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

Marques and Andrew talk for a bit about what's happening with the Ford F-150 Lightning and car dealerships before getting into the big news of the week. They go deep on Microsoft buying Activision for $69 Billion and what that could mean for all of the games that Activision makes. After that, they talk about the news that YouTube is cutting back on a lot of its YouTube Originals. Links: Ford F-150 news: https://bit.ly/3qKbxHp Sonos article: https://reut.rs/3AkDZCN Marques survives Mad Max: https://bit.ly/3KxeVNs Twitters: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Shop the merch: shop.mkbhd.com Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And today we've got a couple things we're going to talk about probably the biggest deal in not just gaming but like the biggest acquisition i've ever seen in the tech world yeah 69 billion dollars we'll talk about that nice we'll also talk about maybe google potentially being banned from shipping pixels in the us um and a couple of little things yeah but, but first I bought a new car. You did it. I did. I've been seeing it in the parking lot. Yeah, we've talked to,

I think I mentioned it in like October, but I finally pulled the trigger. Buying a car right now sucks for a million different reasons. Supply chain mostly. I was, so as I've mentioned on here before, I clearly love EVs. I've wanted to get an EV for a long time. I think the issue is,

is just price is still pretty expensive right now. And my car was towards the end of its life and I needed one a bit quicker, even though it still took me a while. So, you know, like waiting in line for an EV right now, especially the ones I was interested in are like coming out this year, but who knows when that'll actually happen. I still maintain that every year I've said this like several times in videos, every year from here on for the next 10 years will be the most interesting year yet in EVs. And that probably just means every year that you wait,

there will be, I don't want to say remorse, but like there'll be way more better options in the EV world. It's easy to say that for all pieces of tech, right? Yeah, but especially one that's growing from such a beginning like it is now. So what car did you get? And I assume you had to deal with a dealership to do it yeah so i wound up getting a 2022 subaru forester so i was going to get a used car because i just thought maybe in two or three years i'll grab a an ev when i think there's something more that fits my lifestyle

right now i test drove a used car before this one was delivered to the lot it had 30 000 miles on it was two years old and it was three grand more expensive than the new one i bought so the market is just insane right now it's crazy i think i'm assuming used car market is so expensive because in any if anyone's in those dire situations of needing a car like that weekend you have to be able to get something in the inventory um but yeah i'm super happy with decision i i love the car so far i'm happy to be in like a more suv-ish like compact suv i guess mac like the car actually mac doesn't love the car yet because i bought a cover for the back seat and it's mostly nylon and he slides around so if i ever like hit the brake too hard

or turn a little too hard i just hear like you hear him flying around the back yeah it's got a little window in the like cover so i can see him and he's just in a totally different spot um but for me it's just getting a car in like a new generation now i have things that are pretty standard but for me are really awesome it's got like a backup camera i haven't had one of those it's got like remote start with an app the app's terrible but it does have remote start so i can warm my car up it's like 12 degrees outside so that's awesome um and then a couple other things like adaptive cruise control which like it'll stay in the lane it'll pick a car in front of me for target and traffic it's like not quite tesla autopilot but it's

obviously like cars are getting really good at stuff i was gonna say we made a video not that maybe a two years ago on when we had the buick here just on like the base tech stuff that comes with new cars and it's pretty good they're all connected to the internet in some way they're all gadgets in some way and they all have way more tech than they did years ago so yeah that is that is pretty good. Speaking on that, though, and talking about the bad app, I asked you this last night, and I don't know if you confirmed it yet,

but does Tesla, or do we know of any cars out there, if the apps for preheating your car, cooling your car down, can connect with Google Home or Alexa or Apple? So I've seen a couple very basic things with actually with HomeKit. Okay, I was gonna say Quinn would probably know this. Yeah, I think Quinn did a video where he had like,

you know, you can have a Siri shortcut, open the door or open the front trunk of your car. So you can ask Siri to do things to your car. I imagine that would apply also to like preheating it and things like that. I don't know about Google Assistant. I haven't actually seen that. I just looked it up real quick.

There is a, it looks like a third party service that will let you connect Google Assistant to your car, but you need to allow some permissions to make that happen. But you can probably have it

work if you want to. I would love to wake up at seven, say Google, how's my day? It'll tell me the temperature, the weather, like the potential traffic report and then know like at 750 i wanted to start warming the car up so when i get in at eight it's warm and i don't have to right now the subaru app is you like press it

press the heat preset you have to either put a pin or do a biometric and then confirm and then you have to like hope that it works and like watch, but whatever. That's enough about that car. Like you mentioned though, I did have to get it from a dealership, which dealerships and EVs lately, we've seen a couple articles in the news about. I will start off by saying my experience was actually fantastic. I think I got really lucky.

I think I had a good salesperson, but I think we can all agree dealerships in general are like not something anyone looks forward to going to. Not at all. I was dreading it. Everyone's dealership experience is different. Yeah. And so there will be a large range of different dealership experiences ranging from great to nightmare, terrible, not good at all. So that's good.

Yours was good. I feel like we saw, what was the one? So we've seen a couple of big things recently with markups. Yeah. That's the one that's good yours was good i feel like we saw what was the one um so you've seen a couple big things recently with markups yeah that's the one that's that's crazy to me so first of all dealerships are not actually directly associated with the car companies they're not allowed to be in the u.s i believe right in the u.s so this is a u.s this is another u.s centric thing but to just like explain it it's kind of like terrible that basically you have a dealership required to be the middleman

between you and the car manufacturer. So the car manufacturer is not directly selling you the car in most cases. So you have, let's give like Ford as an example because this actually happened. The Ford F-150 comes out, they ship them to a bunch of dealers and then the dealers are in charge

of how much they're going to charge for them, what sort of financing options they're going to give people, and et cetera, et cetera. They're in charge of the whole buying experience and servicing, et cetera. So a good dealer network does make a car manufacturer good, but it can also be a pain. A bad one makes it look bad, yeah.

A bad one makes it look bad. Which is kind of what we've seen with, like John Rettinger recently had a reservation in for the mercedes eqs that story was wild yeah he got to text saying oh yeah if you want to take delivery on this it's going to be an extra fifty thousand dollars yeah and the order in which it happened i want to actually we'll probably i'll have him on here eventually i gotta have him talk to tell his side of the story he's got a bunch of he's also got the lucid so he sounds like he could do a whole episode on a bunch of different things. We should do that.

But basically, he'd had a Tesla for a while. I'd watched plenty of his videos on electric cars. He was like, oh, I'm feeling something new. I want to shake it up a little bit. So he pre-orders a Mercedes EQS. We made a video about this. It's a different EV. It's a large electric vehicle. It's pretty expensive, down in the uh in the pre-order line knowing

roughly how much you're gonna you're gonna pay based on the spec you pre-order then he gets an update after that point from the mercedes dealer that he's going through that says all right in order to take delivery of this car it's actually going to cost you fifty thousand dollars more because this car is in such high demand that this is what we could get for it. Yeah. Which is like, well, okay, I was going to pay one amount. $50,000 is a whole lot of money. Literally more than what I just paid for my car. It could be an entire another car. That's going to be how much extra you mark up. Even if you can afford it, like you have to say no out of principle. That's an absurd ask for most people it's totally absurd i'm he's based in

la right yeah in california if i'm gonna assume there's a spot in the u.s where somebody probably would pay that oh no there's somebody will pay that that's crazy so the dealership knows like oh the the car market is pretty crazy right now and we get this in stock and we know based on probably others that we sold after this that that somebody is going to buy this for 50 grand more. Yeah. And so we're going to get that money however we get it. So they raise up the price on John. John actually bails.

Good. And he says no, cancels that order. And he actually goes over and he has actually one of the first lucid errors I've ever seen in the street by a buyer. So I'm also super interested in that experience. I think he's making a review on it or probably a video in the process of it i think it's a long-term thing yeah so that'd be cool to see um but the fact is that is just because of what a dealer has the power to do yeah and you know who looks to the worst in that entire position mercedes mercedes

yeah and it's a mercedes dealer which isn't directly Mercedes. So Mercedes looks terrible there. Now they're like this big luxury brand where like, that's probably not the most uncommon thing when you have these like lesser made super luxury cars, especially in LA. But then we also saw an article recently about some Ford dealerships doing this with the F-150. F-150 Lightning. Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry. Yeah. The Lightning. It seems to be, i think what we're seeing right now is this mix of evs being hyper popular tons of new evs coming out and also insane supply chain issues so we're seeing like it being harder and harder to get these evs so people are taking advantage of it where it's all these extremes that are coming together to really show the root of the problem here um and with and with the F one 50 lightning,

it's not quite the same in terms of the markup on the car, but what some dealerships were doing, and I think there was like two or three of these that there were reports on is people would be pretty far in the line for getting their delivery. And the dealerships were asking them to play like five or 10 extra thousand to kind of be at the front of the line. Hate it. Absolutely hate it. Um, because of those people who actually like trusted in it and were excited to do it and put their reservations down early and had it for the right models that were going to come early now are potentially getting pushed back because no one

wants to add five to 10,000 extra dollars onto a car payment. Yeah. But there's people out there that that's the thing. Exactly. They're doing it because they know people will pay it. Yep. And when you have a product that's in such high demand and I guess technically low supply right now because it's before it's even coming out,

they're just jockeying for place in line. Yeah, people are going to pay that. So they're taking advantage of it. And Ford recently, I think, came out with 200, a number of like 200,000 pre-orders or something like that. And then, so they're expecting that limit to not even be fully delivered till 2023 because of production.

And now they said they're upping their production, everything, we'll see that. I'm still fingers crossed on it actually shipping. But we do know that Ford has told us personally that they're very, very adamant about like making this rollout as smooth as possible to make sure to not leave a sour taste in the mouths of anybody who are previous. Early adopters.

Yeah, early adopters, previous ICE truck owners that are now switching to EV. They want that to be as seamless as possible. So Ford is now reacting. And then I guess that's the next thing we should talk about is how Ford's trying to deal with this because it's a hard scenario. I guess the one that caught my eye was the reselling that they're not allowing. Yeah, so do you want me to kind of explain

what they're doing? Yeah, sure. Super TLDR. So pretty much what they did was they're threatening dealerships to add, who are adding these extra incentives to pay money to get further in the line they're basically telling if they get caught doing any of that then they'll severely limit the supply that

they send during the first few uh deliveries of of these trucks so they'll just not deliver it pretty much to the dealerships doing that and then i guess to kind of combat that and make the deal because the dealers obviously are trying to make as much money as possible um to combat that they're saying that they're not suggesting but they're saying they are open to and that they support adding a clause into the contract of selling that tells the buyer they're not allowed to sell the car within one year of purchase right so basically that's to so anyone who is lucky enough to get an early f-150 lightning yes probably really wants to

drive it yes but there's going to be a percentage of people who got in line early and paid some extra dollars to move themselves up in line and get one early who just intends to flip it because they know or even just got in normal without paying any extra because of them trying to combat that, but yeah, who are going to flip it. Yeah, people who are basically scalpers, like what the PS5 has been going through for the past year and a half.

Sneakers. If you can build some bot or get some way to get some early stock, it is in such high demand that you can just immediately turn around and sell it for 50% more than you bought it for, and people will absolutely pay that and so ford doesn't you know doesn't like the idea of scalpers well yeah i think it's their like way of trying to like be like we want to do this so

the ford dealerships don't add that markup because the ford dealerships are worried about losing out on that income that now just a scalper is going to get rather than the dealership yeah so i guess it's it's them sort of and getting more control over the experience which is admirable you know i guess i understand that you want to you want to control the buyer's experience and make it as good as possible but like we said like it's my truck i want to sell it in six months or something sure it's this really weird position where it's like i think ultimately to prevent scalpers, it seems like the perfect decision of like anybody who's going to buy it and actually want to use the truck is obviously keeping it for a year.

But I just hate having the extra limitation. Like when you purchase something, it should be yours. This is something we talk about in right to repair all the time is like you're purchasing it. You're taking it off of their hands. It is is your product now you do what you want with it yeah and as much as i hate scalpers i still fully think you should be able to do what you want yeah what you own so yeah i also don't have a ton of pity for dealerships because in general

i don't love them yeah yeah that's the that, that's at the end of the day, probably the, the, the lesson learned is, uh, we could probably get away with not having dealerships. If we went direct to consumer, if car, car companies could get direct to consumer, they would love to do that.

Yeah. I, I would like to see a, a kind of in between because right now we see Tesla doing direct to consumer. And in general, I like that more. There clearly are still markups in that scenario. Like Tesla has raised the prices of their consumer. And in general, I like that more. There clearly are still markups in that scenario. Like Tesla has raised the prices of their cars. And, but you see that when you make

the purchase. Um, so that's great. I don't like being surprised. Obviously there are some benefits to dealerships of the fact of like my car broke. I need to get something this weekend. There's inventory on the lot. You can go test drive it. you have a salesman who's maybe like most tesla dealerships are usually like you go and pick up your car you do most of the stuff online so there is that like brick and mortar aspect of it there's an advantage but i would like to see um like the companies running stuff like that and maybe having that there i think there's a middle ground somewhere here um but we don't see it yet it going to take a while because it's a legislation issue and that takes a while.

God bless. Yeah. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about an even bigger legal action that happened. That's a perfect segue.

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and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. Welcome back. We are going to talk about gaming, Marques' favorite. Let's go. Yeah. But this was like gaming in the big, big news. Even you heard about it, I think. I heard about the dollars.

The dollars. Yeah. Nice dollars. Oh, yeah. Microsoft, for those of you who don't know, Microsoft just acquired Blizzard Activ activision for 69 billion dollars pause for wait a second hold on okay so i just i saw the headline and i had to go back and because 69 billion dollars is so much money i'm trying to like put this into scale with like other existing companies that you could buy for $69 billion.

Let me just look up real quick. That's a good point. Let me just look up real quick on Microsoft could have bought. So right now. I mean, MKBHD is worth more than $69 billion, obviously. Of course. But just to look up a quick like let's say Microsoft wanted to make a car, GM's market cap is 83 billion dollars right now ford's market cap is 90 billion dollars so if you just wanted to like quickly spin up a microsoft car you could

they could they could have bought ford they have a hundred and i think i'd check yesterday they have like 175 billion dollars of free cash just to toss around you know spend on things still sucks that bad woof uh they clearly have a priority in gaming and we can talk about why they chose to buy this company yeah i want to talk about that very specifically later um but that was just my my my last like fun fact was that uh facebook bought instagram for 1 billion dollars back in 2012. What a steal. $1 billion. It looked like a lot of money back then. That was 1 69th of what Microsoft just paid for this company. So why are they so into buying Blizzard Activision? Okay.

So if you're not aware, Blizzard and Activision are like, is arguably one of the top tier game developers just in the world right now. I'm sure I'm just going to name a couple of the games, like their biggest ones and i bet you you've heard of all of them okay all right we have warcraft starcraft diablo yep world of warcraft sure call of duty yep and this one actually surprised me but they own candy crush also which little little irk here when you're listing from the official xbox account it's made you so mad games that you own if you put candy crush in front of starcraft i'm going to lose my mind that was funny because candy crush is probably the most popular game totally that they own and as far as like household like when you see this on the the nine'clock news where they're like, find out why Microsoft paid

bazillions of dollars for this thing, they're probably going to say it's the owner of Candy Crush and maybe World of Warcraft. Like the two most popular... Call of Duty, yeah. Call of Duty, yeah. But yeah, as far as total gameplay time.

My irk with it is yes, Candy Crush is obviously making them more money. StarCraft II came out 11 years ago. There's a lot to it, starcraft is like iconic it is just completely iconic in the gaming industry i'm esports i don't think is where it is today without starcraft it's like one of the first major watched esports out there devil's advocate is mobile gaming where it is today without candy crush like we had a couple we had a couple big like segments we had the farmville era you remember farmville yes like that was like facebook gaming basically and then we had like mobile puzzle gaming come up with candy crush everybody played candy crush and now everyone's got some type of mobile game we all just played

wordle last week it's not that it came from Candy Crush, but mobile gaming spiked hard early. This is totally hypothetical. I don't actually know if this is true. My head's gonna explode. But Candy Crush brought mobile games to the scene, and that is just as iconic as StarCraft. I feel like steam is coming out of my ears right now.

No, I don't disagree with you at all. If I had the opportunity right now to be given a game to make money off of, I would pick Candy Crush over StarCraft a billion times over if I cared about money, which obviously if you're spending that much money, you want something that makes it, but just like, oh man.

Just fix your tweet. It's not the purest gaming headline you would have asked for. No, it's not the purest tweet. It's not the purest gaming headline you would have asked for. No, it made me, it's, it made me salty, but okay.

That's, that's that. That's like the little tiny gripe that I had with it. Um, I also wanted to point out, or I wanted to play a little game with you really quick because you said you've heard of Starcraft, right?

Yes. You ever played it? No. Okay. It's like a top down real time strategy game game i've seen people play it okay okay so like you know you're just controlling a bunch of troops and everything i just want to like real quick little fun thing i've posted a picture of the three races you can play in there and i want you to pick which race you would want to play so their names are terran zerg and protoss um blue is terran

red is zerg gold is protoss and i just want you to solely based off this picture pick which race you think looks the coolest and you would want to play i'm gonna go zerg for a couple reasons number one it's in the middle so it's clearly a primary character number two the one on the left and the right are both like sort of humanoid with armor where the one in the middle zerg is this sort of animal which implies a little more strength a little more power doesn't need as many artificial armor things the one on the right's more alien like okay but yes the left is human yeah yeah i'm going with that dragon thing zerg i just honestly wanted you to do this because i feel like um am i gonna get roasted for picking

that that's just the thing it's not whichever you pick. You'll get roasted. It's like a Pokemon. Zerg is from what I remember, and there might be balancing things, but Zerg was generally the hardest to play because the other ones were a little more overpowered for certain reasons, but I was terrible at StarCraft, so I did watch a lot of it.

But anyways, I have kind of three main questions, concerns, things I want to talk about in terms of this acquisition sure number one i hope bobby kotick the ceo of blizzard gets fired immediately um i will let everybody do their own research on what's happened but there is a lot of cover-up on a lot of really terrible things i think he's a terrible person um adam you can bleep this off bobby um i he's gonna get a payday out of this it makes me really mad but i'm glad he'll just be out of it because i really really like blizzard and i

really like the games that they make and i don't want him to have any part of it okay moving on the next thing is there is a world of warcraft which is one of their bigger games in terms of blizzard has a monthly subscription base to it and i'm really interested now with microsoft game pass which is a monthly subscription for games if things like world of warcraft or even in the future that take monthly subscriptions with it will potentially be added game pass yeah i think this is super niche i could see that happening i mean right now so we have xbox the game pass subscription service we also have what you know sony has been trying to do with the playstation and just generally like companies trying to make enticing packages for their gaming platforms we're gonna see a version

of this for ar i mean how many developing studios is facebook gonna buy before we realize that's what they're building all right so yeah i feel like that that could easily happen and they could build in it into xbox game pass the exclusivity part though would it be just in game pass or would That's what they're building. So yeah, I feel like that could easily happen and they could build into Xbox Game Pass. The exclusivity part though, would it be just in Game Pass or would it be like the option to pay a subscription in Game Pass? That's even a good point.

So that's why I think this kind of comes down to, could this be, it'll also based on price of Game Pass plus price of subscription. I believe subscription is $14 a month. So it's like for one game that you already had to pay for. So like, it's not cheap as a World of Warcraft player

in the past, it blows. But like, I'm interested in that. I'm also just like, what I think is really cool about this and Game Pass is Game Pass. And I think they're calling it something else. They're really trying to focus on cross-platform, which makes so much sense for Microsoft because they're obviously Windows

and they're obviously Xbox and cross-platform ever since Fortnite really has just been absolutely blowing up. It's like what makes or breaks a game I feel like recently in terms of multiplayer at least. And it makes such perfect sense for Microsoft to do this because a lot of these games are already cross-platform. Diablo, Overwatch. I don't know about Starcraft um but call of duty like

these are all games that are already very good at um being on console and on pc i don't know if all of them are specifically cross-platform but this gives it the option yeah i think that's really really cool you can play on the surface of duo theoretically sure you can with its cool touch. At 90 hertz, that's not bad. No. Yeah. You kind of derailed me on that one. But going on to the third thing I kind of wanted to talk about here, you briefly mentioned is exclusivity.

So we all know one of the reasons PlayStation is so good is because all of its exclusive content. All the games are just PlayStation only. Now, correct me if i'm wrong most of those are single player games right like we have spider-man spider-man's the main one i think of spider-man miles morales now is the latest one there's still some stuff like uh like the 2k franchise games for example they're on everything right um are they no they're on everything okay but you kind of have to it's kind of like like iMessage. Like it works better if you have like the features with the PlayStation, it'll work better when you're playing with a person on a PlayStation.

But yes, a lot of the games are Sony only. So like if I want to make a big headline here, that probably won't happen, but like Call of Duty potentially being exclusive to Xbox and PC and taken off of PlayStation would be crazy. It would be a huge, huge industry shakeup. You're talking about one of the biggest multiplayer games just because of how it's played on so many consoles and how big it is and so many people play on PlayStation that you would lose a big customer base,

but the amount of people, next-gen console, that are buying Xboxbox over playstation because of it yeah i think i think i could see them doing that with the long play with the next version yeah right so like currently you know microsoft just bought you know the entire company that includes call of duty it's like okay so we're not going to take it away from the playstation 5 but best believe the next version of call of duty will come out before the next consoles and so when you're gonna buy that next console that version of call of duty is going to be xbox and pc only so when you do come up to the next cycle of what console you're gonna buy

now that's gonna factor in because i don't think ripping it out of the store i remember when apple bought dark sky and it just got pulled from the play store you have a good really good point there i i don't think they rip it out i honestly don't think they go exclusive either but if we're talking about an a scenario the scenario right now is playstation was far more hyped than xbox it it's still almost impossible to get you can get xboxes they are still tough with supply chain stuff but like i think we can all agree that playstation 5 was way more hyped than xbox X. I don't even know the name exactly, but that's mostly because their naming sucks. So being able to pull something like Call of Duty

as an enticing element to bring you onto Xbox is not a bad chip to have in your hand. It's not out of the question. Exclusives get played all the time in the console wars as chips for these manufacturers to want you to pick one over the other if you spent 69 billion dollars on this game studio yeah i'd say you make some of those little exclusive to your platform and take advantage of that yeah i'm really interested to see what that is um and then i guess that kind of falls into my like last overall point

here which is obviously the main thing gamers in general should worry about with this is just like getting closer and closer to the monopolization of top tier gaming developers i mean microsoft is already huge as it is and now grabbing blizzard activision as like arguably being one of the biggest it's scary it's scary because of things like exclusivity and stuff like that and the way they make games and all that um i think one really good thing about this is lately in the last five years we've seen indie developers really make some like very very very popular games i mean you think among us fall guys pub g like those aren't coming

from these top tier like triple a i think that's triple a right um like so we are seeing some other things where these little guys can kind of squeak out there and create really good stuff it doesn't have the support although call of duty is apparently a total mess i'm sure tim could come in here and rant about all the cheaters that are going on right now um but i think it's safe to say for Microsoft, this is an amazing acquisition in terms of money in your pocket. That's what I was going to ask. So whenever there's a big sports team trade,

the question is always, who won the trade? Microsoft. You think Microsoft won? So my question is, is $69 billion a good price? $69 billion is only possible because of all the controversy that Blizzard's in right now, I think. I think most people agree with this.

Microsoft bought this at a discount. Wow. Because of how many issues they're having. It really did, and again, I don't want to get too deep into all the stuff that happened, but it is out there for everyone to read. There's a lot of really bad stuff

that was going on in those companies and i really hope they deal with that and i hope microsoft can do it better yeah because they make amazing games like i really really love blizzard stuff yeah i mean it's definitely at that price it has to be a long-term play you're not gonna make 50 billion dollars next year and it makes up for itself it's like like, this is this company, Microsoft, committing itself in the next decade to gaming in a lot of ways with Xbox and with all the stuff they're building. So it kind of reminds me of like,

whenever we see Facebook buy a new game developer, it's like, yeah, they're willing to spend a lot of money to get ahead of all the money they think they're gonna make when AR gaming becomes a big deal. So I think I see $69 billion. I'm like, well, okay, Microsoft clearly believes this is gonna keep going. I would even argue that like,

this is barely even a future move. The games they're taking right now are so big already. Call of Duty. It's like the amount of money you can make off Call of Duty is absolutely crazy. I have no idea how much. Candy Crush is nuts. Candy Crush probably makes a couple billion dollars

probably and then the funny thing is is the blizzard games are like almost all of them are due for like some sort of refresh i mean overwatch 2 has been hyped for a while still isn't out yet starcraft 2 was made in 2010 where starcraft 3 like they're fine. Yeah, they'll be totally fine. Yeah, what are the numbers? Candy Crush revenue in 2021. Hold on, let me find an accurate number. Supposedly, Call of Duty in November of 2021 made $30.37 million just in November. Just in November, which is like, that's a lot. If you multiply that out, if you take that as an average for 12 months, that's 300, 400 million, which is not a lot compared to 79 billion. It's not very much.

Yeah, and apparently Candy Crush generated $1.19 billion in 2020. That's wild. Call of Duty also, that November number is like from a game that's out already. Like that's not including like release date of things. So like there'll be huge, huge spikes when you're paying full price for a new game. And they they churn those out. So, yeah, I think this is an insane win for Microsoft and a semi worrying thing for gamers in general.

God, they make so much money. Candy Crush had eight hundred fifty seven million in profit in 2020. Jesus. All right. Well, you know what? I think you won, Microsoft. I think you made the right call. All right.

Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about a little more news. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're not alone. If you ask nine experts,

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the other day called Google products may be banned from importing into the United States. Or I think even some of them were more specifically like you might not be able to buy a Pixel 6 in the U.S. Isn't there like a rule about, well, when there's a question mark in a headline, the answer is always no. I think this is one of those. It's like, will Google phones be banned in the U.S.? Probably not. Yeah. But there is some legit legal bias.

If you're interested in the story behind it, we're just going to do a pretty quick TLDR here because I thought it was interesting to talk about. Yeah. So what we're mostly seeing or what is stemming from this whole scenario is pretty much Sonos filed copyright infringement lawsuit against Google for five different copyrights. It's pretty much all of them have to do with like home audio systems and pairing

and volume control like easy wireless stuff. A lot of audio interface stuff. So it seems like kind of mundane because like Google should obviously be able to do all of that stuff themselves. So it's like okay maybe they just found a way to do it because it's volume controls it's pairing whatever um but sonos filed the copyright infringement and the itc actually ruled that and validated that

google infringed on all five patents that they listed so not a great look despite google denying that they didn't do that of course um so they they're going to have some issues now with that. And now this doesn't just affect Pixel phones. It's like, if you think of Pixels and anything Google makes, Pixels, Chromecast, Nest, Google Home, there's multiple different ways and speakers that Google have that are probably using this infringed system.

So because of that, and because they're copying something from a US patent that's with Sonos, it could potentially ban importing of products with that infringement on it into the US. So like now we're thinking of potentially not being able to get your Pixel 6. You might not be able to get any Pixels. You might not be able to get a Google Home or a Chromecast or a Nest imported in any way. I don't see that ever happening because there's a couple ways around this.

Number one, Sonos said that Google can pay royalties for the technology. Of course. I'm sure Sonos would love if they did that. I'm sure Google will find some sort of way to get around this, whether hopefully that doesn't involve watering down all their stuff

and making it harder for consumers the way i kind of see this here is like it's just pairing your speakers i guess volume controls a little more but it's like pairing your speaker once not that huge of a deal but but like i totally understand sonos should be mad about this they made it they got an official ruling that it copied them enough like that is a win. It's a win for Sonos. You know what's funny? Sonos is one of those companies where I hear about them constantly. I've never used any of their products.

I've never actually owned a Sonos setup or a Sonos speaker pair or any of those things. Well, our Bixby speaker is a Sonos speaker. Right. We had one and we literally never used it. We just turned it into a Bixby speaker. So I always wonder, people really like Sonos. If you look on their site, they're very expensive. They're premium. Right. We had one and we literally never used it. We just turned it into a Bixby speaker. So I always wonder, people really like Sonos. If you look on their site, they're very expensive.

They're premium. They clearly do a good job. So the fact that Google infringed on their patents must mean they're doing something right. Yeah, they clearly are. They're doing well. So that'll be interesting to see what Google does. Adam's a sound person. Have you ever fully embraced a Sonos setup? Not personally, but I've reviewed them in the past and they're pretty great really i was gonna say they're great they're very easy to set up now that i've now that i own like a house and not just doing it in like an apartment it's definitely more of something i would be interested in maybe i should look into them yeah yeah it's less for

well not less for but it's like if you're a real home theater geek they're probably not for you but if you're just trying to like play music in different rooms and things like that and you want it to sound good then yeah they're pretty great yeah at this point i don't do a whole lot of playing music in different rooms do they do outdoor speakers they i think they have an outdoor they have like i would have a tv speaker they have a like a small bluetooth speaker they have an outdoor yeah i was gonna say they have bluetooth speakers that i don't know about outdoors i still i like well and sonos wouldn't help this but like google hear me out outdoor google home max or just outdoor mounted google home that i can like run through my siding or up through my attic because i want my google home outdoor waterproof where i can like i don't

like bringing bluetooth speakers to like a barbecue at my house because if I walk away with my phone I either have to leave my phone there or walk away and it dies so I just bring my google home outside and put it on the deck and everyone can play from it if they're on the wi-fi no one's having like connection issues just give me an outdoor one that I can leave out there so it can get rained on I like how nobody even expects anything close to that from apple like we got a home pod and then we got a home pod mini you can afford it we're happy like apple apple's not going to do seven or eight more home pod variations they did colors though they did a bunch of home pod colors for mini um and you can pair some home pod minis and stereo and that's a thing but yeah no i i think my takeaway from this is huh sonos is doing something

right maybe i should check out some sonos stuff yeah cool i also wanted to deliver a quick eulogy we lost a good friend um and that friend's name was youtube originals the youtube originals program is officially just sort of being wound down there's actually going to be like one or two that still exist um but for the most part, all of the different shows, like, I don't know if you've watched any YouTube originals, but all the different shows that existed under that umbrella that were funded.

Jake Roper ones. Yeah. Love that one. Can you survive the movies by Jake Roper. Vsauce had an entire series. Let me find the name real quick. Vsauce. Can you survive the movies?

The Harry Potter one was fantastic. I love them. Casey was a gem in that. Yeah. You were also in it on the Mad Max one. I was in a Can You Survive the Movies episode, which was sick. That series was Emmy nominated. Yeah.

I also really liked Minefield by Vsauce. I haven't seen that actually. It was just a sort of a brain related type of thing. There was one where he was in like a completely blank room with the lights on for like two straight days or something crazy like that. And slowly went crazy with the cameras. It was great. Um, retro tech is also another YouTube original. So that's a fun, like, you know, we had a lot of fun. We learned a lot from retro tech, both the production side of it and the actual research and making the show.

Had a lot of fun with it. We did two seasons of it. The first season was also Emmy nominated, which is sick. But yeah, just the program itself was cool because it actually gave creators a little bit of funding, a little bit of extra backing to do something bigger that you might not have actually originally been able to do. So I know people like Jake were like super into that like how else would you find the resources to put together such an incredible show and just put it out for free on the internet put it out on youtube so uh yeah it's it's sort of winding down i wonder if there's something that's going to be spun up to replace it i guess not it's probably still sort of being worked on but yeah retro tech as we

know it is over now that doesn't mean maybe we can't get our hands on the ip and do our own season i think that would be fun that'll be a we'll figure that out later we'll work on that we'll figure that out that's obviously some legal conversations but um the fun fact of this is youtube's uh put a lot of backing into getting a lot of impressions for Retro Tech. And I just pulled this up because some of you might not know this. The most viewed video I've ever made is actually a TikTok. But the second most viewed video I've ever made is the first episode on the Game Boy for Retro Tech. And that has 33.7 million views.

Game Boy for Retro Tech and that has 33.7 million views but it has that many views because it was paid for many times over by the originals team to be impressions for you know just all over the internet you can just find it as running as a pre-roll it's recommended alongside stuff it has 2.2 billion impressions oh you didn't read that number before holy cow that's a lot so it has a 0.4 percent click-through rate obviously so it is cool it is cool that it has a lot of impressions and they just we shared it to as many people as possible um but i also had my own theory that uh some of these pumping metrics actually sort of were like an anchor on the channel. Like the average view duration on this 23-minute video is one minute and 50 seconds. That's brutal.

So when you add up 33 million views with an average view duration of one minute and 50 seconds, I think that legitimately dragged the channel's average view duration down. Typically YouTube, yeah. So there's some weird quirks about the Originals program like that um but at the end of the day we did get to do something really cool with retro tech and here's my my

plea now to uh i guess still google but youtube okay so would you agree that youtube originals was like part of that was to try and entice people to go into youtube premium because a lot of times like either they were locked behind youtube premium or with retro tech it was like you could binge all of it before they came out week by week right youtube premium needs it has an issue right now and i add freeze great but it needs something more enticing um and i've said this many times before and many people have done this but like copy twitch prime when you have youtube premium give somebody give those users every month one free channel membership and then they can use it from different channels they can use it they can unlock perks maybe it's the first time they ever join a channel so they can see what like the

private discords are like or but then they get some badges which there's get out of here that's not happening they already like the subscription thing and they did emotes it's already the same thing like they're trying to drag more people into live streaming on youtube this would help that so much it would help other creators because they're going to get paid that little cut of the subscription aspect of it the membership aspect of it but it's also going to help other creators because if my first month i decided to join the mkbhd channel i'm like oh this is really cool but now this channel over here i really like they have a membership program either maybe next month month i'm going to try that and then miss the mkbhd one

so now i'm going to spend my own money and get the membership over there right it seems so obvious and i'm sure there's some reason why they haven't done it but throw that in the garbage and do it anyways because i'm clearly the expert and yeah there's there's some reason why they haven't done it, but throw that in the garbage and do it anyways because I'm clearly the expert in this scenario. Yeah, there's so many things that I think YouTube should try. Yeah, just try it. And that's clearly one of them that would be super smart. If you can try creating your whole own YouTube originals and buy whole production teams with YouTube,

you can try free memberships for a month or a couple months I think they're basically were sort of coming at Netflix like everywhere you look on YouTube whenever you see anything like officially backed by YouTube it's always it always seems to be YouTube attacking old media like YouTube wants to you know Netflix is old media now it is I mean but TV though like every time they bring those like late night shows and they get promoted and trending and everything. And it's like, this is just YouTube trying to replace TV. And Netflix was one of those like other larger established, not traditional, but everyone understands what Netflix is and YouTube going, Hey, we can do that too. Look, we have all

these original content pieces that are only available on YouTube and they're, they're paid for just like Netflix stuff, but it's really good. It's worth paying for it. You want to be a subscriber too, don't you? Um, and I wish they sort of pushed in the other direction too, of like supporting, and they kind of are doing a little bit of this, but supporting like the newer creators, supporting the shorts and the, and the TikToks of the world and all of these, you know, creator made things that are already being built, the live streamers. So i kind of i want all of it to be successful but that's just the way i see like most of youtube's most visible efforts is like we want to be traditional media which is fascinating no also one last random stat nice the uh retro tech game boy episode has the highest female to male ratio of any video on the channel is it double digits

it is what do you put like it's crazy first of all we're joking about this because it's something we would love to have much much better but i don't i don't remember i've been here five years now and i don't remember a single video with as many tech videos as we make basically i'm always trying to make it as broadly helpful and appealing as possible. But something we've noticed is mostly men and guys watch tech videos. And so the overall, yeah, tech videos in general.

Yeah, yeah, in general. I don't know any tech channels, both male or female creators with over a 10% female viewership. So yeah, mine's been around seven or 8% for a long time. And we're always like, oh, maybe this one will be double digits. Maybe the iPhone video will get over 10%

or something like that. Because it's so broad. It's just like you assume it leaks a little past the tech. Exactly. It's the everyone audience. Do you want to take a guess at what the Retro Tech Game Boy episode is? 10.1.

It's higher than that. 10.2? It's higher. 11? It is over 10.1. It's a little, it's higher than that. 10.2? It's higher. 11? Is, it is over 20. Whoa. Yeah. Let's go.

23.6%. Oh, wait, but these were served as ads. Right, this was served to like the world. Oh, man, are you still that bad? It's the Game Boy, you know, it's like this universally, everyone knows what the Game Boy is, and it was served to 2 billion people, but out of all the people who clicked it,

out of all the 33 million who actually clicked it, 23% were female. So that's a fun little fact. So shout out to YouTube Originals for bending that ratio a little bit. That's all we got for this week. It's gonna be, is it February next time we talk? No, it's not.

It's still January. No, but it is our 100th episode. Oh, that's the next episode. Okay, well, we're gonna have to do but it is our 100th episode. Oh, that's the next episode. Okay. Well, we're going to have to do something big or something special. Something fun. Yeah.

Definitely sitting down in these chairs again. Yeah, that'll be the teaser. That's how big it is. Yeah. All right, cool. Nice. I don't have any other teasers. Thanks for watching, listening.

Catch you guys in episode 100. Peace. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina. We're partnered with Vox Media and our intro after music was created by Vane Sill.