Phil Spencer Interview: Redfall Reviews, Activision Deal - Kinda Funny Xcast Ep. 137

[troyan]

@cheapchips
BotW and TotK are only two games within 10 years. How many games has Microsoft released in the last ten years which have any real impact? There are several Forzas, Gears, Halos but they are always the same games and they are all good. But in the end: Where are the true flagship titles? Something people really want to play? Nintendo did it six years ago with BotW.

Microsoft tries to differentiate with faster hardware. But this more performance couldnt save Redfall.

 

[Nesh]

It’s inevitable and people will get over it eventually. As silicon costs rise it won’t make sense to have all that expensive hardware just sitting in everyone’s living room doing nothing all day. Cloud is a much more cost efficient solution from a hardware standpoint. Internet infrastructure and people’s expectations will evolve in time. I don’t see it going any other way as the cost of a cloud subscription will get more attractive as hardware costs rise.

Actually it is more complicated than that. With hardware units, you sell the hardware once and the user is the one dealing with the cost of running it apart from some online services and online stores that are ran by the platform holder. If the player at some point stops playing, the effect is mostly opportunity cost rather than an expense for the company. In other words the responsibility of operating hardware is transferred to the user.

With Cloud it transfers all the responsibility of the hardware operation to the cloud service owner. Having to maintain, upgrade, have enough hardware available after planning for the possibility of congestion, planning for downtime and service recovery etc. And even after all these, the quality of the service may be affected by factors out of the company's control that might result to unsatisfied consumers projecting the experience on the company (like for example a bad connection from your ISP).

The cost of that responsibility will be reflected as much more costs passed on to the consumer in the long run.

 

[cheapchips]

@cheapchips
BotW and TotK are only two games within 10 years. How many games has Microsoft released in the last ten years which have any real impact? There are several Forzas, Gears, Halos but they are always the same games and they are all good. But in the end: Where are the true flagship titles? Something people really want to play? Nintendo did it six years ago with BotW.

Microsoft tries to differentiate with faster hardware. But this more performance couldnt save Redfall.

That's not really the case. They needed to have a powerful hardware message at the Series launch to combat the Xbone's failure on that front. The XSS, xCloud, PC and Gamepass and play your game anywhere are how they're trying to differentiate themselves.

They 'just' need a frequent flow of good and interesting games to support that strategy. The last four years of buying studios has been about that. It's not paying off for them yet. Redfall not delivering doesn't mean much on it's own. By Phil's account at least, seems like it was a Bethesda project that MS left alone and it didn't work out. It doesn't tell us much about future titles from Bethesda, other MS studios or even Arkane Austin.

Game development fails all the time, big and small.

 

[stu11]

Game ownership legally disappeared years ago, for the most part you now own a licence to use a game and that licence can be withdrawn at any point. That said, nobody has really abused this although if you heavily invest in digital libraries and lose access to that library because of a hack, you'll quickly realise how screwed you are compared to owning a game on a disc for a console.

Acknowledging that the game ownership vs licensing situation is unlikely to revert any time soon, it would be nice if there were more options to "buy" games as we do now and run them on whatever remote hardware suits your performance/budget. E.g. swapping the PC under/on your desk for one elsewhere.

One of the reasons I've not really invested too much time or money in modern games recently is due to the download nature of games these days. I guess at some point I'll just have to get over it ..lol. I do have some download games on my Steam, Ubisoft Connect and EGS but most of those I've picked up for free either through Amazon Prime or the weekly free games from EGS. I did buy the Xbox360 version of Daytona USA a few weeks ago.. just before it was supposed to be delisted from the store.

There will be more options than just subscription services. Nvidia and stadia are both companies in which you pay for titles and only pay for the access.

Considering the rising cost of hardware, I largely suspect more people will be moving towards cloud than away. The reality is, like cars, your hardware is sitting there doing nothing most of the time much like our cars.

Shared services maximizes the usage of the hardware. Means you can serve more with less.

I’m sure 25 years ago before iPhone, if you told PC users that the majority of users would interact with the internet and applications using a phone and not a PC, most people would tell you no way, need a keyboard and mouse.

But times have changed so quickly, as will people’s opinion on needing to own the hardware to run games. Children will grow up playing on the cloud on whatever device they own wherever they are, and ask about how archaic it is to lug plastic around.

I've tried out the free Luna option offered to Prime subscribers with mixed results tbh. I do like that Luna is now allowing Prime subscribers to access their Ubisoft Connect account and play those games through the Cloud, would be nice if they do the same with EGS also. I tried out Assassin's Creed Unity for about 25 mins the other week on Luna and it was fine for about 24 of those 25 minutes .. until it crapped out and kicked me off. May try the free Nvidia tier at some point too.

 

[Nesh]

One of the reasons I've not really invested too much time or money in modern games recently is due to the download nature of games these days. I guess at some point I'll just have to get over it ..lol. I do have some download games on my Steam, Ubisoft Connect and EGS but most of those I've picked up for free either through Amazon Prime or the weekly free games from EGS. I did buy the Xbox360 version of Daytona USA a few weeks ago.. just before it was supposed to be delisted from the store.

I did the same with the PS3 version. I didnt want to lose the perfect version of the game. But I ve noticed something worryingsome with the Digital or semidigital nature of games.
Probably this has to do with the internal battery of my PS3 dying too which probably reset the internal date/time of my console.
I couldnt play the game unless I connected with the internet to set the date through it.
I also tried to play my disk version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and it wouldnt load for the same reason. I was getting an error message regarding my save or DLC. I dont remember which one. This game was mimicking the character reveal of the arcade cabinets.
For example old Tekken games in the arcades had locked hidden characters. The characters werent unlocked if you finished the game. Rather these characters would appear gradually after specific dates. . The same counted for Tekken Tag Tournament 2. As time passed, characters were automatically revealed. I cant remember if the characters were automatically downloaded or if they were in the disk after specific dates. But the game is partially or fully unplayable due to its internet connected nature.

 

[eastmen]

None of them have the cloud infrastructure of MS and Azure. Being number one revenue generator from gaming is nothing like being able to dominate the cloud gaming market from already having a $gazillion international cloud infrastructure.

The iPod/iPhone wasn't invented for gaming, but it generates huge income from gaming. Apple didn't get massive gaming revenue because of their gaming credentials but their platform.
Likewise, the cloud wasn't invented for gaming but it has the potential to gain huge revenues from it.

None of them currently perhaps. However Amazon already does and just entered the UK streaming market with 13m subscribers and growing. They are already in the usa also . Sony is already in the streaming market and has been there for 10 years. That was more than enough to build up cloud streaming.

Seems like a lot of people here are upset because MS's investments have the ability to pay off and now want them to have to pay for that.

 

[eastmen]

@cheapchips
BotW and TotK are only two games within 10 years. How many games has Microsoft released in the last ten years which have any real impact? There are several Forzas, Gears, Halos but they are always the same games and they are all good. But in the end: Where are the true flagship titles? Something people really want to play? Nintendo did it six years ago with BotW.

Microsoft tries to differentiate with faster hardware. But this more performance couldnt save Redfall.

I could only imagine how badly TOTK would be nitpicked for its horribly outdated graphics if it was an Xbox release. Nintendo is afforded allowances that MS isn't. Everyone loved Mario kart on the switch but I had already bought the same exact game with the same graphics on the wii u. They just named it deluxe and everyone loved it. That isn't something MS could get away with. Even sony had to actually work to improve the graphics in the last of us remasters for people to be interested in it.

So its really easy to take a game from 2017 and over 6 years reuse the same assets and just make more content for it. 6 years is a long time in game development

 

[iroboto]

New Zelda sits at 97% Metacritics. Runs on a 300 GFLOPs console from 2017. Microsoft may or may not be able to overtake Sony but there doesnt exist any excuses for boring and/or bad games.

Right. 1 company in all of games industry makes a Zelda, and everyone else is expected to make the same quality because they can throw money at the problem.

I would love to see the pitch from a studio.

Trust me guys, just give me a 2 billion dollars, we'll make the next Zelda.

Give me 1 billion dollars, I'll make the star wars.

Give me 1 billion dollars, I'll write the next Harry Potter.

....

 

[Johnny Awesome]

MS needs games and they are working on it. It's funny though. I believe there is a core audience of GP that really doesn't care that Redfall isn't amazing. It's just a new game they are having fun playing even with all its flaws, until the next GP release. My brother just plays every new game on GP for about 4 hours and then he says it's "too hard" and moves on to the next game until he gets stumped. Every once in a while he encounters something he really loves and plays it over and over like Dishonored, which he has completed 4 times. We dialed into everything people sometimes think this stuff matters more than it does. In the end MS needs to do much better though. Maybe Redfall will be their No Man's Sky.

 

[cheapchips]

Right. 1 company in all of games industry makes a Zelda, and everyone else is expected to make the same quality because they can throw money at the problem.

I would love to see the pitch from a studio.

Trust me guys, just give me a 2 billion dollars, we'll make the next Zelda.

Give me 1 billion dollars, I'll make the star wars.

Give me 1 billion dollars, I'll write the next Harry Potter.

....

Give me 1 billion dollars, I'll make the best space sim.

 

[eastmen]

Give me 1 billion dollars, I'll make the best space sim.

Hey now , even Chris Roberts is only at 570m for the best space sim ever

 

[Shifty Geezer]

None of them currently perhaps. However Amazon already does and just entered the UK streaming market with 13m subscribers and growing. They are already in the usa also . Sony is already in the streaming market and has been there for 10 years. That was more than enough to build up cloud streaming.

You say that like every other company in the market didn't fold. That's kinda like saying because Virtuality started in 1985, by 1995 they should have had a dominating presence in the VR market. You can't make a market appear faster than it's ready. Cloud tech was minimal a decade ago; it's just starting to ramp up. And it's all about the infrastructure, and AFAIK only three companies have the infrastructure to manage cloud on a global scale. Sony or Tenent having some more games than MS is nothing compared to datacentre infrastructure needed. Compae MS's investments, studio acquisitions and hardware investments, with Sony's and tell me who has a lot of investment catch-up needed to match the leader...

 

[eastmen]

You say that like every other company in the market didn't fold. That's kinda like saying because Virtuality started in 1985, by 1995 they should have had a dominating presence in the VR market. You can't make a market appear faster than it's ready. Cloud tech was minimal a decade ago; it's just starting to ramp up. And it's all about the infrastructure, and AFAIK only three companies have the infrastructure to manage cloud on a global scale. Sony or Tenent having some more games than MS is nothing compared to datacentre infrastructure needed. Compae MS's investments, studio acquisitions and hardware investments, with Sony's and tell me who has a lot of investment catch-up needed to match the leader...

Sorry did I miss sony folding and exiting the cloud market ? They bought Gakki a decade ago. It was more than enough time to scale up cloud streaming and yet they barely did anything with it until MS entered the market. If sony is behind then its only sony's fault. Unlike the console market sony likely bought gakki to kill off the market and not to actually let it grow. I am sure Sony's service would be come extremely popular even if they just put their first part titles on the service 6 months after they released on the console.

Tencent is gigantic and can roll out a cloud gaming infrastructure in China like its nothing and expand out in the world. Sony like I said already bought the biggest cloud gaming company a decade ago and until MS rolled out xcloud was the market leader. There is nothing stopping Sony from expanding their own cloud services except themselves. They have already said they don't wnat to change their business model. Apple can also enter the market easily. They have more than enough money. Google can always re-enter the market when they choose too. Google could just roll out streaming integrated into youtube

 

[Nesh]

Sorry did I miss sony folding and exiting the cloud market ? They bought Gakki a decade ago. It was more than enough time to scale up cloud streaming and yet they barely did anything with it until MS entered the market. If sony is behind then its only sony's fault. Unlike the console market sony likely bought gakki to kill off the market and not to actually let it grow. I am sure Sony's service would be come extremely popular even if they just put their first part titles on the service 6 months after they released on the console.

Tencent is gigantic and can roll out a cloud gaming infrastructure in China like its nothing and expand out in the world. Sony like I said already bought the biggest cloud gaming company a decade ago and until MS rolled out xcloud was the market leader. There is nothing stopping Sony from expanding their own cloud services except themselves. They have already said they don't wnat to change their business model. Apple can also enter the market easily. They have more than enough money. Google can always re-enter the market when they choose too. Google could just roll out streaming integrated into youtube

What do you mean they barely did anything until MS entered the market? Can you be more specific and explain exactly what they didnt do and did after MS entered the market and why they shouldnt have done anything?
Gaikai didnt take the world by the storm before the purcahse, and there is a chance the company might have exited if it wasnt for Sony to use the Playstation branding and integration to keep it alive.
In addition Sony has interest in using the Gaikai infrastructure for Playstation games, whereas its competitors including MS can expand their reach providing PC games that perform much better than they would on a Playstation console.
Far bigger companies with much more resources like Google and Amazon struggled to capture the market. The market just isnt there, and Sony has less resources than its competitors. MS owns the resources and infrastructure that can reach a much bigger market when the industry is mature enough. Especially with Zenimax and if they manage to acquire ABK on top of that. Because all their IPs are established titles, they are some of the biggest publishers in the world that competing platforms will have to negotiate with MS, a competitor, to grant access which will be under MS's terms and if they will allow their games to be available.

Gaikai still exists withing the PS Plus subscription when PS Now was absorbed into it.

OnLive, another company which started in 2009 providing cloud gaming went defunk.

 

[stu11]

What do you mean they barely did anything until MS entered the market? Can you be more specific and explain exactly what they didnt do and did after MS entered the market and why they shouldnt have done anything?
Gaikai didnt take the world by the storm before the purcahse, and there is a chance the company might have exited if it wasnt for Sony to use the Playstation branding and integration to keep it alive.
In addition Sony has interest in using the Gaikai infrastructure for Playstation games, whereas its competitors including MS can expand their reach providing PC games that perform much better than they would on a Playstation console.
Far bigger companies with much more resources like Google and Amazon struggled to capture the market. The market just isnt there, and Sony has less resources than its competitors. MS owns the resources and infrastructure that can reach a much bigger market when the industry is mature enough. Especially with Zenimax and if they manage to acquire ABK on top of that. Because all their IPs are established titles, they are some of the biggest publishers in the world that competing platforms will have to negotiate with MS, a competitor, to grant access which will be under MS's terms and if they will allow their games to be available.

Gaikai still exists withing the PS Plus subscription when PS Now was absorbed into it.

OnLive, another company which started in 2009 providing cloud gaming went defunk.

LOL ... I guess @Eastman considers 3.2 milllion subcribers to be "barely anything" now. And thats as of May 2021, 2 years ago. That was a 100% increase over 2020 figures, I have to wonder how many there are now.



Quote " PS Now is, admittedly, a footnote on the list of PlayStation services these days – but its number of subscribers has been gradually growing. As of the end of March this year, the service had 3.2 million members, which is dwarfed by PS Plus’ ginormous 47.6 million – but is almost double where it was at the same time in 2020."


And that's for a service that Sony doesn't really advertise that much or push hard, compared to the other PS related services. And it seems that Sony is starting to expand their investment in PS cloud services as well by hiring more people for its cloud division

Quote "Sony has long been a major player in the gaming industry, with its popular PlayStation consoles dominating the market. In recent years, the company has also been making strides in cloud gaming with its PlayStation Now service. Now, new job listings and patents suggest that Sony has big plans for the future of PlayStation Now.


I guess that's considered "barely anything" to Eastman ..lol

 

[trinibwoy]

Actually it is more complicated than that. With hardware units, you sell the hardware once and the user is the one dealing with the cost of running it apart from some online services and online stores that are ran by the platform holder. If the player at some point stops playing, the effect is mostly opportunity cost rather than an expense for the company. In other words the responsibility of operating hardware is transferred to the user.

With Cloud it transfers all the responsibility of the hardware operation to the cloud service owner. Having to maintain, upgrade, have enough hardware available after planning for the possibility of congestion, planning for downtime and service recovery etc. And even after all these, the quality of the service may be affected by factors out of the company's control that might result to unsatisfied consumers projecting the experience on the company (like for example a bad connection from your ISP).

The cost of that responsibility will be reflected as much more costs passed on to the consumer in the long run.

That’s all true but those costs will be offset by significantly higher margins.