Voxels

Hi, I'm Sadek. And I'm Christian. And this is episode three of Voxels. We're starting

with a better discourse than last time. I got to say this one is more interesting, at least

less about a kind of game that I don't like. It's about, we got...

Okay, so let me... Wait, wait, before I introduce the topic, all right,

let's take a step back. And I want to talk to you...

I want to come clean on not engaging faithfully with the discourse because I have been living

for this drama. I normally, I'm not the kind of person who's watching the PC YouTube clickbait

where it's like, "AMD lied. Intel cheated." I normally, I don't watch that stuff.

But for this one, so this week's discourse is the Xbox going third-party stuff. And I have been

with an ad blocker on, in incognito. I'm sorry, none of you deserve ad views

or any money for this content because it is objective garbage. But I've been living to

watch the "Did Phil Lie" YouTube videos. Okay, so before we go into it, I think we should say

what we're talking about here. So, "credible sources" have said that... This news started

bubbling up. Multiple sources have come out and said that Microsoft is thinking about...

Microsoft is going to, not just thinking about, Microsoft is going to put

previously Xbox exclusive games on PlayStation. And they're moving away from exclusives. Basically,

Starfield is going to be on PlayStation, stuff like that. So, they're just like,

"This is the plan going forward." And Microsoft officially has not said this.

They will have a press release thing, right? Next, this upcoming week, there's going to be...

They said... They put a tweet out saying... Or sorry, a sheet, whatever you call it on X now.

They put out some sheet saying that... Damn, I didn't even think of that. That just came off

top of my head. Write it down. But anyways, so they put down a post stating, "Hey, we're listening.

And next week, we are going to have a business communication on the future of the business

platforms," or something like that. MF: Oh, that's... Sure. That's a

corporate press release word. Sure. Yeah. So, something is going to happen. We don't know the

exact details. Obviously, all we've heard is from... All we've heard is basically leaks and rumors,

and nothing definite yet. But which, of course, means that everybody, literally every gaming

outlet, everybody who cares about video games is talking about this stuff. And so are we,

because it's a great... It's one of those topics where you can just endlessly debate and talk about

what is going to happen. So first of all, what's your thought? What's the overarching thought on

this? I don't think we actually introduced the news properly. So the rumor is Starfield,

HiFiRush, and Sea of Thieves would be going to PlayStation and/or Switch. I mean, good?

I don't see what the issue is with this. MF: Yeah. There's no problem. There's literally...

I think if you've been dealing with Microsoft Exclusive for the last, I'd say, five years,

you'd have noticed that Microsoft has steadily cared less and less about exclusives as they are,

because they want people... Their big play, I've been talking about this for literally years now,

is services. It's the ecosystem play. They don't care about the Xbox hardware as it is. The Xbox

hardware is nice, and it's like, here you can play all of the games on the Xbox platform. But

they're thinking bigger. They're thinking that they can sell these games on Steam,

as they have been doing for the last few years. Forza Horizon 5 is on Steam. All these Microsoft

"exclusives" are on Steam and not just on the Windows #Microsoft store. So Microsoft is just

like, "These games are going to be everywhere now. Whatever platform wants these games can have

these games." That's the rumor. Yeah, that's the rumor. Well, that's the rumor, to be clear. That's

the rumor. We don't have it confirmed yet. I want to just interject for one moment, because I need

to... I just want to point out the absurdity of a little something I've been seeing in the Xbox land,

Sony ponies, Samsung Knights. But basically, it's been a lot of people being like, "Well,

why have a console if the games are exclusive?" And I'm just sitting here being like, "So why

buy a Surface if you can build a gaming PC?" What these gamers don't understand is,

Microsoft's whole plan forever and ever has always been to just put all their software on other

platforms, right? Imagine if we had this conversation, right? Let's swap out a few vowels

in this game of Mad Libs. So computer enthusiasts this week are mad because Microsoft decided to put

Microsoft Office on Mac, therefore killing its Windows exclusivity. Yeah, so this argument

is partly the fault of the marketing of a decade plus of marketing from PlayStation,

from Sony, and from Microsoft. The companies are to blame for the marketing thing over here.

They have been marketing their devices as, "You should play video games here. We got the good

games. We got the exclusive games," right? I think this is the end result of that. Now,

you're at a point where people are "invested" into these platforms. People have spent

thousands of dollars on hardware, on video games, on services on these platforms, right? And now,

I kind of understand it from a certain point of view because I'm not invested. It's very

outsider. I don't buy this, any of this shit, but a lot of people who've been buying an Xbox

since the original Xbox days, people who have had an Xbox 360, had an Xbox One, have an Xbox Series

S or X, they are fully invested into the Xbox brand, right? They buy games on Xbox. They've

been on Xbox Live Gold or whatever it used to be called. I forget. They're fully invested. It's

like a part of their identity at this point, which is kind of depressing, but it is. So,

I kind of understand why people are like, "What would happen to Xbox without exclusives?" Because

exclusives have been part of the identity, right? Even as a non-console gamer, when I think of

Xbox exclusive, I think Halo, right? Halo is like the big tentpole, or it used to be, really.

Halo used to be like the big tentpole Xbox exclusive, right? If whenever people thought

of Xbox, they thought Halo or Call of Duty, right? Even though Call of Duty was never exclusive.

To Xbox, Call of Duty was massive because of the popularity of Xbox 360, right? And the

Xbox Live online service. There's a whole identity that they have created for the last

however many years. And all of a sudden, people are just like, "Wait a second. You mean to say

my investment is not going to continue to be rewarded?"

Oh my God. Thinking about games consoles as an investment.

Exactly. I'm not even joking, right? It's an emotional investment. I'm talking about financial

investment also. It's like an emotional investment. You feel sentimental about the hardware, right? Or

the software, which is, I kind of understand why. If you've been in the ecosystem for a long time,

since the beginning or since the Xbox 360, you're like, "Is Phil Spencer betraying Xbox?"

Phil lied.

It seems silly to me from an outsider point of view, but I kind of get it.

If you really think about it for a second, people are just kind of mad that games that they can play

that other people get to play, and they're like, "No, they don't get to play these games. These

games are for us specifically." So it's just like, exclusives are bad. That's all I'm going to say.

I hope this means that if Microsoft goes ahead with this, and it does mean that exclusives,

like one big video game publisher is just like, "No, we're not going to do exclusives anymore."

I hope this just means that exclusives become less and less important, because I just find them,

honestly, kind of just really annoying. It's bad for everybody. It's not good to have exclusives.

You could argue that exclusives are the reason some games get made, but at the same time,

what does it even mean?

Sean McPherson (00:36:00): Let's use other language to phrase this.

Is ecosystem lock-in good or bad? This is what this is. Exclusives are ecosystem lock-in.

This is the iMessage of Xbox.

The blue bubbles. No, we're not doing blue bubbles.

Trey Lockerbie (00:36:21): Also, I want to introduce gamers to something

called the European Union. And the reason is, so right now, the DMA does not target video game

consoles. But all the same language you're using for iOS and Android, you could just apply that

to PlayStation or Xbox, right? I'm pretty sure there's someone at Microsoft doing the napkin

math. And it's like, given how much we're trying to force to get an Xbox game store,

Microsoft store, and iOS and Android, at what point do they just look at us and say, "Your

console?" And at what point does it just not make sense to even run the same console business model

with how multiple countries outside of North America, apparently the US and Canadian governments

are too busy banning flipper zeros instead of deciding digital markets.

But at what point does it not make sense to just say, "Fuck it, we'll go third party."

And here's my conspiracy theory. I don't think Microsoft is going to do this, but I think they

should. Genuinely, I think the Xbox platform like that OS should just be a skew of Windows sold to

OEMs. And Microsoft should just start making money off of selling the software and allow third-party

game stores onto the Xbox platform. Christopher Preble (00:37:17):

That I don't think is going to happen. But that seems unlikely, I think.

Christopher Preble (00:37:25):

Well, that's how you get around also the question of, well, what do you do with the console platform

now that you're putting games on other platforms? Because we don't know if it's all or not, but some

are going to other platforms. So we know that some, Call of Duty is still going to stay and other

games, probably CFE, some of the live service ones are going to go to another platform.

So in that case, then I don't know, I would say they should just say, "Fuck it," and go

10,000 feet in terms of, "Yeah, we have our Surface Xbox devices if you want to buy that one,

but you can also buy, I don't know, this weird Alienware one that has shit cooling if you want."

So the Xbox hardware sort of becomes like this halo product, right? Not to make a…

Christopher Preble (00:38:02):

Well, the reference platform. So what Surface works is Microsoft gives out a lot of the tech

for services. So I know you haven't used a Windows laptop in forever, but the reason why Windows

laptops no longer have shit trackpads is Microsoft basically gave every OEM the trackpad used in

the Surface.

Aaron Horne (00:38:25):

So the reference platform, and we got OEMs like, I don't know, Asus or whoever else. You got the

people who are making the ROG Ally, the Asus ROG Ally, stuff like that.

Christopher Preble (00:38:35):

The ROG Box.

Aaron Horne (00:38:37):

A big ROG Box. It could happen. This is the thing. Theoretically, there's no technical barrier to

this. I don't think there's really a technical barrier to this. It's just that Microsoft has

to decide this is the play, and they're going to open up the Xbox hardware ecosystem to actually

more internal competition within the ecosystem.

Trey Lockerbie (00:39:02):

It's just weird that Xbox is the only part of Microsoft that's still vertically integrated.

That to me, it doesn't match up anything of what else they do. In theory, I would assume there's

probably more money for a company like Microsoft to be made in selling game developer tools,

selling game backend services, Azure, and then Xbox mobile services, and then also having Xbox

Live services that you can port in a box. They already have that with their game something.

They have a service like that that some games run off of. I remember it was the one that…

Adam Back (00:39:34):

Azure PlayFab? I think PlayFab, yeah.

Trey Lockerbie (00:39:37):

Yeah, PlayFab. There we go. Yeah, because I remember that one magician battle royale game

we played that was running off of PlayFab. Really putting those services out and then just

piecemeal letting people integrate whatever part of Xbox they want is probably the better way to go,

versus just having a box that's losing. Because you're losing on two sides, right? It's not just

Sony in the desktop market, but assuming Valve ever gets their shit together and actually starts

outsourcing SteamOS to other third parties, which who knows, it's Valve. But that is an objectively

better OS than Windows is for those handheld devices. So having an Xbox platform that could

run from boxes to the portable handhelds probably is the smarter way to go.

Adam Back (00:40:17):

Yeah, because right now, Valve is weird. Nobody knows what Valve is going to do, really.

Valve could have been in this. I don't know if you remember, but Steam boxes were a thing

that they were doing at some point, and then they completely ignored it and completely dropped it.

Trey Lockerbie (00:40:37):

Now, remember, you still have the Steam controller, right? You're like, "Wanna take a look at your

own one?" Adam Back (00:40:40):

I think I still have the Steam link somewhere. Maybe somewhere. I don't even know where it is.

But Valve used to be more into this, but they're sort of getting back. With the Steam Deck,

I think Valve sort of sees another sort of angle that they can work on, which is sort of building

this ecosystem of hardware that runs their software. And Microsoft probably wants to get it.

Adam Back (00:41:02):

Microsoft already wants to be like, "We have all these services already. All of these services

people are using already. Why don't we just make it so that our services run fucking everywhere?"

Whatever OEM wants to build hardware that runs their software, why the hell not?

Trey Lockerbie (00:41:25):

What a good sell, right? This server stack runs Call of Duty and Warzone,

so you should buy it too. Adam Back (00:41:31):

Yeah, exactly. There's a huge pitch that they could make, and who knows what's going to happen.

I'm really curious what this PR press release is going to look like. Is Phil Spencer going to do

some exclusive interview with IGN? What's happening? I don't know.

Trey Lockerbie (00:41:55):

Hard pivot. Just go for it. Gamers are bad. I'm sorry, if you identify as a gamer, you're bad.

Adam Back (00:42:02):

Hot takes on voxels. Yes, gamers are bad.

Trey Lockerbie (00:42:04):

But more seriousness, you can't give a wishy-washy press statement on a change like this.

You have to just go full depth in it, and then a little bit of backlash, but it'll settle down

when people realize… Adam Back (00:42:19):

Yeah, the backlash. Honestly, gamers will get mad at anything. Who cares? Gamers are bad.

Trey Lockerbie (00:42:29):

Xbox fans, get in line. I'm here for my Windows phone. I still got one. Get in fucking line.

Stop crying. Adam Back (00:42:36):

Yeah, I have seen some people… I mean, I talk about whole reason people are "invested" in the

platform, and it's still really, really silly. The amount of people are just really losing their

minds over their… Trey Lockerbie (00:42:56):

I want to address this too. No one's taking away your digital game library. If anything,

hopefully, with this would push Microsoft. I'm kind of wish-casting at this point,

but since we're already making a change, we're deep-prioritizing Xbox at a platform.

Microsoft, please let Xbox games run on PC. There is no reason that the emulation that they use to

run old Xbox 360 games and backwards compatibility cannot just be a part of the Windows Store.

Like, okay, you need Windows 11. You need a TPN, right, for DRM reasons. The hardware is already

there in every Windows 11 PC. They should really just bring some of the Xbox runtime to PC so you

can run at least Xbox One, Xbox 360 games on PC. Adam Back (00:43:17):

I mean, they could even make it part of that Games Pass. You could just bundle that with…

Companies love bundles, so you could just be like, "Okay, look, PC Games Pass, you can emulate

Xbox or Xbox 360 games." There you go. Straight away, just a bunch of extra functionality that

people would surely find value in. Trey Lockerbie (00:43:39):

Yeah, and it'll run any PC because that was built for Jaguar cores.

Adam Back (00:43:44): Yeah. So,

now we're just like, "What would we want if Microsoft does this?"

Trey Lockerbie (00:43:51): And you could tell that me and you are not

coming from a gamer perspective. We're coming from a computer enthusiast perspective where we just

would rather be cross-platform and more open. Adam Back (00:43:59):

If there was one gamer thing, I would ask, "Can we get Halo 5 on PC? Can we just get that one?"

Trey Lockerbie (00:44:08): Can we talk about how they ported Forge to the PC,

but then never brought anything else of Halo 5 to PC?

Adam Back (00:44:16): Yeah. I know 343 is a little under-staffed,

maybe under-resourced. Maybe that's just like bringing Halo 5 to PC while we're at it. I don't

think it's going to happen, but everybody seems to forget that Halo 5 exists, Halo fans included.

So I don't think we can. Trey Lockerbie (00:44:33):

Also, Console Wars is made up by corporations to get you to spend more money with them. I just

wanted to say it. It's a marketing campaign. You're not really like…

Adam Back (00:44:44): Yeah. People bought it. People bought what

they're selling, like Hook, Line, and Sticker. And I'm not immune to this. I'm not saying that

somehow as being a PC gamer, #PCgamer, that I'm just somehow immune.

Trey Lockerbie (00:44:56): You're all team red now for reasons I don't

understand. You're out here buying shitty graphics cards because you don't like it in NVIDIA.

Bro, your ray tracing performance is trash. Hold on a minute. You bought… Okay, everyone,

it's sad. I need to get this name in shame. Downgraded from a 2080 Ti to some latest gen

AMD shit. Adam Back (00:45:13):

That's not a downgrade. That is in no way a downgrade, bro. Steve would be disappointed

with what he's saying right now. Trey Lockerbie (00:45:19):

Can you run DLSS? Adam Back (00:45:21):

I don't care about DLSS, bro. I got FSR. Trey Lockerbie (00:45:29):

Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. No. Adam Back (00:45:33):

Let's not turn into a GPU wars. This is the same place with GPU wars.

Trey Lockerbie (00:45:39): I'm out here using Apple Silicon,

so I really have anything to say? Adam Back (00:45:42):

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yes, I did buy an AMD GPU to upgrade, and it is an upgrade,

no matter what. Rasterization performance is way, way higher than a 2080 Ti. Anyways.

Trey Lockerbie (00:45:56): So, this is going off the rails. So,

the last thing I have about this Xbox One third party is I think we are fans of this idea. I

genuinely think that Game Pass should be on every platform. I'm sorry to the PC gamers out there,

because I know you all love Steam, but then like to say you like competition, but apparently hate

installing anything but Steam. But I think there should be multiple app stores on every platform,

right? Adam Back (00:46:17):

I don't have a problem with multiple app stores, really. I just want them to be better. I just

think Steam has set a standard, and the Epic Games store kind of sucks, just from a software

user experience perspective. Not just because it's deferred. Personally, Valve, Steam,

if the game is… This is another thing. This is a whole other discourse in PC gaming communities

about people who refuse to buy games that are exclusive to the Epic Games store, which does

happen. And I… Trey Lockerbie (00:46:49):

It's hypocritical. I need to talk my shit first. That is hypocritical for people on PC to be like,

"I can only buy games from Steam. I don't like any other store. I don't want to fuck with it."

I understand criticizing other stores. Like, "You're about to do an Epic Games store. The app

could be better. The payment flow could be better." Or the Microsoft store where sometimes

downloading shit just doesn't work for whatever reason. Those are just…

Those are technical complaints that I understand. But you cannot be like, "I don't like app stores.

I need openness. I like upgrading my hardware when I want," and then being like, "I don't want

nothing but Steam." That is hypocritical. Chris Steininger (00:47:24):

That's definitely a point people have bought some of this Valve's marketing, I guess, as much as

Valve does marketing that Steam is the platform for PC gaming, which Valve has its own problems.

But it's like, yeah, why… I don't have a problem with games being… Okay, I kind of do have a

problem with games being explicit to Epic Games store, but also at the same time, I'm not going

to refuse to buy a game. If I want to play a game, like I played Alan Wake 2 in January, that is on

PC, that's exclusive to the Epic Games store because Epic Games published it. And Epic Games

provided funding for the game to even happen. So, yeah, that's exclusive to the… I'm not going to

refuse to play Alan Wake 2 because it's on the Epic Games. That's a very weird stance to take,

in my opinion. I don't see how you're making any actual point. So, yeah, that's PC gamers just…

Robert Leonard (00:48:17): Yeah, just buy a Mac if you want to think like that.

Okay, this topic is really going off the rails. Let's just talk about anime.

Trey Lockerbie (00:48:25): This topic is going nowhere. So, I got to segue.

So, we're having a heated agreement. So, now let's have another heated disagreement and talk about

some weird shit. Robert Leonard (00:48:34): Anime, anime bullshit. Yeah.

Trey Lockerbie (00:48:37): People of a prior podcast may know, I'm what we call a LLC fast

enthusiast. I love live school idol festival club. In a prior life, they used to be the benchmark,

right? You want to talk to me about your gaming phone? You want to talk to me about that ROG

gaming phone? Do that shit, run Love Live at 60 FPS, no throttling. That was the benchmark.

Alas, both of the Love Live games, School Idol Festival and School Idol Festival,

all-stars recently shut down. And I just want to do a sidebar on sidebar. This is sidebar land.

We're at the beach this episode. And talk about how you can just shut down a mobile game when I've

been paying for a subscription for it and I get no refund. Can we just talk about that for a moment?

Where I was paying for the premium monthly thing and I got no refund.

(00:49:36) AC: Yeah. I don't do mobile gaming,

really. I don't really do mobile gaming. So this is entirely out of my purview. But this is the

thing I've been hearing about on and off from people. I know there's been several Jimquisition

videos on it that mobile games just shut. They just stop. They're just like, here is the end date

for the service. The app is just going to stop working at this date. And no, you're not going

to get any refunds for any purchases. (00:50:17)

TB: And you don't get to export your data and you don't get to keep anything from it. And the game

gets delisted from the stores. So you can't even redownload if you want to. So that happened with

that. So then they announced that there is a sequel coming out. It came out in Japan. Apparently,

it was a rocky launch. So normally how these mobile games launch first, especially the anime ones,

they'll come out in Japan first. And then a few months later, they will come to the West.

Totally normal. This game, I'm just going to read the fucking… Sorry, the sheet. Let me open this

up. So the game will launch in February 2024, pre-registration is open. However, we want you

to inform that… Sorry, we also want to inform you that the global version will close its doors on

May 31st, 2024 and cease in-app purchases accordingly. So let's talk about this for a

moment. They just launched the sequel to the game. They shut down no refunds. In the same

announcement, they announced that they are going to shut it down in three-ish months,

whatever February to May is. And in-app purchases will cease accordingly because for those three

fucking months, you still have to pay for shit in the game, even though they know the game's

going to shut down. Like, I… In one way, I respect it. Like, in one way, this is like,

very transparent. Like, look, if you want to play this game, you got four months. If you want to…

If you… Like, look, we're going to shut this shit down in four months and your purchases

ain't going to mean shit. So, you know, just full disclosure. You know, like, I… You know,

in a way, I respect this, but also at the same time, it's like, just… Like, why? Like, what?

Like, what's… Like, do these games not make enough money for the people to keep

running this shit? Like, what is… What's the reasoning behind, like, just…

Like, I… There's a leak on the Reddit. And now, anytime I say "leak on the Reddit," you know,

either I'm going to get arrested or there's something is just wildly incorrect. But the

leak on the Reddit is, this is due to licensing. The license… So, it's at the Love Live company

that made this game, right? Some game studio. And they were contractually obligated to put out

a global version as well. But now the license for the property is running up in May. So, they have

to launch it and then shut it down because they no longer have the license to operate it.

So, I have a question for you. How do you feel about licensed content? Specifically,

we can make this a broader conversation. Let's use this game versus Forza being delisted every

few years due to car licenses. Yeah, I was… Yeah, so I was going to actually bring up Forza

for that example because Forza is like a big example in my sort of… And yeah, it's kind

of unfortunate. Like, really, it's bad on multiple levels. First of all, it's bad for people who want

to, like, you know, go back and… You know, people who want to… Who come to the Forza Horizon series,

right, later and they want to go back and play the older games, right? They want to just, I don't

know, experience the older games. They can't, right? Because they have been delisted, no longer

available. Maybe you can buy, like, a physical copy of some of those games. Maybe. Who knows if

they'll work. But, like, it's impossible to, like, buy them legally. And also, which means that it's,

like, very bad for game preservation, right? Like, historical game analysis or game preservation is,

like, basically impossible because it's, like, you have these digital goods, digital services,

all entirely digital. Like, a lot of modern games don't get physical releases. And even if they do,

the physical releases are just, like, a license file, basically. They're not actually, like,

the content. So, it's like, how do you preserve these, like, historical… Like, for historical

reasons? Like, if you want to preserve, say, all the Love Live! games, like, how do you chronologically,

like, keep all these games, like, you know, the history of these games if you want to, like,

I don't know, write up… - How do I finish the story of the game I didn't have the time to finish?

- Yeah. How do you finish the story of the game? - Like, it's just YouTube playthroughs, I guess.

But then, guess what? That is so easy to be DC and made away. - Yeah, exactly. So, like, the licensing

nightmare is, like, I'm not a fan of it for Forza. And, like, it's going to happen to all the Forza

games because all the Forza games have licensed music in them. That's the big one, right? Like,

licensed music… - Well, it's multiple, right? Licensed music, licensed cars, licensed IP. How

good is that LEGO license for? How good is the Hot Wheels license for? - Yeah, yeah. That's my

question. I, like, I… It's really… I don't know what the answer to this is. It just means that we're

losing, like, sort of a bunch of stuff that, like, I don't know. It's… Game preservation is very…

Like, game preservation is an entire… Like, that could be an entire podcast, like, entire series of

podcast episodes. But it's, like, game preservation in the modern era of digital media is, like,

very, very difficult because so much of it is entirely controlled by the corporations selling

the product. And the corporations selling the product are just, like, they don't care about

preservation, right? Like, they don't… They don't see this as, like, art history worth preserving,

right? This is just a product that they're selling. And as soon as the product doesn't

make enough money or the… The company just goes bankrupt or shuts down or gets acquired or merged

into somebody else. And it's just, like, it's gone. So it's just… I don't know. It's kind of

depressing, honestly, to really think about it for, like, a bit. So… - Well, I mean, what's the

alternative, I guess, in the case of music? Just not use licensed music? Because there's another

perspective where we could say, like, "Hey, get a perpetual license." But if you're a musician,

have a perpetual license for a video game kind of sounds shit, right? Like, it sounds like this

game's gonna profit so much and I, as a musician, won't make money. I know for larger IPs, who

cares? But for the music side of it, it's kind of weird. - Right. So I just… I think this…

I think what you could do… I mean, this is not, like… It will sort of damage the integrity of

the art piece, I suppose. But you could just remove all the licensed music. I mean, that's

one thing. I mean, for example, if you could remove all the licensed music from a Forza game,

yes, it will definitely be, like, a lesser… - Didn't GTA do that? - I think Grand Theft Auto

San Andreas might have… Like, there was a whole controversy about Grand Theft Auto San Andreas

removing the radio stations that had a bunch of copyrighted, licensed music in it, right? So

I think that happened already. And it's definitely not a good solution because it's like,

a lot of the time, licensed music is part of the experience, part of the art, the game,

right? The experience. And, like, remove the music from Forza is definitely gonna make it a worse

game and a lesser sort of art. You're not maintaining the whole thing. The integrity of

the art has been compromised. And, like, I mean, what about the licensed cars, right? The cars

are probably a different licensing scheme entirely. Who knows what those licensing schemes look like?

I think those are maybe, like, perpetual licenses because car companies probably don't really care

about the video game that much. - No, no, Porsche wasn't, remember? When, like, Need for Speed.

No, when Need for Speed ran out of the Porsche, they had to, like, delist some games. - I mean,

Porsche is a different… Okay, okay, hold on, hold on. That's a whole another thing. The Porsche

thing is, like… Porsche… It was, like, a whole ass contract with Electronic Arts, EA,

where that Porsche… Depictions of Porsche cars were exclusive to EA games for a long time,

starting with Need for Speed Porsche Unlimited, which I remember I played that as a kid. That's

how old that is. But for a long time, Porsche cars weren't available in other video games other than

ones made by EA, which meant that Forza Horizon until late in the Forza cycle, that the license,

like, the exclusivity contract expired, basically. And, sort of, that meant that Porsche, like… And

Porsche could, like, you know, Playground Games could put Porsche cars, like, they could license

the Porsche cars and put them in Forza Horizon. So, Forza Horizon 4 and 5 have now Porsche cars.

So, that's a whole ass thing, right? Who knows if they're perpetual or not? Like, what these licenses

even look like. If anybody knows, like… This is one of those things that it's very hard to, like,

actually know. Like, if any game journalist is like, "Let's talk about video game licensing about,

like, third-party media," right? Like, "I want… What's licensing terms look like for cars

in racing games?" Right? Who knows? So, yeah, that's… I think this is… Like, we've got

another topic on a similar note, right? Like, we've got… Speaking of, like, you know, media

that's, sort of, being lost, we got another anime, sort of, related thing. Crunchyroll is shutting

down. So, we've got to explain something here. So, Sony has, over time…

- A monopoly. - …has a monopoly over anime.

Digital anime, right? Digital anime rights, basically, right? Like, anime streaming is

basically entirely controlled by Sony at this point. Like, there's no…

- Except for a company called HiDive. Now, HiDive stans, please don't get at me.

- Why does HiDive have stans? Why does HiDive have, like, what's…

- I don't know if I should… I just want to say I do not want… Okay, listen, listen. We got…

Okay. So, the kind of content you get on HiDive, all right? I didn't watch this show,

before anyone judges me, but remember that dog manga and dog anime I told you about a couple

years back? - I vaguely remember this, yeah.

- As… Think weird anime stuff. And yes, that's the correct interpretation of what that show's

about. - Yeah.

- That's the kind of fine wares you find at HiDive. So, HiDive is owned by AMC, I think?

Like, the same company that owns, like, the TV channel that The Walking Dead was on?

- Oh, AMC. Okay. Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that…

- Okay, no, no, yeah. AMC Networks, yeah. AMC+, Shudder, Sundance, Acorn, IFC Films. So,

basically, they do carry some normal stuff, and I do like HiDive, but yeah, they got a show…

What? They got… Yeah, you know, the kind of stuff you wouldn't watch if your parents were in the

room. A lot of that ends up on HiDive, while Crunchyroll does not carry a lot of adult content.

Although, Crunchyroll does carry, and I'm happy we didn't have this show. There was, like, a phase

a year and a half ago where every anime had slavery in it. - Oh, yeah. You're talking about this.

- Yeah, like, the one where they just buy slaves to sleep with. Like, that was messed up. Crunchyroll,

for some reason, doesn't draw the line to slavery, but at actual nude bodies, that's where they draw

the line. - Jesus fucking Christ.

- They carry, like, four shows about buying slaves, dude. - Oh, lord. So…

But yeah, so basically, anyways, Sony owns Funimation, Crunchyroll. Sony also owns

RightStuff, which is the biggest web store for anime merch in the States. So Sony is basically

building up a monopoly on anime services in North America. And when they bought Funimation,

Funimation has a home DVD business. I guess Blu-ray nowadays. But basically, they would also

be the distributor for anime, which is why they had a streaming service. It was a part of distribution

rights. They could stream it as well, or you can get digital copies of it. So with this change,

Funimation and Crunchyroll are merging. And I'm very upset because my watch history is

not merged between the both because I use separate email accounts. - Oh, wait. Hold on.

The accounts are merging, but there's going to be data loss because reasons? Like, you're not

going to have… - So let me explain the bullshit of data loss, all right? So basically, they turned

every Funimation account into a Crunchyroll account. And if you had different email addresses,

which I'm sorry, I use my Gmail account for my Funimation and I use my regular domain, right,

for my Crunchyroll. I now have two Crunchyroll accounts with both different watch histories

because I did subscribe to Funimation for two years. And apparently, you can contact support

to try and merge them. I'm not. I'm not going to call their support team. Especially with the kind

of shows I was watching on Funimation. I don't need another human to see that. So I just deleted

the Funimation merged account. And you might say, "Well, what about your purchases?" So Funimation

had a service where if you bought a DVD or a Blu-ray, right, you would get a code to redeem

a digital copy. They are deleting all of those digital copies. So hopefully, you still have that

Blu-ray to rip it. - Okay. So this is like… At what point does this become like some sort of

thing that we get a class action lawsuit about? Because this is the kind of thing where, I mean,

maybe in the terms of service, they mentioned the digital purchase is not really a purchase or an

ownership agreement or whatever, but it's some value-added service that they're providing.

But at what point do people just sort of like… This is really like a scam. You paid for… It's

like a bait and switch, right? You paid for the Blu-ray service thinking that you would have

the Blu-ray and a digital copy, and now they're taking away the digital copy. As far as I'm

concerned, they're just like changing what you bought on the fly without any compensation.

And they're not giving you anything in return. They just take it away. They're just like,

"You don't have this anymore." How soon before we get some sort of class action lawsuit about this?

Because this is just bullshit. There's no… I don't see a… Yeah, maybe they have contractual

power over here, maybe. But even legally, this seems a little bit suspicious. So,

kind of hoping that maybe some lawsuits happen, because this is kind of shit. People who bought

stuff here, they're going to lose shit, and that sucks.

- Oh, also Crunchyroll increased their price by a dollar.

- Oh, of course they are. I mean, that's not surprising. Literally every streaming service

has been doing some sort of price increase. That does not surprise… Okay, my question to you is,

do you think that Crunchyroll's subscription price is worth the price you're paying? Do you think

it's reasonably still fine? Even with the price increase, it's fine?

- So, they have three tiers, right? They have the fan tier, which is $8 a month now. Used to be $6

or $7. $6.99, I guess. MegaFan, $10. And Ultimate Fan, $15. The difference between the fan, MegaFan,

Ultimate Fan, regular fan, stream on one device at a time, no offline downloads. MegaFan,

four devices at a time, offline downloads. And you get the Crunchyroll Game Vault,

free gacha games, "free."

- Oh my god.

- And you get $15 off any $100 purchase in the Crunchyroll stores, which is the company they

bought, that Right Stuff company, every three months. Ultimate Fan, $15 a month, six devices

at a time, offline viewing, Crunchyroll Game Vault, $25 off $100 purchases, free shipping on

all orders. And you get a swag bag after 12 months of subscription. So, you get a $10 probably gift

bag after paying, what, 12, 10, 15…

- $80? $180 a year? You pay $180 a year.

- Yeah, not really worth it. The thing too about these tiers are, the different devices at a time.

I don't know. In the past, I would say, "Hey, let's pool our anime subscriptions together,

right? Me and four or five other people." But given what the industry's whole entire

move towards cracking down on password sharing, I wouldn't even trust this, right?

Give it a few months from now, I'm positive we're going to see

headlines saying, "Crunchyroll is cracking down on password sharing."

So, I pay for the fan tier because…

- Yeah, you don't need to…

- Anime is a solo hobby and I don't need to watch it. The times where I'm offline,

like on a plane, I'm not watching anime.

- Right. You're not watching anime on the plane. That's why…

- See, maybe if I had a Vision Pro. If I had a Vision Pro where no one can see the garbage I'm

watching, I would throw that shit on 100 feet in my face. Wow, what a headline. But yeah, so I…

Actually, you know what's the most fucked up part about this?

The full Funimation library is not in Crunchyroll yet.

- Why? I mean, I probably know why some licensing bullshit, right?

- Yeah, they have to renegotiate licenses.

- But they're the same company now. What's stopping…

- It's like 80% of it, so there's like 20% of stuff that still has yet to move over.

So, I would like to go back to what we said in a prior episode where xdcc on IRC exists.

- Yeah, I mean, Torrens also still. Torrens.

- Listen, I'm not saying in the year of our Lord, 2024, you should be downloading random

files from IRC. But what I will say is I'm pretty sure some of those files have been

untouched and in the same nice bitrate and the same great sub quality since I first

downloaded them when I was 13. - Yeah, shout out to Cole Girls,

if you know, you know. - That sounds so wrong, bro.

- No, Cole Girls, just to be clear, people don't get the wrong idea of what the fuck I'm talking.

It's like a fan subbing and coding group who did a lot of releases of anime. I think they're still

around. I don't know if they're actually… I haven't seen a new release on Cole Girls,

but maybe they're still around. I know the Angel Beats era of

end codes from them were really, really good. So, you know, that's what I mean by Cole Girls.

I didn't realize how the… This is peak content. This is what peak content looks like.

- All right, speaking about peak content, let's switch to the metaverse. Tell me about your

thoughts about Disney investing into Epic Games to make Fortnite the most lively metaverse of

your favorite Disney properties and brands that you love to engage with.

- See, this is the thing. I don't give a shit about any Disney property. And I'm just like,

looking at this, I'm not even surprised. I saw this in my feed reader and I was like, of course,

Disney, the company with a gazillion, quote unquote, intellectual property that wants to

merge with… Not merge, but invest in another company that's basically about plugging in your

intellectual property into it and having it be in their games and whatnot. And as part of this…

So, just to be clear, what I'm saying here is Disney is investing $1.5 billion into Epic Games,

into Epic. And it's… This is going to come… Obviously, it's going to have… That means there's

more Disney shit in Fortnite. Obviously, that's the big play. But also that Disney is going to be

using Unreal Engine for their future games, which, sure, I guess. And Disney has a long and storied

history of video games with different publishers. EA for a long time was the company that made

Disney stuff, right? All the Star Wars games that EA made and all that kind of shit. So,

Disney is just going to be like… - There is no way you could say that

sentence without mentioning Kingdom Hearts. I'm sorry. I have to interrupt you for that.

How did you not just mention Kingdom Hearts? - I forgot about Kingdom Hearts. I forgot about

Kingdom Hearts, bro. I forgot about Kingdom Hearts. I forgot about Kingdom Hearts. That's…

Yeah. So, Kingdom Hearts is part of this. - That's self-care.

- I forgot. My brain was like, "You don't need to remember Kingdom Hearts." So, yeah. Disney has a

long history of doing collaborations with other game publishers to make their games. They don't

seem to want to make games in-house. They don't seem to want to have an in-house studio that makes

these games. Maybe that's the smart play. I don't know. I'm not an expert on that. Maybe it is better

for them to outsource their games to video game companies that know how to make video games.

Maybe that just makes sense. So, yeah. I'm sure Epic is going to be involved in some sort of

Disney game other than Fortnite integration. So, I don't think I'm looking forward to it, but

I hope the games are good for the people who like Disney stuff. I don't particularly care.

The metaverse shit is just cringe as hell. I'm not into it. So, how about you? I know you're

probably more… What about Kingdom Hearts? Is there Kingdom Hearts shit in Fortnite?

Surprisingly not. Honestly, maybe I'm just an old head, but I'm actually shocked I never heard

the "When You Walk Away" song. Someone just pops off a shotgun shot and starts dancing with the

Kingdom Hearts opening playing. That's culture. That's culture, baby. That's what that is.

I have nothing of value to add to this. I don't know why it's in the show notes,

and I'm more than happy to move on to the next topic.

Death Stranding for Mac, which also I don't know why it's in the show notes.

I spent so much time talking about hanging out with your good boys in Hawaii last week.

I'm playing a game for once, and I'm delivering packages to Connect America.

Also, I apologize for any grosses about my shit earlier. I'm getting over a cold right now,

so I'm still in that headspace. That's why this is probably a little more off the walls than we

normally do. But as one does when they get sick, they play Death Stranding.

The Mac port recently came out. Before I even talk about the game,

let's talk about some technical stuff of it. It's a PC game, so it has PC settings. But obviously,

me, I'm allergic to that shit, so I bought a Mac. I just play on whatever the default settings are,

which seems to be running in Metal FX upscaling. Better than FSR. I don't know if you can get

rid of that. But Metal FX 1440, like sub 4K-ish, around 4K native res of the MacBook Air screen,

30 FPS. So I guess I could probably tweak it to get to 60, but I don't care to do that because

I'm not a PC gamer. But it looks well. It looks good. The fidelity of this game is very nice.

The facial animations of all the characters, every cut scene to your engine rendered in engine

is really good. And I like the environments. And with the gameplay of this game, because this game

is about delivering packages, I find that it is like a... It's a good podcast game. I don't even

mean that in a way that berates it. You just walk around, you're delivering your packages,

and then you can just pause your podcast whenever a cut scene happens and go back to it. And it

seems to work really well. That's how I've been mostly playing this game. And this is my first

Hideo Kojima game. I've actually never beaten... I played a little bit of Metal Gear Solid,

the demo, Ground Zero for last gen, but I never actually beat it. I played 20 minutes of it.

I've never played a Metal Gear Solid game. It's my first Kojima game. And...

- Wow. Okay.

- I thought people were capping and memeing, but as soon as I open it and we have "Die Hard Man"

and "Dead Man," and some of the lines these people are saying, I'm like...

I get the impression that people are like, "Oh, he wants to make movies. He wants to make cinema."

No, he's making fucking anime for Hi-Dive, not Crunchyroll.

- Oh my god. That's the analogy I would go with. Okay.

- He's fucking making anime, bro. This is a good dubbed anime.

- Oh my god. It does have a very anime-esque plot, right? I think... I mean, I've heard of the

plot of "Death Stratag." It's a very anime-ish plot. The whole thing about connecting people.

That sounds like a very shonen anime bullshit.

- So the plot of the game is, right, is the president of the United States dies after

some weird... and America's already been destroyed due to something that happened in the past.

So you are delivering packages and rebuilding the internet by connecting America on foot

to get to the West Coast from the East Coast. And you have a baby named BB. I...

- Yeah, it's...

- I thought of it. It's a good game.

- I have... At some point, I feel like I want to play "Death Stratag," but also at the same time,

I'm just over Kojima as a creator. I don't know. It's a weird balance. I really like Metal Gear

Solid as a franchise. I've only played the one Metal Gear Solid game, but I've watched playthroughs

of all the other Metal Gear Solid games, so I'm familiar with what happens in the series and

whatnot. But I don't know if I'm ready to play "Death Stratag." But maybe I'll play it one of

these days. I'll give it a...

- Also, it was on sale for 20 bucks when it came to Macs. That's what I thought.

- Okay. That's fair.

- I don't have any experience with the iPhone port because it only runs on a 15 Pro,

and I have a 14, and I'm not going to upgrade my phone just to play "Death Stratag" or "Resident

Evil 4."

- No, that's... That seems like... Yeah. And also, the iPhone port seems a little...

It doesn't look too good. I mean, maybe it looks fine on a phone screen, but the screenshots that

I'm seeing on this Eurogamer article of the iPhone 15 Pro version of the game seems a little

blurry, a little low on detail, which is not surprising, but also it seems a little...

Not too great. So, how are you feeling about this new era of Mac OS ports? I guess they're like,

you know, you get this game, you got "Resident Evil." We're supposed to be getting "No Man's

Sky," right?

- It's been out. Okay, here's the thing. Let me go back to the App Store thing.

It's extremely weird that "No Man's Sky" is not in the Mac App Store and is only on the Steam

Store. And it's not because I'm anti-Steam. It's just that it was shown off at WWDC.

- Yeah, that is weird.

- So, I don't know why the Apple Silicon port has not made its way to the Mac App Store.

But I haven't played "No Man's Sky." So, "No Man's Sky" is a game... I played a lot of it on

Game Pass, but I don't know if I need to re-buy it and play it again because I feel like I got

what I wanted out of it for the few hours I played of it. It is a game you can get lost in.

Some people love the show "No Man's Sky." They've done a lot of great work. But yeah, that's how

that game goes for me. But it's a new era of Apple Silicon Gaming.

I think it's interesting that it took until now for the hardware to be in a place and the software

be in a place where you can make these ports and not have a bad time. Because these are not...

iPhone port aside, "Resident Evil 4," "RE Village," "No Man's Sky" are good ports.

It's... They're not as performing as the PC versions, but the PC versions have better GPUs,

right? Objectively. Even though Apple Silicon is great, the GPUs are not as strong as PC GPUs.

And they do tend to scale to it. I think it's the important thing. You can go from M2, M2 Pro,

M2 Ultra, and it scales with the cores for better performance, which I think is going to help

future-proof them for newer platforms and newer generations of Silicon.

My issue is, it's just not the games I want.

Right, right, right.

I need a shooter. I'm sorry. I just need...

You need "Destiny."

Not "Destiny," but I don't know. I would take a...

"Call of Duty."

"Call of Duty," the finals, "Overwatch," some kind of eSports title. They're getting these

graphical showcases, but they also need to get games that people just play... Yes.

Games that people play for a long time, like these "live service" games, right? Like shooters

and MMOs. "Final Fantasy XIV" does exist on Mac OS, I think, but...

No. Oh, my God. Let's not talk about that.

"Final Fantasy XIV" on Mac OS runs in wine.

Look, beggars can't be choosers. That's what...

WoW is native. WoW is actually the first Apple Silicon game that came out.

That's somehow...

I've talked to multiple people about this, and no one seems to understand why, but the

World of Warcraft team at Blizzard has a dedicated Mac team. They were the first to switch to Metal.

It's weird. I don't get it, but shout out Activision Blizzard. Hopefully,

y'all didn't get laid off.

Yeah. So, let's wrap this up. Let's wrap this really weird episode. I mean,

not a weird episode. We just went off the rails as we do. That's not weird, actually.

This is what happens in your podcast when you're sick.

So, I have a couple books. I finished up the

remaining of the Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers. I read "Record of a Space-Borne Few,"

and I read "The Galaxy and the Ground Within," which is the third and the fourth book in the

Wayfarer series. Really, really good. Excellent, excellent series. I recommend everybody.

Wait, that series sounds familiar. I gotta check my library for a moment. Hold on a minute. I might

actually go to Contribute for once in my life. Let me check my library. Do I have a Becky? I'm

checking. I'm checking. Let me see. Yeah. She wrote, I think, another sci-fi book, not in this

series. But, yeah. Let me see. It is... Okay. Yes. The one I have in progress is "I'm 13% of the Way

Through," "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet." Okay. That is the first book in the Wayfarer

series. So, that is the first book. I read that first book in 2022. It took me like a while to

get around to reading the rest of the books, but I'm glad I finally got around to reading them

because they're really, really good. Some of the best sci-fi I've read in a long time. I highly

recommend them. So, those are my two books that I've read. I'm sure I'm still playing through

"Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth." That game is... There's a lot of game in there. I'm like 40 hours

in it. I'm somewhat slightly halfway more into the game. There's a lot of game in the game.

So, check back on that in a month. Music. You got music recommendations? What do you got?

I got a music recommendation super quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got "That Mexican O.T.'s

Lone Star Luchador." I found out this album yesterday. It's good. It's a good... It's his

debut album, "That Mexican O.T." O.T. stands for Out of Texas. Rapper... Is that what it says? I

didn't know. I thought it was just the thing. Okay. Yeah. So, it's a mix of Southern hip hop

and some Mexican-infused salsa stuff. It is a good genre mix. And the thing I really appreciate

about this as a debut album is that a lot of debut albums are the same flow over every single song.

He's trying different things. I don't think it works on every track, but at least you're getting

versatility, right? You have a song where he's trying to sing. You have a song where it's like

Chopped and Screwed. You have one that has some salsa influences. You even have one where it's

like an East... Like a Cowboy in New York, I think it is, where it's just like an East Coast style

flow. So, he switched it up on the album. And I do appreciate it. It's a good listen. I had a good

time listening to it. All right. So, those are our... That's the podcast. That's the episode.

Do we have any questions for the audience? Is there a question that we want to put to the audience?

Send me a link to the most shameful anime you've ever watched.

Oh my God. Nobody's going to send you anything.

It can be a DM.

If you have thoughts about Xbox going third party, I'd love to hear what other people are

thinking. People might be "invested". Ecosystem, please let us know what are your thoughts.

Other than that, what's the email ad?

Is Proton good? Is Proton good? No, that's actually the question. But all right. Yes.

Where can we find you, Ad?

All right. The Linux nerds will love that question. You can email this stuff, feedback@voxels.fm,

right? That's the email. And you can find me on mastodon@packet.get@10forward.social and

my website sodicsafe.com. Christian, where do people find you?

All right. You all can find me on mastodon@lo-fi-carrots@mstdn.plus. You can also

find me on website, chosefind.website, where I am... My domain's about to expire. I should

renew that domain, actually. Thank you for the reminder, email. That was a really weird email

for it to come in at this exact moment. But hey, that's weird. But all right. Yeah, this has been

the podcast. And until next time, pirate all of your anime and games. Don't play mobile games.

Don't play Fortnite. Death Stranding, pretty cool. And listen to Texas music.

Yeah. See you later. Bye.