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0:00:23 Intro
0:01:05 Fallout Tv Series on Amazon Prime
0:03:44 Shinji Mikami Hated his Job
0:07:36 Xbox Outselling Sony on Playstation
0:09:45 Xbox Console Sales Crater, Gamepass Too
0:12:16 Facebook Losing $1 BN a MONTH on VR.
Transcript
Phil: Hello, and welcome to episode of the Game Under Podcast, Australia's longest running video game podcast.
Phil: I am your sole host this week, Phil Fogg, as Tom Towers is still on assignment in Sri Lanka.
Phil: I spoke with him today, and he's having a much better time than I am, in much better weather, I can tell you that.
Phil: Today's episode may be a news only episode.
Phil: I've got a couple of games I've been playing, like Dave the Diver particularly, that I'll have some opinions on as I get into it a little bit deeper.
Phil: But also I've been watching Fallout, as many of you would be, if you're an Amazon Prime member, which most of the world's population is, I'm assuming, unless you're in China, you will get access to Fallout, the TV show on Amazon Prime.
Phil: Yeah, I'm in episode six or seven, I think, at this point.
Phil: And a lot of people have gone crazy for it.
Phil: I mean, it is one of the most popular streaming shows right now.
Phil: I certainly respect how much they've stuck to the aesthetic, the Fallout video game series.
Phil: I think it's good.
Phil: I'm watching it on Amazon Prime, and they have this x-ray feature, you know, if you're watching it, streaming it through your phone, onto your TV.
Phil: It tells you about the actors and actresses.
Phil: I'm surprised by how much the people in the show haven't done before.
Phil: Walter Goggins, I think, is the one with the most credits behind him.
Phil: But besides that, you know, I'm actually sort of amazed that the actors haven't done as much work as one would have thought, given the level of performances that they're giving.
Phil: Episode was good to a point, a bit longish, but it's certainly very enjoyable and very watchable, and you do want to go from episode to episode.
Phil: I'd say it's great TV, much along the lines of The X-Files or Star Trek, Deep Space Nine or something like that.
Phil: I don't think it's amazing, but it is certainly very watchable and of a very high quality.
Phil: And the fact that they've been able to pull off replicating the aesthetics of the Fallout video game series as well without having to compromise either, you know, the video game or their own form of entertainment or art I think is fantastic.
Phil: And yeah, I thoroughly recommend it.
Phil: I'm not a big Fallout fan.
Phil: I beat Fallout
Phil: That's the only game that I beat in the series.
Phil: I'm looking at how much my collector's edition of Fallout is worth.
Phil: It's got the little Vault-Tec bobblehead doll in it and comes in a tin lunch pail, I'm sure is worth a heck of a lot of money.
Phil: And it's probably peak Fallout at this point.
Phil: They have announced that they will be making a second season of Fallout, the Tv series.
Phil: I've got to say, at this point, I'm not feeling like that's completely necessary.
Phil: But, you know, they've got so many eyeballs on this thing it's hard to see how they wouldn't make a sequel at this point.
Phil: With that in mind, we will go on to the news.
Phil: And story number one this week is Shinji Mikami wanted to leave Tango Gameworks years ago.
Phil: Credit goes to automatonmedia.com who translated this interview.
Phil: Resident Evil director and Hi-Fi Rush producer Shinji Mikami recently commented on his departure from Tango Gameworks and the establishment of his new company, Kamoi.
Phil: Mikami founded Tango Gameworks in and left it last year.
Phil: That's a pretty good run, years.
Phil: And he was involved with titles, obviously, such as The Evil Within, Ghostwire Tokyo, which was a pretty significant release for the PlayStation if not commercially successful.
Phil: And then Hi-Fi Rush.
Phil: Tango Gameworks is not the name of the company.
Phil: Oh, so this is Kenji speaking, Shinji speaking.
Phil: Shinji Mikami, of course, is a legendary director from Capcom and then came over and did Clover Studios.
Phil: So certainly one of my favorite video game directors of all time.
Phil: And highly influential.
Phil: And so basically he wanted to leave Tango Gameworks years ago.
Phil: He stayed there for years.
Phil: And his comment was, Tango Gameworks is not the name of the company.
Phil: It's the name of a department.
Phil: The name of the company is XenomaxAger.KK.
Phil: So that must be some sort of like limited proprietary, not a reference to the Animal Crossing musician.
Phil: What is a COA?
Phil: I've only been CEO for six months, Mikami said.
Phil: I think a lot of people were under the impression that I was a representative, the executive.
Phil: But I was very close to a rank and file employee.
Phil: I had producer attach my name, but I wasn't an executive or anything of the sort.
Phil: Mikami started a new studio seemingly around March though he's yet to reveal much about the team there or what projects they're working on.
Phil: So this was Bethesda Studios or Zenimax basically gave him a signature studio, which went under the name Tango Gameworks.
Phil: And it was a big deal at the time, a very big deal.
Phil: But it's sad that he wasn't given, he was given the title, but apparently not the role.
Phil: And he said what he wants to do basically with his new company is give young people the opportunity to develop their own work, be more creative and all the rest of it.
Phil: But it sounds like he had years of not really fully enjoying himself.
Phil: And maybe there's some regret there about selling out.
Phil: Certainly he was well financially compensated for running up this studio or this department, as he calls it.
Phil: And hopefully so.
Phil: I mean, this is the guy that was the director of Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Onimusha, Devil May Cry, Phoenix Wright, Steel Battalion, P&O Beautiful Joe, Killer Resident Evil
Phil: And one of my favorite games of all time, Shadows of the Damned, which was an EA published game surprisingly.
Phil: So yeah, it is incredible that someone with that sort of resume was not given the level of authority that he felt that he needed or level of attribution that he felt he needed.
Phil: But we didn't know that, and that's why this is a new story.
Phil: Story number two, Xbox games dominate PlayStation Store.
Phil: Xbox recently had seven games in the top sellers.
Phil: Well, this is credited to VGC, and I'll read from the story here.
Phil: Well, it's already had a strong foothold on rival platforms thanks to Call of Duty and Minecraft.
Phil: Xbox recently announced plans to bring more first-party games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, as we all know with Pentament, Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves.
Phil: But during Microsoft's third quarter earnings call on Thursday, Sachi Nadella, the CEO, said the Xbox games had been performing strongly on the PlayStation Store.
Phil: Quote, Earlier this month, we had seven games among the top on the PlayStation Store, more than any other publisher.
Phil: So those games were Modern Warfare at number Overwatch at number
Phil: Wow, I forgot about Overwatch.
Phil: Sea of Thieves at number Fallout at number Minecraft at number which is surprising, Fallout at number and Grounded at number
Phil: Now, the sad comparison is of the top Sony only had five games that made it onto the list, which is kind of funny because, you know, we think of Sony as having better first-party representation and Microsoft sort of floundering around.
Phil: So their games were MLB The Show, Destiny again, wow, I forgot about Destiny, and a trio of titles that were developed by other studios that they published, like Helldivers and Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin.
Phil: So looks sort of like, you know, Microsoft is doing well by publishing their games on other platforms.
Phil: I will leave on the table the issue that Sony only had five compared to Microsoft in the top
Phil: Sort of odd and weird all the way around.
Phil: But it flows on to this next story, which is from Eurogamer.
Phil: Xbox sales plummet, decreased by % year on year.
Phil: In its latest earnings report, Microsoft's data gaming revenue has increased by billion dollars, which is % up over last year.
Phil: However, their hardware revenue has decreased by % due to poor sales of Xbox consoles.
Phil: Now, this is similar to last year, where the company also reported a % drop in hardware revenue.
Phil: So last year they had a % drop, this year they've had a % drop.
Phil: So you can sort of see the trend here, where their revenue is up, they're selling well on PlayStation and other platforms, but their hardware sales are down.
Phil: It doesn't take a genius to know where this is heading for Microsoft.
Phil: Their strength is software, it always has been, Sony's strength has always been on consumer electronics.
Phil: And more tellingly, there was no mention of Game Pass subscriber numbers in this earnings report.
Phil: So usually that's what they lean on, that's what they're relying on.
Phil: They're saying, oh yeah, well, you know, our hardware sales were bad, but hey, look at user engagement, look at our Game Pass subscribers.
Phil: And this report, they didn't even mention it.
Phil: Back in March, Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer shared his concern about the quote, lack of growth in the industry, which was a key reason for mass layoffs at the company earlier this year.
Phil: Now these numbers back up that lack of growth and the reason for Microsoft now publishing games on rival platforms, including Sea of Thieves.
Phil: Quote, we're expanding our games to new platforms, bringing four of our fan favorites to Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation for the first time, said Sachi Nadella.
Phil: In fact, earlier this month, we had seven games, blah, blah, blah.
Phil: All right, we got it.
Phil: So when you've got these two stories taken back to back, I am thinking back to when Sega got out of publishing, or rather out of the hardware business and emphasizing more the publishing type of thing.
Phil: So yeah, and Sega's, you know, they're doing well.
Phil: They're doing well right now, relative to where they were.
Phil: So final news story, Meta, you know, those fine people that bring you Facebook, are losing $billion a month on VR and augmented reality.
Phil: Credit for this story goes to Eurogamer.
Phil: Let me just say that again.
Phil: They're losing $billion a month.
Phil: I think that's more than Australia's gross domestic product.
Phil: I'm not sure.
Phil: Meta is continuing to plow billions of dollars into its AR division, Reality Labs, Rites, Eurogamer, despite losses of more than $billion every month for most of the last two years.
Phil: Quote, historically, investing to build these new scaled experiences in our apps has been very good long-term investment for us and for investors who have stuck with us, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said.
Phil: And the initial signs are quite positive here too.
Phil: Yeah, the initial signs are that their quest sales have been foundering and that VR is over and done with completely.
Phil: I mean, PlayStation basically has stopped producing the PlayStation I'm sorry, VR
Phil: They didn't support it with any video games after the launch.
Phil: And now they're trying to come up with a way for it to work on the PC so they can get through their existing catalog of equipment.
Phil: This sounds like madness.
Phil: Now, they still made something stupid like $billion, like Meta made $billion in revenue or profit.
Phil: I don't know the reality of it, but they're making plenty of money, which is why they can afford to lose $billion, because essentially they're an advertising company.
Phil: So it seems foolish to me, so foolish in fact that I have to think that Zuckerberg has some sick fetish relating to virtual reality.
Phil: That is why they're continuing to push and push and push, you know, these things ahead, even though they're clearly not working at all.
Phil: I've got to say I've never tried VR.
Phil: We've got to ask Tom Towers when he comes back how he's going with his Quest set and whether it sticks or not.
Phil: But yeah, it just seems crazy that a company could be losing a billion dollars a month.
Phil: How do you even do that?
Phil: Like, how do you even do that?
Phil: Do you have like people working on this?
Phil: What are you buying?
Phil: How do you even do that?
Phil: I mean, I could not spend a billion dollars a month.
Phil: After I buy myself a helicopter and some helicopter lessons, I don't know where I go from there.
Phil: I guess I could buy a few houses in a few countries.
Phil: But I still couldn't even get close to like $million if I did that.
Phil: So it's baffling.
Phil: And I hope it ends up in a good place.
Phil: I hope this is not just some investment in a dystopic future where people are living in containers, but they think they're living in Fiji.
Phil: So anyway, that does it for news.
Phil: And I don't think I'm going to go into what I've been playing lately, only because there is a chance that we're going to have another show out of our usual schedule with Tom Towers, because we may be both in the same city soon where we're able to record.
Phil: So with that, I've given you the Game Under news update.
Phil: If you'd wish to comment, please go to gameunder.net.
Phil: Just comment on the front page.
Phil: It's no requirement to log in, no requirement for an account or anything like that.
Phil: We've been doing this since so there's a lot of resources covering games from that time to now on our website, gameunder.net.
Phil: If you'd like to submit a question again, please use our comment section from the home page.
Phil: Thanks again for listening to episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Phil: I'm Phil Fogg.
Phil: Oh my god, honestly, do you ever shut up?