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Sadiq is sick of discourse, Cristian is just sick. We talk about Xbox going third party, the new Love Live Gacha Game, Crunchryoll removing digital purchases, Disney investing into Epic, and Death Stranding for Mac.
Show Notes:
Xbox Going Third Party:
Show Notes:
Xbox Going Third Party:
- What, Exactly, Is Xbox Thinking? - Remap
- What Does Xbox Even Mean Anymore? - Aftermath
- What would an Xbox without console exclusives even look like? - Ars Technica
Live Love School Idol Festival 2:
- Love Live School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live Starts and Ends in 2024 - Siliconera
- Announcellation: Entertainment Media Is Losing Its Mind (The Jimquisition)
Crunchyroll Shutting Down Funimation and Deleting All Digital Purchases:
Disney investing into Epic:
Death Stranding for Mac:
Sadiq’s Book Corner:
- Review: Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
- Review: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
Cristian’s Music Recommendation:
Creators & Guests
What is Voxels?
A podcast on Art and Culture by Sadiq Saif and Cristian Colocho
Hi, I'm Salik. And I'm Christian. And this is episode three of Voxels. We're starting with,
you know, a better discourse than last time. I gotta 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 even 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.
Salik Parekh 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
sort of 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. Like, 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 like... Sean O'Toole 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 the 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. 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 topic. 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? Sean O'Toole I don't think we
actually introduced the news properly. So the rumor is Starfield, HiFi Rush, and Sea of Thieves
would be going to PlayStation and/or Switch. I mean, good? Like, I don't see what the issue is
with this. Yeah, yeah. There's no problem. There's literally... I think if you've been
like dealing with Microsoft exclusives for the last, I'd say like five years, you'd have noticed
that Microsoft has steadily cared less and less about exclusives as they are because they want
people... They care about... Like their big play, I've been talking about this for literally years
now, is that we... Is services. Like they don't... 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 quote-unquote exclusives are on Steam and not just on the Windows
hashtag or Microsoft Store, right? So Microsoft is just like, these games are going to be everywhere
now. Like 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 need to just want
to point out the absurdity of a little something I've been seeing in the Xbox land. Sony ponies,
Samsung Ni-- 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? It seems 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? Like imagine if we had
this conversation, right? Let's swap out a few vowels, you know, 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, I think this is like partly
like the, I guess you could call it the fault of like the marketing of like a decade plus of
marketing from PlayStation, from Sony and from Microsoft. Like everybody, like the companies
are the blame for the micro marketing thing over here. It's like they have been sort of
like marketing their devices as like, you know, you should play video games here. We got the good
games. We got the exclusive games, right? And sort of, I think this is like the end result of that.
Like now you're at a point where like people are like invested, you know, quote unquote invested
into these platforms. People have spent thousands of dollars on hardware, on video games, on services
on these platforms, right? And that now I kind of understand it like from a certain like point
of view because I'm not invested. It's like very outsider. Like I don't buy this, any of this shit,
but a lot of people who've been buying like an Xbox since like the original Xbox days, you know,
like people who have had an Xbox 360, had Xbox One, have an Xbox Series S or X, like they are
like fully invested into like the Xbox brand, right? You know, they buy games on Xbox. They
have, they've been on Xbox Live, you know, Xbox Live Gold or whatever it is to be called, I forget.
Like, so they're fully invested. It's like a part of their identity at this point, which,
you know, it's kind of depressing, but like it is. So I kind of understand why people are like,
what does, what would, what would, what would happen to Xbox without exclusives? Because exclusives
have been part of the identity, right? Like when I think of, even like, even as a non console gamer,
like when I think of Xbox exclusive, I think Halo, right? Halo is like the big tent pole,
or used to be really, it used to be like the big tent pole Xbox exclusive, right? Like
if, whenever people thought of Xbox, they thought, Hey, hello, or Call of Duty, right? Even though
Call of Duty was never an exclusive to Xbox, Call of Duty was like massive because of like the
popularity of like Xbox 360, right? Like, and like the Xbox Live sort of online service, like there's
a whole identity that they have created for the last, like, you know, however many years. And that
all of a sudden people are just like, wait, wait a second. You mean, you mean to say my, my investment
is, is not gonna like, you know, you know, not continue to be like rewarded. I'm not even joking,
right? It's an emotional investment. It's not even like, I mean, I talk about financial investment
also, like really it's like an emotional investment. You feel sentimental about the hardware,
right? Or the software, which is, you know, I kind of understand why, like, if you're been in the
ecosystem for a long time, since like the beginning or like since the Xbox 360, like you're like,
is, is, is like a Phil Spencer betraying Xbox. Like, you know, like it's...
Phil lied.
And it's, it seems silly to me from an outsider point of view, but I kind of get it. Like it's,
it's, it's, it's really kind of like, like it's, if you really think about it for a second, it's like,
people are just like 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. Like that's, that's all I'm going to say. Like this whole, I hope,
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. And it's, it's, it's bad for everybody. Like,
it's not good to have exclusives. That's, it's like, you could argue that exclusives
are the reason some games get made. Right. But at the same time, I'm like, what, what,
like what does it even let's, let's use other language to phrase this is eco is ecosystem lock
in good or bad, right? This is what this is. Exclusives are ecosystem lock in. This is the
iMessage of Xbox, the blue bubbles. No, no, we're not doing blue bubble. Also, also I,
I want to introduce gamers to something called the European 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, like you could just apply that to a PlayStation or an Xbox, right? Like,
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, you know, to, 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. That I don't think is
going to happen, but that should. Yeah, that should, but that seems unlikely, I think.
Well, that's how you get around also the question of, well, what do you do with the console platform
now, now that, you know, 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, you know, call of duty is going
to stay and other games probably see a fee of 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, you know, say fuck it
and go 10,000 feet in terms of, yeah, you know, we have our Surface like 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, you know? So the Xbox hardware sort of becomes like this like Halo product, right?
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. Okay. Yeah. So the reference platform and we got like sort of OEMs, like, you know,
I don't know, Asus or like whoever else, like, you know, you got the people who making like the ROG
Ally, the Asus ROG Ally, right? Like stuff like that is, but like a big rock box. Yeah.
Like it could happen. Like this is the thing is like this, like theoretically, there's no
technical barrier to this, right? Like there is like, I don't think there's like a really a
technical barrier to this. It's just that Microsoft has to decide this is the play and they're going
to sort of open up the Xbox hardware ecosystem to like actually like more internal sort of
competition like within the ecosystem. It's just weird that Xbox is the only part of Microsoft
that's still vertically integrated. That to me, it's like, it just doesn't, it doesn't match of
anything of what else they do. Right. Like 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 of Azure, right? And then Xbox mobile services. And then also having Xbox live services
that you can like 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, um, Azure PlayFab.
I think you, uh, PlayFab. Yeah. Yeah. PlayFab. There we go. Yeah. Cause I remember that one
magician battle royale game we played that was running off of PlayFab. So really like putting
those services out and then just like 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. Cause you're
losing on two sides, right? It's not just Sony in the, um, 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 like an Xbox platform that could run from like
boxes to the portable handhelds probably is the smarter way to go.
Yeah. Because right now, like, you know, like Valve is like, Valve is weird. Nobody knows what
Valve is going to do really like, and Valve is like, Valve could have been in this space.
Valve, 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 because they just...
Now remember you still have the Steam controller, right? You're like...
Yeah, I used to have a Steam controller. I think I still have the Steam link somewhere,
maybe somewhere. I don't even know where it is, but like Valve used to be more into this,
but they're sort of getting back like with the Steam deck. I think Valve sort of sees like
another sort of angle that they can work on. Um, like, which is sort of building this ecosystem of
hardware that runs their software, right? Um, and Microsoft probably wants to get it.
Microsoft already like wants to be like, we have all these services already, right? All of these
services people are using already. Why don't we just make it so that our services run fucking
everywhere? Like on whatever hardware people, whatever OEM wants to build hardware that runs
the software, like why the hell not, right? Like that's the kind of...
Like what a good sell, right? Like this, this, this server stack runs Call of Duty and Warzone,
so you should buy it too. Yeah, exactly. There's, there's, there's a
huge pitch that they can make and who knows what's going to happen. I, I'm really curious what this
and like PR press, this press release is going to look like. What this, what this, what is Phil
Spencer going to do? Like some exclusive interview with IGN? Like what's happening? Like, I don't
know. Hard pivot. Just, just, just go for it. This is, you can't, gamers are bad. Like, I'm sorry,
if you identify as a gamer, you're bad. But hot takes sub voxels. Yes. Gamers are bad.
But more seriousness, you can't, you can't give a wishy washy press statement on a,
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 like... Yeah, the backlash, like honestly,
like gamers will get mad at anything, right? So like who cares? Like gamers are not like...
Xbox fans, get in line. I'm here for my windows phone. I still got one. Get in fucking line. Stop
crying. Yeah. Just like, you know, like it's not even like, I, I have seen some people, I mean,
I talked about the whole reason people are quote unquote invested in the platform and it's still
like really, really silly. Like the amount of like people are just like, you know, like really losing
their minds over like, you know, they're... I want to address this too. No one's taking away your
digital game library. If anything, if anything, would I... Hopefully with this would push Microsoft
and I'm kind of wish casting at this point, but since we're already making a change,
we're deep prior towards the Xbox at a platform, Microsoft, please let Xbox games run on PC.
There is no reason that the emulation that they use to run like old Xbox 360 games and backwards
compatibility cannot just be a part of like the windows store. Like, okay, you need Windows 11,
you need like 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 like Xbox
one, Xbox 360 games on PC. I mean, they could, they could even make it part of that games pass.
Like, you know, like you could just like bundle that with like, you know, people love like
companies love bundles. So you could just be like, okay, look, PC games pass. You can like emulate
like Xbox or Xbox 360 games, right? Like straight, there we go. Straight away, just like a bunch of
extra functionality that people would surely find value in. Yeah, and never run like any PC,
because that was built for Jaguar cores. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's, now we're just like,
we're like, what, what, what would we want if Microsoft does this? And you can tell that me and
you are not coming from a gamer perspective, we're coming from like a computer enthusiast perspective,
where we just would rather be cross platform and we're open. I, if there, if there was one gamer
thing out is, is can we get Halo 5 on PC? Like, like, can we just like get that one?
Can we talk about how they ported Forge the PC, but then never brought anything else of
Halo 5 to PC? Yeah. Yeah. Just, just can we get, I know 343 is a little like understaffed, maybe
under, under like under resourced, maybe, maybe that's just like, you know, bring 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. Also, Console Wars is made up by corporations
to get you to spend more money with them. Like, you know, I just wanted to say it as a marketing
campaign. You're not really like, yeah, people bought it. People bought the, people bought what
they're selling, like hook, line and sticker. Like it's, it's kind of like, and I'm not like
immune to this. I'm not, I'm not saying that somehow as being a PC game or hashtag PC game,
or that I'm just like somehow immune. I mean, you're all team red now for reasons I don't
understand. You're not here buying shitty graphics cards because you don't like it in Nvidia,
bro. You, your ray tracing performance is trash. Hold on a minute. You bought he, okay. Everyone
it's adding any of this name and shame downgraded from a 30, 2080 TI to some latest gen AMD shit.
That's not a downgrade. That is in no way a downgrade, bro. Steve would be disappointed
what he's saying right now. Can you, can you run DLSS? I don't care about DLSS, bro. I got FSR.
Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. You know, let's not turn into the, uh, like a GPU wars.
This is the same, the same, the place with GPU wars, but I'm out here using Apple Silicon.
So I really have anything to say. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I, yes, I did buy, uh, uh, uh,
AMD GPU, uh, to upgrade and it is an upgrade no matter what rasterization performance is
way, way higher than a 2080 TI anyways. So this is going off the rails. So the last thing I've
got these Xbox one third party is I think we are fans of this idea. I genuinely think that, um,
game patch should be on every platform. Like, um, you, we should have, I'm sorry to the PC gamers
out there. Cause I know y'all love steam, but then like to say you like competition, but apparently
hate installing anything but steam. So, but I think there should be multiple app stores on every
platform, right? Like, um, I don't have a problem with multiple app stores really. Like, I just want
them to be better. Like I just think like, a steam has like set a standard and like the Epic games
are kind of sucks just like from a software user experience perspective. Uh, not, not just because
it's like the, for like, I don't like personally valve steam. I don't like, if the game is, this is
another thing, this is a whole other discourse in like PC gaming communities about like people who
like refuse to buy, uh, games that are exclusive to, uh, the Epic game store, which, which, which
does happen. And I, 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 game store that, you know,
the app can be better. The payment flow could be better or the Microsoft store where sometimes
downloading shit doesn't work for whatever reason. Like those are technical complaints. I understand,
but, but you cannot be like, I don't like app stores. I need to open this. I like having,
upgrading my hardware when I want and then being like, I don't want nothing but steam.
That is a hypocrite. Yeah. That's a, that's, that's definitely like a point of people have,
people have bought some of this valves, valves marketing, I guess, uh, as much as valve does
marketing that steam is like the platform for window, like PC gaming, which, uh, which has its
valve has its own problems, but it's like, yeah, like why, like, I don't have a problem with games
being, okay. I'm kind of, I kind of do have a problem with games being explicit through Epic
game 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 on, uh, on in January, that is on, on PC that's exclusive to,
to the Epic game store because Epic games published it. Uh, and like Epic games provided
funding for, for the game to even happen. So like, yeah. So that's the exclusive to the,
like, I'm not going to refuse to play Alan Wake 2 because it's on the Epic game. That's like a
very weird stance to take for, in my, in my opinion, like it's, you're not, I don't think
how you're, I don't see how you're making any sort of actual point. Um, so yeah, that's PC gamers.
Just yeah. Just buy a Mac if you want to think like that. Okay. Let's let's, this, this topic
is really going on the rails. Yes. Let's just, let's just talk about anime. This topic is going
nowhere. So, you know, I got a segue. So, um, we, we're having a heated agreement. Um, so now
let's have another heated disagreement and talk about some, some weird shit. Uh, anime, anime
bullshit. Yeah. That's as, um, people have a prior podcast may know. I'm, uh, what we call a, um,
LLC fast enthusiast, you know, I love live school, I know festival club, um, in a prior life,
they used to be the benchmark, right? You know, 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 that was the benchmark. Alas, both of the love live games, school,
little festival and school, little festival all-stars recently shut down. And I just want
to do a sidebar on sidebar. This is, this is sidebar line. We're at the beach this episode.
Um, and, 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? I was paying
for like the premium monthly thing and I got no refund. Yeah, that's, I, I don't do mobile
gaming really. I don't, I don't really do mobile gaming. So this is like entirely out of my sort
of purview, but this is a thing I've been hearing about sort of on and off from people. Like I know
there's been several Jimquisition videos on it, uh, that mobile games just, just shot,
like they just stopped. Like they're just like, here is the end date for all the, for the service.
Like the service is just going to stop or the app is just going to stop working at this date. And
no, you're not going to get any refunds for any purchases. Um, and you don't get to export your
data and you don't get to like keep anything from it. Um, 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 there's a Rocky launch.
So, you know, normally how these mobile games launch first, especially like 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, um, I'm just going to read the fucking, we, sorry, the sheet,
let me open this up. So the game will launch in February, 2024 preregistrations open. However,
we want you to inform that, or sorry, we want, 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, 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 threeish months,
whatever February to may is. Yeah. Like I, 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. Uh, if you, 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, um, you know, just do full disclosure. 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, for the people to keep running these shit?
Like, like what is, what's the reasoning behind like, just like, there is 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, it's just wildly incorrect. But the leak on the Reddit is this is due to licensing.
The license. So it's not the Love Live company that made this game, right? Some game studio
and they were contract, contractually obligated to put out a global version as well. But now the
license for the property is running up a 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 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 will work. But like,
it's impossible to 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 lot, like, just a license file, basically. They're not
actually like the content. So it's like, how do you preserve these, like, historical, like,
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 DCM made away. >> Yeah, exactly.
So like, the licensing nightmare is like, I'm not a bad effort 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, my licensed music and cars. >> 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, 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, Gate Preservation is very, like, Gate Preservation is an entire,
like, that could be an entire podcast, like, entire series of podcast episodes. But it's,
like, Gate Preservation in the modern era of digital media is, like, very, very difficult
because so much of it is entirely controlled by the corporation selling the product. And the
corporation selling the product are just like, they don't care about preservation, right? Like,
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 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 case of music? Just
not use licensed music? Because there's another perspective that's 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 sound 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 remove all the
licensed music from a Forza game, yes, it will definitely be, like, a lesser... >> Didn't GTA do
that? >> I think, I think Gran Tinto Auto San Andreas might have, like, there was, like, a whole
controversy about, like, Gran Tinto Auto San Andreas, like, removing the radio stations that had,
like, a bunch of copyrighted, like, 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, right? Part of the art that you think the game, right, like, experience.
And, like, remove the music from Forza is definitely going to make it a worse game and
a lesser sort of art. As it's not, you're not maintaining the whole thing. The integrity of
the product, 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. - Porsche is a different, okay, okay,
hold on, 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 with that Porsche,
depictions of Porsche cars were exclusive to EA games for a long, 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 four, late in the four 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 had Porsche. So that's the whole last thing, right? I, 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 got to explain something here. So Sony has, over time, 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 comp-
Except for a company called HiDive. Now, HiDive stands, please don't get at me.
How, why does HiDive have stands? Why does HiDive have, like, what-
I don't know if I should, I, I want to, 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. That's the kind of fine wares you find at HiDive.
So HiDive is owned by AMC, I think, like the, the same company that owns, like, the TV channel
at 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, 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 want
with your parents 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 told me about this, uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like the one where they just
buy slaves to sleep with, like, it was, that was messed up. Crunchyroll, for some reason,
doesn't draw the line at slavery, but at actual nude bodies, that's where they draw the line.
Jesus fucking Christ. They carried like four shows about buying slaves, dude.
Oh, lord. Um, so- But yeah, so basically, anyways,
Sony has, owns Funimation, Crunchyroll. Sony also owns Right Stuff, which is like the biggest, like,
web store for like 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, right, they would, I guess Blu-ray nowadays, but basically, they would also be
the distributor for anime, which is why they had a streaming service, because as 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 may, I use separate email accounts. Oh, wait, hold on, hold
on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. The accounts are merging, but there's going to be data loss
because, because reasons, like, you're not going to have- So, 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 Crunchyrolls accounts
with both different watch histories, because I did subscribe to Funimation for two years.
And I have, apparently you can contact support to try and merge them. I'm not, I'm not going to call
their support team. I just, especially with the kind of shows I was watching on Funimation. I'm
not, 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 at a service where if you bought a
digital, 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.
Yeah, I, okay. So this is like, at what point does this become like, like some sort of thing
that we get a class action lawsuit about? Because like, this is the kind of thing where, I mean,
maybe in the terms of service, they mentioned like the digital purchase is like not really like
a purchase or an ownership agreement or whatever, but like it's like some value added service that
they're providing. But like, at what point do people just sort of like, like, this is,
this is really like a scam. Like you paid for, it's like a bait and switch, right? Like,
like you paid for the Blu-ray service thinking that you'd 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
like what you bought, like on the fly without any compensation. And they're not like, you know,
giving you anything in return. They just take it away. They're just like, you don't have this
anymore. Like how soon do we get like some sort of class action lawsuit about this? Because it's
just, this is just bullshit. Like there's no, I don't see a, like, yeah, maybe they have contractual
power over here. Maybe. But like even legally, this seems a little bit suspicious. So kind of,
kind of like, you know, hoping that maybe some lawsuits happen because this is kind of shit.
People bought stuff years, they're gonna 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. Every, literally every streaming
service has been like doing some sort of price increase. That does not surprise. Do you, okay.
My question to you is, do you think that Crunchyroll subscription price is like,
like worth the price you're paying? Like, do you think it's like reasonably like still like fine?
Like it's not, it's like even with the price increase, like it's fine.
So they have three tiers, right? They have the fan tier, which is $8 a month now. It used to be
$7, I guess. Mega fan, $10 and ultimate fan, $15. The difference between the fan, mega fan,
ultimate fan, regular fan, stream on one device at a time, no offline downloads. Mega fan,
four devices at a time, offline downloads. And you get the Crunchyroll game vault,
free gotcha games, quote unquote free. Oh my God. And you get $15 off any $100 purchase in
the Crunchyroll source as a company they bought that writes stuff company every three months.
Ultimate fan, $15 a month, six devices at a time, offline viewing, Crunchyroll game vault, $25 off
of $100 purchases, free shipping on all orders. And you get a swag bag for 12 months of subscription.
So you get a $10 probably gift bag after paying what? 12 times 15?
$80, $180 a year. You play $180 a year.
Yeah, not really worth it. The thing too about these tiers are the different devices at a time.
Like, I don't know, I would in the past, I would say, hey, let's pull our anime subscriptions
together, right? Me and like four or five other people. But given with 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, pause if we're going to see, you know, headlines saying Crunchyroll is cracking down
on password sharing. So I pay for the fans here because...
Yeah, you don't need to...
Anime is a solo hobby. And I don't need to watch enough. 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.
Oh, see, maybe if I had a Vision Pro, you know, if I had a Vision Pro where no one can see the
garbage I'm watching, I would probably throw that shit on 100 feet, 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? Like, why? Is it just...
Okay. I mean, I know, 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. Now...
Yeah, I mean, Torrance also still. Torrance.
Listen, 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 we know you know.
That sounds so wrong, bro.
No, Cole Girls, just to be clear, people don't get the wrong idea.
Is it 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 like the Angel Beats era of encodes from them were really, really good.
So that's what I mean by Cole Girls. I didn't realize how the fish is. 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 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, look at this. I'm not even surprised. I saw this in my
feed reader and I was like, of course, of course, Disney, the company with a gazillion, quote unquote,
intellectual property that wants to like merge with not merge, but like with 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 like Disney is
investing like one point five billion dollars into into into into Epic Games, into Epic. And it's
with this is going to come like, you know, obviously it's going to have that means like
there's more Disney shit in Fortnite. Obviously, that's like the big play,
but also that Disney is going to be using Unreal Engine for for their future games, which I'm sure
I guess. And Disney has a long and storied history of video games, like, you know, with
different publishers. You know, EA for a long time was like the company that made Disney stuff. Right.
Right. Like all the Star Wars games that EA made and all that kind of shit. So like Disney just
going to like 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 how did you 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 like. Yeah. So, I mean, Kingdom Hearts is part
of this. That's self-care. I my brain was like, you don't need to remember Kingdom Hearts. So,
yeah, like, you know, Disney has a long history of making like doing collaborations with other game
publishers to like make their like make their games. They don't want to they don't seem to
want to make games in-house. They don't seem to want to like, you know, have like an in-house
studio that makes these games. Maybe maybe that's a smart play. I don't know. I'm not I'm not like
an expert on that. Maybe maybe it is better for them to like outsource their games to video game
companies that know how to make video games. Maybe that's just makes sense. So, yeah, for I'm sure
Epic is going to like be involved in some sort of Disney game other than like Fortnite integrations.
So I am I'm 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. And I don't it's it's just it's it's just
the meta version is just cringe as hell. I don't like I'm not into it. So how about you? I know
you're probably more. What about Kingdom Hearts? What about are we doing is there a Kingdom Hearts
shit in Fortnite? Surprisingly not. Surprisingly not. Honestly, like maybe maybe I'm just an old
head, but I'm actually shocked. I never heard like the one you walk away song. Someone just like
pops off a shotgun shot and it starts dancing with the Kingdom Hearts opening playing that.
Yeah. Yeah, that's 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
be on the next topic. Death Stranding for Mac, which also I don't know why it's in the show notes.
Like I don't so much time talking about hanging out with 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 gross
about my shutters earlier. I'm getting over a cold right now. So I'm still in like that headspace.
That's why this is probably a little more off the walls we normally do. But as as one does,
when they get sick, they play Death Stranding. So the Mac port recently came out. And before
we talk about the game, let's talk about some tentacles of it. So it's it's a PC game, so it
has like PC settings, but obviously me, I'm allergic to that shit. So I bought a Mac. So
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. Yeah, but yeah, but Metal FX
1440, like sub 4k ish, around 4k native resolution 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 cutscene to be 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 good podcast game. I don't even mean that in like a way that braids it.
You just walk around, you know, you're delivering your packages, and then you can just pause your
podcast whenever a cutscene happens and go back to it. And it seems to work really well at the top
at 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 like 20 minutes of it. Never played a Metal Gear Solid game. It's my
first Kojima game. And wow. Okay. I thought people were a Cap'n and Meme'n. 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,
people, I get the impression where he's like, oh, he wants to make movie. He wants to make cinema.
No, he's making fucking anime for hide eye if not Crunchyroll.
- Oh my God. That's the analogy we're going with. Okay.
- He's fucking making anime, bro. This is a good dubbed anime.
- It does have a very anime-esque plot, right? Like I think I've heard of the
plot of Death Stranding. It's a very anime-ish plot. Like the whole thing about connecting
connecting people. Like that sounds like a very like shonen anime bullshit.
- So the plot of the game is, right, is the president of the United States dies after some
weird, like, and America has 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 love it. It's a good
game. - At some point, I feel like I want to play Death Stranding, but also at the same time,
I'm just like over Kojima as like a creator. I don't know. It's a weird, weird balance.
I really like, kind of like Metal Gear Solid as a franchise. Like I had, I've only played the one
Metal Gear Solid game, but I've like watched play throughs of all the other Metal Gear Solid games.
I'm like familiar with what happens in the series and whatnot. But like, I don't know if I'm ready
to play Death Stranding or, 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 fair.
- Okay, that's fair. - I don't have any experience with the iPhone port because it only runs under
15 pros and I have a 14 and I'm not going to upgrade my phone just to play Death Stranding
or Resident Evil 4. - No, that's seems like, yeah. And also the iPhone port seems a little,
little, like 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. Here's, 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 like shown off at WWDC. 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 rebuy it and play it again,
because I feel like I got what I wanted out of it for like the few hours I played of it.
It is the game you can get lost in. Some people love the show No Man's Sky, and they've done a
lot of great work. But yeah, that's how that game goes for me. But this 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.
They're not as prominent as the PC versions, but the PC versions have better GPUs,
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 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 like... You need Destiny.
Not Destiny, but I don't know. I would take like a...
Call of Duty. Call of Duty.
Call of Duty, like the finals, Overwatch, some kind of, you know, esports title. They're getting
these graphical showcases, but they also need to get games that people like just play. Yes.
Games that people play for a long time, like these live service,
critical live service games, right? Like shooters and MMOs. And I mean Final Fantasy 14 does exist
on Mac OS, I think, but... No, oh my God.
Yeah, let's not talk about that. The Final Fantasy 14 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 like the World of Warcraft team at Blizzard has like 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
you all didn't get laid off. Yeah, that's... So let's wrap this up. Let's wrap this really weird
episode. I mean another weird episode. We just kind of went off the rails as we do. That's not
weird, actually. This happens in your podcast when you're sick.
Yeah, yeah. So let's wrap... I have a couple of books. I finished up the remaining of the
Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers. I read Record of a Spaceborne 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. Like 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. Oh, 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 the series, but yeah. Let me see. It is... Okay. Yes. The one I have in progress is I'm 30%
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 got me, 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. 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. And it's like, I'm like somewhat
like slightly halfway more into the game. There's a lot of game in the game. So check back on that
in like a month. Music. You got music recommendations? What do you got?
I got a music recommendation super quick. Yeah. I got That Mexican OT's Lone Star Luchador.
I like found out this album yesterday. It's good. It's a good, it's a debut album. That Mexican OT.
OT stands for out of Texas. A rapper. Is that what it stands for? I didn't know. I thought it was
just like the thing of it. Yeah. So it's a mix of like Southern hip hop and some like Mexican
infused kind of 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, right. Are like the same flow over every single
song. This is, 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 like 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 lesson.
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. Tell me if you have thoughts about Xbox going third
party. I'd love to hear what other people are thinking. Some people might be quote unquote
invested in the ecosystem. Please let us know. What are your thoughts? Other than that,
what's the email ad? It's ProtonGood. It's ProtonGood now. That's actually the question.
But all right. Yes. Where can we find you at? The Linux nerds will love that question.
You can email this stuff feedback@voxels.fm. Right. Is that that's the email. And you can
find me on Mastodon at packetcarrot10forward.social and my website sattexape.com. Christian,
where do people find you? All right. You all can find me on mastodon@loficarrots@mstdn.plus.
You can also find me on website, trustfind.website where I am. My domain is about to expire. I
should renew that domain actually. Thank you for the reminder email. That was a weird,
really weird email for 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, um, pirate all of your anime and games.
Um, don't play mobile games. Um, don't play Fortnite, uh, Death Stranding, pretty cool.
And I'll listen to Texas music. Yeah. See you later. Bye. Bye.