Why Phil Spencer Retired, And What's Next For Xbox

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason dive into the year's biggest gaming news so far: Xbox boss Phil Spencer retiring. They talk about what led to this big shakeup, discuss whether new boss Asha Sharma really needs to be a gamer, and try to figure out if there's any way to salvage the Xbox brand.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  Xbox boss Phil Spencer retired, which means a new president is stepping up. That's right, it's John Halo. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. And I'm just kidding, it's actually Asha Sharma. But what is her deal? And what is she going to do when she takes on the role of Xbox president? Let's discuss.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers. Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hi, hello.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  I hope you guys survive the great blizzard of February 2026.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  You know, it keeps snowing. I, I think I'm good on it at this point. I, I kind of missed it for a few years.

• 0:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you're good. No more, you're good on snow. Like, come on, man.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I think I'm good. It was, it was nice for a little while there, winter wonderland, all that. But I, I, I'm okay with it at this point. I think we can cut it off here for the season.

• 1:02Jason Schreier?

  So in my town, we got 24 inches this week. And, uh, uh, man, I had this experience, uh, when, after it was over. So usually I shovel my own driveway, but this time it was so much that I hired someone to come in and shovel it. And then I came and checked it out at night, once it had stopped snowing. And I was walking on my driveway and it felt like I was Moses parting the Red Sea, because there were these two giant tsunami level waves of snow. Literally, it was, it was five feet of snow on each side of my driveway. It was the most insane thing I've ever seen.

• 1:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Were these piles of snow generated with a like snow blowing machine or with a shovel?

• 1:42Jason Schreier?

  I thought you were gonna say generated with AI. I was gonna say, yeah.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Were these real? Was this some sort of slop?

• 1:49Jason Schreier?

  It was a shovel. It was the guy with the shovel. We was doing a bunch of houses in our neighborhood. Yeah, it was wild.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  That's hardcore. Our, our driveway was plowed with a snow blower and we only got 18 inches. So clearly they were lazy compared to whatever mastermind with a shovel was shoveling Jason's 24.

• 2:06Jason Schreier?

  It's true. Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Impressive.

• 2:09Jason Schreier?

  Hey. Did you know that we are a listener supported podcast? Did you guys know this? I just found this out about.

• 2:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I did.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  It's news to me.

• 2:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 2:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I found it out the last time that you just.

• 2:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, last week I found out for the first time. Episode 293, it took me 293 episodes, not 294. That would be embarrassing if I took me 294 episodes.

• 2:27Kirk Hamilton?

  You're focusing on other things. It's understandable.

• 2:29Jason Schreier?

  We are a listener supported podcast. You can support us by going to maximumfun.org/join. And by joining the Maximum Fun Network, which supports us, you also, you not only make the show possible, you also get access to monthly bonus episodes that we do for you, for all you fine subscribers out there. We just ran one for January about the TV show Pluribus, and we are about to run one for February about the documentary King of Khan: A Fistful of Quarters, which we will be watching and talking about. So look forward to that soon if you are a subscriber. And lots more to come, more stuff this year about games, about shows, about The Sopranos and a whole backlog.

• 3:13Jason Schreier?

  If you are not a member and you haven't listened to bonus episodes, we've got a whole backlog full of cool stuff. So go to maximumfun.org/join and you too can listen to those bonus episodes. All right, so there's a big game coming out this week. It's called Resident Evil Requiem. We are not going to be talking about that today. We are going to be talking about that next week instead, which I think will be good because it'll mean that listeners will have had a chance to play it while we're, as we're talking about it. Because there's some big news that we should get into. This isn't a news podcast, of course, but sometimes we like to talk about big, major news, especially when it involves one of Maddy's predictions being proven correct.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  That's true. That's the main reason we're talking about it. Otherwise, it barely would have mattered.

• 4:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, all news through the lens of our predictions.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 4:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, otherwise it would be insignificant. Like, I don't think anyone would be talking about it.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Well, that's kind of how I think all games journalists are orienting all their coverage. It's just around whether or not we are getting predictions right.

• 4:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Headline, Maddy Meyer's prediction proved correct.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I gotta say.

• 4:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And the subhead said what actually happened.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I really had no inside info. I know that's our rule for our predictions, but this was just a real shot in the dark. But Jason, why don't you, why don't you tell the people what we're even referring to?

• 4:28Jason Schreier?

  Phil Spencer, the president of Xbox Gaming resigned and will be replaced by a woman named Asha Sharma, who is in her mid 30s. She was an Instacart executive. She's been at Microsoft for a couple of years now in the AI department, Core AI specifically, AI platforms. And so, most people are not familiar with her and learned a lot about her over the last week. We'll get into that. But yes, the headlines declared, Maddy Meyer is correct. Phil Spencer out. Phil out.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Maddy gets a point confirmed. First point of the year, maybe?

• 5:02Kirk Hamilton?

  It was interesting. There's a big picture of Maddy on the, on the front page, not of Phil Spencer.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:06Kirk Hamilton?

  No Xbox logos, just Maddy looking happy.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  My face was all over every mainstream gaming website this week. I was in the news.

• 5:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. What's funny about this is that there had been rumors, I think for like a solid two years now, ever since Xbox really went on this current path of decline, that Phil Spencer would be out. And the rumors never proved to be true until very recently. In fact, I remember hearing at like, I think it was Dice two years ago, so almost exactly two years ago, people were gossiping about like, oh, Phil's set to resign, Phil's set to retire. So now it's actually happening. Hilariously, I actually just ran into Phil at Dice two weeks ago. He told me he was in Japan, snowboarding on vacation. And I had zero, zero clue that he was about to say that he was going to retire. So Phil

• 5:52Jason Schreier?

  Spencer is no longer at Xbox. Sarah Bond, who was kind of primed as his successor, is also no longer going to be at Xbox. Matt Booty, the other member of their triumvirate, is sticking around to be Asha Sharma's lieutenant and run the studios and run the content, essentially. And yeah, I mean, nobody really knows what this is going to mean. We can venture some guesses, but it is certainly a new era for one of the three console makers and I believe now the biggest company in gaming, certainly in terms of employees, after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

• 6:32Jason Schreier?

  What'd you guys make of this? What'd you think of this news when you, when you first saw it?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  I was shocked.

• 6:38Jason Schreier?

  Did you immediately think, oh, man, I won a prediction?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  No, because I, I always forget. I think we all do this. We all forget all the predictions.

• 6:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I couldn't tell you most of my predictions.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  But that's, that's what's fun about the predictions, though, is that we forget, we forget what they are. We just get to enjoy going through the year. And then someone else, one of our wonderful listeners, was actually said to me, didn't one of the triple click members predict that Phil Spencer resigned? And then I looked it up and I was like, yeah, not only did one of us do it, it was in fact me. Great news for me. I was, hmm, so like a lot of people, I initially really zoomed in mentally on Asha Sharma's prior job at Microsoft, which is that she was part of an AI division there. And that made me really curious about what that means for Xbox going forward. Obviously, we still don't know, but she, when I described this to my wife, I described her as an AI executive.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  And Dina was like, are you telling me they hired an AI? And I was like, oh, no. Okay.

• 7:37Kirk Hamilton?

  She's a really advanced AI agent.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  That would be, that would be wild.

• 7:41Kirk Hamilton?

  You should see what Claude can do these days. Made a whole lady.

• 7:45Jason Schreier?

  So many people are just using AI for so many aspects of their jobs and it's basically.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  I think it was a reasonable assumption on Dina's part, although she was extremely horrified at the prospect of this. It's worth noting. And I was like, oh, no, no, no. She's just someone who specializes in this at Microsoft. And that indicates something about who they're putting in charge at Xbox, or at least that's what I had presumed. But her introductory letter, we kind of have access to everyone's goodbye letters and introductory statements about this changeover. She, she has this little mention about how she doesn't believe in AI slop. She even uses that term. And I, I thought that was interesting, that she kind of felt preemptively defensive about her previous job. I don't know what that means, but that was one of the first

• 8:30Speaker 02

  moments of reflection for me and looking into this. And, and I know we've talked before about AI.

• 8:36Jason Schreier?

  Hold on. I don't think that's like an indictment on her previous job. I don't think that's what she was saying. So the exact quote. Quote is, quote, "We will not chase chase short term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop." She is very much still on board with AI. She's just saying, we're not gonna like make churn out a bunch of games that are just made by like ChatGPT or whatever, a co-pilot.

• 9:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Would have been kind of sweet if she had if she had affirmed that she was going to do those things.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's like, holy soulless AI slop only.

• 9:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Nothing but garbage for all of you. Enjoy it. Lap it up, you little pigs.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  If it's got a soul, we're taking it out.

• 9:16Jason Schreier?

  But no, she's definitely not like criticizing core AI. Microsoft is an AI driven company right now. Over the last three years or so, they've become that. And this is very much like in that vein. So no, I don't think that's her kind of like in like indicating her previous her previous title.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that that statement is a little bit interesting because it indicates that all the way to the most upper echelons of AI companies, they are aware of this current backlash that most people hated that anytime someone says there's going to be AI. And they have now started embracing terms like AI slop to differentiate themselves, to assure people, we're not going to do this. Now, I, I mean, do not really buy that. Or it's like, that's definitely not convincing on its own that someone would say that because everybody has an incentive to say that. But I do think it's interesting that it's clear that the backlash, the very widespread distaste for this stuff has registered at the highest levels and they are trying to change their messaging accordingly.

• 10:15Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, definitely. I think especially someone who's coming in and is pretty young, I believe she's 36. She's definitely in tune with like what people are saying about AI. As part of their messaging and their PR strategy, Microsoft, I think, put a lot more emphasis on her Instacart and Home Depot background than her background as a Microsoft AI executive, which is also worth noting. So yeah, I read that less as them trying to distance themselves from AI and more as the fact that it's not really relevant to them. Like AI is relevant behind the scenes in game development in that a lot of people are using it for various. Kind of efficiencies, writing code, maybe using research, all sorts of other just kind

• 10:57Jason Schreier?

  of random things, maybe helping with automation of testing, that sort of stuff. But nobody's using it to actually generate games. And so if that was actually possible, maybe this would go in a different direction. I want to talk a little bit, I want to kind of segment this a little bit. I want to talk about why this happened and then we can talk a little bit about the future of Xbox under Asha Sharma and who she is and what's next. So a little bit of background here, we've talked about this quite a bit on the show. So I'll make this quick, but basically Xbox has been in a very bad state over the last two or three years. They have not seen much growth other than from Call of Duty and this last Call of Duty tanked, so that was really bad news. And part of me wonders if that's related to the timing of all of this.

• 11:42Jason Schreier?

  Is their one cash cow not being quite as cash heavy? By the way, Call of Duty tanking still means it's like the number two game of last year.

• 11:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I was going to ask what that means.

• 11:51Jason Schreier?

  Put things in perspective, yeah.

• 11:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Specifically.

• 11:53Jason Schreier?

  Normally Call of Duty sells 40 bazillion copies and this time it only sold 20 bazillion copies, that sort of thing.

• 12:00Kirk Hamilton?

  That doesn't sound like a line going up to me. That sounds like a line going down.

• 12:03Jason Schreier?

  The line did not go up. The line, I don't know if you guys remember this.

• 12:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Unacceptable.

• 12:07Jason Schreier?

  The line did not go up to the extent that they, that Activision came out like a week after it came out and was like, hey, after this, we're no longer going to do two Modern Warfares in a row or two Black Ops's in a row because that didn't work for us. So it was, it was, it was not, not a good situation for them. But also we've seen a lot of just kind of very confusing messaging, a lot of problems for them, a lot of pressure put on them from Microsoft. They've essentially gone multi-platform, are releasing almost all of their games on PlayStation. The Xbox brand is kind of in the toilet. Nobody's buying the consoles anymore. A lot of people are questioning if Game Pass has devalued games overall, even though it's, it's been a pretty good deal for customers. And they're just in a bad situation.

• 12:49Jason Schreier?

  They've been laying people off by the forklift load, forklod, truckload and shutting down studios.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  They're using all three vehicles to lay people off, forklifts.

• 12:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Tens of thousands, right at this point?

• 12:59Jason Schreier?

  Tens of thousands for Microsoft, I think thousands for Xbox specifically. They're laying, they're shutting down studios, canceling games. The most recent Bloodbath was last summer when they canceled Perfect Dark and a bunch of other things and shut down some studios. So they're in a bad spot and it feels like.

• 13:19Jason Schreier?

  Me, it's not clear. I mean, we'll never know until we hear it directly from the people involved. And I certainly don't have the reporting to know the answer to this yet. But it certainly seemed like Phil wanted to leave the timing of this and whether how much of that was was up to him versus Microsoft saying, all right, it's time to time to time to say goodbye. We don't know the answer to that just yet. But we do know that Xbox needed slash needs a turnaround. So that's where we are now. And so I guess if you want to look at the kind of silver lining to these moves, it's that, hey, we're going to have some fresh blood in here, maybe some new ideas for what Xbox could look like, maybe

• 13:59Jason Schreier?

  some kind of strategy that actually leads to better games and a better environment for the people involved. So I don't know, sometimes new blood can be a good thing, I suppose.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  It can be. I also think it's interesting that the blame for all of those issues that Jason just helpfully recounted doesn't seem to be fully falling at Phil Spencer's feet, at least in terms purely of the messaging that we're getting, like the corporate letters and that sort of thing. It's not, no one's acknowledging it in that type of way. And I also think it's interesting that some of the blame seems to be put on Sarah Bond, at least in like, the reporting that we've seen about it. Tom Warren at The Verge did a story where he spoke to some sources, unnamed, of course, about just the scuttlebutt internally.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  And a lot of those those sources were pointing to Sarah Bond as the person who was behind the this is an Xbox campaign, which kind of one could argue devalued the importance of the console, maybe led to fewer people buying it. I don't know that any of us knows for sure that that was entirely on her. I'm not saying it wasn't. I just think it's interesting that her name is the one that's popping up as opposed to Phil. And I, I just, I don't know. I'm not sure what to make of that. I read that story and was really like, I feel like this is coming out of nowhere for me. I had kind of just assumed a lot of these things were Phil Spencer's decisions. And now that both of them are leaving, we're

• 15:33Speaker 02

  suddenly being told that it was Sarah Bond's decisions and Phil seems to be getting a hero's send off.

• 15:42Kirk Hamilton?

  At the very least, it seems an acknowledgement that that was a disastrous campaign. Or at least that it was a bad thing. I mean, that you would feel the need to hang it on anybody.

• 15:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I get the sense from Tom's report at least, that that was what was happening in that article is this albatross was being hung around her neck. And it does show, I guess, that they see internally that that was a mistake.

• 16:02Jason Schreier?

  So, okay, this is one of those situations where there's a story, it's got anonymous sources, it doesn't say how many people the reporter spoke to, and it doesn't say what positions they were in, which is a little tough to deal with, tough to untangle. Because I can provide a little bit of insight on how Microsoft works, and specifically how Xbox works, which is that it's humongous and full of factions, and the factions are all playing politics to a degree that no other company has to deal with. Like, if you imagine politics, every company has corporate politics. If you imagine them, like, to an nth degree, that is what it's like at Xbox and Microsoft. And so in Xbox specifically, over the last few years, there have been, there have been two divisions essentially,

• 16:47Jason Schreier?

  Matt Booty's division and Sarah Bond's division, and both of them reported up to Phil. And then on top of that, you have all these other kind of tentacles, right? Like, you have the finance department, which kind of reports all the way up to Amy Hood, the CFO of all of Microsoft. And so that operates almost on its own. And then you have marketing, which is its whole kind of like, very like scattered and just kind of like dotted lines and reporting trees all over the place. So it's a bit of a mess. And if you, so I think something that Tom Warren said in his story is that he had heard from multiple people that Sarah Bond was difficult to work with and that she was divisive at the company.

• 17:26Jason Schreier?

  And I think that if you talk to, I don't know, five people, and they're all in Matt Booty's division, then you might hear something very different than if you talk to five people and they all are in Sarah Bond's division. And even within Sarah Bond's division, there are people who are close to her and people who aren't. And there are people who, like, played the politics game and people didn't. And it gets into this very messy territory where it becomes a very different company, a very difficult company to even... And wrangle and and report on and I say this as someone who's talked to a lot of people there. And so when you're when you're trying to kind of unravel those politics, it can can get a little bit messy. And I think that report got certainly got mixed reactions because it felt like it was putting all the blame on Sarah Bond.

• 18:11Jason Schreier?

  My question for that report was, how many people did the reporter talk to? And where were they would be the questions that I would ask there. And I wish there was a clear answer to that.

• 18:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Would you draw the distinction in this report between the stuff you're talking about just then? The sort of she's difficult to work with and the more factual stuff? Like, for example, that Xbox Everywhere was a strategy that she had been pursuing. It does sound pretty unequivocally from this as though it was her project. And that seems like something that's a little easier to confirm.

• 18:40Jason Schreier?

  I don't think there's any single project at Xbox that can be like pointed at a single person. Because all of them have to go through, again, this is the company, like so much bureaucracy and so many meetings and so many approvals. That it's like you you have, everything has a million different hands on it. And then when something fails, then everybody wants to point to, oh, it was their their responsibility. And when it's a success, then, oh, it's everybody. Oh, it's mine. It's mine. It's mine.

• 19:05Kirk Hamilton?

  That's that's very helpful to keep in mind when reading this piece then.

• 19:09Jason Schreier?

  And at the end of the day, so Microsoft has what's called SLT, Senior Leadership Team. And that's a group of people, I don't know exactly how many, but it's it includes Phil Spencer and Matt Pootie and Sarah Bond. And they're ultimately like making calls and having all these strategy meetings and stuff. So you look at something like Xbox Play Anywhere, maybe Sarah Bond was in those meetings advocating for that. I don't know. Or sorry, not Xbox Play Anywhere. This is Xbox, that campaign.

• 19:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Very similar, but.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I can't blame you for mixing those up.

• 19:38Jason Schreier?

  I cannot say one way or another whether Sarah Bond was in those meetings being like, this is mine. Like, this is what I want to fight for. This is the messaging we want to use, et cetera, et cetera. But I do know that like those sorts of things are discussed by that entire senior leadership team. And ultimately, like, has to go through approval. Like, if Phil Spencer was like, no, I don't want to do that, then it would not happen.

• 19:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I ask you something, just a more kind of big picture question that some listeners might be wondering, and I know you've talked to a lot of people at Microsoft, so Jason, I guess I'll start with you, but what is it that you think that Microsoft wants to accomplish right now? Like, where do they see themselves, like, given where they are and what's happened and how things are going, what is their, what would you think their plan is?

• 20:19Jason Schreier?

  For Xbox specifically, you mean?

• 20:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, like, what do they want for the video, yeah, sorry, for Xbox, for video games?

• 20:25Jason Schreier?

  Well, so Microsoft, so all of the last three years really comes down to the fact that after the Activision Blizzard acquisition and after Microsoft started doubling down on AI, Microsoft put more financial pressure on the Xbox org. Like, that is straight up what happened. Basically, Microsoft said, hey, you guys are now humongous, you just cost us $70 billion on Activision, why aren't you showing the same profit, AM, AM, as they call it, accountability margin, which is basically their way of saying profit margins? Why aren't you saying, showing the same margins as Azure and, like, all these other kind of more profitable divisions within the company? And that is what has led to all these decisions. That's what's led to layoffs, because you gotta cut, if you, if you want the margins

• 21:07Jason Schreier?

  to go up, you can cut, cut costs, right? If revenue isn't going up. That's what led to releasing games on PlayStation, et cetera, et cetera, all this other stuff. And so, I think if you ask Microsoft, what do you want from Xbox, the answer is get the growth, get that, those profit margins up to where the rest of the company is. As far as what, like, Asha Sharma wants from Xbox, and maybe we can use this as a pivot to kind of get into talking about her, I think she's been provided with this mandate of, like, get this, this brand back on track, figure out a strategy, and we don't really know until she starts talking to people, and probably until she starts trying to understand what

• 21:49Jason Schreier?

  all this is and what she's in for. We don't know what her strategy is and what her vision for the future of Xbox is. But I'm not sure, you could say, like, what was Phil Spencer's vision for Xbox? It kind of, it was so scattered that it seemed, and it seemed to change every couple of years. I'll never forget that. Like when they first announced, I don't know if you guys remember this, it was two years ago. They announced, hey, we are putting four games on PlayStation, not Indiana Jones, not Starfield. And then cut to like seven months later and they're like, oh, Indiana Jones is coming to PlayStation. About that previous thing. Oh, now all of our games are coming to PlayStation.

• 22:26Jason Schreier?

  So it was kind of this, this strategy that just didn't even seem like Phil knew exactly what he was planning to do with it. To be fair, he did see, we'll say at the time, we'll see like where the business goes, like where this leads to. This is a test case. We'll, we'll see where it leads from there. But it certainly didn't seem, especially over the last few years, like they had a, a very cogent, clear strategy in mind.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  It did seem like there was a lot of focus on Game Pass. And so far as I can point to any one strategy that Xbox has had, and if I had to stake a prediction that they'll continue to have. And something like Call of Duty's sales, which we were talking about at the top of this topic, seems like, I could, I could speculate. For example, the Call of Duty's sales, we might know. We don't know whether it specifically didn't drive sales of Game Pass subscriptions, but that seems plausible, right? Like if it didn't sell as well. And that also is like why the Activision Blizzard acquisition happened. Like that's the argument for it, right? Is like increase the catalog, make that catalog on Game Pass more valuable.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Get month over month income from people because that's just always going to be steadier than the ups and downs of the games industry that we talk about constantly. Like that to me always seemed like the core strategy, or at least a pillar of it that I could understand while also being able to see that it was never going well. It's, it seemed like it plateaued a few years ago and hasn't, hasn't had the growth that they're hoping for. And we can point to some data points on that, like the. Recent changes in pricing structure to the Xbox Live accounts that folks were talking about, I think a year ago is when they rolled those changes out. Those felt kind of shady

• 24:14Speaker 02

  to people, like just suddenly changing prices and not making it entirely clear how each of the accounts worked. It was confusing even to me and I read the Xbox pages constantly.

• 24:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. That was the thing where it's like, maybe you get this game, but not this game. Okay.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. It just kind of felt like disorganized. And also the whole concept of like, what are each of the different tiers of Xbox subscriptions? What do you actually get out of each of them? Why is that opaque? Why has that ever been hard to understand? Shouldn't that have been streamlined years ago and made as simple as possible? And the same way that any other subscription service we can name is where it's like, it's just one subscription and maybe there's a version without ads. I mean, I'm obviously comparing it to movie and TV subscriptions, but that's the thing that Game Pass is always trying to compare itself to, right? Marketing wise. So how do you make it as easy as possible for people? I can, I, I feel like I'm mentally laying the blame for that on Phil. I don't know if that's fair, but that's how my perception is because Phil has so often been the person

• 25:13Speaker 02

  coming out on live streams and in marketing events, talking about Game Pass, talking about how that's the future of Xbox and talking about Xbox as like a software platform, a games platform that can be anywhere. Maybe not that this is an Xbox aspect, but just the idea of Xbox as a platform rather than trying to sell consoles. And that feels like a reason for Phil to either get pushed out or perhaps look at his situation and be like, I'm gonna do something else with my life. I get that.

• 25:44Kirk Hamilton?

  It also sort of maybe explains why you would bring in someone like Asha Sharma, who seems to me to be, you know, I don't know a ton about her, but a fairly skilled operator who's been at a lot of big companies and like developed platforms, Instacart, she was at Facebook, you know, she seems to be pretty good at what she does and that is like developing platforms. And I don't know if she's going to be focusing on Game Pass, but it kind of makes sense that you would bring in someone like that who knows how to take a platform and build it into something more.

• 26:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so who is Asha Sharma? Her introductory letter to everybody was very confusing and full of contradictions, which might not be the best start because she says in one line that this like commitment to gaming and getting back to blah, blah, blah, blah starts with focusing on Xbox and the like going back to console, focusing on a console. And then in the very next line, she talks about how gaming is everywhere, including PC and mobile and all these other like this ecosystem beyond platforms. So not really clear what she's going to do.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Kind of the same messaging issue that I feel like Phil faced low these many years, where I feel like he was facing the exact same contradictions every time he was doing these presentations.

• 26:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Is this an unsquareable circle for platform holders? Because it seems to me at least that the future of gaming is multi-platform. It is everywhere. And that if you're, but if your company is just, has been in the past reliant on this console that you sell and these exclusives that you build in order to sell the console, like you just have to keep paying lip service to that. And like, you just have to be with one foot in each of these worlds and it just, it does just endlessly apparently create that contradiction.

• 27:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean fundamentally, you have this issue where Xbox was behind in the console race and had to do everything it could to try to catch up. I mean, really, the death knell for Xbox was when they started releasing all their games on PC, which was, I believe, 2016 or so, 2016, 2017. They essentially said, hey, we're going to put all the games on PC now, which made it unnecessary for anyone with a gaming PC to buy an Xbox at all, which just kind of is the beginning of the end for them. Um, yeah, I mean, nobody can really, nobody really knows what the future of gaming is, whether it's platforms or ecosystems or consoles or just Roblox and we'll all just be playing games on our Roblox systems from here on out.

• 28:12Jason Schreier?

  But you're right, Kirk, I think it is kind of an, like it's a, it cannot, it's a problem that cannot be solved, which is you are trying to simultaneously be a software company that reaches a ton of people. And now, especially with buying Bethesda and then Activision, you pretty much have to release those games across as many platforms as possible. Could you imagine Call of Duty, like if it was exclusive to Xbox, that would just be a disaster.

• 28:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Wasn't that part of the FTC settlement?

• 28:38Jason Schreier?

  They did, yeah. They promised it would be on PlayStation for X number of years. But regardless, even if they hadn't made that promise, it would make no sense to put Call of Duty, to take your, again, your cash cow, the driver of growth for your gaming business, and restrict that and limit the number of sales. It would make zero sense. So how do you square that with this idea that you're Xbox and that's your platform? And you want to sell the XS? And it seems like what they're doing, the rumor is that they're planning this kind of,

• 29:06Jason Schreier?

  new Xbox is going to be a PC, essentially, a living room PC, sort of like a Steam machine. We'll see how much that moves forward. But yeah, I mean, so that introductory letter didn't really answer any questions. I think Asha Sharma, so she had a town hall with Xbox employees on Tuesday morning. We're recording this the morning we're recording this. And also, it was mostly just kind of puffery, executive talk, and there were no straight answers. But she did say that she's like, she's got a lot to learn. She's gonna have a lot of meetings with people. She's going to just be involved in all of this stuff. And I think something that is really worth getting into is her lack of gaming background. And that's in two ways. One is she has no experience working at any gaming companies. And two is she does not seem to be much of a gamer.

• 29:50Jason Schreier?

  In fact, in this, in this town hall, she acknowledged, like, she was like, I haven't played, I wasn't playing games regularly until I started, until I considered this job, like however many months ago, a month or two ago.

• 30:03Kirk Hamilton?

  But I mean, Elden Ring, you guys play that thing? It's a fucking good game.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  That would have been awesome if she had said that.

• 30:08Jason Schreier?

  You guys heard of this game, Threes? It's really addictive. Can't stop.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, this, this really made me be like, I, I felt for her, honestly. Because I was like, do we have to have people still coming out and saying that they're a gamer? Just to be in one of these roles? I mean, look, I-

• 30:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Especially women, right?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Of course. I mean, that is, that is a huge piece of this for me. Because I also noticed that, like, Tom Warren got into this in his article, the fact that Sarah Bond was also- So not not a gamer, quote unquote.

• 30:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  And that fact was more obfuscated when she came on board in 2017, because I think in 2017, or that that fact was kind of more of a point of contention. I mean, times were still kind of in the process of changing. And I think now it's at least possible for a female executive to take the reins and admit openly, hey, I don't play games and not have people be immediately seizing on that is like the biggest issue with her. And instead, people are seizing on the AI thing, which makes more sense to me. But

• 31:04Jason Schreier?

  Uh, well, hold on. A lot of people have been seizing on the gaming thing.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Okay. This is because I'm not on X anymore. So I'm not seeing this this kind of thing.

• 31:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, X, this is well, because she started an X account and she's been talking about games and kind of addressing people in this kind of weird way.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Shouldn't do it on X.

• 31:19Jason Schreier?

  Well, also, she's like, she's saying weird things. Like she said, her favorite games, she asked everybody their favorite games, and she said hers were like Valheim and Halo, but she didn't say a number on the Halo. She just said Halo. And it was just, she just talks about it in kind of this funky way.

• 31:36Kirk Hamilton?

  She means Combat Evolved. That means Combat Evolved, if you just say Halo.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we all know she meant Halo.

• 31:40Jason Schreier?

  Sure, sure.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  No, I, that's tough, because then I'm like, okay, so maybe it does seem to her and like somebody, somebody is whispering in her ear, perhaps even I don't even know if this is all on her, that she needs to continue to pretend to be a gamer. I think that's sort of interesting that we haven't shaken that off. But then also, I don't ever want to carry water for Bobby Kotick, but the man is famously not a gamer. And I think it would be hard to argue that he wasn't financially successful as a gaming executive. So like, it can be done. I mean, that's just perhaps one of the most notable examples.

• 32:12Jason Schreier?

  Well, Strazalnek, also CEO of Take-Two, makers of Grand Theft Auto. He is notably not a gamer.

• 32:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Interesting. Those two have something in common that's a little bit different from Arshay Sharma. I'm trying to think what it is.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting that people don't bring up their lack of gamer status.

• 32:26Jason Schreier?

  But here's the thing, I don't want to defend the uppercase G gamers in the audience. And I don't think that anyone needs to be a gamer to step into this role and do a good job. And in fact, I think like not being a gamer can give you perspective that other people don't. I think the worry is when they don't have the gaming industry. History, knowledge or background.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  And she's so young. So it's like, how could she have the relevant work experience? I think is what you're getting at.

• 32:51Jason Schreier?

  Well, well, it's the way I think of it is like, okay, let's say someone from Microsoft Finance came up to her and said, hey, you guys have this team of 75 people in San Francisco called Double Fine. Why is that existing? They don't make us any money. You should shut them down. And for her to look at like a P and L or something, she would be like, oh, okay. But if someone said to her, well, that's Tim Schaefer's studio, would she know who Tim Schaefer is? Like, does she have the kind of the knowledge to understand the ramifications of what would happen to Xbox? And what they would look like in the PR disaster it would be if they shut down Tim Schaefer's studio? Granted, she now has people around her, most notably Matt Booty, to help kind of answer these questions

• 33:32Jason Schreier?

  and and help her learn things. And like I said before, one of her first, one of the first things she said she's doing is going around and trying to learn about the business and understand it. But I think it takes a really long time to understand the kind of the nuances of the gaming industry. And if you come in with zero background whatsoever, and especially if you're pressured to make some big moves in your first few months without having any of that knowledge, that is a little bit of a question mark for me. So to me, it's like, I don't really think it makes one bit of difference what her gamer score is. Or if she's ever, like, if she could tell you who Master Chief is versus, what's his name? Dom from Gears of War or whatever. But it does to me make a difference if she like,

• 34:14Jason Schreier?

  would not be able to tell you like who Tim Schaefer is or what people are saying about Starfield versus Fallout, or why people think New Vegas is the best Fallout, or any of this other kind of history and industry knowledge. Again, she has lieutenants around her. Hopefully they can help. Hopefully she gets in and immerses herself and learns about this stuff. But that lack of industry knowledge and experience is a little bit of a concern.

• 34:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, you know, if you don't have this knowledge, you know who does have this knowledge? Microsoft Copilot.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, not ChatGPT. We're talking about Cortana from her favorite game, Halo. So she's gonna be going straight to the source. Yeah, no, I get what you're saying, Jason, and I agree, of course, I have my concerns. But I also feel like the defense, obviously, is the same with any person who's a good leader versus bad. I feel like a good leader is always someone who has a good group of lieutenants around them and knows who else, especially when you're leading hundreds or thousands of people. In this case, you cannot possibly be an expert in every single thing that all those people do. So the only good way that you could lead them would be to have good lieutenants who do know absolutely everything about each of their respective departments. Otherwise, you're screwed.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  And at that point, I'm like, it, to me, doesn't matter whether the person's a gamer or not. It matters whether they have the emotional intelligence to lead a team. Do I know that she does? No, I have absolutely no clue.

• 35:36Jason Schreier?

  Right, and to that point, I think the kind of defense of someone with no industry knowledge and experience coming in is that they also don't have bad habits developed in the industry. And so they can come in, someone like Ashlee Sharman can come in and say, hey, why are we doing it this way? And people around her would be like, well, that's just how we always done it. Hey, we're Xbox, but why are we making consoles? They're not making money, they're not doing much for us. Why don't we try to go this drastically different route? And that kind of, I think, perspective can be a real benefit to the not having that industry knowledge.

• 36:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the vote against the lieutenants, or at least that questions the lieutenant's expertise, is the fact that it seems pretty clear that Microsoft's gaming division is a mess. I mean, this is just, it is like a rat's nest. It's a Gordian knot of contradictions that seem almost unsolvable. Anyone coming into this position would have a hell of a challenge ahead of them. So, you know, the people who got, who made that happen, or who in some way facilitated it, are also the people giving you advice. I don't know, like, she could be in a no-win situation.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  I think she might be, honestly, because I feel like in this scenario, everyone around her, like Game of Thrones style, like, has their own reason for wanting their job and their role and their, you know... Scrabbling for power to be preserved forever. So they're all going to mislead her. She has the disadvantage of not necessarily knowing this world. That's a benefit for the reasons that Jason outlined, but it's also a disadvantage internally because there's going to be all this drama and clickishness that she's not familiar with. I feel like it would be hard for anyone, no matter who they are, but the fact that she's younger and therefore has less literal job experience makes me be, makes me feel for her more so than I would have thought I would say about a core AI executive getting the Xbox CEO job.

• 37:21Jason Schreier?

  What could anyone possibly do right now to salvage the Xbox brand? Like, it does feel like an unwinnable situation, which, I mean, maybe as someone who doesn't play games, she doesn't realize that like there are most games don't have unwinnable situations.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I mean, that's what I wondered when I saw the Sarah Bond news. Well, I actually wondered.

• 37:40Jason Schreier?

  Sarah Bond wanted the job.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  You think? Because I was like, I wonder if she just left because she was like, screw this. I mean, I have no idea.

• 37:46Jason Schreier?

  No, she was being set up as Phil's successor. I think that's pretty, pretty clear to say. I think that's pretty fair to say. It's both what we've seen online. It's what I've heard from people. Like, I think that's pretty straightforward.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. So as far as we know, she did actually just get screwed and that's a shame for her, career wise, anyway.

• 38:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, then maybe in five years she'll feel less bad about that.

• 38:08Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Kirk Hamilton?

  You know what? I'm glad that I, that no one threw me that particular hot potato.

• 38:12Jason Schreier?

  And she can cry about it in her like piles of money.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. They've all got golden parachutes.

• 38:17Jason Schreier?

  Like.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  They're all doing it.

• 38:18Jason Schreier?

  The amounts that these people all made. I mean, that's the thing about Microsoft. I mean, to your point, earlier Kirk about a job preservation and that kind of part of it is that one of the most infamous things about Microsoft, one of the kind of long running problems at Microsoft is that they pay really well. And there's also like all these incentives to keep your job because your stock will vest after a certain amount of time. And they also have this like lucrative retirement plan that I forgot the exact details of, but basically you make it to a certain age and then your stock will all vest and you'll get X benefits for X amount of time. It's a whole complicated setup. But basically people are incentivized to just stay in a job.

• 38:58Jason Schreier?

  And keep that job as long as possible, which is likely what a lot of people at Xbox are going to try to do by playing politics here. And fighting for why their division needs to keep their budget and explaining to Asha Sharma, who's coming in again with not without much knowledge about this world, explaining why my division of Xbox actually should be getting this amount of money and should be getting this budget. And hey, of course, we all need to stay and just classic fiefdoms and politics and power brokering incoming.

• 39:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Inertia just strikes me as a huge problem at any organization this size. It seems like a problem for them like they're solving. They're still dealing with problems that were put in place by the last regime, you know, um, Matric, right? That was his name.

• 39:39Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the Don Matric regime. Yeah.

• 39:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, like they, they think so many things went wrong then. I mean, and when you make mistakes on that scale with this many employees and this many divisions as part of a, you know, unit as big as Xbox, like turning that ship clearly is if, if not impossible, very, very difficult.

• 39:56Jason Schreier?

  God.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And whoever's at the top gets blamed for whatever happens. I mean, I,

• 40:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Captain goes down with the ship?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I, I feel like if anything, we should be questioning how long Asha Sharma will manage to hold down this job. And it, I guess, I guess I'm implying it's impressive that Phil Spencer was there as long as he was, although I feel like you could look at it the other way and be like, well, it's such a terrible job or seems so to me that it's impressive that he was willing to eat shit essentially for as long as he did.

• 40:24Kirk Hamilton?

  And he was beloved by a certain subset of gamers and you can imagine, I don't know that this will happen, but a similar subset of gamers loathing Asha Sharma. And you can imagine, I could also imagine someone like her, young with a million options, very good at what she does in, you know, in various fields, looking at this and being like, you know what? Fuck this after a couple of years and going and working somewhere else.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Phil Spencer, it's worth noting, he was at Microsoft for 38 years. So literally a light Microsoft lifer. I believe he's like 58 or 59 right now.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  He could just be retiring, right? Like,

• 40:56Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's what he is doing. He's retiring. Yeah. I think that's what he said at least. I mean, I'm sure he'll go and be on some boards and stuff and, and find some things to do. But he's a Microsoft lifer. He definitely had a reputation for being quite nice. Nice to people and generous and just kind of like he was definitely loved internally. By people who just kind of like, I don't know, I'm sure he, I'm sure some people are on his bad side, but it seemed like he was very generous as a leader. And I think one of the reasons he stayed in that position as long as he did, he was the head of Xbox, I believe, since 2014. So about 12 years he was the head of Xbox. Don Matric left and right after the Xbox One launched. So in

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Because it went so well.

• 41:39Kirk Hamilton?

  I fixed it for you guys. Good luck to you.

• 41:42Jason Schreier?

  Could you imagine, man, imagine going back in time to 2013, when the Xbox One was like announced at that TV event? And it was like, hey, this is going to be a living room entertainment system. And also it's online only and like you can't play used games on it. Imagine going back then and being like, hey, 13 years Xbox still will not have recovered from this.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  It's still gonna be a joke.

• 42:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Bounce back from this.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  And it's still gonna like essentially be the same argument, even though we don't think about it in those exact terms. We're still talking about Xbox, the console versus Xbox, the software. Even right now, it hasn't changed at all.

• 42:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's the time scale these companies operate on. It's like geological time.

• 42:19Jason Schreier?

  Well, but it's also like Xbox has just done such a bad job of preserving their brand. Like if you look at the other two consoles, right? You, you think of the Nintendo Switch 2 and you think of that, okay, you know exactly what it is. You know what the, the software that's going to be on it. You know how Nintendo operates. You know exactly all the brands and maybe not all of them are going to be winners, but you have a very strong idea. And same with the PlayStation, right? You have SIE and their studios and maybe they're pursuing this like ill fated games as a service initiative. And maybe they just shut down Blue Point, which man, another just kind of like blow in this industry, another devastating move. But you still, you have an idea in your head of like, okay, you get a PlayStation 5,

• 43:03Jason Schreier?

  you're going to be able to play some exclusive games that are only on PlayStation 5. And most of them are going to be like in this vein. And you have a good idea of what they're all going to look like. They're going to be like third person action adventures about sad dads. And then you look at Xbox and what the hell is Xbox mean? It means everything from Call of Duty to Fallout to a console. Nobody's buying to like a weird handheld experiment thing to apparently this is an Xbox is just everything. They've just completely destroyed the brand in a way that I think is unrecoverable.

• 43:33Kirk Hamilton?

  You can see some of those same things coming for Sony as they moved to multi-platform, as they begin to sort of degrade what it means to have a PlayStation, because they're responding to that same force that we're talking about, that same maybe inevitable pressure of, you know, consoles are just kind of going away and it's becoming a multi-platform world. What do you do with that when, right, having Uncharted be PlayStation exclusive used to be so important? So you can see some of those pressures kind of being applied to Sony. But yeah, it does seem as though they kind of made a few less bad decisions or just kind of bungled things up quite a bit less. They kind of kept things simpler, I guess, over the course of the 2010s than Microsoft did.

• 44:15Jason Schreier?

  I mean, I think for them, their strategy is like, live service games are coming to PC, but I think the sense I'm getting is that they're backing away from putting their exclusive console stuff, like traditional single-player stuff, on PC.

• 44:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Really? You think they can close that door? Is that they could start to say, okay, never mind?

• 44:31Jason Schreier?

  I do.

• 44:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Ghost of Tsushima 3 is only going to be on PlayStation?

• 44:34Jason Schreier?

  I do.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 44:35Jason Schreier?

  I do.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 44:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Call shot.

• 44:39Jason Schreier?

  And I mean, even if they don't, I mean, we're seeing, like Wolverine is coming in September. They just announced it's coming September 15th. That's not going to be on PC. That's going to be on PlayStation 5 only.

• 44:49Kirk Hamilton?

  You think that'll never come to PC?

• 44:51Jason Schreier?

  Um, I wouldn't be surprised if it never came to PC. But even if it does, like, again, it's just like, you have a very strong idea of what that is and you need a PlayStation to play it at least for the indefinite future. And so there is a strong brain behind it. Yes, Kirk, to your point, it's possible that like, the console ecosystem disappears as we know it and everything becomes multi-platform. But even then, I think if PlayStation continues on this course of just like making the games that they do, they still have a stronger brand than Xbox does. Not saying, I mean, PlayStation has its own problems that we could get into in a whole nother episode.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Maybe it will.

• 45:28Jason Schreier?

  It's just, I don't, like, the idea of what Xbox is, I feel like, has just been completely, like, we could all give 20 different definitions. And that, that marketing campaign, this is an Xbox, really defines what their biggest problem is, is that nobody knows what an Xbox is.

• 45:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, I'm just- Sort of observing a strategic similarity in the way that PlayStation is now releasing The Last of Us 2. These big PlayStation exclusives are being put on PC. And in seeing the grumbling among PlayStation fans, kind of saying.

• 45:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I, I, I think that's going to stop is what, is what I'm saying.

• 45:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, exactly. So that would be interesting if it did stop. They'd be kind of moving back toward that console strategy direction.

• 46:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and I, I don't know, like, I'm not sure how super successful those PC releases were. I'm not.

• 46:10Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like trying to put something back in a bottle or turn back the clock. That doesn't seem like it would work to me.

• 46:15Jason Schreier?

  Oh, taking, stopping you there? Well, it's, it's like, they never did it day and day. So the PC releases were always just kind of late to the party. And I don't think that's successful in the first place. So, um, I don't know. It doesn't seem like it's going to be that big of a blow.

• 46:29Kirk Hamilton?

  You mean like, like sales wise successful or?

• 46:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, like commercially successfully. Yeah, I mean, that's the big question. But yeah, I, I, to me, it's very, uh, it's, it's very possible that they put that genie back in the well. Cause it, it seemed like they were always kind of half dipping their toe in the water, like dipping their toe in the water. Like half, half entering the pool in the first place with that, with the staggered releases.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  And it's also like, who, who could say whether that's affecting PlayStation hardware sales or not? There's no way to know unless you actually plug it up and make that decision, I suppose. I, but yeah, I mean, I agree. I feel like PlayStation and Nintendo, you can more easily just be like, they are still focused on hardware. Yes, they have, well, you could barely say Nintendo has a software online presence. I'm not even going to make that argument. They're focused on selling hardware still and making good games on it. But like Xbox, yeah, it's, who knows? Are we in Xbox? Is triple click in Xbox?

• 47:23Jason Schreier?

  Well, and they also, I mean, on that same note, like both of those companies just have made game of the year quality games in a, on a level that Xbox has just failed to do over and over again.

• 47:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, their studios are just much stronger.

• 47:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. All right, well, it's gonna be interesting to see. We'll certainly be keeping an eye on how Asha Sharma does and what this all leads to, but yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Delete your X account, Asha. It's not gonna get better.

• 47:51Jason Schreier?

  That is-

• 47:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Good advice for just about anybody.

• 47:53Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's good advice in general. She just started an X account. That's the funny thing. It's like just-

• 47:57Speaker 02

  You know what? I'm gonna go ahead and say she should go ahead and delete it. I know Xbox has an X in it, so I get how tantalizing that is.

• 48:04Kirk Hamilton?

  There's no sun cost. Just delete that thing.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  You can just go.

• 48:07Kirk Hamilton?

  You can leave.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  It's a frick. Just walk out.

• 48:09Jason Schreier?

  I hope she had a fair warning of what she was getting herself into taking this job.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  I mean, we can't know her mind. I just feel like anybody who's not experienced with games can't possibly imagine. The three of us know all too well.

• 48:21Jason Schreier?

  Man, man. Well, it'll be something to watch. All right, let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 48:32Speaker 03

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• 48:48Speaker 03

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• 48:54Speaker 04

  Look, there's always something fun on the Greatest Trek feed, because when the season's over, we're going back to watching the original series.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  And hey, if you like old Star Trek, The Greatest Generation just had its 10th anniversary.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  That's Greatest Trek for new Star Trek and Greatest Generation for the Star Trek you grew up on.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Both shows you can find on MaximumFun.org.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Ready, go. Knock, knock. Who's there?

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• 49:48Speaker 03

  I walked right into that.

• 49:55Jason Schreier?

  And we are back and it's time for One More Thing. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 49:59Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which I've been watching for the past couple of weeks. It just ended. I've watched all the way up to the finale. The second to last episode was quite exciting, a really great episode of TV. And I have not watched the finale, but I gather it's pretty much in line with the rest of the show, which is to say it's very good. It's a very good show. And I wanted to call it out on this show and recommend it in part because, Jason, you and I have a long and checkered history with Game of Thrones. We used to recap Game of Thrones on Kotaku split screen when it was still good. And we both kind of were pretty disenchanted with it over the course of its final cursed few seasons.

• 50:39Jason Schreier?

  I think we started recapping it during those final seasons, actually. So it might have been that we started recapping it when it was bad.

• 50:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't think that we recapped like the finale.

• 50:47Jason Schreier?

  No, we did. Oh, we definitely did.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Because it was right, right after I joined. I know that because you asked me if I wanted to do it. And I was like, oh, I stopped watching that show because it got bad. So good luck you too. And I think your like last couple Game of Thrones eps were without me, of course, because I hadn't seen the final ones.

• 51:03Kirk Hamilton?

  And then we tried to recap Westworld and we were like, oh, God, this show, like on the second season of that show.

• 51:08Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I remember people being like, oh, this is a bummer that you guys are just kind of disappointed by the show.

• 51:13Kirk Hamilton?

  But, right. It was, that's true. We were, I guess, right. We were watching past the point where it became, where we stopped liking it because then our recaps would just be like, wow. Oh, that sucks. Which is not very fun in a recapture. So that was many years ago now. And I will say in the interim, I tried to watch the House of Dragons.

• 51:33Jason Schreier?

  House of Dragon?

• 51:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I, or House of the Dragon.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  House of the Dragon, I believe, is called.

• 51:38Kirk Hamilton?

  House of the Dragon, which I initially avoided because I was still way too burned out by Game of Thrones. And then I think when the second season was starting, there were some recaps and reviews saying, oh, it's, it's pretty fun. It's pretty good. And I started it and I honestly just found it to be a turgid bummer. I just couldn't get into it because it was all more of the same, just, I don't know, like lots of people I don't care about being dicks to one another, a whole, too many characters, like a period of time I didn't find interesting, a lot of kings in throne rooms having these, it's very turgid. It was, it was not an enjoyable show and I just was not up for it and I just fell off. I tried to watch it for a little while and stopped. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is very much a corrective to that.

• 52:22Kirk Hamilton?

  This is a show run by Ira Parker and it tells the story, I guess I should say it's based on, I think, a series of novellas by George R.R. Martin called The Tales of Dunk and Egg. I'm now looking it up to make sure that I get it right. And it is, it's really great. I had no idea what to expect going in. I haven't read the novellas. I'm not really familiar with it, aside from knowing one very, I would say, important spoiler fact about one of the two characters, Dunk and Egg, which I think is a kind of widely known thing and is actually sort of fairly clear even from the start of the show. But it is the story of Dunk, Duncan the Tall, Sir Duncan the Tall, who is a hedge knight in the world of Westeros of A Song of Ice and Fire.

• 53:05Kirk Hamilton?

  A hedge knight is a kind of an unlanded knight with no lord, who is just kind of roaming around, but is technically a knight and has been knighted and so has some privileges of the sort of knight class, like of that rank. And Duncan, Sir Duncan, is, he was the squire to a kind of wasted old knight who we only see in flashbacks in the show, but who did take him in and he says anyways knighted him at some point. But he's a pretty down and out guy, kind of out on his own, and he shows up at this tournament and he wants to kind of win in the tournament and get some kind of honor and get recognized and begin to kind of establish himself as a knight and get a toehold in the world.

• 53:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And on the way to the tournament, he meets a very small young boy who is named Egg, who is totally bald and very little. Duncan is notably huge. He is Sir Duncan the Tall because he is like a really big beaver dude. And so the two of them cut quite a kind of silhouette together. It's a little tiny kid and a really big, big, tall man. And Egg talks his way into becoming Dunk's squire. Duncan is a very gentle soul. He is played wonderfully by Peter Claffey, an actor I was not familiar with, but who just nails it and is kind of the heart of the whole show, is this performance of Sir Duncan. He is a big, gentle, slightly slow, well-meaning-

• 54:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Man who just wants to make it in this world. And as you know, the world of Westeros is pretty, pretty rough. The thing that makes this show work is that it's very small scale. The whole thing concerns this one tournament. So he turns up at this tournament and then you start to get a sense of the different, you know, power dynamics, who's in charge. This is during the rule of the Lannisters. I'm not totally sure when in the timeline this is, though I believe quite a bit earlier than Game of Thrones.

• 54:55Jason Schreier?

  Is it before or after Phil Spencer retired?

• 54:58Kirk Hamilton?

  This is taking place right in the aftermath of Phil Spencer. He's just retired and so things are.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Asha's reign has begun.

• 55:06Jason Schreier?

  Asha actually is a character.

• 55:11Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, let's not confuse things further. It's, it's in the past anyways, a different era when the Targaryens are ruling, but do not have dragons. So there aren't like dragons flying around like in House of the Dragon. It's more that the Targaryens are in charge. There are quite a few of them and that's kind of it. And then there are various wars and rebellions that happen, but it's kind of a time of peace in the actual story. And then you get a lot of flashbacks to Duncan's history and, you know, some various battles that did happen. But it's not a super action packed show, aside from the second to last episode, which is like, you know, a thrilling blood and mud Game of Thrones type battle. And it is, once it gets to that point, it is as brutal and intense and really kind

• 55:54Kirk Hamilton?

  of horrifyingly violent as Game of Thrones can be. So I wouldn't say this show is like a total, you know, change from those earlier shows. Like if you found some aspects of, like those aspects of Game of Thrones to be kind of a turn off, you will probably, this probably still isn't your thing. But if you're like me, like if you found House of the Dragon to just be this big mess that was just too much like Game of Thrones, but kind of an also ran and kind of boring, this is great. It's, it's a single character, one protagonist story. I mean, I suppose it's two protagonists because it's also about Egg, but it remains focused on just these two characters in this one place. There's a very clear narrative. He's trying to compete in this tournament and then, you know, events happen and you're

• 56:36Kirk Hamilton?

  just following this story of this one person and it feels like a novella. And man, it's the kind of thing we talk about a lot when we talk about these big franchise worlds, specifically about Star Wars, but also about Marvel, how you could tell the story of like. A computer technician for S.H.I.E.L.D. in the world of Marvel, who just has to like get a computer working in order to get information out to Iron Man or something. And then that could be a great story in the hands of the right person. It's very rare that you see it. And I would say this isn't quite that, only because, you know, there are some connections to some fairly big lore stuff in this story, but it feels like that. It has the sort of scope and the emotional scope,

• 57:19Kirk Hamilton?

  like the smaller emotional scope and just logistical scope of a smaller show. And that makes it work. So I really, really like it. I just think it's great. And like I said, it's anchored by a tremendous performance. And it's just a really kind of warm-hearted and nice show, despite having quite a bit of dirty viciousness and awfulness, because this is still, of course, A Song of Ice and Fire. It is still Westeros.

• 57:43Jason Schreier?

  It's also only half an hour per episode, you should say.

• 57:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, some of them are a little bit longer, but it is really nice. That is a nice thing about it. They go up to like 37 minutes for an episode, but it really works. Yeah, I don't know, for a show like this anyways. I don't need that 43, 47, 52, 59, 105, like the thing that starts happening with some of these shows. I'm like, how long have I been watching this? It really just gets through it. And that also makes it feel, yeah, smaller in scope in a way that really works. Great show. Anyway, it's on HBO.

• 58:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the novellas are really good. You should read all the novellas now that you finish the first season, because I can vouch for them.

• 58:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I might. It's, I would never have thought that I would be interested in going back and reading more of Martin's fantasy, just because I was so burned by Game of Thrones. But this, this does make me want to go read them.

• 58:31Jason Schreier?

  You say that as if we wouldn't do an episode on Wits of Winter as soon as it comes out.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, we would all read it.

• 58:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I mean, yeah, no, I'm talking about like other stuff.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  We would all fall back into the pit immediately.

• 58:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but not that it'll ever come out.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  So we're safe.

• 58:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. You know, my final thought is that HBO has had a lot of really good stuff lately. I've just been watching so many interesting things, like between, I guess, Max and HBO, Between the Pit and this. And I mean, I like The Penguin. Like, that was like a really pretty daring show. There's a lot of good programming going on there. And it just- Makes me feel even more trepidation about the fact that they're about to get acquired by somebody, because of course, like, the minute a network has kind of figured something out and is kind of nailing it, we have to, we have to accept that maybe they're going to get acquired and then just turn into chum for Netflix or something, or just ruined in some way or another, which would be a real shame. They've really got something going right now.

• 59:21Jason Schreier?

  To be fair, I mean, HBO has been nailing it across all of these different parent companies. They've always been consistently.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Have you heard about The Sopranos? It's pretty good. I've been checking out this show.

• 59:31Jason Schreier?

  But even more recently, I mean, they had Succession, they had, like, they had a lot of, like, hits even, even among the turmoil.

• 59:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, but that's like, they haven't been bought by a rival streaming company, like a rival media company. Like, they were bought by AT&T. Like, it was, it was a little bit different.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I guess Kirk was making the point that even in the streaming era, they've put out some, some shows that have kind of driven conversation. Like, The Pit is something that, like, every week, people are popping off about that show. And like, that's, that's hard to do nowadays.

• 1:00:00Kirk Hamilton?

  And I feel like I've seen, especially in the last few weeks, Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Like, when I decided I would make it my one more thing, it was a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, oh, but some people won't know that this is good. And then, in the time since then, I'm like, okay, well, now everyone is talking about this show. So it's not gonna, yeah, everyone's heard about it, because it kind of became more of a monocultural thing.

• 1:00:22Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, what's your one more thing?

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  My one more thing, I actually also watched on HBO, although it's a New Yorker-produced documentary. So if you want to watch it on a big TV, you can do what I did and check it on HBO, but it's, it's free on YouTube. It's called Icebreakers, and it's, it's only, like, 22 minutes long. It's a really short documentary, and it's about ice skating. And specifically, it's about queer ice skaters and an event called The Gay Games that was created many years ago by a lesbian skater and which just highlights queer skating. And I didn't really think about, I mean, this is kind of wild to say, like, as a queer person, but like, I really didn't think about the fact that figure skating as a competitive event is like an inherently straight event, and therefore a very conservative event, especially

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  if we're talking about paired skating and the Olympic events that we're familiar with. But also all the other events. And so if you're watching this documentary, pretty much all the skating that's featured, there's some solo skates. But there's like two men skating together or two women skating together and very romantic skates. That are in the style of some of the like kind of faux romantic skates that we see. Of the man and woman, like classic Olympic skates that you can, you're picturing in your mind's eye. And the documentary is about that and about how many queer skaters there are and how even though these many years.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  These, this type of competing still isn't considered okay. And also a lot of these skaters still feel like they can't come out and be part of the Olympics. I think part of that is because many of these countries, it's illegal to even say you're queer at all. But there's also just sort of that further artistic aspect to it where some of these skaters are like, I've never actually done a romantic dance. With somebody who could conceivably be my romantic partner in real life. And I thought that the dances were really, really cool. First of all, like just from a performance standpoint, they're really cool to watch. But also the history of the gay games was really fascinating to me as well. And so it's worth watching. It's not super long and I've really been enjoying watching the skating events with the Olympics.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Alyssa Lou's skate is amazing. Not to pull a Kirk could just throw in another one more thing that people should check out.

• 1:02:33Jason Schreier?

  No, by all means.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  So good. People should definitely check out her skating. But if you feel like, you know, you can't get enough and you want to watch some other really cool performances, Icebreakers is what it's called. I watched it on HBO, but you can find it on YouTube as well for free and the New Yorker produced it. So if you're trying to find it, there's a lot of stuff called that. So I would just say, look for like Icebreakers, New Yorker, and you'll find the documentary.

• 1:02:54Jason Schreier?

  Between this and the documentary about the gay rodeo, I feel like.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  I know, right? This is like HBO.

• 1:03:00Jason Schreier?

  Documentary.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Recommending things to me now. And I'm, I'm like, all right, fine. I'll take it. I'll, I'll watch gay sports that I don't partake in and see what, see what the scenes are.

• 1:03:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddy, did you watch Yuri on Ice, the anime?

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Of course. And after watching Icebreaker, I mean Yuri on Ice, for the listeners sake, is an anime featuring two male skaters who fall in love over the course of one season. And it's one season only, and it got canceled and will never come back. Kind of ends on a cliff.

• 1:03:25Jason Schreier?

  But now there's heated rivalry.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  There is heated rivalry, which doesn't involve figure skating, but does have ice skates.

• 1:03:32Jason Schreier?

  But I mean, it's still ice.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true. But yeah, Yuri on Ice is a really, really fun show. And while I was watching Icebreakers, I was actually thinking about Yuri on Ice a lot and being like, oh, man, that was such a great anime. Really fun love story.

• 1:03:44Jason Schreier?

  Very cute. Here's some more gay sports.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Jason Schreier?

  That's my favorite segment on ESPN.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I love it, like, the old school, like, they just called it the gay games. I mean, like, this was like before kind of the rise of like queer and like other terms. So because it was like invented so long ago, and they're still just calling it the gay games. And I'm like, I love that for them. Like, they're just, they're just calling it the old school term. It's really fun.

• 1:04:08Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a video game called Under the Island. Have either of you heard of this game? It just came out.

• 1:04:13Kirk Hamilton?

  No, not at all.

• 1:04:14Jason Schreier?

  So this is an indie game. It just came out on Steam and also on consoles. And it is very cute. It's a Zelda-like, kind of looks like a Game Boy Advance game. Like, it looks like the Minish cap for people to remember that in terms of a graphical style. And you play as this girl who is like on this island, has moved to this island, and discovers some ominous happenings and has to go underneath the island and find some stuff and figure out how to save the island from dangers and monsters and stuff. But the story isn't all that important.

• 1:04:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Is there a hatch on the island?

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Are there polar bears?

• 1:04:56Jason Schreier?

  There is no hatch. There are no numbers that she has to press, as far as I can tell. She does not have to move the island, as far as I can tell.

• 1:05:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay.

• 1:05:04Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, it's really cute. It's got a lot of charm, got a lot of Earthbound-inspired charm. And the gameplay itself, the puzzles and the combat is really cool. I played through this dungeon that is all set inside this greenhouse. It's got really unique kind of ideas. Ideas and flavor to it. And your main character, she uses a hockey stick instead of a sword, which is cool because it's fun to play around with. And also it leads to some fun moments. Like at one point, you have to go inside of this, it's like a club and there's a bouncer there. And to get in the bouncer, I think this is actually the final section of this dungeon. And to get to the boss, the bouncer is like, all right, just gotta make sure you don't have any weapons. Oh, all right. You just have a hockey stick. You're good. And so you get to

• 1:05:45Jason Schreier?

  go go through. There's a lot of fun, fun jokes like that. And yeah, it's just if you like Zelda likes, this is a really good one, I think. Got all of your classic Zelda tropes, your heart containers and your keys and your items that you collect that help you solve puzzles within each dungeon. But I'm really into it so far and I recommend it. It seems like it's gone under the radar, under the island has gone under the radar. So I recommend checking it out and supporting more cute, cool, interesting indie games.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:06:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Sounds cool.

• 1:06:24Jason Schreier?

  All right. That is that for this week's episode. We will be back as promised at the beginning of the show next week to talk about Resident Evil Requiem.

• 1:06:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 1:06:35Kirk Hamilton?

  That's gonna be fun. I will see the two of you next week for that.

• 1:06:38Jason Schreier?

  See you next time.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:06:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Email us at [email protected] and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:07:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.