Easy Allies Podcast #97 - January 31st 2018

If you want them to discuss it on screen, I'd maybe rewrite it as a L&R question next week. Probably for L&R you'd want to trim it to about 1/3 the length too! :)

Samuel Cardwell

I hope this is the best place to post this, here we go. Discussion regarding xbox and a possible buyout of EA after listening to the recent EZA podcast. Feel free to shorten this post for reading purposes if read on any podcast. Although I strongly with the EZA crew and think that it is highly unlikely that Microsoft will buy EA. I do think that there could be an alternative motive if xbox changed their business model dramatically and purchased EA. Not too long ago, rumors swirled that the heads at microsoft wanted xbox to be written off or changed. Whether that meant closing down xbox, getting out of console manufacture or heading into some other unknown venture. Xbox services has always been Microsoft's bread and butter besides the obvious license fee publishers need to pay to get a game on a microsoft platform. With Microsoft trying to venture into a competitive market for a PC store, recent expansions to xbox game pass and xbox play anywhere. It could easily be looked on that the company may want to become more involved with a real competitor to steam, a "steam killer". Microsoft has tried before to kill steam before but lacked success due to exclusives in their store. Buying EA and their large catalog of games and Origin (EA's online store) could maybe make a dent to steams market in the pc store space. Much like how Disney is pulling their content from Netflix to compete against them with thier own digital delivery service. What does this mean for future xbox consoles and EA's multi platform licenses? Well I highly doubt Microsoft will completely stop making consoles. I think those console licensing fee they get from publishers and devs is profitable. Xbox as a console has in my opinion always been more about the services they offer and less about having a pc experience in a console. EA does have a large catalog of licensed games that could be very profitable regardless of what platform their games go to. Microsoft would still have a large share of the PC space and may become the largest game publisher with EA on their side. Microsoft already publishes minecraft to other platforms and they have always talked about doing more with other consoles like getting sony and nintendo to allow their players to play along with their system. Although its possible for them to buy steam, if they really wanted to create something of their own that could seriously compete with steam. This is actually a very convincing theory. The next few years, we will see many shifts of companies moving to a netflix style model. pushing content online to services that can get players to subscribe or buy digital copies. We already see Disney, hulu, and amazon trying to compete with Netflix. No doubt Sony is testing the water, whether you think they are failing or not with Playstation Now and Playstation Vue. The brand of xbox is heavily known for their services and would be a great brand to push this same business model. In some way they are already testing the water using the xbox name for their PC store. What are your thought?

Howdy Brandon, can you tell us how is your daily rutine vs one very busy day, you always tell us that you are very busy and i'm curious about it, do you visit clients? visit developers hq? Gracias!. P.D your spanish is good :P

Daniel Garza Andrade

Correction: Playground games were already in Leamington Spa, they've setup a second studio in the same town, presumably to run the next Forza Horizon and Fable 4 simultaneously. Also there is a lot of videogame development in Warwickshire. Codemasters that Bloodworth mentioned is in a village on the outskirts of Leamington Spa, Rare are nearby, many studios are in the town itself. E.g. Playground Games, Pixel Toys, Sega Hardlight and Ubisoft Leamington as well as a large number of smaller/indie studios. The town in sometimes referred to as "Silicon Spa" for this reason, although most agree this term is terrible.

Correction: that dragon quest game was probably supposed to be dragon quest 9 since sentinels of the start sky is the subtitle for DQ9.

klastical

Jones on the PSN outage and Fortnite was on point. Good stuff And Ben's reaction to people not finishing RDR "What are people doing!?!"

GW Fawkes

Bloodworth is such a freakin badass. Spit out nearly all my coffee when he "dialed it in." Hahaha

Matt McCarthy

Whoa. Xbox Game Pass available to PC users on compatible Play Anywhere titles without an actual Xbox? This is intriguing.

Joshua Turner

Why can Dragon Age not change but other franchises can? Final Fantasy has changed a lot over the years.

Chris H

I heard your smile a lot kyle

Tim Bechen

There's an easy way to do a live service in Dragon Age 4: using a live service version of the War Table from Dragon Age: Inquisition (<a href="http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/War_table" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/War_table</a> ) That had new missions that you sent Inquisition forces towards, to complete missions and other war table operations for the Inquisition. Those missions are completed by waiting a certain amount of time (in real time). I can absolutely see a live service for that kind of thing in DA4; perhaps there would be new missions over time that would advance the Inquisition or the main character's organization in the game.

jif52

CarlosX360 enjoyed sponsoring Easy Allies, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to drop support until E3. 'Till then, aidos. I'm going to do something else in February, and beyond to prepare for E3 and beyond.