Xbox, every mention
43 scenes (2022), the whole family · ← back to Xbox
tap a year for its mentions
every year 2022 anyone David Rosenthal 43Ben Gilbert 31Mitch Lasky 5Blake Robbins 5Steve Ballmer 4
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Xbox comes up
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 13:10 David Rosenthal In the back of my mind, I've been percolating, it could be fun to do a whole episode just on Xbox.
Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired
- ▶ 8:38 David Rosenthal They power the Xbox.
- ▶ 13:36 David Rosenthal They're powering the Xbox.
Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:08:45 David Rosenthal Microsoft's got a secret project that they're working on at this time, the Xbox, which we talked about a lot on the Sony episode and so many times on the show.
- ▶ 1:08:57 David Rosenthal And Microsoft comes to Nvidia and like, we want you to be a key supplier of the graphics, the GPU for the Xbox.
- ▶ 1:09:11 David Rosenthal Five hundred million dollar a year deal for Nvidia to supply the graphics for the Xbox with a two hundred million dollar advance.
- ▶ 1:22:11 Ben Gilbert Okay, David, so Xbox comes out.
- ▶ 1:22:14 Ben Gilbert Nvidia has a card in there that is the, ah, the GPU of the Xbox that has programmable shaders, so, you know, rather than, um, you know, literally just spitting out triangles to put on screen, they actually are running these little programs…
- ▶ 1:23:09 David Rosenthal The year after that, which is basically the calendar year, 2001, the year the Xbox comes out, they do just about 1.4 billion dollars in revenue.
- ▶ 1:31:23 David Rosenthal So they made this deal with Microsoft, right, to power the Xbox, and it was absolutely the right strategic decision to power the Xbox, to get Microsoft's support in creating CG for programmable shaders, you know, protect themselves from…
- ▶ 1:32:02 David Rosenthal The original Xbox, the PlayStation three, which we'll talk about next time, and the Nintendo switch.
- ▶ 1:33:48 David Rosenthal So, you know, if you're looking at this stock in those years, especially as revenue starts to flatten, and a big part of that is coming out, you know, towards the end of the Xbox generation of consoles leading into the Xbox three 60, which…
- ▶ 1:33:48 David Rosenthal So, you know, if you're looking at this stock in those years, especially as revenue starts to flatten, and a big part of that is coming out, you know, towards the end of the Xbox generation of consoles leading into the Xbox three 60, which…
- ▶ 1:36:07 David Rosenthal So, you know, if you're looking at this company at this moment in time, especially as revenues flattening, coming off the Xbox contract, costs, OpEx is going way up, investing in this sort of speculative new area, I can totally see looking…
- ▶ 1:53:49 David Rosenthal Huge team, you know, and the Xbox project was amazing.
- ▶ 1:54:26 David Rosenthal Great, NVIDIA, we're gonna help save you from Intel, and in return, you're gonna, you know, give us a really sweetheart deal on these chips, and you're gonna put us in business with Xbox, and by the way, the other side of your gaming and…
- ▶ 1:54:56 Ben Gilbert I think your assessment of Microsoft did basically nothing except make really good strategic decisions is, like, reasonable enough for DirectX, but totally is not fair for Xbox.
- ▶ 1:55:07 David Rosenthal No, it's not fair for Xbox at all.
- ▶ 1:55:10 Ben Gilbert But it is an interesting way of, like, to put it another way, and let's exclude Xbox for a moment, you're basically just recognizing that Microsoft had an unbelievable position in the market and did an amazing capital allocation job…
SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:57:56 Ben Gilbert I guess it would have been the original Xbox, but I'm not sure that would have been out yet.
- ▶ 1:58:08 Ben Gilbert So I, I guess Xbox would have been the other one that I could have gotten, but yeah, the, the PS two was like, I think a sufficient number of my friends had playstations where I was like used to the, the controller
- ▶ 1:59:02 David Rosenthal Relegated to a niche player, basically Microsoft to come in with the Xbox, but the first Xbox Sony, the PS two just trounced it.
- ▶ 2:00:10 David Rosenthal And so it actually, like, opened the door for Xbox and three 60 to bring a lot of developers in.
- ▶ 2:00:10 David Rosenthal And so it actually, like, opened the door for Xbox and three 60 to bring a lot of developers in.
- ▶ 2:00:24 David Rosenthal They barely won the generation war between the PS three and the Xbox three 60, but like they should have just totally walked away with it.
- ▶ 2:01:22 Ben Gilbert And Microsoft ends up not selling enough devices and not having a compelling enough story like the Xbox one, for example, of like how this thing is really going to make your life that much better by being the computing thing in the living…
- ▶ 2:06:48 David Rosenthal Just this current generation of consoles with the series X and S Xboxes and the PS five.
- ▶ 2:06:48 David Rosenthal Just this current generation of consoles with the series X and S Xboxes and the PS five.
- ▶ 2:07:56 Ben Gilbert If you look at what Microsoft's done with Game Pass, which is brilliant, they're making it sort of financially irresponsible to buy one of their devices outright.
- ▶ 2:08:07 David Rosenthal It's financially irresponsible as a gamer not to subscribe to game pass.
- ▶ 2:08:22 David Rosenthal Game pass itself is 15 bucks a month.
- ▶ 2:08:34 Ben Gilbert And so when you look at it, Microsoft is now up to eighteen million subscribers to Game Pass, which to your point, I think there's like a cheap version at 10 and then a more expensive version at 15.
- ▶ 2:08:44 Ben Gilbert So every year as an annuity is generating two to three billion dollars on Game Pass.
- ▶ 2:09:12 David Rosenthal I am not one of those gamers, and I think there are a lot of gamers out there like me that in an ordinary year I would maybe buy a couple games, but it's a no-brainer for me to subscribe to Game Pass for 15 bucks a month.
- ▶ 2:10:28 David Rosenthal You know, people are worried about with the Activision deal about whether Microsoft would make Activision's games exclusive on Xbox.
- ▶ 2:11:18 Ben Gilbert It's project Spartacus, by the way, is the rumored game pass alternative, which is kind of a mess because they already have the PlayStation network and then they have PlayStation.
- ▶ 2:13:40 David Rosenthal Oh, yeah, but I think like we were just talking about with, um, Game Pass, I think Microsoft has, uh, finally abandoned that computer in your living room vision for Xbox and realized like, no, no, no, this is a good business.
- ▶ 2:13:40 David Rosenthal Oh, yeah, but I think like we were just talking about with, um, Game Pass, I think Microsoft has, uh, finally abandoned that computer in your living room vision for Xbox and realized like, no, no, no, this is a good business.
- ▶ 2:21:54 Ben Gilbert Only, like, ten-ish percent is selling hardware, and in the same way that Microsoft has reoriented their business model around, we gotta keep selling people who like Xbox's digital stuff, Sony's realized that too, they just haven't changed…
- ▶ 2:30:09 David Rosenthal I was like, what, why is this not on Xbox?
- ▶ 2:33:21 Ben Gilbert My bear is that Microsoft's right in their strategy with Game Pass, and gaming will move to the Netflix of video games style thing, and that it's not about having the most beastly console and keeping the business model the same.
- ▶ 2:33:36 Ben Gilbert And maybe the Xbox, they have finally segmented the market right where they can sell an expensive beastly console to the people that want that and sell a pretty good console to everyone else and make a ton of money on, you know, two to…
- ▶ 2:42:38 David Rosenthal And it's interesting though, like with game pass and if the, if the industry moves much more to subscription dynamics, I do think a lot of this power goes away.