The Information's TITV
00:19:29 · Bing Gordon, Akash Pasricha
[00:19:29] S2: Which is the fun of robots. So, you know, in the end of my... Are we going to have a robot friend? Absolutely. Right. [00:19:37] S0: Right. We can come back to the book and there's... I mean, of these checklist items is worth a conversation, but I want to ask you about the current state of the gaming business. Specifically, I want to ask you about Xbox because they're kind of in an interesting place right now. Microsoft just reported the segment within the company is shrinking. What do you think is going wrong at Xbox right now? [00:20:07] S2: You know, in the history of the games business since the very first generation of console, every six years, we've increased memory in the console by 10x and increased polys per second by 10x. It's been a Moore's law business and we're kind of the end of the Moore's law console business. So we'll see what... I mean, that's the NVIDIA story. It's not Moore's Law. It's a coprocessor. And now we're heading to optics on chip, so Moore's Law has kind of ended. [00:20:42] S0: So they... I content mean, is in the gaming sector is what shrunk, which was surprising.
00:20:42 · Akash Pasricha, Bing Gordon
[00:20:42] S0: So they... I content mean, is in the gaming sector is what shrunk, which was surprising. [00:20:50] S2: Yes. In general, if you're a student of media, you can see that stories are forever and media formats are ephemeral. You know, at Amazon we saw the book business kind of stalled after rapid growth. The TV business is still growing a bit. The music business looked like it was over back in the Napster days and it's come roaring back. But the music business is no longer the prerecorded box music business. You know, I grew up a poetry fan, poetry went away and now it's rock video. So I think gaming, you include gamification is still growing. The game designers are needed almost everywhere else, But these the these AAA games, a little like the movie business, have been over... Overspent and the the minutes are going away from some of the the huge blockbuster games. [00:21:58] S0: Right. Do you think Microsoft should sell off Xbox?
00:21:58 · Akash Pasricha, Bing Gordon
[00:21:58] S0: Right. Do you think Microsoft should sell off Xbox? [00:22:03] S2: Boy, I thought when Satya came in, they were going to sell it right then. I'm a fan of Don Mattrick who ran it for a while and had his ups, huge ups and then a down. And my sense is the only reason Microsoft stayed in the business is because Minecraft was stunning and I think they they believed that Minecraft might be the beginning of virtual worlding heading into VRAR. And you know, it doesn't... The Xbox doesn't exactly fit the core principles of Microsoft. It doesn't exactly sit on Azure. It doesn't exactly save Outlook. And I think Microsoft's never committed to consumers as a whole. I had to talk with Ballmer way back when saying, you should be a, you should reorganize around customers and he went, no, no, we'll never do that, we're a product company And so you end up having product fiefdoms. So it sounds like it [00:23:08] S0: sounds like it sounds like you are seeing a sale coming in sub capacity is is the real redone. [00:23:15] S2: God, the question is who's gonna buy it, you know? [00:23:17] S0: Who do you The [00:23:19] S2: Saudis. I mean, who... You know, if LIV Golf hadn't been crushed, maybe it looked like they had infinite money. I don't know who would buy it. I think probably PE firm would buy it. I think all these things are execution based. Right.
00:23:19 · Bing Gordon, Akash Pasricha
[00:23:19] S2: Saudis. I mean, who... You know, if LIV Golf hadn't been crushed, maybe it looked like they had infinite money. I don't know who would buy it. I think probably PE firm would buy it. I think all these things are execution based. Right. [00:23:40] S0: I mean, so the execution... I mean, this is actually the next thing I wanted to ask you about, is if you look at the execution of these PE companies, certainly there was the EA deal. Now we have the reports that Silver Lake and PIF are looking at. Unity is another report that we've seen come up. So I I guess I'm I'm less curious about whether or not you think these deals are going happen. I'm more curious about what you think these PE firms should do with the gaming businesses to materially change the trajectory that they couldn't have done maybe as a public company, or what would you do?
00:23:40 · Akash Pasricha, Bing Gordon
[00:23:40] S0: I mean, so the execution... I mean, this is actually the next thing I wanted to ask you about, is if you look at the execution of these PE companies, certainly there was the EA deal. Now we have the reports that Silver Lake and PIF are looking at. Unity is another report that we've seen come up. So I I guess I'm I'm less curious about whether or not you think these deals are going happen. I'm more curious about what you think these PE firms should do with the gaming businesses to materially change the trajectory that they couldn't have done maybe as a public company, or what would you do? [00:24:15] S2: Well, EA... You know, I kind of joke about EA, I haven't gone a long time, but EA will see what happens. That's going to be kind of a bell cow. By going private, does it get inventive again or have they just gotten a habit of being risk averse and only sequelaing ten year, fifteen year old franchises? In theory, you know, EA going private could make us nimble and make us creative. So we'll see, I'm a fan of the leadership there, I've seen them be highly creative and inventive, but they've been not very highly creative and inventive for a while now. So there always is a question of, you know, why do you go like this and say, thanks, needed that. Now I'm going to get back to my youthful self. And so if they can get back to their youthful self, the PE people are going to be unable to go hire new talent. So if they can go back to their youthful selves, it could be a home run.
00:24:15 · Bing Gordon, Akash Pasricha, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz
[00:24:15] S2: Well, EA... You know, I kind of joke about EA, I haven't gone a long time, but EA will see what happens. That's going to be kind of a bell cow. By going private, does it get inventive again or have they just gotten a habit of being risk averse and only sequelaing ten year, fifteen year old franchises? In theory, you know, EA going private could make us nimble and make us creative. So we'll see, I'm a fan of the leadership there, I've seen them be highly creative and inventive, but they've been not very highly creative and inventive for a while now. So there always is a question of, you know, why do you go like this and say, thanks, needed that. Now I'm going to get back to my youthful self. And so if they can get back to their youthful self, the PE people are going to be unable to go hire new talent. So if they can go back to their youthful selves, it could be a home run. [00:25:22] S0: Great. Well, Bing, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Bing Gordon, author of Everybody Wins, here on TITV. Last week, AI media and tech company Every brought together some of the biggest names in AI for its annual thesis conference. We were there to sit down with leaders from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Runway. We shared a few of those interviews on Friday, and today we're bringing you more highlights from the event. Let's take a look. I'm here with Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz, the co founder and chief innovation officer of Runway. Alejandro, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. [00:26:01] S3: Thank you. It's great to be here.