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Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals

January 21, 2022 / 45:38

This episode covers Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, potential bans on Google Pixel imports, and Marquez's new car purchase.

Marquez and Andrew discuss the implications of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, highlighting the significance of franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. They also touch on the potential impact on gaming subscriptions and exclusivity in the market.

Additionally, the hosts share their experiences with car buying, focusing on Marquez's decision to purchase a 2022 Subaru Forester amidst a challenging market. They discuss the current state of the used car market and the challenges of acquiring electric vehicles.

The episode also addresses a lawsuit from Sonos against Google, which could affect the import of Google products into the U.S. The hosts speculate on the outcome and its implications for consumers.

Finally, they reflect on the winding down of YouTube Originals, discussing its impact on creators and the future of content on the platform.

TL;DR

Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, Marquez buys a new car, and Google faces potential import bans due to a lawsuit.

Episode

45:38
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[Music]
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all right welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez and i'm andrew and today we've got a couple things
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we're going to talk about probably the biggest deal in not just gaming but like the biggest acquisition i've ever seen in
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the tech world yeah 69 billion dollars we'll talk about that nice we'll also talk about maybe google potentially
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being banned from shipping pixels in the u.s um and a couple other little things yeah
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but first i bought a new car you did it i did i've been seeing it in the parking lot yeah we've talked to i think i mentioned it
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in like october but i finally pulled the trigger buying a car right now sucks um for a million different reasons supply
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chain mostly i was so as i've mentioned on here before i clearly love evs i've wanted to get an ev for a long time
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i think the issue is it's just price is still pretty expensive right now and my car was towards the end of its life
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and i needed one a bit quicker even though it still took me a while so you know like waiting in line for an eevee
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right now especially the ones i was interested in are like coming out this year but who knows when that'll
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actually happen i still maintain that every year i've said this like several times in videos every year from here on
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for the next 10 years will be the most interesting year yet in evs and that probably just means every year that you wait there will be
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i don't want to say remorse but like there will be way more better options in the ev world it's easy to say that
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forever all pieces of tech right yeah but especially one that's growing so yeah from such a beginning like it is
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now so so what car did you get and i assume you had to deal with a dealership to do it yeah so i wound up getting a 2022
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subaru forester so i was going to get a used car because i just thought maybe in two or three years i'll grab an eevee
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when i think there's something more that fits my lifestyle right now i test drove a used car before this one
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was delivered to the lot it had 30 000 miles on it was two years old and it was three grand more expensive than the new
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one i bought so the market is just insane right now it's crazy i think i'm assuming used car market is so expensive
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because in any if anyone's in those dire situations of needing a car like just that weekend you have to be able to get
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something in the inventory um but yeah i'm super happy with decision i i love
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the car so far i'm happy to be in like a more suv-ish like compact suv i guess does
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mac like the car actually mac doesn't love the car yet because i bought a cover for the back
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seat and it's mostly nylon and he slides around so if i ever like hit the brake
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too hard or turn a little too hard i just hear like you hear him sliding around the back yeah it's got a little window in the leg
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cover so i can see him and he's just in a totally different spot um but for me as just getting a car in like a new
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generation now i have things that are pretty standard but for me are really awesome it's got like a backup camera i
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haven't had one of those it's got like remote start with an app the app's terrible but it does have remote start
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so i can warm my car up it's like 12 degrees outside so that's awesome and then a couple other things like adaptive cruise control which like he'll
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stay in the lane it'll pick a car in front of me for target and traffic it's like not quite tesla autopilot but it's
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obviously like cars are getting really good at stuff i'm gonna say we made a video not that maybe a two years
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ago on when we had the buick here just on like the base tech stuff that comes with new cars and
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it's pretty good they're all connected to the internet in some way they're all gadgets in some way and they all have
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way more tech than they did years ago so yeah that is that is pretty good speaking on that though and talking about the bad app i asked you this last
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night and i don't know if you confirmed it yet but does tesla or do we know if any cars out there
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if the apps for like preheating your car cooling your car down can connect with like google home or alexa or
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apple so i've seen a couple very basic things with uh actually with
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home kit okay yeah i think quinn did a video where he had like you know you can have a serious
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shortcut open the door or open the front trunk of your car so you can ask siri to
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do things to your car i imagine that would apply also to like preheating it and things like that i don't know about
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google assistant i haven't actually seen that i just looked it up real quick there is a uh it looks like a
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third-party service that will let you connect google assistant to your car but you need to allow some permissions to
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make that happen okay but you can probably have it i would work if you want to love to wake up at seven say
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google how's my day it'll tell me the temperature the weather like the potential traffic report and then no like at 7 50 i wanted to start warming
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the car up so when i get in any it's warm and i don't have to right now the subaru app is you like press it press
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the heat preset you have to either put a pin or do a biometric and then confirm and then you have to like
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hope that it works and like watch but whatever that's enough about that car like you mentioned though i did have to
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get it from a dealership which dealerships and evs lately we've seen a couple articles in the news about
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um i will start off by saying my experience was actually fantastic i think i got really lucky i think i had a
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good salesperson but i think we can all agree dealerships in general are like not something anyone looks forward to
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going to not at all everyone everyone's dealership experience is different yeah and so there will be a large range of
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different dealership experiences ranging from great to nightmare terrible not good at all uh so
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that's good yours was good i feel like we saw what was the one um so we've seen a couple of the markups recently with
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markups yeah that's the one that's that's crazy to me so first of all dealerships are not actually
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directly associated with the car companies they're not allowed to be in the u.s right in the u.s so this is a
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u.s this is another u.s centric thing yes but to just like explain it it's kind of like terrible that basically you you
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have a dealership required to be the middleman between you and the car manufacturer so the car manufacturer is
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not directly selling you the car in most cases um so you have let's give like ford as an
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example because this actually happened the ford f150 comes out they ship them to a bunch of dealers and then the
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dealers are in charge of how much they're going to charge for them what sort of financing options they're going to give people and et cetera et cetera
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they're in charge of the whole buying experience yeah and servicing etc uh so a good dealer network does make a
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car manufacturer good but it can also be a bad one makes it look bad yeah
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which is kind of what we've seen with like john rettinger recently had a reservation in for the mercedes eqs that
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story was wise yeah he got to text saying oh yeah if you want to take delivery on this it's going to be an
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extra 50 000 yeah and the order in which it happened i want to actually we'll probably i'll have him on here eventually i got to have him talk to
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tell his side of the story he's got a bunch of he's also got the lucid so he sounds like he could do a whole lot right now
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we should do that but basically he he'd had a tesla for a while i've watched plenty of his videos on electric cars he was like i'm filming something new i
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want to shake it all up shake it up a little bit so he pre-orders a mercedes eqs we made a video about this it's a
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different ev it's a large electric vehicle it's pretty expensive but yeah you you get down in the in the pre-order
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line knowing roughly how much you're gonna you're gonna pay based on the spec you pre-order then
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he gets an update after that point from the mercedes dealer that he's going through that says all
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right in order to take delivery of this car it's actually going to cost you fifty thousand dollars more because this
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car is in such high demand that this is what we could get for it yeah which is like well okay i was gonna pay
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one amount fifty thousand dollars is a whole lot of money literally more than what i just paid it could be an entire
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another car that's gonna be how much extra you mark up even if you can afford it like you have to say no out of
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principle that's an absurd ask for most people totally absurd i'm
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he's based in l.a right california if i'm gonna assume there's a spot in the u.s where somebody probably
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would pay that oh no that's somebody will pay that that's crazy so the dealership knows like oh the the car
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market is pretty crazy right now and we get this in stock and we know based on probably others that we sold after this
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that somebody's going to buy this for 50 grand more yeah and so we're going to get that money however we get it
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so they raise up the price on john john actually bails good he says no cancels
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that order and he actually goes over and he has actually one of the first lucid errors i've ever seen in the street by a
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buyer so i'm also super interested in that experience i think he's making a review on it or probably he's in the process of it i
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think it's a long term thing yeah so that'd be cool to see um but the fact is that is just because of what a dealer
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has the power to do yeah and you know who looks to the worst in that entire position mercedes merced yeah and it's a
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mercedes dealer which isn't directly mercedes so mercedes looks terrible there now they're like this big luxury
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brand where like that's probably not the most uncommon thing when you have these like lesser made super luxury cars
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especially in la but then we also saw an article recently about some ford dealerships doing this with the
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not f-150 lightning yeah yeah sorry yeah the lightning it seems to be i think what we're seeing right now is this mix of
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evs being hyper popular tons of new evs coming out and also insane supply chain issues so we're
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seeing like it being harder and harder to get these evs so people are taking advantage of it where it's all these
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extremes that are coming together to really show the root of the problem here um and with the f-150 lightning
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it's not quite the same in terms of the markup on the car but what some dealerships were doing and i think there
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was like two or three of these that there were reports on is people would be pretty far in the line
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for getting their delivery and the dealerships were asking them to play like five or ten extra thousand to kind
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of be at the front of the line hate it absolutely hate it um because of
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those people who actually like trusted in it and were excited to do it and put their reservations down early and had it
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for the right models that were gonna come early now are potentially getting pushback because no one wants to add five to ten thousand
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extra dollars to a car payment yeah but there's people out there that that's the things people they're doing it because
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they know people will pay it yep and when you have a product that's in such high demand and i guess technically low
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supply right now because it's before it's even coming out they're just jockeying for a place in line yeah people are going to pay that yeah
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they're taking advantage of it ford recently had i think came out with 200 a number of like 200 000 pre-orders
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or something like that and then so they're expecting that limit to not even be fully delivered until 2023
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because of production and now they said they're upping their production everything we'll see that i'm still fingers crossed on it actually shipping
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but we do know that ford has told us personally that they're very very adamant about like making this roll
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out as smooth as possible to make sure to not leave a sour taste in the mouths of anybody who are crafters yeah early
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adopters previous ice truck owners that are now switching to ev they want that to be as seamless as possible
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so ford is now reacting and then i guess that's the next thing we should talk about is how ford's
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trying to deal with this because it's yeah it's a hard scenario i guess the
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one that that caught my eye was the reselling that they're not allowing yeah so do you want me to like kind of explain what they're doing yeah super tl
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dr so so pretty much what they did was they're threatening dealerships to add
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who are adding these like extra incentives to pay money to get further in the line they're basically telling if
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they get caught doing any of that then they'll severely limit the supply that they send during the first few uh
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deliveries of of these trucks so they'll just not deliver it pretty much to the dealerships doing that
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and then i guess to kind of combat that and make the deal because the dealers obviously
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are trying to make as much money as possible um to combat that they're saying that
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they're not suggesting but they're saying they are open to and that they support adding a clause into the contract of
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selling that tells the buyer they're not allowed to sell the car within one year of purchase right
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so basically that's to so anyone who is lucky enough to get an early f-150 lightning yes probably really wants to
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drive it yes but there's going to be a percentage of people who got in line early and paid some extra dollars to
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move themselves up in line and get one early who just intends to flip it because they
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know or even just got in normal like without paying any extra because of them trying to combat that but yeah we're
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going to flip it yeah people who are basically basically scalpers like you know what the ps5 has been going through for the past like a year and a half
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where it's speakers if you can build some bot or get some way to get some early stock it is in such high
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demand that you can just immediately turn around and sell it for 50 more than you bought it for and people will
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absolutely pay that and so ford doesn't you know doesn't like the idea of
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scalpers yeah i think it's their like way of trying to like be like we want to do
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this so the ford dealerships don't add that markup because the ford dealerships are worried about losing out on that
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income that now just a scalper is going to get rather than the dealership yeah so i guess it's it's them sort of
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and getting more control over the experience which is admirable you know i guess i
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understand that you want to you want to control the buyer's experience and make it as good as possible but like we said
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like uh it's my truck i want to exactly six months or something sure it's this really weird position where it's like
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i think ultimately to prevent scalpers it seems like the perfect decision of like
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anybody who's going to buy it and actually want to use the truck is obviously keeping it for a year
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but i just hate having the extra limitation like when you purchase something it should be yours this is something we talk about and write to
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repair all the time it's like you're purchasing it you're taking it off of their hands it is your product now you
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do what you want with it yeah and as much as i hate scalpers i still fully
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think you should be able to do it what you want yeah what you own so yeah i also don't have a ton of pity for
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dealerships because in general i don't love them yeah yeah that's the that's that's at the end of the day probably
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the the lesson learned is uh we could probably get away with not having dealerships if
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we went direct to consumer if car companies could get direct to consumer they would love to do that yeah i i
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would like to see a kind of in between because right now we see tesla doing direct to consumer and in general i like
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that more there clearly are still markups in that scenario like tesla has raised the prices of their cars and but
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you see that when you make the purchase um so that's great i don't like being surprised obviously there are some
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benefits to dealerships of the fact of like my car broke i need to get something this weekend there's inventory
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on the lot you can go test drive it you have a salesman who's maybe like most tesla dealerships are usually
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like you go and pick up your car you do most of the stuff online so there is that like brick and mortar aspect of it
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there's an advantage but i would like to see um like the companies running stuff like that and maybe having that i think
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there's a middle ground somewhere here um but we don't see it yet it's gonna take a while because it's a legislation issue
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and that takes a while god bless yeah we'll probably let's take a quick break and we'll talk about an even bigger
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legal action that happened that's a perfect segue don't talk about it next
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welcome back uh we are going to talk about gaming marquez's favorite let's go yeah um but this was like gaming in the
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big big news um even you heard about it i think um i heard about the dollars the dollars yeah nice dollars oh yeah um
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microsoft for those of you who don't know uh microsoft just acquired blizzard activision for 69 billion dollars
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pause for wait a second hold on okay so i just i saw the headline
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and i had to go back and because 69 billion dollars is so much money i'm trying to like put this into scale with
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like other existing companies that you could buy for 69 billion dollars let me just look up real quick that's a good
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let me just look up real quick when microsoft could have bought so uh i mean mkbhd is now is worth more
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than 69 billion of course of course but just to look up a quick like let's say microsoft wanted to make a car
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gm's market cap is 83 billion dollars right now ford's market cap
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is 90 billion dollars so if you just wanted to like quickly spin up a microsoft car you could they could they
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could have bought ford they have a hundred and i think i checked yesterday they have like 175 billion dollars of
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free cash just to toss around you know spend on things still sucks
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uh they clearly have a priority in gaming and we can talk about sure why they chose to buy this company yeah i
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want to talk about that very specifically later yeah but that was just my my my last like fun fact was
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that uh facebook bought instagram for one billion dollars back in 2012
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one billion deal it looked like a lot of money back then that was 1 69th of what
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microsoft just paid for this company so why are they so into buying blizzard activision okay so
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if you're not aware blizzard and activision are like is arguably one of the top tier game
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developers just in the world right now um i'm sure i'm just gonna name a couple of the games like their biggest ones and
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i bet you you've heard of all of them okay all right we have warcraft starcraft diablo yup world of warcraft
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sure call of duty yep and this one actually surprised me but they own candy crush
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also which little little irk here when you're listing from the
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official xbox account who's made you so many games that you own if you put candy crush in
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front of starcraft i'm going to lose my mind that was funny because candy crush is exactly the most popular
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game totally that they own and as far as like household like when you see this on the the nine o'clock
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news where they're like find out why microsoft paid bazillions of dollars for this thing they're
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probably gonna say it's the owner of candy crush and maybe world of warcraft like the two most popular call of duty
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call of duty yeah but yeah as far as like total gameplay my irk with it is yes candy crush is obviously making them
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more money starcraft 2 came out 11 years ago um there's a lot to it but starcraft is
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like iconic it is just completely iconic in the gaming industry i'm esports i don't
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think is where it is today without starcraft it's like one of the first major watched esports out there devil's
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advocate is mobile gaming where it is today without candy crush
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like we had we had a couple big like segments we had the farmville era you remember farmville yeah like that but
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that was like facebook gaming yeah and then we had like mobile puzzle gaming come up with candy crush everybody
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played candy crush and now everyone's got some type of mobile game we all just played wordle last week it's not that it
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came from candy crush but mobile gaming spiked hard
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early this is totally hypothetical i don't know this is true but candy crush is candy crush brought
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mobile games to the scene and that is a uh just as iconic i feel like steam is coming out of my ears right now um no i
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don't disagree with you at all um if i if i were if i had the opportunity right now to be given a a game to make money
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off of i would pick candy crusher for starcraft a billion times over if i cared about money which obviously if
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you're spending that much money you want something that makes it but just like oh man just it's not the secret tweet
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it's not the purest gaming headline you would have asked for no it made me it's it made me salty but okay
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that's that's that that's like the little tiny gripe that i had with it um i also wanted to point out or i wanted
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to play a little game with you really quick because you said you've heard of starcraft right yes you ever played it no okay
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it's like a top-down real-time strategy game i've seen people play it okay okay so like you know you're just controlling
00:20:04
a bunch of troops and everything i just want to like real quick little fun thing i've posted a picture of the three races
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you can play in there and i want you to pick which race you would want to play so their names are terran zerg and
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protoss um blue is taran red is zerg gold is protoss and i just want you to
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solely based off this picture pick which race you think looks the coolest and you would want to play i'm
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gonna go zerg for a couple reasons number one it's in the middle so it's clearly a primary character
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number two the one on the left and the right are both like sort of humanoid with armor where the one in the middle
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zerg is this sort of animal which implies a little more strength a little
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more power it doesn't need as many artificial armor things the one on the right's more alien like okay but yes the
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left is human yeah yeah i'm going with that dragon thing zerg i just honestly wanted you to do this
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because i feel like um am i gonna get roasted for picking that that's just the thing it's not whichever you pick you'll
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get like and there might be balancing things but like zerg was generally the hardest to
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play because it was like the the other ones are a little more overpowered for certain reasons but i'm i was terrible
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at starcraft so um i did watch a lot of it but anyways um i have kind of three main questions concerns things i want to
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talk about in terms of this acquisition sure number one i hope bobby kotick the ceo of blizzard
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gets fired immediately um i will let everybody do their own research on what's happened but there is a lot of
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cover-up on a lot of really terrible things i think he's a terrible person um adam you can bleep this off bobby
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um i he's gonna get a paid payday out of this it makes me really mad but i'm glad he'll just be out of it because i really
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really like blizzard and i really like the games that they make and i don't want him to have any part of
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it okay moving on the next thing is there is again world of warcraft which
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is one of their bigger games in terms of blizzard has a monthly subscription base to it and i'm really interested now with
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microsoft game pass which is a monthly subscription for games if things like world of warcraft or even in the future
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that take monthly subscriptions with it will potentially be added game pass yeah i think this is super niche i could see
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that happening i mean right now so we have xbox the game pass subscription service we also have what you know
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sony's been trying to do with the playstation and just generally like companies trying to make enticing
00:22:28
packages for their gaming platforms we're going to see a version of this for ar i mean how many developing studios is facebook going to
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buy before we realize that's what they're building right so yeah i feel like that that could easily happen and
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they could build it into xbox game pass the exclusivity part though would it be just in game pass or would it be like
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the option to pay a subscription in game that's even a good point so like that's why i think this kind of comes down to
00:22:51
could this be it'll also based on price of game press plus price of subscription i believe subscription was
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14 a month so it's like for one game that you already had to pay for so like it's not cheap as a world of warcraft
00:23:04
player in the past it blows um but like i'm interested in that i'm also just like what i think is really cool about
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this end game pass is game pass and i think they're calling it something else they're really trying to focus on cross platform which makes so
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much sense for microsoft because they're obviously windows and they're obviously xbox and cross-platform ever since
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fortnight really has just been absolutely blowing up it's it's like what makes or breaks a game i feel like
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recently in terms of multiplayer at least and it makes such perfect sense for microsoft to do this because a lot of
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these games are already cross-platform diablo overwatch i don't know about starcraft
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but call of duty like these are all games that are already very good at being on console and on pc i don't know
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if all of them are specifically cross-platform but this gives it the option yeah i think that's really really cool you can play on the service of duo
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theoretically sure you can with its cool 90 hertz that's not bad
00:24:01
no yeah you kind of derailed me on that one
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and but going on to the third thing i kind of wanted to talk about here you briefly mentioned is exclusivity
00:24:13
so we all know one of the reasons playstation is so good is because all it's exclusive the games right just playstation only
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now correct me if i'm wrong most of those are single-player games right like we have spider-man spider-man's the main one i think of the
00:24:26
spider-man miles morales now is the latest one there's still some stuff like uh like the 2k franchise games for example
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they're on everything right um i think no they're on everything okay but you kind of have to
00:24:39
it's kind of like imessage like it works better if you if you have like the the features with the playstation it'll work
00:24:46
better when you're playing another personal playstation but yes a lot of a lot of the games are sony only so like
00:24:51
if i want to make a big headline here that probably won't happen but like call of duty potentially being exclusive
00:24:58
to xbox and pc and taken off of playstation would be
00:25:03
great it would be a huge huge industry shake up you're talking about one of the biggest multiplayer games just because
00:25:09
of like how it's played on so many consoles and how big it is and so many people play on playstation that
00:25:15
you would lose a big customer base but the amount of people next gen console that are buying xbox
00:25:21
over playstation because of it yeah i think i could see them doing that with
00:25:26
the long play with the next version yeah right so like currently you know microsoft just bought you know the
00:25:32
entire company that includes call of duty it's like okay so we're not going to take it away from the playstation 5
00:25:37
but best believe the next version of call of duty will come out before the next consoles and so when you're going to buy that next console that version of
00:25:44
call of duty is going to be xbox and pc only so when you do come up to the next cycle of what console you're going to
00:25:50
buy now it's going to factor in because i don't think ripping it out of the store i remember when apple bought dark sky and it just got pulled from the play
00:25:57
store you have a really good point there i i don't think they rip it out i honestly don't think they go exclusive
00:26:02
either but if we're talking about an a scenario the scenario right now is
00:26:07
playstation was far more hyped than xbox it's still almost impossible to get you
00:26:13
can get xboxes they are still tough with supply chain stuff but like i think we can all agree that playstation 5 was way
00:26:18
more hyped than xbox series x i don't even know the name exactly but that's mostly because their naming sucks um so being able to pull
00:26:26
something like call of duty as an enticing element to bring you onto xbox is
00:26:32
not a bad chip to have in your head it's not out of the question that's exclusives get
00:26:37
played all the time in the console wars as like chips for these manufacturers to want you to
00:26:44
pick one over the other if you spent 69 billion dollars on this game studio yeah
00:26:49
i'd say you make some of those a little exclusive to your platform and take advantage of that yeah i'm really interested to see what that
00:26:55
is um and then i guess that kind of falls into my like last overall point here which is
00:27:01
obviously the main thing gamers in general should worry about with this is just like getting closer and closer to
00:27:07
the monopolization of top-tier gaming developers i mean microsoft is already
00:27:12
huge as it is and now grabbing blizzard activision as like arguably being one of the biggest
00:27:18
it's scary it's scary because of things like exclusivity and stuff like that and the way they make games and all that
00:27:25
um i think one really good thing about this is lately in the last five years we've seen indie developers
00:27:31
really make some like very very very popular games i mean you think among us fall guys pub g like those aren't coming
00:27:38
from these top tier like triple a i think that's aaa right um like so we are seeing some
00:27:45
other things where these little guys can kind of squeak out there and create really good stuff it doesn't have to
00:27:50
support although call of duty is apparently a total mess i'm sure tim could come in here and rant about all the cheaters that are going on
00:27:56
right now um but i think it's safe to say for microsoft this is
00:28:02
an amazing acquisition in terms of money in your pocket that's what i was going to ask so do you whenever there's like a
00:28:08
big like sports team trade the question is always who won the trade
00:28:13
microsoft you think microsoft won so my question is like is 69 billion dollars a good price
00:28:20
69 billion dollars is only possible because of all the controversy that blizzard's in right now i think i think
00:28:26
they i think most people agree with this microsoft bought this at a discount wow because of how many issues they're
00:28:32
having like it really did and again i don't want to get too deep into all the stuff that happened but it is out there
00:28:37
for everyone to to read there's a lot of really bad stuff that was going on in those companies and i really hope they
00:28:44
deal with that and i hope microsoft can do it better yeah because they make amazing games like i really really love
00:28:49
blizzard stuff yeah i mean it's definitely at that price it has to be a long term play you're not gonna make it
00:28:54
50 billion dollars next year and it makes up for itself it's like this is this company microsoft committing itself
00:29:00
in the next decade to gaming in a lot of ways with xbox and with all the stuff they're building so
00:29:07
it kind of reminds me of like whenever we see facebook buy a new game developer it's like yeah they're willing to spend
00:29:12
a lot of money to get ahead of all the money they think they're gonna make when ar gaming becomes a big deal so i think
00:29:20
i see 69 billion dollars i'm like well okay microsoft clearly believes this is going to keep going i would even argue
00:29:25
that like this is barely even a future move the the games they're taking right now are so
00:29:31
big already call of duty it's like the amount of money you can make off call of duty is absolutely crazy i have no idea
00:29:37
candy crush is is candy crush probably makes a couple billion dollars
00:29:42
probably and then the funny thing is is the blizzard games are like almost all of them are due for like some sort of
00:29:47
refresh i mean overwatch 2 has been hyped for a while still isn't out yet starcraft 2 was made in 2010 where
00:29:55
starcraft 3 like they're going to be fine yeah they'll be totally fine what are the numbers candy crush revenue in
00:30:01
2021 uh hold on let me let me find an accurate
00:30:06
number because supposedly call of duty in november of 2021 made 30.37 million
00:30:13
just in november just in november which is like that's a lot if you multiply that out if you take that as an average
00:30:18
for 12 months that's 300 400 million which is not a lot
00:30:24
compared to 79 billion it's not very much yeah apparently candy crush generated 1.19 billion dollars in 2020.
00:30:30
that's wild um call of duty also that november number is like from a game that's out already like that's not
00:30:36
including like release date of things so like they'll be huge huge spikes when you're paying full price for a new game
00:30:42
um and they they churn those out so dang yeah i think this is an insane win for
00:30:48
microsoft and a semi-worrying thing for gamers in general god that makes so much
00:30:54
money candy crush had 857 million in profit in 2020.
00:31:00
jesus all right well you know what i think you won microsoft yeah i think you made the right call
00:31:06
all right let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about a little more news all right so there's a
00:31:12
news headline the other day called google products may be banned from importing into the united states or i
00:31:19
think it even some of them were more specifically like you might not be able to buy a pixel six in the u.s
00:31:25
isn't there like a rule about well when there's a question mark and a headline the answer is always no
00:31:31
i think this is one of those it's like will google phones be banned in the us probably not yeah but there is some
00:31:37
legit if if you're interested in the story behind it um we're just gonna do a
00:31:42
pretty quick tl dr here because i thought it was interesting to talk about yeah um so what we're mostly seeing
00:31:49
or what what is stemming from this whole scenario is pretty much sono's filed copyright infringement
00:31:55
lawsuit against google for five different copyrights it's pretty much all of them have to do with like home
00:32:01
audio systems and pairing and volume control like easy wireless
00:32:07
stuff a lot of audio interface stuff so so it seems like kind of mundane because like google should obviously be able to
00:32:13
do all of that stuff themselves so it's like okay maybe they just found a way to do it because it's volume controls it's
00:32:18
pairing whatever um but sonos filed the copyright infringement and the itc actually ruled
00:32:24
that and validated that google infringed on all five patents that they listed so
00:32:30
not a great look despite google denying that they didn't do that of course um so they're gonna have some issues now with
00:32:36
that and now this doesn't just affect pixel phones it's like if you think of pixels and and anything google makes
00:32:41
pixels chromecast nest google home there's multiple different ways and and speakers that google have that are
00:32:48
probably using this infringed system so because of that and because they're copying something
00:32:54
from a us patent that's with sonos it could potentially ban importing of products with that
00:33:01
infringement on it into the us so like now we're thinking of potentially not being able to get
00:33:06
your pixel six you might not be able to get any pixels you might not be able to get a google home or a chromecast or a nest imported in any way um
00:33:14
i don't see that ever happening because there's a couple ways around this number one sonos said that google can pay
00:33:20
royalties for the technology of course um i would i'm sure sonos would love if
00:33:26
they did that i'm sure google will find some sort of way to get around this
00:33:31
whether hopefully that doesn't involve watering down all their stuff and making it harder for consumers
00:33:38
the way i kind of see this here is like it's just pairing your speakers i guess volume controls a little more but it's
00:33:44
like pairing your speaker once not that huge of a deal but but like i totally understand sonos should be mad about
00:33:49
this they made it they got an official ruling that it copied them enough like it was that would be mad it's a win for
00:33:55
sonos you know what's funny sonos is one of those companies where i hear about them constantly i've never used any of
00:34:01
their products i've never actually owned like a sono setup or a sonos speaker pair or any of those
00:34:08
well our bixby speaker is the sonos speaker right yeah we had one we literally never used it we just
00:34:14
turned it into a bixby speaker so i always wonder like people really like sonos they're if you look on their site they're very expensive they're premium
00:34:20
they clearly do a good job so the fact that google infringes on their patents must mean they're doing something right yeah they clearly are doing well so
00:34:28
that's uh that'll be interesting to see whether adam's a sound person have you ever um fully embraced a sonos setup not
00:34:35
personally but i've reviewed them in the past and they're pretty great really pretty great they're very easy to set up now that
00:34:40
i've okay now that i own like a house and not just doing it in like an apartment it's definitely more of something i would be interested in maybe
00:34:48
yeah yeah it's less for well not less for but it's like if you're a real home theater geek they're
00:34:54
probably not for you but if you're just trying to like play music in different rooms and things like that and you want it to sound good then yeah they're
00:35:00
pretty great yeah at this point i don't do a whole lot of playing music in different rooms do they do outdoor
00:35:05
speakers they i think they have an outdoor they have like they have a tv speaker they have a like a small bluetooth speaker they have an outdoor
00:35:12
yeah they have bluetooth speakers that i don't know about outdoors i still i like well and sonos wouldn't help this but
00:35:18
like google hear me out outdoor google home max or just outdoor
00:35:24
mounted google home that i can like run through my siding or up through my attic because i want my google home outdoor
00:35:31
waterproof where i can like i don't like bringing bluetooth speakers to like a barbecue at my house because if i walk away with my phone i
00:35:37
either have to leave my phone there or walk away and it dies so i just bring my google home outside and put it on the
00:35:42
deck and everyone can play from it if they're on the wi-fi no one's having like connection issues just give me an
00:35:49
outdoor one that i can leave out there so it can get rained on i like how nobody even expects anything close to
00:35:54
that from apple like we got a home pod and then we got a homepod mini you can afford it pretty happy like apple
00:36:00
apple's not gonna do seven or eight more homepod variations they did colors though they did a bunch of homepod colors for mini um and you can pair some
00:36:08
homepod minis in stereo and that's a thing but yeah no i i think my tech away from this is huh someone else is doing
00:36:14
something right maybe i should check out some sona stuff yeah cool thing i also wanted to deliver a quick eulogy
00:36:20
we lost a good friend um and that friend's name was youtube
00:36:26
originals the youtube originals program is officially just sort of being wound down there's
00:36:32
actually going to be like one or two that still exist um but for the most part all the different shows like i don't know if
00:36:38
you've watched any youtube originals but all the different shows that existed under that umbrella
00:36:43
love that one can you survive the movies by jake cooper vsauce had um an entire series let me
00:36:49
find the name real quick vsauce hey can you survive the movies the harry potter one was fantastic i loved it casey was a
00:36:55
gem in that yeah you were also in it on the mad max i was in a can you survive
00:37:01
the movies episode which was sick that series was emmy nominated yeah um i also
00:37:06
really liked minefield by vsauce that that youtube original actually it was just a sort of a a brain
00:37:13
related type of thing there was one where he's he was in like a completely blank room with the lights on for like
00:37:20
two straight days or something crazy like that and slowly went crazy with the cameras it was great um retro tech is also another
00:37:26
youtube bridge yeah so that's a fun like you know we had a lot of fun we learned a lot from retro tech both the
00:37:32
production side of it and the actual research and making the show had a lot of fun with it we did two seasons of it
00:37:38
the first season was also emmy nominated which is sick um but yeah just the program itself was cool because it
00:37:45
actually gave creators a little bit of funding a little bit of extra backing to
00:37:50
do something bigger that you might not have actually originally been able to do so i know people like jake were like
00:37:56
super into that like how else would you find the resources to put together such an incredible show and just put it out
00:38:02
for free on the internet put it out on youtube so uh yeah it's it's sort of winding down i
00:38:08
wonder if there's something that's going to be spun up to replace it i guess not it's probably still sort of being worked on
00:38:15
but yeah retro tech as we know it is over now that doesn't mean
00:38:21
maybe we can't get our hands on the ip and do our own season i think that would be fun that'll be uh we'll figure that
00:38:27
out later we'll work on that we'll figure that out that's obviously some legal conversations but um the fun fact
00:38:33
of this is youtube's uh put a lot of backing into getting a lot of impressions for retro tech
00:38:40
and i just pulled this up because some of you might not know this the most viewed video i've ever made is actually a tick tock
00:38:46
but the second most video i've ever made is the first episode on the game boy for
00:38:51
retro tech and that has 33.7 million views but it has that many views because it
00:38:57
was paid for many times over by the originals team to be impressions for you
00:39:03
know just all over the internet you can just find it as running as a pre-roll it's recommended alongside stuff it has
00:39:08
2.2 billion impressions oh you didn't read that number before
00:39:14
holy cow that's a lot so it has a 0.4 click-through rate obviously so
00:39:20
it is cool it is cool that it has a lot of impressions and they just we shared it to as many people as possible
00:39:26
um but i also had my own theory that uh some of these pumping metrics actually
00:39:32
sort of were like an anchor on the channel like the average view duration on this 23
00:39:37
minute video is uh one minute and 50 seconds that's brutal so when you add up 33 million
00:39:44
views with an average view duration of one minute 50 seconds i think that legitimately dragged the channel's average veteration down
00:39:52
so so there's some weird quirks about the originals program like that um but at the end of the day we did get to do
00:39:58
something really cool with retro tech and here's my my plea now to go uh i guess it's still google but youtube
00:40:05
okay so would you agree that youtube originals was like part of that was to try and entice
00:40:10
people to go into youtube premium because a lot of times like either they were locked behind youtube premium or with retro tech it was like you could
00:40:16
binge all of it before they came out week by week right youtube premium needs has an issue right
00:40:22
now and i adfree's great but it needs something more enticing um and i've said this many times before
00:40:28
and many people have done this but like copy twitch prime
00:40:34
when you have youtube premium give somebody give those users every month one free channel membership
00:40:41
and then they can use it from different channels they can use it they can unlock perks maybe it's the first time they ever join a channel so they can see what
00:40:47
like the private discords are like or but then they get sub badges
00:40:53
get out of here that's not happening they already like that youtube subscription thing and they did emotes it's already the same thing like they're
00:40:59
trying to drag more people into live streaming on youtube this would help that so much it would help other
00:41:04
creators because they're going to get paid that little cut of the subscription aspect of it the membership aspect of it
00:41:11
but it's also going to help other creators because if my first month i decided to join them kbhd channel i'm
00:41:17
like oh this is really cool but now this channel over here i really like they have a membership program either maybe
00:41:22
next month's month i'm going to try that and then miss them kbhd1 so now i'm going to spend my own money and get the
00:41:28
membership over there right it seems so obvious and i'm sure there's some reason why they haven't done it but throw that
00:41:34
in the garbage and do it anyways because i'm clearly the expert yeah so there's there's so many things that i think
00:41:40
youtube should try yeah and that's that's clearly one of them that would be super smart if you
00:41:45
can try creating your whole own youtube originals and by whole production teams
00:41:52
with youtubes you can try free memberships for a month i think a couple months i think they're basically
00:41:57
were sort of coming at netflix like everywhere you look on youtube whenever you see anything like officially backed
00:42:03
by youtube it's always it always seems to be youtube attacking old media like youtube wants to
00:42:09
you know netflix is old media now it is i mean but tv though like every time they bring those like late night shows
00:42:16
and they get pro mode and trending and everything and it's like this is just youtube trying to replace tv yeah and
00:42:22
netflix was one of those like other larger established not traditional but everyone understands what netflix is and
00:42:28
youtube going hey we can do that too look we have all these original content pieces that are only available on
00:42:34
youtube and they're they're paid for just like netflix stuff but it's really good it's worth paying for it you want to be a subscriber too don't you um and
00:42:40
i wish they sort of pushed in the other direction too of like supporting and they kind of are doing a little bit of
00:42:46
this but supporting like the newer creators supporting the shorts and the and the tick tocks of the world and all
00:42:52
these you know creator-made things that are already being built the live streamers so i kind of i want all of it
00:42:59
to be successful but that's just the way i see like most of youtube's most visible efforts is like we want to be traditional media which is fascinating
00:43:06
also one last random stat nice the uh retro tech game boy episode has the
00:43:12
highest female to male ratio of any video on the channel is it double digits
00:43:18
it is what you put like it's crazy first of all we're joking about this because it's something we
00:43:25
would love to have much much better but i don't i don't remember i've been here five years now and i
00:43:31
don't remember a single video with as many tech videos as we make basically i'm always trying to make it as broadly
00:43:37
helpful and appealing as possible but something we've noticed is mostly men and and guys watch tech videos and so
00:43:43
the overall yeah our tech videos yeah yeah in general um i don't know any any tech channels both male or female
00:43:50
creators with over a 10 female uh viewership so yeah mine's been around
00:43:56
seven or eight percent for a long time and we're always like oh well maybe this one will be double digits maybe maybe
00:44:01
the iphone video will get over 10 or something like because it's so broad it's just like you assume it leaks a
00:44:06
little past the tech exactly it's the everyone audience uh do you want to take guess at what the retro type game boy is
00:44:12
7.1 it's a little it's higher than that 10.2 it's higher 11 is it is over 20.
00:44:19
whoa yeah let's go twenty three point six percent oh wait but these were served as ads
00:44:25
right this was served to like the world but it's still that bad it's the game boy you know it's like this universal
00:44:30
everyone knows what the game boy is and it was served to two billion people but out of all the people who clicked it out
00:44:35
of all the 33 million who actually clicked it twenty three percent okay or female so that's a fun fun little fact
00:44:42
so shout out shout out to youtube originals for uh for bending that ratio a little bit
00:44:48
uh that's all we got for this week it's gonna be is it february next time we talk no it's not no no but it is our hundredth episode oh
00:44:55
that's the next episode okay well we're gonna have to do something big yeah or something special
00:45:00
something fun yeah definitely sitting down in these chairs again yeah that'll be that's how big it is yeah all right
00:45:07
nice i don't have any other teasers thanks for watching listening catch you guys in episode 100
00:45:13
peace waveform is produced by adam molina where you're partnering with vox media and our interactive music was created by
00:45:18
vayne silk [Music]
00:45:37
you

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 70
    Most shocking
  • 70
    Most surprising
  • 70
    Biggest cultural impact
  • 60
    Most iconic

Episode Highlights

  • Buying a New Car
    Marquez shares his experience of buying a new Subaru Forester amidst a crazy market.
    “Buying a car right now sucks!”
    @ 00m 36s
    January 21, 2022
  • The EV Market's Future
    Marquez predicts that every year will bring exciting advancements in electric vehicles.
    “Every year will be the most interesting year yet in EVs!”
    @ 01m 13s
    January 21, 2022
  • Microsoft's Massive Acquisition
    Microsoft acquired Blizzard Activision for a staggering 69 billion dollars, reshaping the gaming landscape.
    “69 billion dollars is so much money!”
    @ 15m 51s
    January 21, 2022
  • Bobby Kotick's Controversy
    The discussion revolves around the need for Blizzard's CEO to be removed due to serious allegations.
    “I hope Bobby Kotick gets fired immediately.”
    @ 21m 26s
    January 21, 2022
  • Microsoft's Big Bet
    Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard Activision raises questions about the future of gaming exclusivity.
    “Microsoft clearly believes this is going to keep going.”
    @ 29m 20s
    January 21, 2022
  • YouTube Originals Winding Down
    The YouTube Originals program is officially being phased out, leaving creators and fans wondering about the future.
    “We lost a good friend, and that friend's name was YouTube Originals.”
    @ 36m 20s
    January 21, 2022
  • YouTube vs. Traditional Media
    YouTube is positioning itself as a competitor to traditional media like Netflix and TV.
    “YouTube wants to replace TV, and that's fascinating.”
    @ 42m 16s
    January 21, 2022
  • Female Viewership in Tech
    The retro tech Game Boy episode has the highest female to male ratio on the channel.
    “Shout out to YouTube Originals for bending that ratio a little bit!”
    @ 44m 42s
    January 21, 2022

Episode Quotes

  • Buying a car right now sucks!
    Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals
  • Every year will be the most interesting year yet in EVs!
    Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals
  • 69 billion dollars is so much money!
    Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals
  • I hope Bobby Kotick gets fired immediately.
    Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals
  • Microsoft clearly believes this is going to keep going.
    Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals
  • YouTube wants to replace TV, and that's fascinating.
    Microsoft Buys Activision for $69 BILLION and Saying Goodbye to YouTube Originals

Key Moments

  • Car Buying Challenges00:36
  • Future of EVs01:13
  • Microsoft Acquisition15:51
  • Bobby Kotick Controversy21:26
  • YouTube Originals End36:20
  • YouTube Originals44:42
  • Episode 100 Teaser45:00

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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