Xbox wants to be the number one entertainment company. Does it have the IP?
Xbox says it wants to be the number one entertainment company in the world. Not the biggest game company: the biggest entertainment company, across film, TV, products and live experiences. The same week, it launched a division to do it.

Xbox says it wants to be the number one entertainment company in the world. Not the biggest game company: the biggest entertainment company, across film, TV, products and live experiences. The same week, it launched a division to do it.
The panel's question is whether it has the IP to get there, after two years of cutting almost every bet that wasn't already a hit. Simon Pulman's answer was the line of the episode: "Nobody knows anything." Nobody predicted K-Pop Demon Hunters, or Sony would never have handed Netflix the rights. You don't find the next big franchise by only funding the last one.
Greg Posner is joined by Simon Pulman of Pryor Cashman, Justin Ruiss of BWG Global and Stephen Lenz.
IN THIS EPISODE
- Galactic Racer and Gears of War: E-Day both scored 87. Why the Steam numbers only tell half the story
- "You know what really works? Call of Duty": Activision as Xbox's shooter factory
- Who is the biggest entertainment company in the world right now? Greg says Disney. Justin says YouTube: "All of that IP lives rent free on YouTube."
- Xbox's dormant catalogue: Rare, Banjo, Viva Piñata, Perfect Dark
- Is Xbox just picking a fight with Sony it already lost once? And who is producing the Zelda movie?
- Who gets to stream GTA 6, the report and Xbox's correction, and the new cloud streaming caps
- A round of our favorite licensed games, from X-Men Legends to GoldenEye, and why licensed games are a graveyard of dead IP
- AI can now rebuild almost any game. Simon on why selling an AI copy gets you shut down, why the real fight is over the tools, and the indie developers being cloned in real time
- What's keeping us entertained, including Angel Down, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction
Two corrections after recording: Matthew Ball said Xbox's GTA 6 streaming rights are not exclusive; he did not rule the game out of the cloud. And the last mainline Gears of War was Gears 5 in 2019, not twenty years ago.
Never Entertained is live every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.
Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/QOQOQ1XBc_I
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