"Cycular" Financing w/ GamersNexus

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4:47That's right, folks. We are back at it. Subscribe to the newsletter. Download the premium. Download this episode. Download all the episodes. I need those downloads. Or else buy some merchandise if you must. But today, we are joined by the mighty Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus to talk to us about something called Cycular Finance? Cycle? Cycle-y-ler? It's not a circle. It's a cycle. They said that. So this is the virtuous cycle, is it, that Jensen Huang has been talking about? Why don't you tell me?

5:17It came up in your video, but I want to hear your eloquent way of putting it. They said that they know that, quote, some will refer to this as circular financing, end quote. But if you read some of their posts, they talk about how it's a virtuous, as you said, cycle. And as we know, cycles are not circles. That's... Yeah, they're cycles. They just go in a shape that might be circular, but it's not the same thing as a circle.

5:49Right. It's really best you don't think too much about, like, cycle and bicycle, and everything on a bicycle is moving in kind of a circular motion. But it's a specifically different thing. They made that very clear. Yeah, this is... And so this is NVIDIA in their last earnings trying to justify what is obviously blatantly circular financing, where they invest in someone or they provide residual guarantees. Now, I just want to also add that they're saying they'll provide residual guarantees with data centers, but not saying what that actually means.

6:21There's lots of articles that are saying, oh, it could be this and that. NVIDIA is not actually saying anything about what it means. They've said in one post, it'd be up to 25%, but not what that would actually result in. I've noticed this with a lot of it.

The Superintelligence Accord

6:35I mean, like, the superintelligence accord recently. Oh, Christ. What is this thing? I didn't want to jump the gun. I'm sorry. No, please. Just let's get to it. Fucking... So, yeah. I mean, as you know, the Trump administration gathered some of the AI executives... SI. Sorry, I fucked that up already. SI. They've issued an executive order to rename artificial intelligence to superintelligence for purposes of government documents.

7:07And which, just to get ahead of it, is not binding and does not do anything. And I did notice that the company's on there. It's like Anthropic. Elon Musk was on there representing, I guess, Elon Musk and whatever he does now. Jensen, signature on there, your friend Vidia. And AMD was absent. But AMD did follow up and say that they were happy to support and participate. It just seemed to... It felt the same as a group project when the one kid in the group who did actually nothing hands in the paper, you know, and says, we worked very hard on this.

7:45AMD's jumping in there to say, we're happy to be a part of this, too. Even though we weren't really fully included. Yeah, it's such a bizarre thing because they also signed this self-regulatory thing as well where they've agreed to do absolutely nothing legally binding in any way, shape, or form. Well, they did say that they would police themselves. Oh, good. And as we've seen, look at how well-regulated the tech industry is. It's a direct result of their regulation of themselves. You know the Elmo meme where the background is on fire and he's waiting?

8:17Yes, yes. Yes, that's kind of what I'm picturing right now. What I liked about it as well is just how all of these guys who genuinely, I'm saying this without any irony or anything, genuinely, these companies have more power than the United States government. They actually do if they wielded it. But all of them, the second, the absolute second Trump is like, sign the document, I'm going to, all of you must kiss the ring. They fall over themselves to do so. And I mean, did you see the video of Mark Zuckerberg and him talking?

8:50Which one? So outside of the White House, they were talking and him and Zuckerberg were yucking it up. And people were like, oh, Zuckerberg can barely hold his laughter in. When actually what happened was the moment Trump turned away, Zuckerberg looked like he had diarrhea. He was just like, he looked like he'd seen the face of God. But the best part was in the background of Trump warbling on about some shit that barely made sense. Dario Amadei looked like he was being stabbed in the leg by a little man. He was like actively grimacing.

9:20I did notice, I did notice that Dario, when he was asked to speak to the reporters for a moment, looked so, I don't know if it was conflicted or if he's just naturally, look, I get it. Like natural awkwardness, I get. But that didn't really look like what that was to me. He just looks strange. Yeah. He just looks like a weird freak. And I'm willing to call him that because someone from Anthropic in front of the Pope threatened to walk out because the Pope would not accept that machines were conscious.

9:54Okay. Okay. This thing, how are you feeling about this? Just on a personal level, how do you feel right now looking at this every day as I am? Oh, it's bad. Really? When NVIDIA said on their call, you know, some will refer to this as circular financing and they showed this sort of self-awareness for a second, I genuinely had a moment where I paused the call. And I just sat there like, oh, this is going to be really bad when it goes.

10:27Yeah. That's how I've been feeling right now because we've, I think we've gone past the point where anyone rational is disagreeing with the financial argument I'm making. Like I think that that ship has sailed. Yeah. But no one really wants to accept what it means. And it's like, the thing that I don't get with NVIDIA as well is when you talk to people about this and you're like, hey, so like half or more of their revenue comes from five companies. Out of those companies, half of them to three quarters of them require debt to buy the GPUs. Ten-year treasuries are skyrocketing, which means the cost of borrowing for everyone is going more expensive.

11:02At some point, NVIDIA's revenue has to drop. And people respond by saying, yeah, but you know, things were okay after the dot-com bubble. So, it's like, okay, but what happened during that? Yeah. What happened during? After is a pretty long window. Yeah. You've got about 26 years, give or take, I guess, a year for the after the dot-com bubble. Yeah. And also, I just don't think that that really applies here because instead of dark fiber, we have GPUs that, as I've established, are not getting installed.

11:35Right.

Where Are the GPUs

11:36I mean, so this is, I think for me at this point, one of the biggest questions is just like, we've been talking about this, but it's the where are the GPUs? Right. Everyone would love to have that story, and I don't think at this point, I mean, let me know what you think on the reporting side, but I don't think someone figures out this, like, oh, what warehouse or what warehouses realistically are GPUs sitting in unused unless someone internal comes out and says it.

12:09Like, hey, I'm a forklift driver, you know, at XYZ warehousing, and we have 1800 GB or whatever GPU, you know, servers here. Because otherwise, I would think all that stuff is so close to the chest that you're not going to have a leak from the executive circle and the companies that are warehousing it. It's also not clear to me. So, if Microsoft buys a ton of GPUs, and then you have Satya Nadella, who actually said on camera that he has more GPUs than he has, quote, warm shells, and a quote that he can plug them into, right?

12:48Like, we know they have more GPUs than they're using. He said that. What I don't know is where do those GPUs sit in that purgatory, right? Yeah, are they in a data center but without power? That wouldn't make sense, though, because if the data center didn't have power, that would actually be dangerous for them. Yeah, and he also did say warm shells, which to me, in your situation there, I think the only way that happens, while his warm shells statement is true, is if it's a data center that doesn't have power yet. And I just don't see that happening, you know, because then you're probably, you're not even permitted, right?

13:22It's just, and again, you go to the various journalists about this, and you try and make them talk about it, and they go, ah, you know, it really is. This is actually what jokifies me. It's when you try and talk to your peers, and they're like, eh, yeah, you know, it's bad, I guess, but eh, who's to say? And it's just like, okay, but we've sold possibly $200, $300 billion worth of GPUs that have gone nowhere, and they're planning to buy more. This alone is a story. And they look at you like you're reading algebra to a dog.

13:54Yeah, I mean, it's like, I feel like a product physically exists, probably. I hope so, legally speaking. Like, if it doesn't, and this is just literally balance sheet transfers, that's so bad. Right, I mean, that's how I feel, too. It's like, I think there's a certain level of awareness, and I don't, any of these people aren't stupid, I think. And it seems unlikely that it would be a pure balance sheet product.

14:24Type of algebra. I think that they just have a, if I had to guess, they're sitting in warehouses in Taiwan. Yeah. That they get manufactured, and they just get stored somewhere, and that's, like, we're never seeing those things. And I mean, I was, I reported with the Guardians, I should add about this, but they're, Microsoft, as of a few months ago, only had less than two gigawatts worth of AI capacity online. Right. And most of that was H100s and H200s. Like, the vast majority of it.

14:56And it's like, people, people don't realize how bad that is, because it means that most of the Blackwells sold in 2025 have gone nowhere. Right. It means that any of the chips sold this year have gone nowhere. Bryce Elder at the FT reported the other day that there was an analyst who said that 50% of the chips sold this year and next year have nowhere to go. And it's so, it's like, why, I mean, why are we doing this is probably the biggest question right now. And no one really wants to talk about it.

Micro Center GPU Restrictions

15:24Well, you know, on the consumer side, there's something really interesting.

15:28We're working on a story on this, which I can, basically, I mean, I can share it in advance. But we got an email from someone about a, you're familiar with Micro Center, a big retailer? Yeah. So, for anyone who doesn't know, Micro Center is a gigantic retailer, computer parts. Gigantic, I guess, in a relative sense. For the computer parts world, they're big. And they have, and we've confirmed, started using forms for customers buying 5090s, which is this NVIDIA's flagship consumer GPU, sort of.

16:05It's kind of workstation, prosumer, consumer. So, these forms, they ask the staff to obtain from the customer things like a government-issued ID to prove who they are. Or the purchaser, the customer walking into the store buying this GPU or desktops containing it, have to certify that they're the end user. Or if it's for someone else, that they've obtained certification from that end user that this device is not being exported, not being resold. And is in full compliance with, you know, the covered list and export control laws.

16:41And this is a Micro Center-specific thing right now. Like, you go on Amazon and buy a 5090 or a Newegg. They don't make you fill out a form like this. So, it's Micro Center-specific for at least the time being. But it's interesting to me, I guess, because we're now in a situation where 5090s, which were launched as a consumer part, that's been hard to get because all the silicon is being taken for these data center parts that are probably sitting in a warehouse. That part is now so difficult to obtain that you have to potentially provide government ID and certifications in order to buy it.

17:18Like, a credit card isn't enough, which is wild to me. I mean, I get it. And what is this to do? Is this to stop the sneaky Chinese from taking it? I think that's probably the sort of the build usage of it, you know? Is that really what China is doing to get these GPUs? It just feels like slapping a Band-Aid on the side of the Titanic as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Well, I mean, NVIDIA had one of its own people detained in Taiwan and implicated in smuggling, right?

17:48Not long ago. Well, there's more smuggling stuff that came out today that I've yet to even fucking read. Yeah, I saw the headlines. Because there's more shit going on. But it is really funny, though. I'll paraphrase in the Bloomberg headline about it, but it was NVIDIA's overseas sales of... Oh, sorry. NVIDIA GPUs getting to China shows holes in due diligence. Right. Not like, hey, has NVIDIA known that this is happening? Which is very obvious by now. Like, there was the Bloomberg story from end of last year where there was a picture of him with the CEO of a Singaporean data center company that was sending the chips to China.

18:24Like, having drinks with her at a big party. Right. Like, it was like a professionally taken photo. And people were like, eh, you know, it's still an open question. Are you just referencing Bloomberg repeatedly to hurt me, Ed? No, no, no. I'm referencing it because the times they... Usually, their biggest business is threatening to sue you for using videos of Donald Trump, I realize. But on their off time, they do journalism sometimes. Right. Okay, got it. Yeah, I wasn't sure. I feel really bad as well because, like, the legal side is different. But, nevertheless, that was a bullshit.

18:56But it is funny, though, how... No, we've... There we go. That's the second one. It's like another thing that no one really wants to talk about. First of all, it's, hey, the data centers aren't really getting built, like they say, and the chips aren't being put in them. And the second is, NVIDIA is 100% aware that they're getting these chips to China and doesn't appear to be doing anything or, alternatively, might want it to? I think that's the one sort of asterisk I have on that form from MicroCenter. I emailed them. They didn't respond. But I emailed them to ask, is this...

19:28Did MicroCenter decide to implement this form? Or did NVIDIA apply pressure and say, you need to do this? You know, maybe the government traced a serial number of a device back to MicroCenter's supply or something. Or did the government ask you to do this form? And they haven't answered me. But in the case of NVIDIA, I don't know. Maybe there's like a, look, we're trying. Here's this piece of paper we're making a physical retailer use, right? But ultimately, though, yeah, I don't know where the GPUs are going. What I do know is that a big component of the GPUs, the memory, has gotten into even worse shape since the last time we spoke,

20:07which is these three gigabyte higher density modules.

Memory Pricing and Shortages

20:11Now... What was this? So the memory supply for GPU VRAM, like GDDR7, has continued to worsen from a pricing standpoint where the... There's two kind of main types of modules that NVIDIA uses right now on consumer cards, which... And I kind of hesitate on consumer every time now because the 5090s really, it's been bought up by a lot of sort of home AI type of people. But it's... They've got a higher density three gigabyte module. You'll find those on the RTX 6000 Pro, which has just doubled in price from $8,500 to $16,000 from NVIDIA directly.

20:48And then there's lower two gigabyte density modules. And so the pricing's gone up and availability has gone down on the higher density modules where, you know, you really only have sort of three main suppliers for them. And if you look at Micron's margin on its memory now, I don't know if you saw that the other day. Did it go... I actually saw it was higher. I think it's 88%. It's about 90% margin on consumer memory.

21:19Micron is doing okay. Oh, I was worried about them. Yeah. I just feel bad for the little guy. Aren't they also taking billions in taxpayer subsidies as well? Ah, yeah, but who doesn't do that? Good. Good. Well, I'm glad that... And I'm glad that we attack people for doing dodgy things on their taxes. But, I mean, people strictly, not companies. Companies must be able to do that. Companies need as many loopholes as possible.

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Meta Tax Credits and Exports

26:24Did you hear about the Meta story? Oh, no. What? Is it good? It's not. Meta has been using the R&D tax credit to try and take billions of dollars worth of data centers off of their taxes. It's basically a tax rebate by saying that they are an R&D expense for a project that may fail. Oh, wow. No, I didn't hear about this. New York Times put this out this week. It's just, again, how many dodgy things need to happen for people to be like, okay, maybe this is dodgy, maybe this is bad.

26:58Because even the micro center thing, sure, those things are getting bought up by, like, whoever. They're getting bought up by whatever little AI perverts might buy them. And theoretically, the Chinese could get them. I don't know. But we have a real way the Chinese are getting these chips. Like, it's happening. It's probably through Malaysia or Singapore or there's another country out there. Taiwan, Macau, Singapore are pretty common ports of Ingress. And there's a whole question, too, of, like, is there even any point to try and export control?

27:32Or I don't know. When we talked about it back last year, the conclusion I came to was I'm not really sure. I don't feel qualified to judge if there should or shouldn't be a law on it. But what I do feel is fair to say is if we're going to have them, they should make sense and probably be actually enforced. Otherwise, what's the point? And, yeah, it seems like we've got kind of sort of a lack of follow through, you know, at either the government level or a lack of enforcement at the company level.

28:06But, yeah, I mean, also the question, this is just Dario, a great, great friend of mine who writes, has the single worst, like, I love the guys, one of my favorite people, has the single worst design blog I've ever seen. But he now moves stuff off of it. So many ads. It's truly crazy. But the thing that he's done very well is he's been looking at NVIDIA very intensely. And Kakashi, another guy's been doing this as well, where it's the way that NVIDIA has changed how it puts in its sales, how it counts where something was going.

28:39It used to be it'd say, oh, yeah, 10 percent of I'm pulling a random number, 10 percent of our sales went to Singapore. But what they changed a few quarters ago was it's now the event, the HQ of the company buying them. Oh, yeah. That's so it's like, oh, yeah, like 90 percent of our sales go to America. And as we all know, it's really hard to start an LLC. Right. Yeah. So it's really impossible. It's about $200. How would I put it's millions of dollars? It's not $100 and five minutes. There are multiple companies that do this immediately.

29:10And it's just funny because if it turns out a sizable amount of this money is coming from China, which I don't know how much it would be, that will eventually go away once China just copies America and stopping doing the AI bubble or when they truly move to their own chips. But at the same time, it doesn't seem like China has any trouble getting them.

Model Distillation and China

29:28You know, not only that, but I also I've had a I've seen a lot of the Anthropic and these other LLM company model company posts where they complain about how they well, at least according to them, their models are being stolen. And they'll always point to China and the companies in China as stealing their models. And which is just like what people have always said forever about manufacturing coming out of China in terms of sort of the it's like the scapegoat of that's just what people point to is copycat.

30:04But the truth of the matter is, these days, there's a lot of really good engineering coming out of China. Yeah. But what's interesting to me is how these LLM companies, they they still draw upon this old image of China and its sourcing for what its IP, I guess. And these are companies like Anthropic and, you know, OpenAI and Meta who are in the business of stealing everything made by anybody ever.

30:36And they then have the gall to point at literally any other company and say, you're reverse engineering or stealing our IP. I just I have a really hard time reconciling why I should feel bad. Like, take the China and the US and the whatever out of it. Right. Take all the geopolitics out. Why should I feel bad if a company that has ingested all these authors and musicians and everyone else's work then feels like their IP for their LLM has been infringed upon by a competitor? You know, it's like, make me care.

31:07Well, also, the other thing is, is I think there's also a fairly large layer of xenophobia to it. I also think, paraphrasing my girlfriend here, America misses the USSR so bad. Oh, oh, we miss having we miss having like an argument with Russia. Oh, we don't have an adversary anymore. We miss having an adversary so much. We started shit with Iran, who is dabbing on America on Twitter, which is embarrassing for everyone. But this distillation thing. And so, Steve, I assume what you mean is like the models, like Chinese models training off of outputs from ChatGPT and Claude, right?

31:44That's what they claim. Yeah. Yeah. So here's two things with this. One, you're completely right. Who gives a fuck? Oh, suddenly the stealing machine doesn't like when it's stolen from. What are you going to do about it, bitch? Why don't you distill from other people? It isn't theft. It's ridiculous. And it's so silly as well, because their argument is, well, it's our models that created the outputs and thus we own them. It's like, okay, well, who created the shit you trained on? Right. Did it pop out of the fucking air? I mean, if I break into someone's house and I do them a favor and steal their LG television and then a different thief steals that from me, I feel like it's kind of hard for me to cry about it as the original thief.

32:23Yeah, I mean, well, the answer would be both of you would be criminals, but one would be the funnier criminal. Right. There was a level of funniness to it. But there's also another thing that no one really can quantify yet, which is how much of their revenue is a result of distillation? Because Anthropic in their S1 that leaked this week, or sorry, last week even, is they are, they're saying that like 20% of their revenue or something comes from overseas. Okay. So, and I mean, some of that might be Australia.

32:54Apparently they have a huge Australian, I don't know why, Australian listeners, if you have any information, please email me, easy at betteroffline.com or EZ for those of you in Australia. But the other thing is, is I wouldn't be surprised if like hundreds of millions or billions of dollars came from the distillation. And if that's the case, they kind of need this to continue. I will also argue that if it must be quite a large share, in which case, how can they not tell? And if the answer is the Chinese are too sneaky, well, sounds like they're out innovating you.

33:28Sounds like you're terrified of them out innovating you. Why don't you, I don't know, why don't you distill off of their models? In fact, that just occurred to me. Why don't they distill off those models or their own models and make cheaper models, right? They, surely they could. It's almost as... See, there's a problem. What's the problem? Well, you just said the word cheaper. Oh, right. My bad. Yeah. No, that's the wrong direction. Do that here. Yeah. Well, and now also, so have you really looked into Broadcom at all?

Broadcom and Enterprise Chips

33:56You had a look at... I can. I'm afraid of why you're bringing them up specifically right now. Well, the reason I'm bringing them up, I'd be looking forward to talking to you about this, actually, is Broadcom is currently doing an NVIDIA impression. They're really desperate to do NVIDIA style. Now, so what they're doing is they have now, so Anthropics S1, they have $413 billion worth of uncancellable commitments, which is very good for a company that had $4.8 billion in revenue. Sorry, $4.6 billion last year and lost $8 billion.

34:27Now, $161.2 billion of that is to Broadcom. Broadcom, their largest customers are now Anthropic and Google, both for TPUs, all of them mostly going to Anthropic, and also OpenAI's jalapeno chip. The less we think about that or say that, the better. So right now, Hocktan of Broadcom is actually raising $60 billion more to just keep doing more of this. And so we have this, another pressure on the overall RAM market, more demands of the HB

35:04RAM market because of fucking Broadcom. Right. And so it's weird as well because Broadcom doesn't really have, they don't have any consumer gear, so you'd think that this would work out better for them, but their margins are worse, they don't have the supply chain that NVIDIA has. They have a supply chain, they're pretty good at enterprise chips, but they are still nowhere near as proficient at it as NVIDIA, which is interesting in and of itself. But I think we're going to see Hocktan try and race Jensen Huang to be the biggest chip company, which is hilarious because they won't do it.

35:36They'll be potentially dead by then. But it's just interesting watching the semiconductor industry kind of eat itself at this point. I do wonder who's left standing at the end. You know, if there, or when, if or when there's some kind of collapse, if we just kind of go full doomsday and assume it's, it's a sort of a catastrophic collapse at some point where maybe one domino falls and then, you know, a bunch of other ones do, I genuinely don't know who is in the strongest position to remain standing.

36:08I feel like NVIDIA is probably in one of the stronger positions. They'll be okay. It would just be 90% smaller. Right. Yeah. And that's crazy too. Because I mean, if you look at their, their revenue, just whatever, four or five years ago, I guess, right? It's like a fraction of a fraction of what it is today. And most of it was still gaming. So I'm not sure. I really, I don't know. I, I wish I could say that my hope would be in the event of some kind of drawback of

36:42this B2B stuff. If the companies have to go crawling back to consumers, I would hope that consumers would try to not buy from them as a means of, you know, like, fuck you for what you've done to our industry. But unfortunately your options are in the GPU space, NVIDIA, Intel, which NVIDIA owns like four or 5% of, and, uh, and, and Intel's barely present there and AMD, which hasn't really done a whole lot to garner much sympathy itself.

37:14And so it just feels like we're kind of like, what do you, who do you give your money to? I guess, Lee Swan coming out of China or maybe someone else, but there's not really any, it's those three, you know? Well, the other thing that I've been thinking about with the gaming GPUs, which it sounds like they no longer, NVIDIA no longer discloses on its earnings, which is. They group it in with edge computing. Yeah. So it's all rolled in. Fucking Jesus Christ. And the edge computing, uh, category, I, if I remember correctly from our coverage of

37:45it is not even enough revenue to kind of equate the tax bill that NVIDIA has, uh, how small it is now, and that contains gaming, gaming, right? So, and AMD, their gaming was still broken out in one of the previous reports recently, and they had seen something like a 30% decline, uh, in that category, which makes sense. So. But here's the thing that I've been really thinking about, which is, okay, let's say AI bubble bursts. I'm sure that's going to happen.

38:16NVIDIA and AMD haven't really been working on gaming very much the last few years. Like no one really, it feels like the entire intelligence of these companies has been focused on building chips that can sit in warehouses and can bench max, which makes me wonder like what happens to gaming after this? I think the good news is in terms of like playing video games as a fun thing to do, it's doing great. You look at Steam's numbers, Steam's a private company, they're a big digital platform for

38:48people who don't know, um, for games purchasing and, uh, they're, there's, they're doing more like better revenue than ever from some of the reports that have come out. But I think a lot of it's going towards indie as an independent games these days, as opposed to the big studios. And what that tends to mean, although not always, is that things like the graphics fidelity or the demand on the system are lower because they're more focused on just getting a fun game that's playable out, not necessarily these sort of like GPU melting graphics.

39:19And for the GPU companies, that's uninteresting, unfortunately, right? Because they can't sell more GPUs. If you, if like, why are you making a game that's fun when you could make a game that sells graphics cards, uh, is I think their perspective. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema, so I get how it can steal your time.

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40:24Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting ebglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit ebglis.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. This is Hoda Kotb from Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy. A 10-foot skeleton? Sure. A full-size fog machine?

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43:03The moment between getting the ball and finding out whether you made the right read, I loved it. And it's why I understand what underdog brings to sports fans. Because once you make your pick, you're not just watching anymore. Every snap matters, every yard matters, every decision matters. Everybody thinks they know what's coming next. Well, underdog gives you somewhere to put that opinion into play. Pick them, money lines, totals, spreads, games, and more across your favorite sports. So trust your read, make your call, and see what happens. Download underdog and get in on the action today.

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The State of Modern Gaming

44:00Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teenaccounts.

44:12But the thing is, gaming at this point is reaching its own kind of bubble status where games either cost $100 or $1 billion to develop. I'm being dramatic, but you get my point. It's not too far off. And everything is, it's so expensive to buy a new console. And everyone's very unhappy. Like, Xbox, Microsoft looks like they might. But I don't know if they'll sell it off, but it's no longer a foregone conclusion that they'll keep it.

44:47Right. And there's rumors about Xbox Game Pass, which was obviously a bad idea being rolled back. Like, what a surprise, selling hundreds of games for $30 a month wasn't a good idea. Kind of like streaming media, except dumber. And it just feels like gaming is kind of accelerating to this point where it will have its own financial credit. Like, I mean, as NVIDIA AI bubble ends, AMD, same deal. They have to go back to pleasing gamers at a time when inflation is high and the prices are high and no one can really afford anything.

45:22What the fuck are they meant to do? They just, like, I just don't see how it works. I mean, I think, yeah, to your point, I think in that situation, sort of normal people, as in customers, are probably the last people you're going to shake money out of if times are tough and they're worried about losing their jobs. Like, it might actually be better to try and stick with the sort of B2B and just hope that you can scrap together enough. I don't think there's going to be a B2B left. I will say, this is my most dramatic statement I'll make on this episode.

45:55I think the Steam Machine is a better console than the Xbox or PlayStation 5. Ooh. Perhaps the PlayStation 5 has better, they may have better games, but, and maybe the performance is better. But as far as the experience of using the fucking thing to play video games, I like the controller better. I like the experience better. That's cool. I mean, I can, I like hearing opinions like that because it's, it is like, people lose sight of the fact that consoles, although you can compare the performance. This Steam Machine is basically a console, though.

46:25It's a computer. It's also, like, thrice the cost of a PlayStation 5. The economics are fun. Yeah, these days, though, I mean, the PS5, if you buy it with a disk drive now, which is a whole separate topic. Oh, yeah, it's like 7 million. Yeah, it's, yeah, they're over $1,000, so. Jesus Christ. Yeah, actually, so they're, like, weirdly for the Steam Machine, their competition's kind of getting closer to them. And, yeah, I do think it's interesting, though. So, I think if you look at where gaming's gone with the lack of the super high-fidelity graphics and towards more of these more playable, more fun games, stuff like the Steam Machine or, like, consoles are better positioned for it because you don't need the crazy graphics.

47:06But on the game bubble you mentioned, I don't know if it may be interesting for your people who watch from the financial industry side, but on the gaming side, a lot of these big studios really are struggling now. I mean, Epic Games is not far away from me. I've heard a lot of, sort of, talk and rumors from people who work there about, and this relates, actually, to AI, about the internal push to use AI and to add it to, sort of, the job requirements for people working there.

47:39Jesus Christ. Yeah, and so, you know, this is… Tim Sweeney. Yeah. Tim Sweeney. Did you know? I haven't shared this yet with anyone publicly. Please, please. This is an exclusive. Oh, yeah. Did you know that Tim Sweeney has blocked the Gamers Nexus Twitter account? No! No! What a coward! Oh, it's one of my great honors. I need to print that out and frame it. Was that because you kept asking him for an interview? Uh, yes, and I may have…

48:11It's because he kept beating the drum about AI and how you shouldn't need to disclose if a game has AI in it or AI art or assets, which is something that Steam has, you know, required, and he didn't like that because they're invested in AI at Epic. And, um, I repeatedly offered an interview, and I may have, in my last round, said something to the effect of, look, I know the town revoked your zoning for the mall that you bulldozed to put your new offices on, but we could do an interview there.

48:45Uh, although I suppose the backdrop of gravel and needles is probably not a good backdrop. And then he blocked me. How would he block you? Why? I just can't work on it.

48:56It's just, yeah, it's like when CZ from Binance blocked me after three months of… Did he really? Yeah, well, it's like I kept posting the smiling man image underneath everything he said. He blocked you? Yeah. I should… Wow, congratulations. That is awesome. Famous actual criminal. That's actually really cool that he blocked you. Yeah. You should put that on your awards and accolades section. Yeah. You get people boasting about Marc Andreessen blocking them.

49:27That's super easy. No, you need to get actual… You need the big criminals. But as we wrap up, I actually did want to ask you about something positive.

Steam Frame and Privacy

49:36The Steam frame, the VR headset, can you tell me about, like, I've really… It's something where I have actually not had a ton of time. Like, my mate Casey just got it, but I haven't had a ton of time to look into it. What's it like? It's cool. It's like a fun thing to talk about. Yeah. I mean, VR, it continues to sort of have the chicken or the egg challenge, which is just getting enough distribution where developers want to develop for it. But it has matured a lot in the 10 or so years I've been covering the headsets these days. The Steam frame is expensive with sort of an asterisk I'll come back to.

50:13But one of the things it does really well is comfort, where they've kind of finally made a headset that, for some of the people on the team, they find just comfortable out of the box without needing to buy a third-party, you know, strap to attach it. And so VR has gotten more approachable, I think, no matter what you buy for everyday people, where it's no longer this big mess of, like, a rat's nest of wires you have to plug in to use. And so it's pretty fun. The thing that I thought was the most interesting with the Steam frame versus its biggest competitor, which is Meta's Quest, is the Steam frame, although more expensive, their privacy policy was very clear.

50:57Like, they straight up told us, no, we do not sell or share data for marketing and advertising, like, third-party ad purposes. And all of the room scanning data, you know, these VR headsets now, they have cameras on them, they have microphones in them, you have to scan or look around your room to use it. And Valve was very clear with us where they said all of that stays local to the headset for purposes of, you know, processing where you're standing in your house for playing VR games. Whereas Meta, if you read their privacy policies, which are, like, recursive and nested and tens and tens of thousands of words, they have all kinds of terrifying clauses about the data that they extract and, you know, exfiltrate back home for who knows what, being a big AI company.

51:45So, on the positive side, I thought it was really cool. It was like, okay, you say what you want about Valve's pricing or about VR in general, but the fact that they have this thing with cameras and microphones, and they're choosing to not sell data that they can collect with those, that's so rare these days. Yeah, it gets back to the thing I said about the Steam machine. One of the things I like about the Steam machine is that it has a list of my games on it and some games I might like to buy, and it doesn't have an ad for a fucking FX show.

52:15It doesn't have Tracker featuring Tracker, the guy who tracks things, or, like, an ad for Diet Pepsi or whatever. Like, I don't have to go through... It's not even trying to advertise me a new game. It's just like, hey, man, you were playing this. You want to play this? Here is, in a small bar at the bottom, some other things you might like. But you should play the thing you want to, versus the Xbox. The PlayStation 5 is better, but the Xbox is a fucking nightmare. It reminds me of the epicenter in Charlotte, North Carolina.

52:48Just this big blaring thing, and you can't find North Carolina references around here. But you can't find what you want, and it's really loud, and it sucks. That is the Xbox now. Well, have you seen Microsoft's newest patent? What'd they patent? They patented the technology to identify the least intrusive times to inject advertising into video games and media that people... And the programs. It's not just games.

53:18It could be Excel, for all you know, or QuickBooks. Hey, you want to complete that general journal entry? You have to watch this ad first. So that was kind of their newest patent. Oh, God. It truly is. It's such a depressing state where I pretty much... It's actually great to say. I think Valve might have a meaningful chance of dethroning the Xbox. Like, it's crazy to say that. Yeah. And I used to be a big Xbox head. I used to really... I used the... I love the Duke.

53:49I think the Duke is a great controller for those listening who don't remember the Xbox... The first Xbox, not called the Xbox One, that was a later one. You're talking the original controller, the big one. The original one had just this chunky motherfucker of a controller, and it's so satisfying. It's just like a big... Like, you could... If you... If you, like, used one to defend yourself, it would take a knife. Not really. You shouldn't try that. And then the Xbox 360 was great, and then each one got slightly worse. Yeah. And then... And now we're at this point when the Xbox One X is just a shittier PC.

54:23I mean, just their branding is a mess. They went from Xbox to Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S. Series X, Xbox One X. And, I mean, I kind of... Asha Sharma, I kind of feel for her in that she's just been dropped in... In a post-frat party house with a tiny brush, and they're like, Clean it the fuck up, woman. Go. Go to fix it. Do you think she is being put in as, like, an axe person? You know how sometimes the companies will put in a new executive to kind of clean house,

54:58and then that person's the bad person, you know, and they get them out? Yeah. I think that there's a... I think it might be that, but she's not really agreeing with it. Okay, yeah. Because she seems to be doing these interviews. The thing is, if she's doing these interviews, and she's saying, Oh, I want to make Xbox good. I'm jumping in customer service calls to make it good. And she's just fucking lying. Then, Jesus Christ, what a monster. But I think she might be put there as a means of chopping things off,

55:29but also not wanting to. But also trying to fix it. Yeah. I just watched Margin Call again last night, which I really recommend. And there's a bit in it where Jeremy Irons turns to Demi Moore and goes, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't fight me on this, as he tries to leave everything at her doorstep. I think that may be it with Satya Nadella. I also think that there is a certain degree of having a very public face of something going wrong with Microsoft that they can point at and make everyone focus on.

56:00As the AI bubble falls apart, it has some use too. But I think that people will also say, Oh, that's a really smart move. Now, it probably feels smart to them, but it's actually a terrible idea. Because what's more than likely going to happen is this Xbox collapse, which is inevitable at this point. They're going to have to start laying even more people off. It's going to happen around the time of either before or after the AI bubble. So it will be Microsoft getting two hits at once. And it's also, but this is kind of the acceleration of the problem with the game industry,

56:33that every console has to get more expensive because of memory. Every AAA game has to be twice or thrice as expensive. Every game can't just be a video game that you buy once. It has to be a live service game. Right, yeah. You buy fucking, what is it, Madison Beer, Justin Herbert's girlfriend. You can play as her in Forknife or whatever. It's like every single game has to be plus plus, go on for 15 years. Like, Destiny. I mean, oh, that's a whole other thing.

57:04I think it's the... We're at peak extraction of money from consumers. Some of these... Sony and Microsoft have at various points in recent years talked about how they start seeing a plateau on their user base, and so it's time to get more money per user, right? And so, yeah, we're sort of... And I think we've hit the point where, like, consumers are obviously have had enough, and it's just, okay, this is... You're no longer providing me this super convenient,

57:37I can watch movies from the internet? Cool. Thank you. Yeah, like, I'll give you $5 a month. We're way past that. Yeah. And they don't want to compete for your money. They don't want to do more useful things. They just want to turn the screws on you more. It's genuinely sad as well, because gaming is one of the few things that I have replicably enjoyed in my life, along with music. And this... It's a real escape. And it's also just... The games I've enjoyed the most have not been AAA for years. Like, Slay the Spire 2,

58:08the raccoon coin game I play. I'm not sure if anyone's familiar with that one. It's a coin machine where you have a raccoon. It's by the Bellatro people. Bellatro, another fun game. And I can't... I don't remember the last time I played a AAA game and really stayed into it. I borrowed a copy, which we won't be able to do in the next few years, of the new James Bond game, mostly because the bloke kind of looks like me. And I quit five minutes in. Jensen said that he looks like him.

58:40Wait, what? James Bond? In the new James Bond game, First Light? He looks exactly like me. He said, Jensen said... It looks like him. Well, he's not Asian, so that's the biggest... He said he sort of looks like me. I think it's because he had a leather jacket on. Okay, Jensen. It's kind of like the tweet where it's like the guy who's only seen Boss Baby. Oh, this is giving me real Jensen Huang vibes. But I played five minutes of it, and the reason I stopped is it begins with a helicopter crash, and you were injured, and so you have to slowly shuffle

59:12along a beach. And it's just this prestige dog shit. These prestige games. I'm sure you've seen clips of Wolverine. Yes. It looks painful to play. Oh, I'm surrounded by guys. I better hit R3 and L3 to activate Wolverine mode. It's just every AAA game is like that now, to the point that, oh, I don't want to fucking get involved. Even if it looks fun, I'm going to have to struggle through the cut scenes and the weird prestige bollocks. And it also costs them

59:42a bazillion dollars. Like, Wolverine costs hundreds of millions of dollars. How do you fuck up a Wolverine game, man? I don't know. It's like the most straightforward superhero game you could do. Well, it's just... It's kind of bleak, but I do think there is an opportunity for PC gaming to somehow come out the winner, though. I think so. I mean, I think with the smaller development scene and unfortunately, it's just with the shortage of components now,

1:00:10man, yeah, the companies in the space for PCDIY are hurting and I think a lot of them are... I think what's going to happen is these companies won't be able to really, truly survive, but you'll see the brand persist as sort of a shell of itself to continue moving through whatever inventory is still in warehouses because to truly close would be to signal to, you know, your distribution and retail partners that they need to stop buying whatever's left.

1:00:42And a lot of that's because people can't... It's not because it's necessarily the cases that the coolers are bad. It's because if a stick of RAM is $250, you know, for half of what you want, then it's just not viable to build a computer. Well, with that happy note, I'm going to end it there.

Smart Appliances and Advertising

1:01:01Steve, what are you working on now you want to hype? What's coming up down the pike? Now we're working on even more of the smart TVs, actually, after our LG one. So, it turns out... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's some pretty concerning stuff still with LG that we'll talk about at some point. And right now, one of the things I'm playing around with is connecting the profiles of smart appliances. So, if you have a smart refrigerator

1:01:31and a smart TV, connecting those devices to then monitor how well does the advertising platform know when I've, like, depleted my supply of Red Bull in the fridge to then start shoveling Red Bull ads in front of me on a TV. Hmm. Yeah. Well, tech industry sucks. You heard it here first. This has been Better Offline. I'm super happy now. Thank you so much for joining me. Steve will have those links in the episode notes and everyone will be back with a monologue. Thank you.

1:02:08Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Ossowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matt Ossowski.com M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.com You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.wheresyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much

1:02:40for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Marcus Allen,

1:03:14Pro Football Hall of Famer, NFL MVP, and Super Bowl champion. I played football for a long time. One thing I've learned is nobody really knows what's going to happen next. Before the snap, you can study the defense, you can know the play, and you can see the opening. But eventually, you have to make a decision and go. For me, that was the fun of football. The moment between getting the ball and finding out whether you made the right read, I loved it. And it's why I understand what Underdog brings to sports fans. Because once you make your pick, you're not just watching anymore.

1:03:44Every snap matters, every yard matters, every decision matters. Everybody thinks they know what's coming next. Well, Underdog gives you somewhere to put that opinion into play. Pick them, money lines, totals, spreads, games, and more across your favorite sports. So trust your read, make your call, and see what happens. Download Underdog and get in on the action today. Underdog, unleash your dog. Trading involves risk, including total loss on positions. Content is promotional and not a recommendation to trade. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Bobcat.

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1:06:20It was more credit, Kev. I'm just saying, Edible Arrangements is my perfect birthday gift. Order yours today at edible.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm not saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot. I'm saying you forgot.