Ask Paul: March 3 (Premium)

We’re in Mexico City for three weeks because life wasn’t chaotic enough already, so let’s kick off the weekend with some great reader questions.

Bungie, Halo, and the future

helix2301 asks:

What are your feelings on Bungie how did they break away from Microsoft I was wondering if you knew the history of it.

When this happened—and it was in 2007, far longer ago than I was thinking—I didn’t understand what they were doing. Knowing the history now, I wonder about this even more. Basically, Bungie was tired of making Halo and felt that the series had concluded, which makes sense when you realize that they were responsible for the only three truly excellent Halo titles (the first three): Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3. (Well, and Halo 3: ODST, which was also very good but was a side-story.) But the team also wished to be independent again, and so they negotiated a deal with Microsoft to split off, with Microsoft keeping Halo and Bungie helping complete ODST.

That all sounds fine, but it’s the history since then that makes this narrative make a lot less sense. From a game creation perspective, Bungie of course went on to make Destiny, which is great and everything but, come on, it looks and feels exactly like Halo. It kind of begs the question of whether this game might have just been set in the Halo universe (like ODST) had they stayed at Microsoft. (Also, Bungie has released only two games, Destiny and Destiny 2, since leaving Microsoft 15 years ago? Come on. Destiny 2 is now 6 years old.)

Worse, Bungie signed an exclusive publishing partnership with Activision less than three years later, ended that deal early, and then was acquired by Sony in 2022. For a company that wanted to remain independent, they’ve rarely been truly independent. And it’s not like Sony is a better place for a game studio than Microsoft, unless of course you’re looking to be made console exclusive again.

Basically, Bungie’s decisions have never made sense to me.

Why was Sony allowed to buy them no questions asked but Microsoft is running into such an issue with Activision.

Bungie is a tiny studio compared to Activision Blizzard, and as noted, it only has two games in its stable, or really just one because Destiny 2 has pretty much replaced Destiny. Sony paid $3.6 billion for Bungie, a small fraction of the $69 billion Microsoft has offered for AB. (And it looks like Sony is about to buy Take-Two as well.)

What are your feelings on Halo infinite? I play it quite a bit while it’s a great game and its fun I just don’t see that big of a userbase compared to something like Destiny, Pubg, or Fortnite. You don’t see many people streaming it on Twitch or YouTube. Do you think the userbase is there for sustainability?

I’m worried about Halo, and while I haven’t published this yet (and maybe won’t), I did start writing something called “Why Won’t Microsoft Set Halo Free?” that’s based on my opinion that 343 Industries has completely lost the script on Halo and that Halo: Infinite is the breaking point. None of the post-Bungie Halo titles are truly great, and while I’ve replayed the first three many, many times, the newer 343-based titles just don’t have that staying power. I have little doubt that Halo has been losing players for years and that the delays, problems, and broken promises of Halo: Infinite have made things even worse.

As for the game itself, I do appreciate how it captures the look and feel of classic Halo, but I just drifted off after a while because the single-player campaign is repetitive and uninteresting. There is a real sense of “been there, done that,” which I know sounds odd coming from a Call of Duty addict, but then that’s what Halo lacks (to me) now: the replayability thing. COD has incredible multiplayer and the Halo stuff just seems old-fashioned.

As an aside, Phil Spencer has said that today’s Microsoft would have done a better job keeping Bungie happy and in-house. I do believe that.

Microsoft will never give us hard numbers

helix2301 asks:

When you fire up a new Windows laptop you always see things like Spotify, Amazon Prime Videos, Netflix, and others has Microsoft ever said or given any hard numbers on the revenue they make from this, or if they make revenue from this as part of their advertising business?

It’s not possible to know what Microsoft earns from these partnerships or even where they record that revenue because they’ve never done so. And, I’m sure, never will. But lumping it in with advertising is a good guess.

LG Gram

ggolcher asks:

I was wondering if you had any plans to review the new LG Gram models. The new Gram 17 model looks especially compelling this year, but your perspective would be the one that I would trust on it.

I haven’t reviewed an LG Gram laptop in many years, but I was always impressed by these PCs and I’m sure the Gram 17 is fantastic. (Though I’d prefer no numeric keypad.) I have my hands full with PC makers asking me to review devices, so I don’t really ask for things for the most part, but I’d be happy to review a new LG Gram, of course.

Xbox sales

christianwilson asks:

Are you surprised by the sales numbers of the Series X|S compared to PS5? I figured PS5 was likely selling higher but I am a little surprised this reported number of Xbox sales is so much lower than PS5. Series S has been more readily available for a while. I figured they were selling well and Microsoft was keeping up with demand but maybe the reality is that the demand isn’t as high for it.

Yes, but I would have guessed that the number was lower just based on what is probably now an out-of-date belief that Sony has outsold Microsoft by roughly 2-to-1 since the Xbox One. But it’s possible that they’ve closed the gap with this generation, which makes sense: not only is the Xbox Series S value-priced and often on sale on top of that, even the base PS5 is very expensive. My guess is that that is how Microsoft closed the gap from roughly 2-to-1 to roughly 3-to-2. (Assuming the numbers are correct.)

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it’s likely that Sony will extend its lead now that its supply chain issues are behind it.

Alternate history

spacecamel asks:

You have mentioned a few times that Microsoft should have been broken into two or three parts during the antitrust trial.  How do you think these parts would have done long term?   I wonder if Azure would have been created from this mess.

It’s hard to understand what would have happened had Microsoft been split up, but thinking about this, I believe the same high-level changes would have occurred: companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and even Facebook/Meta were able to dominate emerging new businesses that a more competitive and unfettered Microsoft likely would have squashed had it not been distracted by its antitrust struggles. So a set of smaller, weakened mini-Microsofts would likely have faced the same challenges, just for different reasons.

I do often reference my belief that Microsoft should have been broken up, but it’s important to put that in context: that made sense to me at the time, but in the years since, Microsoft has emerged as a different kind of company, and those competitors noted above (and others) have more than leveled the playing field, transforming personal computing from a Windows-centric monoculture into a diverse, heterogeneous, and bigger thing. Personal computing still has antitrust issues, and the abuses of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta are even worse than anything Microsoft did (or does) because they impact so many more people. So I would argue today that it’s for the best that Microsoft wasn’t broken up, and that this future was inconceivable in 1999 or whenever.

It is interesting to me that the most destructive force in personal computing in the 1990s is today the most benevolent. Microsoft isn’t without its issues, for sure, but it is more trustworthy than its competitors and is, if you will, a “better” company from an ethical/business behavior standpoint. It’s not perfect, but Big Tech makes that a low bar.

NextDNS issues

ThemainJP asks:

I’ve tried NextDNS (and some alternatives) and find they work quite well with one exception. I live in an area with poor mobile data service and I often have to connect to public WiFi, where encrypted DNS is frequently blocked.  It isn’t the end of the world, but it does get annoying having to toggle the App off or create exceptions, and of course losing the ad-blocking while on public WiFi.  Have you experienced this, and if so is this just something we have to live with?

No, but it’s possible/likely that that’s related to my own usage, and that I’ve just not been in enough unreliable areas to have noticed this. But I have definitely used NextDNS on public Wi-Fi and haven’t noticed anything unusual. I wonder if others have any experiences like that.