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pinerdom · 2 years

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Tc electronic mimiq signal path

#Tc electronic mimiq signal path full

If you shift from a completely Dry signal (with the effect off) to the pedal being on, you may create too much of a volume boost, which means keeping the pedal’s DRY turned down (unless you want that boost). The Mimiq Doubler has only a few knobs, but as stated there is tweaking to do. Moreover, suppose you already have some songs pre-recorded and you want to make the guitar (or any instrument) sound bigger you can run the guitar track’s signal into the Mimiq Doubler and record a new ‘multi-layer.’Īnother great feature is that the pedal includes a USB port so that you can upload firmware updates when available – a pedal that keeps on giving and improving in technology over time. Dial in just right and you may find it difficult to return to a regular guitar signal as it can sound relatively ‘weak’ in comparison. What is very impressive is when you add other effects, such as chorus, phaser, etc., as the outcome of the Mimiq Doubler seems to super-enhance everything that much more.

#Tc electronic mimiq signal path full

The video with this review was recorded in Mono, but it is a full Stereo pedal, which gives an even greater thickening effect (not a panning effect) when you have left and right speakers communicating in their appropriate corners. It also produces a 12-string guitar effect, if you so choose to dial it in accordingly (keep the tightness low and the effect high). It thickens up anything, from synth effects to a bass guitar or when you want the vocals to stand out more during the chorus, and obviously it works great for guitar (could be interesting if added to a drum track). Now, what I like about this pedal is that it merely replicates what goes in it, which means it works for ALL instruments, and even the human voice. The EFFECT adjusts the level of the overdubs/added layers and this needs to be coordinated with the DRY knob (which adjusts how much of the input signal is sent to the outputs – full up is parity). very precise in replication, any adjustment that can produce a different quality in time, pick attack and pitch. The TIGHTNESS adjusts how much variation there is in the layers, e.g., a slight warble or chorus effect vs. One DUB can make a difference, whereas three may be too much (depending on the entire scope of your sound, other effects, what effect you want, etc.). The DUBS refer to how many additional guitar signals you want layered with the original or DRY. This is most apparent as you add more DUBS or increase the EFFECT to obvious levels rather than modest levels. And that makes sense if you consider have 1-3 guitarists in your band playing the same thing and with the same gear and settings. Depending on the settings there ‘can be’ a coloring of the original tone, although not a bad coloration as the nuances (harmonics, etc.) of the notes seem to be enhanced while making the signal sound livelier – something distorted becomes a bit more distorted and edgy, whereas pinch harmonics ring out even more clearly. But once you do, you can get closer to that ‘wall of sound’ from just one guitar, bringing a lot more life to leads and heavy rhythms. The YouTube demo video within this review did not ‘dial in’ to the best effect relative to clean or distorted signals, but was set in such a way that you could hear the audible difference clearly (since YouTube often compresses the signal and you lose some of the effect desired).Ĭertainly your playing and composition will dictate how many additional guitars you want to hear… one extra, or two or three, and that also requires tweaking the Dry, Effect and Tightness accordingly to best match the guitar’s tone, amp settings and other effects in the chain. Dialed in correctly (which tweaking can vary whether the signal is clean, heavily distorted or somewhere between) it can sound very natural and full. The MIMIQ Doubler does the latter automatically and at various levels – in a very subtle way or with a lot of aggression. The purpose of the Mimiq Doubler is to thicken up your sound, often achieved by way of a slight chorus or slap-back echo, or more commonly (in the studio) by way of multi-tracking the same guitar part. FYI: I posted my past demo videos on a new YouTube channel for those who care to check them out: CoolGuitarGear

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bananaofswifts · 3 years

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By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Sketching Sessions

“The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways,” elaborates Low. “Sometimes they are more fleshed‑out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he’ll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I’ll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what’s there.

“I don’t call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies.”

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they’d load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. “Taylor’s voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks.”

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore’s 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percusion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an “anti‑pop album”, the world’s number‑one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

“It was exciting to have Serban involved,” explains Low, “because he did things I’d never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song ‘epiphany’. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye‑opening and refreshing.

“Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over‑mixing.

“We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, ‘Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?’ We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn’t improve the song — ‘cardigan’ is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix.”

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making‑of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co‑producing all tracks, apart from ‘gold rush’ which was co‑written and co‑produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift’s vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single ‘willow’ became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

“Before Taylor came to Long Pond,” remembers Low, “she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go‑to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR‑1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A‑D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes.”

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. “The element that draws me in is always Taylor’s vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I’m used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It’s more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music...”

The arrangements on evermore are even more ‘chamber pop’ than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. “As listeners of the National may know, Aaron’s and Bryce’s arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percusion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real‑sounding vocal was the ticket.

“A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There’s not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge.”

#taylor swift #folklore

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weasley-detectives · 7 years

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Brave and Merida in a Trumped up world

It's a little surprising to me that the Disney fandom went absolutely apeshit over the "Disneyfication" of Merida in their merchandise - something Brenda Chapman even spoke out against, calling it a cheap ploy to sell merchandise - yet there hasn't been any commentary on other Brave spin-offs.

Merida's a Disney/Pixar heroine who, in Chapman’s own words, was created to be a different kind of Princess. Now, I don’t think it makes me a good feminist to sit here and pit Disney Princess against Disney Princess; I think popular perception of the “Disney Princess” is a different beast altogether when compared with the actual source material, which has both positive and negative aspects. But when it comes to Merida the writers intentionally set out from the start to try something new. She has a fuller, rounded figure, a nuanced relationship with her mother, and romance plays no part in her story. You could argue there’s evidence of a romantic interest, but that’s not the same thing as a romantic subplot, and it’s not overt enough that you can say with any certainty. The writers admit the original idea was to have Merida walk off into the sunset with Young MacGuffin, the suitor who briefly catches her attention early in the film, but that epilogue thankfully only exists in the artbook and deleted scenes.

And let me be clear, there's nothing wrong with Merida having a romantic interest. In fact, I came to love that Merida is subtly shown to be a little interested in Young MacGuffin.

I was watching Mulan the other night with a @pale-silver-comb (who is 100% responsible for my newfound love of Disney- well, that and the fact I need bright happy escapist animation as the rest of my time is spent neck deep in miserable politics). We were cackling over the scene where Mulan ogles a shirtless Shang and later wound up ranting over how rare it is to see women checking out guys in films. When women do make their attraction known, they tend to run the risk of being framed or labelled as shameless, or worse, sluts. On the flipside, how often do we see guys ogling girls in media? Yeah, exactly. It's a shitty myth that women don't own their sexuality in the same ways men do. That's one of the things I love about Mulan and Merida as heroines - they're not "strong female characters" (god I hate that term, can we please kill it?) just because they kick large hairy man arse. They're great characters because they are so relatable. They're funny, they're giant dorks, they stuff their gobs, they check guys out, they can be crass, proud, and make mistakes. These are all things women do, but aren't shown to do nearly as often as men are in mainstream media.

I’m glad the Brave epilogue with Merida and Young MacGuffin didn't make the final cut, because the story wasn't about Merida finding romance - it was about Merida's relationship with her mother, and the two of them confronting their pride, opening their minds to new ways of thinking, and admitting their mistakes. The epilogue had no place in Brave’s narrative. To have included it would have harmed the message of the story by adding romance for the sake of romance, rather than for any narrative purpose. But at the same time I don't want to downplay Merida showing even a subtle interest because yay women owning their own sexuality. One of the things that has driven me crazy since I was a kid myself is the patronising infantilization of girls. A crush is normal, you can pretty much get them at any age, it does not mean you’re not enjoying your childhood to the fullest. Fuck that noise. I had massive crushes from the age of 4 and still managed to climb trees, get into fights and battle Captain Hook and Shredder on my T-Rex with imaginary best friend Gollum at my side (what? fuck you we had a bond). That Merida might have had a bit of a crush on Young MacGuffin reinforces for me the fact she’s a character who doesn't want to get married because she doesn’t bloody want to, not because the suitors are conveniently horrible people she vehemently dislikes. I actually find that even more inspiring. So yes, Brave is a great film with a pretty amazing heroine.

Which is why it pisses me off when spin-off writers take something so progressive and shaft it.

This isn't a ship shaming post at all - fandom is a ship & let ship space, ship Merida with her bow for all I care, it's all good. This critique is aimed at crappy spin-offs and I’m taking Once Upon a Time as an example. Now, OUAT isn’t all bad. Sometimes it takes Disney canon and transforms it into something really interesting, progressive and original. Or, well, it used to. Recent seasons not so much. The actress who plays Merida is the only good thing about OUAT's Brave arc. The rest is unbearably lazy (HA! pun.) writing. The gravest injustice has to be King Fergus, who looks like he's wearing a wig knitted from a highland cow's pubes.

Don't get me started on his accent. I’m scottish. No Scotsman sounds like that. Not unless they’re squeedging out an enormous post-curry-hangover shit. I love Fergus, but honestly I was relieved OUAT!Fergus was bumped off before my ears could go on strike.

The suitors are also sexist pigs. Dingwall and MacGuffin don't even say anything, they just play the lazy mindless followers/minions to MacIntosh who’s probably the most unlikeable aspect of the arc. Really says something about OUAT when the original animation, aimed at a younger audience, portrays its characters as more nuanced. In Brave, Young MacIntosh is all bluff- he’s a show off, a sore loser and generally a bit of a prick, but there are also glimpses of genuine empathy. He's also the suitor Merida is openly put off by in the film. So yeah, in Brave, Young MacIntosh is a bit of a lanky fucktrumpet, but he's not anywhere close to being the scabby sexist cockwomble he is in OUAT. This would be fine if it had some sort of clever narrative purpose, but who am I kidding, it’s OUAT. OUAT!MacIntosh is a proper dickhead and there’s no reason for Merida to like any of the suitors, because unlike in Brave, they’re all fucking assholes. And yet the OUAT arc still ends with Merida giving him the smitten googley eyes. Because romance or something. cool.

Another Brave novelisation published by Disney Random House ends with Merida confirming to the reader that yes, she did eventually marry. Well thank fuck for that! My frail girlish heart couldn't possibly entertain the idea of Merida never marrying. Thank you book, you've reassured conservative parents everywhere.

In addition to that bollocks is.. probably one of the worst offenders. I recently picked up a couple of the Merida chapter books by Sudipta Bardham-Quallen, again published by Disney Random House. They're for wee kids, but I wanted to see more of @gurihiru 's lovely art which I’m fully smitten with. The writing isn’t great, but the stories involve challenging enough themes for very young readers. To the author's credit there's a bit of an effort made to retain a Scottish feel to them and there’s a nice focus on female friendships as Merida encounters new characters. It’s a bit cutesy-poo BFFs!!, the kind of thing I hated as a kid, but hey, we need more female friendship stories. The new characters are even quite likeable, so thumbs up there.

Then I picked up the second book, The Fire Falls (also written by Sudipta Bardham-Quallen), and cringed. Basically bad Merida and Young MacIntosh fanfic involving some classic tropes like: 'I'm not jealous, I’m just better than all those shameless slags flirting with him' and 'arg he's such an asshole but i'm inexplicably attracted to him though there's nothing to show in the story why I should be!' and my favourite - ‘He’s a bad guy but I can change him!’

Here's my main issue: why is it when a female character shows or says she’s not interested in a guy's advances this all too often becomes a springboard for their romance? Why do these stories have such an obsession with positioning the sexist hyper-masculine asshole as the romantic lead? (I'm sure that couldn’t have any dire implications for the worl-oh fuck). And in Brave's case, when the source material and original epilogue show Merida taking an interest in the big fat guy, why don’t any of the spin-offs build on that? Young MacGuffin also happens to be the only one in the entire film to vocally stand up for Merida’s rights. That’s pretty cool! So why don’t spin-offs celebrate that? The cynic in me says we all know the answer - much like Merida had to be “sexed up” to sell Disney merchandise, the fat suitor had to be swapped out for the skinny.

Really, in a film that revolves around Merida's frustration that people aren't listening to her, it sort of amazes me that these spin-offs don't realise they AREN'T LISTENING TO HER.

And yeah, obviously I know it seems really silly picking on kids books and OUAT, neither of which are ever going to win awards for great progressive writing, but considering America just elected a vile celebrity as President and populism is on the rise, maybe it’s time we all said screw that academic snobbery and paid more attention to popular media. This stuff is common, these tropes are common, and it’s consumed mostly by young kids who internalise these crappy messages.

I make a big deal of it because these coded messages have a profound effect on us as we grow. These messages tell us to ignore a girl's decision and choice: that when she says 'I'm not interested' what we hear is 'I am'; that the most "attractive" and most "masculine" guy will always be the “natural” choice; that being fat or shy or awkward are inherently negative qualities and will always be overlooked by the loud wanker distracting everyone by waving his tiny hands around.

I'm now a published historian and I plan on publishing children's books in the near future; I work part-time in a bookshop, so I talk to kids about the stories they read, the stories they want to read, and their frustrations with the stories they HAVE read, all the time; I studied child psychology as part of my degree in Social Anthropology: this is why it matters to me and why I know all too well how much these coded messages affect us. I know it from my own experiences as a half-Moroccan kid with a dead father, growing up in a classroom of white kids who all came from middle-class households with two parents. This was all brought back to me when I rediscovered some of my old journals and stories I had written for class where I portrayed myself as being blonde/white and talked as if my dad was still alive, because I desperately wanted to be *normal*. I never got to encounter a character like Merida growing up, and I wish to god I had.

Children's authors and publishing houses have an enormous responsibility to make their readers feel included and heard. They also have a responsibility to challenge toxic ideas - not reinforce them. We have to keep pushing boundaries, not limit them.

#Brave #Disney #Merida #OUAT #Brave disney #Children's fiction #writing #feminism #rants #Weasley rants

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ramialkarmi · 6 years

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Microsoft’s Xbox boss explains how its push into Netflix-style gaming heralds a brand-new business model in video games (MSFT)

Microsoft made a major move toward Netflix-style subscriptions for Xbox games this week.

The move is the latest of several ambitious additions to the Xbox One platform.

Business Insider spoke with Xbox lead Phil Spencer about the latest changes in a phone interview this week.

Spencer hints that Xbox Game Pass could be the herald of a new business model in video games, beyond paying $60 for a new game or microtransactions in a free-to-play game.

Microsoft's Xbox One isn't the best-selling console on the market (that's the PlayStation 4), nor is it the hot new thing (that's the Nintendo Switch). It is, however, the most ambitious.

Here are just a few examples:

The Xbox One has the Game Preview program, similar to Steam's Early Access, which allows players to buy and play games that are still in development.

The Xbox One X, an outrageously powerful (and, at $499, equally expensive) game console that powers 4K and HDR gaming natively.

The Xbox Game Pass program, a Netflix-style subscription program that offers access to a large library of games for $10/month.

And this week, the latter of those three got a major update: Starting with "Sea of Thieves" on March 20, all future Microsoft-published Xbox One games will arrive on Game Pass the same day that they're available to buy in stores.

For example: You could buy "Sea of Thieves" in stores on March 20 for $60, or you could pay $10 for a a month of Game Pass and gain access to it and over 100 other games. Apply that same scenario to, say, the next major "Halo" game, or the next "Forza Motorsport" — it's a risky move for Microsoft, as it potentially cannibalizes its own retail sales.

But it holds obvious appeal for thrifty players. Who doesn't want to pay less for games? Games are expensive!

Microsoft isn't the only company thinking this way, either: In 2014, Sony launched PlayStation Now, a subscription service (priced at $20/month or $99/year), giving players access to a library of over 600 titles for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. But where Xbox Game Pass titles are downloaded into your library, Sony's service streams them over the internet to your console.

On the flipside of that argument, games are expensive to make — thus the high cost at retail. And in the hit-driven video game industry, the major publishers still rely on early sales for the lion’s share of revenue they expect from their biggest titles.

Microsoft's Xbox lead, Phil Spencer, sees both sides of this argument. He has to — he's the guy in charge of making Xbox Game Pass a success, but he's also a guy who plays games himself. He wants his game development partners to be happy, but he also wants Xbox One owners to be happy.

When I spoke to him on the phone earlier this week, he explained some of the nuance behind the Xbox Game Pass program and where he sees subscription services going when it comes to gaming. The following is that conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Ben Gilbert, Business Insider: If I'm EA or Activision or whatever — a so-called "third-party" game publisher — why would I put my games on Xbox Game Pass at launch? Is that even a goal here?

Phil Spencer, Microsoft executive VP of gaming (head of Xbox): Just like I say on the gamer's side about choice, I just look at us just giving our publishers and our developers choice as well. I'm not here to dictate the terms of how they deliver content and what avenues they choose. I think you're right that when you look at a big third-party, whether they're gonna look at shipping their games day and date in Game Pass is the option for them will be based on their business, not my business. For gamers themselves, the commitment I can make is to ship our first-party games into Game Pass.

But I will say from a discussion with third parties, I think everybody is excited about the innovation here. Because everybody has seen how subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify have brought in more listeners or more watchers or, in our case, more players. But how they will evolve their business choices will be up to them over time. Today, a majority of the games that are in Game Pass, but as you say, they're not day and date games — they're games that've been out for a longer period of time.

BG: And that of course appeals to some people — a kind of "instant library" of games. But demand for newer games is exactly what drove Microsoft to institute this new policy for first-party games going forward. What, if anything, is Microsoft doing to get third-party games on Game Pass closer to launch?

PS: We're still within the first year of launch of Game Pass. The response has been great. We're continuing to learn and listen and have conversations with our third-party partners — and our customers, frankly — about things that they would like to see. I'm bullish on Game Pass' long term potential to allow people to play the games they want on the devices they want. And I think that, as we continue to build the audience for Game Pass, our discussions with third parties will continue to grow.

Game Pass wouldn't happen today without the third-party support we have. I think it's critical. And as we make these moves our third parties are right there asking what we learned.

And that's getting to a bit of another topic, but something that's worth hitting on: As I look at our first-party and the things that we want to do, one of the things that I've really been focused on over the last couple of years is how do we make sure our first-party is doing innovative things that can help expand the market for everybody. Not necessarily just going after genres where third-parties have success today, but can we try to do new things. This obviously isn't something a first-party is doing with their game specifically — it's just how a game launches — but it's an opportunity for us to take our first party, try something that's great for consumers, learn from that, share that with third-parties, and continue to grow the business.

And I think that's a critical role for us as a first-party publisher.

BG: Given that it's been about six months since launch, how has it been so far in terms of pick-up? Are you releasing any numbers today in terms of how many people are using Game Pass?

PS: We're not releasing any numbers. I will say that this is playing to a strength that we see on our platform. We've had a really great response to Game Pass, so that the customer voice in what's going on with Game Pass from our subscribers is something that we're very tuned into right now.

We look at this opportunity as something that, one, is a strength of our console — because it's available there. But also in the longer run with things like Mixer, and putting "Minecraft" on all platforms with cross-play. We're very much about reaching the gamer where they want to play, and in this case it's letting those games reach the gamer in the way they want to be reached.

So, I apologize for not announcing a number today. I will say that we're very, very happy with the success we've had with Game Pass, and we see this as a way of further investing into something that's working.

BG: What's the long-term goal for Game Pass? Do you think it, or something like it, will replace more traditional means of getting games (buying in a store/downloading)?

PS: I think it's a good question, and it's actually a good vein of conversation, because some people will draw almost a one-to-one analogy between a PlayStation Now or a Game Pass with a Netflix or something. Forget about one being download and one being streamed, but more that subscription model.

I think that business model diversity in video games is a strength of video games. It's something we should all make sure we don't take for granted, that when customers find a great game and they love it that they're willing to continue to invest in that game. And, frankly, when they're not, they're pretty vocal about not liking the business model diversity. We've seen some of that even in the last few months.

But that diversity that we have in our space is a real strength. We're not dependent upon one business model — there are games on your phone that solely exist because of ads and advertising. There are models out there that are completely based on the day one purchase of a game, and those games can be incredibly successful. We should love that.

And then we look at free-to-play, and episodic, and things like subscriptions — we should all take it as a real strength of the video game business that we're able to support so many different business models in a healthy way. I think it really provides a strength and foundation for a craft and a business that I love, that will keep us strong for decades to come. And not all media have that opportunity.

SEE ALSO: The Xbox One's Netflix-style game program is getting a crucial update

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Join the conversation about this story »

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#Tech Insider #Arab #Entrepreneurship #sillicon alley insider

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