Things of note for whatever day it is because it’s Christmas and who cares x.

#408

INTRO

Well hello there.

As suspected, between doing final bits of present gathering and wrapping, eating my body weight in pigs-in-blankets (home-made, obvs), and catching up on some movies and video games with the fam… I had some down time (down time!) to throw together a quick and dirty FTOF for your end of year delectation.

It's relatively fast Five Things, I think at least (be gone your average 3000 word edition), so here are some things that I've seen or read since we broke for Christmas.

I hope you like it x

—

TO THE THINGS!

THING 1. JACOB COLLIER DOING...

Sometimes, when it’s the Mrs’ turn to put the kids to bed, I’ll just stick YouTube on and browse through the watch later list to see what I’ve filed away (and promptly forgotten about) to watch another day.

One such discovery last week was this from Jacob Collier:

I want to tell you it’s 18mins long but I also want you to watch it so just put it on, ignore the length, and let it wash over you.

My favourite definition of ‘GOOD CONTENT™️’ is content you enjoy spending time with, content you’d enjoy spending time with again, and something you’re happy to share with others

And that’s this.

‘What are you watching?’
‘You just missed it. But it was Jacob Collier improvising with the National Symphony Orchestra. You’d enjoy it I think, shall we put it on again?’
‘Yeah go on then’

So we did.

THING 2. YOU HAVE BILLIONS INVESTED IN GENERATIVE AI

This is a fun game! Enjoy!

Play now (mobile friendly)

THING 3. THIS FINAL WEEK OF 2025 IN VIDEO GAMES MEANS ONLY ONE THING

It being the ACTUAL end of year FTOF I am able/happy to share the annual @Whatleydude 2025 in Games data with you.

A now yearly tradition, these data are made up from the annual WRAPS that the platform providers give (as is now the trend thanks to Spotify kicking everyone else into shape and marketers having literally no chill) which I then throw into a Google Sheet and create charts from because I’m a big fat nerd and I don’t care x

Some caveats:

1. Xbox seemingly isn’t doing a ‘wrapped’ this year. Rumours abound as to reasons why ‘marketing budget being spent elsewhere’ is seemingly the main one. But we’ll come back to it. Anyway, the caveat is: I pulled the data from True Achievements (that does something similar using the same API).

2. Nintendo has kicked its annual ‘Year in Review’ into January. Smart, given how many Switch 2s may well be under Christmas trees this season but still. Annoying for data-monkeys like me. So the Caveat is: I got my Switch 2 on launch day and I’ve only really played three games on it, so I went and looked manually at the play time then added them in.

3. There is, as ever, no Steam data. I don’t own a gaming PC so have no access to it. Sue me x

Now, the charts!

First up, the biggie.
2025 in games by hours played.

I’m gonna start with the good:

Death Stranding 2 showing up as my most played game is amazing and I think underlines it as my game of the year (something I subsequently double-underlined with my submission for Video Games Industry Memo’s ‘Game of the Year’ issue published just last week - it’s a great read btw, not just my bit).

My other big faves were Blue Prince (you simply MUST play it) and Hades II.

Now to the not so good:

As per previous editions, the kids’ playtime has shown up again. We’re not quite there yet on my two littl’uns having their own accounts so Fortnite (which I do play some of - but don’t have a way to separate out LEGO Fortnite from Battle Royale) and Minecraft (that I don’t play much of) is definitely mostly theirs.

The kids also show up with the one (1) Xbox title that has appeared in my overall playtime.

They bloody love Wobbledogs (I’ve never played it) and so of course, here it is.

And so 2025 marks the year that a) Xbox embraced a cross-platform publishing approach and b) I let my Game Pass subscription lapse… and did not renew. The price hike did that choice no favours either.

Microsoft spent 2025 quietly exiting the hardware market… (coming fourth in a three-horse race is quite something) …and so everything else, in the short-term at least, suffers as a result.

Something only illustrated further when you get to both hours played…

…and total games played.

Hours played, broadly are on average the same as years gone by. But the percentages - for both charts - are wildly different.

Last year, Xbox took up over 25% of all playtime and 40% of total games played (the ability to use Game Pass to experiment with a lot of games is something that is showing up here) vs 3% and 8% respectively for 2025.

This is mad to me! I fully expected the Switch 2 to make an impact this year (and I may well revisit these numbers when the official Nintendo data drops in January) but I guess I didn’t really think about just how much the Xbox shift in strategy would show up in my own personal data.

‘But James, you play so many games - how?!’

Good question. I don’t really follow football, I don’t spend my weekends cycling narrow roads. Gaming is both part of my job and a hobby I enjoy - with my family. That and not much needing much sleep generally, well, it adds up.

So that’s my wrapped. What’s yours? :)

Quick News / Gaming Bites

• I’m excited about: STAR WARS: GALACTIC RACER.

• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is getting middling reviews. I am tempted to get it. But only because I’ve finished Hades 2 and I want something to play on my Switch 2.

• ‘Article based on ‘US only data’ somehow makes a link to UK high street pain’ is literally only one niggle of about fifteen I can make about this article. Please don’t write about ‘recession indicators’ if you’ve no real idea what a recession is.

• ‘Who holds the power in the video games industry in 2025?’

THING 4. OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD

'Old man yells at cloud' was a headline dominating the PR industry this week. He was obviously very, very wrong.

This is interesting to me for a handful of reasons. For a very long time, Sir Martine Sorrell was my biggest, ultimate boss at Ogilvy (owned by WPP, where he was CEO). You were [told to be] scared to hell of him.

Then in 2018, he ‘left’, and things changed. A reputation irreversibly (?) damaged, and a new start up that had high hopes but not much else.

Fast forward to 2022, and I had to follow this same man, on stage at BIMA Beyond, after he had stood in front of a live audience of his peers and said 'We're going to make around £40m from the metaverse this year' and then went on to reel off a bunch of things like the transformation of WFH, training pilots in VR and more... uninformed rubbish.

Stuff I called out on stage when I went on afterward and stuff I mentioned again when I published the video of the same talk a week or so later.

As a small aside, I went into the break after that talk waiting to hear what the young'uns in the room thought of SMS's opinions. I wanted to know what they thought of this titan of industry.

And… they thought he was a bit of a joke. Less commentary about his metaverse opinions and more about his response to a young brown woman asking him about making his workplace suitable for working mothers. Marty's response was all about diversity. He didn't hear the question, he just saw a brown woman asking it. And the audience noticed.

To my detriment, I don't actually remember this. I was too busy making notes and cross-referencing his bad metaverse opinions on my phone because I was up in the next session and I knew I'd have to call them out. What happened above was relayed to me by a group of students that were sat on the front row and that I spoke to at length several times that day...

All in all, all of the above is long way 'round of saying: Sarah Waddington is ace. Martin Sorrell isn't. And if you fancy skipping watching Jurassic Park this Christmas and just listening to a real life dinosaur instead, then give this a listen.

Well done SW.
Long may PR continue.

THING 5. NEED SOMEWHERE TO EAT IN LONDON IN 2026?

Here’s a good place to start.

My friend, dining pal, and erstwhile writing partner, Marshall Manson, has published both his Best New Places and Top 12 London Restaurants in one handy edition of Professional Lunch.

If you’re stuck for somewhere to book for a client dinner, fancy lunch, or just a bloody nice date night - then you can’t go far wrong with this list.

File it for when you need it.

PS. I’m lucky enough to have been to 50% of the top 12 (mostly with Marshall). It really is a fantastic list (I’d put Roe above Quality Wines, mind - just).

PPS. Marshall also reviewed our recent and reasonably terrible trip to Hawksmoor St Pancras. I love Hawksmoor. Air Street and Covent Garden are great places for decent goto client/friendly lunch. STP alas, is simply not ready.

BONUS SECTION

ONLY ONE, BECAUSE IT’S CHRISTMAS.

So look, I tried to sign off from Linkedin last week - but literally the day after I did that, the Mrs got named as one of Campaign's top ten trailblazers of 2025.

Which is an insane thing and the best bonus we could've asked for.

We were literally just about to go ice-skating when we found out - lol - so we did that, then went for an amazing celebratory, first-day-of-Christmas-hols lunch.

That’s it, that’s the bonus.

YOU ARE REACHING THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER. MIND THE GAP.

So here we are. That’s it. That’s the last Five Things before Christmas. Given my schedule between now and NYE (I’m cooking and hosting Christmas - twice) I’m reasonably certain that this is the final FToF of the year.

I hope you have a very merry Christmas, and I hope you can look back fondly on your achievements of 2025 as you prepare for whatever 2026 might bring.

Me myself, I’m about to enter my own period of reflection. A time when I think about time spent to date. That work is only just beginning and maybe I’ll write about the findings in the New Year.

Until next time my dear friends,

Whatley out x

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