33 Immortals & Dungeons of Hinterberg

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, it's Larry Hyrb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the official Xbox Podcast. A little bell went off on YouTube if you subscribe over there. And all of a sudden, here we are. So thank you for liking and subscribing and doing all that stuff. And did I do it right?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Larry, you're finally there. You've gotten it. You've got the spiel.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Nice work.

LARRY HYRB: It is what it is.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Took two years.

LARRY HYRB: It's great to have everybody back. Welcome back Showcase Week we. Have the Xbox Showcase a few days ago, depending upon when you're listening to this. And Jeff, you were in LA. Rebecca, where were you? I don't know where you were.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I was cozied up. So you might be able to tell, I have a new background. So I moved into San Francisco. And so I was cozied up at home for once.

LARRY HYRB: By the way, that's not a background. When you say background, people think like a virtual. That's real.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes, sorry. This is my background/home.

LARRY HYRB: Right.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But, yeah, so I was cozied up on the couch watching with my coffee. And I have to say, I quite enjoyed that. It's nice.

LARRY HYRB: I also--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Can we just talk about your background real quick and how daring it is, because you've got a mirror back there. And if you're in a meeting with somebody, and if you're not paying attention, they're going to see that you're playing a game or so-- that is a commitment to the viewer. I appreciate it.

LARRY HYRB: Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Anyway, welcome.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I'm confident.

LARRY HYRB: You want bold and confident. I appreciate that. Welcome back, everybody. I was in Mexico. I just got back last night before, obviously, before we record this. So it's-- I wanted to-- I'm committed to the show. And I appreciate you guys being committed as well to come back right after we were gone for two weeks.

[INAUDIBLE] we stay quiet. We stay quiet, to let people ruminate over--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Lot of work to do.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, the work that they have to do. And then the internet likes to chase its tail over rumors and whatnot.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You've been quoted many, many times. Larry, can we talk about Cafeteriagate real quick?

[LAUGHTER]

Did you see this, Rebecca?

LARRY HYRB: Did you hear this, Rebecca?

REBECCA GORDIUS: No, I did not.

LARRY HYRB: So I don't know if you have it on your phone, if you-- let me see if I can pull it up because it's-- why don't you explain this?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Like the week before, two weeks before, we went down for showcase, Larry and I. We were just in the office, normal work day. And we went down for lunch. And in the cafe we run into Aaron Greenberg who as you know is the Head of Games Marketing here at Xbox.

And he's like hey, let's just take a selfie. And we're like oh yeah, sure. Of course. Why not.

LARRY HYRB: Because he-- by the way, he's a selfie king I. Am not a selfie, selfie person. So I don't particularly care for any. Actually, so I'm going-- I'm going to get it ready here, Jeff. So just--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right. So it was a very serendipitous meeting. We were finishing lunch. He was just coming down. We took a selfie. We talked about coffee, and off we go. Next thing we know, I'm getting tagged and you're getting tagged. I notice it more, you probably get tagged all the time, Larry, on Twitter and other social channels.

And the picture was seen on Instagram stories. It was then elevated and people thought it was a hint, because that's the time of year where everyone, like you said, chases their tales and are looking for a hint everywhere. So do you have it, Larry?

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, I'm going to pull it up here right now. So what it was-- again, what do you mean, it can't be found?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Let us know if you see anything innocent or amiss, Rebecca, in this photo.

LARRY HYRB: Because it just didn't make any sense. I was like, wait a minute, I texted this to Jeff. So let me bring it up here. Here it is. So here we are.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right.

LARRY HYRB: Now this that right here is the photo. And that's Jeff and I. We're coming. Now what do you see in this photo?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh. Abel.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Right.

LARRY HYRB: Yep. There you go. And so all of a sudden, as Jeff said, there's all this new stories being written about Jeff and I and Aaron, is this a tease? Oh, my gosh-- they're going to.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, gosh.

LARRY HYRB: Now, Rebecca. You've been in that cafeteria. You know what that word is. It's table.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Table. Yeah. A very normal word to show up in a cafeteria.

LARRY HYRB: Because I think it's like-- I don't remember what-- they said like, what is the name of that farm--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's the table or something like that? Anyway. And then, of course, Fable was in the show.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, it was right at the top of the show, actually.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So there are some people out there that are saying, we knew it. It was a hint.

LARRY HYRB: It was--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: There we go.

LARRY HYRB: And let's be very clear. At that point, I guarantee you, as God is my witness, Jeff and I, and I don't know about Aaron. I can't speak for Aaron. But at that point, Jeff and I knew nothing about the show. Nothing. We didn't know Fable was in. We didn't know Fable certainly was the beginning of the show. So it was-- this is just kind of like nope, nope. nope. Able.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that's pretty funny. Anyway.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So that's why we don't have a show for like the two weeks leading in, because anything that could be said could be-- but that is a new. That's a new high, I would say.

LARRY HYRB: Or a new low. I don't know how you look at it. But that was-- yeah, that was something. It was because Jeff, you had not seen it when I texted it to you, right?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No. I was just like, why am I getting [INAUDIBLE]. The funny thing is that was elevated by Idle Sloth who I think was having a good time. He's a he's an Irish influencer, who I ended up actually meeting and giving a fair amount of stick to about that. He listens to the show and great guy. And but--

LARRY HYRB: Oh, so he was with you in LA.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, I got to meet him. Again, super nice guy. He is maybe the most active person on Twitter, this side of Wario64. I highly recommend you follow him, by the way. If anything is happening in gaming world, he catches it first. I did ask him if he sleeps. And he insisted he did.

LARRY HYRB: What's his day job, or is that his day job?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I don't want-- he doesn't want his personal information.

LARRY HYRB: Fair point.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, fair.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: He goes by Idle Sloth and there you go.

LARRY HYRB: Anyway, so that's one-- and Jeff, that's a great example, case in point of why we don't do a show leading two weeks up because you just don't know. Anyway, so welcome back, everybody. I'm back from Mexico just from LA. Rebecca, from her couch a few feet to her.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Well, I would love to know, what was it like in Mexico City, Larry. I feel like Mexico has some of our most passionate fans for sure.

LARRY HYRB: That is an understatement. I'll tell you this. It was an experience. So we had our event on Sunday. Sunday morning, the place was packed. We had 250 people in there. I mean, the place could hold 250. It was at capacity. And the fans are just so lovely, because they're just so excited to be able to talk about Xbox. They love Xbox. They love our games.

There was a little bit of disappointment at the end there, because everybody wants to see their game in the show. And some of them are like, oh, I didn't see XY or Z And so they were disappointed by that, but they did get-- they love Starfield. They love Forza. They certainly loved Fable and Star Wars which was also on the show and so on and so forth.

So it was just great to go down there. I did that on Sunday. And then Monday, I met with a bunch of influencer and community members, two different groups of I think-- it was 10 or 12 each. And we hung out I did a Q&A with them. And then we played Halo.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Nice.

LARRY HYRB: I think we played a total of six Halo games between the two sessions. And I think I won-- came in first in 3 of them. Not going to say so.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: OK.

LARRY HYRB: And these are hardcore gamers, so I'm just telling you.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Experience.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's impressive.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Experience over youth, sometimes.

LARRY HYRB: I brought it and they were like. I was like numero uno. So-- but, no it was great. I didn't have a lot of chance to sightsee or do any of the things I wanted to see because I was there to work.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You had to eat good, though. I mean, food in Mexico.

LARRY HYRB: Can I tell you something? Let me tell something. Hold on, talk for a second. I got to show you something. I'll be right back, I got to show you something.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right. All right.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Do you want to tell us about life?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Here's the thing that Larry did last time we went to Mexico, which was XO18, is we were hyping up the crowd, doing some stuff. And Larry gets up there. And he genuinely has fans there, and people are going crazy. And he's like, give me the mic. And we're like, oh my god, what is he going to say?

LARRY HYRB: Are you ready?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And then he just goes, oh La Mexico. And everyone goes, yeah. And then he hands the mic back.

LARRY HYRB: So we go out to a restaurant.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's all he said?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That was it. That was it. But you know, we were talking about someone else. Larry, go on please.

LARRY HYRB: No, we go to a restaurant. And I love Mexican food. And especially since I was growing up in Connecticut, that wasn't really Mexican food, I came to find out. But I have to tell you, we go out to this restaurant at this hotel. And I had the salsa, it was called matcha salsa, salsa matcha.

And I loved it. I asked the chef I said, what is It And he comes out with a bag of all the chilies sealed up, to end-- all the chilies to make it, so I can take it home and make it. He's got them all labeled, a sample of the salsa, and then a note, a note, and the recipe.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That is incredible.

LARRY HYRB: So I could not believe it, I mean. So now, I was like-- I was so excited, because some of these peppers, you can't even find in the United States, at least I can't. I don't know where to look. One of my favorite is paseo del waco, which is-- these are a good smoky--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You got to make that, Larry.

LARRY HYRB: Right. So I so I have all these things and I'm thinking, how am I going to get through passport control with these, because they always tell you, no plants, no seeds, nothing. So I had these. I had in fact, I think I still have it in here. Do i have it in here?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Going through customs, they're like, wow, this guy really likes spicy peppers.

LARRY HYRB: So I just threw this out this morning. But I had everything declared. I had it all written down, even down to the stuffed animal that I bought my daughter. I was like-- I had everything in here, what I thought it would cost, the name of the peppers. I go through, he says, he looks at my passport, stamps his, welcome home, Larry. And I was like, what about? Don't worry about it. OK. So walked in. Anyway so.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I feel like if it's dried too, it's a little bit easier to take through customs.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Vacuum-seal. They don't want you bringing fresh fruit in and out, something where they could be a--

LARRY HYRB: To answer your question, Rebecca, I had some incredible food. It was just-- it was-- but it was-- I am a big salsa fan. And I love all the different types of salsas that you find down there, and this one matcha, which I guess in Spanish means man. So it's the man salsa. It's very spicy.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Mmm, nice.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We got to make that. We should do a live show. Larry, you're going to hurt our ratings. This is a family show.

LARRY HYRB: I totally forgot about that, because I was so panicked. I wasn't getting through last night. So thank you for asking. I wasn't planning on sharing it, or I would have had everything here. No, it was great down there. The audience in Mexico. Of course, we had-- that was FanFest. We had one in-- Where's the other one? We had one

REBECCA GORDIUS: Poland

LARRY HYRB: Warsaw. We had one in--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Australia.

LARRY HYRB: Melbourne, which is where I went last year. And we were are in-- not Sao Paulo, where were we?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think actually it might have been Sao Paulo.

LARRY HYRB: It was Sao Paulo. Anyway, it was an amazing, amazing time. So just it's so great to go out into the world outside of the Seattle bubble and represent Xbox. Because you see people that. I run into people that are work at Xbox, at the grocery store, it's not a big deal.

But when you go out there to the rest of the world, These people are excited. And they want to talk-- and I want to talk about Xbox with them, you know, what game do they like seeing? What are they playing? They all want to know about Phil. They all asked about you both.

A lot of folks listen to the podcast, they asked about both of you. Where's Rebecca? Rebecca is not here. Where's Jeff? I have no idea where Jeff is. So and anyway, so it was lovely. So thank you for asking. But there we go.

Why don't we-- why don't we go into what we're playing? We've got a couple of interviews lined up. So we got to get to those. But I figure we can kind of go through what we're playing. Jeff, do you want to kick it off first?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Sure. Yeah. I have it over here on the dashboard behind me. It's been a few weeks, but I spent, I would say most of my time playing through-- actually I don't think the last time we talked, I hadn't played through Planet of Lana. I think we had, I just started. I finished it. Played this game.

It's only five, six hours. It's on Game Pass, one of my favorites of the year, like no, doubt. Go. Phil has been playing it and talking to him about it. And everyone I know has played it has loved it. Please play Planet of Lana Also back here, Street Fighter 6. You will see that right there. I've been playing, just the new mode, the world tour mode.

LARRY HYRB: By the way, I want to call out, I want to call out something real quickly. If you notice how Jeff is able to do this, that's from his years of being a weatherman, being able to point on the screen behind him and do it so accurately.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You see these green cells coming through that, that's a trough or low pressure.

LARRY HYRB: I can't even do that, Jeff. So I have to-- I have to comment you and recommend you, really recognize your talent there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, I have monitors like here and here so I can see what I'm doing. It's an acquired skill. Anyway, so Street Fighter 6, there's that World Tour Mode. Anyway, I would say, the closest thing, I love it, even if you don't think you're a fighting game fan, but maybe you're a Yakuza fan.

Street Fighter 6, The World Tour Mode is effectively like Yakuza. You're running around kind of a fictional New York, but then you're meeting Chun-Li and then you befriend her and you get into fights. You learn some of her moves. And it's like for the first time ever in Street Fighter, you get to make the character you want, not just what they look like, but their moveset.

And then you earn money. You get new equipment. You upgrade. My character looks like-- it's like, I don't care. I'm trying to make them a silly looking as possible, if it-- if it makes the level go up. And I'm totally into it. I have barely even gotten into just like playing PVP, which has all of that stuff. It trains people.

And it also has a new-- I think they call it the modern control scheme, that's very much like Smash Brothers, where instead of hitting a Hadokem move or a Shuriken, which I've been doing since the '90s so I'm used to it. But if you were just getting into fighting, you might be like, why do I need to hit in that direction. It teaches you, you can play the special moves a little more simply and then over time, you can move to the more traditional mode.

So really, I would say this fighting game has it all for a fighting game. It's an awesome entry point. And I love it. The other game playing just a ton is Diablo right now. And I think, every night, I feel like

LARRY HYRB: I will tell you who is not playing it? Who's not playing it?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Who?

LARRY HYRB: Whoopi.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, I read about that. If she looks in the right places on Reddit, she could find a way to play. But anyway, it's Diablo IV just, like congrats again to the folks at Blizzard, to our good friend Rod Ferguson and actually another-- a lot of other friends that we've worked with in the past are working on that game in some capacity. They have killed it from everything, from like the game itself to the marketing to just everywhere.

REBECCA GORDIUS: The cut scenes are amazing. I watched all of them last night.

LARRY HYRB: You did?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HYRB: Oh, OK. All right. Go right on.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Like I've never played Diablo for this story.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Gave my nightmares, just kidding.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: But the story is great. I just love it. The thing, and I think we've talked about this in the past. The thing that's so awesome about it, because we've been very busy the last couple of weeks, I haven't played as much as some of my friends. I'm like level 25, like pretty rookie here.

My best friend is level 73, and we can play together, no problem.

LARRY HYRB: I know who that is.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And it's a successful-- You know exactly who that is. And level 73, maybe with the second character. It doesn't matter. We can jump in together and have challenging encounters, but it's good and great drops for everyone and kudos to them for like really bringing people together. It doesn't matter. I'm playing. He's playing on PC. I'm playing on Xbox, play with folks anywhere. And I it.

LARRY HYRB: Love it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What about you, Rebecca? What are you playing?

LARRY HYRB: Yeah. Tell us, Rebecca. Bring it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, well you already talked about Planet of Lana, but I've been playing. I have to-- I'm not an experienced weather man like you. But you can see a little bit of it. So I've been playing Planet of Lana. I actually have a really short clip that I wanted to share too, just to give you all a taste of it. I didn't realize it was only-- you said you finished it in six hours?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Something like that. Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, dang. Oh, I'm bummed. I'm like an hour and a half, two hours in. So it's really cool. So basically you have this little cat, monkey pet called Mooey who you can assign to do tasks and you kind of work together to defeat these different puzzles and avoid these monsters.

This one took me a really long time to do. And I was kind of like screaming in the living room because every time the Droid monster would-- that was it. But every time the Droid monster would come close, I'd be like, oh, kind of panic. But eventually got to it. It was very satisfying.

But I love the art style, like you can only see a little bit here. But it's everyone keeps referencing Ghibli. It does feel very My Neighbor Totoro like as you're like walking through and you have Mooey following you. I love the watercolor design.

So it's like Jeff said, it's on Game Pass. Go try it. It's really a lovely game.

LARRY HYRB: It's Phil Spencer approved, apparently.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I guess so. Aside from that, Minecraft's Trails & Tales update came out last week. So I didn't realy get a chance to talk about it, because we were offline.

LARRY HYRB: Busy.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But this new update is really cool. It adds a lot of fun things, but in particular, I love-- you've probably seen on Twitter or people posting about it, the I think it's called the cherry grove, but it's like with the cherry blossoms.

So now there's all kinds of beautiful, like you can see the petals falling from the cherry blossoms. It's really cool. There's also archeology, which is pretty neat, I feel like the 10-year-old me who got super into Egyptology after The Mummy came out would be very, very happy if she could see this coming.

And then aside from that, I mean, honestly like I've been-- I feel like I've been watching and reading so much stuff with Starfield in the last three days since the Starfield Direct. I think it was just--

LARRY HYRB: Let's be clear.

REBECCA GORDIUS: It was a really, really good show.

LARRY HYRB: There was a ton to look at. When I saw-- I know-- I don't know if you're done talking about what you're playing, but we can segue kind of into the showcase stuff if you want.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK. Yeah, let's do it. I actually got to-- I got to visit Bethesda Game Studios in May. And I got to meet Todd Howard in person.

LARRY HYRB: Isn't he-- isn't he amazing? He's so great to talk to.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I love meeting people in the industry who you can tell they're really passionate and genuine about their work. And I feel like he definitely seems that way to me. I had also asked him a question about are the worlds, are the planets like procedurally generated? Is this going to be different for each player?

And I feel like he did a really good job answering these questions in the Starfield Direct and kind of setting player expectations. And I actually just watched the interview that he did with Ryan McCaffrey at IGN this morning. And I thought that was really great. Ryan asked some really smart questions. And I think it kind of contextualizes like why a game like this takes so long and so much effort to build. So I'm really looking forward to it, but yeah. What about you guys?

LARRY HYRB: No, I mean, when I saw that, I happened to watch it before it aired, a little bit for it aired so I just-- was like, my jaw was on the ground because I was like, wow, this is a lot of game. Wow, this is a lot of game. Wow, this is a lot of game. And you and you can do that? What? I can board ships. I was like, when he got to the boarding ships, and you can steal ships, I'm like, OK, now I'm in.

I mean, I was always in, but I was like, this is too much.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It looks incredible. Yeah. And look at that. Wow.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's really nice.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Larry, why don't you go full screen. I can let people know what it is we are seeing here.

LARRY HYRB: Well, I don't know. Should I, Jeff? Do they really want to

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: See? I think you should. Oh, the gloves are on. We're about to embark on an epic journey with the Starfield Limited Edition wireless controller, and perhaps something else that you might have there. Cool thing about that controller, it features transparent triggers with visible, bronze rumble motors underneath, full side and back grips designed to resemble spaceship panels, and a sleek constellation inspired color mark around the Xbox button.

With up to 40 hours of battery life, you'll have more than enough fuel for your voyage into the deepest reaches of space. Now, you can experience superb audio and chat quality with the Xbox Wireless Headset Starfield: Limited Edition. Secure your space fit with the constellation red and white striped headband.

Communicate with your queue using the transparent mic boom and feel fully immersed with audio two tones that are custom made for your adventure. So what I'm hearing.

LARRY HYRB: Look the light is on.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, so what I'm hearing is the sounds that you hear on this are different than the black Xbox Wireless Headset. There's been a couple of different ones. They're special Starfield ones. And I haven't gotten to listen to it yet. Here's what I do know.

LARRY HYRB: I'm going to plug it in later and listen to it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, so these are available now. The controller is $79.99, USD retail price the headset is 120 499 these are available now. I'm pretty sure these are going to sell out. A lot of people are getting after them. And I'm definitely getting that controller without question, that D-pad.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Well, I love the transparent, the transparent accents. Like I remember I had a controller for my Nintendo 64 that was transparent. And I thought that it was like the most high tech cool thing. And I love this. I think this looks really nice. And it's cute that the headset has a little transparent piece too to match.

LARRY HYRB: This is one good looking controller. I mean-- that one is going right up on the wall. I've got so many controllers in here. I mean, it's going to go up to next to one of my second favorite controllers, which is the Sea Thieves one.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Same thing. I got the Sea of Thieves one right on my wall here. And right-- and the Forza Horizon 5 and then this is going on right in the middle.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I was going to mention that one. That one's really good.

LARRY HYRB: Oh, yeah. I signed a lot of the Forza Horizon 5 ones in Mexico, a lot of them.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, really?

LARRY HYRB: Yeah. Because it takes place in Mexico. They love that. It was amazing. Yeah, I signed a lot of those. It was such a great.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Larry, can I do a quick?

LARRY HYRB: You can do whatever you want, Jeffrey.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, I know-- Rebecca, please continue.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I was just going to say, I need to find a better way to store all of my controllers, because right now, I need to physically look over my shoulder. But right now, I just have them all shoved into my media console, but I want to get one of those nice ways to display it, because I have some really cool ones from like Minecraft.

I think I have the--

LARRY HYRB: Let me show you what I have.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Was like the Scarlett or Scorpio controller?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You have a lot of wall space there, Rebecca. So I went on to Etsy, and there's people who basically 3D print these controller holders for a pretty low price. And then you can't see. It's not in the shop, but then you just use command hooks, so you don't have to drill into-- like a adhesive, I think I think they're called command hooks, so you don't have to drill into the wall.

LARRY HYRB: This is one way that I display them, if you want to-- here let me see if I can go full screen. Let's take a look. These are-- it's a really great way to do it because you can get them on Amazon. It's a controller tree.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that's cool.

LARRY HYRB: Right, so--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Do they spin?

LARRY HYRB: They can, but it's not the most stable.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, don't drop them on camera. So anyway, that's a really cool--

LARRY HYRB: I mean, you can get like with four or six. There's tons of stuff, Jeff has his. I don't know if you can see it in this shot. He's got his-- they're kind of creeping out up on the wall there. There's tons of ways to display themselves.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: But yeah, he could rotate the camera of course. There you go. Anyway. So yeah, there's just a little thing that I got on Etsy. Anyway, while you're full screen can I show you--

LARRY HYRB: You sure can. Oh, it's ROG time.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So we've talked about this in previous weeks. This is the ASUS ROG ally, which is a handheld PC. I got to test one out, and I loved it so much, I pre-ordered it and it arrived the day after I got back from the showcase. And I just loved this thing.

And so I got it yesterday. I'm still setting it up, but I'll show you in a minute. But it's just like-- it's awesome. It feels great. It is a full Windows PC, Windows 11 PC. It's got all the docks and everything. And the good-- So I can go right in here. I can just sign in using my fingerprint. Boom. It was that fast. Just finger on the top.

And then, I just hit one button, and there's all my games.

LARRY HYRB: There's your games.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That I downloaded last night. So this is all through Game Pass. I have other games that are not, so I'll be able to add Diablo here because it can just run any launcher. But the first thing I did is I went shopping in my closet with things I already own or have access to through Game Pass.

I also, looking in the store through the Xbox app, I had like well over 100 games that were Xbox Play Anywhere, games that out over the course of the last, 10 years or so. for console, that also have an entitlement for PC.

And so like, I was like oh, I have all the Yakuza games on here. I can go back and play Like a Dragon if I want to. And of course I do. But a lot of great RPDs. Yeah, of course. Oh, we'll talk about that. But yeah, and of course, I had to get Tetris effect connected which is also a Play Anywhere game because Tetris and portables, it's a match--

LARRY HYRB: Nothing says best.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --that's been made since game boy.

LARRY HYRB: It's like peanut butter and jelly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I love this thing. Yeah, it's available now, ASUS ROG website or at Best Buy in America and other retailers as well. I posted about this yesterday. And a lot of folks have it. A lot of creators I've talked to are really into it. And again, I hear it plays Diablo really well. So that'll be--

LARRY HYRB: I have mine right over there. We're got to get you one, Rebecca. So let's get back into Showcase, because I want to get us into those interviews, because we got two interviews from the people some, of the games that were in the showcase.

Jeff, can we kind of go through. I mean, we're not going to go through line by line, but I figure you can go through, hit some of the big ones.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, so we showed-- on Sunday we showed 27 different games, 21 of which are coming to Game Pass which is amazing. There's a huge write up. I highly recommend you watch this. But a lot of games that people have wanted updates on, like Avowed, like Fable, like Forza Motorsport, like Hellblade 2 were all given more information on.

Then we revealed new things like South Midnight, Towerborne, 33 Immortals, and of course, we got a huge deep dive into Starfield. If you haven't watched these things, watch them. Like my words will not do them justice. Yep, they're all there. We have a huge, that is a 4,000 word blog post with tons and tons there.

LARRY HYRB: news.xbox.com

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I wanted-- somebody I want to call out, Metaphor: ReFantazio. It's a fantasy RPG from the people that make Persona. The fact that this-- I mean I was very pleased to see both the Yakuza or Like a Dragon Series and Persona represented very heavily in our show. It just could not have made me happier.

LARRY HYRB: Let's be very clear. Jeff had no influence in that, that I know of.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I would like to think deep down that I do, but the reality is I did not. Also, that Star Wars Outlaws trailer that was towards the beginning, and then seeing it the next day at Ubisoft Forward, where you saw the gameplay. Oh my god, does that look incredible.

So this year with Starfield and Forza and so many other games. And then 2024, I mean just shaping up just incredible. So check that out I'm sure you already saw it if you watch the show. I want to make sure that you also noted that on Tuesday we had an Xbox Game Showcase extended where we went deeper into games like Avowed and Towerborne.

There was a great interview with Keanu Reeves, the Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 is looking great and really meaty, getting-- they're redoing the skill tree stuff which very much speaking to me. High on Life has DLC. We saw more about Lies of P. So there was a ton there.

Oh, and we also talked about, as one thing that I neglected to mention from the showcase is 27 games, but then also a piece of hardware, and that is the Xbox Series S in carbon black.

LARRY HYRB: Let me see if I can pull that up. Hold on. Hold on, Jeff, here.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: One of the things people have been asking for is more storage on the Xbox Series S. And well, we're giving it to you. This is Phil introducing it on the-- there she blows. Yes, it came straight from space. And it is back in black.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LARRY HYRB: No, I don't know why we didn't license AC/DC. I don't know why.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Because well, it doesn't really fit the vibe.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That song is overdone.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Looks good. Got it one terabyte of storage. I know people wanted more Storage. You got your more storage. There it is.

LARRY HYRB: Look at that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: A couple of other things just real quick from Extended Hi-Fi. Rush announced an update called Arcade Challenge which has some cool stuff that's coming free for all players who already have access to the game or own the game on July 5. That is really soon.

And a lot of ID@Xbox, in fact, 10 games that were talked about coming to Game Pass. A couple of really quick highlights, Little Kitty Big City, that one looked really cool. Another Crab's Treasure, think of a cartoon, Souls-like which looks really cool.

And a game that I had heard about, but never had a chance to play, it wasn't on Xbox, Neon White is coming. So that's a single player speedrunning FPS, which seems really cool. And then one last one Sea of Stars, which is-- it's a retro inspired, turn based RPG.

This was a game that when it was first announced, was not announced for Xbox. And Xbox fans made it very clear to the devs, like we want this game. And the devs listened, which is awesome. So that one is going to be coming. And it's coming day one to Game Pass, which is just phenomenal. So Sea of Stars. Play it when it comes out.

We also talked more about Exoprimal which is coming from Capcom. That has a beta test. Its second open beta test this weekend. So check that out. That is the dinosaur action hunting game, which looks really intense and a lot going on.

LARRY HYRB: It's category.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And then Capcom also showed a bunch more. In our show, they released or revealed for the first time Path of the Goddess which is coming to Xbox Series X and S and Game Pass and PC as well. They talk more about Exoprimal. A game called Pragmata. They showed more on Dragon's Dogma 2, so they had a bunch going on.

And then Ace Attorney, which I've always just associated with Nintendo, is coming. Three games are coming to Xbox for the first time in 2024. So these are very interesting games, like how do I even explain it? It's like courtroom drama, but in a game form, and it totally works. So I'm excited that folks will get a chance to play that on Xbox. So there was actually probably a ton more, but trying to speedrun this. news.xbox.com. We literally have--

LARRY HYRB: It's all there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Check it out.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, we get there. I'm excited about. We saw Fable at the top of the show, like we talked about earlier. Sea of Thieves and Monkey Island, I'm excited about that. So yeah, I'm the only pirate legend on this show, very excited about that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes, you are.

LARRY HYRB: And I remind you frequently.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes, I know. What about,

REBECCA GORDIUS: Larry, you can try the Flight Sim Dune.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, I was-- when I saw that come in, I was like, I'll try that. I mean. And then of course Flight Simulator 2024 with the fire and the rescue and the executive activity. But to your point, I'm looking forward to Dune and that's coming simultaneously releasing with the film later this year. I didn't even realize there was another film coming out later this year. I got to watch the first one.

LARRY HYRB: It's good. Did you-- wait a minute, the first one or the original from the '80s?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Sure. Yes.

LARRY HYRB: OK, we'll talk about that. I'll let you borrow my--

REBECCA GORDIUS: I guess I'm the I'm the big Dune fan here. You know what game I was very excited to see for the first time was South of Midnight. So I'm actually just like reading about it a little bit more on Xbox Wire. I didn't realize that they had done an interview, because I feel like they showed-- it was at the beginning, says it is a third person action adventure set in a magic realist version of the American South.

It looks really cool. And it's coming out on Game Pass, which will be great. So I need to read this interview after we had--

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, I'm trying to look for it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You'll Find more about work they went into the story and what it means. And so kudos to the team and both the Wire team and the folks at Compulsion for taking more time to let people know what to expect.

REBECCA GORDIUS: What about you, Larry? Anything else you were excited to see from Showcase.

LARRY HYRB: No. I was just-- I just-- I just like to sit back and just soak it all in and just enjoy it because I want to-- I'm going to pull back the curtain a little bit, you know, Rebecca and I and Jeff certainly we work on games. We work at Xbox. We work in a lot of these different projects.

But we don't get to see the final product until you do, because there's a lot going on. So we have an idea what was going to be in the show, but when you see it for the first time, generally we've seen it for the first time. So we get to enjoy in that excitement with you.

And I kind of like that. I like that we get to-- for me, it was Jeff-- you were in LA in the room. I was in Mexico City. You and Pumba were watching it on the couch, Rebecca. But you just kind of enjoy that excitement and that oh, wow, what is that? What's going on here, kind of moment. You know, like when Keanu returned to the screen after a couple of years from.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I love how he sorta scooted off camera after he ha done it.

LARRY HYRB: You just kind of-- I was like, where are you going dude? He's whoo. off he went. So that was a lot of fun. But yeah, I mean I'm just-- I love the collection of games. And Jeff, as you said, 21 games, 21 of those games are coming, to Xbox Game Pass.

Game Pass folks, you're set. That's just some the ones we showed. Certainly much more is coming to Game Pass as well. In fact, we've got two games that I want to talk about. And Rebecca, do you mind bringing us into the interviews because we've got-- I did an interview with two of the games that we saw in Showcase.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, let's do it. So first talking about 33 Immortals. We have the creative director from Thunder Lotus. And then we also have the co-founder and technical director at Micro Bird Games chatting about Dungeons Hinterberg. So let's get into those interviews.

LARRY HYRB: Stephan Logier, Creative Director at Thunder Lotus is here today. Stephan, welcome to the show.

STEPHAN LOGIER: Welcome. Yeah, thank you, Larry.

LARRY HYRB: It's great to have you here. First of all, people may not know Thunder Lotus, but they know what they saw on Showcase earlier this week, 33 Immortals which is the game that you guys are working on that you've announced. Tell us a little bit about 33 Immortals.

STEPHAN LOGIER: Just 33 Immortals is a curb action Roguelike for 33 players. You play as a damned soul who rebels against god's final judgment. You actually are dead. And your fate is to be punished for the eternity. But that's not cool at all, to live in inferno forever, you know. So you join the rebellion against this fate and with other fellow rebel souls, you fight your way through the beyond, through inferno, purgatorio and paradiso in a desperate attempt to find a way to escape this fate.

LARRY HYRB: Now, you talked. In the 33 Immortals, you face the wrath of god in a fight for your eternal life. Tell us about what inspired the idea for this game.

STEPHAN LOGIER: So it came from-- so at Thunder Lotus, we like to be inspired by mythological world. And this time around it was "The Divine Comedy," the classic Italian poem written in the 14th century by Dante Alighieri that inspired us.

And in this poem, Dante tells the story of himself going through inferno purgatorio and paradiso, and discovering everything that happened in this world, how sinners are punished in inferno, how they repent in purgatorio, and how they discover a new way of being, of thinking in paradisio.

And finally, Dante meet, face God and meet God. So and this was the key starting inspiration. And then from there, we wanted to make the first multiplayer game of the studio too. And so we learned a lot about the source material so "The Divine Comedy," and also-- and we brainstormed a lot, OK, what kind of multiplayer game we would like to make.

And finally we arrive on this idea of, OK, but what if-- what if we play as damned soul, and we are actually going through inferno, purgatorio, and paradisio but to escape our fate. And this came from the fact that in a multiplayer game, the more important story for us is the story that happened between players, helping each other work, playing together.

And the story that could happen in the world of the game, but also the stories that happen between friends when we play the game together, talking about what happened, joking about what happened yesterday when we were working together. And so we created this universe to let players live a story together, but not really tell a precise story, but let them join the rebellion and leave the story for the game with other players.

LARRY HYRB: Stephan, so we talked about-- you had mentioned a little bit earlier, it's got-- you can play it with 33 players. This is PVE, not PVP correct?

STEPHAN LOGIER: Yeah. Correct. We focus on cooperation. So it's something that we were not seeing so much in gaming like cooperation at this scale, having 33 players cooperating together. And actually the inspiration comes from MMO like [INAUDIBLE] Final Fantasy XVI that do read you know this big moment, big content where a lot of players join together and fight giant monster and this kind of thing.

And we love this kind of experience, this kind of social and multiplayer experience. But I thought it was a bit sad that you had to have a big organization and invest a lot of time into making that happen. I want to bring this kind of experience, this head-like experience in a pickup and play, pickup in an instant fashion.

Is it possible to make this experience into a really easy and accessible experience without all the preparation? So you can just pick up and play until [INAUDIBLE]. So how do we make that? That was a big question during our conception.

LARRY HYRB: Of course, we mentioned-- We saw during the Showcase that this is going to be coming to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. And you're going to have early access, we'll talk about that towards the end. But what was it like to see 33 Immortals to be part of the showcase this past weekend? You know, this grand show with lots of titles, including your own. That's got to feel really good.

STEPHAN LOGIER: It's height, it was amazing, like it was a dream come true for the team, for me. It was so satisfying to be part of the community. I was in the room with everyone before the fans. And there was so much energy.

And so amazing content, like it was really, really something, a memory, one of the best moment of my life, I would say like having a game. Like we worked like so hard like for the last few years to make this game, to make this happen. This moment was exceptional.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, you also had an event where you had some of the press have hands on for the first time, which I guess went well, is very good as well. That must have been fun to really take the covers off of it that way.

STEPHAN LOGIER: Oh, all the afternoon. So we played a version of the game with the press. And we had a lot of fun. It was really interesting to start playing in curb, like directly with everyone. And we died a lot. So like everyone was dying a lot and we saved each other.

And so we everyone started to use the couple were so really like the unique power each weapon has that you need other players to take position on a sigil you put in the ground. And so we were like developing tactics to get rid of those dangerous elite monster.

It's really fast, like it was really fun. I was happy that it was in a multiplayer game like 33 Immortal. The game really exist when players play together. It's a dynamic, the game dynamic happened at this moment. When you play 33 Immortal alone, you are alone. The better when you play together. That's where the fun happened.

And we were like playing and talking and having fun together. And it was a really, really a good moment. And I was really happy to share this to with journalist and enjoy the game together.

LARRY HYRB: 33 Immortals is a departure from some of your other titles. Can you talk us about tell us about some of the differences, and maybe some of the-- excuse me, some similarities that people might have picked up on between 33 Immortals and maybe some of your previous games in your portfolio.

STEPHAN LOGIER: Yeah, so in terms of similarities, we are drawn, we are classically animated like our characters are drawn by artists and animators. And it's really something we really love, like these 2D style technologies and something that we built upon. And we push our art style further each time. So that's really simulated.

Something else, so if you look at previous game of Thunder Lotus, we made Jotun, which is a game that happened in a Viking mythology and a warrior fight giant monster. And also Sundered where the protagonist fights a lot of monster.

So this first [INAUDIBLE] we made games but with combat gameplay, with [INAUDIBLE] And so we draw a lot of inspiration from them too far, 33 Immortals where you are going to fight a lot of hostile, also having giant and massive [INAUDIBLE] with 33 player.

And so those are the similarities. And in terms of difference, it really is a multiple-- the multiplayer aspect of it that is a huge learning for the studio. This is a first online multiplayer game that the studio is doing. And so we have built a team specifically to make this game with a lot of developers that have experience in multiplayer, in developing and operating multiplayer games, because those, we need a certain infrastructure, online infrastructure to support this kind of game.

We have an online engine. We have a lot of process and way of working and way of actually designing the game that is completely different from developing and working on a solo game. One example being, for instance like two years ago, we started to do a prototype of the game with a lot of player, some monster world.

And right away, we played it. And from that day, we didn't stop to play the game and make it evolve. Like it's really like every week, we play the game as a team. But that first, we were not enough. We were not 33. But the studio grows, and that moment, at some point we reach this size 33 player. And we were able to-- actually, in the studio, I have PlayStation and play the game and talk about it and develop it as we experience it.

LARRY HYRB: You know, Stephan, you talked about the fact that this is a new muscle for your studio, this multiplayer component, you talked quite a bit about that. But that means you talked also-- we talked about at the beginning of the interview. You're going there early access. Tell us about early access and what that means and of course it's going to be coming to Game Pass on console and PC. Tell us about early access.

STEPHAN LOGIER: So we are really happy with the announce of the game because right now we can start to talk about it. And the next step for us is to let players play it and really see how it goes and talk with our community and develop the game with them. So this is a goal of early access.

So next year, we are going to release the game on Xbox Series X and S and PC in early access, so on Game Pass, Game Preview. And the goal of it is to progressively, until the early access, and after during the early access, to build a game at content, at features, and see what works, what doesn't work, what the community thinks about it, what is it like and doesn't like, and really engage in a discussion to make the best game possible.

We have a lot of ideas, but we really want to see how those work with players playing the game and what really work and what really doesn't work and where we should add next. So yeah, that's really the goal. It's make the best game as we can with the community of 33 Immortals.

LARRY HYRB: Fantastic. 33 Immortals, we saw it on the Xbox Showcase earlier this week. Congratulations on the announce. You've got a lot of work to do now with Game Preview. Coming to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, day one. But first you've got to get the got to get that game preview. So Stephan Logier, Creative Director at Thunder Lotus, thank you for joining us today.

STEPHAN LOGIER: Yeah, Thanks for having me Larry. Thank you.

LARRY HYRB: On Sunday, we saw the reveal of Dungeons of Hinterberg. And joining us today are Regina Reisinger and Philip Siegfried. Did I get those? I totally butchered that, didn't I, guys?

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: It's Reisinger and Siegfried, but that's totally fine.

LARRY HYRB: OK, well first of all, welcome to the Xbox Podcast. Really excited to talk to you about the Dungeons of, Hinterberg which we saw in the Xbox Podcast, or excuse me, the Xbox Showcase earlier this week. And for those folks that don't remember what that game was. Some of the gameplay. Can one of you explain to us what the game is about?

REGINA REISINGER: Yes. I take this. So Dungeons of Hinterberg is an action RPG with social simulation elements. And it set in this small Austrian town by the name of Hinterberg. And Hinterberg used to be a minor skiing and hiking resort until a few years ago, magic and magical tensions appeared all around it.

And you play as Louisa, the main character who comes to Hinterberg as one of the many visitors that come and try to complete all those tensions. So it's kind of a mix of doing puzzling and in combat in the dungeons and exploration and then going to the village of Hinterberg and forging friendships there with colorful locals and adventurers from all over the world and building up your skills that way.

LARRY HYRB: Now we talked about-- before we started recording, we talked about you're both-- you're in Austria right now. So what drew you to create a game based on where you live? I mean, I have never had the chance to go to Austria. My understanding it is beautiful. But what makes this game Austrian?

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: What motivated us to create it I suppose is that you have to write about what you know. So I think there's a lot of very nice destinations here like the Alps are beautiful. One thing we looked at was that in the past years, a lot of really great indie games came out that had strong narrative and that really made you feel like you were living in a place for a while, games like Night in the Woods for example.

But most of these are about American destinations. And we felt something with a European setting could be really interesting to a lot of people. That was one motivating factor. Another one was that--

LARRY HYRB: Go ahead.

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: Pardon me.

LARRY HYRB: No. Go ahead, please.

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: Another one was that when we started production it was just at the beginning of 2020, the pandemic started there. Were a ton of lockdowns and we really needed a vacation so we thought one up in our heads.

LARRY HYRB: Well, now we're seeing some of the gameplay here. And you talked about talked a little bit about the gameplay, its puzzles, it's dungeoning. Regina, tell us around a little bit about the art, because the art is also beautiful. And as the art director, I mean, that's just-- it's a stunning environment that you all have created.

REGINA REISINGER: Thanks, yeah it's like we both generally really enjoy stylized art. It's kind of more interesting to us. And of course, it's always more suited to do it with a small team then trying to do something hyper realistic. And we both looked a lot about let's say graphic novels, comics, but also a lot of illustrators or the movies, just things outside of games that have a very stylized and very bold visuals.

And we were a lot inspired by that, and we're going for these bold colors for a simplified style, but one that's very expressive at the same time. And it's not just my art direction. We also build, Philip, mainly when we started the game, started to build a custom render pipeline.

So we're using Unity, but we do a lot of the rendering just custom made so we can achieve these broad outlines, the colors, the shadows. We have kind of access to all of that would not normally be influential in Unity. So yeah it was very important and interesting to us to do.

LARRY HYRB: I also want to point out that the Dungeons of Hinterberg is coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024 next year, sometime. You don't have a release date yet you're still working on it of course. But tell us about what it was like to unveil Dungeons of Hinterberg on the Xbox Showcase on Sunday last week.

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: It was absolutely amazing. We had to stay quiet-- or we stayed quiet about the game for a year and a half. When we first started prototyping, we did some initial screenshots and put them on Twitter and had quite a good resonance. But then we stayed quiet for so long.

And really it's been nagging at us that we can't talk about the game. And having this be shown for the first time at such an amazingly huge event, just being in that cinema in LA, it was-- it was one of the greatest moments we've had in years.

REGINA REISINGER: Yeah, we were really excited. Our hands were shaking a little bit in there, waiting--

LARRY HYRB: Because you have to remember, you were in LA with us. I was in Mexico City with 300 fans. We had people around the world at different FanFest event. And I tell you, when I was in the room when this game came on and people were like, there was a murmuring in the crowd, like what is this? We haven't seen this before.

So there's-- I'm sure you saw the same thing in LA and it happened in other places. So there's genuine excitement about this game in terms of what is it? And it does the right amount of piqued my interest to tell me more about it. What's your favorite thing about the project?

REGINA REISINGER: There's so much about it. We laugh, but maybe a bit like Philip hinted at before for us, it kind of all started with creating a place, just this modern day small town where then something really exceptional happens, like what if magic came into our world now?

You could just buy a ticket and go there basically and see that and then how do people react to that for example, the people living in this village of Hinterberg, they kind of make a tourism industry out of it and invite people and kind of make a spot out of it.

And to us, creating this place both like visually as well as gameplay wise and then the thought of inviting players to come there and find their own way through it and choose which dungeons to do in which order and which NPCs and characters to hang out with and really have their own vacation, that's just something that we really enjoy.

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: I agree with that. There's a sense of realism in our approach. And I like that a lot about the game as well. Like if magic really existed, what sort of people would that draw to the village, tons of adventurers, but also tons of really just weird folk.

And I think what we really like about this project is that we're building out from this idea sort of. It's a fantastical game, but it's also, in a way, a realistic game despite the visuals. And I think that results in a tone of voice that can, at times, be very original and that's what we're aiming for.

LARRY HYRB: Oh, lovely. Well, I know. Like I say, folks are really excited about getting their hands in it. What are you most excited for players to experience with Dungeons of Hinterberg?

REGINA REISINGER: It's hard to say. I think I'm most curious about how people-- which kind of way people pick through the game, like we do a lot in a very nonlinear way that there's this these areas around Hinterberg that are inspired by real Austrian biomes and that all look very different.

And then there's the dungeons hidden in doors, and then you can go to this village and socialize down to all kinds of stuff. And I really am so looking forward to seeing what path people take through it, what they're more interested in or less interested in and how they experience, how the different experience will kind of compare that's-- I can't wait to give it into people's hands and see that.

So again, the basic loop you go through in the game is something like you wake up every morning and you go into an overworld. There's several different ones available. You look for a dungeon. You go into the dungeon. Hopefully, you will complete the dungeon. And then you get back to the village of Hinterberg, and that's where the socializing part takes place.

So you hang out with different NPCs. You get to choose who you want to spend the evening with and then get different relationship level-ups which are, in turn, your skill tree. And all of this is very, very non-linear in the sense that you get to choose who you hang out with. You get to choose the order of the dungeons.

And I think people are going to take paths through this game that we ourselves can't really anticipate. And that's going to be super fun to watch.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, I mean, like I say. We're looking at the game. There's so much interesting combat and gameplay and puzzling. We're seeing some of the puzzling here, if you're watching the video on here. So it's a game that kind of has a lot of things.

And I know we don't have a release date yet. You just said 2024 which is perfectly fine, coming to Xbox, Game Pass. So if you'd like, I'd love to have you back on the show when you launch, whenever that is. But I want to also--

I want to congratulate you on your unveil and being part of the Xbox Showcase. We really, really love having you as part of Xbox. Well, thank you. Thank you for the game and thank you for your time. And I'll let you get back to work because [CLAPPING] you got to ship a game next year.

REGINA REISINGER: Thanks so much.

PHILLIP SIEGFIED: Thank you so much.

REGINA REISINGER: We love being here and we're looking forward to more.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Thanks so much for the devs for sharing with us, really like their first look at these new games. And I will say that 33 Immortals, we actually had playable for a subset of creators in media that had showed up in LA at our event and they were playing with the devs. And there was a lot of hollering and just like teamwork and ah's and just like great emotions happening here.

And I think bringing that many players to I guess you would call it a Hades-like it's just kind of going to be really fun. And it was really fun seeing the reactions of people, because they've played a top down. Well, they've played Hades. And that's a solo game.

And then it was like, oh co-op, and it was like oh, 4 player. Oh, 6 people, 33 people. There was a really good-- There was a really good reaction from some folks, Ray Narvaez, specifically, on TikTok had hilarious ones. So cannot wait to play more of that. And of course, if you're a Game Pass member, you'll be playing it.

LARRY HYRB: Not only that, but you'll be part of the preview. So thank you for that. As you said, thanks for all the gifts there. So it was a lot of fun to them. We'll have more folks on over the coming weeks to talk about the games that you saw. Yes, I'm trying to get Todd Howard on, but I want to get him on at the right moment. So I'm going to work with those Todd's--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Can you believe we're going to be playing that game in less than three months? It's just like, I'm so excited just thinking about it.

LARRY HYRB: Here's my trouble. Here's my problem with that, Jeff. I can't wait to play the game. But if I play the game, that means summer's over.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'm all right. Because one that game comes out, I ain't leaving the house. By the way, let's not talk about summer. It's 59 degrees here right now. What summer?

LARRY HYRB: Was 85 two days ago, so what's going on? I don't know what's going up in Seattle? But it's-- yeah, I'm excited about-- I'm excited about all the games we see. But yeah, we playing that. We're playing Forza. Got to get some Forza action here.

We talked about-- we saw the cover car. We don't need to go through it again. news.xbox.com. That's all you really need to know.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Check out, iJustine.

LARRY HYRB: How is she? I've not chatted with her in forever?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: She's great. She was she was up here where we had both of the cover cars, the Corvette and the Cadillac. And she got she was climbing in and it has a whole detailed a history of Forza and the history of Forza's cover cars and climbing into them.

And so if you check out her TikTok or her YouTube page, youtube.com/iJustine or TikTok.com@iJustine. Cool stuff there. Give her like.

LARRY HYRB: And I also-- I got asked this a lot in Mexico. And I get frequently-- I'm asked on Twitter. No. I don't have TikTok.

[LAUGHTER]

REBECCA GORDIUS: Why not?

LARRY HYRB: There's too many social media outlets. And that one is, I'm not doing any strange dances. I'm not issuing any challenges. Have fun, gang.

REBECCA GORDIUS: It is a more time-intensive platform than something like Instagram to maintain. But there's a lot of--

LARRY HYRB: I'm not saying, there's great content out there. But it's-- I just, it's not--

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's not for you.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, it's not for me. You kind of--

[OVERLAPPING SPEECH]

REBECCA GORDIUS: The Xbox Social Team has a really good TikTok.

LARRY HYRB: Yeah, they've got-- I mean, they've got a whole team that does it. It's just me. I got up. That's why I'm sitting here switching the switches and doing everything like this for the podcast. I don't have a team, Jeff. I don't. It doesn't need to be complicated.

Anyway. But you can find me on Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky. You know what I was experimenting with while I was in Mexico in my downtime, which was very little, the metaverse I was really experimenting with a lot of elements of the fediverse really interesting stuff going on?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: The what?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Fediverse.

LARRY HYRB: The fediverse. It's this concept where different services are federated. So there's a photo sharing site, it would be like Flickr was. It's called Pixma. I can't remember what it's called, That if you're on Mastodon, you can add it to your feed and make comments from your Mastodon account that show up over there and vise versa.

So there's a Reddit knockoff and things like that. So there's all these-- we're seeing the decentralization a lot of the social media. So I'm doing a lot of experimenting in the fediverse right now.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Always ahead of the game, Larry.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Like a cheese thing, right?

LARRY HYRB: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: It all sounds like Wolf from the office, if you remember that. It's like consolidated all the social media accounts and gives you one notification for all of them. Anyway, sorry.

LARRY HYRB: But they're not-- what's interesting is it's not one of them. It's all of them. They're just kind of collected all together. And again, that's why they call the fedirate, because they're fedirated.

So in computers, we call things fedirated that are collected. And so it's the fediverse.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Fediverse, well, maybe, you're--

LARRY HYRB: Look for me on the fediverse if you want.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, we'll be looking back at this podcast. In 10 years and going Larry knew.

LARRY HYRB: I'm just telling you, just tell you. Everyone's out there doing dances and flipping things around and Mentos and Coke and I'm looking at the fediverse.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Mentos and Coke. That is 20 OK.

[LAUGHTER]

LARRY HYRB: All right, guys. All right. Well we'll see you guys next week. Thank you for downloading the show. Make sure you drop a comment if you're watching on YouTube or even listening on YouTube. Find us on Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Podcasts and where all your final podcasts are distributed, we'll be there. So if I missed one, hit me up on Twitter and let me know. Anything you guys want to say before we go? Nope. OK.