578: The next Xbox One System update. And Leeroy Jenkins

Speaker 1: (Music)

Larry: Hi, It's Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Welcome to show number 578. Thank you for downloading the show. We're hopefully are going to ... You're going to learn something in this show and have some ... Hi, Jeff.

Jeff: Hi.

Larry: Uh.

Jeff: Do I have to learn something, too?

Larry: You will learn. I promise you will.

Jeff: Oh.

Larry: I promise you will.

Jeff: Uh.

Larry: Uh, unfortunately uh, Laura's actually out, so she's not joining us today, but don't worry about it, because we have replaced her with not one, but 2 people.

Jeff: The chairs are warm.

Larry: Joining us uh is Mike Ybarra, a long-time uh listener and fan of Podcast, and guest.

Mike: I learn something every day on this podcast.

Larry: And then ...

Mike: Hello everybody.

Larry: And then nice to see you by the way. And then joining you is a, is a new, new member of the, of, of, of the ... Well not really the group or the staff, but Scott Henson.

Jeff: Somewhat new.

Larry: Somewhat new.

Jeff: Been here since day one before Xbox Live has ever been even thought about, and now he's joined us back to lead our Xbox team.

Larry: Hello Scott.

Scott: Hello. Good to be here.

Larry: Now, I want to point something out. For those long time listeners of this show and I'm talking since 2005, I had Scott back then.

Jeff: Yes you did.

Larry: Yeah.

Jeff: You did. That's correct. (Chuckles)

Mike: We got to go bring that role clip back to back.

Larry: This is a ... This is so, so, so ...

Jeff: [Crosstalk 00:01:22] roll that tape.

Larry: Nice to have you back Scott, but Scott now is, is working with you Mike on, on the program management side, and the platform side, right?

Mike: Yeah, we're super happy to have Scott back leading the Experiences Team. So, everything you see, how you interface with it, how it works.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Scott's the person driving all of that.

Larry: Yeah, that's ... So, so, you get ... You’ve got your hands full Mr. Scott.

Scott: I do have my hands full, but hey, there's no better job than uh serving the community of Xbox Live.

Larry: But we usually start out as ... As you guys know because I know you listen to the show, with what we're playing um, so uh Scott is a guest, I'll ... Is one of the newest guest, I will let you start. What are you playing? (Chuckles)

Scott: Well, you know there's a lot of clubs in LFG going on in my world.

Larry: Right.

Scott: So 4 games ...

Larry: Right.

Scott: Uh going on right now. A lot of Rocket League, a lot of De- Destiny and uh um, Halo.

Larry: Are you playing Destiny with Mike? Are you radiantly [crosstalk 00:02:08]?

Scott: No, Mike's in a slightly different category from me.

Mike: Oh, come on, come on!

Larry: Yeah. Yes, that's, that's true. That's, that's true.

Mike: (Chuckles)

Larry Okay, well are you playing ... I mean are you playing like, Battlefield, Deus EX?

Scott: Uh, I haven't, I haven't, got Deus EX queued up. It's, uh ... It's in the queue for the weekend.

Larry: We'll talk about that.

Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Scott: And Battlefield as well will be tonight.

Larry: Okay. Good, good, good. Well that's good to know, the Battlefield Beta is going out where you know just as we released this show it's uh ... The, the latest, uh, preview has gone out, and we're going to talk about that in just a, just a moment right? Right Scott? Mike that’s why ...

Mike: Yep, that's right.

Larry: Whenever we get one we’re going to use, but we're just going to kind of tick through what we're playing and uh now we'll get into the kind of the, the funner stuff. Mike what are you playing? I see you playing Deus. You were away last week.

Mike: I was. I was on vacation last weekend. You know, I had my withdrawals and got through that [Crosstalk 00:02:48]

Larry: Do you, do you take a console with you? Do you take your PC with you?

Mike: I do on business trips. On family vacations ...

Larry: Yes.

Mike: I am not allowed to do that. (Laughs)

Larry: Yeah, I understand.

Jeff: As, as ... You need to renegotiate. That’s what I did last [Crosstalk 00:03:00]

Mike: To be really clear. (Laughter)

Larry: Um, but you, you, you know, you, you're a long time PC gamer.

Mike: I am, yes.

Larry: Like you’ve been PC gaming a really long time.

Mike: Yeah I ...

Larry: Like I've heard stories of you playing Warcraft. Is that true?

Mike: Oh yeah. I mean I (laughter) started on DOOM …

Larry: Right.

Mike: In College.

Larry: Now, now have you ... Do you have any particular memory moments from, from Warcraft that you want to share?

Mike: Uh, well no. (Laughter). Not really. (Laughter)

Larry: You're being set up here.

Mike: (Laughs) I can tell. I'm like, let’s … I'm trying to think back, what did I do that Larry found somewhere? (Chuckles)

Larry: Were you in any particular famous party that that happened to go through the internet at all?

Mike: For World of Warcraft?

Larry: Yes.

Mike: Oh, I thought you meant Warcraft, the team Warcraft because it’s something very different than I thought.

Larry: I'm sorry, World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft.

Mike: Okay, yes. Uh, yes. Uh...

Larry: I don't think you know this Jeff.

Mike: Several, there's a couple of, (laughter) uh, great friends that I have uh, in Pal- ...

Larry: Yes.

Mike: Uh, pal- ... A group called Pals for Life. And of course Leeroy Jenkins and all of that is ... Comes from the Pals for Life people.

Larry: He was in the Leeroy Jenkins party? That's the headline here. (Laughter)

Mike: Anyway, I don’t think that a lot of people know that.

Larry: That's the headline here, is he was in the Leeroy Jenkins party.

Jeff: That's amazing.

Larry: The better headline would be is if was Leeroy Jenkins. (Laughter)

Mike: Oh no, Oh, no. Oh no. (Laughter) That's a great, group of folks so that you know like the other [Crosstalk 00:04:13]

Larry: Can you? So if you watch that video and go "That's was ... That's me. That's me."

Mike: There's several people actually that worked at Microsoft as well. They're no longer here, they're somewhere at Blizzard and other places but uh it was actually more Microsoft people than than uh we thought that played with our group.

Larry: Can you for ... For those people ... For ... For maybe those members of the audience that don't remember that, can you just give a, a brief recap of what that means and what the Leeroy Jenkins party was? (Chuckles)

Mike: Well, it's funny because you know I talked to Chris and Bill and folks that sort of uh were there and drove a lot of that.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And it was one night in uh Blackrock Mountain. Which at the time at World of Warcraft launch was you know pre- ... Pretty big, big area.

Larry: Sure.

Mike: And we were there waiting, uh for someone to come back you know when you're in a 40 man raid.

Larry: Yeah. (Laughs)

Mike: Big groups, people leave and they're like, "I'll be back in one minute."

Larry: Right.

Mike: 30 minutes goes by.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And you're still sitting there [Crosstalk 00:04:57]

Larry: The dog had to go out. They had to do something.

Mike: Yeah.

Larry: Who knows?

Mike: And so, uh we were sitting there waiting and you know, Leeroy gets a little restless. (Laughter) And so he just decides to hop up and run into the cave and draw everything and everyone starts freaking out, and it was kind of a joke that turned into a life of its own, no doubt about it, my whole family knows about now.

Larry: Where, where are you, here?

Mike: It's in uh, Jeopardy too.

Larry: Is it?

Mike: It was funny. (Laughter) They called it World Series of Jeopardy was on.

Larry: Really?

Mike: And they asked the question, I, I might get this wrong.

Larry: Right.

Mike: Uh we can link it to ...

Larry: Fact check it, yeah.

Mike: The podcast, but, the question was something like, “Uh in this ... In the World of Azeroth, uh famous people like Leeroy Jenkins exist.” Or something like that.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And the answer was, "What is World of Warcraft?"

Larry: Right. (Laughs)

Mike: And no one got the answer, from the college world series. Like, when I was in college, all I did is play DOOM-

Larry: Right.

Mike: Quake.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And other games. That was like, my classes.

Larry: So, but anyway you know what's interesting is because of course the World of Warcraft movie, uh premiered earlier this year, and apparently uh, Jamie Lee Curtis is a huge World of Warcraft fan. I don't know if you know this. And she was on the red carpet, as the celebrities do, and she was talk- ... She screamed out like Leeroy Jenkins. (Laughter)

Mike: She was cross-played too there I think.

Larry: Exactly, she’s cross playing as well.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, I saw that. Yeah, that was cool.

Larry: So anyway I did ... I never knew that, and I found that out about you, and I was like I, I ... I've been dying to ask you to get your back on the show.

Mike: There was uh, a lot, a period of life where I think all of us, lived in MMOs.

Larry: Right.

Mike: From Asheron's call to other things.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And there are horror stories in each one.

Larry: (Chuckles)

Scott: I, I found that Jeopardy clip. It was the thousand dollar question. (Laughter) How ... That's inexcusable. (Laughter)

Larry: How do you not get it?

Scott: Going into the commercial break, on a real downer too.

Mike: Right, as we watched that we're all like, "How do you ... I don't understand." It’s called the World Series.

Scott: Everybody ...

Larry: Are you going to put that in the show notes?

Mike: Oh yeah. (Chuckling).

Larry: Lots of guys. Anyway, so it's, it's, it's great to ... Have you ... (Chuckles) What do you ... What are you playing? (Laughs)

Mike: Yeah. (Laughter)

Larry: Sorry.

Mike: Uh, you know, we acquired Beam.

Larry: Yes.

Mike: And so the Beam team's here. Great bunch of people that we're really happy to have. And so I'm doing a lot of Beam streaming as I kind of dive into that too.

Larry: Yeah, I've done that as well.

Mike: And one of the games that I'm playing, you know it's not a super popular game but, Prominence Poker.

Larry: Okay.

Mike: Which is a free game on Xbox Live.

Larry: Okay.

Mike: That anybody can go download.

Larry: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Mike: And you get in to do tournaments and all kinds of things in Poker, and so we're streaming almost every night a Poker game with you know some of the friends that I play with, and we get on Beam and Twitter and say "Anybody want to join a 6 man tournament?"

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Uh.

Larry: What's the buy-in?

Mike: We, we can choose.

Larry: Okay. (Chuckles)

Mike: It's you know $5,000, $10,000, $50,000.

Larry: Right.

Mike: It goes all the way up, but it's pretty fun. Pretty fun game.

Larry: All right, fake money. (Laughs)

Mike: Of course I'm playing Destiny.

Larry: Right.

Mike: Everybody knows, I, I continue to play Destiny. People are giving me you know, crap for not playing as much as I should be playing, but I am playing Destiny. Uh, and I'm going to look forward to Madden 17 this weekend, which I haven't had the chance to dive into, but I really want to.

Larry: Oh, I've been playing that a little bit. Have you played that Scott? [Crosstalk 00:07:33]

Scott: Not yet.

Mike: That’s great.

Jeff: All it is, is you just heaving the ball up to Gronk.

Larry: Yeah, Jeff, Jeff.

Jeff: It's all you do.

Larry: So Jeff and I, Jeff and I usually ...

Scott: Oh patriots, Okay. I think we should have a Major Nelson quick Madden 17, streamed on Beam. Patriots, Seahawks game this weekend.

Jeff: Sure, absolutely, I’d love to do it.

Larry: Okay.

Mike: Perfect.

Jeff: I’ll tell you what he's going to do. He like Babe Ruth he will call his shot over the middle of a Gronk. (Laughter)

Mike: I hope ... I hope he does that.

Larry: Jeff, Jeff and I, we played last year right? That's exactly what it was. It was a Bam, Bam!

Jeff: Yeah, and I, I knew it was coming and (laughter) the pass interference or were touchdown every time.

Mike: You know those Patriots. They probably paid off the Madden dev team to make them the best team.

Larry: Oh, okay well, that's now ... Okay, now we're getting into a little [Crosstalk 00:08:08]

Mike: That's actually going to cause a problem, big issue on this podcast. (Laughs)

Larry: Mike that’s Xbox quick on Twitter. (Laughter) So... yeah. Anyways, so you've been busy playing, we've all been doing that.

Scott: Yeah, I haven't played Deus EX, how is it?

Larry: Uh, it's, it's a lot of fun. I mean it’s ... Jeff, Jeff, you've been playing ... I think you and I are roughly around the same area.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Larry: It's, it's, it's … although it's weird with Deus EX. I spend a lot of time reading peoples emails. It's very Deus EX-y. (Laughs)

Scott: It's almost uh ... Yes, exactly. (Laughter)

Jeff: Yeah.

Scott: A spy, a snoop simulator. It's uh, it’s very dense compared to the first one where there wasn't a lot to do.

Larry: Yeah, there's some cool new augs, so it's, it's a lot of fun.

Mike: Is it slower?

Larry: Uh.

Mike: The Deus Ex, the ones I’ve played have been, somewhat fast. You can go in and rip it up, or you can go a little [Crosstalk 00:08:48]

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Larry: Same thing, same thing.

Mike: Okay.

Larry: You still have, you still have, you still have both choices and you can, you can, you can outfit your augs based on what your style is.

Scott: And you can get in over your head way quicker than in Human Revolution.

Mike: Yeah.

Scott: Like I immediately splintered off into side stories because I want to fill up that skill tree. It's the best skill tree in gaming. Like, you look at every single ... I'm like, "I need all of these augs." And uh ... And very quickly I'm like, “I'm in like one against 10 here, with no powers.” Like, “How did this happen?

Larry: Right.

Scott: And um, if you don't just follow along the main path which I didn't do, and which uh, you know I don't think you did either, then you can uh ... Then you can get into some severe trouble so it was great. Uh, there, my no kill play through ended very quickly.

Mike: No! Yeah?

Larry: So, anyway, checking that out. That's kind of what I'm playing. I'm playing that and Overwatch and madden a little.

Scott: And Battlefield?

Larry: And Battle field uh yeah. Jeff and I played Battlefield which, which, you need to check out both of you guys Scott and ...

Mike: Yeah, yeah.

Larry: It's a, it's ... You know it's, it's ... You know, standard battlefield, massive game play, and there's craziness and Jeff and I are up in a plane, and a biplane what was kind of ...

Jeff: A lot, a lot of like uh collaboration. Like we used to just get into the chopper, and you would fly in circles and we would just you know, unload [Crosstalk 00:09:52]

Larry: I don't know if you know this but I'm actually a skilled Battlefield chop ... Chopper, chopper pilot.

Mike: Oh I heard, I've heard.

Larry: So, it's a little different because there are no choppers in World War I. We’re in a biplane which had a little bit ...

Jeff: Yeah, it was a lot of like, "Tilt down! Tilt down! No, the other down. I need to go down." (Laughter)

Larry: "No, left, the other left." Yes.

Mike: I’ve got to try it, I just installed it on everything. I loaded it up actually before coming to the podcast. I, I’ve really ... I've seen a lot of videos on Xbox Live, and the activity feeds.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: They’re like really good.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: You know what I'm really trying to do? I'm trying to get Allen Hartman, who leads turn 10, to give me a, a green disk of ...

Jeff: Of Forza Horizon.

Mike: Horizon.

Larry: Oh that game looks amazing.

Mike: Yeah, I got an HDR TV. I cannot wait to try that.

Larry: I know. Now you saw that we had ... Last week I was down there, we announced the Warthog.

Mike: I did, yeah.

Larry: Is coming.

Mike: Looks awesome.

Larry: I got a chance to ride around. The funny thing about that is, so we did a video ... I'm going to share this with ... With you the listeners and everyone here in the studio. We did, we did the uh ... It was, it was um ... It was uh, Dan Greenawalt and I were standing there. And he was going to do the reveal of hey, what's it? And you'll see us. If you watch the video, you'll see us turn to the left and the warthog drives up. What's funny is, the warthog was queued up about 50 feet away.

So we do the take, the very first take I said, "Oh, so Dan, what's the surprise?" And he says, "Well, it's right over there." And I turn, and we ... It's not included in the final, but you ... In the, in the, in the raw footage you hear, (noises). It wouldn't start. [Crosstalk 00:11:12] (Laughter). So I'm trying to get that outtake to share it. Obviously the edit is fine, but I'm like "What is it?" And I turn over and you can hear it just in the distance, because it's way off mic.

It's actually a pretty funny moment so ... But the warthog ... The real warthog in the game will have no problems like that I guarantee, so ... But uh it looks great.

Mike: Yeah, what are you playing Jeff?

Jeff: Uh.

Larry: Yeah Jeff, what's up with you?

Jeff: So I jumped into the new, um Tumble, Minecraft mini-game which is really fun, so that just uh ... That just launched last week, and uh ...

Mike: With new achievements.

Jeff: Oh.

Mike: I heard there's new achievements.

Jeff: I’m going to have to take a look at that. Um, it's something my, my daughter is like super into Minecraft and Stampy I guess was playing it, and therefore uh I was dragged into it, but it's actually really cool. You start off on like this, this platform where, it might be on fire, there might be quicksand or things like that, and the goal is to ... American Gladiator style just like knock someone off their feet.

So, you can do that either by like, digging holes and making it so that they, they mess up, or you can throw snow balls which, each snowball that hits the ground will make a hole. And so you're like aiming for their feet, and or where you think they're going to go. And then you go down to another platform, and then another platform, and then there's lava at the bottom, so whoever gets knocked off ...

Mike: Wow, so it's like a PVP thing?

Jeff: Yeah.

Mike Oh, wow.

Jeff: And uh, it's, it's very quick fire, and it's a ... I think it's a best out of 3, and it's really fun, so definitely recommend you try that out for like very quick uh, battle mode I get killed, when I go online, very, very quickly, but this is um just like a real quick hit and everyone can get in there ...

Mike: Oh wow.

Jeff: On, on basically even terms. So, definitely enjoying that.

Larry: Yes.

Jeff: And uh, what was the other? Oh, playing through gears 2 and 3. So I was on vacation last week, and uh my buddy had gotten uh the Xbox One S. We, I ... We travel with this other family and we play a lot of games together. And uh, every time we travel together, we basically ... You know we do whatever we're doing, trip stuff during the day, but at night, we’ve got to put the ... Put the kids down and then the, the ... Our wives go and they do what they want to do and then we just play games. Uh, usually co-op stuff.

So, uh, I had him ... I couldn't find an Xbox One S in Seattle. They were just, last week, couldn't get them.

Larry: Two terabytes, sold out everywhere.

Jeff: So, uh he actually put the Madden Bundle, I was getting there the day the Madden Bundle was coming up, this was in Hawaii, so he put one on hold for me, and like pretty much straight from the airport went straight to uh GameStop, I ended up trading up to a, an Xbox One S, and I had never ... I had never finished Gears of War 2, is when I was working at Sony.

Larry: Right.

Jeff: And uh actually I had come here from my very first PAX, and I had met up with some folks from the Gamerscore blog.

Larry: Right, I remember that.

Jeff: Back in the day.

Larry: Right.

Jeff: And they handed me Mass Effect 1 and Gears of War 2 and I blew through Mass Effect 1,

Larry: Nice.

Jeff: The very night, first time I'd ever been to Seattle, very welcomed, here I am.

Larry: Here you are.

Jeff: And, uh, and I played a little bit of Gears but, 2, but never have finished it, so we blew through that.

Mike: Awesome.

Jeff: And about halfway through 3 and uh, I, I will finish that before 4. So we're just every night, on their co-op we had back to back uh ... We, we, we rented our Airbnb, we made sure they had extra TVs there. We're like, "How many ... How many extra TVs are here?" We put them in then we’d commandeered the dining room and, and ...

Mike: Oh, and just side by side?

Jeff: Yeah.

Mike: Oh nice.

Jeff: And that was just a whole thing...

Larry: I saw your set up, it looked good.

Jeff: Yeah, so.

Larry: Speaking of Gears, uh we announced that PAX was this past weekend.

Jeff: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Larry: Penny Arcade Expo here in Seattle, and uh, they announced ... the Gears announced this new mode. Uh which, which is really extraordinary. It's called Arms Race. Have you heard about this guys?

Mike: I have not, no.

Larry: So this is really interesting, um so it's uh ... I think it's, is it 5B5 or 6B6, whatever, whatever the [Crosstalk 00:14:27]

Jeff: Most of it is 5B5

Larry: 5B5, so 5B5 and everybody starts out with, I think it's the boom shot, so one of the best weapons.

Mike: Yep.

Larry: And then, after every 3 kills that team … so when our ... When my team ... When our team gets 3 kills, we now get the next weapon down. It hot swaps immediately.

Mike: Oh wow, wow.

Larry: And then, then, 3 more kills, next weapon below that.

Jeff: There, there's a similar mode where it, it builds up, I think in Call of Duty where you start off with handguns, and then, and then you end up with like something crazy.

Larry: Yeah, so was the first World of War. Right.

Jeff: But this I ... I think it's cool because if you fall behind you still got the better weapons, so the better you're doing the harder the game gets.

Mike: Yeah, Totally it’s cool. [Crosstalk 00:15:02]

Larry: Yeah, it's a very cool idea until it ends up with pistols and everyone's running around. So it was really uh ... We played that at Penny Arcade, and like I said, they announced it this past weekend and it is just a lot of fun coming to Gears of War.

Mike: Now if it's Gears of War, I assume the shotgun is the absolute best weapon.

Larry: Uh ... No, it's ... I think like I said, I think you started with the boom shot and then the ... There’s something else, something else, something else shotgun, and then there's a new, I think there's a new type of shotgun. Isn't there a new shotgun in the game?

Jeff: Not, not in the, what we've played in the multi-player beta ...

Larry: Okay.

Jeff: But there might be. I don't think we've seen all the weapons.

Larry: Yeah we haven't seen, anyways, so there's a lot of cool stuff.

Mike: I, I can't wait for Gears.

Larry: So, that'll ...

Mike: Gears 3, you're going to have a blast in Gears 3. I absolutely loved Gears 3.

Jeff: I can’t believe how good that game looked.

Larry: Yeah, yeah, so. Anyway, but I wanted to ... you know, so that's kind of what we're playing, and I wanted to move into the next section of the show which is really about the uh recent, update went to preview Mike, that you and Scott worked on and of course the team. Uh, everyone here at Team Xbox is working on it. Great update to preview. And I wanted to see if you and Scott could kind of tick though some of the highlights.

We certainly saw the video that Scott and I did and some of the other work that we did. The blog post that you did Mike, but I wanted to see if we could kind of go into, go into this and talk a little bit more detail if you don't mind.

Mike: Yeah, the team's working incredibly well. Uh, I cannot wait to get this into everybody's hand.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: It's in preview now.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: We're plug testing it. We’re getting lots of feedback. Of course we go through all that feedback and uh act on it and try to make the product as best as it can be when we release it, but I'm really excited personally,

Larry: Yup.

Mike: For looking forward ...

Larry: Okay.

Mike: Which is something that I announced at E3,

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: And we talked about there.

Larry: Yeah, you were on stage at E3, yap.

Mike: Uh, I always here from fans that, "Hey, I just got home, I have an hour, I really want to do this achievement, or this quest, my buddies aren't online, how do I find people really easy? I don't want have to go to a PC, or into the web, and do all of that."

Larry: Right.

Mike: All baked in, uh, really great UI. I think this is really going to let people connect, build more friends, more relationships in gaming, more epic moments. I cannot wait for that feature to get out.

Larry: Now Scott, your team has been working on that you know with, with Mike for quite some time, and it's, it's, it's come a long way hasn't it?

Scott: It has, in fact uh, I've been playing it a ton, as you would expect over the last couple of weeks. Tons of LFG sessions, um setting up.

Larry: Get in a little closer to the mic, if you would.

Scott: Yes, of course.

Larry: Thank you. (Chuckles)

Scott: Uh, so yeah, I've been playing a ton. [Crosstalk 00:17:05].

Larry: Yeah. That, that's right, learning how the, the microphone works, yeah.

Scott: Um, been playing a ton of uh sessions over the last, I don't know, 2 to 3 weeks.

Larry: Right.

Scott: Um, so we're rotating it through a ton of games.

Larry: Right.

Scott: It's tons of fun.

Larry: Yeah, so it's ... And it's pretty easy, I mean you've seen the videos and most people are putting videos up on YouTube and, and Beam and Twitch and all the rest of the place, so you can kind of see how it works. Looking for Groups is just a better way for us to connect you with the right people.

Mike: Yeah.

Larry: That, that are ... With, with similar interests that, that, you know, want to play a similar game, or go after an achievement.

Scott: That's right. Like, Prominence Poker, 6 person tournaments.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: And so, if I'm online and maybe, Larry and Scott and Will and the others and we need 2 more.

Larry: Right.

Mike: Super simple, create a Looking For Group, Prominence Poker. Say we need 2 people, we want experienced people.

Larry: Right.

Scott: Actually, we want inexperienced, [Crosstalk 00:17:49]

Larry: Yeah, you want people that don't know how to play Poker.

Scott: You can get right down to the specifics of what you want. Uh, including things like, Hey, uh, swearing is okay, trash talking is okay, or not.

Larry: Right.

Scott: And so really customized to how you want to play on Xbox Live, which is really important for us to make sure that everybody feels welcomed to the network, has a great time gaming, uh, because time is important and we want them to have a great time.

Larry: Looking For Groups, uh that'll be coming, you know obviously to the, to everyone later this year when you all release it right?

Scott: That's right, yep.

Larry: Now let's, let's talk about clubs. Also, it's something similar, but actually really different and much more powerful. Scott I want to, I want to talk you about clubs. This is a way where like-minded people can kind of get together right?

Scott: Yeah, we talked about this a little bit, um on the show. Um clubs are, are user community created, um. You can have a public club, a private club, or a hidden club.

Larry: Right.

Scott: And, um uh, based on any interest, um wow it could be, mostly around games.

Larry: Sure.

Scott: Obviously, so you're going to see huge communities build up around games. Um, but might be based on other things as well.

Larry: Right.

Scott: And the magic of clubs is when you marry it together with LFG and with parties and that that creates like the, perfect scenario, where you can find the game that you're looking for, or the gamers that you would like to play with the most.

Larry: But I want to point out, I've gotten a lot of questions on Twitter, and, and, and Reddit and people that don't ... That haven't seen it, or haven't really had a chance to play around with it, I can join multiple clubs.

Scott: Yes you can.

Larry: I can run multiple clubs as a moderator.

Scott: Yep.

Larry: Um, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of dynamic elements there in terms of, I can assign, you know, Mike, or Jeff or Scott. You guys can be a moderator, I already have a group, by the way uh or excuse me, a club, called Major Nelson, so everyone is open to join. Jeffrey are you in it yet?

Jeff: I have a feeling I'll be admin-ing that won't I? (Laughter)

Larry: Yeah. (Laughter)

Jeff: No!

Scott: Actually Jeffery brings up a good point. Admin-ing, uh-huh clubs, but also moderating. So for example, like you said ...

Larry: Right.

Scott: You can be the owner of the Major Nelson club ...

Larry: Right, right.

Scott: And have all of us as moderators so that we can make sure things are going well in the club.

Larry: Right, right.

Scott: Much like what people are familiar with in guild management, World of Warcraft, since you brought that up earlier in the podcast.

Larry: (Laughs)

Scott: Uh, and other areas, so you know, I, I look forward to clubs as Jeff said, one of the best things is you have your club of people that you want to hang out with and play games with and you can start looking for groups specific to that club.

Larry: Right.

Scott: So that, uh you log in and immediately say, "What are my friends doing?” “Wow, here's some looking for groups, they're looking for ..." And you're immediately in with the friends that you want to play with.

Larry: And what's interesting is, is, at least in this build, and I don't know how it's going to end up, we can see the clubs that you're a member of right there in the guide, right?

Scott: That's right, yup absolutely right there, front and center in the friends section. We'll have Friends and Clubs together, and then Parties and uh LFGs together as well.

Larry: And not only that, but it also says, you know, how many people are online.

Scott: That's right.

Larry: So you can instantly, so, so, this is a, this is a much more, you know, certainly, with 360, Scott, you worked on 360 back in the day. We had 100 people friends list and everyone wanted more. So with Xbox One it's essentially unlimited. This is actually a more intelligent way of managing friends’ lists and more isn't it?

Scott: Yeah, you know the, the dream that we've had um, since the inception of Xbox Live has been to get [crosstalk 00:20:37].

Larry: Which you, by the way you, were around for.

Scott: I was, I was there. I was a key part of that. Um, and since the very beginning it's always been about, how do you get the perfect match with the people that are going to give you a great game?

Larry: Right.

Scott: And these 2 features are probably the biggest thing that we've done in the last, I don't, decade, to, to make that true.

Larry: Yeah, that's, so, so, groups are really cool, in addition, to you know, certainly I can see the groups, but there's also a, and I guess it's, you know private, because it could be members of the group. Uh, there's uh, there's uh, there's essentially a, like a feed and there's a chat. Is that right?

Scott: That's right, yep, so the feed in public uh, groups, or in clubs, um, can be seen by anyone. So if you go browse, you can follow that club and it'll become part of your activity feed. In private clubs you won't see it until you're a member.

Larry: Sure.

Scott: When you're a member of course, then you'll see the feed. And then hidden clubs you can't, you, it's an invite only. You can't search it, you can't find it unless someone's actually pulled you in.

Larry: Now will people see, like if I look at your profile or Mike, your profile, will I, will you see what clubs, that, can I see what clubs you're a member of?

Scott: Uh, you will be able to, yes.

Larry: Okay, okay. Because that was some of the questions that I had on, the people like, wait a minute, I don't know if I want them to see what clubs I'm in. (laughs)

Scott: It will not (laughter), so it just-

Jeff: My Illuminati Club. (Laughter)

Scott: Just as people are out looking for this right now, um, it won't initially be in the preview but-

Larry: Sure.

Scott: It'll eventually be on [crosstalk 00:21:42]

Jeff: And that, that's something only [crosstalk 00:21:42]

Mike: And of course, private clubs won't be visible.

Larry: Yeah, of course, private clubs. Now what I also want to point out is, is, to Mike and Scott is that you know, this is part of the preview cycle. You guys have rolled these features out and they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, you're going to take the feedback and tweak them accordingly, right?

Mike: Yeah, like all previews, we'll come out with big features like Looking For Group, Clubs, and others, and the whole feature won't be there on day one, but they'll be enough to let people test, use it.

Larry: Get started.

Mike: Basic- get started, that's right.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: And as we go on with more builds, just like we have historically, more features will come in based on their feedback and what we already have working on. We, I, I can't wait to get this in the hands of, of the customers to watch how they use Looking for Groups, what kind of clubs they create,

Larry: Right.

Mike: What tools they need?

Larry: Right.

Mike: What other options they need to make sure that their club environment is is something that's great for them and specific to them and their friends that they like to play with.

Larry: And that's what's great about the preview program, is that, you know, the team rolls these features out, they look at how they're being used, and we have incredible, smart, uh, men and women here on the team, that the, the, the developers and the program managers all of them, that like, think of all these scenarios. There's always that interesting idea that we see from the community like, at feedback.xbox.com right?

Mike: Oh, absolutely, I, I, personally believe some of the best ideas come from uh, the men and women that play on Xbox Live.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And how they use the product.

Larry: Right.

Mike: I always say, Team Xbox, the people creating this product, includes us and all the fans that use it every single day.

Larry: Right.

Mike: Uh, and preview program is a great example of that. Some of our best bugs come from preview program. Now, we have passionate fans, so some times the way they communicate those bugs are very targeted. (Chuckles)

Larry: Yes, yes.

Mike: But, you know what, we take it all, we, uh, uh, it's great, great program. Great fans, uh, you know, Xbox is the best place to play. I've always said that.

Larry: Yup.

Mike: I love the fans that we have. The development team that we have building the product and the features that we, we, we, focus on.

Larry: So we've got uh, Groups, LFG, Looking for Group, uh and clubs, I'm sorry. And then, what a, what else do we have, features that are in this preview?

Mike: Well, um, a new Gamerscore Leaderboard.

Larry: Yeah! I know you-

Mike: I should say modified Gamerscore Leaderboard.

Larry: Modified, modified.

Mike: Close to my heart, obviously.

Larry: Right.

Mike: Uh, what we've done here, is we've listened to the feedback of, wanting to understand a little bit better on timing of when the Gamerscore, who the leader is on the Gamerscore.

Larry: Right.

Mike: For example, before, it was just, a rolling 30 days.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Now, it's changed to monthly.

Larry: Okay.

Mike: So I can go back and say, "Hey, in the month of July, where was Quick relative to... any of my friends?"

Scott: Major Nelson.

Mike: Major Nelson.

Larry: Or actually, Scott, we haven't even talked about his Gamertag yet, which-

Mike: Oh.

Jeff: We did in the previous show, so.

Larry: In the internet, it's, do you, do you know what it is, Jeff?

Jeff: I do. It’s, it's just Bear. So hit Bear, B-E-A-R. Is there a Bear group already?

Scott: There is a Bear group already. Yes, there is. (Laughter) That one may be hidden.

Mike: There's a Bear club. (Laughter)

Scott: It's right, it's a bear club, thank you, thank you. Yes, Bear club.

Larry: Bear club with bear cubs. Uh... (Laughter)

Jeff: That's true, that's also true.

Larry: But any who, so.

Mike: But yeah, the new Gamerscore Leaderboard is a, monthly now.

Larry: Right.

Mike: So it's a rolling 30 days. So for the month of July I can see who was number one and all of my friends and what that looks like and August and, and so, and so.

Jeff: This is going to ensure that [Stein 00:24:41] 83 never sleeps, because, not only will he have to be the leader,

Mike: Yeah, right.

Jeff: He will have to be the leader each month. So...

Mike: Right, you know, it's already, within the team, it's already caused, uh, a lot of conversation because, you know, when you have a rolling 30, you can go 28 days and not worry about it, and then pound a few thousands and you're okay.

Larry: Right, right.

Mike: As I walked into this podcast this morning, somebody, I won't mention who, was already saying how I'm not number one or number 2,

Larry: That would be me.

Mike: in August (laughter) as we use the product. But that's great.

Larry: Right.

Mike: I think there's so much more we can do with achievements in terms of, making people heroes and, and famous, frankly on Xbox Live, for the gaming accomplishments. Achievement is one small part of that,

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: That we're investing, investing in, but you can easily see where we could take this down the road, which I think is really exciting.

Larry: You talked about achievements, um, because that's uh, that's you know, Scott, you worked on achievements like, along with me back in the day from original Xbox to 360. Do you remember that, that was a big moment?

Scott: I was.

Larry: You were working with developers at that point.

Scott: Well no, actually, um, I was, uh, leading the platform team in Program Management when we invented achievements.

Larry: Oh really?

Scott: Yeah.

Larry: I didn't-

Scott: Yeah.

Larry: I don't remember that. Was I on the team at that point?

Scott: You were on the team.

Larry: Okay.

Scott: That was a long, long.

Larry: That was uh, so that, that was so funny (laughter) I always love telling that story because Scott, Scott, Scott and I've reminisced about this. Back in those days there was like, you know, 20 people on the team, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Larry: It was ridiculously [crosstalk 00:25:55]

Scott: But, I mean the ambition was obviously a lot more focused to the console. You know, Xbox means so much more today right? It's about the PC, it's about mobile.

Larry: Right, right.

Jeff: And, and a good point that Scott brings up. All of these features are available in the Xbox app.

Larry: Right.

Jeff: On all the clients. IOS, Android and Windows 10.

Larry: Right. So so, so all those elements about you know your club and looking for group, you can still maintain those connections to each of those when you're not sitting in front of your console.

Jeff: Yeah, here's a great example for you. We obviously have uh, Windows 10 laptops, they have the Xbox app, and I'll be sitting here on a Thursday and we’ll say, we’ll be in a meeting and we’ll be like, “Hey let's play Saturday.” I’ll go ahead and create the looking for group for Saturday, a future date.

Larry: Yeah.

Jeff: Uh, they invite, I accept them and I’m we are ready to go. We know that at 6:00 pm on uh Saturday, we're going to do the King's Fall raid in Destiny for example.

Mike: Or we can I'll send you one and we can play a little bit of Overwatch.

Larry: There you go.

Jeff: I would like to point out …

Larry: I am glad there’s not a one versus one in Overwatch.

Scott: I would like to point out these features will be rolling out over time, so people are like really excited to go check this out right now. PC client will come out you know within a few days.

Larry: Sure, sure. Now you talked about. Thank you Scott. Now Mike you talked a little bit about achievements. You're also I know the team is thinking about really creative ways to kind of amp that concept up, achieving Gamerscore, right.

Mike: Yeah, that's right. One of the new items we're working on based on uh, a lot of fan feedback is achievement rarity.

Larry: Okay.

Mike: Which is the ability for a user to understand how rare an achievement is they, they’ve accomplished across all of the Xbox Live Community.

Larry: Okay.

Mike: So for example, what's a really hard achievement that you can think of?

Larry: Oh boy.

Jeff: Uh the raid, finishing raid in Destiny with no one dying.

Mike: That's right. I can’t remember what that's called right. But yes, Flawless Radar so something.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Mike: Good example. If only you know let's just make up a number 5% percent of the Xbox Live Community that have played Destiny have achieved that. When you get the achievement, a brand new toast will come and I think we're going to link that so you can see it.

Larry: You're going to provide that to me, it’s your first time publicly.

Mike: First time, no one will ever see the new design.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Please provide feedback.

Larry: Yeah. That’s for me, specifically.

Mike: You'll see a brand new toast and it'll be a rare achievement. And if you go into your achievements, you'll see the number of rare achievements you have.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And over time that could change. If a lot of people go get that achievement, it's not rare anymore.

Larry: Right.

Mike: So as you look historically at your portfolio of achievements, you’ll be able to see if your completion is you get a thousand of a thousand, you have a lot of rare achievements in there, and Gears of War has some very tough achievements. They always have.

Larry: Right.

Jeff: Seriously.

Larry: Seriously, right?

Mike: Yeah. The number of people that get seriously, it’ll be fascinating to see if that's a rare achievement or not.

Larry: Right.

Mike: So the ability to kind of provide a little bit of uniqueness to yourself based on your accomplishments through achievements is something the fans have asked for and, and we’re happy to roll out with the …

Larry: Yeah, that's actually big because you know the achievement notification and the sound are you know iconic.

Mike: They are iconic, trust me.

Scott: They are.

Mike: Scott knows.

Scott: Yeah.

Mike: Talk about a little the amount of reviews of, wow do we change the sound-

Larry: Right.

Mike: And the visuals and what does that mean emotionally for people who are so used to that was, was uh you know a great topic and …

Larry: What do you think Jeff? That’s just uh, I don’t know. That’s …

Jeff: I’ll have to see it.

Larry: Yeah, we'll have to see it. Look I and, and let me be clear at this point sitting here as we record this, I have not even seen it yet. You haven't shared it yet. So this is all news to me as well.

Jeff: Yeah, there's probably what? 20 people that have seen this.

Scott: That’s right, yeah.

Larry: That's probably right.

Jeff: In fact Phil hasn't even seen it yet.

Larry: Oh boy, because [crosstalk 00:29:10]. Sorry Phil.

Mike: Which is a little scary.

Larry: You might want to get that to him before I post the show, so just saying.

Mike: It's part of the preview, the design changes, changes.

Larry: Yeah, that's … again, that's what preview is all about. There are some other …

Mike: I’m really happy with the design and where we are at though, so I think we're there.

Larry: Yeah. So and I think it's also important to point out as you know preview program is important to, to helping you, you know we look forward to the community helping us create a better, but what's also even more important is how you share that information. You know filing bugs in the console or sending feedback, going to feedback.xbox.com. If you just spin up a thread on some random forum, we may not see it.

Mike: Yeah, that’s a great point. You know I, I love engaging with the fans on Twitter but my Twitter feed is not the best place to send me bugs.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Because what I have to then do is cut and paste it into, into the tools-

Larry: Right.

Mike: And, and make it happen. Easiest thing, hold down the Xbox button on your controller, over to report a problem. It is invaluable to us. Our preview audience does it a lot. Thank you all for doing that. Please continue. Please continue.

Larry: As long as you’re in the feedback program you’ll have that link there. So that’s the most important thing. You know how to do that. Can we have a couple of the features that we as well if you don’t mind?

Mike: Ah yea- absolutely.

Larry: Scott what have we got?

Mike: Group messaging.

Scott: Group messaging. That’s right. So we’ve participated in some group messages which is pretty cool.

Larry: Yeah.

Scott: Right? We’re able to like just um pull people in. You know based on their settings assuming that they actually wanted to be pulled in.

Larry: I want to point out. This is a little different from perhaps what some people think of group messaging and I (chuckle) messaged all my friends.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. Right.

Larry: You know back in the day, the 360 right?

Scott: It’s right.

Larry: This is not one to 100 people. This is like you most people have on a modern you know text messaging on their phones where it’s like 4 of us just kind of going all together and we see the whole conversation.

Scott: That’s right. You could be on your mobile device, you could be on PC, you could be on console, um coordinating, getting together for a game um, deciding what maybe the LFG is that you want to set up.

Larry: Right.

Scott: Right. So it’s a great way to um stay in touch with each other. Maybe you know recapping last night’s games whatever. So it’s definitely an enhancement to what we have. It will also have the new emojis capability in there too so you can express [crosstalk 00:31:03]

Larry: Have you seen the emojis Jeff?

Jeff: I only see one emoji from you Larry. (Laughing).

Larry: Okay. So this is uh, this is really important because I posted uh, I posted a video of how to do this. And it’s, it’s, it’s you know there’s a virtual keyboard that comes up. You hold the left trigger once, pull it let once then pull it again. Right? As I, I believe that’s a key stroke. And then you’ll see the um you’ll see the emojis. Now Scott was actually on the phone with me. You and I were talking about it.

Scott: That’s right.

Larry: The first time I saw them I’m like, wait a minute. Where’s the most important emoji in here? And it’s under the happy face. That’s the poo emoji.

Mike: Oh yes, that’s nice.

Scott: Smiling poo. But you got to tell them the tip though.

Larry: Yeah. The tip is, is that as you’re scrolling around on the keyboard press and hold A and it will fold out uh you know um other, you know there are other, other ...

Mike: Others.

Larry: There are kind of of other ones that I don’t want to say hidden behind but they’re kind of grouped together behind a similar.

Mike: You know what we should make sure is that on that emoji list?

Larry: Yes.

Mike: Is the Scorpio M that the fans are using. Got to work on that one.

Jeff: Future request.

Mike: Future request.

Larry: We’ll you guys can execute, I can’t do anything.

Scott: We just gave ourselves a future request on [crosstalk 00:31:58].

Larry: Look at that. So that’s fun so …

Mike: Scott loves when I do that.

Larry: Group messaging, emojis. What else do we have Scott?

Scott: Uh well of course arena.

Larry: Yeah, arena.

Scott: We got a great partnership ah with the Killer Instinct team um which we’ll be rolling our later uh through the preview.

Larry: Yeah, I want to point that out.

Jeff: Third party you know interest in the feature as well. So …

Larry: So this is a feature that’s not in here in preview right now?

Scott: That’s right.

Larry: Yes. So that is, this is the, this is that we, you talked about on stage at E3. But that’s going to be coming further on down the line. So I want to make sure. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a pretty … I mean each one of these is, is important but this is rolling up to be quite the, do we call the autumn update, the fall update? Apologies to the friends under the equator. Uh whi- what is the proper terminology for this?

Jeff: The fall update.

Mike: Ah you’re looking at me?

Larry: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t … yeah. I’m looking at you too. Usually [crosstalk 00:32:40]

Mike: Since when do I, when do I name things?

Larry: What’s it’s called something? Jeff what’s it called?

Jeff: Let’s just call it the fall update for now.

Mike: It’s a new sweet things.

Larry: The fall update for those of you underneath uh the equator on the southern half of the hemisphere. That would be the spring update but it’s all the same one. (Laughter). So that’s, that’s what I want to buy.

Mike: It is one of the biggest Xbox Live updates that we’ve …

Scott: Yeah.

Mike: Released. In terms of bringing people together to play the games they want when they want.

Larry: Right.

Mike: And uh, you know it’s pretty significant like …

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Like I use these features I’m like, wow this is really going to change how fast people get into the games and accomplish things they want to in games.

Larry: Right.

Mike: That makes me very excited. Because a lot of the feedback we get from all the sites and on Twitter and from Larry and everybody is, “Make things faster. Make it easier for me to get into my game and start my fun.

Larry: Yeah, yeah really and that’s what I always say. I mean I tell you Scott and I tell you Mike and I tell the rest of the team. I’m like, get out of my way. And when I say that I mean get, get the, get the, get the, get the experience. The experience is very important. Get it out of my way so I can get to the game and start playing as quickly as possible.

Mike: That’s right. I, I think that’s exactly right. And there, you know down the road but with this update there are some things to home that will change a little bit.

Larry: Oh?

Mike: In terms of the UI to make that easier as well.

Larry: Okay.

Scott: That’s right. So uh, the key part of this right, you know LFGs and clubs you know obviously center around your friends but also centered around your games.

Larry: Sure.

Scott: So game hubs are going to be the way that we want people to get to that. Right?

Larry: Right.

Scott: So you’ll see some changes to homes that really gives you an idea what’s going on in, like in your MRU list.

Larry: Right.

Scott: Um that [crosstalk 00:34:05].

Larry: Most recently used.

Scott: That’s right. Exactly right. Sorry about that.

Larry: That’s okay.

Scott: Most recently used list. Yeah, and so you’ll see some uh, throughout the previews some tweaks that we’re going to make to home to make them more discoverable.

Larry: I want to point something out really is the LFG, the um looking for group you know make sure if you’re in the preview programs and certainly once we ship this, is going to the game hub. Because the game hub is going to have these entries in there as well.

Scott: That’s right.

Larry: You, you, it may not be people on your friends list. This is how you’re going to introduce and, and say hello to new people.

Mike: Yeah. It’s a great point. Um you know I use the example of what are my friends doing I can join them looking for groups.

Larry: Right.

Mike: But if you want to create a uh looking for a group for Halo 5 to do an achievement or just finish the co-op or whatever you want to do, play multi-player.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Go to the game hub of Halo 5.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: Right in there you’ll see everybody’s looking for groups that’s going on.

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: And create looking for groups there with all the tags and specifics that you want and you’re ready to go. So the game hubs of the games is really the place to go to see everything going on in that universe. We always talk about on the show what we’re playing.

Larry: Right.

Mike: The game hub is the place to go to and see everybody you can join and have fun in those games.

Larry: Yeah. It’s not just what we’re playing or your friends playing, but this is what people of the servers are playing.

Scott: That’s right.

Larry: You may not, you may only have 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or however many friends. This is really going to uh, and I urge everyone to go check out the game hubs because this is going to make you um have, make, you know make better connections, find better people to play with and frankly find new friends.

Mike: Yeah.

Larry: Which is, which is always awesome.

Mike: Alwa- always great.

Larry: It’s ah, yeah so it’s also cool is that we, we did, we sure talked a little bit about this in the video Scott that you and I did for the release but it’s neat when you’re going into LFG or uh you know when you’re saying what games you want. The system knows what games I own. And it auto- kind of automatically populates them, right? So that’s really, that’s really kind of cool.

Scott: It does, absolutely.

Larry: It does that and the other thing is like when I’m looking for a group I say, it actually knows okay I have the game. Here’s the list achievements so I don’t even have to type in the achievement. I can just highlight it.

Scott: They’re just right there. You can go click them. Say which one you want to go get

Larry: Right.

Scott: And you’re off and running.

Larry: That’s kind of awesome.

Scott: Then you can use achievement onto your own screen shots to customize the look and feel of your club. There’s so much depth to what these features are. I can’t wait to see what the fans do with it and, and the feedback that we get.

Larry: Is … You know I haven’t checked. I’m hoping, did you create the Leeroy Jenkins club?

Scott: (Laughter) no, no. I’m not Leeroy Jenkins.

Larry: I know but, but … (Laughs).

Scott: I don’t really …

Mike: That’s not what I heard. (Laughs).

Scott: [Crosstalk 00:36:16] Oh here we go, here we go.

Larry: Ah (laughs) the truth, the truth comes out. Oh my, oh my. Anyway yes. So …

Mike: There are a few club that we have ah, we have in there

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: So that when people first get in ... the Major Nelson Cub they’ll see.

Larry: Yeah, yeah absolutely.

Mike: When they go in there. There’s an Xbox club that’ll be there that they’ll join-

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: And they can … you know, we’ll all be there and we’ll all be you know helping people through as they learn about what the features of it and what not. And so look for us on those 2 clubs. Major Nelson and Xbox and we’ll go from there.

Larry: Yeah, yeah. And there’s a preview club I believe coming [crosstalk 00:36:42].

Mike: There’s an Xbox preview club as well. Yeah.

Larry: That’s probably what and in my mind probably one of the most important ones is that you can certainly to, to what we said earlier about posting in a forum or on Twitter. Go in there and, and help each other to learn how to use the features. So everybody who’s in preview, go join the preview club uh and, and you can kind of get started from there and help each other. And it’s, it’s, it’s the way uh, you know it’s kind of like when you move into a new apartment or a new house for the first time. You’ve got to figure it all out.

Mike: That’s right. Yeah.

Larry: So it’s, it’s …

Scott: To that point you know one of the things that’s going to roll out through preview in the clubs is uh we’ll have a new capability. Not their day 1 but uh in the weeks ahead um. People have the ability to chat. So people can go in there, post their questions, get feedback. That kind of thing. So clubs will have that feature in general but that will be a great way to use the preview club.

Larry: I’m looking forward to that.

Mike: Yeah, that’s a great point from Scott. You know use the Xbox app on your mobile phone and you go into your club and you can text chat. Much like uh, discord or other things like that.

Larry: Sure.

Mike: I’ll text chat.

Larry: Sure.

Mike: This is an area where you can real time chat with people and hey I have a quick question. Someone wants to answer it. I can imagine the MBPs I’m talking to some of them already about the creating the MBP club where people could go in there and chat and ask questions and get answers.

Larry: Yeah.

Jeff: Really a new way of real time communication that we want to provide the user of Xbox Live.

Mike: Yeah. There’s a ton of ways to get in touch with us and each other and this is just one more awesome way. You can do it on a console and uh, and off, off console as well.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. So …

Larry: I, I’m just looking at the time you Scott you need to run. Don’t you?

Scott: I have ah a bit of uh …

Larry: You’ve got a busy, yeah.

Scott: Uh, yeah busy schedule. That’s right.

Larry: Mike’s given you some, some work to do.

Scott: Well I’ve got some new action items from this podcast. (Laughing)

Mike: Yeah, you have [crosstalk 00:38:09].

Scott: What happened?

Larry: So do, do you want to step out now or?

Scott: I think I probably need to uh make uh, a graceful exit here, yes. And let you guys get on with uh, with the podcast.

Larry: All right, Scott had to step out but Mike you’re still with us. Right?

Mike: Yep, that’s right.

Larry: Okay good, good, good, good. Well we’re going to, we’re going to kind of ru- … that was a, that was a lot, that was lot of cool stuff we just went over.

Mike: It’s a big update. I’m super excited. I cannot wait for the fans to get it.

Larry: Yeah preview is always a great thing.

Mike: Yep.

Larry: If you’re not in the preview program um I know that they, they’ve kind of, they’ve kind of stopped accepting new people right now. They’ve slowed it down a little bit. So don’t worry, don’t worry. Even if, even then when we roll it out to preview a small subset. Because you guys as software developers you, and you know and we roll it out to a small group and okay everything looks good. Let’s go a little bit larger

Mike: Yeah that’s right.

Larry: Okay. That looks good, a little bit larger. So you don’t want to just, you just don’t want to have everybody you know getting it at once because you don’t want to uh, you don’t want uh … you want to make sure you can kind of monitor the data in a measured way.

Mike: Yeah when we roll out it won’t be to all you know a million or however many preview people there are out there.

Larry: Right.

Mike: It will be just smaller groups and we’ll, we’ll broaden it. So please be patient. I know when we’ve done this before my Twitter feeds lights up of how come I’m not in it? How do it get in it?

Larry: Yeah.

Mike: People will get in it uh very soon. We just want to make sure that uh there’s nothing big that we find that we have to go fix and that impacts a broad set of people. We’re, we’re really excited though.

Larry: You know it reminds me of the day when we used to roll out Xbox 360 updates.

Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Larry: And you know we’d, we’d have to take the service offline for a … we don’t do that anymore. Um, but as, as the service came back on, people would you know say, oh I just got the update um. Hey I’m in, I’m in Indiana.

Mike: (Chuckles).

Larry: Or hey I’m in, I’m in London. They were tracking it like Santa Clause. And I’m like, no, no it doesn’t really have anything to do with that. (Laughing).

Jeff: It’s been sited.

Mike: Yeah. There it is …

Larry: That doesn’t really matter, but anyway we’ve got a couple of releases. Jeff you’ve got some of the news headlines here that you can kind of …

Jeff: Sure, sure. A lot of games hitting, we’re, we’re getting into the silly season, September now. And, and, you know very soon we’ll be playing um which crazy is Forza, Forza Horizon 3 is coming out at the end of this month.

Larry: The back log grows.

Jeff: We’ve got ReCore hitting uh on September 13th. We’ll have the Witness coming out soon.

Mike: That’s right.

Jeff: On Xbox 1. That’s very much looking forward to playing, but out now Earth Lock Festival of Magic. This is a RPG, a brand new RPG that is available free for uh, as part of games with gold for Xbox 1 along with uh Forza Horizon 1, um that are both available now. Um Live Lock. This is uh, an interesting looking game. It’s a top down, uh cooperative shooter uh, one of my favorites …

Mike: Twin stick shooter? Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Definitely one of my favorite uh, one of my favorite uh genres. So looking forward to playing that. Resident Evil 4. Many would say the best Resident Evil definitely up there with 2. Uh now available on Xbox 1 in uh full 1080 P and an increased frame rate, um in the tarring test. This is one of our …

Larry: Oh.

Jeff: Our key uh the Xbox 1 uh, ID at Xbox titles that we have been showing off since uh, since uh GDC this year.

Larry: Yeah.

Jeff: And had a lot of attention. So that’s now available on Xbox 1.

Larry: Same guys who did Pneumas, Pneuma: Breath of Life?

Mike: Yes. Right.

Larry: That crazy, that really relaxing puzzle game

Mike: Yeah.

Jeff: I have 1-Kd that, I believe you did as well.

Larry: I believe I did as well. Yeah.

Mike: You were a 1K too or?

Larry: Yes, I’d …

Jeff: I hope so.

Larry: I hope so.

Jeff: I, I got to look at the new shipment last. So yeah those are a few of the highlights, but it’s, that list is only going to be growing in the next uh … this is a very crazy holiday season.

Mike: I think there was like 6 or 7 games released this week on Xbox. It was pretty incredible.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mike: Like the holiday season is ramping and it’s going to be, it’s going to be one of the best holidays. I mean the Xbox has some of the best games that I’ve ever seen in a one year time period. And a lot of those are releasing in the next 4 months.

Larry: Yeah. It’s uh, you know the all, as the title, as the hol- as the proper holiday season you know cues up with more and more titles than … you know some of the titles frankly get pushed back towards this time of the year. You know summer and early fall. So it just feels like the games … I remember when we uh, and I’m sure you ember this Mike and, and, and uh Jeff you know. Remember when February and March wasn’t really that, that was the doldrums. Now it’s like the games that didn’t ship in the holiday …

Jeff: There kind of are no doldrums.

Larry: Yeah.

Jeff: And when a game, when I hear like a game is like moved out like a few months I’m like yes.

Larry: Thank God.

Jeff: Because I’ll actually have time to play everything.

Larry: Yeah to check it out. So there’s, so so some good stuff coming out there and uh it’s thank you for that Jeffrey.

Jeff: Have you guys pre-ordered Forza horizon 3 on Gears of War?

Larry: Oh yeah, both.

Mike: All of them.

Jeff: I pre-ordered today uh actually.

Larry: Did you?

Jeff: It was great with XPA because I’m going to get it on Windows 10 and the console.

Larry: That’s right.

Jeff: Xbox play anywhere time.

Larry: You’re going to play anywhere, aren’t you?

Jeff: I am going to probably be a number one customer.

Larry: But I’ll tell you where you’re not going to be playing anywhere on holiday with your family.

Jeff: That’s true.

Larry: (Laugh) Jeff, Jeffrey will you will not be.

Jeff: That’s true.

Mike: I, I drew that line in the sand very early uh in the, in the relationship. Uh looking forward to, to finding out the sound track of Forza Horizon 3. The Forza Horizons have the best soundtrack in gaming and I, I’ll put them up there right next to and maybe slightly edging from my personal taste above the, the Grand Theft Auto games.

Larry: The GTAs.

Mike: Which are also…

Larry: They’re iconic.

Jeff: They’re iconic.

Mike: Yes. Uh, fewer stations than you would see in the GTA you don’t have to talk, but the, the music that you will hear in this game is the stuff that 6 months later or a year later radio will finally pick up on it. I found that to be the case with every Forza Horizon. I’m like I, I heard that 6 months ago.

Larry: Which is, which is impressive because the team that does the soundtracks they’re working on that even 6 months to 8 months before release.

Mike: Yeah. I, I don’t know how they do it, but it’s like …

Larry: So they’re called …

Mike: Your next 10 favorite songs will be in Forza Horizon.

Larry: They’re calling it 18 to 20 months before release. It’s unbelievable.

Jeff: Even their E3 uh you know when, when a Forza title comes up of stage at E3 the music they pick is fairly iconic.

Mike: Yeah.

Jeff: You always remember the music …

Larry: Yes.

Jeff: That played in that.

Mike: I think uh, for this time it’s that uh Chris Isaac …

Jeff: Yeah.

Mike: Wicked Games [crosstalk 00:43:35].

Jeff: Remix or …

Larry: Did I, did I ever tell the story about that?

Mike: No.

Larry: So when I, I think I told you this Mike. If I didn’t um uh I’ll tell you now. When we were getting ready for E3 this year, you know everybody, the whole team top to bottom. And then we’re all working endless hours on this. And I remember I was sitting in one of the reviews over at the other building.

Mike: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Larry: I had gone through the entire show top to bottom and I was like there so much great music in here. I went and found one of our marketing people who was working on a lot of the music. I said, I need the list. And I put together a Spotify and a groove playlist which went out right after the briefing. Because it’s the number one question I always get is, what was that? And I just had it all there for them and that thing has gotten thousands and thousands and thousands of people all listening to it now.

Jeff: That is awesome.

Larry: I’m going to continue to do that. Because music is important part of the games. We have background music now.

Mike: Yes we do. With Pandora now.

Larry: With Pandora.

Jeff: Yeah, actually Xbox Wire this week released a, everything you need to know about background music. I’ll link to that in the show notes.

Larry: Please do, please do.

Jeff: But it’s sort of a guide for background music um.

Mike: And, and also another big announcement was uh, any developer at all can now submit apps to Xbox 1 and they’ll show up in the stores.

Larry: Right.

Mike: Or if you’re a developer that wants to create the ideal background music app. You can now create that and submit it. And lots of people can go download it.

Larry: Or, or something some other type of app as well.

Mike: Or any app. Yeah absolutely.

Larry: Yeah. So there’s a lot going on there. Uh anyway. All right. So we’re going to, we’re going to wrap things up here. Jeffrey you are okay? Should we …

Jeff: I’m, I’m good. I’m ready to play Forza horizon 3. We’ve talked about it enough …

Mike: I know. I’m itching to …

Jeff: I’m ready to go … I’m like …

Mike: I’m looking at Forza Horizon 2 box this whole …

Larry: Oh yes. This is, this is where you know actually I don’t have a picture of this but I should put a picture of this. This is kind of our, our wall of, of, of you know different chachkies. Like this, like that over there is the se- Sea of Thieves. See the little one on the lower right?

Mike: I do.

Larry: You now they even haven’t released this …

Jeff: [Inaudible 00:45:14] ROD cam there.

Larry: That’s just, it’s just … (Laughing).

Mike: When are we drinking that lemonade?

Larry: Yeah the lemonade. We’ve got …

Mike: That’s going to expire soon.

Larry: Actually you know the Forza, there’s a Forza, if you pull out the Forza box back there Jeff on the top. No, no on the top. I know this is difficult for radio. It’s uh, it’s behind the booth.

Jeff: Oh it’s signed.

Larry: Yeah. That is actually the … so the team signed that. That is a box copy of uh, of Forza Horizon.

Mike: 3?

Larry: Forza Motorsport 3 and it was signed by the whole team at Forza, that was to me.

Jeff: Very cool.

Larry: This is you know, so I try to put things up there. So it’s you know I get so much great stuff that the teams you know uh send along, and I love to share as much as I can but this one is actually really special because it’s ….

Jeff: You know something that reminds me of.

Larry: Yes.

Jeff: Just yesterday uh, Blizzard sent me signed copies of the new World Warcraft expansion that came out, Legion.

Larry: Oh they did?

Jeff: Yeah and I’s really great because on Xbox Live with the Xbox app you can now record some of your best uh PC games.

Larry: Right.

Jeff: That are not Xbox Live enabled and post then to your activity feed and videos.

Larry: Right.

Jeff: So I look forward to doing that as well. Lots of people are playing Legion. Congratulations to [crosstalk 00:46:11].

Larry: Again, I hate to bring it up again but they’re in this [crosstalk 00:46:13].

Jeff: Oh no.

Larry: There could be, there could be a World where Leeroy Jenkins was in your feed.

Mike: (Laughs) I walked into that one.

Larry: (Laughs) I’m sorry.

Mike: I should have wrapped it up in that, that part of it but yeah.

Larry: Ah. What amazes me about that clip is the fact that somebody had, you know back then there wasn’t a lot of video capture gear. That’s what, that’s what amazes me about it.

Mike: Actually that’s a very good point.

Larry: Right? We take it for granted.

Mike: That was a long time ago.

Larry: We take it for granted.

Mike: We do.

Larry: So, so anyway.

Mike: We do.

Larry: All right gang. We’re going to wrap it up. Mike Ybarra thanks you so much for joining us. Scott Henson had to step out but on behalf of Scott there has, the Gamertag bear. We’ll make sure we link to that. Thank you guys. Keep up the great work. Um wonderful uh, wonderful preview release. You guys have a lot more work to do. You’re nowhere near done.

Mike: Yeah. That’s right. I mean I I love coming to the show. That’s for having me. You guys are the stars of the crew.

Larry: Oh stop it.

Mike: That help us communicate the features that we’re doing. We always appreciate that.

Larry: It’s love to, it’s lovely to have you on and talk about the features and, and you know here’s some great news like achievement rarity. I’m going to go. I can’t, I can’t wait to see it.

Jeff: I’m very excited to see so …

Larry: All right guys. We’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for uh tuning in and uh you can find Jeffrey on twitter at?

Jeff: Jeffrey Rubenstein.

Larry: And Mike they can find you?

Mike: @XboxQwik.

Larry: All right guys. We’ll see you next time. Bye, bye everybody.

(Music).