606: Post PAX, Post Gamescom and more

Larry: Hi, it's Larry Hryb Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Welcome to show number 606. We're in September, we've got a fun show ahead for you. We got Laura here. Hi Laura.
Laura: Hello!
Larry: Across from you is an empty desk or an empty position. Jeff is en route. He's gonna do as any good multiplayer would, he's gonna join in progress. He's gonna join us in progress and then also sitting at his own station over there on mic number three is Mr. Graham Boyd. Hi Graham!
Graham: Hello!
Larry: Long time friend of the show. We've had you on frequently, but it smells like you've maybe been on more frequently.
Graham: It smells like it?
Larry: I was just gonna say you've moved...
Graham: What are you trying to say?
Larry: You've moved over from the UK.
Graham: That's right, this is the first time I've been on the Podcast where I'm not rushing off to a flight to the U.K. afterwards which is nice.
Larry: Cause this is now your home.
Graham: Yes, I've made the move. I'm now a Redman local.
Laura: Awesome.
Larry: Yeah, you are a Redman local. So, congratulations and welcome. Now ...
Graham: Thank you.
Larry: ... I want to talk a little bit about that before we get into the news and what we're playing and all that stuff, because there's been some chatter on Twitter, like "Oh my God, Graham's leaving the U.K.! What's gonna happen? You're actually moving over here to be more effective over there. I know it sounds weird, would that be a way to put it?
Graham: That is a good way of putting it. So yes, I've moved over here now.
Larry: You moved your family over, your boys.
Graham: I'm not working in the UK anymore, yeah, it's like a proper move. So we all arrived last week, which is really exciting. I think part of the issue is that I didn't actually tell anyone on Twitter or whatever until about two days before we moved. Just because we had so much going on through the summer.
Larry: I had a big surprise I dropped as well, we'll talk about that later.
Graham: We were joking weren't we, this is like the personal edition of the Podcast, we're talking about all our personal news.
I wanted to get through Gamescom because we had so much going on at Gamescom before I made it public that I was coming over here. I've seen a few people Tweeting and were like, "Oh, it's a shame that you're leaving the U.K. and you're leaving Europe and stuff". First of all, I want to clarify actually what my role is and what I do at Xbox and I want to reassure people that I'm certainly not turning my back on U.K. or Europe and Xbox definitely is not. Nor the rest of the world as well.
My role for the last 18 months has been on the global Xbox social media team. I've always really worked on the social media team.
Larry: Which is a corporate way of saying you've worked on the social media but that team is really for the most part based over here.
Graham: Based over here.
Larry: In the Seattle area, right?
Graham: But that team's remit is global. So all around the world.
Larry: Their job.
Graham: Everywhere that we do social media is part of what we look after. My role specifically is split into two areas. Part of it is, I focus on console and accessories. So every time we've got new consoles coming, new accessories, controllers, et cetera, I'm responsible for that work showing up on our social media channels. Which is awesome, because I love all that stuff.
Larry: So all those pretty pictures you see on the Xbox Instagram ...
Graham: 100%
Larry: ... and all the rest of that stuff, that's you.
Graham: I love it so much that I do it for the officially Xbox social channels and then on my own social channels I do it as a hobby as well. So I love all that. Then the other part of my job is to look after international social media for Xbox. So I work with all of our Xbox teams all around the world, every market that we have Xbox in, to help them with their social media content.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: I love that, it's fascinating because you learn so much about different countries around the world, how they engage with social media, fans, Xbox fans.
Larry: What works, what doesn't work and its always interesting to find out what works in Japan that works in the U.K. versus what works in Russia or whatever.
Graham: 100%. We'll notice that there'll be pieces of social media content that will work universally everywhere. Then there'll be strange pieces that will go amazing in some markets, like Latin America or whatever and maybe Australia, but won't play in other markets as well.
Larry: And vice versa.
Graham: It's really fun to look after all that. None of that changes for me, I've moved, I live in a different country.
Larry: You physically have moved.
Graham: Yeah, I'm not in the U.K. anymore, but I'm still essentially doing that same role and looking out for those same things. I think the way you put it, Larry, was good, is that I'm really excited to be here, in Xbox HQ globally, as an international voice. Another international voice here to be in the room and say what about Europe, what about Latin America, what about Australia or New Zealand, what about greater Asia and markets outside of the U.S.
Larry: And I want to be clear is that everybody on the team, we all think globally.
Graham: 100%.
Larry: But Laura and I have grown up in the United States, in very different parts of the United States.
Laura: That's true.
Larry: But you're bringing in, I don't know about you Laura, but in Texas I didn't have a lot of exposure to people, to non U.S. citizens.
Laura: Right.
Larry: In Connecticut, I didn't, so it's great to have, when you come work at a multinational company with a company that has a brand that goes around the world, it's great to have voices like yours Graham, who can kinda go, "Wait a minute this is actually" ... I even noticed a difference, I'm sure you did Laura, when you moved to Seattle from Texas. When I move from Connecticut to Seattle it was like, "Whoa, things are a little different out here, wait a minute that's not really" ... I remember I had this conversation around summer. Because summer in Seattle they don't think it ends until October but in New England it's like right after Labor Day, which is beginning of September. Summer's gone, we're back to school, its autumn now, even though maybe the calendar may be a little different. So anyway, I digress.
Graham: Well, the weather's nice this week, isn't it? Thank you for organizing that for me, a nice week of first weather.
Larry: You are welcome.
Graham: I just want to reassure people that there are amazing Xbox teams, particularly in Europe.
Larry: Oh yeah.
Graham: Which is where a lot of people have been saying to me, "What about Europe, what about Europe?" We've got amazing Xbox teams all around the world and especially in Europe. Our focus is still squarely on that. If you look at what we did at Gamescom, in Germany.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: The reveal of Project Scorpio Edition, pre-orders for that and of the great news that came out of Gamescom, I think that's an indication of how important Europe and other regions around the world are for us.
Larry: There you go.
Graham: Of course, we got EGX coming up in the U.K. next week. I was looking at the plans for that.
Larry: Are you going back for that?
Graham: No, unfortunately.
Larry: I was gonna say back and...
Graham: For one reason or another, I never get to go to EGX. It's such a shame because that show is ace, I love it. It's sort of like the PAX of the U.K. because you get real gaming fans there. It's really the first time in the U.K. generally, that people get hands on with the new games and the new hardware.
Larry: Sure, those coming up in the holiday.
Graham: So for us, it will be the first time in the U.K. that real gamers, Xbox fans, are getting hands on the Xbox 1X.
Larry: And you've never been?
Laura: Oh, really?
Graham: I've definitely been, but it's always like, I think was it last year that I was there just briefly for a day?
Larry: Where is it held?
Graham: It's in Birmingham.
Larry: It's in Birmingham
Graham: At NEC, so it's easy for people to get to. Our booth looks ace, there's a ton of Xbox 1X there. We've actually got more Xbox 1X playable there than we have Xbox One S and PC combined.
Laura: Really?
Graham: It's a great opportunity to get hands on with X, loads of games there and some really cool stuff happening as well. The booth looks great this year, it's a bit like our Gamescom booth looked really cool and therefore made the whole experience more fun. It's kind of the same at EGX.
Larry: Great job on Gamescon, by the way.
Graham: It was fun. We had a really good year this year.
Larry: I missed you guys.
Graham: But we missed you.
Larry: Ah, we'll talk about that later.
Graham: Everyone was asking, "Where's Larry?"
Larry: Well now you know, the secret's out, we'll talk about that later.
Graham: Yeah we couldn't tell anyone, it's like, "Oh he's busy." So that's good and then Paris Games week of course coming up in France really soon. Then of course, we'll have a ton of great stuff out around the Xbox One X launch around the world as well.
Larry: It's weird because we've had you on the show before, right Laura? We've had him on ...
Laura: Plenty of times.
Larry: ... we usually have three or four times a year when you come over. But now you're here and it's great to have you. So this feels very natural.
There has been some, "Well wait is he gonna be the fourth person on podcast?" I don't know we haven't decided that yet, we're still in the trial phase. To be honest with you Laura has to approve you.
Graham: I'll put you in touch with my agent, Laura.
Laura: Okay, well bribery does work for me.
Graham: Oh does it? That's good to know, that's interesting.
The funny this is as well about my role, I think a lot of people assume that me and you already work together.
Larry: Yeah, like we're the same thing.
Graham: Like all the time.
Larry: Right, which we do, but it's not the way people think we do, right?
Graham: Yeah, I wish we worked together more.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: But actually, we kind of sit in different parts of business and sometimes we get these great opportunities to work together at events and stuff.
Larry: Gamescom and E3, right.
Graham: But yeah, it's always interesting to, sometimes I talk to people about what they think my job is, and it can be interesting hearing how different it is to what I actually do.
Larry: The way I always describe it is your job and our job and Laura, you as well, people see what we do publicly, the podcast and PAX and the events, but there's a whole other part of our job that we can't talk about. We can eventually, like when we were planning Xbox One X, I obviously couldn't talk about that until we revealed it.
Graham: Totally.
Larry: So there's all these other parts that we work on quietly. I meet with the product teams all the time and say, "Hey, why are we doing this or how about this idea?" There's this whole part of the other job that kinda rolls up to this public conversation, I guess.
Graham: 100%. But hopefully we will get to work together a bit more now.
Larry: I hope so, we're already, we're in the same building.
Laura: Now that you're closer.
Graham: That'd be nice wouldn't it?
Larry: I do want to level set a few things right away, is that we're in a different building, you and I are in building 37, Laura hasn't even been over to see me in that building which is on the other side of campus. True story, true story.
Laura: Yeah, I haven't seen you, but I have been to 37 but you weren't around.
Graham: You avoided him.
Larry: Yeah, so.
Graham: Snuck in.
Larry: We were over there, so you're welcome to come up maybe Graham will come up. I also want to point something out, is that I really appreciate you coming on the show and squeezing us in between your annual leave.
Laura: Semi bad news is there isn't really annual leave over here.
Larry: Yeah, there isn't annual leave.
Graham: I know.
Larry: So you're gonna have to...
Graham: That was definitely in the cons column.
Larry: Exactly.
Graham: I can't just take eight months of the year off, I don't know.
Larry: What are you gonna do?
Graham: Everyone goes on about annual leave to me on Twitter now, it's you've made that and actual thing.
Larry: The people that are responsible for that are in this room specifically, me because we were always busting.
Laura: We do that all the time.
Larry: Always busting your chops.
Graham: I'll have to start calling it vacation now.
Laura: Yes, you do.
Graham: I'm going on vaca.
Larry: Vaca, it's okay you can call it holiday.
Graham: Okay, there's certain things I want to keep a hold of, like my accent and then words like holiday.
Larry: And your style.
Graham: And my style as well. Thank you, that's very kind of you to bring that up.
Larry: Anyway, well welcome, we'll have you on the show as frequently as you'd like. Maybe you want to come in here and give us some of your secret Instagram stories.
Graham: Thank you.
Larry: Instagram by Graham.
Graham: Instagram
Larry: Instagraham.
Graham: No, it's very kind of you, I might take you up on that because those people want to hear from.
Larry: So we're here, Laura and I and Jeff who will be here, he should be here probably any minute. He's actually landing, he landed from New York. He was out in New York all week and he's gonna come in right from the airport, so he's gonna hot seat this.
Laura: Well, that is a rush dream.
Larry: But yeah, you and I did PAX with Jeff.
Laura: We did. It went well.
Larry: We had a great Cuphead experience. Mikey Bard joined us. Did you get a chance to watch that stream?
Graham: I've watched some of the streams, I don't think I saw that one, no.
Larry: Yeah, that one was, it was a lot of fun, we had, Cuphead was a lot harder than a lot of people thought. Cuphead's coming up later this month. You've seen the artwork right?
Graham: Oh 100% yeah. We had it on the show at Gamescom as well. It looks absolutely amazing.
Larry: Yeah, everybody loves that so we
Graham: It's tough.
Larry: We had Cuphead on. We had Mikey Bard came out. We talked about some of the new features coming to Xbox One. We talked a little bit about that, little sneak peak of what's coming up for those of you getting an Xbox One X later this year, the smooth transfer procedure, which is kinda cool. It was a good show, but we took August off because we had Gamescom, Laura you went on holiday right?
Laura: I did go on holiday.
Larry: Do you want to talk about where you went? I know where you went.
Laura: I went to England and to Italy.
Graham: Oh nice! Where did you go in England?
Laura: European vacation. To London and Manchester.
Graham: Excellent.
Laura: And the lake district, all over.
Graham: It's so nice. It could have been better. You could have gone to Scotland, but England's okay.
Laura: I was really close.
Graham: You were, you were very close.
Larry: So you had that travel, we had Gamescom of which, okay we'll get into that now. I couldn't go to Gamescom because it was finally revealed, that we revealed at PAX, is that I have a baby girl now.
Graham: Yeah!
Laura: Yeah! Congratulations.
Graham: Congratulations.
Larry: Thank you very much. Of course, I told you guys months and months ago. Because I remember I pulled ... Did I tell you at E3 or did I pull you before that?
Graham: I think it was E3, yeah.
Larry: Yeah, I pulled you aside and I told you.
Graham: Yeah it was, do you know what, it was in Phil Spencer's green room at E3.
Larry: Oh, that's right.
Laura: Wow.
Larry: I pulled you in and I said...
Graham: What a moment.
Laura: What a surprise moment.
Larry: I said, "Hey Graham, I can't go to Gamescom this year," because everyone I work closely with, because when I wasn't at Gamescom everyone had exactly the response, "Well, why isn't he here?" I told Phil, obviously I told you and I told the people that were involved with this so that you could have the context, so it wasn't like, "Oh my God, what's wrong?" And of course, I told Laura and Jeff many months ago, so I want to thank you guys for all your support and everybody on Twitter said some nice words. I'm very proud. She's a lovely, beautiful little girl.
Laura: She is the cutest.
Graham: She is amazing.
Larry: Her name is Waverley Emma. So, Waverley Emma Hyrb.
Graham: What is the background on Waverley?
Larry: There really isn't. My wife is an expert at naming and branding, for lack of a better term. She came up with that, turns out there's a little bit of story that was accidental in that. We've all seen the movie the Princess Bride.
Laura: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Graham: Yeah.
Larry: Well apparently in the book, Buttercup and Wesley had a baby and the baby's name is Princess Waverley.
Graham: Oh nice.
Larry: So we didn't, I didn't even know this, I'm sure my wife did because she reads a lot more than I do, but yeah other than that it was just a beautiful name.
Graham: It is.
Larry: We call her Wave.
Graham: Someone on Twitter reminded me that there's a Waverley train station in Edinburgh.
Larry: Yes.
Graham: And they wondered if that was the inspiration.
Larry: That is not.
Graham: It's a nice train station. I believe that's the stop if you're going to watch Hearts Play, Heart of Midlothian, you get off at Waverley and walk down the Gorgie road to the stadium.
Larry: Did you understand any of that Laura? Because, I didn't.
Laura: No.
Larry: Anyway, that's my news, I'm not gonna be that guys who's flooding everybody with photos of my child and I don't want to bother everybody with that.
Graham: Well, please send them to us at least.
Larry: You're very kind.
Graham: Because she's super cute.
Laura: She is super cute.
Larry: So anyway, that's the big news, I've been sitting on that one for more than nine months, we're very excited about that. Back to work, we've got Xbox One X launching later this year. We have this Project Scorpio Edition, which, when did you see that video I did?
Graham: Like the day before? With the gloves?
Larry: With the gloves.
Graham: The gloves are amazing.
Laura: I haven't seen it, what are you talking about?
Larry: So, I did the Project Scorpio unboxing.
Laura: Were you wearing white gloves?
Larry: Yes. So what happened was, we go over, we shot that about a week before because I knew, that was I think the last thing I did before I went off and we had the baby. I went into the lab, I don't remember what lab it was, it was one of the ones on the other side of campus with the big robots and they build hardware and they do all this prototyping.
Laura: Oh cool.
Graham: Nice.
Larry: They had this beautiful table set up and I said, "Hey, I'd love to do it with white gloves." There were like oh and they had this whole collection of different white gloves. I look like mickey mouse.
Laura: What?
Larry: Or I look like Cuphead. Because I wanted to bring it out because when you're showing off new hardware you don't want to get fingerprints or anything, regardless of what it is, always gets fingerprints on it. It apparently created quite a storm when I...
Graham: It did, it was hysterical.
Larry: Because I held them behind then I revealed them and everyone was like, "Bwhat!?"
Graham: Everyone loved the gloves. I'm intrigued by the person who has a collection of white gloves.
Larry: I'll tell you when you go into a hardware lab, they have a lot of very strange things.
Graham: Oh I guess, no, that makes sense.
Larry: So that was really what it was all about. So I was able to be part of the show in my own special little way and thank you for having me there.
Graham: Yes.
Larry: But the Project Scorpio Edition, which now is sold out.
Graham: Yeah.
Larry: Sold out. If you got a chance to pick one up you are gonna be very lucky. You've seen it Laura...
Laura: I have.
Larry: ... with the beautiful green on the front.
Graham: It's gorgeous.
Laura: It's lovely.
Larry: The one thing that's unfortunate, is that the beautiful finish on the front of it doesn't come across well in video or photos.
Graham: That's very true.
Larry: So we did the best we could do, but you gotta really see it to believe it.
Graham: In a way, that's quite nice because when people actually get it and unbox it, they'll get the real effect of that for the first time.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: It's like another little bonus.
Larry: I do want to be very clear is that white gloves not included. You're on your own there. It's the white glove edition.
Graham: There is a line of apparel there for you.
Larry: Is there?
Graham: To be.
Larry: You think my unboxing gloves, oh yeah, I think you're right.
Laura: Major Nelson unboxing gloves.
Larry: Official unboxing gloves.
Laura: There might be an opportunity there.
Graham: We should have some conversations about that.
Larry: Yeah, we'll talk to some folks on that one. There's money to be made there.
Graham: It was genuinely, lovely to have you on the show even though you weren't there in person.
Larry: I watched the show, you had Juliana and...
Graham: Maxie
Larry: Maxie from Germany. She's so great. You guys had a great time.
Graham: It was a lot of fun.
Larry: The set looked good. I was sitting in the hospital watching it.
Graham: Really?
Larry: Yeah I was in the hospital and the nurses were like< "What are you watching?" "Sh, sh, watching Graham. Watching Graham and Maxie."
Graham: You really had more important things to worry about.
Larry: I do, but the show looked great. We had a great show over there. It's always that, Laura you haven't been to Germany yet.
Laura: I have not.
Larry: Oh, you simply must. How was the temperature this year?
Graham: It was nice.
Larry: It was always blazing hot there.
Graham: Do you know, it wasn't really hot, but the weather was really good and it was pleasant. So, it wasn't that horrible sticky, sweaty heat ,for the most part.
Larry: For the most part.
Graham: I mean there was a couple of moments, but it was nice, it was really nice, and I love it, Cologne is such a nice city, it's nice for going for runs and just getting some fresh air.
Larry: You and I, I just remembered, four or five years ago when we walked to the top of the Dame, remember that?
Graham: Yes.
Larry: That was a great time.
Graham: I was reminiscing about that.
Laura: How many stairs.
Graham: And, then we had the nice, I passed the restaurant where we had the nice lunch together.
Larry: Oh with the meat sweats.
Graham: The Schlacta Plater. Do you remember that? I ordered this plate ...
Larry: It was about the size of this table.
Graham: ... of meat. It was humongous. Finished the whole thing.
Laura: You did?
Larry: Yeah, I was proud of him.
Laura: Impressive.
Larry: I don't know how many steps the Dame is, but it's, I just remember it is uniquely European. In that, over here in America, they've always got very clear markings of up and down, this is medieval. Like we're going up and down in the same staircase of which it's maybe two feet wide.
Graham: It was tiny, yeah.
Larry: And you're tinier than I am, I had a difficult time with my American girth.
Graham: Remember it was worse going down wasn't it? Because there's more of a sense going down that if trip, you're gone. You were rattling down that whole spiral all the way, it is so close. It feels like a lot of stairs when you're directly behind someone the whole way up.
Larry: As we talked about at the top of the show,
Jeff: What's all this?
Larry: Joining us in progress
Jeff: Hello.
Larry: Direct from.
Jeff: Hello, hello.
Larry: I started the show Jeff, letting everyone know this is like a good multiplayer game, where you join in progress.
Jeff: Yeah, I love the idea that I flew 2,500 miles to be here for this show
Larry: Yes.
Jeff: And I'm still shown up. It's still not far enough.
Larry: He's here.
Jeff: Hi Graham.
Graham: And speaking of Cologne, Arsenal.
Jeff: Cologne's playing Arsenal like as we speak. Yes.
Graham: What's the score do you know?
Jeff: I haven't looked yet.
Larry: Here we go.
Graham: I think they delayed the kick off
Larry: Here we go Laura.
Jeff: Because they were waiting for me to land.
Laura: Love this.
Graham: There's so many Cologne fans in London for this games.
Jeff: It's crazy, yeah.
Graham: There's video of them, of all these Cologne fans going through the middle of London. There is like a hoard of them. It looks amazing. They're all singing and having a good time.
Jeff: And they're sponsored by my favorite supermarket.
Graham: Oh yeah, that's right.
Jeff: Rewe
Graham: Rewe, I think.
Larry: Oh, I know that supermarket.
Jeff: You're darn right you do. It's the best one in town.
Graham: They engaged Jeff on social media
Jeff: They did actually
Graham: I was well impressed.
Jeff: We had a whole discussion about Rewe. Look, I play favorites with German supermarkets, I know you have to stay about the fray Larry.
Larry: Well anyway, welcome back Jeff. You were in New York, you were doing some Xbox One X work in New York right?
Jeff: Yeah.
Larry: Can you talk about that at all?
Jeff: I can, we've been showing Xbox One X. I know you're looking at my hair, it's a mess, I've been up since four in the morning.
Graham: I absolutely wasn't, don't do that to yourself. At least you've got hair.
Jeff: Well, for now. I've been showing Xbox One X and tons of games in 4K, stuff from Forza 7, which makes me very glad I bought a 4K TV, to games that are going to be enhanced for Xbox One X like Gears of War 4, Halo Wars 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Spent a lot of time with Cuphead.
Larry: We were just talking about our PAX panel.
Jeff: Actually, I got to see Craig Duncan and spend the day with him yesterday and play...
Larry: He's in new york?
Jeff: He came in just for that and he's already back in Blighty, I believe, and spent, I probably played Sea of Thieves for about three or four hours.
Larry: Now what's funny is I always have this Sea of Thieves, this affinity for Sea of Thieves, for a lot of reasons. It's a fun game, I love Rare, but I remember a long time ago, Jeff and I went up to the top floor with Craig and we played as wire frames, really early version of it.
Jeff: Yeah.
Laura: Did you go to Rare to do that?
Larry: No, no, we did it here.
Graham: Oh nice.
Jeff: Yeah, that's one of those things where Larry lifted up the velvet rope and I was like, but it was so early, it was amazing, but even then you could feel they had something good there. Forget about the visuals and all that.
Larry: The gameplay fun
Jeff: And it was.
Larry: What they didn't have though, at that point was what we've seen already, which is the incredible water.
Jeff: You're gonna bring up the water today?
Larry: I'm sorry, I'm obsessed with this water.
Jeff: It is, so too, are the PUBG developers and I played a bunch of that too.
Larry: Oh boy, so you've been busy. So all that news is gonna come out in the future right?
Jeff: Yeah, in another week or so you'll start to read, we've got one more stop on this media tour. Then you'll start to see all the stories that were written about it.
Graham: What was the buzz? What can you say about what people we saying? What was the reaction?
Jeff: I will say that, people really enjoyed getting ahold of Cuphead, that was I think the only stop on this tour that we had, I'm sorry, Sea of Thieves. Cuphead everyone was playing. It's beautiful.
Larry: Coming out at the end of the month
Jeff: Cannot wait, very soon will be playing that one. Forza, of course, looks beautiful and people definitely gravitated towards PUBG. I think there might be something to that game, kids, you heard it here first.
Graham: It's gonna take off, that one, isn't it?
Jeff: Only 10 million sold in six months or whatever it is.
Larry: I played it, I think we haven't talked about it. Have you played it Graham?
Graham: Yeah, I played it a few times, but I bought my own copy ...
Larry: So did I
Graham: ... like two days ago or something.
Larry: Laura, have you played at all?
Laura: I have not played it yet.
Larry: So I played it and I got to number 3.
Graham: Nice.
Jeff: That's pretty darn good.
Laura: So, what does that mean?
Larry: Jeff I'll let you tell.
Jeff: It's a battle royale type of game, there's are starting to become, sort of like an off shoot of like, sorta like how Counter Strike was initially an off shoot of, I can't remember at this point.
Graham: Half Life?
Jeff: I can't remember.
Graham: Half Life, initially?
Jeff: Might have been, yeah
Larry: The internet will correct you, don't worry about it.
Jeff: It's one of these games that distills the fun elements of an open world MMO shooter. It's, basically, very much like the Hunger Games. 100 people are dropped in, literally, you jump out of a plane over a map and you say, "Alright, this is where I want to go" and you hope that everyone else doesn't do it. You have nothing, you just have the clothes on your back and you start looting through houses and buildings and hopefully, you find something good. Slowly you are hemmed into a smaller and smaller area and there's only one survivor and you get the chicken dinner.
Larry: And I was number three.
Laura: Oh that's neat, so you were the third remaining whatever.
Larry: Third remaining, and it tells you
Jeff: Quite good.
Larry: It was quite good, but I also must say, I was running like crazy. I don't think I got one.
Laura: Were you hiding?
Larry: Oh, you have no idea, you have no idea.
Graham: It's tactical though isn't it?
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: Just stay away from all the action and you can get down there. The thing that nobody warned me about, is it's terrifying.
Jeff: Oh yeah, very intense.
Graham: One of the scariest games I've ever played, because you hit the ground and you know straight away if anyone's near you they're gunning for you. And if you can't find some decent armor or weapons.
Larry: You're in trouble.
Graham: And there's those moments in there where you're like rooting through a house to find some stuff and you hear a gunshot outside.
Jeff: You just freeze
Graham: Oh my god! It's terrifying.
Jeff: And then of course you just dump right into the next one, which is good.
Larry: Lot of fun. Coming to Xbox One later this year.
Jeff: Yeah, I think we said later this year. I don't think we've said anything else besides that. I can't wait. I just cannot wait. I think it's gonna be fun.
Graham: That was one of my best memories from Gamescom, again. We had Brendan Green on the show it's self, delivering that news for the first time. He is such a nice bloke.
Larry: Oh, he is.
Jeff: Nice guy, too.
Graham: We meet him the other day. He's so relaxed. He's in the midst of this absolutely mad travel schedule. If you follow him on Twitter everyday he's ... He lives in Korea and then he's in Brazil and then he's in the U.S. and then he's in Ireland. It's just non-stop. But he was so chill and so humble about the whole thing. Seems so excited about where it's all going.
Jeff: His life's changed just a bit in the last year.
Graham: 100%.
Laura: I bet so.
Larry: Well, he's got a lot going on. We'll talk about that. Do you want to, maybe, get yourself settled in, Jeff, a little bit?
Jeff: Sure, I'll do that.
Larry: Crack your laptop open.
Jeff: Oh, alright. Oh, now you're gonna put me to work.
Larry: Well, we're gonna go through a little bit of news. It's been a month since we've been on, we've gotten together. Laura's been traveling. I have a plus one in my life. Graham has moved over. What's your big news?
Jeff: I got a car.
Graham: Nice!
Larry: We'll talk about that later. I did, too!
Laura: That's great.
Jeff: First time I bought a new car, since, six months after I graduated college. So it's been awhile.
Larry: Great.
Jeff: A very long while.
Larry: We'll talk about that in ...
Graham: Is it your new car that has the biohazard filter on the dash?
Laura: Yeah, yes.
Jeff: Oh, that's you.
Graham: I saw that and I was like, "Oh my God, that's end of days stuff, isn't it?"
Larry: I prepare.
Laura: And you used it.
Larry: A lot. When the ... we'll talk about that later in the show.
We got a lot of news going on this week. I don't even know what to say. Destiny 2.
Laura: Yes.
Jeff: Yeah. What's your light level? Quick!
Graham: Listen, I'm just gonna say straight away, I've been moving my whole family ...
Larry: You're off the hook.
Jeff: Hardly, an excuse.
Graham: I have been completely off the map.
Larry: You're off the hook.
Graham: I did play a bit of Civilization 6 as the house was getting packed up.
Larry: Oh, that's a good one.
Graham: There were these ...
Jeff: One more move! One more move!
Graham: Well, it's amazing because all these guys turned up to pack our house up.
Laura: Awesome.
Graham: I felt like, "I've got absolutely nothing to do here." So I just booted up Civilization 6 and played, seriously, about seven hours straight.
Jeff: I think that the minimum recommended session.
Larry: And then you looked up and your house is empty.
Graham: Just like these removal guys like tutting at me. Trying to get me to make them cups of tea.
Larry: Nah, I moved a couple of times. Laura, you've moved too. You stay out of their way. Do not get in the way of the professionals man. They know what they're doing and where to go.
Laura: Exactly.
Graham: Totally.
Larry: Yeah, Destiny 2. Laura, have you had a chance to check it out?
Laura: I have had a chance to play.
Larry: Yeah, and?
Laura: Yes.
Larry: What class you play?
Laura: So, I am a warlock.
Larry: I knew it.
Laura: Can you guess what race? Is it race?
Larry: No. I don't know.
Laura: The Awokan.
Larry: Okay.
Jeff: The blue ones?
Laura: Yes, the blue ones.
Larry: That's a good call.
Laura: Yeah, I know. They're really cool. I've only played about two hours of it. I haven't had a chance too much to delve into it.
Larry: What level are you?
Laura: Two.
Larry: Okay. Yeah, I think I'm level 15. I'm getting towards the end of it.
Jeff: Are you getting ...
Larry: I've been waiting for you.
Jeff: Well, I've been gone.
Larry: I know, I know.
Jeff: We've been sneaking in.
Larry: I know.
Jeff: When we were in San Francisco we had an hour break for lunch and immediately just booted up Destiny and started falling into the public events.
Larry: Right.
Jeff: You can make them into a legendary public event. It's the earliest I've ever gotten an exotic.
Larry: Good for you.
Jeff: I know, I'm pretty happy about it.
Laura: Awesome.
Jeff: But I got a lot more work to do.
Larry: Destiny 2 is out on Xbox One X. Check it out or Xbox One. I may or may not be playing on Xbox one X. I can't say.
Graham: What a tease.
Larry: I can't say that.
We've got a lot of other news. Jeff, do you have the news open there? Do you want to kinda ...
Jeff: Yeah, I'm getting there. Just announced, yeah, we had this on tour. We're talking a lot about Xbox One X. If you're listening to this podcast, you might be in the market for it. But, Xbox One S is a huge part of what we do and of course, every game you can plan on X you can play on S. A new bundle is out for that and that is Forza Horizon 3 Hot Wheels Bundle.
Larry: Woot!
Jeff: You've played the Hot Wheels expansion for Forza Horizon 3?
Larry: Oh, yes.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Jeff: I think it's just amazing.
Graham: So much fun.
Larry: It's the game I didn't know I wanted.
Jeff: Exactly.
Laura: It's a brilliant idea.
Jeff: And the execution's so good. The plastic tracks look so shiny. It's beautiful. I've been playing a ton of it.
Graham: For me, I've got two boys. Finley, the game that I will always remember with Finley is Lego Marvel Superhero's.
Larry: Yes, I remember you playing that.
Graham: That's the first game we ever played together. It's Forza Horizon 3 Hot Wheels with Frazier, our three-year-old. Because it's the first time he saw a game. He loves Hot Wheels and he's got a mad Hot Wheels collection. He saw that and he was like, "OH". We were actually playing it with co-pilot.
Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Graham: Which is the first time I'd properly used co-pilot to play a game.
Larry: It's a great feature.
Graham: He was on throttle, just full throttle all the time.
Laura: He knows how to play it.
Graham: That's how I taught him. That's how he's gonna live his life. I was doing the steering. It was amazing because we weren't doing any races or anything. We were just tooling around the tracks, hitting the boosts, and everything. We had such good times. Very special. That's a nice bundle.
Larry: It is a great bundle. Some of the Microsoft Stores run a get the bundle and get a game of your choice for $279 U.S.
Laura: Oh! Free games.
Graham: That'd be good.
Larry: Yeah, we always like that. So I know people love free games. What's wrong with that?
Graham: Do you know, when I was talking about rule earlier.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: If you want an indication of the kind of things that I actually do in my day-to-day, if you look on the Xbox Facebook and Twitter page today, we did this really cool image of the bundle box shot and actually built Hot Wheels tracks around it and we got some Hot Wheels cars in there and took photographs of it.
Larry: Let me be clear.
Laura: Did you really build them?
Graham: I was very heavily involved.
Larry: In case you haven't connected the dots, Graham has moved to the U.S. and is being paid to build Hot Wheels tracks.
Graham: It's my dream job.
Larry: Did I capture that correctly?
Graham: That's pretty much it.
Larry: Okay. You know what? God bless you.
Graham: I did it all for you.
Larry: It's a great gig if you can get it.
What else you got there, Jeffrey?
Jeff: This is something for those of you who are in the preview program. You're getting early looks at the Xbox One's system software and you may have noticed that we're making some improvements to game DVR. I think some of the folks in those early alpha rings are starting to see that as part of the insider program.
Larry: Yeah, I've been using it.
Jeff: Previously, game DVR was limited to 720p 30 frames a second, but now we're bumping it up to 1080.
Laura: Awesome.
Larry: More P's
Jeff: Yes, More P's is always good.
Larry: By the way, we're also allowing in the alpha ring, to let the people store their clips on an external drive.
Jeff: Yes.
Laura: Oh, very good.
Jeff: Basically, use your Xbox as a [crosstalk 00:30:24]
Larry: And there's some other cool features that are coming soon that I can't really talk about. Oh, there's the headline.
Jeff: Larry, you walked right into that one.
Larry: Darn it!
Jeff: That's the one I was telling you about.
Larry: Oh yes, anyway. We'll talk about that later.
Jeff: I'm still getting use to my light mode.
Larry: I know.
Jeff: My light ...
Laura: Your theme?
Jeff: Theme. Thank you very much.
Graham: It's a nice touch.
Jeff: I didn't mean it to sound so trite, but it really does.
This is something I was very excited ... We were talking about battle royales and while we're waiting for PUBG to come out, Fortnight has announced a battle royale mode coming. It's coming September 26, so in not even two weeks, to Xbox One. I have a friend who had tried it out. I guess there's some test servers or something like that. It's pretty darn cool.
Laura: Awesome.
Jeff: Fortnight has some great mechanics. As you know, it's a game that is also in a preview mode right now, but the main mode is building and then surviving sieges of zombies. This is a very different look with, I believe, 100 players on one giant map. I'm looking forward to getting into that one.
Larry: Yes.
Jeff: To brush up for PUBG.
Graham: Do you think it's the next big genre? Is there gonna be a flurry of battle royales?
Jeff: We're seeing quite a bit ... I think there will be. The Calling, I believe, was actually the first one to hit Xbox One. That's in preview program right now, in game preview. I think that came out in April? Or May?
Larry: Yup.
Jeff: That one is a little bit smaller. I think there's maybe 24 people and it's a little more melee based, but I think you're gonna start to see ... I mean this is just my speculation. When there's a trend and people are all over it. Everyone's paying attention right now.
Graham: Yeah. It's a great mechanic though isn't it? I guess it got big in movies and stuff, what five, ten-years-ago? The whole battle royale.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: Well, and actually there was Battle Royale, the Japanese movie, which I watched as a teenager.
Larry: Did you?
Graham: Yeah, that was like 20 ... that was a long time ago.
Jeff: At the little cinema in Scotland? In Aberdeen?
Graham: No, I got it ... you know, it was a cult classic. I got it on VHS.
Larry: Old school.
Graham: Yeah, remember those?
Larry: I do, with the tracking and the whatever that was.
Graham: How far we've come. But yeah, it's a good genre for gaming isn't it. And you made the point earlier about Battlegrounds that dip in, dip out.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: If you're out of the game, straight back into.
Larry: A lot of other folks are tapping into that. For instance, Grand Theft Auto has a new mode which is very battle royale
Graham: Yes.
Laura: Yes.
Larry: So you've got the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto which is extraordinary.
Graham: Yeah.
Larry: And then this layered on top of it.
What else you got there Jeffrey?
Jeff: Yeah, a couple of demos available now. When all the sports games come out, Madden of course has been out for a little bit.
Larry: By the way.
Jeff: Yeah, you've got ... We need to play.
Larry: Jeff and I last year, we played it for the past couple years. It's a Patriots vs Eagles.
Laura: Oh right.
Larry: And I've been asking him for two weeks.
Laura: It's an annual game.
Jeff: We could probably play on Saturday. I think it'll be good. If I hit the road again, you can just toss the ball up to Gronk over and over and over again.
Larry: Hail Mary. Hail Marry, Hail Mary.
Laura: Hey, if it works.
Jeff: It did work and it wasn't really fun to play against that.
Larry: I promise I'll only do those once a ...
Jeff: Well, I have some receivers this year. Unlike the past couple, so get ready for some Alshon Jeffrey, great name.
There's an NBA 2K18 demo called the Prelude. They did this last year as well, where you get to play the story mode, the create a character-you can do that. You can sort of get a jump before NBA 2K18 comes out. I believe you can pre-order it. You should probably, by the time you hear this, be able to play it. But the release date for everyone else will be on the 19, so next week.
FIFA 18 also has a demo that is out right now. That maybe ... you're nodding a little more vigorously for that one Graham then you were for NBA.
Graham: Proper football.
Jeff: That one, despite having Ronaldo on the cover, who I'm just not a huge fan of, I'm still excited for this.
Larry: Jeff Rubenstein on Twitter if you have any issues, you can take that up with him there.
Graham: What's wrong with Ronaldo?
Jeff: Somehow, I think the world's richest football player will somehow, first off he played for Man U, bit of a showboat.
Graham: Oh come on.
Jeff: If I had to choose between Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi. It's Messi, all day long. All day long
Laura: It's Messi.
Graham: Ancient history.
Larry: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back to me. Back to property of gaming.
Jeff: I don't forget these things. Of course, anyway. The thing about FIFA 18, if you get the Ronaldo Edition, and it really hurts me to say that ...
Larry: I'm sorry, what's the edition?
Jeff: Yeah. You get to play it earlier. So, I'm going to be getting the Ronaldo Edition. I believe, you get to play it on the 26th if you get the Ronaldo Edition and of course, EA Access will give you ten hours of play before that. We'll be talking about that, I believe, next week.
Larry: Right. And you have EA Access right?
Jeff: Of course, I have EA Access.
Larry: Of course, why wouldn't you?
Graham: And that starts the 21st right?
Jeff: I believe it's the 21st. Something around that time.
Graham: Xbox is the first place you can play FIFA 18?
Larry: Of course.
Jeff: And the only place you really want to. Where else are you gonna play against me?
Graham: Indeed. I can't wait to see Aberdeen are getting right this year. Should be awesome.
Jeff: Throw Ronaldo right out. They're gonna miss you.
Larry: Alright, alright.
Jeff: I think we need to start a new podcast. I'm just gonna say that. We might wanna do that.
Graham: Larry's desperately trying to cut us off.
Jeff: Just to complete the sports, which is really just NHL 18 the Young Stars Edition ...
Larry: 3v3.
Jeff: ... is now out. Yeah.
Larry: 3v3 mode.
Jeff: I know. I was always a big ...
Larry: I played that.
Jeff: Did you?
Larry: Yeah, I had a good time with that. I was actually pretty good with it.
Jeff: Yeah?
Graham: That'd be fun.
Jeff: I like the one button pass, one to shoot.
Graham: Has it still got Flicks?
Larry: It feels good. I wanna play as my Hartford Whalers, but that's a whole other conversation.
Jeff: Can you make Gretzky's head bleed?
Larry: I don't know.
Jeff: That's a deep cut right there.
Graham: I saw a car registration plate with Hartford Whalers on it. Just like yesterday.
Jeff: Is it yours?
Graham: What's the story there?
Larry: I don't know. Where was that? Obviously here.
Graham: Here, yeah, yeah. On my drive to work.
Larry: Wow. I don't know. Hartford Whalers is ...
Graham: Are they an old ...
Larry: ... they're a defunct ... They used to be the New England Whalers, I think it was Hartford and then New England. It was a hockey team in Connecticut. Then Connecticut's economy basically tanked they moved. They rebranded the team and moved them to North Carolina and became the Hurricanes.
Graham: Alright.
Larry: That was '96, '95. Somewhere in there.
Jeff: Yeah, somewhere in that.
Larry: Yeah, right about that time. That's when I lived there.
Jeff: I think they won a Stanley Cup, didn't they?
Larry: I'm sure they did once.
Jeff: I feel like they did once. Anyway, that shoulda been yours.
Graham: Well, you've got a soulmate out there somewhere locally.
Larry: I think it may be KP from 343 because he's from Connecticut as well. Anyway.
Jeff: You still have you Burger King Whaler if that's what the fish sandwich is still called.
Larry: Is it?
Jeff: It was, it was called the Whaler at one point.
Larry: Wow! Okay.
Graham: Made from real whales.
Larry: I'm really hungry. I have not eaten in six ... I had a cheese plate, like, seven hours ago.
Jeff: Seven bags of peanuts on the air, did you?
Laura: Oh no!
Jeff: They don't even give you the peanuts any more.
Larry: I know.
Jeff: Larry, don't get me started on that.
Larry: Everyone is allergic. Don't get me going on that either.
Jeff: Go on Delta they give you peanuts.
Larry: I am a loyal Alaskan. I know. Well, then you'll have to do without the peanuts.
Jeff: I'll have to do without the peanuts or buy them before I get on.
Anyway, a lot of Indie games also coming out this time. Just a ton actually. One I wanted to call out because a big fan of the developer, which is Clay Entertainment. Don't Starve Together console edition is now available. If you don't want to starve alone.
Graham: I was watching that today actually.
Jeff: Oh, were you?
Graham: Yeah.
Jeff: Well, there you go.
Graham: Glen Gregory was playing it. It looks great.
Larry: Well, if you want to catch up on all the news you just swing by my blog at MajorNelson.com. Will have all the easily, browsable. You can follow me on Twitter @MajorNelson and we'll let you know what's going on. The game deals, the bundles. The pictures may not be as great as Graham's but I'll do what I can.
Graham: It's a high bar to set.
Larry: It is, it is.
You know what I did this week? Shot a Taco Bell video.
Graham: I heard.
Jeff: I saw the Snaps with a guy who I'm a huge fan of, Legion Jordan Patton.
Larry: Jordan was great.
Jeff: One of the funniest guys I have ever met.
Larry: I don't want to say too much. You'll probably see it next week, but we had a good time with it. It was just to talk about the ...
Jeff: Five buck box.
Larry: The $5 box. Have you gotten a $5 box Graham?
Graham: No, I was bummed out because I was gonna come to the shoot yesterday and then realized I had meetings I couldn't skip out of.
Larry: You had real work to do.
Graham: I assumed that someone would bring me a $5 box back.
Larry: We ate them all.
Graham: Exactly.
Larry: Talk to Aaron Greenburg. He was doing that.
Laura: [crosstalk 00:38:17]
Jeff: It's got a Doritos Locos Taco in it and so it has my seal of approval.
Laura: Did you send me Snaps?
Larry: Did I send you Snaps? I may have.
Laura: I don't have any Snaps from you. I'm sad.
Larry: Oh, I gotta tell you, I tend to be a little more active on Instagram than Snapchat. Instagram's UI is a little easier for me to.
Jeff: Better engagement.
Larry: Yeah. Follow me on Instagram if you will. That's probably the best.
Jeff: I heard the Quesarito was good, too. I would kill for a Quesarito right now.
Graham: Calm down.
Larry: Anyway, we shot a bunch there and it was a lot of fun. We'll see that video next week. I'm sorry to digress.
Jeff: That's fine.
Laura: Shall we talk about what we're playing?
Jeff: Oh! How about what we're eating? Just keep rubbing you nose.
Larry: We talked about Destiny 2 a little bit. What are you playing? Do you have your list Laura? I can see your ... Laura's one of the only ones that shows up prepared for this. Jeff doesn't show up sometimes until 20 minutes.
Laura: I know look. Graham has notes.
Larry: Graham does have notes.
Jeff: You could have waited.
Graham: I can't live without notes.
Larry: I could have waited, but ...
Laura: I'm very impressed.
Graham: Thank you.
Jeff: You weren't going to.
Larry: ... I knew that Graham and Laura had other stuff.
Jeff: You run a tight ship Larry. I get it.
Laura: Yeah, he does.
Larry: On time.
Laura: Well, the preparedness, that's check on the box.
Larry: Laura, you brought up what we're playing so why don't you go ahead and indulge.
Laura: So, I can't remember what happened before PAX because that was ages ago. I'm just gonna start with PAX and move forward.
Larry: I'll tell you, if you were to say a year ago, this is what's gonna happen during the month of August and PAX, nobody would believe us.
Laura: Yeah, no right. It's crazy.
I wanted to chat about the games that we saw at PAX cause we didn't get a chance to do that on the show. We were super busy with all the awesome stuff we had to talk about. Nothing about what we'd seen at PAX. I think my favorite thing that I did, I played Sea of Thieves with Larry.
Larry: Oh, we had a great time.
Laura: Yeah, we got a chance to play it together. We had a crew of four who was pitted against two other crews of four.
Larry: Our other two was just a couple of random folks.
Laura: Yeah, they were random people and they were super nice.
Larry: Really nice folks.
Graham: Who sidled into the captain role?
Larry: It was Joe, wasn't it?
Laura: Joe Neate, the producer, was walking us through. Fortunately, they had a guy who would help you if you ever got stuck or explain the controls. If you couldn't figure out the puzzle, he would give you a hint.
Larry: There was a situation where Laura couldn't figure out the puzzle. In fact, I don't think you've seen this Laura, this is the image of us playing with our four. You can see Laura and I on the left side and then ...
Laura: Our two.
Graham: Oh! That's a really good photo.
Larry: Yeah, isn't that a great photo?
Graham: Who did that for you?
Larry: Who did this? This was David, one of the producers.
Laura: Oh right.
Graham: That's really good.
Larry: David Quiden did that.
Jeff: Did you get to experience the new feature that has official sold me on the game, if I wasn't already?
Graham: Sick in a bucket?
Jeff: How did you know?! How did you know? Yes! Buckets 'o puke.
Graham: Yes.
Larry: I don't ... Well, that feature may have been in our game, but we were too busy trying to solve puzzles.
Jeff: Yeah, well.
Laura: I was the driver of the ship or the captain.
Larry: Well, call them the captain.
Laura: Or if you want to be like [crosstalk 00:41:06]
Larry: You did very well.
Laura: Thank you, but I had a great map reader, which was Larry.
Larry: Yes, I was. Well, you and I have decoded many a map in real life and in games.
Laura: Serious, yes.
Larry: It worked out well. It was pretty easy because it was like, "Straight ahead Laura, just straight ahead."
Laura: Keep going. Doing well. But once we got to solving the puzzles ...
Larry: Things unwound.
Laura: ... Things unwound a little bit.
Larry: Which was a little disturbing because ...
Laura: I must say. I will say, I think my compass was broken.
Larry: If you haven't played Sea of Thieves or if you haven't seen any of the 100's of streams that have happened, there's puzzles that you can solve that are in the form of a scroll.
Graham: A riddle isn't it.
Laura: Yeah, riddles.
Larry: You solve the first part of the riddle and then it reveals the second part and third part, forth. So you're kind lead. So Laura ...
Laura: Right and then it leads you to treasure. So, it's essentially a pirate treasure map and you're trying to go under the island to find the treasure.
Larry: One of them was, we had to go to this particular fire ...
Laura: There were multiple things that required the compass. Which is why I think my compass was broken.
Larry: Yes.
Laura: And how it always ... For example,
Graham: Was it like every way you turned it was always pointing the same way for north?
Laura: No, I think it was maybe ten degrees off.
Graham: Oh, okay. Ten degrees is ...
Laura: Because I went due south and found the southern most tip of the island because one of the puzzles was about getting to the southern most beach of the island then doing something, I don't remember what you had to do there. Either play a song or do a dance. I don't remember. But I was there at the southern most, my compass said, "You cannot get more south than this," and you were somewhere else and you're like, "I found it! I found it!"
Larry: That's right.
Laura: That's why I think, my compass was broken.
Larry: And then, to put a fine point on it. At one point in the riddle we had to go to a fire.
Laura: We had to go to the center of the island to a fire ...
Larry: This particular fire pit ...
Laura: ... and take seven paces each.
Larry: Seven paces. I hear Laura, I see her. I see her character get there and she does the seven paces and she starts digging and there's nothing. I'm kinda like, "Uh," with all due respect, based on what I had seen earlier I had little confidence in your compass so I went over and was like, "Let me count this out myself." I went over and I pull out my compass and seven steps, was it east?
Laura: To the east, yeah.
Larry: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, pull out my shovel, first "dink" I hit the chest.
Laura: Ohhh.
Larry: The funny thing with that chest is it was cursed.
Laura: That's right.
Jeff: Oh yeah.
Graham: What?
Larry: Yeah, it was cursed. For those of you who hadn't seen it, you have to carry your chest back to your ship and then eventually take the ship into turn it in.
Laura: The store and sell it back in.
Larry: The chest was cursed and it would cause you to walk as if you were drunk.
Graham: Oh nice.
Larry: We're weaving, me and Laura and our two teammates are handing the chest off weaving all over hither yon. We finally got the chest back, but it was some good loot in that chest.
Laura: We did. We found the treasure after even the broken compass adventure.
Larry: Nice, your broken compass adventure.
Laura: Yes, exactly. We turned it in and we got about $3,000.
Larry: Yeah, it was pretty good. So we had a lot of fun. That was just the first mission that we did.
Laura: That was really fun.
Graham: Walking around drunken kind of takes us back to the sick in a bucket. This is a legitimate feature in the game now.
Jeff: Yes, perhaps the most legitimate feature in the game.
Larry: Could you explain?
Jeff: You come equipped when you spawn in to the game with a mug, a tankard of grog and at any point, you have a moment or two you can take a sip or draft or ...
Larry: This is for the adults only crowd.
Jeff: Yes, 21 or up please. Or a big ole swig and if you clear your mug and you go back downstairs or if you're in a tavern you can refill it and if you have too much to drink you learn a hard lesson. It's now or you're gonna learn it on the streets.
Larry: Now it's interesting because I used the bucket, but I used it for bailing out the ship. So this is a multipurpose tool.
Jeff: Yeah.
Graham: Similar concept really.
Jeff: Yeah, it's a fluid and it's in a vessel.
Graham: When I was talking to Ted Timmons two-weeks-ago I think, we did the game store managers conference over in the U.K. He was talking through the feature and he was saying it's got tactical implications. If you're sick in the bucket you can keep that sick in a bucket, carry it around with you and if you get into combat you can actually throw the bucket or throw the sick from the bucket at an opponent which then blinds them.
Laura: Oh really? Gross.
Jeff: Yeah, it clouds the screen with green slime.
Graham: And therefore you can take off.
Jeff: It's funny, right before you said that I was like, "Wait, I can use this for more than just shenanigans."
Graham: Correct. Tactical implications of sick in a bucket.
Jeff: I like it, yeah.
Laura: Disgusting, but very creative.
Jeff: Larry is plainly disgusted.
Larry: No, no. I did not know that.
Graham: Let's be honest. It's gonna be the only game with a sick in a bucket feature for the foreseeable [crosstalk 00:45:41]
Larry: For a little while, until they add that into PUBG or something.
Graham: And therefore deserves props.
Laura: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Or eating a banana with the peel on. Just straight in.
Graham: Taking a chunk.
Jeff: River had taken the lead and the play was just disgusting.
Larry: Rare put up a Top Ten Things You Don't Know About Sea of Thieves video and I'm just kinda previewing it right now with the sound down. I don't know if this bucket situation is in there. I'll have to find out.
Anyway. So, Laura getting back to you, sorry.
Laura: Another thing that I was sad we didn't get to talk about on the show was I got one of those sweet Sea of Thieves tattoo sleeves.
Jeff: Nice.
Laura: Which is a funny story. I had seen pictures of the Sea of Thieves team in different events with these full sleeve tattoos and I thought for sure that the lead producer, Joe, had actually gotten a sleeve tattoo onto his arm.
Larry: What it is, it's a flesh colored piece of fabric that you slide your arm ... It's a sleeve.
Laura: It's a sleeve.
Larry: And it's got tattoos on it. If you look quickly, you're right it does look really.
Laura: Looks real. For the eagle-eyed people at our panel I was wearing one for the first half.
Larry: I didn't notice that.
Laura: You didn't notice that? And then I took it off when we were standing up to play Cuphead.
Jeff: And then you rode your Harley home.
Laura: I did. That's right. So I got one of those which I was super excited about.
Graham: Nice.
Jeff: So if you see Laura at Bike Week in February in Daytona Beach.
Laura: If you see the tattoo, it's not real.
Graham: They have good swag, Sea of Thieves.
Larry: They do.
Graham: Have you got one of those, one of their notebooks?
Larry: No.
Laura: No.
Graham: They're sort of brown, leather notebook and it's got ...
Laura: Oh, that sounds awesome.
Larry: Is that what you have there?
Graham: It's very nice. No, no I've actually stupidly packed all of my good notebooks and put them in the airfreight so I don't get them for another couple of weeks. That's just a standard one.
Larry: Alright.
Laura: The other game I got to play at PAX was Shadow of War.
Larry: Yeah, we got you over to see Shadow of War.
Graham: Oh nice.
Laura: It was awesome. They let you play for 30 minutes which was really, really fantastic. I don't know if this is just the demo mode or if that's how the game is gonna be, but they put you into an arena and you get to choose what type of mission you could do. There was a new type of mission which was new to Shadow of War which is a siege of a castle.
Larry: Right.
Laura: I got a chance to play that and let me just tell you, it was really hard.
Graham: It's nuts isn't it?
Laura: It's nuts! It's really hard, but of course, that's because I was a low level character. I hadn't unlocked all my awesome powers yet.
Jeff: Did you ride on anything?
Laura: And you get to spawn a warg [crosstalk 00:48:00] but I didn't get a chance to ride on anything else.
Jeff: So I saw a siege that was made a little bit easier because you get to go full Daenerys and ride on a dragon ...
Larry: What?
Jeff: ... and you basically [crosstalk 00:48:14]
Larry: Watch for spoiler! Watch for spoilers!
Jeff: You get to say Dracarys and fry a bunch of Orks and it's awesome.
Graham: It's over the top.
Jeff: It's really, really cool. It looks amazing and it's fun.
Graham: The thing about that fortress assault, I played it at Gamescom. You know when you're playing Shadow of Mordor, obviously, you came up against the war chiefs and your nemesis. You'd have these battles and it was generally against one high level opponent, a war chief or whatever. In those fortress assaults ...
Laura: It's all of them.
Graham: ... you end up with like three of them on you at one time and it just like a chain of you've got to keep those combos going. But you've also got your allies right? So I had some of these amazing new moments that I'd never seen before where I was downed and about to be decapitated and one of my allies stepped in and saved me ...
Laura: Yes! It happened to me! Chopping his head off!
Graham: ... by executing the dude that was about to ... I was like, "Oh my God this is amazing!" And I was back up. They say a little word to you, "Get up on your feet."
Jeff: "Let's go! Get back to action"
Graham: Yeah exactly.
Laura: "You owe me one, I will remember this day."
Graham: It's just amazing. It like this 30 minute action sequence that just keeps going and going and building and building. It was intense. It was great fun.
Laura: Yes.
Larry: When does that game come out?
Jeff: October 10.
Larry: October 10, so we're getting close.
Laura: Exactly.
Graham: I would love an Xbox One S bundle for Shadow of War.
Laura: Oh we will?
Larry: Yes.
Graham: My brain always does a little tick there, Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War.
Laura: They sound just alike.
Graham: 500 gigabyte and one Terabyte editions.
Laura: That was super fun at Pax. I'm very thankful I got a chance to try that out. The lines were so long, but it was definitely worth it.
Larry: Yeah.
Graham: You know, we tip. If anyone's listening and they get the chance to go hands on with the demo, when you start the demo if you go into your inventory or character screen or whatever you've actually got a ton of power ups stored up that you can add to you character.
Larry: That you can activate.
Laura: That woulda helped.
Graham: Yeah, abilities. So you can choose which path you want your character trained for the demo.
Larry: Who knew?
Laura: That would have definitely helped fight war chief after war chief after war chief. It seems like you fight them all in siege.
Larry: We talked about the games that I played and I really don't have much to add here. Graham you played the move into the United States.
Graham: Yeah.
Larry: So achievement unlocked. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Have you been to Wal-Mart yet?
Graham: Not, Wal-Mart. Target several times.
Larry: Okay, maybe we should ...
Graham: We've been in about 78 different supermarkets in the four days we've been here.
Larry: You've got quite a thing.
Graham: And we still haven't bought everything we need.
Larry: Really?
Graham: Every time we go in, something happens.
Jeff: If you're looking for Jaffa Cakes keep looking, but if you find them let me know.
Graham: Okay, well I think I've got a lead on that actually.
Jeff: Do you? What is it?
Larry: What are they talking about?
Laura: I think I've had a Jaffa Cake.
Jeff: You should have. They're delicious.
Larry: A Jaffa what?
Jeff: It's like a cookie but it has a thin layer of orange marmalade and then chocolate on the top. It's delicious, but the thing is, it's actually not that unhealthy for you. It's only about 40 calories.
Larry: What's the origin?
Jeff: England? McVitie's. I'm sure you've seen that band.
Graham: I think they're British, yeah.
Jeff: I can get a lot of that brand here, but I can never find Jaffa Cakes.
Larry: They don't have them down at the QFC in U Village? That really nice grocery store?
Jeff: No, believe me they have, like, everything on that product though. They have canned bread. When does one eat canned bread?
Laura: It's at Wal-Mart.
Graham: Whoa, yeah, look at that.
Jeff: Okay.
Graham: They don't look like official Jaffa Cakes.
Larry: Speaking of Wal-Mart.
Jeff: They look like some import in a store.
Graham: There's a British shop near here apparently.
Laura: Yeah, British Pantry.
Larry: Yeah, there's one down in Redmond.
Graham: I bet they've got them. Jaffa Cakes are pretty...
Jeff: You're not British though.
Graham: Well, what do you mean?
Larry: He's not English.
Graham: I'm Scottish.
Laura: He is, that is British.
Graham: They have Jaffa Cakes in Scotland and well.
Jeff: Do they?
Graham: I'm hoping they've got Item Brew in this British shop.
Jeff: I've never seen it, but maybe.
Graham: What?
Jeff: Well I've never had it.
Larry: Alright.
Jeff: We should bring some in for everyone.
Graham: You know, the debate about Jaffa Cakes though. The ongoing debate is whether its a cake or a biscuit and by biscuit I mean cookie.
Jeff: It has a cake-y sort of ...
Graham: It's softer than a crunchy
Larry: What's that gentleman that always brings us chocolate at PAX East?
Laura: Oh right! The [crosstalk 00:52:16]
Larry: Maybe he should bring some of these over. I can't remember his name, apologies.
Laura: Yes.
Larry: Maybe he should bring some over this next year at PAX East.
Jeff: Oh yeah, he brought the Dairy Milk last year.
Larry: Right. Those were so extraordinary.
Laura: The Dairy Milk was so good. I love Cadbury.
Larry: That's unfortunately, Graham, I have some bad news.
Graham: What?
Larry: The chocolate in the U.S. kinda blows.
Jeff: Unless you like dark chocolate.
Graham: I do like dark chocolate.
Jeff: They have great dark chocolate. Even stuff that's made in town, but the milk chocolate? No where near as good as it is in Europe.
Graham: Because I'd heard that, I brought a couple of big bags of Cabury's for the people I'm sitting next to just to try to endear myself.
Laura: Oh nice.
Jeff: You can also go to Canada. You just drive over the border.
Laura: I'm sitting next to you.
Graham: Well you are now, yeah. They're all gone. Trust me, they got wolfed. I'm not a massive chocolate person.
Larry: Anything else there Laura?
Laura: I have one more funny story I want to share about PAX.
Larry: Please, please.
Laura: We all know I've played Thimbleweed Park and yesterday I talked about on the show how I got stuck. I was just walking down in PAX and looking at all the Indie games and came across the Thimbleweed Park booth and the Indie Mega booth. I saw a bunch of people behind the booth and so I thought I might say hello and introduce myself. I walk up to the booth and there was a man standing there. An older gentleman. He looked kinda familiar, but I was like, "Hmm, okay." I said, "Hello, do you develop or work for Thimbleweed Park?" And he's like, "Why yes I do. I am the sole developer." And I was like, "Oh my gosh! Are you Ron?"
Larry: Ron Gilbert.
Laura: He's like, "Yes, I am." I'm like, "Hi, I'm Laura."
Larry: Fangirl.
Laura: "Hi, um. Great game."
Graham: Just for the benefit of the listeners, Laura is actually going red.
Larry: You never do that.
Laura: I was not prepared to have the developer at PAX at his merch booth.
Graham: That's amazing.
Larry: Before you get started, that's a classic PAX experience. That happens all the time at PAX, that's the beauty of it. So, go ahead.
Laura: So we were chatting about the game and I eventually said, "I love your game, but I'm stuck. Do you have any advice for how to get me unstuck?" He said, "Did you know there's a helpline in the game?"
Graham: Seriously?
Larry: What?
Laura: And I said, "No."
Graham: Within the game?
Laura: Yes.
Graham: Oh my God.
Laura: He said, "There are payphones throughout the city." And I said, "Yes, I've seen the payphones. I've tried to dial some numbers and nothing happens." He said, "But if you look in the city there are fliers on walls, in different places that will tell you about the helpline and you can go to the phone in the game and dial the helpline."
Graham: That's awesome.
Larry: Did you do it?
Laura: I haven't done it yet, but it's on my list!
Larry: Oh, okay.
Graham: Do we need to clarify that for some of your younger listeners maybe?
Larry: Sure!
Jeff: They used to have that back in the day.
Graham: That's what I'm saying though.
Jeff: I remember calling the Nintendo ...
Larry: The Nintendo, their Power Line.
Jeff: ... I want to say it was 1-800-422-2602 because we dialed that a lot.
Larry: The funny story is, to bring it around, back in the day before there was the internet when we were young wee lads as you like to say Graham, we would get stuck and there would be no place to go to find out what to do. So, you'd be able to call this 800 or sometimes it was a 900 number and God forbid you misdialed the 900 number, that a whole other conversation. You would call up and you would get people that would help you through or you could go down to the local store.
Here's what's interesting. We talked about the Nintendo line, Ryan who works with us on video, you guys all know Ryan, TritanTrue on Xbox Live. He used to work there.
Graham: Yeah, cause it was near here wasn't it?
Larry: He used to be the guy at the other end with a binder of tips on how to get you through.
Laura: No way.
Larry: Ask him the story sometime.
Graham: There is actually, last year, someone sent me a link to a video. I think originally the video was on a cover mounted VHS on a video games magazine from the '90s and it was like a behind the scenes look at the Nintendo Power Line office. Which I believe was right around here.
Larry: Right, it was right around the corner. It was about a mile away.
Graham: It is amazing. If you can find it on YouTube it's so funny. Cause it's like, "These guys are video game experts." It's got footage of someone picking up the phone.
Laura: That's funny.
Larry: So getting back to your thing Laura. You saw, by did you ever call into an 800 number?
Laura: No, I never did call the number.
Larry: You know why? It's because you never got stuck, that's why.
Graham: They were expensive as well, weren't they?
Larry: That's what I'm saying.
Laura: They charged you?
Larry: That's why they were 900 numbers. They would be fifty cents a minute.
Laura: Oh.
Larry: Misdialed and it could be $4 a minute. Trust me.
Graham: I hope that woulda been a quick question.
Laura: Oh, my goodness. I would not have been allowed.
Larry: Exactly.
Laura: So a tip, if you're stuck in Thimbleweed Park. Look for the flyers.
Larry: I need you to report back. Please, I need you to go dial the number and let us know what the number is too.
Laura: Yes, I will let you know what the number is. You dial it in game and apparently there's a 1980's pre ... to help you
Larry: Voice, "Press 1 if you're stuck. Press 2 to place an order."
Laura: I thought that was brilliant. So you heard it directly from a game developer.
Larry: From Ron. I should have asked him that when we interviewed him a few months ago.
Graham: Did you get a photo with him?
Laura: No. That was bit awkward.
Larry: Is there anything else you guys want to talk about? Anything else about what we're playing? Because we're approaching about 60 minutes now. It's kinda flown by. We're kinda getting back in the saddle here. We got a busy, busy time coming up in the next few months. We've got launch of the Xbox One X coming up in November. We have an unbelievable amount of games being launched. I'm going to be traveling to New York and Los Angeles and all points in between as I'm sure you will as well Jeffrey.
Jeff: Oh yeah. Starting Sunday.
Larry: I don't know if you have anything else you want to talk about before we get into the gadget section. We're all chomping at the bit about our gadgets.
Graham: The one thing I did download and haven't really had a chance to play yet, but want to see if you's had, was the Mario and Rabids for the Switch.
Jeff: Oh, I need to get that! That's very much up my alley.
Larry: I have not. I do need. I haven't had the chance. Everyone says it's great.
Graham: It passed me by. I didn't hear much of the buzz or the hype about it through E3 and everything. Then I realized when it launched that it's sort of like XCOM.
Jeff: Exactly.
Graham: So, I was like, "I'll have to get that then." So I can't wait to try it out.
Jeff: Mario keeps his shirt on in that one, I'm told.
Larry: Did you see that?
Jeff: I saw it!
Larry: What do you make of that? How did that make you feel?
Jeff: Laura do you want to see a chest-less Mario?
Laura: I don't. No thank you.
Larry: That's what I thought.
Jeff: I did play one unusual game that I was surprised even existed. There's a lot of games, for whatever reason, that have come out in the last two months with the acronym POE. There's been Path of Exile, there's been Pillars of Eternity. I want to say there were two or three. One of them I saw, I was just looking at the list of things coming out and it said Pillars of the Earth. And I'm like, "I think I've read a book called Pillars of the Earth."
Larry: POE means something different to me.
Jeff: Oh does it?
Larry: Yeah, Prison of Elders. Power over Ethernet. I use that in my house to wire up some cameras.
Jeff: Alright, that would have been the ultimate segue if you coulda just held it in, into the gadget section. Anyway, this is book from like 25-years-ago. It's huge. It's the biggest book I've ever read. If you're really into the politics of 11th Century English Monarchy and ...
Graham: Tell me more.
Jeff: ... and the priesthood, that's right, and architecture. Oh my God, the architecture. That is this book. It's actually a pretty good book.
Graham: I think they made that into a TV mini-series about it back in the day.
Jeff: They turned it into a game! Yeah, with Rufus Sewell. Let me guess, he must be the bad guy.
Graham: Rufus? I love him.
Jeff: But he's always the bad guy.
Graham: Yeah, but he's so good at it, isn't he?
Jeff: I think he was in it.
Larry: For those of you who don't recognize the name, he is from, I'm sorry, I'm blanking.
Graham: Man in the High Castle.
Larry: Man in the High Castle.
Graham: He's Obergruppenführer.
Larry: Yeah, thank you.
Graham: No worries.
Larry: Well done.
Graham: He's so good.
Larry: Yeah, he's excellent.
Jeff: Anyway, they turned that into a game that's very similar ... Like a Telltale type of story retelling. It's a little bit different, but it was, yeah, Rufus Sewell. And he's not the bad guy, spoiler alert, sorry about that. Donald Sutherland.
Larry: Nice. Also a good bad guy.
Jeff: That's a game I never thought I'd be playing. You do indeed control a monk from the very beginning.
Graham: Oh, excellent.
Jeff: Yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's not for everyone, but if you read the book you might be surprised to know there's a game for it and you might be super into it.
Larry: Okay. Delightful.
Graham: That's very highbrow actually.
Jeff: Now you know what POE is.
Larry: Now you know what POE is, it also stands for power over ethernet which is a way to power your devices with just an ethernet cable assuming it ejects power at the other end. Are you familiar with that Laura?
Laura: I thought it was the other way around where you could plug something with the ethernet into the power and it gets ethernet through the power cables.
Larry: No, power over ethernet is like, I can run an ethernet cable to a device that is POE capable, like a camera so when you mount your cameras up you only have to run one cable and then you inject, you put the ethernet in this end and then it has to inject the power to go through. That's all POE is.
Laura: So what is the e-thing that I described called? I know you have those, too.
Larry: Well, there's a couple different things. There's ethernet over power line which I don't use that any more, but that's something that allows that to happen. Whenever you settle we can talk about networking. I'm the networking nerd.
Graham: Okay. I'll contract you to come in and rig the house up.
Laura: Get the WiFi [crosstalk 01:00:52]
Larry: I've been trying to get to Jeff's house forever, but he won't let me in the front door.
Graham: Can you cut grass?
Jeff: If you can make my internet faster you're welcome to come out.
Larry: Yeah, I know how to do that.
So we're talking about gadgets in this section. You got a new car Jeffrey.
Jeff: I did.
Larry: Welcome.
Jeff: Thank you.
Larry: Welcome to the zero emissions future.
Jeff: That's right.
Laura: Did you get a Tesla?
Jeff: Well, you really took the air out of this one because I didn't. I would love to get a Tesla.
What happened was I ...
Graham: I'm interested Jeff.
Jeff: This would be like if I said, "I got married." "Oh did you get a three carat ring?" "Noooo, this is what I have over here."
I was interested. Prices are coming down and I knew I wanted to get an electric car. My car which is like 10-years-old was starting to give me trouble and it was starting to get to the point where I'm like it's costing me more money to keep this thing going then it does to probably get something new. I know Larry had gotten ...
Larry: I've been electric for three plus years for now.
Jeff: ... You'd been electric for quite some time and you had a great experience. So, I went to go, I was like, "Alright, I'm just gonna start looking in the space." Tesla model 3, it looks amazing. Can't get a hold of one for a least a year and a half or something like that if you're not on the list already.
Laura: I'm on the list.
Jeff: There you go. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Laura: I have a long way to wait.
Larry: I'm on the list too. We'll talk about that later.
Jeff: The car with the most range that is not a $70,000 Tesla right now is the Chevy Bolt. So, I test drove it and I've never had a Chevy. I never thought I was in the Chevy market for whatever reason. I ended up buying it and you know what? It's really good. I Tweeted about it and someone who listens to your show ...
Larry: Yes, this show, right here.
Jeff: ... This show, who maybe listening right now was like, "Thank you for supporting our factory." That meant a lot. I was like, "Wow, that's really cool.
Larry: He works on the assembly line?
Jeff: Yeah.
Laura: Oh wow! That's cool.
Jeff: And I can tell you, it's a great car. I'm really enjoying it. I drove it here. I almost never have to charge the darn thing because you get ton of range and there was a thing where if you're going downhill it recharges. I've charged it once and I've had it for like two weeks already. Definitely a fan. It's got some really cool futuristic features.
Larry: Yeah, it does. It's really nice.
Jeff: I never had camera on my car, even for backing up, but it's got cameras all around it. It has something, if I get to close to other cars because, not that I'd be looking at my phone, that's illegal ...
Larry: It is. It is.
Jeff: ... but it does let you know if you're getting too close to a car should I ever be distracted
Graham: Nice.
Jeff: It actually has car play and all the things.
Larry: It's got everything you'd ever want, except things you don't which is a gasoline engine.
Jeff: It doesn't have that. The first time I filled up, you actually showed me the ropes, how to fill up on campus. $1.46.
Larry: Yeah, we have electric car charging out here on the Microsoft campus which most major companies do now. Jeff was a little nervous. I said, "Eh, back it in, pop it open, pop it in, done."
Jeff: I have a commute that's about ten miles. I don't drive a ton. I take the buses as much as I can. It just seemed like a good fit.
Graham: Nice.
Jeff: I will miss the smell of gasoline.
Larry: What are you gonna have for a car when you move? You had your Mini in the U.K.
Graham: Yeah, yeah. We had a Ford Focus as well. Generally, when people come over from the U.K. and settle here, they buy the biggest, most ridiculously American car they can get. So I'm willing to follow that trend to be honest.
Jeff: Escalade!
Larry: Really?
Graham: The higher car we've got is a Ford Explore.
Larry: Now that's a big vehicle.
Graham: It's nuts, yeah. It's like piloting a cruise liner.
Larry: It's like the Queen Mary.
Graham: My Mini Cooper was like 12-years-old.
Jeff: He did not edit that in ladies and gentlemen. That was not the actual Queen Mary.
Larry: A skill I didn't know you had.
Graham: A bit like what you were saying though. My Mini Cooper was 12-years-old. I loved it, but I had nothing. Where as this thing is humongous and it's got cameras everywhere. It's got, this is how, like, behind the times in cars I am. It's got Bluetooth. Which blows my mind because I'm like, "Oh, I can listen to podcasts from my phone! Oh my God, this is amazing!"
Larry: I do the same thing.
Graham: So, we're having fun with that.
Larry: What podcasts do you listen to?
Jeff: Yeah, besides this one.
Larry: Besides this one, of course.
Graham: It's Scottish football podcasts. No one wants to hear any more about that.
Jeff: That's true.
Graham: But they are good.
Larry: We'll save it for our soccer cast.
Jeff: When you decide on your vehicle, let us know. We'd love to talk about it.
Graham: I will. I think, I'll probably gonna be boring and go with Fords. I mean, I say boring, but they're great cars.
Larry: They're great cars.
Graham: And I did a thing at Gamescom with Henry Ford III.
Larry: Oh I remember when I went out to Detroit. He's a great guy isn't he?
Graham: Yeah, he's so chilled out. He's, like, I guess you would kinda expect someone like him to be, like, really intimidating and, like, you know.
Larry: Well, the interesting part about Henry is, I remember when I met him in Detroit. I was introduced to him as, "This is Henry" and they never said his last name and I never made the connection. And then I realized, Oh my God, his, what is it, his great grandfather is Henry Ford. He's the Henry Ford and you're like, "Wow." But he's such a delightful gentleman.
Graham: And he's, like, head of marketing for Ford Performance
Jeff: Maybe he can give you a bit of a discount on the GT.
Graham: I tried, Jeff, trust me I tried. And I struck out really badly. I was like, "Oh yeah, me and my wife drive a Ford Focus. We absolutely love it. We're moving to America soon. We need to get some new cars."
Jeff: Something a little faster maybe? We don't really care about trunk space so much.
Graham: He was like, "Oh that's nice. Good luck with that."
Laura: Awww
Larry: Anyway Jeffrey, sorry about that.
Jeff: Yeah, anyway I'm enjoying it.
Larry: You're all electric. Good for you.
Jeff: I'm all electric. It's the future. The future is now. There's a lot more while we were just in New York. We had a couple friends that were in town that were working for doing a gig for Kia. Kia just announced, actually a pretty nice looking electric car as well. The Stinger or something like that. It's a pretty cool looking car.
Larry: Well, they've had the Soul for a while.
Jeff: Yeah, but this looks more like the Model 3 almost. Anyway. Cars, Forza soon. Maybe the Bolt will be in it.
Larry: Forza soon.
Jeff: I can probably look that up.
Graham: Can't wait.
Larry: What else we got? Laura?
Laura: I think you should go next.
Larry: I just don't want to follow up to Jeffrey.
Jeff: Well, I didn't want to follow up to you.
Larry: So I also have a new car because as discussed earlier we have a new baby in our life. The funny story is my wife called me at Comic-Con, when I was at Comic-Con in July. She says, "Hey, you have your electric car and it's a little too small so we need to get a bigger one because we have the little one coming in a month." She says, "I found us a car." I'm like, "Oh boy here we go." She says how about we get the Tesla Model X?"
Laura: Sweet car.
Larry: I was like, "Wait, what?" So long story short we got the Model X and that's what ...
Jeff: You have gull wing doors. It drives itself.
Larry: And a falcon wing.
Jeff: Falcon wing is more aggressive than a gull.
Larry: It is the obsidian black with the tan leather interior.
Laura: Nice.
Graham: Classy.
Laura: Have you tried autopilot?
Larry: Pardon me?
Laura: Have you tried autopilot yet?
Larry: I have. In fact, I used it quite a bit and it got angry at me and it shut down.
Laura: What?
Larry: Apparently, so the Tesla has this autopilot where you can go out, but if you're using it and it prompts you to grab the wheel, "Hey, you still alive? You still there?" And if you don't do that fast enough three times it basically shuts down until you pull over to the side of the road and restart the car.
Laura: Oh it shuts down completely.
Larry: Well, no, the car doesn't shut down, just the ability to use autopilot is no longer available.
Laura: I see.
Larry: It's like, "Nope, we really don't trust ya any more so you need to pull over to the side of the road and prove that you're really alive."
Laura: But to be clear, autopilot only works on highways.
Larry: Or even. I use it whenever I can. Anyway, I love my Tesla. I'm having a great time. We'll go for a ride in it if you want.
Graham: I'd love to, yeah.
Larry: It's a big car.
Graham: Always a highlight of my visit here is ...
Larry: It is a big car. I'll tell you that. But, anyway. That's about that. Actually, I hate to do this, but if you're in the Tesla family and if you want in on a Tesla let me know and I'll hook you up, right?
Laura: Yes!
Larry: I'll hook you up with the $1,000 off routine. So send me an email.
Laura: Nice. That's very kind of you.
Larry: They have that referral program.
Laura: Yeah, they do.
Larry: Do you have anything you want to talk about Laura?
Laura: So, I finally got around to using the Roomba.
Larry: Oh that's right! Did you name the Roomba? I don't recall.
Laura: No, he doesn't have a name yet.
Jeff: You should name it after one of those little thieves in Diablo cause you love going into their area.
Laura: Yes! The treasure globins.
Jeff: And it sort of skulks around and steals your dirt.
Larry: Treasure goblin, there you go.
Jeff: The dirt goblin.
Laura: The dirt goblin, pretty good actually. But now, and clearly I'm disappointed nobody game me any good names.
Larry: Okay. So how do you like it? Is it cleaning your ...
Laura: It's significantly improved from a previous version of Roomba that I've had with friends.
Larry: Right.
Laura: Where it seems like the algorithm that those olds Roombas had ...
Larry: Friends? You buy Roombas with friends? What kinda of weird life are you having?
Jeff: There's a whole lot of things you have no idea about, Larry.
Larry: I was gonna say, "Let's unpack that".
Laura: It's my roommates. Don't be like that.
Larry: Okay, I see.
Laura: Those old Roombas they just seem to have the algorithm of, hit a wall, make a random turn, go until you hit a wall ...
Larry: Random turn and then record what you're doing so you don't do that again.
Laura: ... like random. It probably didn't even do that. It probably was just completely random the whole time. But this Roomba, now, understands where it is in the house and tries to create straight lines.
Larry: I see.
Laura: So, you know, when you're really good a vacuuming, which I am not, you can make the carpet look really nice by getting the straight lines.
Graham: Like when you're cutting the grass.
Larry: Yeah.
Laura: Just like when cutting grass, exactly. That's what the Roomba does, now, which is pretty cool because it tries to get straight lines.
Graham: That's pretty cool.
Laura: So, it's really professional looking.
Larry: Okay, fun.
Graham: So, your living room looks like a football pitch.
Jeff: Oh yeah, you gotta do like the checker style.
Larry: The diagonal.
Laura: You know, I don't know if you can program different patterns. That would be really awesome if you could do that.
Graham: That would be cool.
Larry: Fun.
Laura: The other cool thing it does, is that it sends you notifications about it's status. So, you have to have the app on your phone ...
Larry: Is it doing that now?
Jeff: "Thinking of you" Heart.
Larry: LOL
Laura: "Oh, I don't really wanna clean now." "I'm really lonely"
Larry: "I'm feeling dirty."
Graham: Oh hello!
Laura: Thanks for going there Larry.
Jeff: That's not where I was gonna go with that.
Larry: What, it's a Roomba?
Graham: I've never got a message like that.
Laura: The first time I turned it on, hours later I get a notification that says, "Roomba is stuck, go save it."
Larry: Oh no!
Jeff: "Help me!"
Larry: Were you at work?
Laura: Yes.
Larry: So you stopped the meeting. You said, "I've got to go, my Roomba needs me!"
Jeff: "I'm sorry, I got a domestic emergency."
Graham: That would stress me out.
Larry: So what happened?
Jeff: I have to pick up the little one.
Laura: So, I got ...
Larry: Where was it?
Laura: So, we proceeded to go hunting for the Roomba ...
Larry: So, you're in a panic, "Where's my Roomba?"
Laura: Exactly!
Larry: And you can't call it.
Laura: I can't find.
Larry: It can't go, "Beep, beep, beep."
Laura: So, I'm looking all over the house trying to find this Roomba, but of course it's always the last place you look. It was like a five minute search and the bathroom door was closed.
Larry: Yes.
Laura: So, I tried to open the bathroom door and soon as it pressed on me ...
Larry: You felt resistance.
Laura: It was going, "Error 17!" Pushing up against the door.
Jeff: "Leave me alone, Mom!"
Larry: Error 17.
Laura: Error 17.
Jeff: "I'll come out when I'm ready."
Graham: Amazing. That is amazing.
Larry: Oh boy.
Laura: It had gotten itself stuck in the bathroom.
Larry: Who hasn't really?
Jeff: That's fair.
Laura: I felt really bad for the poor Roomba and he was out of battery because he had been trying to get out of this small little bathroom.
Graham: Did it have some candle lit and a glass of wine?
Larry: Was it heaved over the toilet with a bucket of sick!
Jeff: Getting back to the bucket.
Larry: The old dipsy doodle on that one man.
Laura: So, I had to carry it back to it's charger.
Larry: Have you told it, "Don't go in there again"?
Laura: No.
Larry: You gotta put up those little lighthouses.
Laura: Oh that's right! There are lighthouses.
Larry: Right and you can put them up which basically say, "Don't go here".
Laura: Little things that say, "Don't go in there." I can just close the bathroom door.
Larry: That too.
Jeff: That's probably a good low tech solution.
Larry: Low tech, but it'll work. Maybe this is getting to personal, but do you ever have the situation maybe you're doing your business in the bathroom and leave the door ... maybe it bumps the door and wants to come in with you?
Laura: No!
Larry: It has separation anxiety.
Laura: It misses me so much. It has to come and find me now. "I'm here"
Larry: "Error help! Error help!" Oh dear.
Laura: No, but it's a fantastic machine. It cleans really well. It cleans better than normal.
Larry: Just not the bathroom.
Laura: But not the bathroom because we can't let it in there.
Larry: So, that's interesting. Okay. So, Roomba. Which one do you have?
Laura: I can't remember.
Larry: The Snooper?
Laura: It's like a top of the line one.
Larry: It's the one that gets stuck and it doesn't have a name.
Laura: It's the one that get stuck.
Larry: It's a nameless Roomba. That's terrible.
Laura: Poor little guy.
Larry: Now, so, we talked about ... Do you have anything else Laura?
Laura: No, that's it.
Jeff: That's more than enough.
Larry: I was thinking about this earlier this week, is that this is kinda the, getting into, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, the fall. This is, like, the season of the X. We've got Xbox One X coming. Of course, iPhone X or I think they call it iPhone 10. They don't really call it X, but is there any other products I'm missing? We were first to the gate on this one. I'll tell you.
Graham: Yes.
Laura: We were [crosstalk 01:14:14]
Jeff: It's not the Xbox One Ten.
Larry: No, it's the Xbox One X. What do you think of those new phones Jeffrey? Laura and I were having ...
Jeff: I want to see it in person. I think you gotta see it in person to really know. The thing that I want is I want wireless charging. My car has wireless charging built into that.
Larry: Where is the pad?
Jeff: I'll show it to you. Yeah, it's like a little pocket that the phone goes into and ...
Larry: Now you have to upgrade.
Jeff: I feel like, for science, for science, I should probably do that.
Graham: Fine.
Larry: Anyway, we'll see.
Laura: Wireless charging is pretty sweet. It's terrible to try and plug in your phone when it's dark.
Larry: First world problem.
Laura: You know, just set it on the wireless pad and it starts charging. Yup.
Larry: Anyway, we'll see.
Jeff: Is there a Star Wars episode IX? IIX or is it VIII?
Larry: I don't know.
Jeff: I don't really ... The Romans. There's a reason the empire fell and it was the numbers.
Larry: @JeffRubenstein on Twitter.
Jeff: I didn't mean it Justinian!
Graham: The Romans are gonna be so angry with you.
Larry: Oh boy. I think we should probably wrap up, now.
Laura: I think we should.
Larry: The numbers have rolled over we've gone so far. So I don't know how long this show is.
Laura: Uh-oh.
Larry: Anyway, Graham, welcome to the U.S. on behalf of everybody here.
Graham: Thank you.
Larry: Welcome to the U.S. and thank you [crosstalk 01:15:25]
Jeff: Got some tips for you.
Graham: Thanks for that.
Larry: You're welcome to come on the show as frequently or infrequently as you'd like to. Now, he hasn't done so to this point, but on Jeff's behalf, I will invite you to his Saturday morning football event.
Jeff: Oh yeah,
Larry: Cause he goes to the bar ...
Jeff: This is the biggest adjustment, is all of the football, it's a breakfast thing. You put on a pot of coffee ...
Graham: Amazing.
Jeff: ... maybe have a full English occasionally.
Graham: No Scottish?
Jeff: I'm still not sure what black pudding is. I only ate a little bit of it.
Graham: On Saturday morning, super jet lagged like everyone was up at 1:00 a.m. or whatever. I was watching Man St. Liverpool at like 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. But, just really quickly on this one. One of the best, unexpected bonuses about coming here is that, you know I love Aberdeen Football Club right? I can watch every Aberdeen on the Official Aberdeen, like, Internet TV website. Every game in full, live at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Larry: I think you have your whole weekend ahead of you.
Graham: That sold it for me. I was like, "I'm coming to America cause I can watch all the football here."
Larry: It's actually easier to watch here, than it is there.
Graham: I know! It's ridiculous. I mean I can understand why they do it. They've got all these blackouts and everything, but it's gonna be great. I'm gonna be able to watch every single game.
Larry: Yeah America.
Graham: I know. The further I go away from Aberdeen, the more I can watch them. It doesn't make sense.
Laura: That doesn't make sense.
Larry: Yay for licensing.
Alright gang. Laura, thank you for staying. For those of you who have picked up on this, we're at the end of the show, but we didn't do name the game.
Laura: Oh we didn't.
Larry: We didn't because we're just gonna reheat the other one so go back and listen to the last one.
Laura: Okay.
Larry: How about we do that?
Laura: Yeah, we did kinda run out of time.
Larry: Yeah, we ran out of time.
Laura: So much to talk about.
Larry: We had Graham here which we got completely dis ... we'll blame you.
Jeff: You're already getting blamed.
Larry: Sorry.
Jeff: Always blame the Scotsman. That's what you'll learn about the United States.
Graham: Always blame the Scots.
Jeff: Working here has been fun.
Larry: You can find Laura, they can find you on social media.
Laura: You can find me on Twitter @Lauralollipop.
Larry: Graham
Graham: On Twitter @ACBungoes and Instagram as well.
Larry: Yeah, that's right. Look for those beautiful photos. Those highly stylized photos.
You can find me Major Nelson. Of course, Jeff you can find.
Jeff: No, you went first I couldn't say, "Direct all complaints to Major Nelson @JeffRubenstein" Be gentle.
Larry: Alright, gang we'll see you next week when we see you. Thanks for everything. We'll talk to you soon. Buh-bye everybody.
Laura: Buh-bye.
Jeff: Bye.
Larry: Do you want to say good-bye Graham?
Graham: Bye!