609: Xbox One X Launch and Insects

Larry Hyrb: Welcome to the show, everybody. My name is Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. This is show number Xbox One X. We're restarting-
Jeff: We are.
Larry Hyrb: We're doing it all new. We've got here ... Jeff is with us, Laura's with us. Hi, Laura.
Laura: Hello.
Larry Hyrb: We are ready. We're just a few days away ... Well, depending on when you listen to this, either it's a few days away from Xbox One X launch or it's out already.
Jeff: We may be in the future, future, future.
Larry Hyrb: Great to have you guys back, we haven't been back for ... Let me just look, let me just pull it up here and take a look ...
Laura: Pull out the calendar and see how long it's been.
Larry Hyrb: Looks like the last time we were together was, wow, a month ago.
Laura: It's been a long time.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, with my travel, your travel, Jeff's travel-
Jeff: You've aged. You look like a young Moff Tarkin.
Larry Hyrb: Are we gonna do that right now?
Jeff: Yeah
Larry Hyrb: Are we really ... Do you know what he's talking about?
Laura: No, I haven't watched any of the trailers. [crosstalk 00:01:24]
Jeff: Don't watch the trailers, they'll ruin the movie for you!
Larry Hyrb: Don't watch the trailers.
Jeff: Really don't.
Larry Hyrb: There was ... So, I don't know exactly how it started, but I was talking to Gary Whitta, who was the screen ... I think he was the story writer.
Jeff: I think on Rogue One.
Laura: Okay.
Larry Hyrb: On Rogue One. He's done some Walking Dead stuff, and he was asking ... He says, "I need to get an Xbox One X console." I said, "Well, look, I can probably work something out if you write me into the next screenplay in the Star Wars." But I said, "But I have to be a rebel. I'm not gonna be on the dark side." And then it started this whole ... It devolved into this conversation. Somebody posted a picture. I'm sure Jeffrey's pulling it up now-
Jeff: Yes.
Larry Hyrb: Of me as Grand Moff Tarkin.
Laura: Oh, no.
Jeff: So I ended up ... I was down in San Francisco this week, meeting with Greg Miller, the kinda funny crew, along with Albert, and Gary Whitta was there. And so he-
Larry Hyrb: Which is so bizarre.
Jeff: So we started talking about it, he's like, "He really does look like he would be part of the Empire." I couldn't argue.
Laura: That is so funny.
Larry Hyrb: So, anyway, that's-
Laura: Be careful what you wish for, Larry.
Larry Hyrb: I don't know. Yeah, don't watch the trailer, Laura. Don't watch the trailer. You know, I have my tickets and actually, let's ... Can we stop for a moment, just have a serious conversation? ... I'm sure you've probably seen if you follow me on Twitter, Laura, or Jeff, or E, former member of the show, we lost somebody. StepTo, who's a long time member of the show and will always be a member of the show, unfortunately passed away.
Laura: Very sad news.
Larry Hyrb: Last week surprised quite a few people. I mean, we've had him on the show to talk about ... He had some health issues. He was in coma, and he knew he was on borrowed time, unfortunately. Laura and I and E are going to get together in a future show. We're not going to do it today, but we want to make sure we recognize. We're going to get together and talk about him.
Laura: That's right.
Larry Hyrb: You okay with that?
Laura: Yeah, I'm okay with that.
Larry Hyrb: We'll probably do that when we get back, because we have the Xbox One X launch, but we're going to talk about StepTo. We have some great stories. I don't think we've ever told some of these stories before. We'll do that in a future show, but we do miss him. Sad times. Let's take a moment, take a breath and okay. Here we go.
Do a little reset. Hi Jeffrey.
Jeff: Hi.
Laura: Hello.
Jeff: You know, it's hard to follow that u[.
Larry Hyrb: It is. It is but we'll do our best.
Laura: We do miss him a lot.
Larry Hyrb: You know, you're welcome to join us on that show, Jeffrey.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah, I'd love to.
Larry Hyrb: If you've got time. Looks like we've got ... Laura, I'm going to ask you to step out if you would.
Laura: Oh, [crosstalk 00:03:51]
Larry Hyrb: Our guest here. Albert Panelo's joining us, so you're going to go retrieve him. Because we all have special access to the inner sanctum-
Laura: I'll be right back.
Larry Hyrb: But Albert, who's going to join us on the show, does not. You can hear the door opening. Laura's going to go down the hall there and get Albert. You were down in San Francisco with Albert, right Jeff?
Jeff: Yeah, I was. Yeah.
Larry Hyrb: You do the podcast [inaudible 00:04:12] with ...
Jeff: That's when we ... Actually, if anyone fanboyed out over meeting Gary Whitta, it was Albert. At some point I had to go, it was like 6 pm.
Larry Hyrb: Did you tell him about this?
Jeff: He was there when we had the conversation, yeah. At some point, I had to go and they just kept going.
Larry Hyrb: Once you wind Albert up about Star Aars or anything like that, he'll just go.
Jeff: Exactly.
Larry Hyrb: He's on his way in. Laura's out to get him. He's on his way in. We're going to talk about Xbox One X, coming soon or out now, depending upon when you're listening to this.
Jeff: Nobody knows more about the Xbox One X than Albert Panelo.
Larry Hyrb: Well, Albert ... He's one of the few people that's been at Xbox longer than I have.
Jeff: That is ... He'd also be working for the empire.
Larry Hyrb: No, now come on.
Jeff: It's really more about hair color, you know. Also, full credit to you, everyone in the empire ... They seem to hold on ... Outside of Darth Vader, they have a nice head of hair.
Larry Hyrb: And Albert does. Congratulations, we started without you Albert. Have a seat.
Albert Panelo: Are we live right now?
Larry Hyrb: We are, well we're live to tape.
Jeff: I brought some Sour Patch Kids.
Larry Hyrb: We're just ... Thank you Laura for going out and getting Albert.
Laura: You're welcome.
Larry Hyrb: I was just explaining. Apparently you were fanboying out down there in San Francisco?
Albert Panelo: Oh, yeah. What a great day. Did you rat me out?
Jeff: Yeah.
Albert Panelo: What a fun day. What a great group of guys. I had never met the kind of funny crew before.
Larry Hyrb: I haven't either.
Jeff: Get that done.
Albert Panelo: Had a blast, and got to spend some time with Gary, Gary Whitta.
Jeff: So we were just talking about the back and forth we had on Twitter. Did he tell you about that?
Albert Panelo: Uh-uh (negative).
Jeff: Okay, well we'll tell you about it later. We just already went over it. Apparently he thinks I look like a young Tarkin.
Albert Panelo: Well, someone did a little Photoshop job, just to sort of confirm that.
Larry Hyrb: You did see that, okay.
Albert Panelo: I wouldn't say it's looks as much as attitude, really.
Laura: Oh, dear. It's early, the jabs are coming.
Albert Panelo: But Gary's a good dude. The funny story with Gary is that I actually ... He didn't remember but, when I was at EA when I was a young lad, I had actually pitched a bunch of games to him when he was the editor of PC Gamer.
Larry Hyrb: Really?
Albert Panelo: Yeah, and of course it all came back because we sort of knew of each other through mutual friends. I had reminded him, I go, "Yeah, I was the marketing guy for the Jayne's Flight Simulators on PC." He was like, "That was you? That was forever ago." It was fumy to sort of catch up on that.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, it's a small world. We were just setting things up, depending upon ... This'll go out today, and depending on when people listen to this, they're either getting ready for their Xbox One X or they've already got it.
Jeff: They're busy playing.
Larry Hyrb: One of the things we want to talk about, because you and I talked about this earlier in the week, was this really cool ... Can we call it an app, an experience? What are we calling it?
Albert Panelo: That's a great question. I'll call it a demo.
Larry Hyrb: Okay. Demo.
Albert Panelo: Let's call it a demo.
Larry Hyrb: So, have you seen this Laura?
Laura: No.
Larry Hyrb: It's called Insects.
Laura: No.
Larry Hyrb: And this is ... I've got a video that'll got out on Monday but we're kind of doing a little preview here. Shall we?
Albert Panelo: Yeah for sure. Yeah.
Larry Hyrb: This is an experience, a demo that ... Albert actually worked on this, getting it together. Why don't you tell us about it Albert?
Albert Panelo: Yeah, there was this idea. We knew early on that people were going to have a lot of question about HDR and wide color gamut. The biggest challenge that you face is that you can't show it if you can't display it. When people say, "Show me HDR," you need to have an HDR screen and then I can turn it on and off and show you the difference or I can show you wide color gamut. We knew that that was gonna be a big thing that people were gonna both ask, and then we were going to have difficulty demonstrating.
The advanced technology group, that's the group that works in our engineering org who interfaces a lot with our development partners, had built this demo of a ladybug that was authored from the get go with wide color gamut and HDR in mind. It was also authored to run on both an Xbox One S and an Xbox One X. It was a just a tech demo, like "Here's how the code works and heres what your authoring path needs to look like." But it was amazing, because now you have all this power sort of rendering a flower and a lady bug. When we first saw it we thought it was a scene out of Planet Earth. We thought it was a movie.
Larry Hyrb: Or A bug's life.
Laura: To be clear, it wasn't filmed.
Albert Panelo: No, it is all computer generated.
Larry Hyrb: And it's all in engine render.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, it's not a movie.
Larry Hyrb: This is real time.
Albert Panelo: It's real time.
Larry Hyrb: In fact, not only is it real time, but as a result of the fact that it's real time, you can manipulate it.
Albert Panelo: That's right, you can pause it. You can zoom in and out. You can change the color of the ladybug, the color of the flowers, time of day. We said, "Oh my gosh. If we can get this out into people's hands, this would look awesome being displayed on TVs, it'd be an awesome way ..." When your family comes over and you want to show off your new 4K TV, you're not like scrambling for like "What's the piece of content," or like, "Where do I get to that part in the game where it looks really good?" You just turn this thing on and it goes.
We work with our advanced technology team, so I'll give a shout out to [Arthur 00:09:04] and to [James 00:09:04] for really spearheading this on the team, and got something that we can ship. It is gorgeous, it is beautiful, it's unexpected. I think the tech heads are gonna love it, because it's technologically very interesting, but my daughter who is three now always asks if she can watch the ladybug movie. It's just beautiful. It's something you can just run and show to anyone, and it's amazing.
Jeff: Like I said, depending on when you listen to the show, this will be available. It's a free download.
Albert Panelo: It's totally free, and it's small. I think it's only two gigs, so it's a really small download.
Jeff: You'll be able to download it starting when Xbox One X launches on Monday, the [crosstalk 00:09:42]-
Albert Panelo: Yeah, and if you're one of the lucky Taco Bell winners, you've got your console, you'll have it the night before.
Jeff: That's right. Anyway-
Laura: How do you find it?
Jeff: That's a great question.
Albert Panelo: Insects in the store. It's called Insects: An Xbox One X Enhanced Experience.
Jeff: I will put a link out on my Twitter, as well as on my blog, to download it, so people can download it.
Albert Panelo: I think we're gonna host it up on the dash as well, so that when you unbox and get it home, it'll be right there for you.
Jeff: The only time you're gonna want Insects on your Xbox One X, I can assure you.
Larry Hyrb: It's the only time you want bugs.
Albert Panelo: Thank you.
Larry Hyrb: Sorry.
Jeff: I will say this: like I told you, Laura, it's real time. You can toggle things on and off. It's just so interesting to watch the detail. You'll see ... This is the beauty of the technology. It's real time. It's gorgeous. Albert and I were talking, it's like ... Remember back in 1999, we're like, "Oh, this game's gonna look like a POne Xar movie." This looks like a POne Xar movie. It's not a game, but I'm just saying, it looks unbelievable.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah. 100% of the people that have seen this assume that we have done some photography and gone and filmed something and that it's a movie. Then I pause it, and then I change the ladybug's color or something.
Jeff: Real time.
Laura: [crosstalk 00:10:53] camera angle?
Larry Hyrb: A little bit, a little bit. It's all designed to show that it's in real time. You can zoom in and you can sort of manipulate things. It's not a playable thing. I like it. It's kind of it's own experience.
Jeff: Yeah. Then the other thing is, you can actually go in there and there's a setting to split the screen, so you can kind of see [HDR 00:11:16], [SDR 00:11:16] ...
Laura: Basically before and after?
Jeff: Yeah. You can see the side of the screen that's HDR, non HDR, so as it pans over, you'll see the lighting. You can turn wide color [gamut 00:11:23] on and off. You can make it render real time in 4K or 1080P, so you can see super-sampling. You can see the texture differences. There's even some advanced stuff in there for the guys that really get into it. If you want to see what part of the scene is displaying wide color gamut, you can filter it so that you can see the colors that would only be visible because of wide color gamut. There is a lot of really neat technical things you can do.
Albert Panelo: I thought of a sequel we can make for this. It is really cool to see the stuff, but I mean you can only look at ladybugs for so ... Your daughter, she will enjoy it for a while. After she gets out of the ladybug phase, can I suggest the sequel, which would be Empire Major Nelson in 4K. You can change him-
Jeff: It'll be like Rogue One. We CG his face and we can zoom in, put him in different scenes in the movies.
Laura: I hadn't seen that picture [crosstalk 00:12:15]-
Larry Hyrb: Would you prefer a target, a military target? Anyway.
Jeff: I thought I smelled your foul stench when I was brought on board.
Laura: Yes, I was just about to say that.
Albert Panelo: I don't know how we got into this. Thanks, Jeffrey.
Jeff: No, it's what I do. I keep us off target.
Albert Panelo: Insects is gonna be available at the launch of Xbox One X. You need an Xbox One X or an S. Does it work on the original?
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, it works on every console.
Albert Panelo: Everything in the Xbox One X family? [crosstalk 00:12:37]
Larry Hyrb: That's right. You will be able to see HDR on Xbox One S. There'll be [atmos 00:12:43] on all the consoles. That's the other thing, sorry. It also does spacial audio, so you can test that out if you've got headphones. We rendered it in spacial audio, the audio. It works on all the consoles, so here we are.
Albert Panelo: That's ... On the eve.
Larry Hyrb: We are on the eve of launching. What number console is this for you? How do you measure them? Because I was trying to figure this out. I've done a few, Laura's done a few, Jeff's done a couple.
Albert Panelo: It just depends on how impressive I'm trying to make my resume seem.
Larry Hyrb: Buff up your LinkedIn for us, will you?
Albert Panelo: Well, I mean, it's the third gen and a half. Then if you count things like the Xbox 360 S, [Trinity 00:13:19] [inaudible 00:13:20]. If you count Kinect, which felt a lot like a console launch ... We're at four, five, six of these. I would just say all of them.
Larry Hyrb: Are you gonna be with me in New York?
Albert Panelo: Yes. You're leaving tomorrow, right?
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, Jeff and I are leaving tomorrow. Are you leaving tomorrow?
Albert Panelo: Sunday.
Larry Hyrb: Okay, so we'll see you out there on Monday. In fact, I just did the show rundown yesterday. There's a lot going on.
Jeff: What's funny is everybody's Facebook feed that does the memories, it's been showing up the last couple of days seven years ago, and we're all in New York on the Kinect launch. I was like, "Oh, we're gonna be reliving these memories."
Larry Hyrb: Here we are in New York again. I have the details on my blog about what we're doing. We're doing a global launch. We've got a lot of things going on around the world.
Jeff: Yeah. I think Australia just opened up a little hotel you can go stay at and just play [crosstalk 00:14:06]-
Larry Hyrb: They did?
Laura: Really?
Jeff: Yeah. It's some sort of pop up hotel thing.
Laura: [crosstalk 00:14:10] amazing.
Jeff: I saw their tweet. It seems really cool. There's a lot of fan fests going on. All over the world we're doing things, and then in the US we're gonna have a bunch of folks out in New York at the Microsoft store. You can come and stand in line and play games and meet people. There'll be celebrities there.
Larry Hyrb: Phil's gonna be there.
Jeff: Like I said, celebrities will be there. Albert'll be there. Handlers and lower level people in the organization will be there, and I think there will be some surprise celebrities will be there. [inaudible 00:14:38] we've announced them.
Albert Panelo: I'm the fact checker here, we need that the whole time. There's something in Xbox Australia called the Xbox Stay and Play event. There's these pods. I've stayed in smaller hotel rooms in New York than this.
Jeff: If you've ever been to Japan [crosstalk 00:14:54]-
Albert Panelo: It's almost one of those capsules.
Larry Hyrb: Do they have capsule ... I got to take a look at this. Wonder who's going down for that.
Albert Panelo: I'll throw that in the show notes.
Larry Hyrb: Anyway, we're really excited about the launch. I wanted to get Albert in here, just to kind of walk us through ... We talked some about the Insects demo, the experience that people are gonna be able to download. A lot of questions, I've seen a lot of questions on Twitter. No more Scorpio editions. Those are done, right?
Jeff: Yeah. We sort of knew that when the standard editions came out people would swap, or there would be stragglers as orders kind of came through. I do think you might get lucky and sort of get the golden ticket and find one pop up [crosstalk 00:15:33]. I think I saw someone at Reddit that saw at a store ... There was a handful. Yeah, just when you're talking about the volume of units that we're doing, the fact that there might be dozens or hundreds of them that still show up in store.
If you find one, grab it, because those are done. We don't make those anymore. Whatever you see is what was part of the original batch that managed to make its way into stores. I want to remind ... If you're this weekend and you're getting ready for your Xbox One X, this is a perfect time to get ready. We can do that with the console, right Albert?
Albert Panelo: Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I really love about what the team has done, and this whole idea about making this a family of devices, is that you can actually get ready for the launch now. You can get ready early. If you have an external hard drive, you can start backing up your settings. You can move your games over. If you know you're getting an X, you can start taking the 4K updates. There's already dozens of games where the 4K updates are already up on the service. We know people are out playing them now. You can actually download those to your Xbox One S.
I went through the experience just like a customer. I hadn't done anything at home. Probably one of the fastest out of box time between start and playing a game that we have had for probably since the original. Certainly in this day and age of updates we have a very small day one update that you'll take, but if you have the hard drive plugged in and if you know what your Xbox Live password is ... That's the two things. Please know your Xbox Live password. Laura's laughing because she knows what I major issue that is for some people who forget. Have your password, have your games on a hard drive, have your 4K updates downloaded. You will be playing games in 15 or 20 minutes from the time that you plug that thing in.
Laura: That's really fast.
Albert Panelo: It's amazing. [crosstalk 00:17:21]
Larry Hyrb: I also want to point out-
Albert Panelo: Congrats to the team on that.
Larry Hyrb: There's a lot of folks that may be picking up an Xbox One X at launch or maybe this holiday, for Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate, in the gift giving season. There's a little bit of confusion out there that I've seen, like, "Wait a minute. I want to get an Xbox One X, but I don't have a 4K TV."
Albert Panelo: No problemo.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah.
Albert Panelo: It's all good.
Larry Hyrb: Tell people about that and super sampling and what it means.
Albert Panelo: Yeah. I think one of the things that I always remind people, being someone that's been in the business for a long time, consoles have never output the graphics based on the TV you were looking at. If you think about Xbox 360, which was right in the nexus of ... There were still people with analog televisions and digital at the same time.
Laura: They were spending a lot of time testing on both types of TVs.
Albert Panelo: Yeah. The small font problem ...
Laura: Yeah, small font problems, [inaudible 00:18:10] green space on the two TVs, then this beautiful big flat screen TVs.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, and no one ever asked, "Am I only gonna get the analog 480P assets on my TV on my Xbox?" It's like, "No, the consoles always output the best graphics." There is so much more that the games are doing beyond resolutions, with lighting and frame rate and textures. All of these incremental improvements that they're making that are still gonna show up on a 1080P TV.
If you want the best gaming experience, you don't need a 4K TV to see all of the enhancements the developers are doing. Then there is this technique called super-sampling, which basically shrinks the screen down so that all the detail and a lot of the anti-aliasing will go away. A 4K super-sampled picture is better than a 1080P picture.
Larry Hyrb: Right.
Albert Panelo: Plus, oh my gosh, the faster load times and the better texture filtering on 360 games and all of those things. You still get all of those advantages when you get an Xbox One X, even if you don't have a 4K TV.
Larry Hyrb: I think this really reveals itself, that people are starting to notice that. Recently when we started shipping the original Xbox games, there were details in those games that existed that nobody ever saw until we brought them over to the Xbox One, right?
Albert Panelo: Yeah. That's been one of the fun discoveries [crosstalk 00:19:37]-
Larry Hyrb: Have you heard about this, Laura?
Laura: No.
Albert Panelo: Have you played Fusion Frenzy on an Xbox One X?
Laura: Not yet.
Albert Panelo: Okay. There was the level ... What is the tower level?
Laura: That's my favorite one. Jump and duck.
Albert Panelo: The jump and duck. Most people were playing an original Xbox. We were probably fortunate, even in those days, that we were playing them on early HD sets-
Larry Hyrb: With the HD advance pack.
Albert Panelo: With the HD advance pack, or the VGA adapter. Trademark copyright Microsoft corporation.
If you remember, you would jump and this little yellow light would come around and you would duck. Well, when they first started getting it up and running on an Xbox One, they realized that that is actually a duck texture. It is not a yellow light.
Laura: Really?
Albert Panelo: You couldn't make it out at all on a regular TV. You could sort of see it if you had an HD set. What they've discovered is, not only was it a duck texture, but when they got it on an Xbox One X, the duck had an eye and an orange bill. That was all art that existed, so on an Xbox One X [crosstalk 00:20:42]-
Larry Hyrb: That no one's ever seen.
Albert Panelo: On an Xbox One X, not only does it look like a duck, but it has an orange bill and an eyeball. That was in the art 17 years ago. No one ever knew it was there until they started getting these games up and running.
When you see even what we did with the 360 Xbox One X enhanced games like Halo, you bring a lot of the team over to see that and ... I didn't realize that the Covenant pods that were dropped had a leather covering on them. It always kind of just looked like a texture. When you're moving away, you're not sure if it's anti-aliasing, whatever, but it turns out, the things are wrapped in leather. You're like, "Oh my God, that's a leather texture that I never even noticed was on this item that had existed the whole time.
Jeff: Much more luxurious than we thought.
Albert Panelo: Rich Corinthian leather.
Jeff: Exactly. I've really changed my mind on the Covenant.
Albert Panelo: They're more stylish than [crosstalk 00:21:34]-
Jeff: Details are very important, Larry.
Albert Panelo: It is fun to go back and look at those old games and realize that these developers were way ahead of their time in the creation. Now we've got a machine that can show it.
Larry Hyrb: Did I see correctly that a game that I had played probably a dozen years ago, and my first ever 1K, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been upgraded for Xbox One X?
Albert Panelo: Yes.
Larry Hyrb: My head's exploding right now. If this was a video podcast, [crosstalk 00:22:07]-
Jeff: I'm sure there's a filter we can put on it. I'm sure he's got an animated gif in his documents [crosstalk 00:22:10]
Albert Panelo: Someone edit it up so Larry's got some ammunition against Jeff.
Larry Hyrb: When I saw that written, I was like, "Somebody made a mistake. I need to refresh this, because that game came out in 2005." That's crazy that that's possible, that it was there.
Albert Panelo: Those games did a bunch of interesting things. There's a reason we're only doing a handful of these, because again, in those cases, the developers almost had to be living in the future, because there has to be ... I call it DNA in the game that makes it possible to do these kind of enhancements. Many of these games, especially for developers at that time that had PC backgrounds, like in the case of [Bungee 00:22:49] who had been building PC games and Bethesda who did their stuff on PC, their art was authored in 10 bit color instead of 8 bit color. The Xbox 360 couldn't display, and there were no TVs that could display it, so the console at the last minute would basically take the colors and remap them. The emulator now doesn't remap them, so you basically have ... The technical guys will get on me, but you basically have HDR and wide color gamut that existed in these old games that we're kind of unlocking.
The colors are more vibrant, the contrast ratio is higher in these titles. Again, the other thing that's interesting ... Everybody talked about textures in those days, where I'd get right up to the wall and I would see these amazing textures, but then the machines would have to store multiple layers of these textures, because they didn't have enough power to put a high res texture half a mile away on a building.
Laura: Yeah, like the level of detail.
Albert Panelo: The level of detail. One of the things that they're able to do is they're able to basically increase the level of detail, so you are getting better textures all the way through the image.
Laura: Oh, that's great.
Albert Panelo: You're able to see details and draw distances that were just impossible to do on the 360. All of that stuff ... This isn't a remaster. The original developers aren't going back and doing anything. This existed in the game, and the geniuses, the emulation ninjas, have figured out how to unlock that stuff so people can see it.
Larry Hyrb: It's like finding an old wallet, and there's 1000 dollars in it. It's just unbelievable.
Jeff: Bonus.
Albert Panelo: That's our new marketing tagline.
Larry Hyrb: There we go.
Albert Panelo: Xbox One X Enhanced: it's like finding a wallet with 1000 dollars in it. That's good, I like it. You're in marketing, so that'll work.
Larry Hyrb: I am now. I am now.
Jeff: Here we are, Xbox One X. Now Albert, of course we've talked to ... We just had you on two shows ago. We have done shows frequently enough. I was just looking back. We had you on a couple shows ago, where you were talking about naming the X after ... This concept you came up with, the nomenclature of that and the letter after the product.
Albert Panelo: The whole Xbox One S story?
Jeff: Yeah.
Albert Panelo: I told this story.
Larry Hyrb: [Controller 00:24:52] S.
Albert Panelo: [crosstalk 00:24:53] The Controller S.
Larry Hyrb: The [Akebono 00:24:54].
Albert Panelo: The Akebono.
Laura: [inaudible 00:24:56]
Albert Panelo: And how I was marketing guy S, and they all hated that name. Oh, the engineering team hated that name so much.
Larry Hyrb: Who's laughing now, Albert?
Albert Panelo: Who's laughing now? They've come to love it.
I told the story. I needed a name for the new controller we were doing, and the only reason we needed it was so that when people called up technical support, the call centers would know which controller they were talking about. It was never supposed to be the name, it was more a model designation. No one knew, because we were [inaudible 00:25:28] everything at the time. I think I got a call the day before we needed to print that was like, "We need to have another name."
Laura: You had one day to figure [crosstalk 00:25:36]-
Albert Panelo: No, I mean ... As we were driving in, there was an Acura type S or something right before ... I'm a car guy, as you guys know. I've said this many times. I was like, "Type S. I like that. It's sporty, S is kind of an open vessel. Could mean second, could mean small, could mean slim, doesn't really mean anything, but it means everything. Xbox controller S." I'm like, "Yeah, it rolls off the tongue."
I just went back and like, "That's what we're gonna do." That was the testing. That was the clearancing. It was it. Now we've got Windows 10 S, which sort of traces its roots all the way back to-
Jeff: You sitting in traffic.
Albert Panelo: On my way to millennium.
Larry Hyrb: I've now gotten to hear you tell the story three or four times. Can you tell the part about the prank that was pulled on you after this?
Albert Panelo: Oh, yeah. I told you, the engineering team absolutely hated it. I came back to my office after. After it had gotten printed, so it was done. I had sticky notes all over, covering my wall, that said "Marketing guy S" all over my wall. They did not like that name at all.
Larry Hyrb: Maybe we should legally change your initials to Albert S. Panelo.
Albert Panelo: Albert S. Panelo.
Larry Hyrb: Anyway, it sounds like you had a good time. I'm just looking to hear ... You had a busy time down in San Francisco. You were on all the different podcasts. You saw Ryan [Mcafree 00:26:58] again, it's always good to see Ryan.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, I love Ryan. He's great.
Larry Hyrb: He's a lot of fun.
Albert Panelo: We saw him a lot too, because he came up and did the [crosstalk 00:27:05]
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, we had him in here kind of secretly. We couldn't talk about it until he had talked about that publicly.
Albert Panelo: He was the perfect guy to do that.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah.
Albert Panelo: I mean, when we were talking about doing this story, his name was ... It just popped [crosstalk 00:27:16]-
Larry Hyrb: There was nobody else.
Albert Panelo: Well, he had just such an amazing history with Xbox, as one of the few people that's still in the industry that's not at Xbox that's kind of been around since the very beginning-
Larry Hyrb: Doing Xbox stuff, doing gaming stuff, right.
Albert Panelo: If you want to talk to someone who's gonna have a passion and sort of remember and a fondness for those titles-
Larry Hyrb: Not only that, but I remember when you were showing him Ninja Gaiden, right?
Albert Panelo: Yeah.
Larry Hyrb: I walked in the room and I was kind of hanging out in the back. He was playing it, and he remembered the moves.
Albert Panelo: It was unbelievable. He was clearing through that game.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah.
Albert Panelo: I spent forever jumping on the wall, trying to figure out where the try was and getting stuck. He's like [inaudible 00:27:50] He's like [crosstalk 00:27:52]-
Larry Hyrb: [Unidrop 00:27:53]. That was the move. That was the move.[inaudible 00:27:55]
Albert Panelo: Yeah. He was unbelievable, and actually KOTOR II, he was playing through, knew what choices to make. It was really a blast. The best part about that is you always kind of do the beginning of the day ... You know what you're gonna show and everything. In the beginning of the day, I remember asking him, "What do you expect to see today?" You always are wondering, "Am I gonna over deliver or under deliver?" He's like, "Well, it's gonna be great and I'm looking forward to meeting everybody, but I really want to see Knights of the Old Republic, and if you guys do Ninja Gaiden that would be amazing." [inaudible 00:28:26]
Larry Hyrb: "Have a good day brother. Here [crosstalk 00:28:30]-
Albert Panelo: "Have we got surprises for you."
Larry Hyrb: Here we go. We're really excited. We've got a few days ahead of us before we get to New York and start launching this thing. People start unboxing their consoles. Earlier this week, you were probably surprised when you saw it, the pre-boot animation.
Albert Panelo: Oh yeah, they gave that to you and let you put that up.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, it was one of those things where ... Because I remember you and I talked about it, but you're right. People started getting their consoles and I went to the right people like, "Hey, we just got to get this out there. I want to show people," so boom, out it went.
Albert Panelo: It's funny. I was thinking about you. You put out the boot animations for 360 and OG as well, so at this point [crosstalk 00:29:08]-
Larry Hyrb: I'm the boot guy.
Albert Panelo: We actually have given everyone pretty high resolution videos of all three boot animations.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, I showed the boot animation for when you put in original Xbox titles in Xbox One. I had the team send it over to me. It just looks so beautiful. I always love to tell the stories. I don't know if you remember this story, because you don't see this in the original Xbox because you can't get to the dashboard like you can with 360, but the dashboard ... If you remember correctly, one of the iterations ... I think it was the Tsunami release. You were around for that right, Laura?
Laura: Yes I was.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, I think it was before that. Anyway, the background sounds. Do you remember those?
Albert Panelo: The ambient chatter.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, what those were ... Because I always ... Because as an audio guy, I was always bothered. I don't remember who did them, but I went and found the person who did them and I said, "What's going on here? I got to know." He says, "Yeah, we needed some background ambience sound, so we got some publicly available NASA transmissions and just modified them." That's actually astronauts in NASA.
Laura: Oh, really?
Albert Panelo: No way.
Larry Hyrb: Yes.
Albert Panelo: I had no idea.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, so if you listen, they sped them up [crosstalk 00:30:13]-
Albert Panelo: So all that [inaudible 00:30:14].
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, that's actually ... Those are public domain NASA transmissions.
Albert Panelo: Get out of here.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah. That's one of my favorite pieces of trivia, because it's ...
Laura: Oh my goodness.
Albert Panelo: You just dropped a knowledge bomb on me.
Larry Hyrb: Boom. You're not the only ones.
Albert Panelo: It is funny how ... As we were preparing for the back-compat story to release and trying to put out assets and things like that, a lot of that stuff doesn't exist anymore. One of the challenges ... I was talking to the guy who's in charge of marketing for the back-compat stuff. As we were putting these videos out, we wanted to put the console logos on it so that you could see what version [crosstalk 00:30:48] wipes and stuff.
He comes back to my office. I was like, "Hey, I was looking at the videos. We should put these one." He's like, "Yeah, no one's got it." I went to our [markom 00:31:00] team, I went to all the art teams, and nobody has the logos.
Larry Hyrb: The old Xbox logo [crosstalk 00:31:03]
Albert Panelo: The old Xbox logos.
Larry Hyrb: Like this one I have?
Albert Panelo: Yeah, like the one on your shirt. I thought about it. I said, "Hold on a second." I started clicking through a bunch of folders on my computer, and I go, "Oh, here you go. Here's all the fonts, here's the art files, here's the layers for all the old logos." Nobody else had it, but I had it on a folder on my desktop.
Laura: Are you a digital hoarder?
Albert Panelo: I am. Well, you know, I would call it more like a historian. [crosstalk 00:31:26]
Larry Hyrb: Xbox librarian, I believe we prefer.
Albert Panelo: That's right. Digital hoarder does take up a lot less space than an actual hoarder, however. Hard drives are cheap.
Larry Hyrb: Of which he's also as well, if you've been to his office. He's a real ... anyways.
Albert Panelo: Thanks, Larry.
Larry Hyrb: Now it's back on me. Let's talk about Grand Moff Tarkin.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, I have a bunch of old ... Now of course, I regret that I didn't just grab it like everything. There's other stuff I wish I still had, but I have a treasure trove of documents and art files and things from back in those days.
Larry Hyrb: We should release those.
Laura: I do the same thing.
Larry Hyrb: We should release some of those.
Albert Panelo: On the anniversary, I think on the 10th, I went back through and found a bunch of stuff.
Larry Hyrb: I remember that.
Albert Panelo: A bunch of old TV commercials. Of course, they're all ... Back then, when they'd send you TV commercial to review, it was like the potato quality. It's like, "Oh my God, this thing is like 20 Megs. No one could download this thing. It's gonna take forever."
Larry Hyrb: And you need to download Real Player.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, that's right, or the QuickTime whatever plugin. I've got a bunch that have actually been challenging-
Larry Hyrb: Dark Master.
Albert Panelo: I have a bunch of those, but I can't do anything with them because they're so small, because they were the [crosstalk 00:32:37]-
Laura: Terrible.
Larry Hyrb: Postage stamp.
Albert Panelo: That's how you would go and [crosstalk 00:32:41]-
Larry Hyrb: Review.
Albert Panelo: Of course and your monitor resolution wasn't that big either, so-
Jeff: 624x768, top of the line.
Albert Panelo: It all scaled up at the time. To look at them now it's painful, but it is fun to go back and watch Dark Master and those old techno commercials.
Larry Hyrb: You [crosstalk 00:32:54] talked a moment about the generations. What do we ... This is a half generation, it's a mid generation. We talk about the family of devices. How are you thinking about it?
Albert Panelo: Well, I think about it as a mid generation upgrade. We said that the name really tells the story. When people ask, "Is this a next-gen console?" Well, the answer is it's an Xbox One. We called it an Xbox One. I think I said this on IGN, too. It was always gonna be Xbox One something, because there was no way that you were gonna be able to tell the story you wanted to tell around compatibility and how the games work and forwards and backwards if it was called something else. Everyone would have just immediately said, "Oh, they're starting Gen 9."
It was always gonna be Xbox One something, then it was a question of which Xbox One it was. It's part of the same family. It is the 1080 to the Xbox One's 1060. They're part of the same family. Everybody always says, "Oh, are you gonna make exclusive games for the Xbox One X?" It's like, "No, they're literally... " If you tried to build an Xbox One X exclusive game, you would get an Xbox One S version of the game. It's how we architected the system.
Larry Hyrb: I just want to ... Oh. That's my ringtone. Do you know what that is?
Albert Panelo: Is it NASA transmissions?
Laura: Sped up?
Larry Hyrb: That's actually from Totoro.
Laura: Oh.
Albert Panelo: Oh.
Laura: [inaudible 00:34:16].
Larry Hyrb: Big Totoro fan.
Jeff: As a former audio professional, leaving your ringer on, man? Come on.
Larry Hyrb: I had it on because I was working in here earlier and I wanted to make sure I could hear it if Albert texted us, because [crosstalk 00:34:29] wasn't coming.
Jeff: If it was one of us, we'd already be out the door.
Albert Panelo: By the way, it snowed this morning.
Laura: It did.
Albert Panelo: We talked about this. I woke up to my daughter going, "Daddy, daddy, it's snowing, it's snowing." What are you ... Are you having a dream? What's going on? It's November One. It hasn't snowed anywhere.
Jeff: Sure enough, there it is.
Albert Panelo: I live just ... Seattle, for those in the middle of the country where things are flattish, Washington is quite hilly. You can live very close to Seattle, which is close to sea level, and be quite a bit above sea level. We are just enough above sea-
Jeff: Are you the same altitude I am, roughly? [inaudible 00:35:07] on a hill, you know.
Albert Panelo: Yeah. Up there ... Yeah, probably almost 900 feet above sea level.
Larry Hyrb: I told Laura, I opened up the garage this morning. I wasn't even expecting it, and I actually went "Holy what?" I couldn't believe it. I screamed it out loud.
Albert Panelo: The nice thing is you've got an SUV, and I just have a regular car. Usually I have to prepare myself for snow. I [inaudible 00:35:30] slope driveway. This is all things nobody cares about [inaudible 00:35:33]. Unless you live in Seattle, you really ... Of course, people in the Midwest are like, "Ha ha ha, you and your snow."
Larry Hyrb: "I'm under six feet of snow right now."
Albert Panelo: "Your light dusting."
Larry Hyrb: I just got a text from someone on my team who just moved up here from LA, and it was just all caps, "HOLY S, THERE'S SNOW." Probably has not seen it in a decade.
Albert Panelo: As somebody who grew up in New England, this is not snow. It's merely a [crosstalk 00:35:53]-
Jeff: It looks like someone spilled a snow cone.
Albert Panelo: Yeah.
Jeff: But it is nice to have actual seasons.
Albert Panelo: It is nice.
Jeff: But it does bring traffic to a screeching halt.
Larry Hyrb: I wanted to talk about ... Before I let you go, Albert, because I know you got a busy day as you prep for launch, is ... One of the things that the team focused on was making sure that they knew what titles were gonna run really well on Xbox once they're enhanced.
Albert Panelo: Yeah. I mean, right now the support that we've seen from developers has been unbelievable. We created a very specific dev kit. All of the components and all of the specs that we have in the box were designed to do that. The result is just an unbelievable games lineup.
We're gonna have right around 50 titles on launch day that take advantage of Xbox One X Enhanced. We're tracking to about 70 titles in the first week or so. If you think about ... This is where I will talk about a traditional console launch. Typically when you launch a new console, you get 15 titles, 18, maybe 20.
Larry Hyrb: You have to buy new games.
Albert Panelo: Not only do you have to buy new games, but there's maybe only 20 titles that actually take advantage of the new stuff. We're gonna have between 50 and 70 games available. Many of them you already own.
Larry Hyrb: You're sitting right there.
Albert Panelo: That are taking advantage of the power of the new box. Over 160 announced so far, on top of 200 exclusives, 1300 titles, game pass, OG. There is so much to play.
Larry Hyrb: [inaudible 00:37:19] Gold every month.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, plus [inaudible 00:37:21] Gold. There's so much to play on Xbox One. To have 50 plus titles, around 50 titles on launch day is just remarkable. They all look amazing.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, and you can just go into your console and go into your game collection and you can sort by, filter, which ones are Xbox One X Enhanced. Bam, there they are.
Jeff: It's funny, because it's like ... Literally everyday it's being updated what games there are. There's a website, which I will link to. What I do is I just hit Ctrl+F, and type in "Avail," like for "Available," and every day it's taking me longer and longer to get to the bottom of the list. There's some pretty amazing games on there.
Albert Panelo: Yeah, there was ... Call of Duty just launched last night.
Larry Hyrb: The Witcher.
Albert Panelo: They just launched with their enhancements. Their enhanced version's already out. The Witcher they just did, Titanfall 2, which is right above 4K and actually does super-sampling from 6K down to 4K in some scenes. That's a whole nother thing we'll talk about. Actually, the Titanfall engine in certain scenes can render higher than 4K.
Remember how we would talk about dynamic resolution and it would be between 900 and 1080P? Their dynamic resolution is 4K and above. They actually in some scenes have super-sampling above 4K down to 4K. Yeah, the list is great. We're updating it every day.
Larry Hyrb: Every day.
Albert Panelo: The other thing that I like to say is, if you have an Xbox One S and you're curious, we also allow Xbox One X enhanced filters on the Xbox One S. If you're someone who's like, "Hey, I made this investment in games. What do I have? How many games to I own that are gonna take advantage of the new box we allow people to see?" It's almost like being able to see in the future. If I want to get one, how much of my content is [inaudible 00:39:10].
Larry Hyrb: It's also cool in the ready to install, you can also sort by that. Which games do I not have currently downloaded?
Albert Panelo: And which ones do I want to prioritize?
Larry Hyrb: Exactly. You can go back and go, "Oh, that one ..." [inaudible 00:39:20] download that and take another look. I've been very impressed with FIFA 18, by the way. They got [inaudible 00:39:27] you can see the blades of grass [inaudible 00:39:28].
Albert Panelo: Blades of grass.
Larry Hyrb: It's all about that.
Jeff: How's your Reinaldo?
Larry Hyrb: He looks ... It's funny because it was the first time ... I knew that they were updating, and the very first match they throw you in ... He is a beautiful man in 4K. I made sure as quickly as possible to slide tackle someone horrifically and get him sent off so I didn't have to look at him. Still won 4-1. Still won 4-1.
Jeff: I'm Jeff [inaudible 00:39:51] on Twitter. You can find it.
Larry Hyrb: I'm are principal man.
Jeff: Anyway, you're welcome to hang out with us. We're just gonna kind of tick through some of the news and do some housekeeping, if you have time.
Albert Panelo: I have to go. [crosstalk 00:40:01]
Larry Hyrb: You're busy? What?
Albert Panelo: It's a crazy time. This is always the best. I love seeing you guys.
Larry Hyrb: Albert Panelo on Twitter. You're actual the man ... I actually consider you one of the key people behind Xbox One X.
Albert Panelo: Thank you. There are lots of hard working-
Larry Hyrb: I know there are, but I just remember coming to you many, many years ago. You and I were sitting in your office and I'd stop by all the time. You would show me these ... And you're like, "What if you took your games with you?" I'm like, "What?" And here we are. Remember those conversations?
Albert Panelo: Larry, true story, Larry was a good sounding board. I've said this, that one of the great things about this journey for me personally ... Again, I have to say it, there's real smart people doing real work. The men and women here that are actually grinding, like Laura, doing real work and making sure this thing works, is not me. I'm just the guy out there telling people about it. But it has been a fun journey, because I've been fortunate enough to be there from the beginning. I always say, one of the most exciting parts was asking ourselves the same questions that we're getting asked now.
Larry ... Which probably now I can say it, because no one can get mad at me, because I probably shouldn't have told him at the time, but every idea we would have ... I would call Larry and I would say, "How do you think ... What if we did this? What if we did that? What do you think people will say? What would you like to see?" Larry was actually a great sounding board for me for many years on a lot of this stuff.
Larry Hyrb: It's a great partnership. You're right, we have a lot of smart people here. We're gamers. We just want to play great games [crosstalk 00:41:22]. Everybody here is about that. Anyway Albert, thank you, man. I'll let you run. I'll see you in New York.
Albert Panelo: Alright.
Larry Hyrb: Jeff and I [crosstalk 00:41:26] okay man.
Laura: Bye.
Larry Hyrb: Be careful out there, because it's snowing.
Jeff: It's snowing. There's a light dusting.
Larry Hyrb: There's a light dusting. Be careful with that.
Alright, we're gonna [inaudible 00:41:34] ... Jeffrey's got some headlines. While Albert ... You don't have to be quiet, they know you're leaving.
Laura: Bye.
Albert Panelo: Bye.
Larry Hyrb: You can let the door slam. Why don't you go ahead and tick through some of the headlines for us, and we'll keep going?
Jeff: It took me a long time to even figure out what to start with first. Since we're on the subject, let's talk about 4K upgrades and 4K enhancements. One of them that jumps out towards the top of the list is Halo 5, is a game that I cannot wait to see. It's already been updated. By the time you get this ... You have an Xbox One X, you have Halo ... Of course you have Halo 5. You do need to see it in beautiful, enhanced joy.
We're actually ... The Xbox [Wired 00:42:14] team has been putting together a series of stories on what different teams are doing, including Titanfall. I'm gonna link over to the story about Inside Xbox One X Enhanced: The Witcher 3, because this is the game that I cannot wait to see in 4K. I've been saving ... I've seen a number of people talking about this ... Saving the DLCs, Blood and Wine, and Hearts of Stone, I want to say, to see these in all their Xbox One X Enhanced glory.
I'll link out to that. It's really cool to see what [inaudible 00:42:45] Project Red is doing. We've also heard from Respawn, we've heard from the Halo Wars 2 Team. There's an ongoing thing.
Again, if you just want to see quickly, at a glance, what games are being enhanced, we've linked out to it. There's just so many games coming and so many games ... Literally every day, I'm getting an email internally like, "Hey, this one's live. This one's live. Assassin's Creed's live." I need to play Assassin's Creed.
Laura: Oh my goodness. So many awesome games.
Jeff: The other big news that is not directly talking about Xbox One X, although it kind of is ... Coming out of Paris this week, news from the French guys, is-
Larry Hyrb: Dateline Paris.
Jeff: Bonjour.
Larry Hyrb: The Axis have been pushed back.
Jeff: Oh, you got your news reader on, there. "And that's the way it is."
Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, the kids call it PUPG, has a date, and it's hard to even forget it because it's 12/12. 12/12. We will be playing with a joystick, with our favorite ... I'm gonna be playing with an [Elite 00:43:43] controller, because that's what I've been wanting to do. Really, it's only a little over a month now.
Larry Hyrb: I've got to get higher than three. I've gotten as high as three in the game on PC.
Laura: No chicken dinners for you?
Jeff: Really? That's really good.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah. Well ...
Jeff: That's really good.
Larry Hyrb: I said it. I have not been private about this. Camping is a strategy.
Laura: Yeah, it is.
Jeff: Oh, absolutely.
Laura: It's a big strategy.
Jeff: I try to be in the top 50 before I've even seen anybody. The goal is to get above the bell curve.
Larry Hyrb: Get halfway there.
Jeff: Yeah, exactly, before I even have to pull a trigger. There's actually a lot going on, and talking about what it's gonna look like on Xbox One. I'm just gonna link out to a story, but it really tells you everything you need to know about PUPG 1.0, what is gonna be on the Xbox One at launch, because it's gonna be part of the Xbox game preview program. I'll leave the details to that post, but the story will be linked out in the show notes.
Larry Hyrb: You talked about all the Xbox One Enhanced games coming up, been giving those away all week. I've been giving away ... I don't know if you've seen this on Twitter. I've been giving away copies of enhanced games all week long. Monday for the launch of Xbox One X, make sure you check in on Twitter. I've got something very special to give away.
Laura: Oh, do you?
Jeff: Oh.
Larry Hyrb: It's gonna be big.
Jeff: Can you tell me on the flight out?
Larry Hyrb: I will.
Jeff: Alright.
Larry Hyrb: Do you know, we're sitting next to each other on the flight out to New York?
Laura: Oh, you are?
Larry Hyrb: In fact we-
Laura: [inaudible 00:45:00] play Zelda again.
Larry Hyrb: Well, no.
Laura: [inaudible 00:45:02].
Jeff: It'll probably be Mario.
Larry Hyrb: We're gonna be playing Mario. I'm gonna bring my Switch, we're gonna play Mario.
Laura: Very good. You have Mario?
Larry Hyrb: I do. Have you played it?
Laura: I have only watched someone play it. Haven't had a chance to play it myself, but I hear is the best game a lot of people have ever played.
Larry Hyrb: It's a lot of fun. This is really the question that Jeff and I ... Frankly, this is the first time we've discussed it. It's a little awkward. Am I the hat, or are you the hat?
Jeff: What?
Laura: What? Okay, I played it at Pax.
Larry Hyrb: That's how you play it.
Jeff: That's how you play?
Laura: No, what?
Jeff: I've always been your hat, Larry.
Larry Hyrb: No, no, it's like if you're playing it together, co-op.
Laura: Do you?
Larry Hyrb: That's the way I understand it.
Jeff: Alright, let's try it out.
Larry Hyrb: We'll let you know.
Jeff: We'll see.
Larry Hyrb: We'll report from 30,000 feet up.
Laura: Please do.
Jeff: You'll be waiting with bated breath.
Laura: I will. [crosstalk 00:45:43]
Larry Hyrb: I know Laura and I-
Jeff: It is a delightful game.
Laura: [inaudible 00:45:44]
Larry Hyrb: I know you won't be sleeping until you get the answer to this question. Moving along.
Jeff: This was another piece of news. Because I've been so busy, we've all been focused on Xbox One X, I didn't even know it was coming until I saw it show up on your blog, [majornelson.com 00:45:57].
Larry Hyrb: That's right.
Jeff: NFL Customized Xbox Design Lab controllers.
Laura: Controllers.
Jeff: For some reason, and I can't figure out why-
Larry Hyrb: Fly, Eagles, Fly.
Jeff: Thank you. The seven to one Eagles, the best record in the league. Can you imagine if we had an Eagles-Patriots Superbowl rematch? I really don't want that, because Tom Brady ... I have bad memories of that. But yes, the Eagles one looks phenomenal. Of course we don't have it in picture, we have the Seahawks one, but this looks really good. I'll link out to a couple pictures of those, but yeah. This is something that I didn't realize I needed.
Larry Hyrb: I knew you needed this. I knew these were coming.
Jeff: I didn't know I wanted it until I saw someone with the Eagles one. There's someone here who actually works on the Xbox One X team, on the hardware team. He's a huge Eagles fan, and he tweeted out a picture of that controller.
Larry Hyrb: Jealousy ensued.
Jeff: Yeah. The money quickly flew out of my wallet.
Larry Hyrb: Do we ... Go ahead, keep going through.
Jeff: No, no.
Larry Hyrb: We haven't really talked about what we're playing, and I don't know if we have time for that.
Jeff: No, let's do that.
Larry Hyrb: Do you want to talk about what you're playing, Laura?
Jeff: [crosstalk 00:47:01] news desk?
Larry Hyrb: I don't know, maybe.
Jeff: Let me just tick through the new releases [crosstalk 00:47:05]-
Larry Hyrb: Okay, tick through the new release, and then we'll do Laura.
Jeff: The biggest game, no surprise, it is the first week in November therefore a Call of Duty game is out. This one people are very excited about: Call of Duty: World War II. I downloaded it last night, haven't had a chance to jump on yet, but we should at least play a little bit of the war mode. I played that in beta, played it at E3. A series of different objectives of happen where you're holding down a bridge and the other side is trying to build the bridge, you're trying to stop a tank ... There's a lot of different things happening. It's pretty fun. We should play, at least a little bit.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah.
Laura: That'd be fun.
Jeff: Let's at least give it a go, and then we'll get destroyed and then we'll [crosstalk 00:47:43]-
Larry Hyrb: You and I ... Laura and I haven't played since someone else was in the White House. It's been a long time.
Jeff: That was only a year ago.
Larry Hyrb: Beyond that.
Jeff: Two regimes back.
Larry Hyrb: You and I haven't played in probably a month or so.
Jeff: At least.
Laura: [inaudible 00:47:59]
Larry Hyrb: Because travel, my travel.
Jeff: Yeah. Let's get a couple matches in. Let's do that. I think, if you haven't played a Call of Duty game in a while, this is one ... It's very different than the last several, I feel like, so it might be worth a shot. Anyway, that's out now.
Larry Hyrb: [crosstalk 00:48:14] Do the loot crates really land on the beach?
Jeff: I've seen the gif. I haven't gotten there yet, but I'll let you know.
Larry Hyrb: Okay.
Jeff: Assuming I can actually earn one of the ... A kill streak. A few other games ... These ones, good for the kids-
Larry Hyrb: [inaudible 00:48:28]
Jeff: Three titles that are for Xbox One S and X, and they are Xbox Play Anywhere games. Three of them ... Disney POne Xar Rush, Disneyland Adventures, and Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection.
Larry Hyrb: You may remember the Disney and the Pixar games from the [Kinect 00:48:48] days.
Laura: I do.
Larry Hyrb: [crosstalk 00:48:49] These have been updated for Xbox One.
Jeff: I remember you sent me one.
Larry Hyrb: Did I?
Jeff: When I worked at the competitor.
Larry Hyrb: Did I?
Jeff: Yes.
Larry Hyrb: Okay.
Jeff: I ran it. Everyone that went to E3 press conference 2010 ...
Larry Hyrb: [crosstalk 00:49:02]
Laura: Yeah, that was the one I was onstage.
Jeff: Yes, that's right.
Larry Hyrb: Were you in the audience when she was onstage?
Jeff: I was in the audience.
Larry Hyrb: No. Did I know this?
Jeff: Here's the thing. There's always a couple people from Sony at the Xbox [crosstalk 00:49:11] couple people from X and Nintendo. Everyone attends everyone else's. I always went. I ran into you.
Larry Hyrb: That's right.
Laura: [inaudible 00:49:19] me.
Jeff: There was an announcement at one point. This was when the Xbox 360 S was ...
Laura: [crosstalk 00:49:24]
Jeff: Albert had his [crosstalk 00:49:25]
Larry Hyrb: Reveal, yeah.
Jeff: Everyone was gonna be getting one. I ran into you afterwards and I was like, "Even me, Larry?" And you were like ... You were in a big rush, of course, because it had just ended. You were probably gonna be doing a live hit or something. You were like, "Do you need it now? I can get it for you now if you need it now." Still the same Larry. I was like, "Larry, I can wait. It'll be fine." Then a month later it showed up at PlayStation Headquarters. I unboxed it and I went home, and actually I did play-
Larry Hyrb: It's a good console.
Jeff: Yeah. Kinect Sports was the game that we all played together. Anyway, it's funny how things work out.
Larry Hyrb: It's the weirdest thing. Here you are. You were in the audience watching Laura, and I was somewhere [crosstalk 00:50:02]-
Laura: You were backstage.
Larry Hyrb: That's right, because I remember talking to you, and Cliff was ...
Laura: I shared.
Larry Hyrb: She shared a dressing room with Cliff [Blazinsky 00:50:07].
Laura: I did, and Peter [Molineaux 00:50:09].
Larry Hyrb: And Peter Molineaux
Laura: [crosstalk 00:50:12]
Jeff: I don't even know what to say.
Larry Hyrb: You know what? Jeff, you and I should go away and work up a treatment for a TV series, because it feels like that could be a sitcom.
Laura: The green room of E3.
Larry Hyrb: Right. "Laura, Cliff Blazinsky, and Peter Molineaux. What'll happen? It's zany. Tonight, on must watch TV."
Laura: Oh, weird. Well.
Jeff: I don't even know what to say, which is very rare, isn't it? One last game I wanted to call out ... There was actually a lot of indie games that hit in the last week as well. One sort of caught my eye that just went into game preview. That is Mutant League Football. This was a game that ... I feel like back in the day it ran off the Madden engine. I'm talking back in the Genesis and Super Nintendo games, where it was sort of monsters playing football. It was sort of over the top. It was brought back by ... It was the people that made that game. Yeah, it was a Genesis game. [crosstalk 00:51:09]-
Laura: Yeah, I think I played it. It sounds familiar.
Jeff: I feel like we all did as kids. Anyway, it's in game preview now. I'm gonna have to take a look at it. Nostalgia is a big driving force in games, so definitely something probably worth checking out, if you look back on that game fondly, as I do. Awkward segue to, "What are we playing?"
Larry Hyrb: Well, we got a quick "What are we playing?" Because then we gotta go to "Name the game." We gotta wrap things up, unfortunately, because we're almost going an hour long and I know you've got to go and I've got to go.
Laura: You have a plane to catch soon.
Larry Hyrb: We got to pack and ... Yeah, it's a little crazy. I'm doing some cool stuff in New York with you, Jeffrey.
Jeff: Yeah.
Larry Hyrb: Stay in New York, come on.
Jeff: I would love to.
Larry Hyrb: I know, I know. Alright, what are you playing, Laura?
Laura: [crosstalk 00:51:51]
Larry Hyrb: Besides ... What you're playing, not what you're watching someone play, okay?
Laura: Fair enough. I'll tell a quick story. I went back into Thimbleweed Park. Do you guys remember that game?
Larry Hyrb: I do.
Jeff: I do.
Larry Hyrb: Of course.
Laura: Do you remember how I ran into Ron [Gilmour 00:52:04] the creator of that game at PAX?
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, and you were concerned ... Did you go pick up the phone?
Laura: I went to try and find the phone, so I went back in. As you guys know, I was stuck and I asked Ron Gilmore for help. He said, "The way you can find help in the game is you go find a pay phone and then you call the help line on the pay phone."
Larry Hyrb: As you do in the 80s or 90s.
Laura: Exactly. I ran around the map and I found the posters that talked about the help line. Pro tip: you can also find the help line in the phone book, which is-
Larry Hyrb: Under?
Laura: Game Help.
Larry Hyrb: Okay.
Jeff: Which surprised me, because this phone book starts at like, "A, Aaronson" or something. It's not like there's 10 numbers in there.
Laura: No, there's a lot of numbers in it, and I imagine it might have been all the backers from the Kickstarter. I don't know, but there's a lot of names in the phone book, so you have to search pretty hard for it, but I found the number.
Larry Hyrb: For those of you that know what a phone book is.
Laura: Right. I found the number, and then I went to dial the number, and it said, "Phones out of order." I was like, "What? It's out of order? How do I get help?"
Larry Hyrb: Oh no.
Laura: I'm now stuck again, because I don't know how to get help. Unfortunately then, at that point I was like, "Alright, fine. I'm gonna go search a wiki and a walkthrough to try and figure out how to get past this."
Larry Hyrb: Even Laura has to do it.
Laura: I know, but unfortunately the wiki did not help, because I am ... I think I might have gotten myself stuck.
Larry Hyrb: Oh.
Laura: Yeah. I think I might have found a way [crosstalk 00:53:19]-
Larry Hyrb: Do you want me to give you Ron's email address? Is that what you're saying? Is that what this is?
Laura: Potentially. Yeah, the walkthrough said you're supposed to do this before you do that, and I had done that before I did this. [crosstalk 00:53:30]-
Larry Hyrb: Story of my life.
Jeff: And here we are.
Laura: I had done it in the wrong order, so I might be screwed. I don't know. I'll keep searching. I'll have to try [crosstalk 00:53:39]-
Larry Hyrb: Good luck.
Laura: [crosstalk 00:53:41]
Larry Hyrb: If you have any tips, hit Laura up on Twitter.
Laura: Yeah, if you know how to get the phone to not be out of order, maybe help me out.
Jeff: Maybe there's gum in the ...
Larry Hyrb: Did you put a dime in it?
Jeff: Coin slot.
Laura: I have a nickel, and ...
Larry Hyrb: Okay.
Laura: It didn't work. It does take a dime [crosstalk 00:53:57]-
Larry Hyrb: Good luck.
Laura: Nickel. That's part of the problem.
Larry Hyrb: Okay, there you go. See? See? We're puzzling this out together.
Laura: I know, but the way you get the additional is ... Anyway. I'm stuck. I'm stuck.
Larry Hyrb: Okay.
Laura: Yeah. The other game I've been starting to play is Shadow Wars, finally.
Larry Hyrb: Which looks great.
Laura: It's amazing. Oh my gosh, it's so much fun. So much fun. It's great to be back in the world. It's great to be running around killing orcs and conquering things. Oh my gosh, it's so much fun, but I haven't had enough time put into it to really get completely into it and start leveling my character up. I'm back in the weak stage, trying to sneak around and not get killed the other day.
Jeff: That's the game I've spent far and away the most amount of time with. In fact, I'm looking up right now on the Xbox app on Windows 10 how much time I've put into it. 22 hours so far.
Larry Hyrb: Which sounds about right.
Jeff: I'm still on Act II, because I'm doing the collectibles and all the stuff. They all have a nice little story that goes with them [inaudible 00:54:51] [VIO 00:54:52]. The voice acting in this game is phenomenal. I always want to hear what thing Kela [Brimbor 00:54:57] wants to say that sort of dismisses everything. He's just so surly. He is dead, he is a ghost, had everything taken away from him, from Sauron, but can he smile a little bit, Kela Brimbor?
Laura: He's grumpy. He's a grumpy guy.
Jeff: He is. I love this game, and I've spent just a ton of time with it. I feel like I don't want to start anything else new, as badly as I want to play Wolfenstein, as badly as I want to play Assassin's Creed [crosstalk 00:55:22]-
Larry Hyrb: Wolfenstein is so good.
Jeff: I know, and I'm going to. I'm going to play all these games-
Larry Hyrb: I'll talk about that in a minute.
Jeff: South Park, all of these games I want to play, I know. Because Middle Earth, Shadow Wars, tough. If I walk away from it, I'm gonna lose my skill. I need to string these combos to get-
Larry Hyrb: Health bar.
Jeff: You've playing South Park.
Larry Hyrb: No, I haven't. Here's my memory of South Park, is when Jeff and I went out to Alan [Magordo 00:55:43]. He took his console. I just remember ...
Jeff: Yeah, I traveled with it.
Larry Hyrb: He was in a few rooms down and I was texting him. He was telling me all about the game. I hadn't had a chance. Did you finish it on that trip?
Jeff: I did finish it on that trip.
Larry Hyrb: I remember that. You just were loving that game.
Jeff: I mean, we were in the middle of nowhere. Literally the landmark that we saw was a landfill. I wanted to finish South Park, I was very into it, so I brought my 360 out. I must have played 30 hours in a three day trip while we were there.
Laura: [inaudible 00:56:13]
Larry Hyrb: I know that was gonna be one of the greatest trips we were gonna go on.
Jeff: It was. I don't remember what I had for dinner last night, but I remember every detail of that trip. I've never been dirtier.
Larry Hyrb: Filthy. Filthy.
Jeff: Anyways, Shadow War is awesome.
Laura: Oh my gosh, [crosstalk 00:56:31]
Jeff: If you get to it, please get to it. It just really opens up once you get into the middle of Act II.
Laura: [inaudible 00:56:39] open it up, yeah.
Larry Hyrb: What else have you played? Those are the headlines?
Laura: Those are the headlines. There's a lot of little games in there, but ...
Jeff: The one week when the game you always play has upgraded for Enhanced for Xbox One X and you haven't played it yet.
Laura: I know [inaudible 00:56:53]
Jeff: I'm gonna buy-
Larry Hyrb: She doesn't have an Xbox One X. That's the problem. She doesn't have hers yet.
Jeff: I feel foolish now.
Larry Hyrb: Rubbing it in her face.
Laura: Rubbing it in my face.
Larry Hyrb: Wow, that was cold.
Jeff: Yeah.
Larry Hyrb: I'm gonna do a quick little ... I'm play Wolfenstein II: the New Colossus, which is great. It's just ridiculously fun. I'm playing a little Assassin's Creed Origins. I was in New York a couple weeks ago for that with Ash. That games looks ... Your eyes will melt, how beautiful that game is. Its so, so beautiful. That's really what's taking up a lot of my time right now, in addition to the travel for the game launches and whatnot.
Laura: Been a busy man.
Larry Hyrb: Xbox One X, I'll be in New York all next week. Headed back up to New England to see family for a little bit. I'll be back, but Jeff, what are you playing?
Jeff: Literally, Shadow ... I've been testing out a few games here and there. I played a little bit of Forts of [Seven 00:57:39]. I wanted to see what that one looked like on the Xbox One X. Spoiler alert: stunning. I play a lot of our Xbox Play Anywhere games on PC. I travel a lot, and I bring ... I have a pretty nice laptop that makes games look beautiful. I've gotten used to really good looking games, but to be able to see in that resolution on a big TV in a living room setting is really, really, really impressive. I have a feeling, my laptop, other than when I'm traveling, is probably gonna get neglected now, because I'm gonna want to see Forts just enveloping me in the beautiful frame rate, 4K 60 and all these things. It's glorious. And FIFA, FIFA looks so good. Right now it's just ... The pile of shame is just ever growing.
Laura: That time of year.
Jeff: I'm stressed out about it. We have a vacation coming up at the end of the year. I'll be gone for [crosstalk 00:58:39]-
Larry Hyrb: You're going overseas.
Jeff: Yeah. I'll be going to Japan. I don't get to take a lot ... We work kind of crazy through the summer, so we just kind of take one big vacation a year. I'm almost dreading at. That is a good period of time I could be playing these games that I'm not gonna be able to do. I'm gonna go into January and ...
Laura: [inaudible 00:58:56]
Jeff: Some amazing game, some game of the year candidate, I will not even have started yet. It's just ...
Laura: Well, play anywhere. Play it on your laptop. [crosstalk 00:59:05] glorious 4K.
Jeff: No, no. You all go out and see the palace. I'm just cleaning up some achievements.
Laura: It's a long flight.
Jeff: Yeah, that's true.
Larry Hyrb: Alright, we're gonna wrap things up a little bit year. We haven't named the game to [inaudible 00:59:18], Laura.
Laura: Oh, that's right. Almost forgot to do that.
Larry Hyrb: We do. We haven't ...
Laura: It's been so long.
Larry Hyrb: It's been so long. This one was actually fairly easy. We had a lot of entries for this. Why don't you go ahead and play the ... You ready for the clip?
Laura: Yeah, let's play the old Name the Game.
Larry Hyrb: This is Laura's Name the Game payoff. Any time you're ready.
Laura: That was Name the Game from last time. Super easy one.
Larry Hyrb: Super easy one to guess, but it's a hard game.
Laura: That's true, it's a hard game to play. The answer was, Cuphead. Congratulations to our winner, Scott from Louisiana.
Larry Hyrb: Scott, Louisiana. You've been to Louisiana, Jeffrey?
Jeff: Yeah, quite a few time. A number of Mardi ... What'd be plural for Mardi Gras? Mardis Gras? Fat Tuesdays. Yeah, it's a great ... First of all, amazing food, really nice people ... I enjoyed Louisiana. It's been too long.
Larry Hyrb: This segment brought to you by the Louisiana Department of Travel and Commerce. I wasn't expecting a whole soundbite on it.
Jeff: Yeah.
Laura: It's a good state.
Jeff: Right, it's a great state.
Larry Hyrb: I've never been.
Laura: Scott ...
Jeff: Also, the best over Schlotsky's I ever went to. [crosstalk 01:00:51] nowhere. I think I was in either Monroe Louisiana or Hammond, one of the two. Man, I got the drive through and I went back in and I said, "Look, can I speak to the manager? I just want to say, this is the best sandwich I've ever had in my life." They appreciated that.
Larry Hyrb: Thank you.
Jeff: Louisiana, good memories.
Larry Hyrb: Brought to you by Schlotsky's. Really, Jeffrey?
Laura: I'm sure Scott [crosstalk 01:01:12]
Jeff: Look, you asked, I'm going to tell you.
Laura: Scott is wondering what he won.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, he's sitting there going, "Wait a minute, I won? What did I win?" Shut up Jeff and tell him what he won. That's what he's saying.
Jeff: A turkey original.
Laura: No, no sandwiches for you, Scott, but we have much better things. We have a copy of Cuphead, of course, a copy of Mutant Football League, which you heard about earlier-
Jeff: Oh, hey. I'm glad I talked that up.
Laura: Exactly. A copy of Black, which is an original Xbox back compat game, and a copy of Titanfall 2. That's not all. You also get a copy of ASsassin's Creed Origins, and a copy of Call of Duty: World War II.
Larry Hyrb: What?
Jeff: What didn't he get?
Larry Hyrb: I know.
Laura: I know. All of [crosstalk 01:01:49].
Larry Hyrb: I get all these codes and you give them away. Now I know why I don't have any codes.
Jeff: Not included: all of time to play all of those times. It's hundreds of hours of gameplay.
Laura: It's true. Find your own time.
Larry Hyrb: You're on your own there, pal. Congratulations to Scott down there in Louisiana. That means we clear the deck for another Name the Game, right?
Laura: Is it time for another one?
Larry Hyrb: I'm ready if you're ready. Hey listeners, are you ready?
Laura: I think listeners are ready.
Larry Hyrb: Let's do it.
Laura: Let's roll the tape.
That was Name the Game. If you, too, would like to win a large number of fabulous prizes, it's super easy. All you have to do is send us an email. [email protected], and CC: [email protected] All you have to do is let us know what game those sounds are from. That simple.
Larry Hyrb: That's it.
Laura: If you want to, include your name or your gamer tag-
Larry Hyrb: Where you're from-
Laura: Or you don't have to, if you don't want to. If you can hear our voice, you can enter the game.
Larry Hyrb: Very simple, very simple. Everybody can play. In fact, why aren't you sending us an email right now? By the way, don't tweet at us. We only accept email entries. You can tweet at us, but it doesn't count as an entry.
Laura: That's true. It has to be to our emails. And that's it. That's it for Name the Game.
Larry Hyrb: It is. I'm just going through the list here, thinking of all the things Jeff and I have to do before we go to New York. You're not gonna go with us. You haven't been on the road with us in a while.
Laura: I know. It's been a long time.
Larry Hyrb: You came with us to PAX.
Laura: Yes.
Jeff: I don't think I've seen you on the road since E3 2010. That was a callback to earlier in the show. Yes, PAX.
Laura: I see. Funny.
Jeff: See what ... Yeah. Edit that out, Larry.
Larry Hyrb: I got it. No, it's staying in.
Laura: Too late, staying in.
Jeff: We don't have editing.
Larry Hyrb: Too late, stay ... No.
Laura: There's no editing staff.
Larry Hyrb: Editing is for chumps.
Laura: We're doing it live.
Larry Hyrb: We're doing it live. In fact, I want to talk to you guys about that. I haven't talked to you ... I'm completely sideswiping you guys. We have not talked about this before. There was a request, multiple, multiple requests for us to do the show on MOne Xer.
Laura: Really?
Larry Hyrb: Do you guys want to do a live video show on MOne Xer one time, just try it out?
Laura: Yeah.
Jeff: One time?
Larry Hyrb: Okay. Alright.
Jeff: People need to see this visage. I need an excuse to brush my hair. We should do that.
Larry Hyrb: Because this certainly isn't it.
Jeff: All the time we joked about it. I'm like, "Oh..." We're constantly doing "Bad radio" by pantomiming or showing visuals.
Larry Hyrb: Let's do it.
Jeff: Let's do it.
Larry Hyrb: Let's do it. Okay. We will do this when Jeff and I come back from New York, maybe the second week of November. Is that alright?
Laura: Yeah, sounds great.
Larry Hyrb: Third week we'll figure it out. Are you around over the holidays-
Laura: I am.
Larry Hyrb: Christmas? Alright. Jeff, when do you go on your ...
Jeff: Middle of December.
Larry Hyrb: Okay, so we'll definitely do it before we all leave. Before the end of the year, we're gonna do it once. We'll commit to that.
Jeff: Okay.
Larry Hyrb: Can we all commit to that?
Laura: Yes.
Larry Hyrb: Alright, there we go. Alright. Sadly guys, we got to wrap things up, because we have a lot of work to do and we have to get ready for Xbox One X launch. I want to thank everybody for all the support. Jeff and I may or may not see you in New York. You don't have to be there. You can watch the stream, MOne Xer.com/Xbox. Check out my blog. Jeff, did you put a link to it? We've got [crosstalk 01:05:30]-
Jeff: To your blog?
Larry Hyrb: No, no, we've got all-
Jeff: I think they know.
Larry Hyrb: I think there's a pinned post at the top that talks about all-
Jeff: The livestream? I'll go ahead and put that in there.
Larry Hyrb: The global events. Hopefully by then Laura will have picked up a console.
Laura: We'll see.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
Laura: If I'm lucky.
Larry Hyrb: Yeah, no gadgets this week. You know, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this live thing. I'm excited about this live video thing.
Laura: Yeah, that should be exciting.
Larry Hyrb: People have been asking for it. Jeff will comb his hair.
Laura: I'll find good lighting.
Larry Hyrb: You'll find ... Well-
Jeff: My hair cutter left the country for like three months, and you can tell.
Larry Hyrb: It shows. It shows.
Jeff: I know you can tell.
Larry Hyrb: You're looking a little ...
Jeff: I'm like, "I'm glad you're finding yourself in Paris and taking a class in the [inaudible 01:06:07], but look at me. I'm hideous."
Larry Hyrb: "No, don't look at me."
Alright gang, we'll talk to you next time. Thanks for ... You can follow Laura on Twitter at:
Laura: @Lauralollipop.
Larry Hyrb: You can send all your complaints and suggestions to Jeff at:
Jeff: @JeffRubenstein. You're already doing it.
Larry Hyrb: And I'm Major Nelson. We'll talk to you guys next time. Bye bye, everybody.
Laura: Bye.
Jeff: Bye.