612: Welcome to 2018 & Phil Spencer drops by

Larry: Thank you. All right, welcome to the show. My name is Larry Hyrb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. How was that for an opening? Really excited you could join us, we have a new outlet, we have of course, Mixer, mixer.com/majornelson. We are on Twitch, the lovely folks over there on Twitch are carrying us now, and now, Facebook! Welcome everybody.
Anyway, welcome to see you guys, why don't we open up and show everybody. Of course, we have the great hosts here, I have Laura and Jeff. Now, listen, we are not stable geniuses, we are a stable of geniuses, and really smart.
Jeff: I was going to get to that, and you beat me to it!
We need an animation for that. When I hear that HBO music from way back in the day, it reminds me that one, I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing, which is watching HBO, I was like six and it was bad stuff-
Larry: Now, question: were you watching it with a full screen, or were you watching it when it was squiggly? Did you pay for it? Remember [crosstalk 00:01:11]-
Laura: I remember that! Oh, I sure do.
Jeff: It was on a TV that had wood on it.
Larry: Woo! What a show we've got for you!
Anyway, well, welcome back! We haven't been on the air in month, we've been traveling, we've had the holiday. Last show we did was right here on Mixer and we had so much fun. I know you had fun, Laura.
Laura: It was a ton of fun!
Larry: And everybody here had fun, and of course, you at home had fun, so we said, "We're going to do it again!"
Laura: Yeah, let's give it a try again.
Larry: And here we are.
Jeff, what are you reading? You're not reading the chatroom are you?
Jeff: I am reading the chatroom [CornWolf 00:01:36] says, "Jeff doesn't really sound like he looks." Well what do I look like?
Larry: Some people said that you don't sound like you look. "You sound smarter than you look," was one of the quotes I read.
Laura: What? That's mean.
Jeff: Okay. I don't know that I sound smart. I certainly don't look smart, so I don't know if it's a compliment or not.
[CornWolf 00:01:53], please elaborate, I need this.
Larry: Anyway, well, welcome to the show. We're going to talk about what we're playing, we're going to do Name the Game; we had a great Name the Game from last time. We're giving stuff away. If you're watching us anywhere else, if you're watching us on Facebook or Twitch, you might want to swing over to mixer.com/majornelson because we're going to give stuff away in the chat. We're also going to give some stuff away here, so you can double your chances.
Look at this! I have 12 months of Game Pass to give away.
Laura: You do? That's a fantastic gift!
Larry: Should we give it away now?
Laura: I think we should, what do you think?
Jeff: Right to the giveaways!
Larry: Right to the giveaways!
Okay, it's a code on the back, here. You can't read it because I'm going to read it to you in NATO format: Romeo, Tango, Hotel, Seven, Tango, Seven, Four, Three, Tango, Charlie, Papa, Hotel ... What's M? Mike. Mike, Kilo, Three, Four, Nine, X as in X-ray, Three, Mother, Juliet, Four, Two.
Jeff: Is that a sneak peak of Call of Duty DLC?
Larry: There's one more. I've held off for this very last one so long. I'll let you come up with one for the last character.
Laura: Well, I know the NATO pronunciations, I-
Larry: Right, good! Whatever you want to do it!
Laura: Okay, it's Zulu!
Larry: Okay, there you go. So that is one.
Laura: I think you should have practiced your NATO before we did this.
Larry: You know, I try it all the time and-
Jeff: I have no idea what that is, nobody's going to get that.
Larry: We actually have someone on the staff, as you know, who is a NATO expert. He's been in the military, and he talks NATO and he always just shakes his head when I try to do this, so, I'm sorry.
Anyway, we're going to talk about what we're playing, we're going to do Name the Game, we're going to go over some gadgets, we're going go to talk about our holiday, hopefully y'all had a great holiday. And then we may, I don't know because scheduling's kind of tough, we may have a special guest come by. I don't actually know if this person will come by?
Laura: Secret special guest!
Jeff: Well, he said maybe. Let's not raise the hopes.
Larry: Yeah, maybe. We'll deal with that towards the show.
We're going to hang out with you for an hour, we'll have our eye on the chatroom at mixer.com/majornelson, so feel free to drop some questions in there. Keep it civil, please! Do I have to say that anymore?
Laura: I think you do.
Jeff: That's what the [inaudible 00:03:55] are for.
Larry: Yeah, exactly.
And away we go! What are you playing, Laura? Let's just get right to it.
Laura: Right into it. Right into what you're playing.
So it's been ... how long has it been? About a month since we've been-?
Jeff: Almost exactly.
Larry: I just said that at the top of the show!
Jeff: Larry, we don't listen!
Larry: I know, I know!
Jeff: It took this format for you to realize.
Larry: Can we bring up the console up here? This is my dashboard.
So, I think you're playing this game in just a bit, alright? One of the moment the guys bring it up here.
Laura: Drum roll, please!
Larry: Drum roll, please!
Jeff: The crew loves it when he directs from the stage.
Larry: I guess it's not going to go up, there it is!
Laura: There it is!
Larry: Are you playing PUBG? You're playing PUBG.
Laura: I am.
Larry: Yeah, do you want to tell your PUBG story?
Laura: Yes, I do.
Larry: Please, please, go ahead.
Laura: So, it's been a couple weeks since we've had PUBG on Xbox, it's been great! I've had a chance to jump in and play some single player. And I did pretty well on single player. I'd say greater than 50%, which I think is a win.
Larry: Not bad.
Laura: Not bad. Not bad for your first couple of rounds. And I saw, one night when I was playing, that Larry was online and he was playing PUBG-
Jeff: Like he does, literally every night.
Laura: Like he does, all the time. And I sent him a text and said, "Hey Larry, can I join? I'd love to play as a group!" and what did Larry say? "No, sorry, group's full!" Off you go!
Larry: And by the way, I want to point out that this is probably the first time in five years that Laura's asked to play with me.
Laura: Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration.
Larry: It's sure feels like that!
Laura: It's an exaggeration.
Larry: It sure feels like that.
Laura: But I figured that the time that I would actually text you to say, "Hey, I'm free. Let's actually do this, let's play!" you're like, "No, sorry, I've got a crew. And I'm going to bed, so, off you go."
Jeff: Here's what I've noticed about Larry is, he'll get very absorbed in a particular game, and he did this with Overwatch. And we'll say, "Hey, let's all meet up, let's play at 9," and then I get on at 9:00, 9:01, 9:15, and you're already gone! You've already taken off, you've got a full group with a bunch of other people-
Larry: Well, let's be clear, that gets back to, and we've talked about this, it drives me crazy when people aren't on time.
Laura: That's true. You're very punctual.
Larry: And you guys know that it's my broadcast, but it's like, "Okay, 9 o'clock means 9 clock." It doesn't mean 9:01, it doesn't mean 9:15.
Jeff: So says the guy who started the show at 1:05-
Larry: That started the show five minutes after 1:00.
Jeff: "Cause I wanted to make sure people were joining us." You really stepped in it this time!
Larry: Yeah, I did. I set you up. But, guilty as charged! So I owe Laura-
Laura: Next time, Larry.
Larry: Well why don't we get me, you, Jeff, and we'll get somebody from our team. I think I got this guy a great ringer. And we'll talk about that when we get to ROM play.
Laura: So, I had to join into PUBG on my own. I wanted to try teams because teams is a different mechanic that single.
Larry: They're very different mechanics.
Laura: So I wanted to try teams. So I jumped in-
Larry: Have you seen this commercial, by the way, that the team-
Laura: I haven't seen this one.
Larry: This is an amazing commercial that our Marketing team did, which just kind of shows - I'm sorry to cut you off but it's just that they're playing it right now - the essence of PUBG which is like, we all get on a plane, we have nothing, and we're all going to jump out of the plane onto this island, and we all have to find stuff.
Laura: And that's how it feels.
Larry: Right?
Laura: You've got nothing and you have to [inaudible 00:06:51] it.
Larry: Right? Have you swiveled the camera to go behind the plane, so you can see everybody in there? You can see all hundred people in there.
Laura: Really? I haven't done that.
Jeff: I've never done that.
Larry: Come down low, and when the hatch opens, you can look in and you can see them all lined up.
Laura: That's kinda cool. And then you can see when people are jumping out. You can maybe time your jump-out when nobody else is jumping out. That's my strategy.
So I jumped into team multiplayer on my own. So I joined up with three other random people.
Larry: So you did a squad.
Laura: I did a squad, yeah. You play with four people on your same team, and you have to go, of course, kill everybody else in the game. And I wanted to be friendly with my team and actually stay with them and play with them, since I had not played it before, and I'm not sure if the other people on my team had ever played the game before.
Larry: Uh-oh.
Laura: Because we were hanging out in a house, looking for all of our equipment-
Larry: You're scavenging.
Laura: Yeah, scavenging. Trying to get everybody with a good quality gun and some ammo and some armor. Then I notice the timer keeps saying, "Hey, one minute till the ring collapses, 30 seconds till the ring collapses." My teammates, now they're just hanging outside the-
Larry: But are you in the circle? Do you have circle advantage, Laura?
Laura: No, we were outside, that's the key point. We were outside of the circle, and I'm starting to panic a bit. And about 10 seconds until the circle collapsed, my teammate starts running, and I'm like, "Okay, finally, we're all going to run together, we're going advance on the frontline together-"
Larry: And if you notice, the map actually will give you a tip; it'll give you a dotted line of which direction to go.
Laura: But I haven't figured out how to zoom out the map and see how far away the line is.
Larry: Down on the deep end.
Jeff: You'll get there.
Larry: I'll help you, I promise.
Laura: Thank you. I had to go in by myself.
Larry: Oh, now I feel bad.
Laura: So I didn't know how far away we were, and I was just trusting my team, that we were going to stay together, that we were going to fight everybody together. And it turns out, we only left about 10 seconds before the circle collapsed, so we took off running in the straight beeline direction that the dotted line shows you to run-
Larry: "Go here!"
Laura: And then all of a sudden, here comes the-
Jeff: The Blue Zone.
Laura: The Blue Zone of death, it's come, it's come, and it overtook us. And I am running as fast as I can, and I am bee lining it, and I'm saying, "Come on, come on, run faster!" And unfortunately, I didn't make it. Neither did my other teammates.
Jeff: We've all had that story before.
Laura: My other teammates didn't make it either, so, come on team.
Jeff: Sometimes you've got to leave them behind.
Laura: So that was really sad.
Larry: Well here's something you need to know, is that the game's in game preview, and since it launched, I think it's had three or four pretty major updates.
Jeff: Indeed, there was a new update just yesterday.
Larry: Do you have the details on that?
Jeff: As a matter of fact, I do.
Laura: Before you bring that up, I want to give out my pro tip which is, even if your teammates aren't leaving when they should, you should leave, otherwise you will die, and it will be all for nought.
Jeff: Or, or, get better teammates.
Laura: Or get better teammates, that too! And I'm looking at you people to help me-
Jeff: I'm not [inaudible 00:09:40].
So Larry's like my mother-in-law in, well probably many ways, but here's the thing, if my gas tank - the rare times that I'm driving her around - is anything less than 3/4, she starts getting nervous. She's like, "There's a gas station there," and I'm like, "Yep!"
Larry: She's going to be even worse about it now that you have an electric car!
Jeff: She's not been in it. A Bolt, big fan.
So Larry's like, "Time's ticking down, gentlemen! Time's ticking, we should get going, right?" And it's like, "Oh, we've got plenty of time!"
Larry: I'm actually going to play the game live on the air here, while we're doing the game, so I can show you some of the things we're talking about.
Jeff: I knew you were going to do that. He's tuning us out.
Larry: No, I'm listening.
Jeff: So let's talk about the PUBG Xbox game preview, Patch Notes. It's the fourth update, and so a couple new features that have come into this, as you can see there-
Larry: They're right on the screen!
Jeff: Right, so, "Aim acceleration can now be adjusted by players by in-game option." Definitely recommend tweaking this to find the feel that is going to work for you.
This is a big one, maybe the biggest one out of all of these, which is "Player weapon damage has been increased against vehicles," something that we see towards the end of matches a lot of times-
Larry: People just driving around in a circle.
Jeff: Folks are in cars and you get a bit of a Mad Max type of thing.
Larry: That's the car meta game.
Jeff: Yes. So-
Laura: I've been around the cars, it's really interesting.
Jeff: So anyway, this makes it more likely that you're going to be able to mess that car as someone who's not in a vehicle-
Larry: So I'm actually going to start here in just a minute, we'll bring this full screen. I'll show you what I'm talking about where you can look in the back there, then you can continue with the notes. I don't know if we can flip those around there, have the studio ... So there's the plane. It may be too dark to see them, but you can actually see everybody in there. I think on this monitor, I don't know how it's coming through, if we could go full screen-
Jeff: Maybe the sun is on a different plane there.
Larry: Let's see [inaudible 00:11:22], we'll just ... ready? Can you see? I don't think you can see.
Laura: So what is your strategy for jumping out of the plane?
Larry: It depends where ... apparently the peanut gallery is talking now.
It depends where I'm coming in from. So I will go, here's what I do-
Laura: Do you go exactly for the center or do you go-?
Larry: No, I got off the plane tip. So I usually drop a marker down here like this and then I'll wait till it lines up on the plane tip, you can see it coming along on the plane tip at the top. Once that gets roughly where it is, I will hit B and then I'll basically spin it around. And I will do this, this will get you the most distance if you're looking up under yourself here.
Jeff: And this is by pushing the left stick forward?
Larry: Pushing the left stick forward. Then I'll drop and hit the ground. So while I do that, you can see I hit back for the menu, you can hit up on the D-pad, see?
Laura: You can zoom in and out. Yeah, thank you! Pro tips.
Jeff: Anyway, so a few other things. There's now a first-person perspective solo matchmaking queue made available for a few of the regions and they're going to be opening other modes in those regions as concurrency allows as well.
There is a couple of, I would say, typical bug fixes that you would see. On the server and client-side, some increases in FPS and a music on-off option has been added. This is already the fourth update and this game has only been out less than a month, so I think we're going to continue to see-
Larry: Yeah, I want to point out the updates that you just talked about. With the aim, you can actually hit those by hitting the menu button and then if you hold the menu button down again, you'll see them in here under Settings.
So here, you can see Sound at the top, and then down here at the bottom, we've got Aim Acceleration.
Let's turn that up to ten. So, there you go.
Alright, let's get back to the show.
Jeff: Forgot to check in for-
Larry: If you didn't tune us to see us play games, you're-
Jeff: They're on Mixer, they're here to watch people play games. It's a fair bet.
Larry: Okay, fair point.
Alright, so anyways. Continue on with what you're playing.
Laura: Oh, okay. Was that all the updates that we needed to cover?
Jeff: Oh yeah, just for that, go for it!
Laura: So another game that I jumped into, which I don't know if you guys had a chance to play yet, but it is Dungeon Defenders II. Did you guys get a chance to play Dungeon Defenders I or hear about it?
Larry: I did play the first one, quite a while ago. It had a long life. You have a history with this game.
Laura: I do. I played a lot of the first version and I was really excited to see the second version came out. So if you haven't played Dungeon Defenders, it is a first-person tower defense game. So you are a person that runs around the world, you have powers. And you can place all kinds of towers, and then you have to protect your core, and there are enemies that come along certain paths, just like a tower defense game, and you have to make sure that the tower are there to kill all the enemies that are walking down the path. I think this one is a really interesting game because it's first-person, and you can either decide to go attack the enemies yourself, or you can build up more towers.
The second version of this game, I think, is just a lot more polished than the first game. I didn't play with anyone, so I played solo, on my own, but in this version of the game you can switch between the four main characters, which gives you a bunch of different towers that you can go place, or different spells that you can cast against the enemies. I've spent a lot of time playing this and upgrading all of my little characters ... There we go! We got the film up now.
You can see you run around and you collect coins, and you collect equipment, so there is kind of an RPG element of it, and that, again, sort of scratches my Diablo itch of upgrading loot and collecting loot.
So if you're into tower defense games, this is a nice twist on a tower defense where you play in first-person.
Larry: Yeah, you never get to see it on ground level like that. Normally you have the view of God and you're just dropping stuff down. Fun!
Yay, good for you!
Laura: It's really fin, so I played a lot of that. I think it was a game with gold one week in December, so I downloaded it.
Larry: Okay, good for you.
Laura: I've also been, of course, playing some Diablo, as you guys know, and some Dance Central 2, as you guys know, because I had some family up.
Larry: That's right. Dance party at Laura's house!
Laura: Dance party! It's a fun a party game.
Larry: Except for me.
Laura: So that's pretty much it. Except for you, of course. You probably choose other games to play-
Larry: People get social anxiety. I know there's some people that are nervous talking to a camera and whatnot, I don't have any of that. Dancing! That will paralyze me.
Laura: That's your anxiety.
Larry: Yeah, that's like, "No, no, no, that's not good, stop."
Laura: Alright, so that's it for me.
Larry: How you doing over there, Jeffrey? How's your bot?
Jeff: I'm doing good! Let's not talk about that.
Larry: There's a question in the chatroom about it!
Laura: What?
Jeff: I'm just having fun in the chat here.
Yeah, so for most of ... almost the entire time since our last show, and since we've been back here, I've been in Japan, something I've been planning for a long time. I always wanted to go snowboarding in Japan because I heard it was really soft snow - why is that funny, Larry?
Larry: Because I saw some of the photos of your expectations and reality.
Jeff: What do you mean?
Larry: Just that there was a lot of snow.
Jeff: There was more snow than you could possibly imagine.
Larry: Be careful what you wish for!
Jeff: I know! The thing is, I'm not particularly good at snowboarding, I don't like falling, I'm tall, I'm 6'2" and a half maybe, that's a long way to fall down! It's a pain in the butt to get back up. Here, you have this wonderful ... it's like falling asleep on a Sleep Number bed. You just land and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to stay right here," and then you realize your head could get hit by someone on a snowboard.
Larry: In your ear, did you hear a Hello Kitty "uh-oh!"?
Jeff: There's stories there because Hello Kitty was everywhere.
One of the cool things ... wow look at this, thank you!
We were in [Niseko 00:16:54] which is in [Hokkaido 00:16:55] in the northern island of Japan. I highly recommend that if you ever get the opportunity, it's totally a different world, but it was just great to be able to do that. Now, I'm pretty much ruined for snowboarding anywhere else in the world.
So while I was out there, of course, on the way, I wish I had been able to bring ... it looked like [hoff 00:17:13], it was just snowing non-stop. It was really cool
Larry: And what is that we're looking at? Is that the-
Jeff: You're looking at the thousand meters. There was hut where you could get food and you could eat Japanese curry and Udon when you're skiing, which is just amazing to have, instead of chili cheese fries, which-
Larry: That'll sit in the gut!
Jeff: It does, it does. But you've earned those calories.
Anyway, on the way out there, it's a long trip, so I did bring my Switch and had a ... one of these days, I'll beat Zelda, one of these days.
Larry: You know I'm at the end of it, right?
Jeff: Are you? And you just haven't beaten it yet?
Larry: So, Zelda, it's an open world game and you have this final Boss Battle, and I know that it's there and I keep doing other tasks because I know if I go there, the game's over. So I'm like, "Yep, I see you. No problem, catch you later!" Then I go off and do something else.
Jeff: So while we were at the Game Awards, I wanted to play some of the DLC hits, so I downloaded it and realized, you can't actually play that stuff until you've beaten the main game. So I was like, "I'll make some progress," and I did, but a long ways to go there.
Also got super into Darts. Darts is really big in Japan. And I-
Larry: Like, pub Darts?
Laura: Real darts?
Jeff: Well, plastic darts, cause you can see-
Larry: Because it's Japan, it has to electronically tally.
Jeff: Yes, it was electronic, and it would talk to you in Japanese, and after every throw-
Larry: "Uh-oh!"
Jeff: -it would show a picture of famous dart players in Japan, which is a thing. And for whatever reason, if-
Larry: Is there a photo of this?
Jeff: It's called DARTSLIVE2-
Larry: Did you order one? Are they on Amazon?
Jeff: I have a feeling, because it's something that shows up ... they have Dart arcades everywhere.
Larry: They're called "Pubs" in the UK.
Jeff: I mean, yes, there's pubs and other stuff, but the main reason to go there was to play Darts, not to sit around and drink hand-drawn lager-
Larry: You need to get a dart board!
Jeff: So now I've come back, I want a Dartboard. I want to do it.
Laura: Were you any good?
Jeff: Define 'good'. I'm not like one of those people that's like, triple twenty, triple thirty-
Larry: Did you embarrass yourself?
Jeff: No.
Larry: Okay. Did you always get them on the board?
Laura: Yes, that's my definition of 'good'.
Jeff: Most of the time. So the plastic ones, which they use, and that's the way they do the auto scoring. Sometimes they bounce out, or they'll bend, so you have an endless supply of new tips you can put onto the dart and then throw it. But I didn't hit anybody. That would have been embarrassing if I had hit somebody at-
Laura: Yeah.
Larry: You would have been escorted off.
Jeff: Yeah. So I won a couple of games.
Anyway, so Darts. Darts is huge there. And I was like, "Oh, I'll be able to find all kinds of cool console games," games are much more expensive there. So I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll buy a new controller for my switch. No, I'll ... wait till I come back home." So I did that. But it was really good to get home, because while I was there, the one thing, the one thing that made me wish that I was back home, was seeing that The Witcher had upgraded or been enhanced for Xbox One X, with 4K, HDR, and a number of anti-[inaudible 00:19:56] and occlusion effects and things like that. Anyway, means it looks better!
So I came back, and literally, the first game I loaded up was The Witcher. I had never played Hearts of Stone, I'd never played Blood and Wine. Jumped right back in. Hearts of Stone is amazing, I'm nearly done, I think I'm winding up there-
Larry: Oh, it's great, isn't it?
Jeff: Definitely top three favorite game of all time, for sure.
These were some of the most memorable missions in there. If it's been a long time since you played the Witcher ... I got the controls back pretty quickly, after having beaten Dark Souls, which was kind of easy, I think, at this point. But you're playing it for the fun and for the storyline and for the things that Geralt says.
There's a couple of things that you do in Hearts of Stone that we haven't done, I know you've done it. You are completely different than anything you've done in the main storyline, which I've beaten. So huge, huge fan of that, and I'll be done with Hearts of Stone soon, I'll jump into Blood and Wine right after that.
Also, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, is something that I've been blowing through. The few times I'm not playing The Witcher, and you're not online playing PUBG, I'll try to get that in because there's definitely some really crazy moments that have been happening in that game.
Larry: I did the same thing with The Witcher when the enhancement came out. It was right before Christmas, I-
Jeff: Yeah, it was December 20th.
Larry: And I was like, "Oh, I've got to get back in," so I booted up, and make sure the 4K is on, and I get in there, and apparently my previous save, which was over four months ago, I was in a dungeon and I completely forgot what quest I was doing, what was going, what am I doing. So, okay, great.
It looks great! The inside of the dungeon looks great.
Jeff: Well you'll get it back. I was a little worried because I'd beaten the game in July of 2016, because I'd looked up my last save time and the last achievement I had unlocked. And I came back-
Larry: Oh, Wolfenstein. Here's your Wolfenstein [inaudible 00:21:44]
Jeff: Wolfenstein, though, the humor in the game. For a game that's incredibly disgusting, incredibly violent at times, gory, can be very funny.
Larry: It's got a dark humor, you're right.
Jeff: It's not often, I would say, you play a first-person shooter to see what happens to the characters, but this is definitely one of those situations.
Larry: It's interesting, you brought up, when you were in japan, about buying then bringing it over. I had the same exact thing happen to me when I was in Japan. Did I ever tell you the story, Jeff?
Jeff: No.
Larry: What's equivalent to the public television in Japan, I believe it's NK, the-
Jeff: Oh, NHK.
Larry: NHK, right.
Jeff: You can get that here!
Larry: Do you know what their mascot is?
Jeff: No.
Larry: Domo-kun.
Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Larry: The little brown ... you probably don't know the name, but you probably know what's going on there.
Oh, hello! Apparently we're a through-area here-
Jeff: It's lunchtime, apparently.
Larry: So I wanted to go get a Domo-kun, which is this little character, and I walked, I spent half a day going to the Japanese train station, because they only have them available at one place, and they didn't have the one I wanted. Long story short, I come home a week later, I'm in Target, and they have them in Target.
Laura: Really?
Larry: Yeah.
Laura: Oh, goodness.
[crosstalk 00:22:57].
Larry: Pardon me?
Laura: They're super cute. But it's too bad you spent so much time looking for it.
Larry: I know, I spent a ridiculous amount of time.
Jeff: I did go to a Pokemon Center to get gifts for a friend of mine.
Laura: What is a Pokemon Center?
Jeff: Well, I mean, in the game that's a thing, but then they actually have, in a neighborhood called Ikebukuro, this giant Pokemon store that's freaking huge. They have a plush of every single one. I wanted to get something for someone we work with's kid, who's not even one. I wanted to get a baby Slowbro because we call him "Slowbro" for many reasons, and I was able to find it because they have everything there.
I miss it. I miss it already, but-
Larry: Welcome back.
Jeff: Welcome back.
Larry: We're talking about what we're playing. I'm playing, of course, we've talked about PUBG, in fact we're going to bring up the full screen in just a second. This is one of many.
Laura: Did you save a screenshot?
Larry: Look! Right there! Chicken dinner!
Laura: Nice job, Larry.
Jeff: I'll have a chicken dinner.
Laura: Did you share that chicken dinner?
Larry: Well, no, no I didn't.
Playing a little bit of PUBG, let's see what else we're playing. I've been so busy, I haven't had a chance to figure out what I'm planning to talk about. Of course, playing Overwatch, they've got some new stuff. There's some Overwatch news-
Jeff: Yeah, there is some Overwatch news if you want to jump into that.
Larry: Yeah, why don't you share that with us.
Jeff: If you've fired up Overwatch recently - and I know a lot of people are playing PUBG, as are we, but we still love Overwatch in our house 0 the Overwatch League is something that is going to be launching really soon. Really soon, actually. So, even if you're not interested in eSports and spectating with some of the teams that they've got, you can get some new outfits. So there are, I think, 12 teams and right now, if you log in, on your Xbox, between now and February 13, they will give a hundred of this currency that is involved with the League, and that allows you to buy uniform of any of the teams for any of your players.
The thing I like about what they're doing with the League, and instead of it being just some names that are sort of generic - and a lot of these teams they find a following across the world - these are allied with cities, so I think they're sort of like-
Laura: That's really cool.
Jeff: -there's infinity there.
Larry: There's a Boston team!
Jeff: There is a Boston team, the Boston uprising. Are you going to be a Dallas Fuel fan or a Houston Outlaws fan? It could go either way.
Larry: Where do you fall on that spectrum, Laura?
Laura: Oh, man. So that aligns with the NFL, which we'll get into. All kinds of wars, I'm sure.
Larry: Yes you will.
Laura: So I won't got there. Dallas and Houston are probably equidistant, in my mind, from Austin, so we'll see.
Jeff: There's nothing in Seattle, but there's a Philadelphia Fusion team, so probably I'd go with that. Of course, I do like the logo for the Florida Mayhem, which is just a very perfect name for Florida.
Larry: What's the logo? I don't know if we can pull it up.
Jeff: It's a bomb who's wick is a palm tree.
Laura: That's great.
Jeff: [Crosstalk 00:25:45].
Yeah, there it is! So I think that is quite fitting in many ways. If I had to name a Florida team, mayhem sounds about right.
Of course, L.A. has two teams because it is L.A.
Laura: Of course it does.
Jeff: Anyway, so, actually I like the San Francisco Shock logo, and I used to live there, so-
Larry: Question now from Mixer chatroom, mixer.com/majornelson, asking if we are going to PAX South. Unfortunately, we're not able to go there, but we will, as usual, be at PAX East, right?
Jeff: Have we talked about this?
Laura: We haven't talked about it.
Jeff: Oh, okay.
Larry: We're talking about it now!
If you can make it, we'll be there. Jeff, if you can make it, we're going to be there. We'll be there at PAX East, which I believe is in April this year.
Laura: Okay, that's a few months.
Jeff: Well, as long as it's not as cold because-
Laura: If it's snowing-
[Crosstalk 00:26:29]
Larry: Well, you know, my family's back there now. Last week when I was there, it was -11, -12 degrees.
Jeff: That wast the bomb cyclone?
Larry: Yeah, I got out right ahead of the bomb cyclone.
Jeff: So, the first time I heard that, I saw something about a bomb cyclone, and I thought it was like a Boston area weatherman was like, "Yeah it's a bomb cyclone, it's wicked, wicked strong." And no, it's actually called that.
Larry: It's a meteorological term which is disappointing because for those of you that keep track of the show, know that Jeff was a weatherman.
Laura: Were you?
Jeff: I was.
Laura: What? How did I not know this?
Jeff: How did you not know this?
Larry: Oh, it gets even better. I haven't been able to do this, you don't know because you're just learning this information ... internet.
Jeff: No, no, no. No. No.
Laura: Yes!
Larry: Apparently there's video of him as a weatherman online somewhere.
Laura: Find it! Let's all know. I want to see.
Jeff: Larry, there is a ... hold on let me check the radar. I think there's an 80% chance of me smacking you in the face for setting people up with that. Oh, wait, no, it's 100%.
Yeah, that was something that I did in my senior year of college and my side hustle was at a TV channel and I was able to do that.
Laura: What was the channel?
Jeff: I'm not going to give these people any hints!
Larry: I think I know what it was, but I won't say it.
It's funny, you and I ran parallel lives. Because when I was at Syracuse University studying Communications and all those other things I did, my dad - I don't know if I told you this story - I would come home and my dad would always tell me, "So how's school?" He's like, "Have you every thought about meteorology?".
Laura: What?
Larry: And I was like, "No?". For four or five semesters, I'd come home, "How about a weatherman? Do you want to be a weatherman?" And I finally said to him, "Dad, what's the deal? Why do you want me to be a weatherman?" He kind of looked at me, and he goes, "Well, there'll always be weather," and I couldn't argue with him.
Laura: Aw. No, that's true.
Larry: So there you go, you can always be a weatherman.
Jeff: So I did it for about six months, and during that six months, there were three hurricane near-misses in the area. When it's that type of storm and you live on the East Coast, it's not like they do the News and then they do the Sports, and then let's kick to Weather for three minutes.
Larry: Weather is the top of the show.
Jeff: They're like, "Here's the two anchors," and like, "We're gonna kick it to Jeff," and I'm like, "Great". You have 10 minutes you have to fill. Filling 10 minutes live ... I mean, we have our computer here and there's three of us and we're not doing really anything of import here - this is very important work we're doing here today - that's really hard because you end up having to memorize the order or the maps that are coming through, and people are wanting to know, "Should I evacuate or not," and it's on you-
Larry: And they're looking at you!
Jeff: And I'm like, "I am not qualified to be doing this," I didn't have a meteorological degree.
There's two things: there's a meteorologist, who you should listen to, and then there's a weatherman or weatherperson. A weatherperson is someone who does not have a meteorological degree, they're just reading whatever the computer said. That was me, I was just like, "Oh, it says it's going to be 74," it could be like January and I'm like, "Look, the computer said 74, so just deal with that. Take it up with the computer. Take it up with AccuWeather."
This is why I work at Microsoft now, and I'm not a Weatherman.
Larry: Were you ever that person who, when it's 100 mph winds, you're holding on as you're trying to do your report?
Jeff: Why do people do that?
Larry: I don't know!
Jeff: Then again, if they don't do that, you need Jim Cantore to get out there and have lawn chairs blowing past him, otherwise I don't know it's a real hurricane.
Larry: Anyway, so cyclone bomb or whatever.
Jeff: Bomb Cyclone.
Larry: Also, I spent some time - this is going to sound terrible - but I spent some time in Boston when I was growing up. We would go out to Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, and apparently there's sewage coming up, and it's frozen.
Laura: Ew.
Larry: Frozen sewage. You never want to hear either of those words apart, how about them together?
Laura: Ew, no thanks.
Jeff: Yeah, so East Coast.
Laura: Going back to Florida-
Larry: Yes, getting back to Florida, apparently, iguanas were freezing recently? Did you know anything about that?
Jeff: So when I was in high school, and I lived in Miami for three years, and ... five years? Whatever. I want to forget it that much. There weren't iguanas, there weren't very many of them. They were an invasive species, but over the course of the last 20 years or whatever, there's iguanas everywhere. And they're big?
Larry: Where do they come from?
Jeff: They're native in parts of Mexico, Central America, South America, and some of the islands. But the way it works is Florida's warm enough that if you let a pet go, like, "Oh my god, my pet viper got too big. I'm gonna dump it out." It's gonna live, and it's gonna make babies.
Larry: But the bigger question I have is, why do you have a pet viper? But they do?
Jeff: People do.
Larry: This is part of the Florida ...
Jeff: And that's why ... A couple years ago, I was visiting my folks, and we were walking down to the Chik-Fil-A like you do, and I saw one of those lizards that goes up on two feet, running past. And I'm like, "That should not be here."
Larry: Right.
Jeff: They probably have those in Texas.
Laura: No.
Jeff: No? Well, whatever those are, it's really funny.
Laura: There's no roadrunners.
Jeff: I looked at my brother, I'm like, "Did you just see that?"
Larry: Right.
Jeff: An eight-foot alligator in a swimming pool, that's normal. You're supposed to see that. But a two-legged ... no. Apparently it got so cold, 'cause my grandma was freezing. She had her heat on, it was in the mid-60s.
Laura: Oh no.
Jeff: Wish I was joking. The lizards were falling out of the trees, and they had to tell everyone, "It may not be dead. Don't touch the lizard, 'cause it might wake up and bite you."
Larry: 'Cause they're cold blooded, right?
Jeff: Yeah.
Larry: So their body does something different.
Jeff: They just shut down.
Larry: And they just go into this ... it's like putting your computer to sleep, or hibernating, right? Wakes up.
Jeff: Yes. You control-alt-delete the iguana and it wakes up.
Larry: I am not an amphibian expert.
Laura: I saw a news article that said a Florida man, I immediately thought of you, Jeff.
Jeff: Thank you.
Laura: Had gone around and collected all these frozen iguanas, and then was surprised when they woke up in his van, and he [crosstalk 00:32:16].
Jeff: Of course it's a van, by the way. None of that story [crosstalk 00:32:20]
Laura: I'm sure there was.
Jeff: I actually kind of like the iguanas. They're really big. You'll see them if you're ... sunning themselves on a wall. Wow, you just turned into an iguana. That was amazing. Anyway, Florida. It's a place you can go.
Larry: I'm sorry, JC [Cappas 00:32:40], I don't know what this is either.
Laura: We should take a break, and we should give away another Game Pass.
Larry: Oh yeah, let's give another one away.
Jeff: Let's do that.
Larry: Ready?
Laura: Let's give another Game Pass away.
Larry: Jeffrey, will you do the honors?
Jeff: Alright. I'm gonna read these in ...
Larry: Reptilian. They need to be reptiles.
Jeff: Yes. [crosstalk 00:32:55] Should I just show it to them and you zoom in? Isn't that a little easier, and I'll cover the last five?
Larry: Well, look, if you don't wanna read ...
Jeff: Never mind, I'll just read it. Hey, everybody. JFX2XFCJ6R22JHH3JF29 ...
Larry: Hold that last character.
Jeff: I know. M4VT ... that's it. I'm not telling you the last one. It's one of the 26 letters of the English alphabet.
Larry: Let me see what it is. It is O.
Jeff: Spoiler alert: it's the same one as the last one.
Larry: The same one as the last one, which is the last one of all of them.
Jeff: Yes.
Larry: How's that for a present?
Laura: Wow. You can be a [inaudible 00:33:44].
Jeff: Someone said they redeemed it.
Larry: Yeah.
Jeff: Dark Stalker, well done.
Laura: Congratulations.
Larry: Congratulations. We'll do another one a little bit later on. Let's keep going through the news, 'cause I have no idea what we're doing here, where we are.
Laura: We went way off track.
Jeff: When do we ever ...
Larry: If you guys, if you're in the chat, or if you're on mixer.com/majornelson, if not, you should be, if you're on your console, feel free to say hello. If you're watching us from Facebook, hey, Facebook. If you're watching us from Twitch, hello. Let us know where you're from. I'd love to know where you guys are watching us from. I know that it's really cold in the Eastern United States. It's cold in Europe. And it's really hot down in Australia.
Jeff: Oh, I know.
Larry: It's 100 degrees Fahrenheit down there.
Jeff: They said it was like 43, and I'm like, "I don't know Celsius."
Larry: Australia, I got somebody from Massachusetts. Rob wants to know, is that the Surface Book one or two?
Laura: The one that Jeff has?
Jeff: This is a Surface laptop.
Larry: Laptop.
Laura: This is the Surface Book one.
Larry: Yeah, so there we go.
Laura: The OG.
Jeff: Look at these Philly people. Represent.
Larry: Rochester, New York, home of some of the greatest wings I've ever had at the Anchor Bar.
Jeff: Isn't that where they're from?
Larry: That's where they were invented.
Jeff: Was that Rochester? I thought that was Buffalo, but I could be ... was it Buffalo?
Larry: I think you're right.
Jeff: I could be wrong. I'm sure the wings in Rochester are phenomenal, too. It's on the Finger Lakes, I think. Is it? Yeah, I think. [crosstalk 00:34:57]
Laura: Should I get to the news?
Larry: Yes.
Jeff: Oh yeah, the news.
Laura: Back to the news.
Jeff: This time of year, obviously, you're big, huge titles, your AAAs, all the things we've been waiting for and that you hear about A3, those games come out around Christmas, typically. And then it's a little slower, and you get a chance to see some indie games. There's a few games that are coming out in the next couple of weeks, or have just recently come out, that I wanted to bring your attention to. One of them, looked really interesting, is sci-fi mystery The Station, which is coming out both for Xbox One and Windows 10.
Larry: Like space station?
Jeff: Yes, like a space station. As someone who played ... yes, if that helps you, Larry. It's not train station, it's not Grand Central. I really enjoyed Tacoma, when that came out last summer I wanna say, and I'm sort of getting some vibes from that. It's a first person mystery game set on a space station, and there it is right there, to study [inaudible 00:35:53] alien civilization. That is going to be coming out. And of course, any game coming out on Xbox One and Windows 10 is something that makes it that much easier for me to play it when I'm on the road. I'm looking forward to that.
Another one, OK K.O.! Let's Play Heroes. This is based on a Cartoon Network show called OK K.O. Let's Go Heroes. The reason I'm talking about a licensed game is because one: the Cartoon Network studio has actually been putting out some really good games of late. But two: because this game is made by Capy. Capy Games makes some phenomenal games. Super Time Force was one of them that came out early in the Xbox One cycle.
Larry: I remember that.
Jeff: Quite a good game. And they also made probably one of my favorite licensed games, which came out on 360 quite some time ago, which was ... oh my god, now ... Might and Magic Clash of Heroes HD is what it was. Capy is also working on Below.
Larry: Oh, I forgot about that.
Jeff: This is a studio with a really good pedigree, and I'm a really big fan of what they do. They make really good looking games. Even though I'm not exactly familiar with OK K.O.! on Cartoon Network, I will play this game, simply because of the Capy pedigree. That definitely gets them pretty far in my book. They're really good at making 2D games, if you played Super Time Force, and they're really good at working with animated stuff. I'm looking at it now, and it seems like something I would probably play.
Laura: It does seem right up your street.
Jeff: Yes. Another game that's coming out very soon is The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, which is a first person story-driven mystery game, which has been getting, I believe, released on PC and had some really good feedback. I think we're saying it's critically acclaimed, would be the easiest way to say that. Looking forward to that. That's coming out in about a week and a half, on January 18th. It's currently available for pre-order on Xbox One pre-order pre-download.
And one last one, and this is a game that I played at, it might have been either at GDC last year, or perhaps at PAX or E3. Anyway, Full Metal Furies, this is a game that has been in the works for some time, is coming to Xbox One on January 17th, just a shade over a week from now. And this is a game that four people can play together, and it's definitely ... if you like Double Dragon back in the day, or maybe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Arcade, those types of games, this is a type of game that I think might be up your alley. Full Metal Furies, coming out in just over a week. Keep an eye out for it.
Larry: Delightful.
Jeff: Yeah.
Larry: By the way, I just got an email from the PUBG team.
Laura: Just now?
Larry: Yeah, they gave us some codes to give away in the chatroom. So we have some PUBG codes. We'll randomly give those away in the chatroom, so thank you, PUBG team. Apparently they're watching.
Jeff: That's cool.
Laura: Hello.
Jeff: We like your game.
Larry: It's amazing how many people tune in and watch this show.
Jeff: Oh, there's Full Metal Furies, by the way.
Larry: Oh, look at that. That looks cool.
Jeff: They have vastly different ... it's not like everyone's exactly the same. There's more tank type of players. There's a number of different folks that you control, and they have different abilities that can come into play, and you have to work together. So right now, you're just seeing a single player, but you can play four players at once. I had a lot of fun with this. I think it was GDC, now that I'm thinking about it, that I played that. God, we're almost getting ready for the next GDC.
Laura: Almost time.
Larry: Next month. Game Developer Conference down there in San Francisco. I haven't been there in a while.
Jeff: We need to go. We should go down there.
Larry: I think we need to go. Laura, if you're around there, we'll go down.
Laura: It's been a few years.
Larry: Jeff will take you to this place that has great ice cream.
Jeff: Actually, I will.
Larry: I know.
Jeff: You know we're getting a Salt & Straw up here? That's really good ice cream, too.
Laura: That sounds pretty good.
Jeff: We'll talk later.
Larry: Alright, so we're moving right along here. We've got ... should we do another one?
Laura: We should. Should I read this one out this time?
Larry: Yeah, an entire year of Xbox Game Pass, which has over 100 games, endless play, we're gonna give away a code right now. If you're watching this on Facebook, Twitch, or Mixer, get ready, 'cause here comes the code. Oh, Laura.
Laura: Ready?
Larry: Yes.
Laura: Here we go. The code is MY7P6KQ3J93RPRH3GJDQ2F63 and the last character ...
Larry: What's the last one? Here we go. Drum roll please, is ...
Laura: The same last character as all the rest of them. [crosstalk 00:40:33]
Larry: Are we giving out the same code over and over again?
Laura: I hope it's not the same code.
Larry: No, but you're right. They're all the same final character.
Laura: Really?
Larry: We're gonna have to switch it up.
Laura: Oh, my gosh.
Larry: That's bizarre. I've never seen that.
Laura: I'm gonna tear this one in half.
Larry: Yeah, tear that one in half.
Laura: Did anybody redeem it on the chat stream?
Jeff: Someone said, "I was so close." So, it's possible that somebody else already had gotten it.
Laura: Somebody redeemed it. Well, congratulations, watchers.
Larry: Congratulations. I'll take that.
Laura: Enjoy 12 months of Xbox Game Pass.
Larry: So do we have any other news? 'Cause I thought it was gonna be [crosstalk 00:41:00]. Oh, we have to do Name the Game, too.
Laura: Don't forget Name the Game.
Jeff: I don't think, because it's been so long since we did a show, I don't think we really talked about the Games of Gold for January.
Larry: Make it so.
Jeff: We're already about halfway through. Actually, I think it was the very first game that was released this calendar year, was Adventures of Van Helsing 2. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing 2, I'm really selling them short. Or three, my god. I'm just ...
Larry: Are these incredible adventures?
Jeff: These are incredible adventures. These are not the regular ... it would have been the second one if it was just the regular adventures. The third incredible adventures. That's free right now, with your Gold subscription, as is Tomb Raider Underworld, which has become available through the magic of backward compatibility. And then coming up on January 16, will be Zombie, which I believe is actually coming to Xbox One, I wanna say it was one of the big Wii-U hits back in the day. I don't think it was on any other platform until now.
Larry: I think you're right.
Jeff: So there's Zombie. And then Army of Two, which was a huge game back in the early Xbox 360 days. That'll be in the middle of the month. It was three. Van Helsing three.
Larry: If you wanna keep up on all the news, you need to go to news.xbox.com, or my blog majornelson.com, or you can follow me on Twitter at @majornelson.
Jeff: Yeah. We're all here for you, Larry.
Larry: No. We're all here for everybody there, you at home, right? What else do we have to go ... we have a lot going on here. I'm just noticing that, yeah, they're all ending in Z.
Laura: That's really funny.
Larry: Could we do one more? I'm gonna do something different.
Laura: Okay.
Larry: Okay, ready? This one's gonna be a little harder, gang. This is for a free one year of Xbox Game Pass. I'm gonna read the code backwards.
Laura: Oh no.
Jeff: Larry, it's hard enough to get ... I couldn't do that.
Larry: I'm gonna read it straight across. Ready? Starting from, the first letter I'm gonna give you is gonna be the last of the five by fives. Here we go, you ready? Z, Golf, Victor, Romeo, Six, Mother, Six, Whiskey, Two, Niner ... gotta say niner, right?
Jeff: Maybe?
Larry: Mother, Papa, Two, Kilo, Queen, Tango, Queen, Two, Golf, Kilo, Romeo, Papa, Juliet, X-ray, Seven. There you go.
Laura: Nice job.
Jeff: Did I hear a niner in there? What was that from? That was Tommy Boy.
Larry: I wanna thank you guys for joining us. We're having quite a day here. We're hanging out with you. We got a lot of requests to do this show live every week. Unfortunately, we can't do it every week.
Jeff: Why? Why did you request this?
Larry: It's a little harder to get us all in here, and we gotta look presentable. Sometimes, Jeff shows up in just shorts and flip flops.
Jeff: This is the first time I've worn pants all year.
Larry: He may have shorts and flip flops on for now, for all you know.
Jeff: No.
Larry: To be really news-y. We'll do another show in the future, maybe next month, whenever we get around to it. We got a lot to do. Wanna do Name the Game?
Laura: I am ready for Name the Game.
Larry: Let's see if they ... it's a little more complicated, 'cause we're gonna play the clip from last time, and then we're gonna tell you who won it. So if you guys are ready up there in the control booth, go ahead and play the clip from last time.
I don't know if our audio's hot. Doesn't need to be.
Alright, now that was a little tricky, right, Laura?
Laura: Yes it was. That was a trick one.
Larry: We decided to put our collective heads together and Laura came up with this ... well, we all came up to decide to do a trick.
Laura: It was a group effort.
Larry: Why don't you go ahead and give the answer to that.
Laura: So that was Name the Game from last time. And the answer is Wolfstone 3D. So that is the mini game which is found inside of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus.
Larry: So it was a game within a game.
Laura: Game within a game.
Larry: And so we had a lot of people that got it wrong, 'cause they guessed one game or the other, but you had to have that whole thing.
Laura: So we took all the correct answers and we chose a random winner. This time's winner is David, and his gamer tag is oniongum. Congratulations, David. Good job figuring out our puzzle.
Larry: Does it say where he's from?
Laura: No, it doesn't say where he's from.
Larry: That's fine. Doesn't matter.
Laura: That's okay. We don't need to know. So David, you've won a lot of great prizes. We've got a copy of Wolfenstein for you. This is the two pack, which includes both Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Old Blood. We have a copy of Madden NFL 2018, and that also comes with the ultimate team starter pack. But that's not all. We also have a copy of Star Wars Battlefront 2, which I am also looking forward to playing. I haven't had a chance to play it yet.
Larry: It's really good.
Laura: I head it's fantastic. And this is another game that I'm looking forward to playing, but I'm gonna share with you, David, instead of playing it myself. This is a copy of Okami HD. Have you had a chance to play that one yet, Jeff?
Jeff: Yeah. I haven't had a lot of time with it, but it looks so beautiful.
Laura: And that's not all. You're also, David, getting a copy of PUBG, which is in game preview.
Larry: Player Unknown Battleground.
Laura: Which we've been chatting about at length here.
Larry: Oh, we have something else.
Laura: I'll send him an Xbox Game Pass that we've been giving away here.
Larry: A free year of Xbox Game Pass, which is 100 games.
Laura: 12 months, 100 games, all for you. And then, I've got one more thing.
Larry: I'll let Laura do the reveal. Are you ready? There you go, putting it under here.
Laura: I'm super jealous about this. David, this is for you. This is the Sea of Thieves special edition controller. And I am mega jealous you're gonna get this.
Larry: It's cool, 'cause controllers are interesting design. It has the controller version of a gold pirate tooth. Show that off, Jeff.
Jeff: Oh, yeah. One of the right trigger ... look at that zoom, you guys ... is gold, and the left trigger is nearly obsidian, but I also love it. It's kinda hard to tell here just how glowy this skull is, but it's [crosstalk 00:47:26].
Larry: I'm not gonna ask the team to turn down the lights, but I think it glows in the dark, right? I don't know. You'll have to find out. Let us know.
Laura: It is a fantastic controller. Does it glow in the dark? Okay, thanks for checking that out, Jeff.
Jeff: Yeah. Some real deductive work here.
Larry: Oh, yeah, it glowed.
Jeff: I'm on the case.
Laura: Alright, so congratulations, David, or oniongum. Great job getting through our puzzle. I'm gonna pry that away from Jeff.
Larry: Congratulations. So that means we have another Name the Game. Right, Laura?
Laura: That's right. We're gonna do it again, and the people here watching us live, you're gonna have the advantage of seeing the clip as well as hearing it.
Larry: If you're listening to this on my regular podcast feed or anywhere else, then you need to go to mixer.com/majornelson to see it if you need that extra help. There's audio here, of course, as there has been doing this feature for 13, 14 years.
Laura: I'm gonna ask the chatroom, please be kind. Do not answer in the chatroom. That does not get you anything. [crosstalk 00:48:30] It spoils your chances.
Larry: Actually, it will.
Laura: What does it do?
Larry: It gets you kicked out.
Laura: Oh no. It also spoils your chances of winning, 'cause you're just giving someone else the opportunity to enter into our contest, so don't answer in the chat.
Larry: Just be cool.
Laura: Be cool.
Larry: Why don't we go ahead and roll, ready to roll the name?
Laura: I'm ready if you're ready.
Larry: Alright, let's roll Name the Game for this week.
I need healing.
Laura: Alright, so that was Name the Game for this week. If you think you know what game those sounds or those clips are from, all you have to do is send me an email, [email protected] Tell me what game that is.
Jeff: [For Neck 00:49:30] spoiled it, Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
Laura: Nice try.
Jeff: Thanks, guys. You blew it for everybody. [crosstalk 00:49:37]
Laura: So email [email protected], CC [email protected] so we both get it, and good luck to all you guys out there. We'll choose a random winner, and you, too, could win fabulous prizes.
Larry: I wanna show you this thing. This was sent to me, Laura, from Geek Made Designs.
Laura: Those are awesome.
Larry: You've probably seen these on social. It's this peculiar little thing. You put it down like this. Can we get a zoom on this, Bryce? You put your controller in, and it fits so nicely in here like that. Look at that. Isn't that amazing?
Laura: That is a fantastic display case.
Larry: It just fits right in, and it just locks right in there, unlike that controller.
Laura: We could have used one for that one.
Jeff: See, you needed another one.
Larry: This is from geekmadedesigns.com. I wanna thank them for sending this over here. And there's actually, if you go to the left here, you can see there's another one. This one is a separate one that he made for me, which is also for two. So when you have that player two in your life, this is where he and/or she can store their controller.
Jeff: I like how it looks like if you had a baby duck and you got its feet bronzed or something like that. By itself, it's a real conversation piece.
Laura: I love the detail of burning in the logo at the top.
Larry: We've got the one over here. Get the zoom in on that, if you could, and then the other one. I wanna thank him, he sent those over here. And I think you can order them on his site, can't you? Do you have that information?
Laura: It looks like you can find the website at geekmadedesigns.com.
Larry: Yep. This is the way it goes, so there you go. They sent this here for free. They're not paying us to be on here. I just thought, I felt this thing and it feels good, right?
Laura: Yeah, it's a solid chunk of wood.
Larry: It's a nice solid piece of wood, so, that's kind of awesome.
Laura: The logo on the back. Yeah, this is great. I would love one for myself.
Larry: If you're a single player, you play by yourself, or you play with others, there you go.
Jeff: That's some good Dremel work. I was terrible in wood shop.
Larry: He's got a video on his ...
Laura: Is it a laser cutter? It looks laser [crosstalk 00:51:27].
Larry: We were looking this up yesterday, and he's got this laser, he's got a video that shows.
Jeff: I just thought he was really good at whittling. Sitting there with a pocketknife.
Laura: That would take forever.
Jeff: I'm impressed.
Larry: Anyway, there you go. [email protected] is the email again. Thank you, if you're watching us on Facebook. Thank you, if you're watching us on Mixer. Thank you, if you're watching us on Twitch. We're having a good time here.
Jeff: We never found out what you were up to over [crosstalk 00:51:52].
Larry: Thank you for asking. I kind of alluded to this at the top of the show. I went over to Massachusetts. I saw my family. I was in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Laura: Goodness gracious.
Jeff: So every place but Maine.
Larry: Every place but Maine for the New England states. I did an event at the New Hampshire Microsoft store. I knew it was cold. I don't know if I told you this, Laura. I knew it was cold when I was doing the event, and it was inside the shopping mall in Salem. And there were people coming in from the cold at eight o'clock at night in full snow suits.
Laura: Wow.
Jeff: Salem, Mass?
Larry: Salem, New Hampshire.
Jeff: Oh.
Larry: Salem, Mass is the witches.
Jeff: I went there when I was little.
Larry: I did another event at a store in Burlington, Massachusetts, which is a good store. You and I have been to that one. Have we?
Jeff: We have.
Larry: Oh, no, you're right. We have. I forgot about that. So we went up there, and I remember when I was going into New Hampshire, one of the last times I was in New Hampshire was also with you.
Jeff: Yeah, when we went to see Ralph Baer.
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Larry: That was probably ... Jeff and I have done a lot of stuff together. Of course, we did the ET dig, we did a lot of things together, but that was ...
Jeff: Most of the seminal creators of our craft, the people we all have to thank, Nolan Bushnell was another one that we got to meet.
Larry: That's right. Nolan and I are friends on Facebook, and it's weird.
Jeff: It's like, "You invented Chuck E. Cheese." I think I met him, and I said, "You invented Chuck E. Cheese. Thank you."
Laura: Did you say that to him?
Jeff: We did. He was the founder of Chuck E. Cheese, and other things as well, Atari.
Larry: Atari, Pong.
Laura: That's a big deal.
Larry: It was a busy time. I spent a lot of time with my sisters and my mom, and of course my wife and my new daughter. It was our first Christmas together. She's great.
Jeff: Did she get anything good?
Larry: No. Well, yeah, she got a few things, but she's ...
Jeff: I should have bought her something.
Larry: No, please. You don't have to worry about that. Anyway, we've got quite a full chatroom. Apparently we're ... are we on channel one in Mixer right now on the console? I think we are.
Jeff: Definitely up there.
Larry: So, we're moving right along here. It's just about two o'clock here in the Pacific coast, which is five o'clock out there on the East coast.
Jeff: 10pm GMT.
Larry: Is it? We've only got a few more minutes. We're supposed to have a special guest, so we're kind of just buying time that maybe this person will stop by. I don't know. I haven't got ... have we gotten a text message from him, or let me just check my text messages.
Jeff: Tell you what, in the mean time, I'm gonna get your back here, Laura. When you said Wolfstone 3D, people were like, "It's Wolfenstein." Well, of course it is.
Larry: Oh, here we go.
Jeff: But it's called Wolfstone.
Laura: Inside the game, it is.
Larry: This is what I like, is I come in here, and I say, "Come on over." I come in here and I say, "We're gonna have a special guest," and then joining us, ladies and gentlemen, Phil Spencer.
Laura: Phil Spencer, yay. Hey, Phil.
Phil: I've never been in here.
Jeff: You've never been in here?
Laura: It's your first time here?
Phil: I think so. Larry doesn't invite me anywhere.
Larry: That's not true at all. In fact, I've been trying to schedule this for a while, but you were away for the holiday.
Phil: I was.
Larry: Let's get into the microphone.
Phil: Sorry. [crosstalk 00:55:05] What is this?
Larry: Look at the controller holder there, a guy in the community made.
Laura: No, I didn't. I'm not that talented.
Larry: He made one over here for two of them, with the Xbox logo on it.
Phil: Can you buy them?
Larry: Yeah.
Laura: You can.
Larry: He sells them on his website, but he sent them over here. Isn't that cool?
Phil: That is. You get all the good stuff.
Larry: I was sharing it. In fact, we gave that Sea of Thieves controller away to someone.
Phil: Who'd you give it to?
Laura: The Name the Game winner. They got my really difficult Name the Game correct.
Phil: What was it?
Laura: So the last one was a game within a game. It was Wolfstone 3D inside of Wolfenstein.
Larry: So the next one, we can't tell you the next one. They have to guess it. Anyway, how was your holiday?
Phil: It was good. I spent some time away.
Larry: You were traveling. In fact, we were talking about me, you and I went to opposite directions. I was in Massachusetts, where it was negative 11, and I think you were someplace sunny, where it was not negative 11.
Phil: I was in Hawaii. I was spending some time ... I usually spend some time over the holidays away, just thinking about stuff that's gone well, what we need to do better at. So for me, it's good to unplug. I did play a lot, though.
Larry: What did you play?
Phil: I think I'm 65 hours in now on Assassin's Creed [crosstalk 00:56:17]. I'm on level 40, and I got to level 40 right as they're not doing the weekly events right now, so I'm waiting. But I just saw today, I think there's a new piece of story content coming, which will be awesome.
Larry: Yeah, they announced that.
Phil: Which will be awesome, but it's just an amazing game. You are playing PUBG.
Larry: I've been trying to get you to ... in fact, Laura ...
Laura: He's exclusive. Yes, he is. He's hard to get into [inaudible 00:56:41].
Phil: You didn't let Laura play?
Laura: No.
Larry: She texted me for the first time in two years, and she's like, "Hey, have you got room?" And I'm like, "No, all full." [crosstalk 00:56:49] I know, I feel so bad.
Laura: And then he went to bed.
Larry: And then I was like, "Gotta go." You know when you're gonna text somebody, and they're like, "Oh, you don't wanna play one?" And then they sign off immediately? You're like, "Oh. Waiting for you, Larry." We should play. You know what? In fact, here is the four. We can play as a squad right here.
Laura: We could do this.
Phil: When do you play? What night?
Larry: We'll play any night you want. It's all around your schedule. You're a big executive, and you've got all this time, and you got ready for all this stuff coming up.
Phil: So there's a great story. I'm in Hawaii, and I meet somebody who is a gamer.
Larry: So you're just out on the beach sunning yourself?
Phil: Yeah. He's 17 years old. And I say, "What do you play?" And he's telling me about what he plays, has all the consoles, happens to be an Xbox player mainly. He said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I work at Xbox." And he looks at me, literally, "Do you work for Major Nelson?" And of course, I said, "Yes, I do. We all work for Major Nelson." I thought it was awesome. And it's a true story. I hope he's watching, so he can actually validate. Yes I do.
Larry: You've made his year. We're gonna be hearing about this forever.
Laura: That's true.
Phil: And I said, "He's a hard guy to work for, but [crosstalk 00:58:10]." It was great, in so many ways.
Larry: It's funny because I was traveling, I was telling these guys, I did a bunch of events at Microsoft stores in Massachusetts and ...
Phil: How'd that go?
Larry: Great. We did a Fortnight event. We did a Call of Duty event, and it was a lot of fun. People are so excited. They're actually asking about you. It's funny, because I was on the other side of the planet and they were asking about you. "Is Phil gonna be here? What shirt is he gonna wear at E3 this year?" It was bizarrely specific.
Phil: Yeah? My E3 shirts are ...
Larry: They're legendary.
Laura: Apparently. Huge fans of the E3 shirts. [crosstalk 00:58:46] You have a Game Pass.
Larry: You know what that means.
Phil: I don't know.
Larry: We got a bunch of 12 month codes to give away for Game Pass, so every time we talk about Game Pass ...
Phil: I love Game Pass. I love to see what people ...
Larry: Bryce, can you zoom in on this?
Phil: Is that how they do it? Look at that. And then nobody can scrub it.
Larry: Yeah, exactly. So hopefully we can zoom in on that. But yeah, Game Pass, you've got the Game Pass hoodie. It's doing really well, isn't it? A lot of people really like it.
Phil: It's good. For us, from the beginning, we've talked about giving people choice, and I think Game Pass for some people is a choice of what games they get to play, how they wanna pay to play those games, whether they want a subscription or go buy the games. I love the idea that people are asking for more choice to play games. The other thing I loved in Game Pass is, when I look at what games people are playing, it's not always the games that you'd expect. There are some games that people missed, and that maybe came out at the wrong time, or in the shadow of a bigger game or something else. It's cool to see some great games that got missed when they launched regaining some users and players.
Larry: You can go back, and you can pick up some achievements that maybe you missed.
Jeff: Yeah, a few friends of mine, or friends of friends, or family, they'll be like, "Oh, I just got an Xbox for the first time." They're just starting the [inaudible 01:00:10]. Like, "What should I play?" And I was like, "PUBG and, oh by the way, here's 100 games for you."
Larry: You send them to PUBG first?
Jeff: Yeah.
Laura: That's a bit of a rough landing, there.
Jeff: I was amazed. We have some friends that actually just joined your team, and we had them over. I've known them for a long time. They came to visit.
Larry: You should give them Cuphead, too. You should go PUBG, and then Cuphead.
Jeff: And they came over just to meet my family, and one of the kids sits down. He doesn't even ask. He just turns on my Xbox in the living room, and I'm like, "Are you alright?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm good." He just loads PUBG. I'm like, "Do you know what--" He's like, "Yeah. I got this." And I was like, "Okay."
Phil: So yeah, we had a good holiday. You had a good holiday. We're getting ready. It's great to come back after the holiday with your mind cleared out, and you're ready to go.
Larry: I'm always anxious. I always come back, and we had our first big leadership team meeting this morning of the year, and everybody's back. Some people are [CS 01:01:00], but everybody's back. We don't have a lot of [CS 01:01:02]. There's '17, we obviously had goals around shipping X, and getting Game Pass out, and all this stuff that we were doing, and we have some big goals in '18. I wanna get going. I think they hate me on the first, 'cause I'm just like, things have to take time, but I'm like "Come on. Let's go."
Phil: You're chomping at the bit, which I think is good. If that doesn't happen at some point, just put me out to pasture.
Larry: It's funny, because I stopped by to see you right before the holiday, right before I left.
Phil: Yeah, you did. I was here.
Larry: We were up in your office, and you were playing Forza. Let me set the stage for you. I walk into Phil's office. He's got his computer up and he's doing email, and you're probably replying to Sati or something, and then you got Forza up on your big screen.
Phil: Well, they ran this competition on, did you see this, where I was a rival?
Larry: Yeah.
Phil: And it did really well. A lot of people destroyed me in my time, but I was pretty bad. They picked a track I don't love. I love the car, but I didn't love the track.
Laura: Which track was it?
Phil: Hockenheim, which I'm not great at.
Laura: That's hard.
Phil: Yeah, I like Road America. So I was trying to get used to ... I finally went to manual shifting, which had me gain some seconds. That helps. But I think I still fell in the 50 percentile of the group.
Larry: Not worst, not best.
Phil: No. Fair to middling, it's kind of my approach to life.
Larry: It's great, because I walked in there, and you and I just sat down and chatted for a half hour, 45 minutes. But we were just talking about the great year that we had, all the games that have come out. We just finished the Game Awards. I had just come back from the Game Awards, if I remember correctly, with Jeff.
Phil: Which I think ended up being the biggest Game Awards they had yet.
Larry: Yeah, Jeff did a great job with that. For those of you that tuned in, it was an entertaining watch.
Jeff: I know what you're referring to.
Larry: But there was a lot going on.
Phil: Was that the Joseph moment?
Larry: Yeah. Joseph's a good guy. I like Joseph a lot. He and I are friends. I actually wasn't there at the Game Awards, and then it was my wife's birthday, so I couldn't go. Shouldn't go, and didn't wanna go. I wanted to go to my wife's birthday. But I think Joseph had a point of view that he wanted to share. But I think the show looked like it was great.
Phil: Cuphead did great.
Larry: Congrats to all the teams that won. I thought there were a lot of great games this year, if I just look. I love Cuphead, obviously, but Zelda, Mario, Horizon. There were just a lot of very good games that are launching. And I'm seeing some of the things, I got to see one early this morning that's coming in '18 from a third party. I think this is looking like it's gonna be another good year for games.
Phil: It's funny. When I was at the Game Awards, we didn't even really talk about this in the show, but I saw Reggie. And Reggie was asking about you.
Larry: Friend of mine.
Phil: I was over in the corner, and I was starting to tweet something out 'cause I was with Felicia Day, and he's like, "Oh, he's tweeting." I was trying to give him an Xbox pin for a Zelda pin, but his security people pulled him away.
Larry: We should give him a Twitter handle, 'cause I actually think my friend Reggie is not on Twitter right?
Phil: You're right, he [crosstalk 01:04:02].
Larry: I try to tweet him sometimes, because obviously, [Shoo 01:04:07] and I will ... I know [Shoo 01:04:10], I've known him for a long time, and I try to share some things with Reggie, and silence.
Phil: We'll work on that. So 2018's coming up. I was just looking at the calender. I think I've had my fourth E3 meeting already.
Larry: We started in December.
Phil: Started in December.
Larry: And it always seems like we start earlier and we're further behind.
Phil: Yeah.
Larry: And we're starting to see some of the content, some of the plans that we have, getting the changes for us this year, which I don't think we've talked about yet, but I think will be some positive changes at E3.
Phil: Yeah.
Larry: Are you going to E3 this year?
Laura: Maybe.
Larry: Maybe.
Laura: I like being mysterious.
Larry: Yeah, okay.
Phil: Tough to pin down.
Larry: Jeff will be there, obviously.
Phil: I'm a lady of mystery.
Larry: I think this year's E3 could be fun for us. It'll be a nice change.
Phil: I always love the event. It just feels like all of a sudden, you lift your head up, and you're like, "We're three weeks away." [crosstalk 01:05:09] But it's also great being surrounded. You talked about you feel like you're behind, but it's great being surrounded by people who are overachievers. I know that I was in a meeting like, "Okay, here's the show rundown." I'm like, "How do you have that already?"
Laura: Wow.
Larry: The chiclets, they call it. "This is going to be this amount of time, and this is going to be this amount of time."
Phil: And then you're looking at hand drawn stick figures for certain things.
Larry: What the stage will look like and stuff like that.
Phil: And by the time that we get there, there's a stage that's amazing.
Larry: It's magical.
Phil: Teams do a great job showing up.
Larry: You of course should be able to watch it on Mixer.
Phil: I keep looking at this. How much HypeZone have you watched?
Larry: I've watched quite a bit.
Phil: I love HypeZone.
Larry: Yeah, generally just leave it on the background.
Phil: I know. I do, too. I think it's so funny to watch the person who, when HypeZone pipes in, all of a sudden, somebody will say, "Oh, you're on HypeZone now." And the nerves start kicking up. I think it's great. [crosstalk 01:06:02]
Larry: They're nervous that they're 10 or five left, and now all of a sudden [crosstalk 01:06:09].
Phil: This massive influx of people.
Larry: All of a sudden, the internet is now watching you, 'cause here's DM21 Gaming is on HypeZone.
Laura: You don't need that extra level of pressure. It's hard enough getting there on your own.
Larry: I do not reach HypeZone. I am Dead Zone.
Laura: I'm Dead Zone too.
Phil: We need to do HypeZone for more games.
Laura: It's really fun.
Larry: I can't really say anything more, but I'll say Phil and I were talking about the HypeZone before the holiday, and you had some great ideas. You had some really cool ideas about how to plus it up.
Phil: I just think there's ... some people like to follow one streamer, and I think that's awesome. You can go, and you can subscribe to them, and do all the things. Other people like to focus on a game. I think the idea that we could use the analytics in the game and the game could actually tell us when it's at its most interesting point. Some things like how many people are left, that's a fairly easy one. But there are other things you could do as we build better telemetry with the game developers, and those are the conversations we're having now. I think it will lead to some pretty cool things in this space.
Larry: There's just so much going on. This is just ... I haven't played this map yet. This map will be coming to Xbox [crosstalk 01:07:21].
Phil: Myanmar.
Larry: I appreciate you coming by. I know you're running in between meetings. I don't wanna keep you too long.
Phil: Well, that's okay. I like that you invited me. It's good to see everybody I don't see that often.
Laura: Yeah, thanks for coming by.
Phil: Happy New Year.
Laura: Thank you.
Larry: 2018's gonna be a great year for Xbox as always, right? We've got so much stuff planned.
Phil: Sea of Thieves will be good. [crosstalk 01:07:42]
Larry: March 20th.
Phil: From the technical alpha, you saw the controller, but the technical alpha's coming up. Jeff's gonna give the details. I played a build about a week ago.
Laura: You did?
Larry: Solo, or did you go ...
Phil: Oh, I went solo.
Larry: And what do you think?
Phil: This game is so beautiful. I had it booted up, and I was actually taking screenshots of it for my wallpaper, 'cause it's so beautiful. It's so much fun. The water, you've heard me go on and on about the water. I actually got seasick at one point. Seriously.
Larry: Is that a feature?
Phil: I was up in the crow's nest, and I was going back and forth, I was like, "I gotta come down. I'll be right back."
Jeff: It is exhilarating standing near the prowl of the ship, though, and the spray is coming in when you're going up and down.
Phil: It was like flying.
Larry: It's your Titanic moment.
Laura: Oh, my goodness.
Larry: That's awesome. They gotta build that animation in. Titanic mode. We can talk to Craig about it.
Jeff: So on January 24th, set your alarm early, for those of us at least on the West Coast, 'cause at 4am Pacific is when the Sea of Thieves closed beta is going to launch. That's noon GMT. I guess 7am on the East Coast. For a full five days ahead of the March 20th launch, we're gonna be testing a nice chunk of the game during this closed beta phase. You wonder how do you get into it, so if you're already a Sea of Thieves insider, and you have been since December, you're already in. But if not, the way to get in is to pre-order. There's a lot more details on seaofthieves.com, but that's what we're going to be playing from January 24th to the 29th.
Larry: I mean, the fun of shooting yourself out of a cannon never gets old, like you see right here. Beware, there's sharks in the water. I will say this, I'm working ... I probably shouldn't say this in front of Phil, but I'll say it. We're working on putting together a video package for Sea of Thieves, and I told the team, "Look, I am not doing a Sea of Thieves video unless we go to the Caribbean and find a real pirate ship."
Phil: There you go. Go to the Bahamas, that's good. Little black flag.
Larry: Hopefully, we'll do that. But I know you've been playing it, right?
Phil: Yeah, it's awesome. I have a great time with it. I played a ton of Destiny last year, I love the cooperative quest space games. [crosstalk 01:09:57]
Larry: And the puzzles.
Phil: Puzzle stuff I think has come out. I love the video they did where they started to talk about some of the depth that we've known about for a while, 'cause most of my friends that are pinging me socially about, "Hey, is this gonna be a game I wanna play?" It's really is the depth going to be there? And I think when they went through the different factions and how you can level in each of those, and the way that the quests are shared. I thought their response to that was good. As more of the game gets unveiled, I think people will get more and more positive on what's there.
Larry: It's coming up, and you can get in if you pre-order the game, right?
Jeff: Yeah, if you pre-order the game, or if you're already a Sea of Thieves insider, and so that closed beta, once again, just two weeks away.
Larry: It's interesting. It's a closed beta, but it's also, they're gonna allow people to stream it.
Jeff: Yeah. You're gonna see a ton of it on Mixer and other channels as well. It's gonna be free. You're gonna be able to take screenshots, clips, whatever, and put it everywhere. I think you're gonna see a ton of Sea of Thieves at that point.
Larry: If you wanna see us playing as a squad or a team or a boat or galleon or whatever their term is.
Jeff: If you let us in.
Laura: Yeah. If you answer [crosstalk 01:10:59].
Jeff: Ship's full.
Phil: Three of us will be playing together. Somebody else won't.
Larry: Not true. I actually had a great experience. I forgot to mention this at the beginning of the show. Second or third week of December, playing PUBG, and they just had squads go live or something like that. I had three of us, and you all weren't around. You were sunning yourself or talking to somebody, and y'all were ... anyway, I tweet it out, I'm like, "Hey, I need a fourth." And it's always risky when you go on Twitter, right? You don't know what you're gonna get.
Phil: I don't know what you're talking about.
Larry: I'm just saying. This one guy came back, a bunch of people came back, and this one guy ... I think his gamer tag is huntertv, he says, "Yeah, I'll join." So I add him to my friends list, we brought him in. This guy was pro legit expert, great guy, nice guy, lives on the West Coast United States, not that that matters. But he was really great. We were just going through it, and we got our first chicken dinner with him.
Laura: Wow.
Phil: He carried you.
Larry: Totally. Absolutely.
Phil: I find some of the best people online when I play, and you really meet some genuine people that love gaming, just wanna play together. For us that are here, we don't feel like we're working the whole time we're playing with people. You can just be yourself. I love that about our community. I think our community, for the most part, is a very fun place to play with some really great people.
Larry: It was a great experience, as always. We just went in and we had some fun. We won some chicken dinners. Did you get yours yet? Do you have a chicken dinner?
Phil: No, I'm dead zone. I am not in the HypeZone.
Laura: I'm not in the HypeZone either.
Larry: I can bring you into a team that can get you a chicken dinner. I just can't guarantee ... I don't think I can carry the whole team.
Phil: I have lived my life with people carrying me through raids, [crosstalk 01:12:38] you're gonna end up with the, "Okay, I can get you a chicken dinner." I will learn to play and build ... I've just been stuck in Assassin's.
Larry: I'll tell you what else is amazing, not just dwelling on PUBG too much. But we're talking about four updates in less than a month.
Phil: They've been doing a good job.
Larry: They are just grinding away. It's in game preview, so that's part of it.
Phil: CH and I, we did stay in touch over the holidays, CH being the executive producer for the game, really head of PUBG corp now. And talking to him about his plans, and it's so cool to see a team, 'cause game development can be a hard space. You work on a game sometimes as a ship. You work on a game sometimes and hit your goals. You work on a game and it becomes PUBG, and they've sold a jillion copies in nine months or whatever it is. And it's just a team that has the excitement of all the success they've had. The fear of we're running downhill faster than our legs will take us, but they're doing a good job. They're doing a good job with the updates, both on PC and on Xbox. Not everything's perfect all the time, but they communicate the things that they're working on, and I think that's what we should both expect, and it's great to see them delivering on it.
Larry: I have one question for you, and I didn't prep you with this one, so I apologize. [crosstalk 01:13:49] You sit on a leadership team for Microsoft the company. You report to [Satiya 01:13:55]. What's that like being at the table with all these heavy hitters. Not that you're not, but I'm just thinking, you're the gaming expert, right?
Phil: Yeah, I don't get a lot of gaming questions from the leadership team, so I don't know if the expertness matters. As some people know, I've been at the company for quite a long time. Sitting there and now getting re-exposed to some of the questions and challenges and opportunities the company has has been awesome. I'll say the thing I love the most has been how interested and supportive the leadership team is for what we're trying to do here.
Larry: In gaming.
Phil: In gaming. And I know four or five years ago, there were some questions about what are we doing in this space? Does it link to what Microsoft strategy is? I missed last Friday's 'cause I wasn't back yet, but the leadership team had all worn their Xbox jacket. They sent me a picture. So it's just nice to see, from [Satiya 01:14:54], Amy Hood, the CFO, Peggy Johnson, who runs business development, Kathleen, who runs HR, Scott [inaudible 01:15:02]. They've really been supportive of what can Microsoft do to help us in the gaming space? Help us do better, help us deliver on our goals, and it's just great. They have been very supportive. I chime in every once in a while on an Office 365 issue.
Larry: What's the squiggly line in my Word?
Phil: But it's been awesome. It's been five months now, but the support that we're getting, the ambition that the company has here, and hopefully 2018 will show some of that.
Larry: Well, on that note, we're gonna have to wrap it up, 'cause I know you have to run to another meeting, and we've kept people far too long already. Any final words you wanna say before we let you go?
Phil: I just wanna know how I did, boss.
Larry: Thanks again for watching. For Laura, Jeff, and of course Phil here, I wanna thank you guys. We'll see you next time, and hopefully we'll see you on the Sea of Thieves technical alpha or PUBG. But I'll be streaming. I stream a lot now, you know.
Phil: I know you do. You're gonna be a partner now.
Larry: Alright guys, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye, everybody.
Laura: Bye-bye.