701: Xbox News and more

Larry Hryb:
Did you like that, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey:
I don't know what that was. Every week I'm like, "What's he going to play? Is it going to be the HBO theme from the early 1980s or what was that?"

Larry Hryb:
I mean who knows? Anyway, welcome to the show. My name's Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson-

Jeffrey:
Who knows? You should know.

Larry Hryb:
I know what it is.

Jeffrey:
It's your show.

Larry Hryb:
I know exactly what it is. It is, I'll tell you later. This is the second in our video podcast series and we got great feedback from last week's show. Some of it was about microphone levels. That's why the mic is all up in my face right now.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. The reverberation, like that type of feedback or actual people saying comments?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, yeah. Actual people saying-

Jeffrey:
Actually, I did read the comments.

Larry Hryb:
You read the YouTube comments?

Jeffrey:
I read the YouTube comments.

Larry Hryb:
They were surprisingly tame, right?

Jeffrey:
They were constructive.

Larry Hryb:
They were very constructive. So if you're watching this on YouTube, I want to thank you guys and girls and wherever you are and whoever you are. We're trying the video thing out. We got a lot of amazing things lined up over the next few shows that I can't wait till you see some cool stuff. But Jeff and I are really excited to join you here. We've got another fun show in store for you, I think. Right, Jeff?

Jeffrey:
You know it's another busy week. I can't believe it's the end of May already. I was putting out the news for the week and there's a lot of good stuff happening right now. There's a lot to play.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Earlier in the week, of course, in the US it was Memorial Day, so we were off. It's weird because I'm sure a lot of folks around the world regardless of what country you're in, whenever you have a holiday everything's kind of blending together in this work from home habit, right? Would you agree with that?

Jeffrey:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean a lot of different countries had a ... The UK had a bank holiday on Monday. I was talking to some friends over there and they're like, "We're just at home as well, but we're not answering email right now." Other than that-

Larry Hryb:
Speaking of bank holidays, I got to get Graham on again so we can talk about his ... He's always on holiday. He's probably out this week.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. He's always on annual leave.

Larry Hryb:
Annual leave, that's his shtick.

Jeffrey:
It's annual leave. Sorry. There's nothing we can do about it. It's annual. It's a thing.

Larry Hryb:
Wait till he shows back up. We got another fun show for you. Again, we are doing video. If you're listening to the audio version of this, you can swing over to my YouTube channel. I'll put a link down below and you can see us and hear us, so whichever way you want to get us.

Jeffrey:
I apologize in advance. Yeah. I had to think about wardrobe today, 10 minutes ago.

Larry Hryb:
Did you? Did you?

Jeffrey:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Oh.

Jeffrey:
Look at this.

Larry Hryb:
That's old kit.

Jeffrey:
Soccer jersey. I miss sports. Actually, we have sports back. We got sports back last week.

Larry Hryb:
Somewhat, right? Somewhat?

Jeffrey:
Well, German soccer is back. You know what? All of a sudden, I'm a huge German soccer fan.

Larry Hryb:
You know what? You were FC Cologne anyway.

Jeffrey:
FC Cologne. I mean I've been there. I love the gummy bears. I love the Kolsch and I love the [inaudible 00:02:56].

Larry Hryb:
And the people, and the people.

Jeffrey:
Of course. They're all very nice. So a couple of tutu draws later, I'm all in.

Larry Hryb:
I also have, if you look behind me I've got my console. I have been playing ... Where is it? Golf With Friends.

Jeffrey:
Microphone's in front of you, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
Golf With Friends.

Jeffrey:
I saw you playing that.

Larry Hryb:
A lot of fun.

Jeffrey:
Am I not one of your friends now? Because I didn't get the invite.

Larry Hryb:
Well, you're busy. We play our daily Apex and I've been playing that a little bit just by myself. It's a miniature golf game. For those of you who don't know, miniature golf is-

Jeffrey:
Okay. So you didn't invite me so you could play Golf With Friends without friends, is that correct?

Larry Hryb:
Well, now that you put it that way, it's awkward. Yes, yes. I'm playing Golf With Friends with no friends.

Jeffrey:
I golf alone.

Larry Hryb:
Well, it's got that option.

Jeffrey:
Why don't we play? I don't play regular golf. It's not for me. I love video game golf. Hot Shots Golf is one of my favorite games.

Larry Hryb:
Do you? Yeah.

Jeffrey:
Mario Golf, I'm a huge fan of those games. I was playing Power Star Golf.

Larry Hryb:
Did you ever play Outlaw Golf?

Jeffrey:
I remember Outlaw Golf. I had it on my old Xbox. I didn't spend a ton of time with it. I mean golf for outlaws, what else could you want?

Larry Hryb:
So yeah, I've been playing that. I just redid my entire home office so that you can enjoy it. Kind of like Jeff has his console behind me, mine's directly behind me. I've got all my stuff over here. But yeah, I've been playing golf, baseball. We talked about the baseball game last week.

Jeffrey:
Super Mega Baseball 3?

Larry Hryb:
Super Mega Baseball 3. You and I haven't played that either, so we need to get to that.

Jeffrey:
We work with someone who was a former baseball player, minor leagues. You probably wouldn't know him.

Larry Hryb:
Did he ever have a trading card? We should ask. Did he have a trading card?

Jeffrey:
He had shoes. He had shoes. He's super into Super Mega Baseball. Every day he's just like, "Sorry, I'm going to have to miss this meeting. I'm in the playoffs right now and I've got a no-hitter going. I'm sorry." Now he's going into season two. But apparently Super Mega Baseball, despite its cartoonish looks, I was reading an article in Polygon from Samit Sarkar-

Larry Hryb:
Is he playing? Is he playing?

Jeffrey:
He's playing a ton of it. Apparently, it takes a step forward. It's an amazing baseball game. So I need to get into that.

Larry Hryb:
So you have a playing-

Jeffrey:
I always loved RBI back in the day.

Larry Hryb:
Also, a great game. But yeah, we're talking about what we're playing. We kind of, I don't know, wandered into it. Usually it's like, "Hey, what are you playing?" We just kind of wandered into it. You can see on my most recently used back there, I've got-

Jeffrey:
What do you got there?

Larry Hryb:
They call that MRU. Of course, Minecraft Dungeons. Let me pull that up here, Minecraft Dungeons. You can see I've been playing that, Apex, Golf With Friends. Those are kind of what's been keeping me busy this past week because Minecraft Dungeons, Jeff, I know that you love that, right? You've been playing a lot of that.

Jeffrey:
I've been playing a ton of Dungeons. I'm playing on multiple platforms. You can see it behind me right over there on Xbox One. There, I'm up to the final. Actually, earlier today I was playing and I was soloing because I just wanted to get some time in.

Larry Hryb:
There it is. What level are you?

Jeffrey:
I made it to the Arch-Illager, level 21 I want to say. I got great gear, but I was wiped out by the Arch-Illager. But it's fun enough to just go through. I played some of the same levels again and again. Why don't we play together?

Larry Hryb:
We should. In fact, I was playing over the weekend. I jumped into Phil's game, Phil Spencer. He was on, so we jumped in. We were playing for a little bit. He loves the game and we were having a ton of fun with it. That Arch-Illager is no joke. Okay? No joke.

Jeffrey:
No, no. Especially not. No spoilers, but when you think of a final boss guy, think of Final Fantasy, how those tend to go and-

Larry Hryb:
You can do the math.

Jeffrey:
... you can think about some of the challenges there. And then also you can see behind me, I have a Nintendo Switch. I've been playing on Switch as well. I rolled another character there and it's just like while I'm watching FC Cologne and the Bundesliga. The game just gets under your skin. I'm like, "You know what? I could go. I have a half an hour, an hour. I'm going to just make a run. Even if I don't win that particular level, I'm probably getting some new gear. I'm probably leveling up." It is always this just one more level mentality and I love it.

Larry Hryb:
Which is a sign of a great video game, right? We've all had that.

Jeffrey:
Exactly. I've seen on Twitch and on Mixer and on YouTube, a lot of creators have been playing it and they're really into it. I think seeing Minecraft in just this different dimension literally has just really resonated with folks. So it's really fun. But we need to play together. I had a meeting a couple days ago with our manager within Dungeons and we had a heck of a time. I will say, if you're finding it too easy, just when you start the level, hit the right bumper once, just once even really and you increase the level of enemies that come to you and the types of enemies that come to you and increase the loot. It's a whole new game when you're playing on a higher difficulty level.

Larry Hryb:
It's funny. You talked about the Switch. You can't see it. It's actually right back here. I don't have the multicolored one, but that's my Switch back here. I've been trying to check it out on that as well. So not to be outdone by you, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey:
It's affordable. It's to-go. Look, we're gamers. We play everything. We play on everything. The idea that we can play a game we love ... Unlocking achievements on the Switch, I mean you could do it with regular Minecraft as well, I believe Ori Definitive Edition. Always, always, interesting experience. You load up your Xbox app and it is right there.

Larry Hryb:
What else are you playing? Because we want to roll into the news because it's been a busy, busy news week, hasn't it?

Jeffrey:
Yeah. Larry, I'm now a, well, two things actually. So I beat Yakuza 0.

Larry Hryb:
You did.

Jeffrey:
I get it now. I get it. I had played Yakuza. I think at Tokyo Game Show I played Yakuza 3 10 years ago, whatever it was.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, that's where you play Yakuza.

Jeffrey:
That's where you play, right? I was just like, "I don't get it. People keep picking fights." I didn't get it.

Larry Hryb:
Right. You were younger back then. You've matured.

Jeffrey:
I'm wiser. You know what? Giving things a chance is something that I think I've-

Larry Hryb:
Everyone should do.

Jeffrey:
... gotten maybe a little bit better at.

Larry Hryb:
Everyone should do it.

Jeffrey:
It drew me into the story. It's so good. It only got better as it went along. I think my final clock time was 38 hours, give or take. It sucked me into the world. It's very over the top. It's very hilarious. These guys who all they do is smoke and drink and eat Ramen. And then someone picks a fight with them and they literally rip their suit off and they're all ripped. And then they fight. At one point I think there was 100 enemy gangsters come up and my guy cracks his neck. He's like, "I got this." They have guns and knives and swords. He's just like, "No, we're good." It's so over the top.

Larry Hryb:
So it's got the drinking. It's got the smoking. It's got the Ramen. I mean at the end of the day, it's like a weekend at your house, less the smoking.

Jeffrey:
Yes. No, I'm asthmatic. I can't do that. They actually have the product placement. Somehow it's charming in the game.

Larry Hryb:
Charming.

Jeffrey:
There's real Yamazaki Whisky in the game and there's real-

Larry Hryb:
You love that game.

Jeffrey:
I don't know.

Larry Hryb:
You're a fan now.

Jeffrey:
So anyway, I finished it and then I went and I downloaded Yakuza Kiwami, which is the next in the line. It's a remake of the original Yakuza from way back in the PS 2 days. So that'll be next. But before that I was like, "I need to have a palate cleanser." We talked about this last week. What hit Xbox Game Pass?

Larry Hryb:
Was?

Jeffrey:
Alan Wake.

Larry Hryb:
Which you had never played. You admitted you had never played it.

Jeffrey:
So I found this. I bought Alan Wake in 2010, 2011, still have the plastic on it.

Larry Hryb:
Oh my.

Jeffrey:
I never got around to it. But I love the idea of it. So now I just downloaded it and I've been playing it. It's really good. This is not a surprise to most of you out there who've played it. I played Control last year. It's my favorite game of the year. You could see-

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, you can see what they did.

Jeffrey:
... what led into Control. It's like, "They did that first in Alan Wake." It's the folks at Remedy. There's even some of the same voice actors in a couple of different places. So really into that. It's the right level of creepiness. I wouldn't call it horror, a couple jump scares. But just the right level of creepiness and supernatural stuff. Man, they can weave a story, Remedy.

Larry Hryb:
They sure can.

Jeffrey:
I very much like it. It's divided up into nice episodes. I think I'm in episode three or four.

Larry Hryb:
Excellent.

Jeffrey:
It even start with a, "Last time on Alan Wake," and it plays through.

Larry Hryb:
Last time on Alan Wake.

Jeffrey:
That's pretty good. Was that you? Did you do the voice?

Larry Hryb:
I could have. I don't remember.

Jeffrey:
Yakuza does that as well. So anyway, that's what I've been playing?

Larry Hryb:
How far are you in Alan Wake?

Jeffrey:
Again, chapter or act maybe three or so. But just very into it, great voice acting and-

Larry Hryb:
You probably appreciate it more now that you live in the Northwest because it's got a very Northwest vibe with the fog and the darkness and the dankness and the trees and all of that, right?

Jeffrey:
Yeah. If I ever left a three square mile ... Even before we were in quarantine, I never went north of the mall or south of the airport or east of where we work. So I live in this very urban bubble. I was like, "Maybe I should get out to the Olympic Peninsula."

Larry Hryb:
In fact, it's such an urban bubble that you don't even come out to my house. I have to come to you.

Jeffrey:
I don't know where you live, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
That's not true.

Jeffrey:
Like a vampire, I must be invited to come.

Larry Hryb:
But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying Alan Wake. Glad you're enjoying Alan Wake.

Jeffrey:
No. It's a great, great work. Check it out. It's on Xbox Game Pass on Xbox and on PC.

Larry Hryb:
What are you doing?

Jeffrey:
The PC version has some great settings. I was able to run that in 4K, but I started on Xbox One and I'm going to see it through.

Larry Hryb:
All right. So that's what you're playing. That's what I'm playing. Anything else before we roll into the news segment with all the great news that's been coming out?

Jeffrey:
We can do that. I just wanted to say cheers to you-

Larry Hryb:
Cheers to you.

Jeffrey:
... my fellow champion squad member. We're having a pretty good season five at Apex.

Larry Hryb:
Apex.

Jeffrey:
We won last night.

Larry Hryb:
That was a little bit of a surprise, that win. I mean you've been playing and winning a lot more than I have. You and I have a pretty good high win percentage. Last night's was a little bit of a surprise. Let's put it this way, the winds were all blowing in our favor from the weapons to the circle.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. It was undeserved.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeffrey:
We were playing. The circle came to us. We had high ground and we had great stuff. We're like, "Let's just wait." We see someone come. I'm like, "All right. There's one player. Where's the teammates?" I actually hit them a couple times, broke their shields. They healed, then they came back. Me and you were on the roof.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. That's right.

Jeffrey:
They have Kraber, which is the most powerful sniper rifle in the game. They one shot me, 290 down. They one shot you, 290 down. How were we getting worked by this one person?

Larry Hryb:
So we get revived.

Jeffrey:
So we get revived. And then we did, but it took all three of us to take this one person down.

Larry Hryb:
It was basically 1B-3 and we ended up taking him down. Whoever that is, you put up a good fight. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.

Jeffrey:
Very good fight. No, no, not at all. Fortune favors the bull. I'm sure they have plenty of wins under their belt, more than we do, anyway.

Larry Hryb:
We've got a bunch of stuff coming up. In a little bit we're going to talk about news. It's been a pretty, pretty hefty news week, right, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey:
Yeah. I mean leading off with Minecraft Dungeons, it is available now. It's part of Xbox Game Pass. You can use Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to play Dungeons on Xbox One or on your Windows 10 PC. Also available on PS4, also available on Switch.

Larry Hryb:
All the places.

Jeffrey:
So this game comes to you no matter where you're at. I highly recommend you check it out, especially if you're on Game Pass. It's just give it a shot. It's just amazing how well the Minecraft World adapts to a dungeon crawling game. It's smooth. It's fun. It's super chill. I mean honestly, I love doing the show, Larry. But if I wasn't on the show right now, I'd be playing it right now.

Larry Hryb:
Likewise, likewise. You can see the ticker down below. These are some headlines that are coming off Xbox Wire which I think I've got here if you want to take a look at it, Jeff, if you want me to bring it of, Let me bring that over here. So this is Xbox Wire.

Jeffrey:
That whole thing?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, this whole thing. Take a look at it. Take a look at all this news. This sits right next to if you click on the top here, you can go over to majornelson.com, which is also a popular destination for-

Jeffrey:
We are the peanut butter and chocolate together here, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
We absolutely are.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. We just have a story out there today where Jason Ronald, who we've seen, he's the well-bearded individual who is the director of program management for Xbox Series X, delving super deep into backward compatibility. The headline I think says a lot. You just had it up there, which was Thousands of Games Will Be Available To Play At Launch on Xbox Series X, the most powerful and most compatible Xbox console ever, which is amazing.

Larry Hryb:
I mean you probably-

Jeffrey:
I'm playing Alan Wake right now. I think that's a great example of it.

Larry Hryb:
You've probably seen this on Twitter, but you can go check it out. It's a pretty lengthy piece there about what's going on in terms of back compat. The back compat team, we've been talking about them for years, right? We've been talking about them for years.

Jeffrey:
They are nothing short of wizards.

Larry Hryb:
Right. You're absolutely right. They're nothing short of wizards. What's going on there?

Jeffrey:
Are they in that middle? They're in that middle area. That's where the wizardry lives.

Larry Hryb:
That's the Wizard Box, Jeffrey. That's the Wizard Box. Oh boy. It's what happens when you're running your own show.

Jeffrey:
I know, right. You should have Jason Ronald on the show at some point.

Larry Hryb:
You know what? That is a great idea. Last time I had him on I think was February where we were talking about Quick Resume and some of those things. You know what? Be right back. Keep talking about the news, Jeffrey. I am going to go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and see if I can book him while we're chatting.

Jeffrey:
Shoot him a note, yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Would you like to do that?

Jeffrey:
Right. Something that Jason was talking about in this post and I highly recommend you read it because he says these things much better than I do. But basically Xbox Series X hardware running with the full power of the CPU, the GPU, the SSD. There's not boost mode or down clocking. All of that will be applied to your backward compatible games. That means they run at peak performance. It means they take advantage of the SSD to load faster.

Larry Hryb:
They run even better than they originally did, right, in some cases.

Jeffrey:
It's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The load screen that used to be there is just ... Sometimes they would have tips, something for you to read while you're essentially staring at a load screen. It's like, "I didn't get a chance to read that."

Larry Hryb:
I don't remember what I was playing, but I was in the lab and we were playing an Xbox Series X, one of the back compat games. It was exactly that. I ended up loading the game or, excuse me, I went to the game and I'm waiting for it to load. I was reading the tips and, oh, it's waiting for me. The game was waiting for me. I completely forgot because it was so fast.

Jeffrey:
It's funny. We've gotten used to, it's just sort of built into your brain that you load up a game. There's going to be some time. Sometimes I'll look at my phone or I'm just getting a drink while it's playing through the initial ... Like you said, oh wait, the game's waiting for me.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, yeah.

Jeffrey:
I'm going to play right away.

Larry Hryb:
I'm now the slowest part of the game now. I feel terrible about that. Anyway, keep going on with the news. What else we got? That's the big piece. You probably saw it on Twitter or over on Reddit. It's all over the place, so take a look at that article. We got a really good article. I just sent an email to Jason, so I'm going to see if I can get him on.

Jeffrey:
Are you in the Project xCloud (Preview), Larry?

Larry Hryb:
Why, yes I am, Jeffrey. Thank you for asking.

Jeffrey:
Of course you are. I'm currently going on-

Larry Hryb:
But wait a minute. Dear viewer and listener, are you?

Jeffrey:
Yes. You can look up. If you're running an Android device, you can get right on in there. Five new games added. Batman: Arkham Knight, Pillars of Eternity-

Larry Hryb:
Batman.

Jeffrey:
Mortal Kombat X or 10 if you insist, Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Sure.

Larry Hryb:
Wait, what?

Jeffrey:
Go ahead and play it right there in, yeah, exactly, Project xCloud. Batman 3, LEGO Batman 3: Return to Gotham. So if you feel like realistic Batman or LEGO Batman, Project xCloud has you all set. But there's already a ton of games in there, so another five. These are big game titles.

Larry Hryb:
Good game titles.

Jeffrey:
Ori's a very new title as well. So that's in the Project xCloud (Preview) for Android. We have it linked out in Xbox Wire where you can just go to the Project xCloud registration page. It's right there on xbox.com, but we can link out to that and you should be able to find it. It's just a search and a click away.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. I want to make sure that, in fact, we do have that. We do have that available. I want to thank everybody who has had a chance to test it out because we're doing this in concert with you, the community. You're helping us make this product better. That's the awesome part about having it in a beta and getting the feedback and the team listens.

Jeffrey:
Look at the bottom. Look what it says. The cloud worked out.

Larry Hryb:
It's all happening. I don't know how this is ... I don't know what's going on here. But here we are. So anyway, xCloud.

Jeffrey:
You designed it. Your whole system is working.

Larry Hryb:
For now. For now.

Jeffrey:
Let's not take it for granted. This was one of the most visited ... I work on Xbox Wire. We don't just do this all-

Larry Hryb:
Not only do you work on Xbox Wire-

Jeffrey:
We do this as much as we can.

Larry Hryb:
He authors some fantastic stuff over there. Jeff is a prolific, prolific writer.

Jeffrey:
Not as much as I used to. I love writing. Writing's fun. Look, I can't make a game. Very few people have the talent out there to make a game.

Larry Hryb:
Yep.

Jeffrey:
Talking about a game, that's my skill.

Larry Hryb:
All day long.

Jeffrey:
That's what I can do.

Larry Hryb:
That's how I've made my-

Jeffrey:
I love to do it.

Larry Hryb:
... career.

Jeffrey:
Seriously. One of the busiest, most visited blog posts this week was Games With Gold. People love to know what they're going to be getting because we're almost at the end of the month. It's almost June, if you can believe that.

Larry Hryb:
Is it?

Jeffrey:
It doesn't feel like it, does it?

Larry Hryb:
At all.

Jeffrey:
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is coming out for Xbox One. And then we've talked about backwards compatibility. But we're talking about when Xbox Series X comes out, four generations of backward compatibility. Here's a great example. Destroy All Humans from the OG Xbox-

Larry Hryb:
I love that game.

Jeffrey:
... is going to be available June 1st for free as part of Xbox Game Pass.

Larry Hryb:
I love that game.

Jeffrey:
You just get it. It's part of Xbox Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Look, you got it right there. It's what I'm looking at. Then a great shmup, shoot-'em-up, Sine Mora, in the second half of the month along with Coffee Talk, which I know that that came out-

Larry Hryb:
Coffee Talk.

Jeffrey:
... not that long ago. That's an independent game. I mean I'm drinking coffee. We're talking. We're in no position right now to be saying-

Larry Hryb:
Where's my espresso? I need my espresso, Jeffrey. I need it.

Jeffrey:
Where is your espresso?

Larry Hryb:
I don't know.

Jeffrey:
Do you make your own espresso? I mean I think you have a ... Do you have an espresso machine?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. You and I have talked about this. You always poo-poo me because you're Mr. I Got To Measure It Just So, two grams, three grams.

Jeffrey:
If something's convenient I just have in my mind that it's not as good when it's convenient. Maybe I should rid myself of that.

Larry Hryb:
E and I, when he was on the show, would have this conversation all the time. It was it's consistent and it's good enough for me. I don't have a very sophisticated palate when it comes to espresso or coffee, so I'm just happy to get something down my gullet.

Jeffrey:
Or anything for that matter.

Larry Hryb:
Hey, hey.

Jeffrey:
You're a real meat and potatoes man.

Larry Hryb:
What is that all about?

Jeffrey:
Your sophistication is in tech. It's in gadgets. It's in home networking. That's where you can talk to your-

Larry Hryb:
Toilet seats.

Jeffrey:
From your mouth to God's ears, Larry. For me, it's coffee. Home network? Whatever the house came with.

Larry Hryb:
But there is one area that I do excel at. You've got your love of coffee. You know what mine is? It's kind of weird. Ice. We've talked about this before. I have this thing for really, really high-quality ice.

Jeffrey:
If you want to know what it's like to work with Larry, he has to go to a specific floor of a specific building at work. One of the break rooms has a machine that has the ice that you like. It reminds me of there's bowling alley, old soda machines where the cup would come down and the ice would come in and the soda would go in-

Larry Hryb:
This is the soft pebble ice, yeah. My favorite ice are the square cubes done by a very, very finicky machine that we don't have on campus. I've only found two of them in Seattle so far.

Jeffrey:
Oh really?

Larry Hryb:
At restaurants, yeah.

Jeffrey:
You know where they do great ice?

Larry Hryb:
Where?

Jeffrey:
Japan.

Larry Hryb:
Oh yes. They do the spherical ice. It's an artwork unto itself.

Jeffrey:
They're decades ahead of us when it comes to ice.

Larry Hryb:
In so many ways. In so many ways.

Jeffrey:
In so many ways.

Larry Hryb:
I mean they were wearing face masks years ago.

Jeffrey:
They have the TOTO toilet. Larry, you should be spending more time in Japan. I would love to go to Japan with you. We would have a great time.

Larry Hryb:
We've talked about that. One of my greatest afternoons in Japan was when I got to spend it with our good friend, David Abrams, GPD.

Jeffrey:
Oh GPD. Yes.

Larry Hryb:
He took me to the TOTO showroom in Shinjuku.

Jeffrey:
Did he really?

Larry Hryb:
Yes. We spend an entire afternoon there. It was unbelievable.

Jeffrey:
Was this the era before Instagram?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeffrey:
Because otherwise there would be a lot of photo ... I would love to have seen that.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. It was in this skyscraper. It was on the 20th floor or something. It was great. You had to be buzzed in. You had to know the secret knock. It was very-

Jeffrey:
Oh really?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. It was not for the faint of heart. But anyway. This is the other podcast.

Jeffrey:
Yes, yes. Japan Tourism Today, our other podcast. We'll cross-promote that.

Larry Hryb:
Like and subscribe.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. Another story that was really popular this week and I'm really excited about it, No Man's Sky coming to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC this June. There's a big update coming with it. There was the Beyond update which came in 2019. They've continued to provide regular free updates to the game. The Living Ship update hit in February. There was an Exo Mech update in April. Suffice to say, if you haven't played No Man's Sky either since launch or in a long time, even if it's been a year when it first came out on Xbox One or it might have been two years. I remember one of the very first inside Xboxes we had some folks-

Larry Hryb:
We had Sean on.

Jeffrey:
... from the No Man's Sky team.

Larry Hryb:
We had Sean on, yeah.

Jeffrey:
Sean Murray.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeffrey:
Well, anyway, yeah. That will be coming. It's to Xbox Game Pass. You have no reason not to try it or try it again.

Larry Hryb:
That is a game that if you are in Game Pass, please try it out because it's one of those games where I don't know, Jeffrey. I remember this where it was one of the few games where you really got the feeling you were taking off from a planet and going into the atmosphere. It was so magical the way they did it. It just felt so real. It was just seamless. It was like I was actually flying.

Jeffrey:
Yeah, going from the planet and out, from the surface out into space and back again.

Larry Hryb:
I love that game. I love that game. So much fun.

Jeffrey:
I never finished it.

Larry Hryb:
I never finished it either. I just had a lot of time to play it. I just never finished it.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. No, I definitely put in probably 15, 20 hours. But then I just was scanning everything. You know what? I was perfectly happy to do that.

Larry Hryb:
Yep. Get your jollies where you can.

Jeffrey:
All right. This is a little bit different.

Larry Hryb:
Yes.

Jeffrey:
Well, sure. Fair enough. So we announced the Xbox Family Settings App is going into preview. Actually, I have it on my phone. I'll bring it up and I'll show it to you. The first 10,000 people on iOS can download it and try it out. So here it is. It's the Family Settings App. I use it. This is how I regulate my kid's time. It's really cool. You can see how much she's played today. Right now school is still in session, I mean even though she-

Larry Hryb:
Hasn't played that much.

Jeffrey:
... can't leave the house, she's doing school. So she hasn't played today. But I can look throughout the week. I can set how much time she's allowed to play on a particular day. If she goes over that limit, then I can ... She can request more time and it'll send a notification right to the phone and I can go, "No, you've played enough," or, "Go ahead, 30 minutes."

Larry Hryb:
You can hear the screaming from upstairs.

Jeffrey:
Yeah, no. You know what? Nothing beats, as a parent, knowing what your kid is playing, knowing how much they're playing and being involved in what they're doing. But this is a great tool to help keep track because we're all busy and we're all doing a lot of things. We're all working from home. We're learning from home. We're playing at home.

Larry Hryb:
All of it. All of it.

Jeffrey:
So having this extra tool is really handy. You can go ahead and you can search for it on the iOS store or also on Android store and you could try it out. It's the Xbox Family Settings App.

Larry Hryb:
Blog post for that over at Xbox Wire, so go ahead and check that out if you would like to, right?

Jeffrey:
Yeah. Just sign in and if your child already had a separate child account, you should just see them right there if it's already connected with yours. If not, you can sign up for a new account there. You can connect them. There's really a lot of different tools you can do there and there's more stuff to come. Your feedback is welcome. I think that's the key thing here. Try it out. Let us know what you think. There's actually a feedback bubble that will show up. You can just click it and you can send a note to the team that's making it. They will read it and hopefully make the app better for you.

Larry Hryb:
That's important. Again, it's about doing it with the community, working on things with you, the community. We would love to have your help in making this app, frankly, the best app we can do for your kids and helping your kids and being a great parent too, which is also important.

Jeffrey:
Your baby's not playing yet, but she will.

Larry Hryb:
No.

Jeffrey:
She's not going to?

Larry Hryb:
Well, we'll see. I want her to do whatever she wants to do. If she wants to play, she can play when she's old enough to make her own decisions.

Jeffrey:
I'm just saying, at some point you're going to need ... You're golfing alone. You should golf with friends or your kid. That's what she should be playing first.

Larry Hryb:
You and I play frequently Apex and your daughter is usually the third and she's quite good. She's quite good. I just don't know if my daughter's-

Jeffrey:
She's better than I am. Got to work on those reflexes. She's a little young now.

Larry Hryb:
Young and, by the way, very aggressive.

Jeffrey:
She's not one to sit back.

Larry Hryb:
No, she's not one to sit back at all. Anyway, what else we got there, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey:
We debuted this week a dev diary series for Wasteland 3. Very excited. That game will be coming out in late August. It's by InXile. If you played Gears Tactics, if you like a strategy RPG, this game's going to be for you. It's very different than Gears Tactics where you came in. You fought that battle and then you withdrew to the base. This strings together a little bit more. It's more story-based, I would say, although I really like the story in Gears Tactics. Anyway, some similar elements. I think if you liked one, you'll like the other. They're not in any way identical.

Jeffrey:
You can create your own character and their backstory and a lot of cool stuff. I got to play a stream during ... There's a Steam beta that you can be part of or backers alpha, I want to say, or backers beta for people that initially backed the game on Fig or whatever the crowdfunding was back a couple years ago. Well, anyway, game's coming out. If you want to learn more about it, if any of the things I said, like strategy RPG or Gears Tactics, piqued your interest, you want to take a look.

Larry Hryb:
If any of those words were like ... They made your ears go up, then that's what you need to do.

Jeffrey:
Exactly. Definitely looking forward to Wasteland 3. Actually, it's three months from today, I think as we record this. So it's really not that far away.

Larry Hryb:
2020 is something, isn't it?

Jeffrey:
Seriously.

Larry Hryb:
On so many levels.

Jeffrey:
This is the part of the news where we talk about free stuff. I love free stuff.

Larry Hryb:
Free.

Jeffrey:
I think everyone loves free stuff.

Larry Hryb:
In fact, I feel like I missed an opportunity to have a little music bit for you. So let's see if I can bring it up. Go ahead. It's going to be blasted up a little bit.

Jeffrey:
The opportunity's not lost. You're going to do it on the fly. Teatime, yes. Yes, sir, Mr. Livingston.

Larry Hryb:
This is how you get some free things, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey:
You got that yes, yes. I don't know what we're doing. We just lost all your subscribers in the UK. They're like, "I don't know what this is."

Larry Hryb:
Go ahead. I'm listening.

Jeffrey:
Sea of Thieves, the game is made in the UK. Sea of Thieves has been the gift that's kept on giving over the past two years and change since it came out in 2018. The free Lost Treasures update is available now. It's available now free across Xbox One, Windows 10, Xbox Game Pass. We revisit the Tall Tales, which is the story-driven adventures. There's a bunch of new daily bounties, weekly events. It's a whole lot of stuff. Jump back into it. This is a game, we were just talking about No Man's Sky, that if you haven't played Sea of Thieves in a while it's not what you remember. There's just so much more going on.

Larry Hryb:
It's a vibrant-

Jeffrey:
It's layered.

Larry Hryb:
Vibrant and beautiful universe. I mean here's all the information here on Xbox Wire. We got a video-

Jeffrey:
It has cats. It has cats.

Larry Hryb:
It has cats. There it is. Even if you're allergic to cats, this is a way you can get into ... You can easily on ramp to cat ownership.

Jeffrey:
My kid really wants a cat and I'm very allergic to them.

Larry Hryb:
She needs one. You know what? My sister's a veterinarian. I will talk to her. We'll find out what kind of allergy you have and I'll have her find a kitty for you or two.

Jeffrey:
Actually, I would love that.

Larry Hryb:
You could have two kitties.

Jeffrey:
We're at home a lot. I would love her to have a pet. I kind of like cats.

Larry Hryb:
Kind of. Kind of, that's a little disturbing. Kind of Like cats. Well, you never lived with one.

Jeffrey:
Actually, I have. That went badly, but we're not going to talk about that.

Larry Hryb:
All right. The kitty incident.

Jeffrey:
We're not going to talk about that.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, you know that reminds me. You can't really tell, but out this door, out this window right here is a-

Jeffrey:
A cat.

Larry Hryb:
We live in a forest. I didn't send you this though. We have a video camera surveillance system. It tripped at 11:00 one morning and I looked at the video. It was a coyote walking through my front yard into the side here with a chicken in its mouth, a dead chicken. Sorry for the guy down the street who's now minus one-

Jeffrey:
Where do you live?

Larry Hryb:
I'm going to send you the video and you're going to look at this and go, "What?" It was the craziest thing.

Jeffrey:
By the way, if you would have just said there was a chicken, that alone would have thrown me for a loop.

Larry Hryb:
My funniest experience is we live on top of a hill and my wife had the funniest experience. She was going up the hill to come home. She was on the phone with me. I'll never forget this. It's probably about six years ago. She just stopped talking. I said, "Are you okay?" And then she bursts out laughing. Running down the middle of the road was a chicken, dead on the double lines, in between the double lines, straight down the road and looking over its shoulder.

Jeffrey:
But not crossing the road.

Larry Hryb:
But not crossing the road, going straight down the road.

Jeffrey:
It doesn't want to play into those stereotypes.

Larry Hryb:
It passed her. Now, to this day, we still call that Chicken Run Hill. It was the strangest experience. But she giggles. She says it's the funniest thing she's ever seen.

Jeffrey:
Did I tell you about the wild nature experience that we had a couple weeks ago? It was very traumatic. My kid-

Larry Hryb:
If you were to say that in Florida, it'd be a very different story. But go ahead.

Jeffrey:
No, no. I was down here playing Yakuza actually. Upstairs, my wife is like, "Oh my God." So I go upstairs and a bird had somehow landed ... We have a very small balcony, literally the size of this desk right here, very small.

Larry Hryb:
It's kind of like you get in a hotel where you can kind of lean out a little bit.

Jeffrey:
Exactly, yeah, yeah. Very little. But a little bird had landed there. I don't know if it was injured or what. It had to have been because it wasn't flying out there. I gently corralled it into a box and I folded the box.

Larry Hryb:
I never heard this story.

Jeffrey:
We live a couple blocks from a park. This was last week.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, you also live a couple blocks from a zoo.

Jeffrey:
Yes, yes. This is also true. I walk out the door to take the bird. Look, if a bird lands there ... I didn't want to touch it because I didn't know if birds have-

Larry Hryb:
Bird flu. It could be anything.

Jeffrey:
Well, that and I didn't want it to not be accepted by its bird peers. My daughter's like, "Let me come with." I'm like, "Okay." So she chases me down and we walk down. I found a clearing.

Larry Hryb:
Was this up the hill?

Jeffrey:
It's just in the park nearby. It wasn't even up the hill. I turn the box sideways and I open it up. We stand back. And then it's like, "Come on out." I sort of usher it. It takes two or three steps and then we're like, "Go." It takes off to fly. Within about three seconds this giant crow comes out of nowhere and they grow big here, snatches it out of the air in its feet, and just takes it and just starts-

Larry Hryb:
And your daughter starts crying, I imagine.

Jeffrey:
Crying inconsolably. It came out of nowhere. How did it even know it was there? I know crows are supposed to be smart. But it had to have been watching it in mute.

Larry Hryb:
Let me tell you something. We live in an area where there's murders and murders of crows, the proper term. They are cunning little creatures. So it may have been following you from your house.

Jeffrey:
How did it know? Anyway, she was devastated. She was absolutely devastated.

Larry Hryb:
Well, she should be. That's going to taint her.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. When she's in therapy in 10 or 15 years, that was a contributing factor. I should have just made her stay home. It was nature. She doesn't want to hear that. It was cute little birdie was just eviscerated by a crow.

Larry Hryb:
That's why I couldn't show my daughter-

Jeffrey:
Now I'm not allowed these bloodhounds.

Larry Hryb:
I couldn't show my daughter the coyote. That's what I told her. I said, "You can't go out of the house alone. There's coyotes out there." She's very, very nervous about the coyotes.

Jeffrey:
The road runner, if she's seen those cartoons, she knows you can't outsmart a coyote.

Larry Hryb:
Wile E. Coyote.

Jeffrey:
I've got a couple more free things here.

Larry Hryb:
Yes, go over them, including this discussion, completely free.

Jeffrey:
If you're still here. Warface: Breakout. So you might have heard of Warface. Warface came out actually on Xbox 360 and available on Xbox One, but this is a different game. It just came out this week. It is a tactical FPS action game. It is free to play. It's a new take on the classic defuse the bomb sort of gameplay. There is absolutely no reason not to check it out. It is inspired by Counterstrike. If you played Warface, this is a standalone spinoff game to that.

Larry Hryb:
Hey, I've got a little something. I'm sorry. You have one more free thing, don't you?

Jeffrey:
No, that's it. I do have one more free thing.

Larry Hryb:
Go ahead. Take it.

Jeffrey:
I'm sorry. Warface is not a free to play game. This is a 1999 standalone game.

Larry Hryb:
All right.

Jeffrey:
I sorted my games-

Larry Hryb:
Editor's correction.

Jeffrey:
Yes. Thank you. But free play days, you can jump in and you can play. Every weekend we've had some games that you can play for free, some cool ones. This week, Hunt: Showdown, Stellaris Console Edition, which I've heard really good things from. Our good friend, Eric Pope, is a big fan.

Larry Hryb:
I thought you meant Xbox Pope.

Jeffrey:
Xbox Pope, he might play it as well.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, we don't know.

Jeffrey:
He may have designed a controller or console for it. He's a talented artist.

Larry Hryb:
Or two or three.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. Jump Force as well, which is the Bandai Namco anime-flavored fighting game that I remember got a real big pop when it was announced in E3 a couple years ago.

Larry Hryb:
I remember that.

Jeffrey:
Those games are available by the time you hear this to play for free up until Sunday, May 31st, just about midnight. If you play them and you like them, they're all on sale between 40 and 67% off.

Larry Hryb:
67% off. Can I be, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey:
Yes. That's two-thirds.

Larry Hryb:
Can that actually be?

Jeffrey:
I think we might have had to round those.

Larry Hryb:
I've said this many times. Ever since Laura left the show, the IQ has basically gone down about 97%. That's the only number I know.

Jeffrey:
It was taken away by the crows as well. They swooped off with-

Larry Hryb:
Picked off.

Jeffrey:
... all the intelligence in the show.

Larry Hryb:
The crows and the coyotes. Brutal. Anyway, what else we got there, Jeffrey? Are we okay this week?

Jeffrey:
That's it for news. We'll, of course, be back next week with news. I hope you're able to summon a great guest as well, someone with some brains.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. For some IQ. We got to pump that back into the show. Your screen dimmed behind you. We can't see your character.

Jeffrey:
Oh my, yes.

Larry Hryb:
I don't know where your controller is.

Jeffrey:
Here we go. No, it's right here.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, I love the fact that you and I have matching chairs. Did you notice that? We have matching chairs. This is the official Xbox chair. Anyway, yeah, we got a bunch of great guests. If you subscribe on YouTube, you can continue to do that. You can like and subscribe. You can do that, Jeff. You love that when they smash the button.

Jeffrey:
I love when you do that. I love when you mash that subscribe button.

Larry Hryb:
If you're listening to this on the normal podcast venues then, like I said earlier, the video version of this is up. You can go check it out. Feel free to comment. Love the fact that the comments are, for now, civil. I hope they stay that way.

Jeffrey:
Yeah. It'd be nice. We do read your feedback though. So if there's something you'd like us to do differently, let us know.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We going to-

Jeffrey:
Be gentle on our quarantine here.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, did you notice I got a haircut? My wife gave me another haircut.

Jeffrey:
You know what? She did a pretty good job.

Larry Hryb:
She did a great job. I mean I wasn't stunned, but I was like, "I don't know if I need to go ..." You know who I feel for? I feel for all these poor people at Supercuts and hair stylists that after this is all done and people have to go back, they're going to have to undo all the mess that we've all done to ourselves.

Jeffrey:
I know. I feel like we should have to pay double or triple because we haven't been able to go and there's going to be just a lot of hair being lopped off. I mean I'm really relying on this headset. This headset is holding everything together.

Larry Hryb:
Look at that.

Jeffrey:
It still looks so-so. She picks your wardrobe out too. I mean you basically have a live-in stylist. She does a lot more than that, but she's taking care of that. Don't take it for granted.

Larry Hryb:
Well, the reason for successful marriage is know what you're good at and know what your partner's good at and do what you're doing at. Don't do what you're not good at. I don't think I've ever told you this story, but when it comes to wardrobe, I have a terrible, terrible habit if I go out and buy clothes ... First of all, she will not let me buy clothes anymore. If I go out and buy clothes, for some reason I always end up within this very narrow band of rust-colored shirts. I don't know why I keep navigating to rust. So she's like, "No," and she throws it out. You've never seen them on me because she won't let me out of the house with them. But this is a nice color.

Jeffrey:
No. I don't think I want ... Rust?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Because I like orange because I'm an orange man. I don't know.

Jeffrey:
Because you went to Syracuse, yeah, I guess. All right, sure.

Larry Hryb:
I don't know. Anyway, it's-

Jeffrey:
Left to my own devices, I'd wear nothing but swag T-shirts and soccer jerseys.

Larry Hryb:
I'll tell you this. I can confirm that. In fact, did you notice, Jeff, I shaved today.

Jeffrey:
You shaved.

Larry Hryb:
Right. We were on a call yesterday and you were like, "Don't shave. Don't shave." I'm like, "I had to. I had to."

Jeffrey:
Keep it for the show. People like the beard.

Larry Hryb:
No, my daughter calls it scruffy and she doesn't like it. She's like, "It's scruffy. Go take a shower and shave." So what are you going to do?

Jeffrey:
All right. And you gave in. You gave in. She's Daddy's girl.

Larry Hryb:
We'll be back next week with another show, maybe some special guests. So make sure you stay right where you are. If you want to hit us up on any of the social channels, you know how to find us, right? All you got to do is hit us below. You can see me at Major Nelson. Of course, you can see Jeff right now. It's like a Brady Bunch thing.

Jeffrey:
Please feel free to send those Dungeons invites if you see us in there.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. If you see us in Dungeons and go ahead and do that. I'm going to play a little music here. Let's see if I can bring us out. Where's the music, Jeffrey? Can I do that?

Jeffrey:
Play us out, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
Which we brought us in with. All right, gang.

Jeffrey:
What song is it? What is this?

Larry Hryb:
I'll have to find the link to it. I don't know.

Jeffrey:
You just like it. It's just a song you like.

Larry Hryb:
I ended up getting clearance for this to use it. I don't know where it came from. Anyway-

Jeffrey:
It's safe.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's safe.

Jeffrey:
Okay.

Larry Hryb:
All right, gang. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great gaming week. Whatever you do, stay safe out there. Jeff and I will see you next time. Bye-bye everybody.

Jeffrey:
See you.