715: Jason Ronald on Xbox Series S

Larry Hryb: Hi, it's Larry Hryb Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show and we are back with another great week of gaming. Joining me is Jeffrey. Hello, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Hello, Larry. Am I coming in clearer? I fiddled with the rabbit ears on top of the TV.
Larry Hryb: I say, am I coming in clear? A little Mic/TV action there.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I say, am I at 1080? I'm in full HD now. [crosstalk 00:00:20] Also, I wore a super bright shirt.
Larry Hryb: Yeah. You got your Philadelphia shirt on there, don't you? For the Overwatch-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: It's my fusion shirt. Yeah. It could be a Flyer shirt, same colors, if I still watched hockey, but let's just...
Larry Hryb: I would like to request that we do get... Do you have a Gritty shirt?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I tried when I was in Philly last time, which was, Oh God, maybe a year ago. I looked everywhere. It was right before Halloween, for a Gritty mask and I couldn't find one.
Then I found out they actually gave them out at a Flyers game and I had a friend who was at that one. I have a huge oversized Flyer shirt that somebody gave me at some point that was-
Larry Hryb: That the family lives in.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... NHL. Yeah, it's a tent. I figured out well, I went out with a Gritty mask, I'm all set. I will scare children during Halloween, which is... That's the goal, but I couldn't get ahold of one. I think it will be a little easier this year.
The big question is, is there going to be Halloween? Is there going to be trick or treating? I don't know. Nobody told the spirit people though, because they've come into their former office max abode, and they've taken it over again, but I hope there's a Halloween.
Larry Hryb: The ghost of what is it? Halloween Spirit, or Spirit of... All these random popup stories that-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Sprit of Halloween. Yeah.
Larry Hryb: ... that appear from August to October in vacant stores. It's kind of weird because they kind of... It's so appropriate that they haunt old buildings, right?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That's a very good point. It's the spirit of retail past, but what I think is interesting and I think we talked about this last year and I want to go back, is every year the section for video game outfits and costumes get bigger, and bigger.
I remember two years ago there was a Fortnite, the mining thing. I can't remember what it's called. Harvester. Then last year there was 30 Fortnite outfits.
A mainstay, I've seen it at Costco already this year is the buff child's Master Chief, Mjolnir armor. It's just the three foot tall child you don't want to deal with.
Larry Hryb: It's funny, because I remember about 10, 15 years ago, when they first started doing licensed costumes, I was like, "Wow, this is..." It was the very first time I remember. I'm sure there was some Mario one's back in the day.
I just remember that. You're right. It just feels like everyone's getting more and more into that. Speaking of video games, we should talk about what we're playing, because that's why people are here, Jeffrey. That's why they're here.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Are they? Do they want to know? Yeah. Well, I would love to hear because I've been playing a lot of stuff, but let's talk about what you've got back there.
Larry Hryb: Well, I got to tell you, I have to thank you. I have to thank you because you've tipped me off to The Touryst, which I've been playing, which come to find out it was a Switch game and it's now on Xbox Game Pass. This game is fun. It's great.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yeah, and it's a game that despite it's very simple look reminds me of, there was a game 3D Block Heroes or something-
Larry Hryb: Yeah, something like that.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... a generation ago, but it uses really... Where its simple graphics, but it layers in very advanced effects, in terms of depth of field, and focus, and things like that. It actually ends up looking really cool with a rock solid frame rate. Digital Foundry loves this game.
Larry Hryb: Oh, did they?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Larry Hryb: Yeah. I am, because you said, "Hey, check this game." I was like, "Okay, Game Pass downloaded." And, I was like, "Hey, this is fine." It was one of those games you're like... You just got into it. You don't know what was grabbing you, but it felt right.
I've been playing it along, I think I'm on my second, or I think on my third or fourth island now. I'm having some fun with it. So, if you're on Game Pass, check The Touryst out. You'll notice it's got a pithy way of spelling it over here. T-O-U-R-Y-S-T. So, look for that.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I think you're enjoying it because you'd love to be traveling, and right now we can't even leave our houses. I think I'm on day seven of apocalyptic air alert.
Larry Hryb: I have to show you something. Can you just hold on a second? I know I told you what this is, but I want to go get this.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Let's do it.
Larry Hryb: Okay. Just talk to the audience for a minute. I'll be right back.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I'll just talk to the fans. I hope wherever you're at, if you're on the West coast, the air is so bad. It's tough, and for people that maybe are a sensitive group, myself among them as an asthmatic. It is really bad. Of course, I brought up my app and it immediately crashed, but unhealthy air. It's not good. It's not good folks.
Larry Hryb: Sorry about that. I don't know what you were talking about when I was gone, but I have to show you this-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I was talking about air quality.
Larry Hryb: Oh, I have to show you this.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Fun stuff.
Larry Hryb: We were talking about traveling and how we haven't been able to travel. My wife who used to travel a lot and she doesn't travel much anymore, but we both love traveling and we loved it. She says, "I got a great gift for you." And, I'm like, "What are you talking about?" She's like, "We can't travel. What kind of travel gift could you possibly get me?"
So, she gets this box that shows up. She says, "Open it! Open it!" She gets more excited about things like that than I do.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I would love to know where this is going.
Larry Hryb: I open up the box and in it, she had sourced from some of our favorite airlines, one of them up here in the Northwest is Alaska. She had sourced the company that sells the mixed nuts you get when you're traveling. Take a look at this.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: They heat them up. They're good.
Larry Hryb: Yeah. So, you can see that.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That's so funny.
Larry Hryb: She got me a couple of bags of these. Mixed nuts, and then apparently there's a separate bunch of nuts that you get when you go to Hawaii. This is the first class Aloha mix, which is something we do all the time here from the West Coast.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Oh, man, some macadamia nuts in there. Yeah. Oh, there's more?
Larry Hryb: No, no, no. I was just saying she got me four bags total, and I was like, "This is one of the greatest gifts." I love my wife. She's so creative, and she came up with this. I was speechless. I was like, "That is an amazing gift." That's all.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: All she needs to do now is serve you coffee in a styrofoam cup and on a tray that's this big, and you'll be all set. You'll feel like you're flying off to Maui.
Larry Hryb: I have to have the person next to me, who's falling asleep on top of me drooling. [crosstalk 00:06:31] Oh, that's you. That's you!
Jeffrey Rubenst...: You know I don't sleep on planes. That was just an exception.
Larry Hryb: That was an exception.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: It was just the one time.
Larry Hryb: Anyway. Yeah. Air quality, you talked about that. Hey, so we're talking about games we're playing. I talked about The Touryst. That was the segue to this. What do you got going on in the back there? It looks like you've been racing.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Well, I think it's funny, we're both playing games with sort of a retro throwback look. This game, Hot Shot Racing, which also came to Xbox Game Pass I want to say last week, immediately caught my eye.
It's got sort of a Daytona USA/Virtual Racing sort of, somewhere in between. That sort of aesthetic, that Sega-like M2-era arcade racer, but in a modern, super fast frame rate, super smooth gameplay. You're jumping right into it.
I just got really into it. You immediately jump in and you just go. You choose what car you want, what driver you want. Do you want to drift more or accelerate more?
Controls. You don't even need to look up what the controls are, you're going to figure them out immediately. It's just right trigger goes, left trigger breaks, A for turbo that you can build up.
Larry Hryb: Left stick steers. You're done.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: You just go. I just immediately jumped into it. It was just a fun pallet cleanser, change of pace. Because, I've been getting into...
I played a lot of Avengers over the past week and I was just mainlining that initial campaign, which is really fun. I beat the campaign. It ended up on a really good streak, but I'd been playing it in big, huge multi-hour chunks. I was like, "I just need something to-
Larry Hryb: That's where you've been.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... sort of just cleanse the palate." I had been playing a lot of that. I jumped in and Hot Shot Racing, give it a shot. It's on Game Pass. If Daytona USA was fun or all these games in the arcade, they were multiple quarters. It was like 75 cents.
Larry Hryb: What?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I'm going to go play Mortal Combat. That's only a quarter to continue. 75 cents? I could play that once.
Larry Hryb: Maybe.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I only have five bucks.
Larry Hryb: You crash into the wall and you're done.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I know you have one bad race, and it even has the checkpoints and all that. It's definitely a throwback for people that love those arcade racers. But again, it's fun. It's on Game Pass. Give it a shot. If you win your first race, it definitely reigns a few achievements on you as well. Nothing wrong with that.
Larry Hryb: That is great. That is great stuff. We've got some news this week. Of course, last week we talked about the Xbox One S, which we announced. In fact, I've got them right here. In fact, let's bring them over here.
The Xbox One X, and Xbox Series S. Those guys go on sale September 22nd in over 40-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That's this coming Monday!
Larry Hryb: That is this coming Monday.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Right? Or Tuesday? Now, I've got to look it up.
Larry Hryb: I've lost track of time. We've got the pre-sale coming up for those, but I've got our good friend, Jason Ronald's going to come by a little bit and talk about Xbox Series S, how games are optimized for it.
We're going to talk about, why you may or may not want to use one of these. Which is the-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Oh, what's that? What do you have there, Larry?
Larry Hryb: That is the external storage for Xbox Series X and S that matches all of the specs of the internal storage. So, you can get games loading. Anyway, we'll talk about that later in the show.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: How do you jam a terabyte into that small of a... Is it made from vibranium or something like that?
Larry Hryb: Look at that. This is it right here.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That's so cool.
Larry Hryb: This is it right here. This is the future. We'll have Jason. He'll come by later on. We've got some news to go through. I think you've got some things to talk about here. We've had a big week, xCloud officially launched into Game Pass Ultimate and some other stuff. So, lets-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That's a great place to start here, Larry. So-
Larry Hryb: Jeff, take it away.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yeah. If you're an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member, we've been talking about this for at least a month. That what used to be called xCloud, which we're calling it cloud gaming is now available via the Xbox Game Pass App directly onto your Android device, a phone, a tablet, whatever you got.
There are 150 games available on this, and we're talking good new games. You can play Wasteland 3 on here. Could play Tell Me Why. You can play Grounded. You can play Battle Totes, all games that came out in the last month.
You can play The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3, that you can play on just a screen, wherever you go.
Larry Hryb: There you go. There you go.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: How amazing is that? You're looking at the app right there.
Spritfarer, which people have been really super into. Untitled Goose Game. Nier Automata. There's small games. There's big games. 150 games. We have the full list over on Xbox Wire, and I believe over on Major Nelson as well. There's almost guaranteed something you're going to want to play.
Here's the thing. Our belief is that this is just a great additional value to us as gamers. The best way to play is right back here on your console, right in front of you. But, if you're not in front and you're playing a big game, like The Witcher, you're playing Wasteland 3...
I'm going to be playing Wasteland 3 for the foreseeable future. You want to get in. You want to play a little bit, when you can't be with your Xbox or with your PC. Well, you can jump in. You can play directly on that device mobily. It's a pretty awesome experience. We're seeing a lot of people get into it, which is really cool.
Larry Hryb: The one thing you should know is that, here I'm booting up Minecraft Dungeons, and there's a heck of a reflection there, so I apologize, but Minecraft Dungeons, actually the Minecraft team and the xCloud team have done tremendous work for touch controls. What's really-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Touch controls. Yeah. They don't work for everything. Yeah. Go on. They work so good here.
Larry Hryb: What's interesting is, I didn't know this. I called the xCloud team. I was talking with Kareem and some of the folks on the team there. We're talking, "Hey, tell us about this touch thing."
Touch is actually something that they're looking at. They have a whole team of people that just work on the touch experience, not just for Minecraft, but all the games.
So, they can go back to our developers and say, "Hey." You can see the game. Actually, let me just do it here. You can see the touch controls here. I'm going to bring them up when they pop up. What I'm getting at, is that if you like the touch controls, you should really check out Minecraft Dungeons, because I think you'll really like it.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yeah, and here's the thing. The team's only implementing touch controls where it makes sense. It happens to work really well with Minecraft Dungeons. It's a dungeon crawler. You can tap to just go. It makes a lot of sense.
For other games it might not make sense, and so there are a lot of options. You can connect any number of controllers. There's a number of different controllers you can connect to your phone or tablet-
Larry Hryb: What I love about it is-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: There's also... Oh, go on. [crosstalk 00:12:59] Oh, there it is. Oh, you got it.
Larry Hryb: I was going to show this. Yeah, is that you can see that the customized... You've got onscreen prompts that show you, "Hey, the A button is for your weapon or that's for your healing in the lower left over here." It's over there.
It's really great that they're able to customize it. They're going to work on it. This over here is your movement stick. I guess it's over here. There's really cool stuff they're doing. So check, if you're Game Pass Ultimate, you owe it to yourself to check this out, because I think you'll really, really like it.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yeah, and there's not a lot of great new content and updates that have hit in the last week. We talked about them last show for Minecraft Dungeons.
Larry Hryb: Samsung phone, by the way. [crosstalk 00:13:35] Thanks to Samsung for their new Note.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Which one is that? Is that the Note? New Note 20?
Larry Hryb: That's the brand new Note. Yeah.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Flip it around the back. I want to see that.
Larry Hryb: Well, I can't flip it around the back because it's got... I would love to-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: All right. I put you in a bad spot.
Larry Hryb: It's got a bunch of those stickers on the back, your engineering and whatnot, but it's kind of cool.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I will say that phone has definitely turned my head. I've been on iOS for a long time and I'm looking at that Note 20, and...
Larry Hryb: Because it's a Note- [crosstalk 00:00:14:02].
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yeah, the fact that you can play games on it.
Larry Hryb: It has a little stylus. Yeah. So, you can draw. You can take notes on the Note.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: All right, well watch, next year we're all going to be toting around one of those and we'll be in Android Land. It'll be good. Few new games added to Xbox Game Pass. I love that almost about every other show, we get to talk about a new batch of games.
Some especially exciting ones here because they're going to be coming pretty soon. So, coming soon to Xbox Game Pass. We used to say for console and PC, now we can say for Android, for console and in some cases for all three of those, depending on what is stream-able.
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep coming to Xbox Game Pass for console, but also stream-able via the Game Pass App, for Android. Same thing with a Warhammer: Vermintide 2, which was a fun co-op sort of... also, like a first person dungeon crawler situation.
Night in the Woods is coming to console, PC and Android. The trifecta there. Great announcement, I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Halo 3: ODST coming soon to PC, finally coming as part of the Master Chief collection. Also, stream-able via Android and then-
Larry Hryb: You can be an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, Jeffrey. That's what ODST stands for.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: You know what? That's the only Halo game, I think that I have not beaten. That game came out when I was working over at Sony and I have it. I just hadn't... I've been waiting for it to come out on PC and playing it there on my cool rig. I'm going to be able to play that really pretty soon.
That's coming out September 22nd, which is turning into a heck of a day. First, wake up pre-order your Xbox Series X, or Series S, then download Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, and Halo 3: ODST via Xbox Game Pass. That sounds like a pretty good day. It's a good Tuesday, as far as I'm concerned.
Last game to talk about Company of Heroes 2 Complete Edition, that is coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC. Those are just the coming soons. It just keeps coming. It just keeps coming.
Larry Hryb: Coming soon. Coming soon.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: It behooves you to follow Xbox Game Pass on Twitter or the Game Pass for PC on Twitter as well.
Larry Hryb: Just warning, they do get a little saucy.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: They're a fun Twitter. Actually, they just released another music video. Sometimes they do slow jams for some of the games that are coming that are your last chance to play it for Game Pass. They're sort of auto tuned.
I don't want to say they're necessarily certified bangers, but they're close. They're pretty good for your average gaming Twitter account.
Larry Hryb: Wow.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Then also, because we've passed the ides of September. We're now into the second half of September. Games with Gold, if you're an Xbox Game Pass Gold member or an Ultimate member, of course it includes Gold, you get a couple of games to keep.
The second half of this month, it is Book of Unwritten Tales 2, and an OG Xbox game, Armed and Dangerous. Go ahead and download those. Then you still have time to get Tom Clancy's The Division for Xbox One. The original one, which takes you through New York, still a good game.
Larry Hryb: My only way we're getting to New York lately.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: By the way, when you look at the air quality, and you see in New York and it's green. I'm like, "With all those taxis running around, with 9 million people living there." And-
Larry Hryb: Well, there is a mass exodus.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... you know what, much better air quality.
Larry Hryb: Let's talk about that. There's a lot of people leaving the city. Anyway. Hey, so we talked earlier about Jason Ronald is here. I had a chance to interview him. It's always great to talk to him. Of course, he lives in a very rural area of Seattle.
His internet connection, not quite the best, but his information is fantastic. So, what do you say we take a break here, Jeff, bring Jason in. Talk to him about Xbox Series S and optimized games. How's that sound?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That sounds great. Let's see the beard.
Larry Hryb: Big week around Xbox. Last week we announced Xbox Series S. Joining us is Jason Ronald. Jason, good to see you again. How are you?
Jason Ronald: Good to see you, Larry. It's exciting to be back here.
Larry Hryb: Yeah, we had quite a busy week last week with Xbox Series S. I want to talk about that and have you come on and explain how this console fits into the family. Tell us a little bit about the announcement.
Jason Ronald: Sure. Last week was super exciting to finally share that we have Xbox Series S joining the Xbox Series X this holiday. An Xbox Series S is designed to be our smallest, most affordable, most accessible, next generation console, delivering all the same great benefits that you get with Xbox Series X, just at a reduced rendering resolution.
Larry Hryb: When you talk about the reduced rendering resolution, that's where people are like, "Well, wait a minute. It's reduced. What does that mean?" Because, the Xbox Series X, the big one, can handle up to 4K. Tell us about the capabilities of the Series S.
Jason Ronald: Sure. So, with Xbox Series X, we really designed that to deliver 4K gaming at 60 frames a second with support for up to 120 frames per second. And, with Xbox Series S you get all of the same great next-gen capabilities and benefits, but Xbox Series S is designed to deliver games at 1440P at 60 frames a second with support all the way up to 120 frames per second.
But, all the same great next-gen features. Things like quick resume, the Xbox velocity architecture, all the improvements that we have with the Zen 2 CPU, as well as our custom SOC leveraging RDNA 2. All of those same features apply to both Xbox Series X, as well as Xbox Series S.
Larry Hryb: Series S, as we've seen, I'm going to bring it up here. This is a significantly, significantly smaller console. Tell us about how the team took this Xbox Series X and kind of shrunk it, because it's not just like you took the optical disk drive out. This is a purely digital device, but tell us about some of that work.
Jason Ronald: Absolutely. I'm super proud of the work that the team... to really deliver the smallest Xbox console we've ever built. There's a tremendous amount of power in this really small form factor. It's almost 60% percent smaller than the Xbox Series, and it's super portable. It's super easy to use.
Like you said, we really wanted to make sure that we delivered a great digital experience. That was making sure that we had a best in class experience so that, for people that maybe are new to the Xbox ecosystem or people that have decided to go all digital, have that great gaming experience for the most affordable price of next-gen.
Larry Hryb: Yeah, and that was something else that we talked about is we're going to be doing pre-orders on September 22nd. It's also important point out the Xbox Series X is going to be priced at 499, and the Series S is going to be priced at 299. That's a real great opportunity, as you said for folks to really get into the next-gen.
Because, next-gen isn't just about... You and I have talked about this many times over the past few months. Next-gen is not just about more pixels. Every part of the console has been optimized to be faster. Would that be an accurate way to put it? I want to hear it in your words.
Jason Ronald: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously we're going to continue advance to state of the art with graphics, with things like DirectX Raytracing, and new capabilities, like variable rate shading and mesh shaders.
So much of this generation is really about getting the player into the fun as quickly as possible. You think of quick resume and being able to quickly bounce between different experiences.
Or, you think about while you're actually in the game, virtually eliminating load times so that I can just go across the worlds that I want to play in, or just jump from level one to level two, just that much faster.
Then obviously you think about things like high frame rates. It was critically important to us as we designed both of these consoles, to make sure that you get that same great gaming experience, whether you choose to play on an Xbox Series X, or you choose to play on an Xbox Series S. We want to make sure everybody's getting that same great gaming experience.
Larry Hryb: I also want to point out is that the team took a lot of... Your team and the hardware team worked really closely together to make sure that we had... You just didn't take an Xbox Series X and pull the optical disk drive out and say, "Okay, that's the digital edition."
You really went through the entire console, and re-wrapped it, in terms of repositioned it and got all the components in there to create a much... In fact, we've called it the smallest Xbox ever, correct?
Jason Ronald: Absolutely. It's less than four pounds. It's six inches by 11 inches. You won't believe how small it actually is until you can actually get your hands on it.
I think the other part that's critically important is that it is delivering a true next-gen experience with all those capabilities that I talked about.
It's a really awesome, great experience for players who maybe don't have a 4K TV, or maybe they have gone all digital and they really prefer that digital ecosystem. It's really about providing player choice more than anything.
Larry Hryb: It's great to see that we're doing that because what you don't see in this is, of course we have the X, we have the Series S. Then next to it for Game Pass Ultimate folks is if you want to play on xCloud, you can do that well. You can play your games anywhere you are. So, we're really providing gamers with the option to do what they want, where they want, with all their games, right?
Jason Ronald: Absolutely. Obviously you mentioned Xbox Series X is $499. Xbox Series S is $299, but we also have the Xbox All Access Program as well, which allows players to get into the next generation for 24.99 a month with the Xbox Series S, and 34.99 with the Xbox Series X. Not only do I get the console, but I also get two years of Game Pass Ultimate, which is just tremendous value for players, regardless of where and how you choose to play.
Larry Hryb: Now, one thing I want to talk to you about is I saw when we announced the Xbox Series S last week, and it was quite a week last week. We had a lot of announcements last week with series S. We had the pricing. We had the pre-order date. We had EA coming to Xbox Game Pass.
There a lot of elements, but one of the areas where people had some questions was about games that are optimized for Series X versus S. Games that I'm playing today that are going to happen. Tell us how that will work. I want to make sure we have clear information out there, because there's a lot of misinformation floating around.
Jason Ronald: Sure. So, when we designed the Xbox Series S, when we thought about backwards compatibility, we actually designed the Xbox Series S to be able to do enhanced games even in ways that the Xbox One X can't today.
Simple example of this is we've made it easy for developers to know they're not running on one of our [inaudible 00:25:16] or an Xbox One. With more than double the CPU performance, and more than double the performance of the One S, leveraging the X One S versions, we're actually able to make it easy for developers to, for example, double their frame rate when they actually choose to release an upgrade.
Then we have a whole series of enhancements that we actually apply at the platform level. Things like improved texture filtering. Obviously the much faster load times that we showed in the announce video last week.
[inaudible 00:25:49] a more consistent frame rate. [inaudible 00:25:52] VR capability when we talked about Xbox Series X. That's coming to the Series S.
We've designed the system in such a way to put the Xbox One S version of the games, but to enhance them even further than what the Xbox One X can do.
Larry Hryb: There's also been some questions. I saw you were active on Twitter, answering some questions about storage. People were like, "Hey, can I take my existing USB 3 device and store games on there?"
I want you to talk about that and how they fit next to what this little device is, which is really the next generation storage. Tell us how people should think about those two.
Jason Ronald: Sure. The storage expansion card that we're launching with this holiday, the exact same storage expansion you use in the Xbox Series X, can only plug directly into the Xbox Series S.
What was critically important to us with the design of the storage expansion, was that it matched the internal performance exactly. So, [inaudible 00:26:52] you're guaranteed to get the exact same experience, whether you choose to run the game off of the internal storage, or if you choose to run it off the storage expansion card.
If you have an existing USB 3.1 drive, you can unplug it from your Xbox One console, plug it directly into your Series X or your Series S, and you're up and playing immediately.
If you want to see all those benefits of the improve load times, we're going to recommend you run it off of the internal storage or off of the storage expansion card, but you can choose to run your Xbox One and earlier games directly off your external USB 3 power drive, and have no problems at all.
Larry Hryb: Yeah. That's really important to point out is you can download a bunch of your games, put them on an external storage drive. Then if you really want to see the performance gains, you're going to want to run it off of one of these things, and we'll have details. I believe we'll have details on all of these guys available very soon, but if you want to just use the inside storage, that's fine, or this storage, you can do that.
But, I love the fact that you guys work to make sure that they're on parity, that there's no difference in speed or performance, or there's no benefits. The only benefit you have is that, if you have one of these, you can take it out and put it in one of your other consoles.
But, otherwise everything's exactly the same. When you look forward... Here we are in September. I had you on in June. I think I had you on in July, and we've got you here. How are things looking as we head into the holidays? I know folks are really excited about September 22nd, the pre-order date, and then the on sale date later this year in November. How's the team feeling?
Jason Ronald: We're really excited. Last week was a big week to finally get a lot of this news out, and to start sharing the details. We're really excited about pre-orders starting on the 22nd, as you mentioned.
Overall, it's been a really exciting time for the team as we get closer and closer to launch. We're less than eight weeks from our launch on November 10th.
So, it's a super exciting time to see all of this come together, to be able to play the thousands of games across four generations today, as well as the brand new titles that are starting to show up as we approach the holiday. It's just a really exciting time for the entire team.
Larry Hryb: I also want to congratulate the team because this is, as you said earlier in the show, we're launching in more markets than ever before. Xbox Series X. Xbox Series X is going to be available in 41 markets around the world, this holiday. And, if you want to pick up a console, you can do that. If you want to hop on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and stream, you can do that. There's plenty of ways to play, right Jason?
Jason Ronald: Absolutely. That's the thing is, the entire design of this program has really been very player first. We want to make sure that we're reaching players all around the world. For the players who want that premium, most powerful console, we're absolutely delivering it with the Xbox Series X.
And, for maybe people who are new to the ecosystem, or who don't have a 4K TV, we've got an amazing option in the Xbox Series S, and both of them deliver that true next generation experience.
Larry Hryb: It's going to be great. Again, always great to have you on the show and talk a little bit about the technology behind Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. Love to have you on. When we're ready to talk about more stuff, I know your team is working getting ready and getting ready for launch, like you said. They've got a lot of work to do, but congratulations on the recent announcements. Thanks again for all the great work you guys are doing, Jason.
Jason Ronald: Thank you very much for everything that you do, and we're excited for everybody to get their hands on our next-gen consoles later this year.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: All right, thanks J.R. Might not have gigabit internet, but he's got gigabit information. That's what really matters.
Larry Hryb: A gigabit beard, gigabit beard. The rumor is that Xbox Series S was in his beard for all of the previous interviews. Like Phil had it on his shelf in his office that-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: It was in plain sight. It was there all along.
Larry Hryb: Jason had it right there in his beard the whole time. But, thank you, Jason, for coming on-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That was pretty funny-
Larry Hryb: No, go ahead. You want to talk about the Phil thing?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Oh yeah. I was going to say, if you didn't see it, there's always that one second delay, Larry. It's taking off... we can't tango like we used to.
I don't know if you saw it, but end of last week there was a number of interviews that Phil had done back in August. I want to say video interviews, and the Xbox Series S was sitting in the background. Don't look here. I don't have that here.
Larry Hryb: It's funny because you know-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: It was on the bookshelf!
Larry Hryb: ... you know who did that? Albert Penello and I did that once in 2006 or seven, and I'll never forget this. We were doing an interview in his office. And, if you remember Albert's office, when he was here, he always had just... He collected action figures and toys and all sorts of stuff. It was quite a showcase.
I had posted, we were talking about it on the show, and people were like, "Hey, can you post what it looks like?" Because, they couldn't get their head around how big it was.
So, I posted a photo and it just had a wall of stuff. Well, inside that wall of stuff was the elite controller, not the elite like we have today, but it was the original black one.
Because, remember we came out with an elite console and it was sideways in between a couple of his characters. Nobody ever saw it until we announced it a year later. We played a long game on them as well back then. That's a long, funny story.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Very cheeky, Larry. Very cheeky.
Larry Hryb: Thank you. We've got a couple more things to go, and then we're going to wrap it up because we've got to go. We've got a lot to do. It's been a busy, busy tech week.
We had the Apple event earlier this week. We're recording this right before the Sony event. We don't know what they're announcing yet, but I'm sure we'll have some stuff to talk about, but we've got some stuff talk about, right Jeff?
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yes we do. All right. A couple news beat's here. So, an Xbox Game Pass game that you might've given a try, Fallout 76. They've been patching this game and adding new updates. Crazy. They're up to patch 22 on Xbox One. This one is a pretty significant one.
We have a post on Xbox Wire from the team over at Bethesda, from Anne Lewis, who's a great writer. She talks about that this new patch resets the world so that it makes it... It used to be gated in terms of, if you go out here and you're a low level, you might not come back. There be dragons.
Well, now everything adapts to your level, and so you can explore a lot more. They're calling it the one wasteland system. That game's come a long way. We're taking another look.
Rocket League, this game-
Larry Hryb: Oh, yeah!
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... the day after, next Wednesday on the 23rd is going to be going free to play. So, if for some reason you have not played Rocket League before, for whatever reason, those reasons surely are gone now, because all you got to do is hit the A button-
Larry Hryb: Download it.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... and download it. It's free to play. It's an all time great game. I think that when people look back at this generation, they're going to go, "Oh yeah, Rocket League was one of the best ones." It just works.
I remember hearing about it and I was like, "Eh, soccer with cars?" Then the first game you play, it instantly clicks. You're like, "This is just magic." You can jump back into it at any point. It's like riding a bike and anyway-
Larry Hryb: Yeah. Make sure when you download it, there's a Major Nelson set of skins in there you can download, with a flag and the antenna-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: That's right. You can get the flag.
Larry Hryb: ... with my logo on it. Make sure you download it. [crosstalk 00:34:14] Send me a screenshot on Twitter once you download it. I'd love to see that. That's fun.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: All right. Then one thing that we... It was last week, but it was after we recorded the episode, Ubisoft had their Forward Event.
Larry Hryb: That's right.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: There was a game that really caught my eye called Immortals Fenyx Rising. It was originally called Gods and Monsters. Now it's called Immortals Fenyx Rising. It's this very colorful, open world action RPG with elements from Greek mythology.
It just looks awesome. It looks really fun. I'm getting some shades of Breath of the Wild there, which look, if there's a game that something is going to remind you of, if it reminds you of Breath of the Wild-
Larry Hryb: That's not a bad thing.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: ... that's good. No, no, not at all. We have an article, our own Will Tuttle, who is the editor and chief of Xbox Wire. He got to play it. There's video in there.
Definitely take a look at that. Immortals Fenyx Rising. You're going to want to keep an eye on it. It's coming out in December. That'll be a fun one to play, before we know it. I can't believe it's mid-September already.
Larry Hryb: I'll have to check with Will. I'll go read the article, but I want to talk to him about that. It sounds like a fun game. [crosstalk 00:35:24].
Jeffrey Rubenst...: He was super into it.
Larry Hryb: Good to be [inaudible 00:35:24]. Of course, we saw last week also, we kind of talked about it on the show. Assassin's Creed coming day, and date for the console. Speaking of the console pre-order next, I checked your date, Jeffrey, it is next Tuesday.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Tuesday.
Larry Hryb: Next Tuesday, September 22nd, and you can see those are going to be available pre-order September 22nd. You can have your choice of the Xbox Series X. You heard Jason actually talk quite a bit about them a moment ago about the all access plan, where you can pay a monthly to get either one.
There's a lot of options. Check it out. We'll link off to that. Keep an eye on my social. I'll have all the details on that as well, and just a reminder for you.
There was a lot of questions about all access. How does it work if I pay off early? It all depends on who you're doing the contract with in terms of every single country has different partners. You need to check with them. They'll know.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I will be pre-ordering day one. I'm not taking a chance. Back when Xbox One came out, I thought I would be able to walk into a store on launch day. Remember we launched?
Larry Hryb: Yes.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: It was right before Thanksgiving. Then I went back.
Larry Hryb: I remember well.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I was still living in San Francisco. I went from New York to San Francisco and I didn't have one. I had to show up at Target at 5:30 in the morning [crosstalk 00:36:36] to try and get it.
Larry Hryb: I remember that. I remember that hunt.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I was like, "I'm not going through that ordeal this time. I'm just going to do the pre-order."
Larry Hryb: Not going to do it. Not going to do it.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Not taking chances.
Larry Hryb: I recommend you do the same because we want to make sure you get... Now, the other fun part is, "Hey, if you still want to play great games, we've got xCloud, which launched this week." Jeff talked about that at the top of the show.
Busy, busy week for tech. Busy, busy week for gaming. Another great week next week-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Busy, busy week for us.
Larry Hryb: For us. Well, without a doubt. That goes without saying. Now before we go, we're going to have to wrap it up, because we have some stuff we need to do here. Jeff, how do people find you on social? I'll put that up on the screen so they can send complaints to you.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Yeah. I'm @jeffrubenstein. Let me know what you're seeing, how things are going. I want to know what you're playing, and also love to jump into a game of Apex with you at any time. My gamer tag's Rubes. Just jump right in. Keep it open.
Larry Hryb: Really? We're going to do that. Okay. You can find me at Major Nelson-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: What? I think people know that, it's the name of the show. Actually. It's not the name of the show anymore is it?
Larry Hryb: Xbox Podcasts where we've gone bigger. We've gone much bigger. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than you, Jeff. We're just trying to-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Everything's bigger than me.
Larry Hryb: Yeah, well. All right, well gang, we'll see you guys next week. We've got a great show lined up for you next week as well. Some more guests. Jeff may have an interview.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Oh, that's right.
Larry Hryb: Can't tell you about that yet.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: I'm very excited about this one.
Larry Hryb: We've got a big show for you next week as well. All right, gang, have a great time. Whatever you do, wherever you're playing, have fun. If you're playing on Xbox, have fun. That's the new controller. You've seen that one, right? We've talked about that.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Cool.
Larry Hryb: Been using that one. Make sure you-
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Not a showoff, Larry. It's not a one upper.
Larry Hryb: I actually grabbed it by mistake. I meant to grab this one.
Jeffrey Rubenst...: Now, people know you have it.
Larry Hryb: All right. Time to go. We'll talk to you guys later. Bye.