717: XSX/S Storage, Yakuza Like A Dragon and Xbox Family Settings

Larry Hryb:
Hi. It's Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. What a show it was last week, but we're back to regularity this week. Hey, Jeff.

Jeff:
[inaudible 00:00:10]. Where are we, Larry? What is this beautiful environment that I find myself with animated green? What would really make this work because it's I saw my name beautifully animate into the screen.

Larry Hryb:
Oh really. Look. This is the Xbox Podcast, the official one. It only makes sense that we kind of brush it up a little bit especially after last week's show. I didn't need any of this. It was just all about the guests, but what a week it was last week, right?

Jeff:
Oh my god. That was awesome to have Todd Howard. You had Phil. It was just a whole getting everyone together. Is this what it's going to be like? Is this going to be the company picnic now moving forward when a company picnics happen again because [crosstalk 00:00:57].

Larry Hryb:
We're all going to get pip-boy sandwiches, right?

Jeff:
Yeah. I got to meet Pete Hines only once when we did an interview at E3 last year, a year before, something like that.

Larry Hryb:
You've never met Pete Hines even when you were working at PlayStation?

Jeff:
No. I knew who he was [crosstalk 00:01:15] him. Then, we met on Inside Xbox. I think it was last year or the year before. He's a big soccer fan. I knew that. We were talking about it. I think he's a D.C. United fan and obviously huge in the Sounders. I was like, "Oh, this is a great guy." Now, now we're teammates. Just seeing the camaraderie there and you know how tough it is to have chemistry over a wire this way, over the air waves. [crosstalk 00:01:41] going to be so much better [crosstalk 00:01:42]. Oh god. Not at all. Not at all. I miss the audio guy. [crosstalk 00:01:48].

Larry Hryb:
That was a lot of, sure, our audio... When we would just record audio, we had a special audio guy that was in the room. He would giggle in the corner [crosstalk 00:01:57].

Jeff:
You did well if he laughed. That was like, "Oh, that was a good joke." At the end he would either say, "That was a pretty good one," or he would say nothing. If he said nothing, I was like, "We should just throw this one in the trash."

Larry Hryb:
But no. Now that we've migrated over here, things are different. As you've seen, I've brushed up the things. Hey, look, there's a lot of full-time YouTubers out there and streamers. We're not that. [crosstalk 00:02:21]

Jeff:
It showed, but we're a little closer today. I don't know if you worked with stream elements or whatever you're doing, but this is beautiful.

Larry Hryb:
I'm trying to buff up the place, but it's great to see you. We had a big show last week as you said with Phil and with Pete and with Todd Howard. It's great to have that Bethesda news out there which was I think… You and I have worked together a long time. You and I, it's not like we sit in a meeting, and they tell us.

Larry Hryb:
You were told different times based on when we need to know.

Jeff:
What I need to know. Exactly.

Larry Hryb:
Sometimes, I didn't need to know. Three weeks ago, I needed to know at a specific time. When you found out and I find out, we were looking at each other like, "So."

Jeff:
You know how we felt each other out here on this one. You sent me a gift of just an atomic explosion with no context at all, megaton. I was like, "That can be interpreted in a number of ways, but I have a feeling we both know a thing now. And, oh my god. Then, we just left it with that.

Larry Hryb:
Yup. Yup. We're excited about that. Looking forward to working with the gang even more. I've got fallout. The fact I had fallout, I don't know if you noticed, but during the interview, I had fallout, for my fallout, level 54 fallout or 52 fallout for characters on the screen behind me. I don’t know where it is.

Jeff:
Wait. I'm getting an urgent notice from Preston McGarvey as a settlement of need of assistance.

Larry Hryb:
Preston.

Jeff:
They've been waiting for five years. Can you please handle this letter?

Larry Hryb:
I'll get right on that, but yeah. We're excited about that, but it's been a great week. You're starting to see some press around some influencers and folks that Jeff works with are starting to receive their consoles, their Xbox Series X. Tell us a little bit about that, Jeff, because a lot of excitement this week.

Jeff:
Yeah. I'm just really excited that we've been able to put Xbox Series X. Here we are, what, six weeks out from launch, give or take, maybe a little bit less. We're able to put early release hardware into the hands of media and creators. You're seeing their feedback and their impressions about how quickly current gen and even back compatible games, load and additions to frame rate or auto HDR or how they make something you already own better taking no work from the devs, no work for you other than to just redownload it and get the Series X and pop it there on the SSD and go.

Jeff:
To see something as good as it's ever been, I think it's getting closer to maybe what the devs originally intended, but maybe we're constrained by previous generation hard... Oh god.

Larry Hryb:
I've got [crosstalk 00:05:14].

Jeff:
... again.

Larry Hryb:
Well, no. It's because later on in the show, we've got some great interviews in the show today. We're going to talk about you had a chance to talk to the Yakuza gang. We're going to talk about the new family settings app for Xbox. You're going to do that interview. Then, Jason Ronald is coming back. He has promised this time a better internet connection.

Jeff:
Oh, good because I mean did you lay a fiber network all the way out to where he lives out there in the woods? Just to wrap this up real quick, I want to say that if there's any one video to watch or any two videos to watch, I thought a lot were really good, but I thoroughly... Actually, I painted myself into a corner here, but for the folks that I work with, two folks, one is your average consumer.

Jeff:
He did exactly what I would do. He took a TV here. He put the exact same TV next to it. Then, he loaded up Xbox One, Xbox One X here, Xbox Series X here. Let's see how fast. Monster Hunter launches. That one had a long load time. Then, he's in there, and he's playing while the other one's still loading and I think really lands how much of an improvement to your existing library that the Series x provides.

Jeff:
Then, another one that I thought was just beautifully shot and edited and also looked at a couple of different games and analyzed some of this is Kevin Kenson. He's a gaming news creator. I just love his style. I think that's another one worth checking out. You're going to see a lot more of these soon, but we want to make it real for you.

Jeff:
Normally, a lot of you listeners probably would have already played Xbox Series X at PAX or Comic-Con or any of the various places at Gamescom that we show up during the year in a normal year this year.

Larry Hryb:
Not normal.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 00:07:01] be any further from normal. By putting this hardware into creators that you trust that you and your fan or media that you trust, put it in their hands and letting them to sort of go to town. We hope that enables you to see, okay, this is what I'm going to get to do in just a few weeks' time.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. That's the reason I busted the glove out is Jason will be on later. We talked about storage. We're going to talk about, hey, here's Xbox One X storage. How does that work? There's been some question on that. Of course, here's the Seagate storage expansion card that you're going to use with Xbox Series X and S. We're going to talk about that and how you're going to use the two together.

Larry Hryb:
Hey, as you've heard Phil say many, many times, it's about choice. You're going to have a choice of where you can store your games. We'll talk to Jason later on about that. We got to [crosstalk 00:07:54].

Jeff:
Looking forward to that.

Larry Hryb:
Pretty beefy. We don't have a lot of time for us because we're going-

Jeff:
No, no.

Larry Hryb:
... [crosstalk 00:07:58] guests.

Jeff:
You know who else we're going... We have a couple of other guests on the show. One, I was super excited about, was we have got some folks from Sega, Scott Strichart who is the localization producer for Yakuza: Like a Dragon. We just sat there and geeked out. He brought 20 minutes of footage with him. We just sat there. We geeked out over the Yakuza series.

Jeff:
I've fallen in love with the Yakuza series because of Xbox game past this year.

Larry Hryb:
Well, I think people who listen to this show, they know that they've actually seen your passion for this series evolve. It's been exciting.

Jeff:
It is. I got to tell you between Yakuza and then we'll talk about it in a minute that there's a new sort of Japan pack for flight simulator that as soon as... Oh my god. The he footage is stunning.

Larry Hryb:
Have you heard about this black hole?

Jeff:
I have in Brazil. I did read about this that there's sort of like a-

Larry Hryb:
A flight simulator.

Jeff:
A Marianas Trench sort of thing happening in flight simulator with an airstrip at the bottom. You can actually teleport to it. Good luck taking off unless you have a VTOL of some sort which I don't think is in the game. Yeah, exactly, but the footage of it was pretty awesome.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway. I don't know if we have much to talk about in terms of what we're playing. One of the games I finished-

Jeff:
Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Larry Hryb:
... was the one that you tipped me on to which was The Touryst. I finished that over the weekend. In fact, I was texting Geoff Keighley the other day. I'm like, "Geoff, you got to check out the Touryst." He's like, "What is this?" Yeah. I think he's playing it as well.

Jeff:
Really? What about it, do you think, would really resonate with Keighley?

Larry Hryb:
Well, he just hadn't heard of it. He's like, "I'll check this out." He's been playing it. It's on Game Pass. I talked about it last week, but I just finished it. If you aren't Game Past subscriber, go check it out. It was on Switch last year. You'll notice when you're playing it, it feels like a Switch Game which isn't a bad thing. It's cute. A lot of the Switch Games are cute. It's very cute.

Jeff:
Very cool. Yeah. It's Xbox Game Pass for both for console and for PC. Make sure to check out The Touryst, T-O-U-R-Y-S-T.

Larry Hryb:
Y-S-T.

Jeff:
Y-S-T. Why? I don't know. Y-S-T. You know what I played through this past week was Peril on Gorgon from The Outer Worlds. That was a game that we all played through is one of my favorite games of 2019. This this was the first DLC. It was nice to go back into that world. I loaded my save. I was standing. I had basically already just beaten the final boss. You just had to have a conversation.

Jeff:
I was like, "Let me back out of there and go do this DLC." Man, I had leveled up my character pretty high. But it was great to be back into that world. After that, I've just been all in on Wasteland 3. I expect I'll finish it this weekend. That is one of my top favorite games of this year. So far, Wasteland 3 from the [crosstalk 00:10:54].

Larry Hryb:
[crosstalk 00:10:54] that. Yeah.

Jeff:
Not only that, I think I'm going to end up just playing it again pretty quickly because there's so many tough decisions it makes you make like real who lives and who dies or do I side with this group, but this character is going to leave me and I put a lot of work in it?

Jeff:
I'm going to have to go through and play it a different way, but it's a really excellent game. They've been consistently updating it and editing it, also part of Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass for PC and for console. I happen to be playing it on PC because there's widescreen support which, on a tactical RPG, I'm very much appreciating that.

Larry Hryb:
Sure. The more real estate, the better.

Jeff:
There is some news. You're the host of the show. It is Major Nelson Show, but do you want to do the news after we've had because [crosstalk 00:11:40] guest on today.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. I think we should. Why don't we roll into the... Who should we do? Who should we get in here? I think we should probably talk about parental controls first-

Jeff:
I think that's a great start.

Larry Hryb:
... which is you had a great time to catch up with-

Jeff:
Dave McCathy.

Larry Hryb:
... Dave McCathy. We're going to talk about that. We'll do that. Then, we'll come back on the other side, and we'll set things up for the rest of the show. How's that sound?

Jeff:
All right. Take care of your kids. This is great advice for anyone who has a child who you want to be a gamer or is a gamer now or will be in the future or even if you're advising your brother or sister who has a kid and they're thinking about picking up an Xbox Series S for Christmas, this is great advice to help them to guide them on how they can set things up and really take control of what their kid is playing and who they're playing with.

Larry Hryb:
The great news is in the past, it hasn't been very easy to set up a child account that is-

Jeff:
Those days are over.

Larry Hryb:
Let's get the guys in here. We'll talk about that.

Jeff:
Now, something we really don't talk about on the podcast all that much is our kids. They're home more than ever. They're spending more time on their screens than ever. They're learning on screens. They're playing on screens. Well, these are things we want to get control of. It's really fortuitous timing that we have the Xbox Family Settings App now being available to everyone.

Jeff:
I've got a very special guest here to tell us all about it, the head of Xbox operations, Dave McCarthy. Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave McCarthy:
Thanks for having me, Jeff. Good to see you.

Jeff:
Very, very good to see you and very happy to have you here. I'm someone who actually... I have an 11-year-old daughter. She loves games. She loves Minecraft. We play Battle Royales together. She's spending so much time because, obviously, she's got to spend time on screens. It's how she's doing everything that she does, but it's very hard to keep track unless you've got a tool that can help empower you. Can you tell us about the Xbox Family Settings App and what it can do?

Dave McCarthy:
I certainly can. We're really proud that the Xbox Family Settings App has come to general availability now on both IOS and Android devices. It really is just another convenient way we're offering parents and kids to manage their online experiences. We've had Family Settings and Family Accounts in place for a good number of years now managing things like purchase controls and content settings communications and so on.

Dave McCarthy:
But the app I find a very convenient tool on a device that all of us have with us, it seems, 24 hours a day. We're hoping that based on the feedback we've heard earlier from parents that they really enjoy this as a way for them to manage that family experience.

Jeff:
It's available on pretty much any mobile device that you could possibly have, but it does a few things that you previously could have done on the console or could do on the dotcom, but it seems like it's made a lot of these things much easier.

Dave McCarthy:
Yeah. One of the things we wanted to really put an emphasis on in going to mobile was taking advantage of the various scenarios and capabilities that mobile devices offered us. Things like notification settings, being able to have that sort of instantaneous awareness when it comes to something like screen time, for example.

Dave McCarthy:
You can manage screen time on account.microsoft.com. You can set your hours of the day and days of the week and length of session time. It's just really easy and convenient to do in the new Xbox Family Settings App. If for whatever reason and I've had this scenario in my own house, one of your children may disagree with the screen time allocated on a certain day or they may be, I don't know, deep into a FIFA session which is the scenario that we had the other weekend here, I can get an instant pop-up on my phone that they would initiate from the console saying, "Hey, dad. Could I have an extra half hour to finish my FIFA game here?"

Dave McCarthy:
I'm maybe looking at my news feed or something else that comes on instantly and, boom, I can just approve right then and there. And happy kid finishes his FIFA game. And everybody's good. We put a few other features that are unique to the mobile experience in place that I'd be happy to share.

Jeff:
Yeah. When it comes to helping the kid, your kids budget their own time knowing that they've got X amount of time to play. It gives them warnings when they're running out. I think it takes away some of that maybe like that negative response you might get from a child when you just pop in there and go, "You're done. Wrap it up, or you got to wrap this up in five minutes," it's something that could be pre-negotiated.

Jeff:
Then, it's just right there. You don't argue with the store that the store is closing it at 9:00 PM and demand to be let in. These are rules that are stated rules. I think the app allows you to sort of have those same sort of ground rules that you set for your child.

Dave McCarthy:
Absolutely. It's really interesting. I think the value of these tools is, sure, they can put some great parameters and guidelines around your online experience, but what you highlight there, Jeff, is it sets the table for conversation. This is what happens in my own house with my kids, is we can look at those settings together. We can decide, hey, does it make sense to get access to this type of content?

Dave McCarthy:
We learned a lot actually being in the beta phase on the app and having parents road test it for us. One of the changes we made based on their feedback was actually proactively offering screen time. In that scenario, I described earlier around a FIFA gameplay session. May, I'm really happy with the chores being finished around the house, and I want to get a good dead point in.

Dave McCarthy:
I can actually proactively push some additional screen time to them which is a requested feature we got from parents. I was really happy we were able to make that available in the app as it's gone to general availability.

Jeff:
Positive reinforcement. It's a parenting trick that works. One of the things I think you touched on is this app gives you great power, but the cliché with great power comes great responsibility. This does not replace parenting. In fact, what I think it does is gives you the ability to have those conversations and to really more closely know what your children want to do and what they're up to and who they're talking to.

Jeff:
Then, to be able to have those conversations to as they grow to then adapt. I know the settings that I had for my child when she first started multiplayer was off the table, like, absolutely not happening. But then as other children, she got older, they want to play Minecraft with her or something else. It's like, "Okay. I trust this other person. I trust their parents. We have the conversation. I trust you to do this."

Jeff:
Now, it's funny we set that expectation. Just yesterday, she wanted to add another friend to play Minecraft with. She had no problem coming to me and asked for permission. It was something like, "Oh, I forgot I even had that setting still going." But it's there. It's vigilant even when you're not.

Dave McCarthy:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important for us to be able to provide choice because circumstances change in a family over time, right? Kids get older. Parents get older. All of a sudden, we're staying home from work and school more. Being able to have that flexibility to manage on a day by day, week by week basis, I just think that's the reality for modern families is that they need that, and the app provides the base to be able to do those things.

Dave McCarthy:
One of the other interesting things we explored with the mobile app that I think is really unique to that experience is this concept of an easy button. Jeff, you mentioned the concept of Minecraft there where, as a parent, you may be particularly comfortable with Minecraft. Interestingly, it has an age rating where for younger kids, if you took the default child account setting, it would actually be blocked.

Dave McCarthy:
We've provided an easy way to unblock that specifically if as a parent after talking with your child, you're comfortable with them playing Minecraft specifically. If you're comfortable with the idea of them playing multiplayer but maybe multiplayer only for Minecraft, again, that's just a simple toggle to do that.

Dave McCarthy:
I love this concept of easy buttons for scenarios that parents are facing because while we may appreciate all these default controls that are on there for spending and screen time and communication and all these critical aspects of the online experience, in reality, we need some flexibility with our kids. That Minecraft example is something I'm particularly proud of because I know it's a scenario that a lot of parents want to be able to really personalize and manage to their needs. That's really important for us to be able to give them that flexibility.

Jeff:
One of the things, I think, is really important to call out is that none of this stuff works if you don't set up a child account. I know that there's going to be people over the holidays that are going to be giving a new Xbox, maybe an Xbox Series X or S to their family, to their children. There's going to be a temptation to just hit the button and go.

Jeff:
But it really is worth if you just talk about how you're able to separate things by making that child account and how easy it is to do within the app.

Dave McCarthy:
Yeah. The cool thing about using the app is we're talking, within two minutes, you could create a family construct an account from scratch if you didn't have one on Xbox or elsewhere in Microsoft already. I love that the app empowers that. I cannot state how critical it is for everyone in the Xbox ecosystem to make use of family accounts. Just everything flows out of that in terms of the capability to control the type of content that's accessible, who your kids can communicate with online, that screen time functionality. It all hangs off that family construct.

Dave McCarthy:
Making it really easy to do in the app is something we have spent a lot of time working on from a design and research perspective. I can't stress enough how many good defaults you get in place when you create those accounts, but also there's a lot of flexibility and choice in there to manage to the personal experience for your household. It's not one size fits all. You can manage down to the individual setting if you want, but really encourage everyone to use those.

Dave McCarthy:
Even though you'll be really excited to set up that console on day one, while it's booting up and downloading and updating, just get on that mobile app and get the family set up right away. You'll be thankful for it.

Jeff:
Yeah. It really does walk you through a lot of settings when you first add your child that you don't have to know offhand, wait, what's right, what should I do. I feel like it gives you a good head start that you can tweak from.

Dave McCarthy:
Yeah. That's right. We even put those scenarios for things like Minecraft in the flow where we said, "Sure. Here's your default content settings, your default communication settings and so on." But if you're a particular fan of Minecraft, hey, here's a couple of unique settings you can put on to enable them to be able to play something like Realms which is our ability to play on private servers, secure servers with your friends in Minecraft, a scenario that a lot of families really get a lot of fun with.

Dave McCarthy:
Making sure those are front and center in the flow and that's included in my two-minute estimate to set up an account, well, well worth the investment of time upfront.

Jeff:
One last thing I want to talk about is that when you activate these family settings, there's the larger world of Microsoft that, I think, where it allows you to plug into some really interesting settings for your child especially now, so many kids are schooling from home. This is how I have the setting for my child.

Jeff:
I can see how long she's been in Zoom meetings today in class. It's a lot. It's more than I think the perfect world that my child would be in Zoom meetings, but it is really cool to be able to see that. I also found that she was working a lot more having extracurricular meetings that I just really wasn't because I was busy working. I know a lot of folks are working, and it's hard to keep track of everything at the same time.

Jeff:
It tipped me off that she's having meetings after school. Turned out I was totally fine with it. But it gave me that perspective. You just talked about how you can, for the power user, go and see some of these other things what your children might be looking at on the internet or even setting up settings there through edge.

Dave McCarthy:
Yeah. It's a real benefit to be able to track activity not just on the console, but if you want to have these settings globally apply to Windows 10 devices, you can universally apply all those settings which, I think, is really, really handy and quite frankly a little more in line with how families operate this year where they're hopping from device device, and they're doing things.

Dave McCarthy:
I think the example you touched upon there with Zoom is just another great conversation starter that the app and management of your account on account.microsoft.com allows, where you can see usage in individual apps. You can see usage in individual games and have those conversations. We've had some funny ones in my house. Typically, on things like YouTube videos, as parents, we've had weeks where we feel okay with them surfing around YouTube.

Dave McCarthy:
Then, there's other times where we're like, "You know what. You got to focus in and work on the school work right now," and at least being able to see that awareness on the app of where the usage is just creates that opportunity for dialogue. Lo and behold, I had an example with my daughter the other week where she was legitimately on YouTube for some research purposes for a school assignment.

Dave McCarthy:
I wouldn't have known even to ask if it wasn't for tracking in the app, but instead of assuming something, we were able to have a dialogue around it. I see her activity report for the day and the week. She knows it's there. She knows that we can have a conversation around those things. I love empowering families that way because we're not having enough conversations around our online habits. It's such a critical part of a child's experience moving forward. I'm really glad we can add this tool to the toolset that parents have for those conversations.

Jeff:
We love data-driven decision-making. We have data-driven parenting. There's never been a better time for it. Dave McCarthy, thank you so much for joining us. The Xbox Family Settings App, it's now available to everyone on IOS and on Android. Get it and make sure you use it. These tools are only useful if you put them to work for you.

Dave McCarthy:
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Jeff. Really good to touch base with you and hope everybody enjoys the app. We'd love to hear your feedback.

Larry Hryb:
There you go, brand new app for family settings. Jeff, thank you for explaining that. It's nice to hear how you're using it at your house with your daughter. It's cool.

Jeff:
Look. I don't just work at Microsoft. I'm also a client.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Is that a hair club for men [crosstalk 00:27:26].

Jeff:
Only the most topical references for this show, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
Topical, by the way.

Jeff:
Topical.

Larry Hryb:
Tri-county, tri-city references, or tri-state tate references to the New York, Connecticut, New Jersey area.

Jeff:
Look, your best shtick, Crazy Larry is a reference to a 25-year-old electronics commercial.

Larry Hryb:
You know what?

Jeff:
It's so funny.

Larry Hryb:
I got to tell you. I have not done that in a year. I feel like should we do Crazy Larry? I feel like I should do it again. It's been too long. It's been too long.

Jeff:
We're coming up on Black Friday. If there was ever a time for you to bust out that blazer-

Larry Hryb:
Now's the time. Where is that Crazy Larry blazer? I think it's in one of the studios on campus. [crosstalk 00:28:13]

Jeff:
All right. [crosstalk 00:28:16] What do you want to do? Do you want to talk news?

Larry Hryb:
Well, let's talk a little bit of news. Then, we're going to roll in. I got that great interview with Jason. We'll run the next two back to back, but let's go ahead and do the news. I'll tell you about the next interview. Go ahead and roll in there, Jeffrey.

Jeff:
Sure. Depending on if you're listening to this on air date, October 2nd, well, you might be playing this alongside Star Wars: Squadrons. That comes out today. I haven't yet played it. I expect that [inaudible 00:28:38] will all be talking about it, but, man, it looks good. They've been releasing some new trailers.

Jeff:
Star Wars: Squadrons is the big release for this week really for the next couple of weeks. That's why I've got the X-wing back there. Are you looking forward to that, Larry?

Larry Hryb:
I am. I was just admiring your X-wing. In fact, I want to go full screen, so I can see even more of it. Who's not looking forward to it? I'm a Star Wars nerd. We've talked about that quite a few times. I don't have a room full of figurines or any of that action. I love the stories. They just mean a lot to me. Yes.

Jeff:
Yeah. I've been reading some of the preview coverage. There's a campaign which is what I know I'll be doing. There's multiplayer which we'll see how bad I am. I might jump in and try a few games. Then, say, "Hey, Larry, I'll just play the campaign," because I'm getting my butt kicked, but, anyway.

Jeff:
Where I won't end up is in the Star Wars Hall of Fame in the Xbox Hall of Fame, but you might. Yes, there is something that we are calling. As we're wrapping up the generation, the Xbox One generation, and moving on to the Series X and Series S generation, we are having something called the Xbox Hall of Fame. This is something where you can compete in a number of different challenges. You might win a really cool prize pack. You might even win an Xbox Series X.

Jeff:
What I would do is I would just head on over to xbox.com. Look for the Hall of Fame stuff and look at the different sort of entries and the different competitions. Some of them actually started the beginning of the generation, believe it or not. We're counting it. Who had the most gamer score? It's going to be really interesting to see who lands at it. I had some ideas about who might have the top gamer score for this generation.

Larry Hryb:
It's not me.

Jeff:
But even if you've only just entered the Xbox family, there are things that you can do over the next couple of weeks which could qualify you, things in Sea of Thieves, Halo 5, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Ori and the Will of the Wisp. Go ahead. Take a look at. Look for Xbox Hall of Fame. You'll be able to find it everywhere on xbox.com, Xbox Wire. You could probably just pop it into the search engine of your choice. Get your competition on winning a Series X.

Larry Hryb:
Do it.

Jeff:
Over this weekend as well, if you're listening to this, before October 3rd, the show should debut on the second, tune into our channels, October, as you probably know if you've watched the NFL and you've said, "Why are they wearing pink shoes or any sport really," is that it's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Larry Hryb:
Do you have your pink crocs on?

Jeff:
I don't have crocs, but I have a couple of pink shirts.

Larry Hryb:
I'm glad.

Jeff:
What are those?

Larry Hryb:
I'm wearing my pink shirt. Got my pink [inaudible 00:31:33] along.

Jeff:
We're teaming up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Geoff Keighley will be hosting a live stream with some of the biggest streamers in the world. It's a fundraiser, of course. I'll be donating, Larry. I'm going to hold you to it. You can look for that starting at 12:30 Pacific Time on Saturday, October 3rd. I'm sure you'll be able to watch the replay as well. You'll be able to donate to Game Pink, is what it's called. Let's see.

Jeff:
We talked about Japan. It was the first world update to Microsoft Flight Simulator. It looks beautiful. I would say head over to Xbox Wire or the Xbox YouTube page and just look at this footage. It is just incredible looking. We've talked about this a number of times on the show. I've been cooped up in this room for better part of a year now and haven't really gotten to do anything fun or go anywhere.

Jeff:
I don't want to say we took it for granted that we got to travel around and talk about Xbox.

Larry Hryb:
Oh [crosstalk 00:32:39] Wait a minute. I know for a fact that you never took it for granted. I never took for granted the fact that we got to fly around the world and talk about video games.

Jeff:
It's the best job ever. Exactly. But I think we're just feeling it very keenly-

Larry Hryb:
Sure.

Jeff:
... that we're not getting to have these conversations in person. I love that we do live podcasts that at PAX and PAX East and just a lot of these things that we are having to do remotely and just seeing this footage of Japan. It makes me a little wistful not that I was necessarily planning on going to Japan this year, but it's like back on the wish list. That's before we even start watching the food chat like on Netflix, There's so many like, "Look at these amazing Japanese street food."

Jeff:
[inaudible 00:33:19] us right before the lunch time. Let's talk about Game Pass. Let's talk Game Pass, which by the way, of course, is [crosstalk 00:33:31] Go on. Go for it.

Larry Hryb:
For our friends in the United States, it's your chance to win an Xbox Series X. How? Dong. Go to Taco Bell.

Jeff:
Oh, of course. I want to get the cup, and maybe I'll go today.

Larry Hryb:
I went yesterday.

Jeff:
You just got to get, I think, it's a medium drink or a large drink.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. There's a code on the side. I went today because I wanted just to see... I don't normally go there, but I'm like, "Let me see what our signage looks like, what's the experience like." I didn't win a console, but I got a cup.

Jeff:
Even if you did, you would have to give it away because you don't know how to keep it.

Larry Hryb:
Exactly. But it was really nice to see that. If you're in the US, we're giving away, gosh. I think it's until like, I want to say, up until...

Jeff:
Close to launch. Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Close to launch. They're giving one Xbox Series X away every 15 minutes.

Jeff:
You get it before [crosstalk 00:34:25].

Larry Hryb:
We've already given away three during the time this show's been on.

Jeff:
It's a very good point. It's a very good point. Yeah. I haven't had a Doritos. Was it Doritos Locos Taco? I didn't have one of those in a while.

Larry Hryb:
I think last time we ate Taco Bell together was in a back alley somewhere which is frankly where you should be eating it.

Jeff:
No one sells it. Let's talk about Game Pass, huge edition. Some of the next editions that are coming on October were announced this week. It's a name I haven't heard in a little while, Brutal Legend. We're going to- [crosstalk 00:35:00].

Larry Hryb:
I could get Tim on the show. I need to get Tim on the show.

Jeff:
Tim, Jack Black.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Jack Black always gives me side eye when I see him backstage at E3. Were you there that year?

Jeff:
No.

Larry Hryb:
Give me one of these. I gave him one back. We were having fun. He's a good guy.

Jeff:
Very good. This is a heck of a couple of weeks here for Xbox Game Pass. Brutal Legend coming to Xbox Game Pass for a console. Doom Eternal is coming to Xbox Game Pass. You'll also be able to stream that via cloud gaming if you're on Android through the Xbox app.

Jeff:
I am fully moved by the way into the Android universe. I'm very, very pleased at the experience so far. Forza Motorsport 7, a lot of people wanted that to come into Game Pass, but guess what? It is for console, for PC. [crosstalk 00:35:46]. Ikenfell and then Drake Hollow is a new game. It's, I believe, previously been out on Xbox Game Pass for console, will now also come to Xbox game for PC and a lot of these actually by the time you hear, DOOM Eternal, Drake Hollow, Brutal Legend or Drake Hollow and DOOM Eternal will already be out.

Jeff:
Then, Brutal Legend, Forza Motorsport 7 and Ikenfell October 8th which is right around the corner. Pretty cool. Then, always, I would say, a corollary to Xbox Game Pass is when a new month rolls around is where are my games With Gold? Another four Games with Gold coming to you in October.

Larry Hryb:
People don't ask me that enough in my Twitter feed.

Jeff:
Never. It's such you're like, "Oh yeah. I forgot that's a thing." Once we get to, I'd imagine, about the 25th, that has to be about a fifth of all your responses.

Larry Hryb:
Well, and also they're in complete sentences. So, points off are incomplete sentences.

Jeff:
The grammar teacher in you is strong as ever. So, very Halloween focused this year. We have Slayaway Camp: Butcher's Cut for Xbox One that starts October 31st. [crosstalk 00:36:58]

Larry Hryb:
Slayaway Camp.

Jeff:
Then, the second half of the month, Maid of Sker, that starts October 16th [crosstalk 00:37:06]

Larry Hryb:
I think it's Sker. I think it's Maid of Sker.

Jeff:
Sker. That makes sense.

Larry Hryb:
[crosstalk 00:37:09] Sker.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 00:37:12] Yeah. Skyr is the Icelandic yogurt. It's low in protein… or high in protein, low in sugar. It's good stuff. Then, for back through the magic of backward compatibility going back to OG Xbox, we have Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. Then, I love this one. The only Halloween RPG is Costume Quest, of course, Costume Quest 2, but Costume Quest is coming out October 16th. That's made by the good folks at Double Fine. That is a Xbox 360 game. It will be available on October 16th.

Larry Hryb:
Do you have a lot more news because a package just arrived. I want to go get it from the front door. [crosstalk 00:37:49]

Jeff:
I can wait. There's a little bit more news [crosstalk 00:37:52].

Larry Hryb:
Okay. Go ahead. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. Sure.

Jeff:
Don’t let anybody interrupt the show, Larry. It's fine. Just go get your packages here. A lot of people have asked when is EA Access coming to Xbox Game Pass? We have just shared the date is beginning November 10th, EA Play, not EA Access.

Jeff:
That is going to be coming really same day as Xbox Series X, November 10th, by the way. Heck of a day. We'll have EA Play coming into Xbox Game Pass. Of course, course have Xbox Series S and Series X coming out that day. Assassin's Creed is coming out that day. Yakuza: Like a Dragon, we know, is now coming out on November 10th. It's going to be just an incredible day. EA Play coming soon. Larry, I'm tap dancing.

Larry Hryb:
All right. I'm back.

Jeff:
Here we go. Is there anything in the box that you want to share or is it, no, these are just my mac and cheese.

Larry Hryb:
No. Hold on. I think I know what this is. Oh, I know what this is. You help get such [crosstalk 00:38:52].

Jeff:
This is great. This is great audio. Okay. It's a box.

Larry Hryb:
You know what's in the box?

Jeff:
Oh, I do know what's in the box. Yes. Gloves, please.

Larry Hryb:
I only have one here. Thank you for reminding me.

Jeff:
Of course. It's a schtick.

Larry Hryb:
This is an Xbox.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 00:39:20] what that is.

Larry Hryb:
Xbox Series X. You can see here this is last, I guess, a few weeks ago. I think it was last week. A bunch of these were sent out to some partners and influencers. They sent some over my way so I can display them in the back. There you go. This is the new-

Jeff:
Look at that.

Larry Hryb:
... the new console, X. This is one of them. Then, I have the Xbox Series… See the cool green on the top. I love how everybody thought that was electrical. Remember back when we made the announce, they thought that was like LEDs or something.

Jeff:
Yeah. I think it was just the way the photos are. You see this a lot on the Sneakers app like some of the Nike ones. I was like, "Does that light up?" It's like, "No. It's just like super bright."

Larry Hryb:
Then this, of course.

Jeff:
It does [crosstalk 00:40:04].

Larry Hryb:
I don't know because I haven't seen the final packaging yet, but I guess this is similar in terms of the size.

Jeff:
Yeah. I have not seen it either.

Larry Hryb:
This is the Xbox Series S.

Jeff:
It's so small. It's so S-M-O-L, Smol. It's smol.

Larry Hryb:
Did you really use that? Did you really S-M-O-L. [crosstalk 00:40:28] This, actually, I totally need the white gloves for. You can see that.

Jeff:
Look at that. You have the world's most powerful console and then our smallest Xbox ever. It's not a bad haul. Now, I know why you got up and left us in the middle of the show.

Larry Hryb:
You can see that it's fake, all the outputs or all the ports are knocked out in the back there. Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I got [crosstalk 00:40:52].

Jeff:
No, not at all.

Larry Hryb:
[crosstalk 00:40:53] they were here, and I was like, "Let me go get them."

Jeff:
We gave out these faux units, we call them, to a number of media and creators just like people want to know how big they are, really, how small they are. What better way to do to demonstrate that than just to give you this case, but I think it was Dan Ackerman from CNET who took those to Ikea. He was like-

Larry Hryb:
That's right.

Jeff:
I don't know. Half of America has an Ikea entertainment center. Which one's the right... Will it fit into yours and how will it fit? What's the best configuration? It turns out like what I've got right back there that's an Ikea one if it's fits fine, but it's a really cool story. [crosstalk 00:41:33].

Larry Hryb:
You know what we're to do? We are going to stop down here. I've got Jason Ronald to come in to talk about storage. Then, we're going to talk about Yakuza. We'll run those back to back. Then, when we come back, I'll have these set up in back here so that you can look at them a little more. What do you say we do that? Let's stop down. Let's learn more about storage.

Larry Hryb:
One of the big questions about Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X is storage. Joining us back again with a great connection, Jason Ronald. Jason, good to see you.

Jason Ronald:
Great to be back, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
Now, we're talking about storage because we've seen a lot of earlier in the show. Jeff and I were talking about some of the influencers. And some of the press have started to get their kits. They're really excited about the fast resume and some of the things that, you frankly, you and I have been talking about for months on the show, but I wanted to talk about storage because there's been some questions about storage. I thought we could recap what we've learned there and what we've announced.

Jason Ronald:
Sure. Last week, we announced the introduction of the Seagate Storage Expansion Card. It's really about delivering the exact same great experience that you get from the internal storage with the custom NVMe SSD. Well, one of the questions that we've gotten is, "Can I continue to use my USB 3.1 external hard drives that you have today?"

Jason Ronald:
We've really made this as easy as possible for you. You can very quickly and easily just unplug your existing USB 3.1 hard drive. Plug it into your Xbox Series X and Series S, and all your games are instantly available and ready for you to play.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. I got some of those questions where just right before we're doing the show like, "Hey do I need to prep?" Here's some of just examples, some of the SSD or the regular hard drive. There's thousands of millions of them. But do I have to do anything when I unplug it from my Xbox One to when I plug it into my Xbox Series S or X? Do I have to do any? The answer is no. You just plug it in, and you're good to go, right?

Jason Ronald:
Exactly. This is once again just really our commitment to compatibility across generations just like all your existing accessories move forward. That includes your external hard drives. If you already have your games whether it's an Xbox One game or an Xbox 360 game or even an original Xbox game, you can easily just move that hard drive over to your Xbox Series X and S, and you're instantly ready to play.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Some of the other questions are, "Well, how does that work with next-gen games? Do I still get the fast loading?" I want to be very clear because you talked about this device which is this is what it looks like and I've got my little white gloves here to show. But we talked about this device, and I've showed this off a little bit before, but this is what the retail packaging will look like when you go to the store.

Larry Hryb:
With this one terabyte expansion card, the engineers, you and the software and the hardware engineers, have designed this to have the exact same read-write speed performance, thermals, everything else that the internal storage does. The benefit here is extraordinary, whereas the current generation of games, they can run off of this, but you're not going to get some things. Explain how that works, Jason.

Jason Ronald:
Exactly. You can store all of your games whether they're original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One or Xbox Series X and S games. You can store them on an external hard drive. You can run and play your original Xbox 260 and Xbox One games directly from that external USB hard drive. You just won't see all the improvements with load times that you'll see if the game's running on the internal NVMe SSD or on the storage expansion card.

Jason Ronald:
But you'll still get all the same enhancements, things like higher frame rates, higher resolution, texture filtering, auto HDR, all of those apply regardless of where you choose to run the game from. But if you want the optimal experience or the best in class experience, the recommendation is to move the games from the external hard drive to either the internal custom NVMe SSD, or you can choose to store them on the Seagate Storage Expansion Card. Then, you'll get the full fidelity of the Xbox Velocity Architecture. You'll get those dramatically reduced load times and just the full fidelity that you get when you're running on the next-gen hardware.

Larry Hryb:
Thanks, Jason. Tell us about the expansion card. I talked a little bit about it how it's engineered to be exactly the same, but there are some great benefits here. How does this work?

Jason Ronald:
Yeah. The storage expansion card really works in many ways like the expandable hard drives where it's super simple. You just plug it into your Xbox Series X or Series S. Then, it just provides extras capacity running at the exact same performance as the internal custom NVMe SSD.

Jason Ronald:
All the improvements that you've seen with the faster load times and just really instantly getting you into the experience, it doesn't matter if you're choosing to run the game off the internal drive or off of the storage expansion card. you get that same great experience.

Larry Hryb:
The great thing about the expansion card just like our USB drives is this is hot swappable. You just plug it in. I've seen some questions as well. Yes, Xbox Series S does have. You can see the expansion slot right there under the series of holes over the four holes. This is a dummy unit, but you can see that's where the expansion slot slides into. You can take that out and plug it into your Xbox Series X. You can see on this one that I have.

Larry Hryb:
I think you can see it there. It's named properly. You just go right back and forth. You can plug it in. When I took this one out, it's running on my console behind me. I just popped it out to show you on the show. It's 100% hot swappable. You really don't have to worry about anything, right?

Jason Ronald:
Exactly. We really designed this to be as simple as possible. You can just put it into your console. Download or install any games that you want to it. Then, you can easily pull it out and then bring it to your friend's house or even switch between the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S. You don't have to do anything differently. It works perfectly well on both consoles.

Larry Hryb:
Then, there was a question I saw a little bit in some of the more enthusiastic communities around game licenses. Are they stored in the card? Are they stored on the console? Can you answer that question?

Jason Ronald:
Absolutely. If you have a digital entitlement for the game, it works just like it does today where you can go to another console. As long as you're logged in, you're able to instantly play your games. If you have a physical copy of the game, the license is actually on the disk itself. If you go to a friend's house or if you go to another console, you can easily just put the storage expansion card in, put the disk in and you're up and playing instantly.

Larry Hryb:
The other question I've seen is like, "Oh, why did you guys use something like this? Why is it custom? Why didn't you just use NVMe? There's lots of NVMe manufacturers and options out there? How come we couldn't do that so I could just open my console and put a larger one in?" I think there's some really interesting information here because tell us about the engineering decisions that went into that.

Jason Ronald:
Sure. It's a great question. What was really important to us as we designed the Xbox Velocity Architecture was really that consistent sustained performance both for developers and for players. When you look at the SSD technology or the SSD drives that are out there, you'll get widely varying performance.

Jason Ronald:
Various drives will run maintenance at different times or maybe they have different thermal solutions. What our real focus was making it as simple as possible for players so that you could go out and buy by the Seagate Storage Expansion Card.

Jason Ronald:
It's just guaranteed to work. There's no formatting. There's no compatibility test that you have to go try or to actually confirm it meets certain specifications. It's just really about making it as simple as possible for players. It was critically important that we had it available on day one at the launch of this next generation.

Larry Hryb:
I think it's interesting to point that out because a lot of people think that NVMe SSDs, they're all created equal. When I rebuilt one of my PCs, I didn't realize. I was like, "Why is this one so much more expensive?" Well, because the read and the write speed is this much versus this cheaper one perhaps the read speed was lower or higher or what have you.

Larry Hryb:
Do you guys have done all of this to match the internal storage on the unit? The console is just doing its thing. Now, one of the features that we've been talking about is quick resume. This quick resume when I'm quick resume, if I get an expansion, do I get more quick resumes? I think you do three or four or four or five. Where is that stored? How does that work?

Jason Ronald:
All quick resume save, saves are actually stored on the internal NVMe SSD. Even if you're choosing to run, say, an Xbox One game or an Xbox 360 game, from an external USB hard drive, you're still going to get that same great quick resume experience. We really designed this so that as a player you get the most reliable and best-in-class experience even if you choose to continue to use your existing USB 3.1 drive.

Jason Ronald:
But if you really want that premium experience with those ultra-fast load times. That's why we have the Seagate Storage Expansion Card so that you can expand that available capacity if you have a larger game library.

Larry Hryb:
I know we went over a lot of stuff here. Jason, I want to thank you for coming on and going into detail and pulling back the covers and tell us how it works. But, really, the most important thing is if you're thinking, "Oh, why do they make this so complex?" It's not complex. These, what you have today, will work for all of your existing games for any of the next-gen games. You've got internal storage in your console. If you want to expand it, you've got this right here. It's, really, we want to make it as easy as possible, right, Jason?

Jason Ronald:
Exactly. Even beyond the hardware, we've actually made user interface improvements to make it easier for you to manage your storage.

Larry Hryb:
Tell us about that.

Jason Ronald:
As an example, one of the new features that we're adding is actually for, if a title, chooses to support it, the ability to selectively uninstall different components of the game so that, let's say, you play a campaign as an example and then you want to focus exclusively on multiplayer, if the developers chose to support it, you can actually uninstall the campaign itself so that you can be more in control of how you're actually using your storage so that you really get the most benefit out of the available storage that you have.

Larry Hryb:
That's exciting. As you said, if I'm done with the campaign, but I still want to play multiplayer, you can take the campaign out of there, free up some storage and still have access to that multiplayer.

Larry Hryb:
Now, folks can buy these at most places. I know that we've talked about them. They're available for 219.99. That's the manufacturer's suggested retail price. Prices will vary around the world. Certainly Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S are launching in different countries. Check your local retailers. Another question I've seen is about partnering with Seagate. Tell us about that.

Jason Ronald:
Yeah. We're really excited to partner with Seagate. As I mentioned before, this is really innovative bleeding edge technology. To be able to partner with an industry leader like Seagate, to be able to deliver a one terabyte expansion option on day one at launch is very exciting. We're continuing to listen to feedback from the community.

Jason Ronald:
I think, over time, you'll see this is a category that's really critical to us. You'll see multiple options and different form factors and different sizes. But what was really important for us is that we had a simple easy to use option available day one. You can expect to see more options moving forward.

Larry Hryb:
You see that right there. That's what you're going to be looking for. Again, I want to point out you don't need this. Out of the box, you've got plenty of storage for your games and quick resume as Jason said. It's only if maybe your Game Pass, you want to download all the games or many more of the games. We've got you covered there. Any other final words, Jason?

Jason Ronald:
No. The last thing that I wanted to leave everybody with is early results or early preview impressions have just started to come out. We're just really excited to see the response. As you and I have talked about, Larry, multiple times, we've been playing on these consoles for more than a year now. It's just exciting to be able to see everybody else start to really experience what we've been building, and we'll have a lot more to share as we get closer to launch.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. To your point, I can say this is we've been using it for quite some time a lot of us in the labs and whatnot. The first moment you've seen some of these videos, the first moment people have quick resume, i had a video out a few days ago of me playing Fallout, here's a game that I finished three or that I last played three or four or five years ago. It just came up in my console.

Larry Hryb:
My level 52 character is there. I'm getting the benefits of quick resume. This is completely unoptimized. Nobody's done anything to this game yet, right? This is what's extraordinary about it. Just imagine what we're going to see when developers are starting to optimize like with the velocity architecture, right, Jason?

Jason Ronald:
Exactly. That's the thing is like these first impressions that everybody's seeing, you're just seeing the raw power of the new hardware. We're really excited to share more with optimized titles that we're doing at the back compat level, but what we're really excited to show closer to launch is titles that are really taking full advantage of this next-gen hardware and these next-gen capabilities.

Jason Ronald:
I think really there's just going to be so much innovation over the generation with all these new capabilities in the hands of the best developers across the industry.

Larry Hryb:
Awesome stuff. Well, Jason, as always, it's great having you on coming in loud and clear. You look great. I love your new connection. Thank you for that. I'd love to have you on again as always in the future to talk even more about this, but I know people are just excited that November cannot come fast enough. They want their quick resume. They want their fast loading games now. Thanks again, Jason. We'll have you on again in the future.

Jason Ronald:
Thanks, Larry.

Jeff:
We're good friends at Xbox Game Pass. They love to say, "Discover your next favorite game." Well, we don't just say that. We live that. I've got to say over the past year on Xbox Game Pass, I have discovered the Yakuza series. I started off last winter. I played through the amazing Yakuza 0.

Jeff:
I moved on to Yakuza Kiwami 1 when that came out of the spring. Then, this summer, I just wrapped up Yakuza Kiwami 2. I love the series. I am a new fan, a new devotee. I know I'm not the only one. I am super excited. As we get ready to wrap up into Yakuza: Like a Dragon, we have someone from the team. We have Scott Strichart, the senior localization producer from Sega. How are you doing, Scott?

Scott Strichart:
Great. Thanks for having me.

Jeff:
I think that in this game coming from Japan and with so much going on, so much dialogue that the localization producer, the senior localization producer has a ton to do. Tell me about your role.

Scott Strichart:
[inaudible 00:56:40] is no short... Yeah. It's my job basically to take what is a Japanese product and make it English. That's the quickest way to explain it. It's a heck of a task.

Jeff:
And even more so because I know and we can talk about it in a little bit that this game will have English language dub for the first time since I believe the first Yakuza back in 2005 several generations ago, so we coming back into English as an option.

Jeff:
I think that will help open it up to more people to be really interesting to see. But you're here not to talk about localization so much as gameplay. You brought with you a bunch of gameplay. Why don't we roll that? Let's see what you got. Let's talk about it.

Scott Strichart:
Great. We are in the middle of the [crosstalk 00:57:27] story. Ichiban has been tasked by this homeless man to go find the crayfish that Ichiban had just thrown off the bridge. Each of them feels really bad for him. As he comes back, he realizes that the reason that the homeless man had wanted him to find him was something the homeless man could eat her and Ichiban is not too happy about that.

Jeff:
There's an interesting sort of dichotomy that we see within the Yakuza games where they are incredibly serious and their stories of love and loss and honor and duplicity, and at the same time, the craziest stuff happens as well. Is it safe to say in Like a Dragon that we're going to be... I feel like just is a one-word answer, but we're going to see some more shenanigans.

Scott Strichart:
Oh, this game is so shenanigan heavy. One of the things our devs have just mastered is turning on a dime and saying the main story is going to be, all those words you use, very serious. But then, in the next instant, you're being asked to retrieve a crayfish. I think a lot of people would struggle to make that work, but our guys always bring that to the forefront. They do such a good job with it.

Jeff:
Let's talk a little bit about our protagonist. For the first several all of the Yakuza games that I'm aware of, it's been Kazuma Kiryu has been the protagonist. We've learned to love him and his gray suit and red shirt. Here, we have a new character for the first time. Can you tell us a little bit about Ichiban Kasuga? And, please, correct my pronunciation.

Scott Strichart:
You're doing great. Ichiban is our new protagonist, like you said. I don't want to call him the polar opposite of Kiryu because he still has that genuine curiosity and that zest for life that Kiryu always had, but he's also a lot more charismatic, I guess. He's more quick to make friends he doesn't believe in being the lone wolf.

Scott Strichart:
That's the impetus for what you're seeing here, this, hey, I got hit by a car. Sure, you would never.

Jeff:
No. The car would stop for Kiryu.

Scott Strichart:
Right. Or Kiryu would stop the car, but there's a life to him. There's a friendliness and approachability about him. That draws people to him. That's one of the biggest changes about the protagonist. That informed our entire chain the way that we're approaching the game.

Jeff:
I've played Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 1, and two the games that are on Game Pass. We spent all of our time in Kamurocho in part of Tokyo, a fictionalized version of a part of Tokyo, and in Sotenbori, a fictionalized version of a part of Osaka, but I've been to Japan a number of times. It really brought me in. There's certain sounds like when you walk into like Lawson's or something like that or just how people are constantly talking to you and thanking you.

Jeff:
There's just certain elements to it that everywhere you go, there are vending machines that sell you tea and actually a lot of the products for real tea and real things that I've bought before. It really captured that essence. But we're leaving Kamurocho and Sotenbori behind here in Like a Dragon, aren't we?

Scott Strichart:
We are. Through some circumstances, Ichiban gets dumped often homeless camp in Yokohama. Yokohama is a little ways out from Tokyo, but it's a much bigger city. It's, for us as the game developers, realizing that in the game has been an incredible task, but also just very rewarding because at the end of the day, it's like three times the size of Kamurocho and each district, it has such a life to it. There's these districts that happen in Yokohama.

Scott Strichart:
There's an industrial park. There's a green park. There's a Chinatown. There's kind of the [inaudible 01:01:40] areas. You get all of that as these world regions that you can go into and explore whether or not you're ready to or not. There's so much to see and so much to find in Yokohama. All of this is very much realized just like the real Yokohama in the same way that they did your Kamurocho where they go there. They take pictures They do research. They get blueprints. They really nail that tourism angle of bringing you to Yokohama.

Jeff:
In earlier Yakuza games, the world was not the biggest world, but it was very dense. There was just almost every building at one point or another, you're going into. You think you've been everywhere. Then, there's an underground arena or betting parlor or who knows what. There's just like a boat leads to an underground passage or something crazy like that. But how do you compare the maps of Sotenbori and Kamurocho to Yokohama? Is Yokohama bigger? Is it more in the dense, but not necessarily expansive sort of map?

Scott Strichart:
It is equally as dense, but three times bigger. As you can see, we've just put that much more. There's some stories to discover. There's all the same parlors that you've gone to. There's still all those kind of entertainment districts and things to go, places to play, things to see, things to take pictures of. It feels like a very much like a real life city.

Scott Strichart:
There's things to pick up at every angle. You can never turn a corner in this game without finding something interesting.

Jeff:
Yeah. We just saw the map there briefly. I think it gave me just a hint of what the scope is here. Something that is familiar is running into street punks or people... I don't know if it is much like hear you that Ichiban has a very punchable face that everyone wants to attack him. It never really works out well for the thugs or the other Yakuza or whoever it is that's attacking him, but definitely playing into... This is where things look just dramatically different. Talk about what we're seeing here. Was that a heat action like turned up to a next level?

Scott Strichart:
Yes, exactly. As you can see, this is something we… I haven't mentioned yet is that we've completely switched the gameplay system from a real-time battle action to more of an RPG, JRPG style. That all comes back to being Ichiban where he's recruiting friends. He doesn't have this god-like power to just slay an entire street of people in an instant like Kiryu did.

Scott Strichart:
He relies on his friends and to realize that it was important for us to bring it around to this JRPG thing where you'd be playing as not just Ichiban, but... That has informed the entire battle system. You're seeing a more turn-based action style of battle but still very much realized in the Yakuza style where, yes, there are heat actions. There are ridiculous skills to be using. It's very fast-paced.

Scott Strichart:
As you are fighting, you're kicking over bikes. You're exploding the environment. It's very much Yakuza but as a turn-based game. It's a marriage of those worlds. It's just so cool to watch it happen.

Jeff:
When you go into battle, is it an active time battle system where the world essentially stops while you're selecting what you want to do or are you still under the gun? How do you merge those two systems together?

Scott Strichart:
You are free to take as much time as you'd like to select your abilities and all that kind of stuff, but you can make it as fast as you want by setting your cursor to memory by making your party members auto battle. You can make this as real time as a turn-based system will allow, but where the action really comes in is a lot of the moves are going to require you to hit buttons at a certain time. You can guard. You can get a better guard by doing those action prompts.

Scott Strichart:
Every ability, every cooler move has an input that's going to make you stay with it rather than just going through the motions of press the same actions over and over kind of deal.

Jeff:
Yeah. It definitely seems quite dynamic and something I've noticed. Both here and I'd seen a different cutscene that referenced Dragon Quest. I felt like there may have been like a little bit of an homage here to persona when she was spinning the gun there.

Jeff:
In Kiwami 1 and obviously Yakuza 0, Kiryu is like a fish out of water a little bit. He was being in prison for so long. He didn't really get modern times that you had to explain like what... the characters were explaining how you'd use a cell phone and why you would do here. [inaudible 01:06:26] going to get. Why people would wait in line for a toy or something like that? Is Ichiban like more of a person of the current day or is he likewise still a little bit out of it?

Scott Strichart:
He's equally as I think because he's just gotten out of a prison sentence that took him out of life for 18 years. He comes back. He's seen a new world essentially, a world that's left him behind. He's very much in that same kind of vein of what the heck is a GPS, and how does this technology work.

Scott Strichart:
That's always hilarious to me. I love when they remember that the characters may not have seen that. There's such an attention to detail and making sure that Ichiban, it's not always going to be the hippest and the smartest, but still have the heart.

Jeff:
He needs the team because he's not the type of person who's going to punch a couple of tigers that are sick on him or take on, what, 100 people from the Omi Alliance all at the same time, most of whom have guns. That's not his style, you're saying.

Scott Strichart:
It's absolutely his style. He just needs the help.

Jeff:
Got it. Can you tell me about some of the characters that we're going to be bringing along with us here, that's going to be on our adventure?

Scott Strichart:
Yeah. Sure. Right now, you're seeing that each character has been given a job. It's a job-based system where you can have their base job which is they'll be doing their standard more of like story appropriate moves, I guess you could call it. But right now, Ichiban is set to breaker. He's doing a bunch of breakdance moves.

Scott Strichart:
His homeless friend, Namba, is set to a host. He's doing things like throwing roses and popping champagne bottles and giving out birthday cakes. Then Saeko is a dealer. She is a classically trained hostess, but all the female jobs are unique to females. The dealer class is a little luck based. It's built to make things either go very well or very poorly for the player.

Scott Strichart:
Then Adachi, he's an ex-cop. He is generally set to detective mode, but right now, he's a demolitionist. He's got a giant hammer. I'm sorry. That [inaudible 01:08:39], but that hammer is a massive powerhouse. Yeah. It's interesting in all these classes in the way that they don't necessarily map to classic JRPG tropes. It does feel like you're always reinventing your party every time you change out a person or change after class.

Jeff:
Is that something that happens on the fly or do you have some sort of base of operations or something like that, that you switch out those different jobs?

Scott Strichart:
Classic Yakuza, you have to go to a real-life employment agency called Hello Work to change out your job because that's how it would work in real life.

Jeff:
But you don't have to go to a pay phone to save it like in Yakuza 0.

Scott Strichart:
No, unfortunately. I actually like that system as weird as that sounds. I was like, "I love saving on a pay phone." That's just the craziest silliest thing, but no, it's going to auto save. We're good.

Jeff:
Yeah. I learned that out the hard way the first time I played. I played for the first two hours. I was like, "I guess it saved." Then, I had-

Scott Strichart:
I'm sorry.

Jeff:
It's like, "If you're just starting and you've never played it, you can play it through Game Pass, the PSA, here's how you do it." Then, of course, you get used to it, but I have a lot of takers. A lot of people like, "Yes. It totally happened to me too."

Scott Strichart:
Yeah. Did [crosstalk 01:09:58] autobiography? I was just curious. Did you equip an item called the charismatic autobiography?

Jeff:
I don't know that I got that.

Scott Strichart:
Good. I'll leave it at that.

Jeff:
Okay. Fair enough. Now, I'm going to have to go back. Let's talk about this game is coming to Xbox and really the Yakuza series, I feel like, has found some new audiences on the Xbox ecosystem, on Xbox One since it's really just been this year. How exciting is it to be part of the launch of the next generation and being there on day one for Xbox Series X and Series S?

Scott Strichart:
We're thrilled. It's so cool to see an entire new generation of people come into this franchise and love it like everyone else has for years. We're very grateful to Xbox for having us on the day one, got hit by a car again. Thrilled to just be here on the new platform and getting to see a new audience find this room for this game in their hearts.

Jeff:
The biggest Yakuza fan that I know offhand is blonde nerd Britt from What's Good Games. I told her that I was going to be speaking with you. She wanted me to ask just a couple of questions. She jumped at it. Like what we were just talking about, she's seen as well. The popularity of Yakuza series has really been rising recently in the west. Why do you attribute that to? I feel like this is a game that is unapologetically Japanese. It's so different then.

Jeff:
I don't know that it necessarily tries to be anything that it isn't. In many ways, I feel like it's kind of awesome that people are discovering this game, but why do you think folks in the west are gravitating towards the Yakuza series?

Scott Strichart:
Unapologetically Japanese is a great way of putting it. I feel like that there's a hunger for content that's not necessarily... That strives to be different. And something that's cool about Yakuza is it's difficult to pigeonhole. There's nothing else quite like it for a long time. People called it, "Well, it's the Japanese GTA."

Scott Strichart:
It's like that couldn't be further from the truth in so many respects, but it's a murder simulator. It's full of heart. It's full of character. It's full of drama, but it's also not afraid to be silly and nonsensical. It's so shareable. There's a lot of instances where people post some nonsense and people are like, "Oh, what the heck is this game that I'm missing out on?" That's driven a lot of people to be like, "I should at least check this out."

Jeff:
Yeah. I found a lot of people are definitely just see me to gravitate towards... There's something about it that I can't really put my finger on. Let's talk about what happened here. Nancy, what just happens? What's going on?

Scott Strichart:
Ichiban has achieved a new friend here by completing that sub-story. Nancy was added to his poundmate selection. He can now summon her into battle. That's your first try summoning a new friend is free. This is the result of that. You summon down a reign of crawfish. Then, you get to play [inaudible 01:13:31] and crustacean damnation as you would.

Jeff:
You had to have had a fun time like picking out the names for these and localizing. You all do a great job by the way because I don't know if that rhymes in Japanese, but to come up with that, crustacean domination, together.

Scott Strichart:
Yeah. The team has a lot of fun in the chats where we're just throwing out the most nonsensical ideas. You know when you found the winner.

Jeff:
Britt did ask me to ask you why is crustacean domination the best summon in Like a Dragon.

Scott Strichart:
It may be, but there's so many good ones that we haven't shown. Nancy gets to be on this Ichiban's shoulder. She's very much looking at him her being like, "Yeah. That's the one." But you're going to be so impressed by all those summons, I think. It's hard to even say that she's guaranteed the best.

Jeff:
Yeah. I thought the heat actions that were contextual to people that you've helped out in Yakuza Kiwami 2 and then you help out a street performer. Then, if you get in a fight near them, that you get some summon them in and they throw you a guitar, and you hit them over there with the guitar or a fish or just some of the crate.

Jeff:
I thought that was nuts, but you may have taken the cake here with some of these summons with Like a Dragon. I'm told that there is going to be a way for folks that haven't yet played the Yakuza games that are on Xbox One. There's going to be a chance coming up for them to get a chance to play for free.

Scott Strichart:
Yes. October 1st, the Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami are entering the free weekend for Game Pass which is going to be a really cool way if you haven't tried them. There's no way you're going to finish in all three of those games in the weekend, but give it your best shot and see what you think.

Jeff:
That's free-play days. That's eligible for people who have Xbox Live Gold even if they don't have Game Pass. If you have Game Pass, you can go ahead, and you can try these games out now. Is there a preferred order Kiwami 1 or Yakuza 0 for you? [crosstalk 01:15:48] lot of debate.

Scott Strichart:
It's debatable. Most people say start with 0. I concur buy it. But a hair. I think if you were to start with Kiwami and go back to 0, your experience changes a little bit, but it's the most common and accepted internet way of doing it is to start the 0 and then proceed further.

Jeff:
All right, Scott. I got one last thing. It's not a question. I don't expect you to answer this. Your PR person's going to not love me, but I'm just going to pass on what I hear myself just being part of this podcast and with Major Nelson and active on Twitter is because there are so many fans or new fans like myself on Xbox of Yakuza, they want to see more of Kiryu's story. They want to see Yakuza's 3 through 6 and everything.

Jeff:
I don't expect you to commit to anything right now, but I do want to pass on. There's a lot of fans that would love to see more Yakuza on Xbox, on the Xbox family of devices. I'm going to leave it at that, but I will say that Yakuza: Like a Dragon is coming out with launch. Thanks so much. Any last words?

Scott Strichart:
No. Thanks for having me. We hope you guys enjoy the games. That's the best thing you can go for is when someone plays your game and loves it.

Larry Hryb:
All right. There you go. A little bit more on storage and of Jeff, great job with Yakuza. You learned a lot at this show. This is like 10 shows into one, but that's what we got to do.

Jeff:
Yeah. It is what we've got to do. By the way, if you want to learn... If Russian is your preferred language? Well, guess what, we've got you covered. This week, we launched Xbox Wire in Russian.

Larry Hryb:
Look at this.

Jeff:
To get to that, yeah, there it is. We have a great team over there. They're already keeping it updated. You can see just all the latest stuff there. It's just important to speak to folks in their preferred language. I'm glad that we were finally able to launch that. We recently launched last month in Portuguese. We can really reach folks in Brazil and other places where Portuguese are spoken.

Jeff:
It's very important to say this is not Xbox Wire Russia. It's Xbox Wire in Russian. There was, of course, other countries, other sovereign republics that speak Russian as a primary language as well. This is for you. If you want to get to it, you can just go to... Even if you just want to check it out, we have France. We have Germany. We have Latin America which is based in Mexico City.

Larry Hryb:
Click on this one.

Jeff:
In the upper right there, there you go, you see it. [crosstalk 01:18:18] I'm hoping we can add more to that list at some point.

Larry Hryb:
What should we add? What should we add?

Jeff:
Well, here's the thing. I don't want to make any promises when I tweeted about Brazil last month and about Russia yesterday. I heard from a lot of other countries that they're like, "What about us?" I'm like, "I agree."

Larry Hryb:
I agree.

Jeff:
But there's a lot that goes into it because it's not like you just deploy a blog and you move on. There are living people that are we work with that are updating those posts. We want to make sure they can also put in great localized coverage and things like that.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We're not running. [crosstalk 01:18:51] We're not taking Xbox Wire and running it through Google or Bing translate.

Jeff:
No. There's humans there.

Larry Hryb:
[crosstalk 01:18:57]

Jeff:
Exactly . One of the reasons we wanted to launch this week is there's a big Russian game show that takes place in early October. We wanted to be there in time for that. If that's something you know I don't know the name, I'm not going to butcher it, but this way, they can cover it. They can cover it in Russian.

Speaker 6:
[foreign language 01:19:18].

Jeff:
Actually , [crosstalk 01:19:24] teams on Russian speaker because the team was like, "We would love to have you try this." I listened to what it was supposed to sound like. I was like [crosstalk 01:19:33] this is challenging. The sounds are just not sounds that we hear in English a lot. Phil did it. I'm really glad he did.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Actually [crosstalk 01:19:44].

Jeff:
There's a lot of love [crosstalk 01:19:45] yesterday. I'm glad Twitter has a built-in translate. Yeah. That's Mikhail, by the way, who we just saw on glasses. He's the one who's going to be behind the keyboard running Xbox Wire in Russian.

Larry Hryb:
So great. Yeah. We're excited about that. Then, these are all huge markets. The world is a huge part for us. This just shows you the commitment that Xbox is continuing to put in certainly the US, but obviously all the other regions around the world. We're very excited.

Jeff:
Wherever you're joining us from. Thank you.

Larry Hryb:
To be clear, we got so many people that listen and watch to this show around the world. It's unbelievable. Jeff and I, we talked about this before when we used to travel wherever we go was people come up to us and tell us how much they love Xbox and love gaming. We just love that. Gaming is really one of the great uniters this generation that can bring not many things can bring us together now unfortunately, but this is one of them.

Jeff:
Absolutely.

Larry Hryb:
I digress.

Jeff:
That's not digression. This is why we're here.

Larry Hryb:
Well, this show has gone on quite... I put them back there. See, like I told you, I would. That's actually the X right there.

Jeff:
Go forward. It's hard to see. Go full screen, major.

Larry Hryb:
Full screen, here we go. This is you can-

Jeff:
There we got. That's better.

Larry Hryb:
There's my Series X, Series S. Then, those are my airline peanuts.

Jeff:
Oh I don't see that. You'll appreciate this, Larry. Yesterday, I was going and getting takeout at a local restaurant that specializes in salads. They are selling there the Alaska airlines cheese plate.

Larry Hryb:
They are?

Jeff:
You can buy it at the start. Yeah. I saw it too late. They were already handing my thing. There was a line. I had my mask on. I want to fumble with my wallet, but I will be getting that this weekend.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We talked about it. Send me the link to that place because I'd love to get my wife one of those for [HaaS 01:21:37], but we travel a lot. This are the peanuts that they hand out in, I believe, it's first class when you travel.

Jeff:
[crosstalk 01:21:45] them up.

Larry Hryb:
My wife sourced where to get those. She found this small family company down in Texas. She called them. Because they're not flying a lot right now, she was able to get something.

Jeff:
They got plenty of them. I'm glad they didn't have to give you the individual packets. You'd be there forever.

Larry Hryb:
That's like Starbursts. I love Starburst, but I hate them because the wrappers slow me down. I know they have [crosstalk 01:22:07].

Jeff:
It's for your own safety, Larry. If you put five in your mouth at once, you'll never be able to open your jaw again.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway, yeah send me where that cheese plate is. That sounds fantastic.

Jeff:
Yeah. It's at Evergreens. [crosstalk 01:22:20]

Larry Hryb:
I know a lot of airlines, people buying airline food which is always a joke back in the day, but I guess... I don't know if it shows up in a tray or what have you, but a lot of people are trying different things nowadays, different things.

Jeff:
All right.

Larry Hryb:
I'll let you go, Jeff. I'll let you go.

Jeff:
Thank you.

Larry Hryb:
We'll be back next week. First of all, we don't say it enough. Jeff, I need you to tell people how they should and what they should hit on the YouTube.

Jeff:
Yeah. Of course. Actually, this is something that will really help us, is if you do enjoy the podcast, if you've made it this far, my God, thank you. Review the podcast. Yes, like, and subscribe, but drop a comment in YouTube. If you're listening to us on Spotify, on Apple's podcast app on-

Larry Hryb:
On Stitcher.

Jeff:
Stitcher or SoundCloud or anything like that, drop a like, but then drop a review. Let us know what you want to hear more of. Let's take a look at those. It does help surface the podcast higher up. There's a lot of podcasts out there. Thank you for spending your time with us.

Larry Hryb:
This is the original. Let's be clear. This is one of the [crosstalk 01:23:21].

Jeff:
It's true.

Larry Hryb:
I want to thank everybody that's gone on this journey with us and especially you, Jeff. Thank you for bearing with us as we made the transition here to video.

Jeff:
Happy to be here. I think we got a nice rhythm now.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We're getting there. All right, gang. We'll see you guys next week. Hope you enjoyed the interviews. As Jeff said, leave those comments below, wherever you're listening and/or watching.

Larry Hryb:
Also, just a reminder, if you're listening or watching this on my blog or on YouTube, I have a full textual transcript at majornelson.com. Just click the podcast link at the top. Then, open up the individual page. You'll see read transcript on the right-hand side there.

Larry Hryb:
If you have a friend who's into gaming that maybe they need some assistance, happy to help you there. All right, gang. Jeff, final words

Jeff:
No. I love reading the transcripts. If you hate the sound of our voice, understandable. You can just read it. Read the podcast.

Larry Hryb:
Just run it through whatever your favorite screen reader is. You can hear a computer read it like those terrible, terrible reviews on Amazon where people just run the review through a text voice to text [crosstalk 01:24:24]. Oh my god. I hate [crosstalk 01:24:26].

Jeff:
Yes. I read all it there.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway, all right, gang. We'll talk to you next week. Goodbye, everybody.

Jeff:
All right.