732: Gaming for Everyone, Black History Month at Xbox and Platform updates

Larry Hryb: Hi, it's Larry Hyrb of Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show, the Xbox Podcast where each, most weeks, I won't say each week, most weeks, Jeff and I bring you the news and some interviews.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Most weeks. Sometimes we do a show and it doesn't actually end up [inaudible] and I would like to say that's a rare occurrence but-

Larry Hryb: I'm very excited because there's been some... I've had some audio issues with this microphone and what we call in the business, my audio chain. I have worked with an audio engineer and we have fixed it so that our levels should be matched. This beautiful Shure SM7B mic, which is a broadcast quality mic goes into all this stuff. Anyway, long story short, we shouldn't have any problems anymore, Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Never had a problem with my beautiful Elgato microphone. It's always done me.

Larry Hryb: That's the Wave.

Jeff Rubenstei...: The wave. Wave:3.

Larry Hryb: The Wave. Wave:3.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Sounds good.

Larry Hryb: Anyways, good to see you. This is actually our first show in February. We didn't do one last week. First show in February, which is we've got a couple of great interviews and we always have great interviews for you. But we got a couple of great interviews. This one's about inclusive gaming at Xbox, Black History month. Someone's coming after your gig Mr. Jeffrey Rubs.

Jeff Rubenstei...: The co-host that's relegating me to occasional guest star, who has my initials or do I have his initials?

Larry Hryb: Who knows? Or are they actually the same person?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Again, I've not shaved in weeks and you'll see this is the second best beard on the show.

Larry Hryb: Is that the extended... Can it get any longer?

Jeff Rubenstei...: That's it man.

Larry Hryb: We're talking about Jason Ronald of course. He will be along later on. Have you ever gotten it long like Jason?

Jeff Rubenstei...: No, no. Although it's funny. We don't see people at all these days. But we're trying to, in the beginning of the year here, trying to make a push for like if you haven't turned your camera on in one of these Teams chats or Zoom chats, turn on the camera just so we can see you. Because it's been too long and people are in varying states of new looks.
We'll just put it that way. People going through long hair looks, people who are trying new things and someone on our team we've worked with for a long time, I'll just call him out, [inaudible], he was a longtime writer. We call him Scooter in the biz and he has the full on... He looks exactly like he should be in Kill Bill stroking his beard. It's just unbelievable.

Larry Hryb: I have to show you this. I did a Teams chat with somebody or a Zoom chat, we call it Teams because of what it is but you guys know what it is, it's a video chat. We did one and I have to share it, let me just pull it up. Give me a moment Jeff. Because I joined it and I actually stepped back because I was like, "What is going on here?"
It was probably the strangest video chat I've ever done with the background. You won't see the individual because they stepped out of the frame. This was it. Let me pull it in here. Are you ready?

Jeff Rubenstei...: I'm ready.

Larry Hryb: Okay. Here we go. This was it.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Rio de Janeiro, is that the...

Larry Hryb: That's the Catholic Virgin Mary in the background. I was like, "Oh my, did I just dial into it?"

Jeff Rubenstei...: Hold on. There appears to be like a bow in the back. Like a long bow of some sort.

Larry Hryb: There's so much going on in this photo and I don't want to out the person.

Jeff Rubenstei...: You've got the AM radio in the back.

Larry Hryb: I was like, "I need to know everything." And this is like his bizarre picture and I need to know what the candles, you see the candles in the back there?

Jeff Rubenstei...: For most points for symmetry.

Larry Hryb: Right. So anyway-

Jeff Rubenstei...: I appreciate the dual shelves. All right. One last... We'll tell you about video chats. There was a great, I wouldn't call it a meme, but something that was going around this week. But did you see there was a... Court cases a lot of them are happening via-

Larry Hryb: Zoom, Teams. Right.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Video chats.

Larry Hryb: Skype, whatever.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Apparently in one court case where it was a judge and two lawyers talking, one of the lawyers apparently they had turned on a filter where they were a cat talking and they couldn't turn it off. It sounded like maybe not a young gentleman and he's like, "I'm not a cat sir."

Larry Hryb: I've got a...

Jeff Rubenstei...: It was too good. And they were like, "We would just like to proceed with the defendant's case." The council being a cat. I'll send it to you afterwards. We just lost it.

Larry Hryb: Was he defending? Was he-

Jeff Rubenstei...: I think it was early on in the call. No opening arguments had been made. This might have been just a normal meeting between-

Larry Hryb: So it wasn't a judicial case around who got up on the counter and got into the tuna fish. It was-

Jeff Rubenstei...: No otherwise, this would be an open and shut case Larry.

Larry Hryb: All right.

Jeff Rubenstei...: What's this show about again? Sometimes I forget.

Larry Hryb: Video games. Hey, speaking of video games, we're playing a lot, I've got Hitman, I've got... Carto, thank you very much for Carto.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Okay. Tell us what you thought. Tells what you like. I mentioned that I feel like a month ago.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, and I finally got around... If you get a chance, it's in Game Pass. And you can kind of see it. It's called Carto, C-A-R-T-O. And you can kind of see it right here. It's this beautiful game and essentially, Jeff described it originally but I'll try to regurgitate what he said.
It was essentially get pieces of maps and you can rotate them and as you zoom out in map mode and then you zoom down, you can walk over the maps and walk... It's a fun, cute game. I recommend it if you want to... If you like map games, it's just fun, cute and it's very low stress.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Just imagine instead of driving to work, you opened up maps on your phone and you scrolled over to work and then you put your phone down and you were at work. I like it. It's kind of like that.

Larry Hryb: Assuming we were going to work. Yeah, I'm playing Carto. The Medium, I have not finished The Medium yet. I feel bad.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I did. I did.

Larry Hryb: I know you have.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah. It was a great game. All right, how many hours are you? Actually I'm going to say something. It's not really a spoiler on its own. Have you sat down on the wheelchair yet?

Larry Hryb: I've been waiting for that moment because you texted me and you gave me a heads up that things accelerate from there.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Things really... Yeah, they start to accelerate at that point. I feel like you kind of see an experience a couple of different gameplay elements and there's certain things that happened leading up to that point. There's almost like a little bit of a sampler building up to that point.
Once you get to that point, things really pick up the pace, they get more intense. Motivations for characters start to make sense and it's really good. I really enjoyed it. I will admit, I tend to be afraid of horror games.

Larry Hryb: No.

Jeff Rubenstei...: This is not a straight up horror game. To give you my litmus test, last year I played through Resident Evil 2 remake and then immediately as soon as it came out, Resident Evil 3 remake. I really enjoyed them. It was scary at times, but for sure. Especially when unexpectedly Nemesis would come out through a wall or anything. A lot of jumpscares in those games. This is very little in the way of jumpscares. I think I counted two. But much more like an oppressive feeling-

Larry Hryb: Oppressive?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Dread. There was sort of-

Larry Hryb: Foreboding?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Foreboding. Just very unsettling. You just want to leave this place as opposed to like there's something coming at you and you have four bullets left in your handgun and you've got to make them... There's not really combat in this game as such. My point being, if you're okay with disconcerting things but you don't want things jumping out at you all the time, this may be the game for you. I've really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it.

Larry Hryb: On Game Pass, download it now.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah. On Xbox Series S and X and also for PC. They do some really cool stuff with the tech and with how quickly things stream in multiple worlds and things like that.

Larry Hryb: Go back a couple of weeks and the Jeff did a great interview with Bluebird team about that. So that's-

Jeff Rubenstei...: Thank you. They invited us for a beer right before the call. I don't know the next time we'll be together-

Larry Hryb: Much less in Poland.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Well, I get theoretically in a... If there's a GDC next year or something like that-

Larry Hryb: Gamescom.

Jeff Rubenstei...: There's a reasonable chance that we would be in the same place and I would love to get a beer with the Bluebird team.

Larry Hryb: Those guys look like fun. They are. They're great. So thank you. Thank you for everybody that's been helping that team out and downloading and playing The Medium on Game Pass. Think about that. What else?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Something else I heard you were checking out?

Larry Hryb: Go on.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yakuza, Like a Dragon?

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Tell me.

Larry Hryb: I don't have it up here in my most recently used because I've been checking out some other titles.

Jeff Rubenstei...: You bounce around.

Larry Hryb: I bounce around.

Jeff Rubenstei...: It's okay.

Larry Hryb: I will say this is that you and I'm very clear about this, you and I had been on team meetings internally and you're like... People were like, "I played Yakuza. It's great." I'm like, "Thank Jeff." You were on the Yakuza boat way, way, way, way, way early. I'm enjoying it. I feel like...
It's actually frightening me because there's so many other games in Game Pass that you can play and like I'm never going to finish this.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Here's what I've been doing. Actually, so since the last time we spoke, Yakuza 3, 4 and 5 came out. I blew through Yakuza 3. Done, deleted. I'd played nothing else during that time. Instead of just jumping immediately into 4, I was like, let me I don't want to say palate cleanser, let me try something else. Because again, there's so many games on Game Pass. Let me try something new. That game that I jumped into was haven. Did I tell you about this one Larry?

Larry Hryb: Let me tell you something. I saw you playing it. I had to go see what this was all about. I actually filed a bug because you used to be able to see what someone was playing, go right to the store, you have to go like five clicks down to find it. So I'd go to the store and I was like... It's like this beautiful looking JRPG kind of game. Am I right?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah. I would say it sort of was made, I believe in France. It looks... There's some French. It's not JRPG. But there's elements. It looks like if Daft Punk made a game. In fact, the soundtrack is phenomenal and there's a couple tracks that sound like they came right off of like Daft Punk's Discovery. By the way, no Daft Punk in the Superbowl halftime show, I would have liked to have seen.

Larry Hryb: Noted. NFL, you're on notice.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Well, I The Weeknd has two songs with Daft Punk. I'm sure they couldn't get here. But man, I was excited. Anyway. If they made a game, they executive produced a game and had this cel-shaded look of Gravity Rush, which was a really cool, like vitta game that came out long enough ago that I was working there.
Really interesting game with some like you're controlling... There's just basically this couple who is on this strange planet and you do explore and you have this cool mechanic where you're just sort of rocket booting around. It's just lovely and the songs are good.

Larry Hryb: Nice.

Jeff Rubenstei...: This interesting very mature conversations about like relationships, but then there's combat where you're basically the D-pad controls one character and your A, B, X, Y controls the moves of another character and you can be blocking with one and attacking with the other.

Larry Hryb: That's not too difficult to get my head around.

Jeff Rubenstei...: At first, it brings you along slowly. In fact, the game even tells you. It says, "Play on normal." This isn't a very hard game. You can always jack up or down the difficulty if you want to.

Larry Hryb: Please, please.

Jeff Rubenstei...: It's more about experiencing the story. There's also 100 gamer score achievement if you can beat the game without ever getting completely wiped out. I'm aiming for that. If I die, I will just like yank the plug out of the wall. I'm sure that's not a problem. Look, we've all done it. We have all done it. Anyway, haven I would wager I'm about three quarters of the way through it. It's just really interesting. It's on Xbox Game Pass. Give it a shot, if you're looking for something new to play. If you like RPG-

Larry Hryb: If you do.

Jeff Rubenstei...: But relationship games, narrative games, but with actual action and it's just beautiful and it sounds phenomenal. If any of those things sort of made you like look up, it's worth the download.

Larry Hryb: Or look down.

Jeff Rubenstei...: There's no commitment. Just try it. If you don't like it, it doesn't grab you in the first 30 minutes, there's something else on Game Pass.

Larry Hryb: Move on.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah, exactly.

Larry Hryb: There's plenty to play.

Jeff Rubenstei...: But I think if you play it, you will want to see it through. That's my prediction.

Larry Hryb: You know what we should do? We should probably take a break here because we've got the two interviews that I want to roll. If you're all right, we can do some news on the other side of that. Do you have time to hang around?

Jeff Rubenstei...: That'd be great. Yeah

Larry Hryb: Okay. All right. Don't you want to set those up for me or how do you want to do it?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Well, yeah. It's February and this is our first show of February and it's Black History Month. We're actually planning a number of things here. Some of those things are already ongoing here. Including on our Xbox Twitch channel and on other sort of aspects of things that you might be seeing from Xbox.
We've got a full story on Xbox wire. But the team who put this all together from Blacks at Xbox have joined us to talk more about what we've got going on in celebration of Black History Month.

Larry Hryb: Really excited to be joined by the co-leads for Gaming for Everyone here at Microsoft. I have Q Mohammed and James Lewis. Welcome to the show gang.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Thank you for having us.

James Lewis: Hey, thanks for having us.

Larry Hryb: I'm really excited to talk to you guys this month. James, I want to talk to you. You're both co-leads. What does that mean to be co leads with Gaming for Everyone? Because Gaming for Everyone is this outbound thing that people may hear for Xbox, but it actually is a strong internal movement at Microsoft as well, right?

James Lewis: Yes, absolutely. Gaming for Everyone is really awesome. Just because it really does figure out how can we welcome as many people to gaming as possible. For Q being co-leads for specifically the Black community within Gaming for Everyone, it's been amazing.
For us, this community has been active for about five years and when we first connected, it was like, how can we share tips on surviving in the Pacific Northwest because many of us came from other parts of the country and the world. Fr us to come to Pacific Northwest and we're like, well, simple things like where do we go to find our favorite foods?
And for me, it's like, where can I find Southern food or where can I get my haircut? We connected on these types of things and then we also realized that we're actually are creating a safe space for one another. I think a lot of us and 90% of the work we're doing, we have this sense of we're trying to fit in, we're trying to... Maybe there's a degree of imposter syndrome or maybe even code switching. And so for us to have this group where we can come together, essentially and kind of let our hair lay down or be our authentic selves, it just created a really, really unique environment for us.
And so we're now thinking how can we take some of those same benefits and that same community that we have, and further as co-leads get to know everyone so that we can fully understand what their career ambitions are, what they would like to see at Microsoft and the industry and really be the champions that can go on and carry that message.
It's an honor to be a co-lead and to be able to represent this group. But there are a lot of voices within this community. It's kind of up to Q and I to kind of get to know and hear those voices and then make sure that we're championing the right things within Xbox and in the industry.

Larry Hryb: It's interesting you bring all that up, because I forget what it was like because I've been here for a long time. I'm from New England. Q, where are you from?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: I'm from Philly.

Larry Hryb: Oh, yeah. My co-host Jeff is a Philly guy as well. James, what about you?

James Lewis: Born in small town, Louisiana and I grew up in North Carolina.

Larry Hryb: That is amazing. You forget what it's like when you move. For all of us, we moved all the way across the country to the Northwest. You don't know anybody. You're starting this new job. You're like, "What have I gotten into?" It's great to hear that you've got like minded people that you can kind of lean on and go, "Where do I get this?" Because I remember when I moved out here for the first time, I was the same way. I'm like, my wife wanted her coffee. Granted, it's the Northwest, you get coffee anywhere.
But she wanted a couple of things. It helps to do that. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about your journey and your industry journey. And I'm going to start with you Q. Tell us about how you got from Philly to Seattle at Microsoft?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Of course. So yeah, I went to school at Howard in DC, Howard University and Microsoft recruiters came to campus. I spent my whole professional career at Xbox. I interviewed for an internship when I was a sophomore. My first internship was in Xbox. And then [inaudible]. Am I lagging? My video looks frozen.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, you're lagging a little bit. I'll let you keep going there. But you were telling us about your journey. You've been at Xbox for your entire professional career. That's amazing.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Yeah, my entire professional career, started as an intern in 2013. That was the summer before the Xbox One launch. So on the first day of our internship, we got to see the console announced with our team, which was just super awesome. And then we really got to be a part of the whole experience. People were working really hard, late at nights having dinners in the office and it was really cool to be in that environment. They're in the thick of it. I kept coming back. I came back full time in 2015 and I've been in Xbox this whole time.

Larry Hryb: And of course, the obvious question people, "What do you do?" Tell people, folks part of the business that you work on.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: I am in the gaming experiences and platform team. So basically, my team is responsible for... Helps build our consoles. We ship the different OS releases, we partner with the hardware teams to build those OS releases for the hardware. It's really... Like the big project we just work on the was Scarlet launch. So the Xbox Series X consoles. Yeah, it was an amazing time. It was a lot of fun. It was a great team of people to work with.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, there's nothing like and since you both have been here with the launch of the Scarlet, the Xbox Series X and S, there's nothing like a console launch, is there?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: It is a great job.

Larry Hryb: Now that James, tell us about your journey from Louisiana to North Carolina out here to Seattle.

James Lewis: Sure. Yeah. Again, this small town in Louisiana, it was never even a dream of mine to be at Xbox. In Greensboro, I actually went through high school, undergrad, all that stuff. I was a theater major, I was a theater kid. I just knew I loved being creative and I always loved playing video games, but never knew that there were opportunities to make a career.
And so honestly, I think it was, I played Heavy Rain and I saw the making of and really something and this is like in my mid 20s and something clicked where, "Hey, there's teams that are actually making this content." Maybe there are ways that I could combine some of that creativity from theater with actually come gaming, which is something I loved.
And so I said to my wife of three years, "Hey, I'd love to take out some loans and then go to going to learn how to do some video game production." And to my surprise, she was like, "Let's go." And then fast forward 10 years, I've been at Microsoft for almost nine years and I've worked with people who are really... Everyone's like... They're living their dreams. It's a dream come true. It's just fascinating to be in this industry. Even thinking about my time at Microsoft and Xbox, I feel like I've even seen an evolution there.
I know when I first came in, it was, again, how can I fit in or how can we make sure that we're getting the right references or saying the right things, but frankly, there were times where maybe I didn't own every console that everyone else owned or I didn't play every game, and so there was this tendency of feeling like, "Maybe I don't fill in," or imposter syndrome, if you don't get all the references. And so there's just this fear and maybe some of that is like again, kind of the code switching or, "Hey, how can I try to fit in into this group?" And then you see something change over time within Xbox and within our country in general.
Which is people feel more free to be themselves. We have this kind of a mantra on bring your best self to work. And it has been interesting how free people are to actually be themselves. It's okay, if you don't get all the references. You probably have other references that you get. So it's like, even within Xbox in my career, I would say, I found that, it's been a more inviting place for people who... If you're doing awesome work, because you're passionate about it and you're working hard and just treat people like you want to be treated. It's really been kind of a great place to work. But yeah.

Larry Hryb: What part of the business are you working on now?

James Lewis: I am in first party BD. I'm sitting on the business side of things. I have the honor of actually working most of our first party studios. So we do everything from helping determine what content we'll put in for our first party. These are the future games we'll sign or even studio acquisitions, things like that. So essentially, we're making...

Larry Hryb: You're the $7 billion check for Bethesda? No-

James Lewis: I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy. Not yet. But essentially, our team has a hand in helping out with that type of stuff. But yeah.

Larry Hryb: It's interesting you brought that up because we talk about... People feel like when I go out and do events and I'm sure when you talk to your friends, people are like, "Oh, I'm not a gamer." And I look at them, and I'm like, "Then you're the exact person I want to talk to because you are a gamer inside. You may not be a hardcore gamer, that's fine. But let's bring that inner gamer out and talk to you and find out how we can connect." And it's amazing how you can connect with those types of people. I love that. One of the things that we have internally at Microsoft is the employee resource group. Tell us about that, James, and what does it do?

James Lewis: Yeah. For our group I mentioned, hey we've been around for about five years and it's kind of evolved, again, from doing things that just build a community to now we're actually like, "Hey, what are some other things that we can do internally as well as externally?" Internally, when we look at some of the goals that Satya has laid out around diversity and inclusion and we're thinking of hey, within the Black community, within Xbox, hey, what are the things that we can do to ensure that our members are getting career opportunities, they're getting proper trainings and things like that.
There's this idea that maybe opportunities are things that are given on golf courses or over a beer and that kind of thing. We're just like, "Hey, can we create opportunities within our community?" And so right now we have a series that we've started this year, which is essentially offering opportunities for some of our more senior members of the Black community within Xbox to come and give career profile.
Hey, here's how I got to this role, here's what this role is about. And so it's really an opportunity for other members to learn and to grow and to explore other opportunities. That's kind of one of the ideas of things that we do for internal people within Xbox. And then externally, we really look to support organizations like Game Devs of Color and Gameheads down in Oakland and community and partnerships with Big. And so it's really around how can we network with other people in gaming but also how can we look out for the next generation of young people who are making games now to make sure that they feel included and they have opportunities to actually continue to make those games and hopefully, bring them to Xbox or other platforms but essentially just make it into the industry.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, that's so great to hear, because that's something I've tried to do over the years and it feels like we're in a new era of that. To your point, it's much more inclusive and open. You guys are great. I was like, "Oh, we've got Black History Month coming up. Let me you guys on here." You guys were like, "Let's do it." I'm just so glad to have you on and we're talking about Black History Month. We're in February. Q, you tell me a little bit about what that means to you?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Yeah, I think Black History Month is a great opportunity for reflection, for education and just general celebration of Black stories. I think it's just a great time to pause and think about... Just recognize contributions of Black people and...

Larry Hryb: It's dropped a little bit again. Let's wait till she comes back. Right, James?

James Lewis: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Q, are you still with us? There you go. Okay, we got you back. Sorry.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Great opportunity to just... Great historical figures. I think I'm freezing again. This is terrible.

Larry Hryb: You're a little bit. You keep going. We can hear you now. Thank you.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: I'm sorry.

Larry Hryb: Sorry.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Yeah, I was just saying it's a great time to pause and reflect and honor Black people who've made amazing contributions to our country, but also just the various industries. I think we always remember to honor folks like MLK and like Rosa Parks, but we could stop and... Hey, Jerry Lawson is someone who was revolutionary to the games industry. He created the video game cartridge. That's awesome. I think most people don't know that.
So I think it's just a great time for us to highlight some of those stories. And working with Xbox, teams across Xbox this year has been great. We had a lot of activations to kind of highlight some awesome gains and organizations doing great work.

Larry Hryb: Let's talk about that. Because we've got some Black History Month activations going on right now. I think you may know a few of them. We've had some sales all month. There's a lot of content out there that kind of kind of aligns with this. Tell us about some of the stuff if you would, please Q?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Yes. I can just name a couple because there are a number of them. But two that I thought were really awesome, the store did a lot of work to create a landing page in the store where basically highlights games by Black creators, games with Black protagonists or primary characters, great Black media and TV shows and some organizations doing great work by serving Black communities. I think you were able to donate to some of these organizations through the Microsoft rewards program, which was really awesome to see.
And another one that I thought was really cool that we got to help plan and work with was the Undead Labs. They did a promotion, they partnered with the NAACP to create a T-shirt for their, I think, We Are Done Dying campaign. And so they partnered with a Black artist which was super awesome. And they created a custom T-shirt that's available in game as well as for purchase in the Xbox gear store. It's in game.

Larry Hryb: And in real life.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Definitely. Yeah. But it's for purchase, I think February 8th to the end of the month. Yeah. And all the proceeds for that T-shirt for the physical copy will go to the NAACP, which is also awesome.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. In fact, I tweeted about that earlier this week. It's a great thing, the in game and in real life. And then on the store, as you said earlier on the Xbox store on your console, you can go through there and check that out.
There's a lot going on there. It's just so good to see this inclusive approach to gaming. And as we said earlier, at the top of the interview that Gaming for Everyone. When you guys look forward, you've got regular day jobs of like we talked about earlier in the different parts of the world, but there's this kind of this parallel thing as the co-leads. What games are each one of you excited about? James, we'll start with you looking forward.

James Lewis: Yeah, it's a good question. Being in BD, oftentimes we get to see things pretty early. Without giving a specific-

Larry Hryb: I'm sorry. When you say BD, that's business development? That's the term.

James Lewis: Business development. Yes. Thank you. Our acronyms. But yeah, being in business development, we often get to see things pretty early. So I would say the thing that I'm most excited about is just seeing all of the new, diverse creators who are out there creating content. I think in the same way, we look at forms of media and a lot of the Black stories that are being told and television and movies and things like that, I think we're seeing more creators starting to come to the table in gaming.
As much as I'm enjoying kind of the current games that are out there, I'm really looking forward to seeing some of these other stories and these diverse perspectives that we haven't seen just yet and come to games and the type of experiences that they create. I'm looking forward to that.
But also as a father of a six-year-old daughter, just a lot of coop experiences are things that I think for me that I'm looking forward to because she's like at the beginning of her gaming journey and so finding the right things for us to connect on has been amazing.

Larry Hryb: When you think about that, when you think about the little ones, about all the opportunities that they have in terms of games and then even as careers because when I was growing there was no thing as a career in video games. I'm sure you guys heard the same thing when you're like, "I'm going to go into video games." Your family was like, "Are you sure you want to do that?" Now it's like, "Why, of course. You're going to go into video games." It's kind of awesome. So that's really great to hear. What about you Q? What are you looking forward to and what are you excited about?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Yeah, first specific titles, what I'm probably most excited about is the next Elder Scrolls. I love that series.

Larry Hryb: There you go.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Skyrim, has taken so many hours of my life. And the next Breath of the Wild. I really love RPGs. That's my thing. But I think I'm also just excited for the Game Pass catalog to keep growing because I have a lot of siblings, both of my siblings are younger than me. I'm the second oldest and I play games with them all the time.
My little sister is old enough now to have a gamer tag. I've been playing a lot of Minecraft with her. Any of those, free, easy to pick up titles in Game Pass are just great for us. It's a way that we stay connected because I'm the only person in my family who's on the West Coast. Everyone else's home in Philly. And so it's a great way for me to keep that sibling relationship going.

Larry Hryb: Well, it's funny, you talked about the RPGs in oblivion. I'm sure you can't wait until Bethesda is officially part of the company, so you could be emailing Todd Howard and the team, all your bug files and all your feature requests, right?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: I saw that. And I was like, "They made this purchase for me." Just like they wanted me to have those titles in Game Pass, that's what that was.

Larry Hryb: Well, I got to tell you, it's so great to have you guys on the team and working on the cool stuff that you're working on. For those who don't know, I've been here a long time and you guys have been here a few years each. It's really a fun place to work and we love... I get to talk about it.
But you guys do all the work in terms of whether it's the business deals, or Q, you and your team are working on the dashboard updates on a regular basis. So on behalf of all the gamers, I want to thank you for all the content you're bringing and all the great cool features and things you're doing for us. Thank you again for that. And more importantly, thank you for coming and talking about Gaming for Everyone and Black History Month, because there's a lot to learn and there's of a lot of really cool content out there. So any anything you want to leave us with? Q, I'll start with you. Any final words?

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: I'm just super excited about the work that James and I are doing going forward, partnering with teams across Xbox to really continue to invest in Black communities and Black games. Yeah, I'm excited for our journey ahead. That's great. What about you, James?

James Lewis: Yeah, same. I just want to say thank you, again, just for the opportunity for us to talk today. I think, really, we're excited to see the direction that the industry is headed, as well as internally as well as externally. Just to be at this moment in time with Xbox, it's just an amazing honor. So a lot of cool stuff to come.

Larry Hryb: Thank you very much. Thank you for joining me today again to help educate the audience about some of the cool stuff that you all are working on and kind of the cool programs that we have here. I'm hoping that maybe out there somebody somewhere who's listening to this or watching both of you, maybe they're thinking like, "Well, wait a minute. I can go work at Microsoft and do some cool stuff and help change the world and make cool gaming experience."
So on behalf of everybody on the podcast, thank you very much for joining us guys. I would love some time in the future to have you on again. So the door's always open, just let me know one or both of you. We'll get you both on and next time Q, we're going to get you a hardwired connection there.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: [inaudible].

Larry Hryb: Thanks gang.

James Lewis: Awesome. Thank you.

Qamar "Q" Muhai...: Thank you.

Larry Hryb: And joining us again, there he is Jason Ronald. Jason, good to see you. It's time for some platform updates.

Jason Ronald: Excited to be back, Larry. Happy New Year to you.

Larry Hryb: Happy New Year. It's been it's been a while since we've had you on and I know the team took a little bit of time off after the holiday. But they're back in it. We've got some things to talk about. So let's just jump in and tell us what's new with Xbox One Series X, S and Xbox One.

Jason Ronald: Yeah, as you mentioned post-launch, the team's like a little bit of an extended break. Very well deserved break. But it was also a really good chance for us to kind of lean back and just listen to the community and listen how people are using the consoles, what they're excited about, areas that we can improve. And as you said, now that the team is back, we're starting to release a series of updates.
And we just released an update earlier this week, really addressing some of the feedback from the community. One area that we really focused on was at launch, we had to disable quick resume, on some titles in the launch window. The team's been working really hard to be able to re-enable those titles so that people are getting that great, quick resume experience on all the titles that people are playing.
In other areas like we've seen reports of things like controller disconnects as an example. That's another area that the team's really been investing in to make sure that you're just getting that best in-class experience on the Xbox Series X and Series S.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. That's a great call. And I want to point out that the we're talking about... You guys have a build numbering system. This is 2102, 21, the year, 02 the month, and that's now available. And folks should be downloading that over Xbox Series X, S and Xbox One. It's great to point out that certainly the next gen features like quick resume, the older consoles don't support that. But a lot of these other quality of life things that you've been working on, some of them will go back to the Xbox One generation, correct?

Jason Ronald: Exactly. That's the thing is when we say we're listening to the community, it includes everybody, including people on Xbox One, people on Xbox Series X and S. And that feedback is critically important to us because it really drives our priorities. We want to make sure that we're really delighting our fans, regardless of what device you choose to play on.

Larry Hryb: Now, I was reading this interesting thing about smart delivery was a huge boom over the holiday. Tell us about it from your side. You got an interesting stat that I was hearing you're going to share with us.

Jason Ronald: Yeah, we're really proud of how people are using the consoles and really enjoying smart delivery. We've had close to 6 million smart delivery upgrades since launch. That's just really exciting to see, because that means people are jumping in and playing their games. They're always guaranteed to get that best version of these titles on the device that they're choosing to play on.

Larry Hryb: Great. That means they own perhaps the game when they bought it on Xbox One and now they upgraded through their new console and this game, whatever title is and there's many, many titles just upgraded automatically. The user didn't have to do anything.

Jason Ronald: Exactly. Developers are continuing to update and optimize their titles for Xbox Series X and Series S. So whether it's a title that you're currently playing today or it's a title that a developer is going to upgrade in a couple of months, you're still going to get that best version as soon as the update's available.

Larry Hryb: And that's again, smart delivering. You can see that if you're browsing through the store on the console or on the web, you can kind of see smart delivery and some of the other cool features that the next gen handles. You talked a moment ago about looking at fan feedback and fan requests. We've also got some updates coming. We can't tell you exactly what they are, but I know there's a lot of people hard at work on the Xbox app, right?

Jason Ronald: Absolutely. One of the pieces of feedback that we've very clearly seen is people are missing features like achievements as an example in the Xbox app. So over the coming months, we're going to be updating the Xbox mobile app to add things like achievements. And then other areas that we're really focused on. As we think about the console experiences, we've listened to the feedback about improvements of broadcasting as an example.
Another thing is the sharing experience and the quality of things like game DVR. And then I mentioned earlier about enabling quick resume for even more titles since launch. We've also seen the feedback about people want more understanding of how quick resume works and more control over the experience. These are all areas that are really high priorities for us, as we're looking at future updates over the coming months and you'll be able to start seeing some of these experiences in the Insider rings really soon.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, if you want to do that, I can put a link in the notes below about how to sign up for an Insider ring. And maybe kind of like get a look at what Jason and the development team is doing and where we're thinking of going and planning with some of the newer features.
I know that there's just so much activity and the team has come back after this holiday and kind of looked at... We launched consoles, not just one, but two consoles and they're going very, very well. Millions of people are out there playing but there's so much more work to do. Tell me a little bit about kind of what's going on in the future. Give us a hint about the look ahead, will you?

Jason Ronald: Yeah. As a team, we're just really excited by this initial response from fans all around the world. At launch, we say it all the time internally, this is really just the beginning. We've got a lot of really exciting things that are coming down the pipeline over the coming months and over the coming years.
We're also partnering really closely with key game developers from all across the industry to really take full advantage of all the next gen capabilities that we put in the Xbox Series S and Series X and we really are excited as we get further into the year and closer to this holiday to start sharing more of the details about what's in development, and how you can really take advantage of these next gen platforms.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, there's there's a lot coming. I can't really say too much, you kind of did there. But I know that's one of the things that keeps me so excited. I have a console here. It's not this one, I have another console that's on our take home and you guys are pushing builds every day to me. Trust me, my bandwidth cap tells me that.
You're pushing the bills all the time and we're checking these out and I'm filing bugs and it's great to have that type of feedback not internally, but also everybody at home can participate when you're in the insider ring. So it's great to see that. I know that we've got a lot of stuff planned Jason. So again, I say this to you all the time, but I think we're going to have you on again sooner rather than later, right?

Jason Ronald: Yeah. You should tell Jeff I'm coming after him. I heard he was a little bit afraid of me coming and taking his job, so let him know I'm on my way.

Larry Hryb: I'm telling you right now, he's just going to say uncle. He's just going to back up slowly. But Jason, it's great talking to you. Great chatting with you. I'll let you get back to work with the team. And again, if folks want to sign up for insider and get a look up the pipeline, that's the best way to do it and join us at Xbox Insiders and help us make Xbox continue to make Xbox great. Thanks so much, Jason.

Jason Ronald: Thanks Larry.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Thanks so much, Jr. You're welcome back here on the show anytime. There's room for both of us. There's room for multiple JRs. You're the one who actually gets things done-

Larry Hryb: There's room for JRs but clearly Jeff doesn't have the beard that's going to box his out. So I don't know what's going on over there.

Jeff Rubenstei...: No. I have better internet than he does, it seems like. That's about all I've got on it. You know what? I just want to thank you, Jr Please, for the achievements in the mobile app-

Larry Hryb: Not yet. Coming soon. Coming soon.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Coming soon.

Larry Hryb: Coming soon.

Jeff Rubenstei...: But thank you for listening. I am one of those vocal people. I'll be very happy to have that back.

Larry Hryb: Very excited he also kind of talked a little bit about it, but I guess I can say a little bit, there will be some enhancement news coming soon. It's all I can say.

Jeff Rubenstei...: All right. We'll leave it at that. I'm sure we'll be reading that 20 minutes after this podcast goes live.

Larry Hryb: Who knows? We've got... What do you got over there? Do you have some news for me? I don't even know if I have the ticker over here anymore.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Well, yeah, actually I do have some some news here from this week. So actually, just we're coming out of JR talking about things like optimizations. I want to call out Crash Bandicoot 4. That announced this week that Crash Bandicoot for it's about time, it will be optimized.

Larry Hryb: It says-

Jeff Rubenstei...: Out-staged by the ticker. Out-staged by the ticker. There we go.

Larry Hryb: Hey, when is it going to be optimized? On what date?

Jeff Rubenstei...: It's on March 12. Okay, moving on. Moving on.

Larry Hryb: Okay, go ahead.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Anyway, no additional cost. If you do already have or you're thinking about Crash Bandicoot 4 on Xbox Series X or S, I better hurry out because the stories are hitting really quickly here. Congratulations to [inaudible] and Double 11 who, I think it's Double 11... Minecraft Dungeons. I love Minecraft Dungeon. We actually had a meeting in Minecraft Dungeons. Our team, we gathered four of us last Friday.

Larry Hryb: I wasn't invited to that meeting.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I had already had four people-

Larry Hryb: Oh, you already had four. Okay.

Jeff Rubenstei...: There's a bunch of stats out here. Let's see. The [inaudible] has been defeated 5,934,000 times. That means 4 million if you have played the game and not yet been beaten the [inaudible]. Please get on it.

Larry Hryb: Do the math.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yes, exactly. The Redstone monstrosity has been defeated 7 million times however, out of 19 billion. So it's about a one in three chance so definitely a tough enemy here. That's pretty awesome. Of course the game is available on Xbox Game Pass. It's also available on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Series X, PC, Game Pass.
I've played it on at least three of those platforms and they've added a lot of cool stuff, new merchants so if you'd played when it first came out, and you're like what do I do with these emeralds? You kind of got like a random box. It wasn't good enough. Now there are more options of things that you can get with a little bit more control if you have a particular item that you want to power it up.
You can leave it with this Blacksmith type character and you go and you do a couple missions, you come back and your item has been powered up. I love the beam, the energy beam one that absorbs the souls and then you shoot out this Cyclops from X-men level just sort of beam. It's cool. I like that one. Anyway, so congrats to the Minecraft team.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah. Forza Horizon 4. A game that I've put in many, many hours on and if you for some reason, listen to this podcast and haven't tried it out, it's now available in another option to you on Steam. Actually, that's coming out on March 9. So another... We've seen a lot of our games show up on Steam. They seem to do very well. Have you looked at the top 10 games for Steam last year? Top 15 games for Steam last year? You saw Microsoft Studios or Xbox Studios quite all over the place.
Who knows? Maybe another one here, Forza Horizon 4. I'm just going to say it, the best racing game ever created.

Larry Hryb: I have a lot of friends of mine who have meetings in that game. Because it's either that or the other one that you and I've been playing a little bit. Did we do it last week, Jeff? Yeah, we did. The week or maybe was two weeks ago, we played Sea of Thieves.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Oh yeah, that's a good one to have some meetings in. Unless you're under attack. It's either super chill or it's-

Larry Hryb: It's Chaos.

Jeff Rubenstei...: "Oh my god. Where's this gunfire coming from?"

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we've got that. By the way, I think I'm working on next week we're going to get the executive producer, can see if he's on Joni. We're going to roll him in here. So stay tuned.

Jeff Rubenstei...: We've been having fun jumping back into that. I saw you were on this last Friday and I wasn't able to make it because I had stuff going on but if we're doing it again this Friday, I would love to get in there and join-

Larry Hryb: We did talk about who we go out with which is a friend of ours, Ryan Trite. He's doing basically nightly charters and you have to sign up early because he goes out he's a captain. He'll tell you what to do.

Jeff Rubenstei...: He's a grizzled seaman.

Larry Hryb: But he'll take you out and we'll... I'll see if I can get Ryan. He may be booked already and we'll have to go out by ourselves. We'll do the best we can. It's a three hour tour.

Jeff Rubenstei...: That did not go well. When we went out with him, he was incredibly patient with us. He was with some more salty or sea dogs, probably would have had a lot more luck-

Larry Hryb: He's patient with you and some of our other friends. He doesn't have any patience for me. He gets angry with me because I seem to ask him, "What is this again?" Because I skipped through the dialogue or something, he gets very angry with me. He won't even answer me sometimes.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Let's see what else this week. Destiny 2: Season of the Chosen has arrived on Xbox. If you play a lot of Destiny, you probably knew that already. But if not, it goes from February 9th up until May 11. Pretty good sale here.
So it's almost Lunar New Year which growing up, me because of my neighbors or now because of my family, we celebrate it Chinese New Year. But the Lunar New Year, it's the Year of the Ox coming up and... My kids are Year the of Ox. Pretty stubborn. There might be connection there. Pretty big sale.

Larry Hryb: I'm not saying anything.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I hope she didn't hear me. She wouldn't disagree. So some pretty big sales here on games like Black Ops: Cold War, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Watchdogs: Legion, Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Red Dead Redemption 2. Just a ton more games. And on PC up to 75% off on select games, including games like Sea of Thieves. Forza Horizon 4, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition 1, 2 and 3.

Larry Hryb: All right.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Check it out. It's a sale. Even if you're not Year of the Ox, it's still something that you still get the discounts as it turns out. What year are you? What's your animal?

Larry Hryb: I have no idea. How do I find this out? Do I want to go look?

Jeff Rubenstei...: You could look it up.

Larry Hryb: All right. All right. Well, let's...

Jeff Rubenstei...: I'm snake. The Year of the Snake.

Larry Hryb: Okay, let's take a look.

Jeff Rubenstei...: That's probably... Am I a Slytherin? I don't know. But maybe. I've called this a bit people-

Larry Hryb: Guess what, Jeffrey?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: We're the same.

Jeff Rubenstei...: You're a snake?

Larry Hryb: I'm a snake.

Jeff Rubenstei...: You're a snake. Snake cast. Look at. You mean that we are 12 years apart?

Larry Hryb: Or something along those-

Jeff Rubenstei...: That's why I get some of your references, but not all of them.

Larry Hryb: No. All right.

Jeff Rubenstei...: We're going to start our new podcast in parcel tongue. [inaudible].

Larry Hryb: All right.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Just a couple of more things. Since it is the middle of the month, I want remind you that Xbox Live games with Gold, those are Windows, those games switch over in the middle of the month. So on February 16, look out for [inaudible] and also for Lost Planet 2.

Larry Hryb: [crosstalk] I remember that.

Jeff Rubenstei...: You want to make sure you get Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. I got to get Resident Evil, the original Resident Evil remake. But you have the whole month for that, all of February. As well as Gears 5. You have all of February. That's for people that have Xbox Live Gold, or of course Xbox Game Pass on Xbox Game Pass ultimate.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Last game. Maybe this is for me, because I finished.

Larry Hryb: Maybe, maybe.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I finished The Medium. Little Nightmares II is out this week.

Larry Hryb: That's right. So I finished the first one. I finished the first one. I loved it. Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Okay. Well, it's a pretty low price. It's 29.99. The game is from NAMACO BANDAI. It's a world of charming horror. Charming?

Larry Hryb: Is that the tagline? Is that what it says on the back of the virtual box?

Jeff Rubenstei...: It does.

Larry Hryb: A world of charming horror-

Jeff Rubenstei...: [crosstalk] Trapped in a world that has been distorted by the humming transmission of a distant tower. We will not speculate what kind of tower that is because we do not spread such things on this podcast.

Larry Hryb: In a world. In a world.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Cool. That's out by the time you hear this. And that is the news this week.

Larry Hryb: It's been a good week. It's picking up speed. We got a lot going on here. I'm glad we finally were able to get together this week and do the show and thank you to all my guests this week. We got some... Actually, I was just looking at the schedule. You and I were going back and forth on some of the interviews. I'm going to have you be doing something you're doing some of the interviews in the future.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yeah. I look forward to it.

Larry Hryb: We're booked through the end of February. We're two to three guests each show. It's crazy. March is-

Jeff Rubenstei...: People want the platform. Larry, they want to be on this show.

Larry Hryb: No, it's because of you dear listeners and dear viewers because of your liking and subscribing and the bell and the whole thing that happens over there.

Jeff Rubenstei...: All that stuff. But you know what? We do appreciate it. We really do. Make sure you leave us that comment. We're seeing most of the comments are on YouTube. That's great. That's where you're comfortable. I will say thank you for making it... Criticism is fine. Constructive criticism, we love it. The general rule of thumb when you work in this business is don't read the comments. We read the comments and we really appreciate the comments that you've been leaving on YouTube.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, in fact, some of the comments were how my audio was messed up. So I'm like, "All right. I got to fix this." So I got an audio engineer to come in here. Jeff's got his microphone. He's got... You can't tell but I actually have my in-ear headphones here. I feel like... I don't know, I feel like Bono or something with these in here.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Is that the most recent reference? That's a year the snake reference right there.

Larry Hryb: Okay, okay. Okay. Machine Gun Kelly, was that better?

Jeff Rubenstei...: That's a little better.

Larry Hryb: Okay. Okay. Either way. But yeah, we do read the comments. So I brought the audio engineer, I think we fixed the audio issues we were getting. This is we're just constantly iterating. If there's a separate thread that Jeff and I have that internal thread, I'm going to jump this is going to surprise you, we need a show open. We're going to have to figure out a show open. I saw that email.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Yes, we need a show open. Something interesting.

Larry Hryb: I need to find a good animator who wants so I can hire to do this.

Jeff Rubenstei...: If you have any ideas, let us know.

Larry Hryb: Send me your portfolio. Hit me up. Hold on a second. Jeff is going... This is how you hit us up. Do it again, Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I just was saying, let us know in the comments or you go you see our Twitter handles. If you have an idea who should be doing that animation, who should be putting together an open, we'd love a new one because... It's a little abrupt. We're coming right at you right out of the gate. We need to ease you in.

Larry Hryb: And by the way, let me be clear. This is one of the largest podcasts out there. There's no monetization here. This is all free for you. I don't...

Jeff Rubenstei...: You don't want to do like an order for Blue Apron or-

Larry Hryb: I'm just saying like all the ads and all that crap along the bottom-

Jeff Rubenstei...: Larry, what's for dinner? Dinner again?

Larry Hryb: Hey, by the way, have you heard about this great new VPN? No.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Actually, we're not sponsored, but we pack in more TOTO WASHLET references per week than any other podcast.

Larry Hryb: Exactly. Well, I am a toilet I am a toilet WASHLET influence or now. Whatever that means.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Is that true?

Larry Hryb: I don't know. I told you, I had a call with WASHLET, with TOTO and they showed me all their line of new WASHLETs. And I was like, "Wow." Either I've done something great or done something horrifically wrong.

Jeff Rubenstei...: If I'm something of a Yakuza influencer and you're something about TOTO WASHLET influencer, I feel like there's something there. I feel like in one of... I think it was in Yakuza Kiwami 2, there was actually a urinal mini game that you could play. We can bring these things together Larry. We can do this.

Larry Hryb: I'm [inaudible]. We're always going to bring it back to gaming for you, whether it's gamifying that, your bathroom trip or something else. We'll try to do our best.

Jeff Rubenstei...: It was called toilets. T-O-Y-L-E-T-S.

Larry Hryb: You remember this?

Jeff Rubenstei...: God bless the localization people.

Larry Hryb: But it works. It absolutely works.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I'm seeing some requests for captioning as well. People are looking for that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I thought I turned captioning on. Just over at my blog at majornelson.com/podcast, that's where it is. There's actually a full textual transcript. If you just want to read it, or search and what have you, then that usually goes up the day over, the day after the whole show post. But I thought I turned on captions. So I got to go figure out why they're not showing up.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Full credit to the person who says that I'm really funny.

Larry Hryb: Are you-

Jeff Rubenstei...: By the way, [inaudible]. They really thought that one was really far down. But it's fine. It's fine.

Larry Hryb: All right.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I give it a thumbs up.

Larry Hryb: Okay, thank you. I will do the same as well. All right, Jeff. We'll be back next week. We got a lot more interviews next week. I want to thank Jason and everybody for joining us on the show this week. Q and James, it was great to hear from them as well and all the great work that they're working on.
So thank you. Thank you, gang. Jeff, yes, you have something you'd like to say?

Jeff Rubenstei...: I just want to add one more plug. For the next two weeks, as part of our celebration of Black History Month, we're going to be having a number of awesome Black streamers from the community broadcasting on twitch.tv/Xbox. Keep an eye out. We're going to be tweeting out the calendar at the beginning of next week.

Larry Hryb: I'll retweet that. I'll retweet that.

Jeff Rubenstei...: On twitter.com. Yeah, that'd be great. I appreciate it. I'll be doing the same and some really good folks that we know personally that we wanted to basically introduced to you.

Larry Hryb: Can we get them on? Can we get them on the show? This show?

Jeff Rubenstei...: I think we could probably set something up.

Larry Hryb: If they can squeeze it in.

Jeff Rubenstei...: Let's work on that. That'd be great.

Larry Hryb: Was that your house? Did someone just go by with a muffler off?

Jeff Rubenstei...: Somebody drove by. Yeah somebody with an exhaust system went by. Whatever, I live in the city Larry. You hear all kinds of noises. That's the least of my concerns.

Larry Hryb: It's funny, as Jeff and I were talking is it's we're recording this right now and it's sunny in Seattle which is so bizarre because... Well, the sun's going down now, they had to close everything here to put the studio lights on but it looks like the sun's going down. So Jeff you and I need to usually record this right before lunch but we're recording it at the end of the day.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I already ate so we're just going and going and going. Usually, we've got to cut this off-

Larry Hryb: Got to go. I'm hungry. My stomach is growling. But anyway, yeah, as Jeff said, please like, subscribe, leave the comments. More importantly the comments and all that. That's that's really what we need your help in making your show, this is your show, better, the Xbox podcast. So Jeff final words and then we're going to we're going to fade the black.

Jeff Rubenstei...: I just want to say thank you so much. We can't do it without you. Please let us know what you want, what you need, we're here for you.

Larry Hryb: See you next time. Bye-bye everybody.