733: FPS Boost, Apex and Sea of Thieves celebrate anniversaries

Larry Hryb:
Hi, it's Larry Hryb Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Welcome to the podcast. Another week, another show, more games, more news, more Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
More me. That sounds like a mirage line, I think.

Larry Hryb:
That's right, it does. Let's talk about Apex.

Jeff Rubenstein:
How about a little more me.

Larry Hryb:
Got an Apex action going on. We'll talk about that in the show. Got a little interview action that Jeffrey did. Thank you for that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh yeah. Happy to be here. Happy to talk more of that; Yakuza and Apex, it's my life.

Larry Hryb:
Well, you know you are a Yakuza influencer.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm starting to believe that may be the case. It's certainly not scientific, but the amount of times it gladdens me when I see someone reply to something like, "I played Yakuza because of you." Incessantly talking about it. And I love it. And I'm like, "Yes."

Larry Hryb:
We have somebody that works in our team, Richard, who we were doing a meeting yesterday. And I didn't think he was going to [inaudible 00:01:02]. I remember he messaged me a few weeks ago. He goes like, "I'm playing a lot of this game." And then yesterday he told you to your face. He's like, "You're the reason I'm in this." So it was great.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's the Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I'm telling you it might not be for you, but you don't know if it's for you until you've tried it. And once you try it, you might be all in. Here's the thing, I didn't know. It turned out that it was not for me and now it is for me, something like that.

Larry Hryb:
And now it's for everybody. And it's especially for you, if you have Game Pass.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That is true. Oh yeah, we are coming up. We've had Yakuza 3, 4 and 5 and then 6 is just a month away. I'm making progress. Actually, that's what I'm playing. I started Yakuza 4. So I finished Yakuza 3. We talked about that last week and I was like, "Well, let me give myself a little bit of space before Yakuza 4, before jumping into that." And I ended up playing Haven. I talked a little bit about this game last week.

Larry Hryb:
What is the game for those people that didn't hear last week or they're not familiar?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. So it was made by a French team, Game Bakers. And it's sort of a very colorful exploratory RPG. There's definitely RPG and battle elements like turn-based RPG elements, but it is not quite like that. It really focuses on a relationship between these two characters. And if you've played persona or something like that, that's the beginnings of a relationship; you're flirting with people.

Larry Hryb:
You love that game.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I do. And then it picks it like, "Oh, you have a real social link with them." This is later. This is a couple that's been together and what their dynamic is like... And they're still discovering things about each other, but they're all in on each other.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And you don't see that represented in games. You see that in movies all the time, but this felt like a movie level sort of like dialogue and experience. And basically every time you make dinner together because you cook, you go out, you find different things that you can for sustenance and you blend them together. And there ends up being a cut scene.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Or every time you go to sleep, one person can't sleep and you end up having dialogue. And that's how you level up, you've increased your chemistry together. And then that gives you more hit points. It improves your powers, your blast attacks, your impact attacks or how you attack together. And it was a joy. It was just so different taking the sort of like numerical aspect into it. There's still numbers, but it's just a very different take.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Anyway, it's on Xbox Game Pass. By the way, the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. I added it on Spotify. It's by a band called Danger, a French techno band. And there is just a lot to like here. I would say, load it up, let it play by the way, the attract mode, if you will, sort of the animation that plays at the beginning. In fact, I want you to do this, Larry, very reminiscent of like a watercolor sketch of a take on me, which I know you love that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
In fact, I want you to start downloading it during one of the interviews because it's only a short game, it's like four gigs or something. It doesn't take up a lot of space. And then the music, just, if that doesn't grab you, then maybe this game is not going to be for you. And I would also say your music tastes needs some work if it does not grab you. So anyway, Haven, really loved it, check it out. Great voice acting, looks beautiful, really interesting game. I think it took me 17 hours to beat. So it's not a huge commitment.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Then I jumped back into Yakuza 4, which actually starts in a very different way. And so I'm super into that too. So, man, I'm just happy about things right now. I'm happy about gaming. Let's narrow it down here. Happy there's many things to enjoy on the gaming side. What about you, Larry, what are you playing? I see Sea of Thieves back there.

Larry Hryb:
I've got Joe Neate, the executive producer for Sea of Thieves. I've got him on the show. We'll do good interview long interview later on. He and I talk about that and hopefully, he'll take my feature request. I'm playing Little Nightmares II. You can see that right about here; terrible, it's blurry. We've got Apex over here.

Larry Hryb:
I'm still chugging away through the medium. I've got [inaudible 00:05:20] over here. So this is the show right here, those are the active things that I'm kind of in working against. It's funny because I'm over here with my console trying to find Haven. That's what I've been clicking through over here. So bear with me a moment.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, how are you enjoying Little Nightmares II? So this week, and I think we might've talked about it last week. We've invited a number of Black creators to join X-Box's Twitch channel. And in that first one we had Zombie Kills. She came on and she streamed a Little Nightmares II.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And man, it was a very stressful stream. It's funny, because it looks like it has like very, I don't want to say cute, but it doesn't look like your typical horror game, but it can be super scary even when it's not blood gushing or anything, be disturbing.

Larry Hryb:
Horror, it's suspense. There's a lot going on in this game and it is a little concerning. By the way, I just want to point out that... There you go, 3.71. I'm downloading.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Good. All right. You're downloading awesome. Using the light mode.

Larry Hryb:
I'm using the automatic mode.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, so in the day it's-

Larry Hryb:
It's light, at night it's dark.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Maybe I should do that.

Larry Hryb:
You do what you want to do, do what you want to do.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Player choice, but-

Larry Hryb:
It's all about choice.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's our mantra.

Larry Hryb:
So Little Nightmares II, I think I'm in the second chapter. I don't really want to say too much for spoilers reason. But yeah, I mean, there's some stressful moments in there and there's some disturbing things that happen and it's Little Nightmares. It's just like you'd expect.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Okay. It still nightmare, emphasis on the nightmares.

Larry Hryb:
Emphasis on the nightmares. Do you have nightmares? Do you have dreams? Do you dream at all when you're sleeping?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I have very lucid dreams. Yes. I usually remember them for quite a while. And remember we were talking like a few months ago after I was playing all those Ubisoft games, like Assassin's Creed and Watchdogs and Phoenix Rising. I had a recurring dream, I was working at Ubisoft. And so yeah, I tend to have... In fact, Haven very much insinuated itself in my dreams especially the music. And I was dreaming about the music a lot and it was really interesting. Sometimes you're in my dreams.

Larry Hryb:
Really? I hope I'm not some weird character.

Jeff Rubenstein:
In a professional capacity, Larry, we're co-workers; we talk all the time. Most of my dreams are work-related which is interesting. And usually take place in either Philly where I'm from or London, for some reason. A lot of dreams in London.

Larry Hryb:
That's interesting. I wish I could say that. I may dream, but when I wake up almost like, I don't remember anything; very rarely do I dream, but what does happen is sometimes later that day or the next [inaudible 00:08:11] I'm like, "Oh, wait a minute. I had this crazy dream." It's downloaded.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There it is. So here, go ahead and hit it. And there's a really cool sort of art style that will kick in when it goes to the attract mode. You'll see, it'll go white and there'll be some dots that are going there. As you can see, it's a very colorful game just based on that key art, if you will. The two characters there are Yu and Kay. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, they escape, they leave the place that they're from. I wonder if it's referencing Brexit in some way. I don't know. We'll have to ask developers.

Larry Hryb:
Where's it made?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I think it's France. Just let it go.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, you're right. I haven't even pressed A yet.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. Once I saw this, I was like, "I'm going to love this game." This could be off of Daft Punk discovery as can a number of other tracks throughout the-

Larry Hryb:
I'm just going to let it go.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, there's a whole playlist on Spotify by Danger and they did great work.

Larry Hryb:
Should we let it go?

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's like three minutes. Leave the music under as a bed is what you should do, and we can come back. I ended up tweeting out one of the voice actors, because the voice performance is phenomenal as well. See, this game is for you. It's you're in or out at that point. When I was starting it up, I was like, "Larry's going to like that. He's going to think of aha, take on me." Not from the music perspective, but just the style.

Larry Hryb:
The art style is this beautiful, very bright water colors. There's passion in here.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It on X-Box Game Pass both for PC and for console, and you can actually pass back and forth.

Larry Hryb:
Is it an RPG? Is it [crosstalk 00:10:33].

Jeff Rubenstein:
No, it's not; you control your characters. It's very exploratory. It gets into a story. So I wouldn't just start it, you don't just jump right in and start playing. But really cool opening, right?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's awesome.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And yeah. And so you've got like these rocket boots and the two of you are always together, but you can choose who takes the lead and you're sort of like... This is what the game looks like, and you're sort of skating or rocketing through the grass. And you're exploring and you're searching and you're sort of almost in a Super Mario sunshine esque way, cleaning up this rust; this sort of like this mess that's on the planet. You end up uncovering everything about it. All the questions are answered. There's some great world-building in this.

Larry Hryb:
[inaudible 00:11:17] eight hours.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It took me about 15, 16 hours, and I played really thoroughly. And so you could definitely clear through it quicker than that.

Larry Hryb:
And you did the recent Seattle Snowpocalypse, didn't you?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I did. I finished it while it was snowing out. How much snow did you get by your way? It's all melted now.

Larry Hryb:
We probably got about at least 12 or 13 inches when all is said and done.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's interesting, because it's one of those things where, and we're seeing this now. And I hope if you're watching this in the middle of the country in Texas or someplace that you're doing well-

Larry Hryb:
And you're warm.

Jeff Rubenstein:
But it's sort of like this thing where if you're in the Midwest, you're like, "Oh, foot of snow, who cares?" But if you're not used to having it and if your city is not equipped for it and by the way we have hills, very steep. It's like San Francisco level here; you can't drive on that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And if you're not used to this type of... The infrastructure is not there, then it can be really tough. So as soon as it starts snowing, it was like, "That's it, we're not leaving the house. We're not going anywhere if you can't walk there." It's really good. And some of the music within the game is even better.

Larry Hryb:
Haven.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Haven, Xbox Game Pass.

Larry Hryb:
We're 20 minutes in and were completely off the rails.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I know. So do you want to keep doing... There's a couple of news pieces that are worth. This was pretty well mentors week, so we have the headset. So the only thing I can think of that's better than being able to play the games that you bought years ago to be able to just re-download them into your Xbox Series S or Series X, only thing that could be better would be if they're better too. And we made an announcement this week that is beginning to happen.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So we announced something called FPS Boost. And what that means is that there are certain games that the wizards, that our backward compatibility team are making certain games that had some overhead because they're playing now on a much more powerful system than they were conceived to be able to run a double or even quadruple the frame rate. So we're talking games like Far Cry 4, Sniper Elite 4, Watch Dogs 2, UFC 4 moving from 30 to 60 frames a second. What's so funny, Larry?

Larry Hryb:
Just keep going, because I have an interview for this. I forgot to tell you; it's somebody who obviously wants your job.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Jason Ronald is back? Then I'm just going to shut up. Why don't we just go to Jason? That's two weeks in a row. He's moving in, he's making himself comfortable.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Let's talk to Jason about the frame rate boost, and then we'll come back. We'll do more news.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Maybe I'll be here, maybe I won't.

Larry Hryb:
Two weeks in a row. I guess Jason, you're really gunning for Jeff's position right now. But you're back because you got some interesting news. We had you on last week to talk about dashboard updates from engineering, but this week you got something really, really cool. Tell us about it.

Jason Ronald:
Yeah. We're excited to share earlier this week we released the first set of what we call FPS Boost titles. Back in December, we showed a prototype of some of the work that we're doing via the back compat program to actually double the frame rate of existing games with no work by game developers. And this week we're sharing the first set of titles that actually take full advantage of that.

Jason Ronald:
And in these cases, the titles which historically running at 30 frames a second, and now we're able to get them to run at 60 frames a second. And there's even titles that were able to go from 60 frames a second, all the way to 120 frames a second. And it's really delivering on that next gen promise and that commitment to the real feel and fidelity of the games that you play on the Xbox platform.

Larry Hryb:
This is amazing. So FPS Boost is kind of coming to some of our back compat titles. And what developers need to do is this, is nothing because it's all being handled at the platform level, right Jason?

Jason Ronald:
Yeah. We handle this at the platform layer and with all this extra power that we have with the Xbox Series X and Series S, what used to take 33 milliseconds for a game to actually process we can do in half or a quarter of the time. So with all that extra processing power, we can really make sure that we're able to run the game at higher frame rates.

Jason Ronald:
And the only thing that a game developer needs to do is we partner with them and we make sure that they're still really happy with the experience, but there's no engineering work they need to do, there's no configuration work they need to do. We handle it all at the platform layer.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. I got to tell you, I downloaded, I don't know if you can see there, but I have Far Cry 4, which Jeff and I played through; did co-op, I think the entire game. And it was a ton of fun. And that's one of the ones that is getting FPS Boost from 30 to near 60. And I mean, it's smooth, but I haven't checked out super lucky sale. I know I've got a 120 Hertz TV behind me, so I'm going to have to check that out too. Some of these are really game changing, aren't they?

Jason Ronald:
Absolutely. And you see this even today with games that have been optimized for the developer where players are really saying frame rate matters. And it's so great to be able to go back into the back catalog and identify games that can take advantage of this new capability that we have. And then from a player's perspective, in a future update, we're actually going to provide the option to enable a player to enable or disable this on the titles that we've been able to for.

Jason Ronald:
So that way, if you want to play it the way that the game was originally running on, say an Xbox 360 or an X-Box One, you can do so. But if you want that best in class experience and you want to run it the faster frame rates, you can enable that as well, and just get that full fidelity experience.

Larry Hryb:
And what's great is if you're an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, then some of these titles that we just mentioned here are actually in Game Pass, so you can actually download them. You're getting it for free or part of your subscription anyway, but you can check them out; there's no barrier to entry. That's pretty extraordinary as well.

Jason Ronald:
Exactly. And one of the things that we learned from the auto HDR work that we did last fall is players actually want to know when their games are actually being enhanced by the platform. So just like we added the capability, when you pull up the guide to see whether or not auto HDR's enabled, in an update coming in the next couple of months, you'll also be able to see whether or not the games being boosted with its frame rate so that you are getting that premium experience.

Larry Hryb:
And what Jason's talking about is if you've played on X-Box Series X or S, and you see quick resume, you usually see that in the upper corner right over here somewhere. I'm trying to show you. It'll pop up for just a second to show you, so what your team is going to do is add even more there to really tell people, "Hey, you're having an amazing experience." Right?

Jason Ronald:
Yes, exactly. And I think it's important because for many of these games, we remember how they play and we have these fun memories. But if you haven't played the game in a while, you might forget that the game was originally running at 30 frames a second. So we want to make sure that you know that you are really getting this boosted FPS experience through the power of the platform and through the power of what we can deliver with the Xbox Series X and S.

Larry Hryb:
And to your point, Jason, way back when, I mean, maybe you didn't have a TV that could do 60 Hertz or 60 frames per second or even 120 frames per second, those are brand new. So now you can kind of go with your television, your display option in your Xbox Series X or S, it kind of unlocks these new options. Can we expect more titles or what's kind of the roadmap ahead for some of these FPS Boost titles?

Jason Ronald:
Yeah. This week is just the first set of titles that we're releasing. We have many more titles that are in development and in testing right now, and we'll continue to release more titles over the coming months. Unfortunately, this technique does not work on old titles. In some cases, the way that the game was originally written as we've been doing some testing on some of these titles, we've seen like animations run twice as fast or physics running twice as fast.

Jason Ronald:
And it was critically important to us is that we always respect the original intent of the creator. So that's why we're able to do this at the platform level. And then we work with the developer and the publisher and make sure that they still believe this really aligns with what they originally intended. And then we'll enable them for players. Like you said, whether the games in Game Pass or maybe it's a game that you have on physical media, we really want to make sure that we're just giving you that best in class experience.

Larry Hryb:
I was thinking about this because with our back compat program and now, with the auto HDR you talked about earlier that we implement now FPS Boost, Xbox Series X and S, is almost it's the best place to play some of these classic games.

Larry Hryb:
We're preserving these memories for you and your family and your son or your daughter, whoever to really get them into gaming in the best possible way. Again, hats off to that back compat team. We've always called the magicians and they seem to be re redefining their magic again and again. So, Jason, thanks so much.

Larry Hryb:
Just quick reminder Dragon Age Inquisition, Watch Dogs 2, Sniper Elite 4, UFC 4, Far Cry 4, Super Lucky's Tale running at 120 Hertz. All the rest of those are running up to 60 or near 60. It's pretty amazing. Thanks for that. I'll link off to the blog post, and again, we'll get you on and we have some more news. Jason, anything else to add before I let you go?

Jason Ronald:
Just we're really excited and I could totally agree with you, the back combat team continues to do amazing work and we're really excited for what we're going to deliver later this year.

Larry Hryb:
Thanks, Jason.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The real J.R, Jason Ronald. Thanks so much for once again co-hosting the show.

Larry Hryb:
Two weeks in a row, he's come on.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Here's the thing I show up and I talk about a song, he shows up and he's like, "Look what my team did. They made a bunch of games better." So he deserves the spot. I'm just going to relinquish it, but always great to hear from J.R. He's actually had a really great interview talking about how this was done with Colt Eastwood.

Larry Hryb:
I like Colt. I love him.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, he's a great guy. Someone we've talked to for a long time and he had some really great questions. And so it was a really enlightening interview. You can find that over on YouTube to show for Colt Eastwood. And he's got a very good audio set up, very sort of jealous. He's got a full studio. He's a guitarist. I think he plays his theme song.

Larry Hryb:
He is a talent.

Jeff Rubenstein:
He is. Anyway, so a little bit more news here before we get into some of our other interviews.

Larry Hryb:
[inaudible 00:22:08].

Jeff Rubenstein:
Thank you. What did we talk about every other show?

Larry Hryb:
Yakuza?

Jeff Rubenstein:
The gift that keeps on giving?

Larry Hryb:
No, Game Pass.

Jeff Rubenstein:
No. We talk about Yakuza every show. Xbox Game Pass, more games announced this week. I'm really excited about this. If you hadn't played DIRT 5, one of the showcases, I think for technology on X-Box Series S and Series X; great team. code-ys that pulled that together. So yes.

Larry Hryb:
That's [inaudible 00:22:40] for codemasters, code-ys.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And so that is coming on February 25th on cloud console and PC; really enjoy this game.

Larry Hryb:
Maybe [crosstalk 00:22:50] Spring Gate. He's a-

Jeff Rubenstein:
That'd be great. Yeah. Now talk to him on Twitter. That's a really fun game, they've added a lot of features. They've continued to iterate onto the game with new content. And it's just really fun. I had a lot of fun with it, a lot of cool modes, and of course it's beautiful. What else? We've got Elite Dangerous on console. It's like, what if you put the whole galaxy in a game? Literally, you can fly it up Alpha Centauri, you can just-

Larry Hryb:
I think I played it for an hour and couldn't even undock my spaceship, because it's crazy.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. And they've added a lot more to it. In terms of space combat, I think you might even be able to get out of the ship these days. This is a game that they've been iterating on for a long time. I want to say I played at a PAX East, 2015, for the first time and here we are in 2021.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Definitely if a real life mapping of the galaxy and go wherever you want sounds like something that's fun to you, you should definitely give it a shot and you can play this in the background just for that suitable space vibes. You going to be playing this forever.

Larry Hryb:
I think that link [inaudible 00:24:02] by the way.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I will send that to you as soon as we're off air. A couple more games, Killer Queen Black. If you've been into an arcade at any point in the last couple of years, you've probably seen Killer Queen. It's sort of a new school arcade game that is made, I want to say up this part of the country; very much elements of Joust and four people playing at once.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, now it's coming to Xbox and is coming straight into X-Box Game Pass, which was phenomenal on February 23rd. And you can play solo, but you'd want to team up with three friends and there's up to three possible victory conditions, which is really cool.

Larry Hryb:
Killer Queen Black [inaudible 00:24:46] now.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, which is the ultimate addition from our good friends at Obsidian Entertainment, a mega huge RPG of a very different style than a game like Haven and this is the sort of the ultimate version of that. We've got Wreckfest coming to console, PC and cloud. And then a couple of games that I believe are on the console, but now coming to Game Pass for PC.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Superhot: Mind Control Delete, you might've played Superhot years ago when it first came out. Mind Control Delete, the addition essentially doubled the size of the game. And then Code Vein, which is a really cool looking game from Bandai Namco with I heard one of the best character creators in games of the past few years. All those, is coming soon to Xbox Game Pass.

Larry Hryb:
To Xbox Game Pass.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Are you good?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So who are we talking to next, Larry?

Larry Hryb:
Well, we've got a couple. We're going to talk about Apex, you were able to do the Apex interview. So why don't we do that, Jeff? Why don't we go ahead and we'll talk to Chad from-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Chad Grenier?

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Talk to him from the Apex team we'll and then after that, on the other side of it, I'm really excited to talk to Joe Neate who's the executive producer for Sea of Thieves. So Jeff is going to take it away. We talk first, Apex.

Jeff Rubenstein:
If we Renamed the Xbox podcast based on what we talk about on the show, there's a good chance that this would be called the Apex Legends weekly podcast. And so it's well overdue that we bring someone on from Respawn Entertainment and we did not just bring in anyone on we're bringing on Chad Grenier, the game director of Apex Legends at Respawn Entertainment. Chad, thank you so much for joining us.

Chad Grenier:
You're welcome, and we're happy to be here. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Larry and I, this is how we've been able to connect throughout the entirety of where we've been indoors for the last year. And I got to say, you've got some big fans here. We're two years in, I put in over 500 hours still No heirloom, we'll talk about that off camera, but this is a game that we've just had so much fun with.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And over the course of the last two years, you're celebrating the two anniversary of Apex. Can you just talk a little bit about what these last couple of years have been like and the journey that the game has been on, it has changed tremendously since it's launched back in 2019?

Chad Grenier:
Yeah, it has. The history of Respawn, we hadn't done live service game before. And so we were creating this multiplayer game that we thought would be pretty good. We were playing it every night at the studio; closer to launch, we were playing it all hours of the night. We wouldn't go home from work. We just we're playing this game. And so we hope that other people would enjoy it, but you never really know.

Chad Grenier:
So we released this game in secrecy and just kind of surprise launched it thinking, "Hey, maybe we'll get a million players over a couple of years, or maybe a year we'll have a million players and we'll grow this thing slow over time." Well, we hit a million players like in the first day and had a bit of a sinking feeling like, "Oh, what do we do? Now what?"

Chad Grenier:
And so we played a bit of catch-up trying to build the live service muscles and figure out, "Okay. Now how do we go from working on a project for three years to releasing every month?" We've learned how to do that over the last two years. And of course we've grown to, I think the last number we've announced was 50 million. But we're far beyond that at this point.

Chad Grenier:
So it's been a bit of a roller coaster ride. The game has been far more successful than I think any of us could have predicted which is a good problem to have, but also caught us a bit off guard. And we finally hit our stride, I feel like in the last year and we've streamlined like development or releasing, I think really good content at a regular basis. And we've got so many awesome things that are coming up that I cannot talk about that the team is just like pumped about right now.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So throughout its history, Apex has been really a pioneer in the Battle Royale sphere; introducing things like nonverbal communication, which makes it almost a pleasure sometimes to play with people you're not even speaking with. Also, really great.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I have a kid who I won't allow her to speak to other strangers online, but she can communicate, she can ping things and all of the different conversations that the different legends have, make it really easy to play as a team. Also, things like resin, there's just so many things that Apex pioneer that in many ways have become industry standard within this genre. So what is the team focused on now?

Chad Grenier:
Well, the team is always trying to find little innovations; big or small. We're all gamers, and so we play the game a lot. We play a lot of other games. We are fairly good at identifying what the game needs or things that work or don't work in other games and trying to make our game as good as it can be.

Chad Grenier:
And so when you're talking about the ping system and the responding, that just comes from the team playing the game every single night and just ideas coming from anyone on the team, whether it's an artist or an animator or designer; it could be the janitor for all we care. A good idea is a good idea, we don't care where it comes from. And so that's how those things foster themselves.

Chad Grenier:
So now the team is pretty focused on coming up with how to expand Apex as a brand and how to offer more to more people. You mentioned we're a big player in the VR space and that's great, but I think we have bigger aspirations. And so I'm always asking and challenging the team to expand a bit beyond Battle Royale. Doesn't mean we're going to stop support for Battle Royale, it's still what the game is made of and that's our core.

Chad Grenier:
But what else are we offering? I think we've got these great legends that people love, and they've got interesting gameplay abilities. We've got interesting universe and maps and the gunplay is really good. So why not offer something else? And you see that happening with some of our limited time modes. But I think we're thinking bigger than limited time and we've certainly been playtesting a lot of really fun things that we're going to bring to the game soon.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Guess what Chad, we lost... Whenever I cut away, for some reason we lose your audio to Jeff. So I apologize. This is maddening.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I lost you after one word and I like, "I'm just going to keep nodding and smiling [crosstalk 00:31:29] recording."

Larry Hryb:
Do you hear him now, Jeff?

Chad Grenier:
Can you hear me? Testing one.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes.

Larry Hryb:
Keep rolling, Jeff. I'm not going to cut away, just keep it to you guys since you guys can now hear each other. And anytime you want to pick up, go ahead.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm terribly sorry.

Chad Grenier:
You want me to summarize?

Jeff Rubenstein:
[inaudible 00:31:46] innovating and then that was all I got from you.

Chad Grenier:
Focused on innovating, ideas come from anyone on the team. We're all gamers. That's how, kind of some of these little features here and there gets sparked up is from ideas from various people playing.

Jeff Rubenstein:
[inaudible 00:31:59] now. What just happened?

Larry Hryb:
All right, guys stand by for a second. Chad, I'm just going to go ahead and kill the program that's recording here and open it back up. So if you could just dial in a second, it's using all that code, then you should be fine.

Chad Grenier:
Okay.

Larry Hryb:
Great. Well, Jeff, I'll drop you and we'll connect.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Okay. Cool. All right. Well, let me know when you're recording and we'll just, we'll keep going.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Recording now, Jeff, go ahead anytime you're ready.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Thanks Chad. So when you're evolving the game as this involves significantly with new maps and do evolutions to the map really like where you're at with Kings County right now, how do you balance sentimentality where gamers might say they might want? I mean, you took away Skulltown, but actually [inaudible 00:32:46] game better. So how do you balance what's good for the game versus what people might say they want or what they might think they want?

Chad Grenier:
Yeah, it's always really hard. The Skulltown decision that you mentioned, was a tough call. Our opinion is that if you're building a live service game, you need to be changing things up. You need to take players on some sort of a journey. You can't be stale. And so Skulltown being like the most popular job spot was the biggest way we could shake things up, but also the most risky because players love Skulltown.

Chad Grenier:
But at the end of the day, we wanted to change things up and introduce a big change to the map. And so Skulltown was of course, the first thing with a target on its back. So we just do it. We can always bring things back. It's a live service game, no change is permanent. We've reverted things in the past, balance changes we've pulled back and whatnot.

Chad Grenier:
So I think I encourage the team to just be gutsy and go big, do big things and take players on a journey. It also opens up opportunities to bring Skulltown back in one way or another. There might be a return of Skulltown at some point; can't confirm or deny.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So you've continued really shaking up the game with a number of limited time modes. I'm really enjoying Armed and Dangerous night right now. I love that I land and there's just like a lot of cool stuff. Always was a big fan of Always Be Closing has been one that we've seen come through a few times.

Jeff Rubenstein:
My daughter has gotten very into the Christmas train mode. When you're looking at what to do and what these different options are, how does that work come through? Is there a whiteboard of just crazy ideas and then eventually, some of them come to fruition?

Chad Grenier:
Kind of, yeah. Game modes are one of the things that are like a treat for the design team. Everybody wants to make a mode. Everyone's got an idea for a mode. After somebody, maybe they complete a larger feature like, "I'm going to make a mode." It's like, "Okay." "So-and-so's on the next mode."

Chad Grenier:
And there's just a million ideas for modes. And I think they're good for the game because they switch things up and they give you a different way to play every now and then. If you're playing the game every day, it's like a nice little side treat. And in some cases, they don't serve a purpose other than somebody on the team wants to try it, they think it'd be cool and we put it in there.

Chad Grenier:
In other cases, we can test changes to the game ahead of time. If we want to know what it would be like if you spawned with a Mozambique, we can test that in LTM and maybe roll that into the game. We saw that with Evo Armor, we did an LTM where everyone started with the white level Evo Armor.

Chad Grenier:
And that actually made us get to the point where we realize all the armor should be Evo Armor. And that was because of some play-testing the LTM. And so they kind of serve multiple purposes, but they're just fun to create. We've got some crazy ones coming too.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You laughed. I laughed only because I couldn't hear you after about 15 seconds again.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff, we're not going to do this right now because I don't know what's going on here. And I feel like I'm wasting Chad's time and your time. So we're going to-

Jeff Rubenstein:
If you think we're going to be able to pull this together, I only had one more question. So let's see what we can salvage, I feel like and I'm very interested in watching this myself, so it'll be a-

Chad Grenier:
If you want to do the question, that's fine. And if you need me back, I mean, I can make time. It's not a big deal.

Larry Hryb:
Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I appreciate that. Why don't we just-

Larry Hryb:
Do the final question?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Go ahead and do the final question. And you guys can hear each other for now, so here we go.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. So this is a game, like I said, we've put in hundreds of hours and so we've got a shorthand for everything. The Triple Take is the TT and the Flatline is the Flatty. But can you help us sort out one issue that we're constantly coming up is Gibraltar Gibby or Gabby? What do you call it?

Chad Grenier:
Yeah, potato, potato a little bit. We call him Gabby internally a lot.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I lost the bet. In this house, he is Gibby. The characters have been awesome and have really just enjoyed as you continue to bring folks in and a diversity of different characters. And I think that's been really awesome. Actually, before I let you go, I'm just curious just how you think about it when it comes to bringing in new legends.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You've even fooled us a couple of times which I thought was just really interesting as people thought they knew what was coming and then that character was completely faked. And then we got Revenant, I think it was at that time. So do you mind just before I let you go, I'd just love to know how, again, you're looking at characters and again, to just commend you on the diversity of characters that we see.

Chad Grenier:
Yeah. Thanks. Legends always start with gameplay, so they have gameplay hooked, what kind of abilities are missing from the game? What sort of play styles are we not representing? And we always start from there. The personalities and the way the legends look usually come secondary. And the diversity is something we're all really proud of.

Chad Grenier:
Our team is very diverse. We've got all walks of life on our team, and that really helps, wouldn't say make it easy, but it just when ideas are coming from everyone on the team, everything's going to be represented whether it's a nationality or a sexuality, or whatever it may be. We're just well-represented at the studio, which is something we've intentionally hired for and it's important to respond.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The voice actors are phenomenal as well. So just great work there. And it's really something that you noticed, I think on Dummies Big Day, when everyone was quiet, how much of the game which was on limited time mode and no one was talking, you realized how much just their conversational chatter adds to just the atmosphere as you're playing.

Chad Grenier:
Yeah. The voice actors are great. The casting has been phenomenal. Huge prop to our audio team, and especially during COVID and working from home, they've managed to do all of these studio recordings for the voice actors without going into a studio. So they're doing the recordings much like this; on a call with the actor and with his microphone in their home and getting voice direction over a video call like this. And so it's pretty phenomenal so kudos to them.

Chad Grenier:
And the amount of work the voice actors have is insane. Every time we add a new legend or a new weapon, there's something like 10 or 15,000 new voice lines have to be recorded per legend. You add a new weapon, like you add the 30-30 Repeater and then you have to get every single voice actor back in the studio to say, "30-30 Repeater here." And little things like that for all the pings, and whatnot. And so there's a whole group of people just doing the video recording. It's crazy.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right. Chad, thank you so much. I am curious, I've been a Lifeline main since day one. So every time you bring someone in else new I give them a shot, still end up back with Lifeline. She's such a great team player. And so yeah, I will stick with her, although Loba, I appreciate what you've done with her because she's my number two; helps absolutely base in fights here in our house.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So thank you so much. I'm hoping that we can talk to you again in another two years when we're celebrating many more millions of people have played and who knows? New maps, new legends, new game modes and everything else. But I want to thank you again for helping Larry and I and our families and everyone to sort of stay together and keep communicating throughout our time here in lockdown and we're wishing our best to your team as well who're doing amazing work in what I'm sure a very trying circumstances.

Chad Grenier:
Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. I love the support from you guys. So thank you.

Larry Hryb:
I'm very excited to have us joining me on the show today is Mr. Joe Neate. Joe is the executive producer for Sea of Thieves, a game that I've been playing a lot lately. Joe, thank you for joining us.

Joe Neate:
It's a pleasure to be here. Good to see you again.

Larry Hryb:
I got to tell you, you and I haven't seen each other in quite a while. First of all, congratulations, it's a third year anniversary for Sea of Thieves. That is amazing. Tell us a little bit about that journey, because it feels like just yesterday you launched.

Joe Neate:
I know, right? It's been an amazing almost three years now and kind of even taking in, I guess, the process before that with our Insiders and the Beta and everything, we feel like we've been delivering and building on this for a really long time now. But it's also flown by as a team and it's been amazing.

Joe Neate:
Sea of Thieves has grown each year. We're in the kind of biggest place we've ever been as a game. And it's just been an amazing journey as a team, especially for us as a studio. It's the first time we've done a game like this, but it's been amazing.

Larry Hryb:
And it's interesting because, I mean, you and I have told this story I believe together before, but it's worth telling one more time. I remember many years ago when you and your team came over to Redmond; you guys are based over there in England. You came over to Redmond and were pitching the game. It wasn't even a game slice as they call in the industry.

Larry Hryb:
It was a conference room on the third floor of the studio. I remember this like it was yesterday, and you had a bunch of PCs around the conference room. And we came in, we played a very, very, very early version of the game. I mean, it's nothing like you see today. And I remember you gave me a pirate name and we all had pirate names, which I still have in my office.

Larry Hryb:
And it was just great. I was like, "Oh, this is great." You could see the teamwork. And to see that, which was essentially stick figures to come into this amazingly beautiful game, Sea of Thieves. Tell us a little bit about that journey because that's amazing.

Joe Neate:
Yeah. Part of working in an organization like X-Box is informing and exciting everybody within the organization. And that's a big part of kind of what you need to do when you're building something, especially when you're building something new. And so actually, we kind of came up with this idea of, "Let's just go across to Redmond let's book out that meeting room." Which to book out a full meeting room for an entire week, take some doing in Redmond.

Joe Neate:
We had to get executive kind of support on that from, I think kind of Phil Spencer's, executive assistant at the time. But we hired some PCs from a local kind of place. Dave Quinn, our team member in Redmond helped us with that. We went to a pirate, fancy dress shop and kind of bought a load of pirate clothes and gear and a little Polaroid camera as well.

Joe Neate:
And the kind of printer as well for names and everything. So we had the whole gear and kind of took everybody through that playtest and the kind of original pitch at the same time. So you've got to see the vision, do the playtest and then actually see all kind of beautiful kind of corner island that were built in on wheels. So we were like, "Hey, look, it plays like this, and it's going to look like that."

Joe Neate:
We just took kind of people from across the organization through that during a week to really just get people on board with, "Hey, Rare is doing something new, they're doing something different." And kind of start building that buzz. And I loved that, well one, everybody put the pirate gear on and took a photo and then we stuck that on their pirate names.

Joe Neate:
But even when we'd gone back to Rare everybody in kind of Redmond, who'd gone through that probably about 50 people, I guess during that really exclusive kind of 50 people that you were part of. But everyone had a pirate name. And so if you went into someone's office and saw the pirate name, you're like, "Oh, you've played Athena's?" As it was known then. "Oh, you played that?"

Larry Hryb:
Athena's, I'm sorry.

Joe Neate:
Yeah. And everyone could share stories and things. So had this little kind of club, but it kind of built that excitement and buzz even when we weren't there. It was a really cool kind of process; really kind of unique, but worked really well.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. And it was great because you worked on it and then you went away for a few years and then launched properly in 2018. And I remember coming out to your studios and meeting you and many of the team who I've met before, but being in your studio by the way. And I've said this to you and I said to Craig, the head of Rare. Your studio is the single most beautiful studio I've been into anywhere in the world. And I've been to a lot of game studios. Yours is absolutely my favorite; out there in the countryside.

Larry Hryb:
And to be able to sit with you all and talk to you about the game, this was right before launch. I remember we were recording some stuff for Inside X-Box and it was just, it was a magical place to be. The accident that happened, I don't know if you remember this accident. As I walked down the hall to talk to Robin Beanland, who does the audio. And I grabbed the cameras. I said, "We have to do something."

Larry Hryb:
And we recorded this piece with him where he showed off the instruments, the actual Hurdy-Gurdy that was recorded for the end game. And it was just the most amazing experience to see. And every time I play the game now, I'm just in love with the music, the audio, and of course the gameplay. So it just everything kind of snapped together. That's got to be a great feeling to see that.

Joe Neate:
It is, and it's down to the Rare, talent at the studio. We have people, like Robin's been there 30 years or close to. And throughout it's gone a journey; you should see some of the photos of him back in the day with the long hair, amazing. And then you've got people that have joined more recently and it's that real mix of people, but everyone kind of... The culture of Rare is what makes it special.

Joe Neate:
And the people that we bring into that are the right people, the right fit. They really kind of strengthen the culture of creativity and of risk-taking, but they also have incredible talent. So Robin is obviously incredibly talented, he's a magician. And he won an Ivor Novello for the Sea of Thieves music, which is a really prestigious award.

Larry Hryb:
Really?

Joe Neate:
Yeah. He won that a couple of years ago. We got to go with him and see him win it, We didn't know if he was going to. It was mind blowing to see him up on stage being presented by Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs, the kind of lead singer that. He presented it to Robin, which is great. But then we've got say Chloe who is kind of, one of our newer members of the music and audio team, is an incredible talent too.

Joe Neate:
I think she's still an intern or not, I'm not sure. But she's right at the start of her career, but she has brought incredible talent into that mix. And that's just the kind of story of Rare, I think, there's people like Robin who are incredible.

Joe Neate:
And then people like Chloe who come in and wow us with their singing talent or the different kind of musical instruments they can use. And they bring that kind of special something to the studio and that's just what makes, I think Rare so special and then what makes the games they make so special.

Larry Hryb:
Well, so Let's talk about this. You've been on this journey with Sea of Thieves. It is a vastly different game than when you first launched. I mean, the features you put in, the story. I remember in March, 2018, people were like, "This is..." First of all and correct me if I'm wrong. I remember I think it was you or Craig told me, you have quite a few artists who just do water, right?

Joe Neate:
Yeah. Kind of the tech art team and the rendering team, everybody that we're focused on that for so long, VFX in terms of all that spray and the glints and stuff. And it was a real journey to get that right. I remember going through the reviews, we had the movement kind of feeling good early.

Joe Neate:
But it was for me in the moment anyway, we're really just suddenly sang almost, was those little glints that you get that just kind of when the water undulates, you see these little glints flick on them. That's almost what makes water look real to me; once you just add that almost little kind of reflection and glints on it and then you start to see the VFX spray, and the spray when he cut through it with the boat and things.

Joe Neate:
But it's all these layers and having to make it work across the network so that it plays kind of predictably and things so all the different boats they're interacting with it, get hit by it and kind of moved around. It's an incredible undertaking, but we were like, "That's going to be what you're doing most of the time. You're going to be out there looking at the sea, you're going to be on the sea. It has to feel right. It has to look right. It has to sound right."

Larry Hryb:
Well, it does all those things and it feels... I mean, sometimes you just stand on the bow of your ship or in the crow's nest on the back, and you're staring at the sunset or the sunrise of the moon and it's simply breathtaking. And one thing I've noticed is certainly we've got the player characters and some of the NPCs are on the game.

Larry Hryb:
But I would argue that the sea is an incredibly important. I don't know another word for it, but it's an incredibly important character to the game, because it has so much character; it changes the dynamics, "Oh, the wind is in our face now." Or, "Okay. Now we can't see, is there a ship over there? I can't tell because things are up to eye." That's an incredibly important part of the game.

Joe Neate:
It is. And it's interesting because of how vast is and how it is that big part of the character of the game. Actually, for some people that have a fear of the open water, it can almost act as a bit of a barrier to coming in and playing because of that fear of jumping in and not knowing what's under it. There's a phobia, thalassophobia or something.

Joe Neate:
And we put in a suit kind of single stick control, something that actually helped you float back to the surface as an accessibility option. And we found actually that as a by-product helped people who had a phobia, because it kind of stopped them with the fear of jumping into the water and not being able to get back inside.

Joe Neate:
So again, incredible journey to go on to even just find that out, to find out about that kind of fear and to find out that we can do something to help people with that in our game, but almost that a game can have that impact on you really [crosstalk 00:50:55].

Larry Hryb:
I remember the first times I was playing it, one of the first time I was playing it, maybe it was the first year. I think when you added a few things, we went back in and I was playing with a friend of mine who I won't give his name, Brian Jarrad at 343. And he wouldn't go into the water because of the sharks. He's like, "I'm not going in the water." I'm like, "[inaudible 00:51:11] jump. It'll be fine." He would not go into the water to your point.

Larry Hryb:
When you guys launched in 2018, as I said earlier, it's a very different game than it is now. Tell us a little bit about that journey of the features and the listening to the community of this amazing Sea of Thieves Insider collection of community. And I mean, the community has just exploded over the years. Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Joe Neate:
Yeah. Well, so to begin with, prior to launch, we built that Insider program, we had kind of a new community that we wanted to build around this new game, this new IP. And so we started, I think it was December, 2016, was our first ever Insider test with 1000 people that were invited. And we built up over the kind of next year and through to the actual launch in 2018 where we had about 400,000 insiders, I think.

Joe Neate:
So we'd kind of built this sizable community just by releasing videos and talking and kind of building up a kind of interest, but then going and playtesting with them. And it led us to that launch moment. And the launch moment was almost overwhelming; it was the closed Beta was when we first lifted the NDA and allowed anybody to play [inaudible 00:52:22] and create kind of videos and everything.

Joe Neate:
And we knew that would be a moment because we'd always designed this game to be watchable to be shareable. But I don't think we realized... We hoped, but that moment when we lifted the NDA and everybody kind of came in and just kind of got to share their stories for the first time was amazing.

Joe Neate:
And that just really kind of gave us that lift off towards launch where we had so many people coming into play that we struggled to cope with the amount of people that were coming in. We had some challenges from a scale perspective because we just hadn't been able to test our systems at that scale.

Joe Neate:
And it was fair to say there was some feedback at launch, in terms of, from our audience. We had a core committed people that love Sea of Thieves. A lot of people came in and for some people were asking for different things and different stuff; a lot.

Joe Neate:
The kind of general sentiment I think at the broadest level was like, "Hey, this is really cool and really unique and really fun. But we want to see some of the bits of this fleshed out. We want to see some kind of just some more things," whether it's for trading companies or it's additional stuff that people wanted.

Joe Neate:
And we always knew we had a long-term plan, a long-term vision to support this and to keep growing and that we wanted to listen to feedback. And so it was kind of a little bit of the, "Let's rip the band-aid off, let's hear it. And then let's go and kind of prioritize what our plans are based on what people want." And it's the energy and the enthusiasm that which the team ran at that.

Joe Neate:
In that kind of first year, especially the first big update we did with the Megalodon with the Hungering Deep was a great foot forward for us with the feedback got. The stories that we saw of people meeting and taking down this giant creature was amazing, and it's just kind of been upwards from there really.

Larry Hryb:
I'm sorry, I'm just, I was waiting because I have my console here and I've got the Lunar of the new year, the Lunar new year sale, which was available for a while there. And I'm very proud. It's funny because I was waiting for the sun to come up because as you can see, it's coming up here. But what's interesting is I want to show, I'm actually very proud of this if I may I'm going to show you. I do have this skin.

Joe Neate:
Nice.

Larry Hryb:
So this is the one you've got to do one of the Tall Tales, I believe three times. And there's a whole series of things-

Joe Neate:
Yeah. The Heart of Fire.

Larry Hryb:
I'm very proud of that skin. I just wanted to flex a little bit there with you, Joe, and to show you that I really do play this game a lot.

Joe Neate:
Amazing. I've got the same skin. I went for that one. It felt like the right balance of I can do that Tale three times. I can do the different kind of tunnels and stuff.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Check it out. I mean, that's a great skin to have. But when you're looking at all the features and I'm guilty of this, I mean, I've sent you a, "Hey Joe, it would be great if you did this." I have no compunction about sending you... no problem sending you emails.

Larry Hryb:
But when you look forward what are some of the areas that you're going to be focusing on, because this is such a rich area. And I have even commented to some folks. I have a lot of friends who work at a large entertainment corporation that if you would know what they probably have a mouse as their mascot.

Larry Hryb:
And I'm saying the IP from like Pirates of the Caribbean, I don't think you guys could do that. I think you're doing it so much better than anything like that. And I'm just so thrilled with what you've done, and I wanted to tell you that. But also let's talk a little bit about where you're going to go with the game and what do you see the future being like?

Joe Neate:
Well, it's an interesting one. So we've obviously recently launched Seasons as kind of a new way of both, or a new kind of rhythm for how we plan to release and update Sea of Thieves. So every few months we'll have a new season with a new set of rewards that you kind of go off to. It's great that you're level 31 already, amazing, and in eight weeks. But that's great.

Joe Neate:
And actually we've kind of balanced it to try and make it achievable for kind of our broadest audience. So it's going to be about 50 hours or so to kind of go through over a course of a season. We wanted to make sure it wasn't that you had to commit all of your time to Sea of Thieves; if you wanted to do it, you can find some more time for gaming. But also it was a bit of a challenge for [inaudible 00:56:32]. So we've started entering into that rhythm.

Joe Neate:
And so we're kind of in that like, "I know what's coming for the next few seasons." I know what kind of headlines stuff is. I can't talk about it, but recently we're going through the strategic planning actually for kind of season four, so if we think kind of September timeframe kind of late this year.

Joe Neate:
And the process for that is we kind of meet with the leadership of the team who are going to be working on it, plus a few other people across the studio that brings some sort of strategic insights and thought to it. And so we have a set of almost strategic pillars for how we want to go update the game. What are the areas and opportunities? So not specifically, "This is the things we'll do." It's more, "These are the areas of opportunity that we're interested in."

Joe Neate:
How can we go and do things that, I don't know, give groups of players things to work towards and have goals and rewards around as opposed to the kind of the progression [inaudible 00:57:30] quite singular and it's about me, not necessarily about the group. So there's an opportunity there. So how would we go fill that?

Joe Neate:
And so we've gone through that process with our team and the best bit about it is that people will bring their one-pagers to that. So they know what the strategic areas of opportunity are. And then they'll bring a single page with a few images on and how does this meet this goal, this goal, this goal, and what's exciting about it?

Joe Neate:
And everybody gets to bring their best ideas about how we can go and do something really cool that that has some real value to our players and the hardest, the best bit, but also the hardest bit is that for that single... Kind of, what's going to be the single key thing we're going to go after, is almost a headline thing for season four.

Joe Neate:
There's like 15 of them to begin with. And then you have to go through and everybody talks through the ones they're passionate about. And then you do a bit of a filtering process, a bit of a voting process. You get it to three, and then you're like, "Okay, how do we go scope and figure this out?"

Joe Neate:
But coming out of that process, I remember Simon who kind of is our brand and kind of audience director at the studio just messaged me. And he was like, "There so many ideas, even just from that one session, should we just grow the team even more because we could just do so much?"

Joe Neate:
And I just love that even though we're three years in, there's so much scope for where we could go with this. And I'm sure you've got a bunch of ideas and thoughts about things you would love to see added. And so almost everything that anybody suggests goes into one of two buckets, which is one is that makes sense for Sea of Thieves, I'm sure at some stage we're going to get to that. And then the other one is, maybe that's not the right thing. We don't want to head in that direction, but there's so much in that.

Larry Hryb:
I think that's where you throw my ideas in that bucket.

Joe Neate:
Yeah, it's just later on the roadmap. But that's the thing, there's so many places we could take this and our core community have loads of feedback about things they want to see improved or things they want to see added. We also have some stuff that we're super passionate about that maybe people haven't been suggesting and thought of. So there's the process of just figuring that out and planning what to do, is actually fun and difficult because there's so many ways we could go.

Joe Neate:
We've launched Seasons. Now we're getting into that rhythm of how we go and update and support, and transitioning how our team works around it. But the launch of Seasons has been really good. Players really loved it. It's been a really kind of good engaging thing for people like you at level 31 already. So you obviously, you're playing and enjoying.

Joe Neate:
And so now it's like, "Okay, cool. We're we're into this new rhythm." But we're seeing really good data. And in terms of players engaging with it and playing and stuff. And January was our biggest year ever, this year, in terms of monthly active users which is a great way to kick off kind of this almost fourth year. It's amazing.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. When you talk about that and the one thing I love about the new seasons is, and let me bring my character back up over and bring my game up is in the Seasons you've got and I don't know where it is near, but you've got the ability to...

Larry Hryb:
And I don't actually even see it in here, but as you're playing the game, it's like, "Okay. Another nautical mile, you've visited a new island." It's not just going on these various quests, it's for investigating the world. So just nearly traveling from point A to point B, you're going to add some things that to your XP, right?

Joe Neate:
Yeah. And the thing, when we were looking at Seasons, obviously there's different ways you can approach this; different games have different kinds of ways of doing this. But it's a nice rhythm of engagement, it's a nice period of time. But we wanted this to be something that just... We know that everybody plays Sea of Thieves differently.

Joe Neate:
Some people will go and do Tall Tale. Some will stick the Reaper's flag up and go sink everyone they see, some will go and do the kind of trading company quests. And it was like, "You know what, let's reward everybody for however they choose to play. So we're not forcing you to play in a certain way."

Joe Neate:
If you want to engage the Seasons, it's an additive thing on top of how people play already. And there are ways to dig in deeper if you want with the trials where you can go in and run out, if you go and take on these things and if you want to whiz your way through Seasons. But if you just want to play Sea of Thieves, then you're just going to be rewarded.

Joe Neate:
And not only that, it's about rewards in a session, whereas previously, Sea of Thieves is all about the rewards at the end and there's risk in that route which is you go out, you've got the treasure, you fill it on the boat. But there's a risk that could get lost and you could spend hours playing and then kind of have a frustrating end to a session.

Joe Neate:
And so hopefully Seasons can soften that blow, because that will still happen; there's still risk. But you will get rewarded as you go, and filling in kind of the gaps of a new adventure of just exploring or doing quests, like you're making progress. We really like that balance.

Joe Neate:
And lot of careful thought went into that from our design team about, "Let's not change how people play. Let's allow them to play how they want given ways to dig in deeper if they want to, but otherwise, if they just want to play and get rewarded, that's cool too."

Larry Hryb:
And it's interesting you say about people playing it the way they want to. You're absolutely right, I've played with people that want to just go find every ship and sink them or just go deliver, or go fetch chickens and crates. I mean, a ton of things to do.

Larry Hryb:
The other thing that I've noticed is, maybe I'm sure you've heard this is, I've actually a lot of my team meetings, they want to do them and Sea of Thieves because we're talking while we're doing things and there's team building because we all have to get the boat and maybe do something, but that's too. I could talk to you for another half hour, but I need to let you go. But I do need to get my feature request in Joe. I think this is a new one.

Joe Neate:
Okay. Let's here it.

Larry Hryb:
I really want at the end of my session for you to give me a tally, this is what you did. This is how much gold you put in the bank. This is how many miles. Even if I can just go to the website and show me, "Hey, you played for 45 minutes two nights ago. This is what you did."

Joe Neate:
That's an interesting one because that is relatively.... that is not a necessarily common. I'm just trying to think about it, but okay.

Larry Hryb:
That's the one thing, because one of the famous... We have a good friend, you and I who plays a lot, Ryan Trite and he plays a lot. He's onto me now, but famously he would go out and do a bunch of quest. I'm texting him, I can't join. And then I would join for the last half hour and just take in all the gold. I'm like, "How much did I get? I don't know."

Larry Hryb:
He doesn't do that. He doesn't let me join anymore, but I just would love to see it at the end of those evenings or the end of this session, how we did as a team. How many times were we in the wind or not in the wind, or whatever? How many times do we have a Megalodon attack or how many, whatever? That's it. I see you thinking about that.

Joe Neate:
Yeah. We definitely have the stats; we track all of that stuff. So it is not beyond the realms of possibility to do that.

Larry Hryb:
This is not official confirmation of a new feature coming out. Very, very clear, this is my behalf.

Joe Neate:
Well, that makes sense. That's something we could do. It's in that bucket. It's not in the other one, so we're good.

Larry Hryb:
I made one. Anyway, Joe, again, I want to just congratulate you and Mike and the entire team there for such great work. The most important thing that I can tell you, the listeners and viewers is just go check it out. It's part of Game Pass. You've already got the game, download it. Even if you don't have somebody just go out by yourself, you can do a solo journey. There's a way to do that. And I know you've got some onboarding process for that. Right, Joe?

Joe Neate:
Yes. The [inaudible 01:05:01] Voyage was something we introduced maybe more than a year ago now, but a much better onboarding kind of flow for players. Come join in or join in the community, join the discord, come to the forums or come on Twitter. There's an amazing Sea of Thieves community that welcome new players. So if you come out and you're just posting and looking, there will be people who'd like to... Super experienced players that love to take like Ryan Trite.

Joe Neate:
He loves to take new people on the journeys and introduce them to the game, the same exists throughout our community. So come out, get involved. If you're not sure, there will be people that will kind of be happy to take you under their wing and get you on that journey to Pirate Legend.

Larry Hryb:
And show you exactly what you need to do. I guarantee, I play the game. There's something in the game for everybody, even if you just want to sail out to the middle of the ocean and drop anchor and watch the sunrise and the sunset there's something to do.

Joe Neate:
Yes, exactly. It's a magical game and it's just going to keep getting more and more things and more and more kind of adventures, so jump on in.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Joe, listen, I'll let you go. Again, congratulations on the almost three years of success. I look forward to seeing what you guys are going to be doing in the years ahead. My best to everybody at the team and we'll see you on the high seas. Thanks, Joe.

Joe Neate:
Yeah. See you on the seas.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Thanks to Joe, 3SheetsNeate, that's his pirate name. It's just funny talk. Every time you bring up that we played like that like super early version of the game and then you knew there was magic there, and it's just amazing how the game continues to evolve. Started out like a Friday night thing going on now of these long voyages and I do really love how they implemented the battle pass.

Larry Hryb:
What was your pirate name?

Jeff Rubenstein:
It was RumRubinstein.

Larry Hryb:
Mine was AdmiralNelson.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I mean, yours kind of writes itself. Just have to just translate major to the Navy. But it's been a really good time and it's just awesome to see how many people have played that game over the past three years now. So time flies, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
And Apex was a couple of years. So good, lots of great gaming. So thank you for that. We get Jason on. We squeezed Jason in because contractually, he wants to be on the show.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. At some point I'm going to be like, "What time we do in the show, Larry?" And you're going to be like, "Why don't you just tend to sit this week out, just go get lunch early."

Larry Hryb:
Just don't freak out. [inaudible 01:07:28] Twitter. And here's the show. No, I won't do that to you.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. Well, you know what, the fans, were doing it for them and if they want more J.R, they'll get the J.R that they want and that's fine.

Larry Hryb:
They want features is what they want.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes, exactly. I could make the argument that I'm useless outside of this capacity, whereas as Jason Ronald actually let's get him back behind the computer.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. It's not true. You're not useless as far as you know.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I don't know. Well, we'll figure it out. I'm not fishing for a compliment here. A couple of other real quick things before we go, I want to call out that speaking of games that continue to evolve, Microsoft Flight Simulator has had its third world update; you had Japan, I believe you had the US and now UK and Ireland which by the time you've read this, it's updated enhanced visuals, handcrafted scenery, custom airports.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Great new soundtrack from Haven and exciting new activities. So it's really cool to see that keeps going specifically to calling out locations like Birmingham, Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge and some of the airports like Liverpool [crosstalk 01:08:44].

Larry Hryb:
... because they're out there in the Midlands.

Jeff Rubenstein:
They're out there and like Sheepy Magna or something, which sounds like something I'm making up. But I swear I'm not there. Definitely, there were a lot of sheep pointed out there. It's a beautiful country. No Man's Sky, another one, just keeping pace. They've now added companions. So it's essentially, they added six big updates last year and this is their first big update this year.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And basically, you can get a pet and it's not just a pet that rides on your shoulder, but like megafauna, like something that you can ride and you can raise, it can lay eggs and there's just more stuff to do. And that game is going on like five years now. It's kind of crazy. So great work Hello Games keeping that updated. And one last thing-

Larry Hryb:
I just need to say it [inaudible 01:09:39]. You need to check it out. It's the game that gives, for me, one of the piers to experiences of leaving the atmosphere and going into space as you fly your spacecraft up; it just, it feels so. I think it would be, obviously I've never done it. But I just remember flying. Then I remember-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Haven't you?

Larry Hryb:
Apparently in my dreams-

Jeff Rubenstein:
You wouldn't tell me if you did.

Larry Hryb:
... but I forgot about it. But just getting in your ship and prepping and taking off and going over this atmosphere and into the stratosphere, it just feels so like you think it would be, it's pretty cool.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. I need to go back to it. I have it downloaded all the time. What I need to do is just strap back in. I've completely lost myself when it first came out in the game. I think I played it on PC for, I mean, I was just constantly playing it. It's almost hypnotic at times.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. It's like Sea of Thieves in that when it launched versus now, it's just a very different game. So it's worth checking out. So I applaud the teams that have been working on that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Absolutely. All right. And that my friend, what-

Larry Hryb:
What a show. I mean, every week we go on this show, we never know we're going to have guests. We got all-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Even if you've done the interview, you might not remember how many guests you have on the show.

Larry Hryb:
You're darn right, everybody wants to be on the show. We got even more interviews lined up for the coming week. I know you're going to be doing a couple, we can't talk about them yet. We're going to have people on the show that have never been on the show before, let's just say that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's good. We should keep that up.

Larry Hryb:
Let's keep that up. So we're going to keep going through things. Anything you want to add before we wrap up here Jeffery?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, but just say as the week goes on next week will be our second week of... It's the final week of February and we will have five takeovers on the X-Box Twitch channels. So tune in, it's usually around noon-ish Pacific. But we'll be tweeting it out and you can take a look, actually we've been Fleeting about. So if you follow the X-Box on Twitter, look at the Fleets, let you know who's coming up.

Larry Hryb:
Are you doing Fleets?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I consume Fleets, but I haven't made any. I make Instagram stories, I haven't Fleeted. Should I Fleet?

Larry Hryb:
I try to do that. For those of who you don't know, Fleets are like Instagram stories, but they're on Twitter. Thus, the name Fleets.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. I don't know why I don't just syndicate them, but I haven't done it. Maybe I'll start.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, congratulations. You've done a great job lining amazing talent up to join us on the Xbox channel this month. So thank you for all of that Jeff. I know you and your team-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, I mean, we're happy to introduce you, the viewer to new voices in the X-Box community. And there's some really great folks. So if you like who you see make sure you follow them on their channel and keep the goodness going.

Larry Hryb:
And of course, if you like what you see here, what do you do, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Please like, subscribe, ring the ding-a-ling bell so you know when a new episode is there and thanks always for commenting. We've been having fun jumping into the comments once the show goes live on YouTube. So thank you so much and we appreciate your thumbs ups, and let us know what you think.

Larry Hryb:
Somebody was talking, I saw that in the comments and about a show open, like a more video graphical show open. So you know what we should do, I was just thinking, maybe I'll reach out to the team from a Haven and we'll make something similar for you and I.

Jeff Rubenstein:
If the Game Bakers are listening, could you imagine if they redid that, but it was the two of us?

Larry Hryb:
Nightmare [inaudible 01:13:04].

Jeff Rubenstein:
Coffee flying through, the Toto toilet seats.

Larry Hryb:
Everybody here is along for the journey with us along with the show.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. Well, I hope you play the game. I hope you enjoy it. There's just so much goodness there.

Larry Hryb:
Like I said, we got a bunch of interviews coming up in the future. We're going to get an engineer to talk about the new headset which is available for pre-order now, you can see the box right there and it's shipping very soon. So this is a great headset.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Mid-March.

Larry Hryb:
Just to let you know, Jeff and I, we've been testing this for quite some time. So we've used it-

Jeff Rubenstein:
This was another Easter egg, I think a lot of you saw that in our commercial in I want to say November, I think it was Daniel Kaluuya was wearing this headset in the video hiding in plain sight. It was there all along.

Larry Hryb:
We got to stop doing that because we're going to get into trouble.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, people are going to start looking into you like, "I think I see something." But you know what? Evil eyes.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, that in there is an Xbox adaptive controller. People are probably wondering what that is under my-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. Hiding a lamp and an old vive. I got to put something else there, but it is what it is.

Larry Hryb:
That lamp was a little too big.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We're still working on this room. I got to tilt my camera, but there's a soccer Jersey and a controller. Here we go. That's the coolest. Look at the blanket.

Larry Hryb:
What are those plaques you've got there.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, that was a gift from [inaudible 01:14:37] centered here, from your average consumer, who's an Eagles fan. And when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, he surprised me with... There's a little piece of like a game ball in there. One of the nicest guys on YouTube.

Larry Hryb:
[inaudible 01:14:50].

Jeff Rubenstein:
Are you talking about the thing hanging on the wall right there?

Larry Hryb:
No, no. [inaudible 01:14:58].

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh, that, okay. So that is something that you might've seen, some creators have this in Australia. Our Australian team, they make some really cool stuff and it is a light box. It's basically two neon lights that kind of is supposed to represent the Xbox Series X.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And so over Christmas they had one left and we have like a big white elephant, a gift exchange right before Christmas and I managed to snag that and actually, just arrived at the house last week. So at some point I'll have it plugged in. I need to figure out the wiring because it has to plug in, but I really liked that thing.

Larry Hryb:
Fine, fine addition. I mean, I've got so much stuff that I could show you. You don't want to see this, it's-

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. That's it. That's the entirety of the stuff I have-

Larry Hryb:
[inaudible 01:15:48] on the show.

Jeff Rubenstein:
... you've got a whole thing. We should do a common sort of YouTube video is like, "This is my setup." And I think a lot of people would be interested in your setup, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
The set up is one thing, but I'm just talking about the stuff that I have.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's my point, your set up can be the things at the background... I'm saying it could be a series. You got a channel, use it.

Larry Hryb:
I know. I do have a channel and I just... I got a daytime job. I don't have time to sit here, roll some YouTube picture. I would love to, but maybe in the future. Thank you for that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
If you've got the time.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you for that time. All right, gang, we're going to see you next week with more interviews, some surprise interviews, I think, I don't know. Maybe Jeff will be doing some, maybe not. We'll hopefully-

Jeff Rubenstein:
We'll figure it out. It depends. Or Jason Ronald will do it for us.

Larry Hryb:
Jason says he's not available, so can you join me next week?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Okay. Wow. Sad because that may be true.

Larry Hryb:
Terrible. All right, gang. Any final words before we go, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's always a pleasure here, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
It's a pleasure see you too.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's always a pleasure.

Larry Hryb:
Everybody else, like, subscribe. If y'all want to hit us up on Twitter, it's very simple. You just follow right down there @JeffRubenstein, there you go, and @majornelson. We'll see you guys next week with some more news, some more interviews and a lot more fun. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.