Big Updates to Xbox Cloud Gaming, Friend Requests, And More | Official Xbox Podcast

SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E to M.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Hello, and welcome to the official Xbox podcast, the only podcast that comes to you from inside Xbox. I'm Ethan and we have a special episode for you today. Normally, we love to dive into upcoming games with the developers making them, but today we're digging deep into the recent updates to the Xbox platform, including today's big news on cloud gaming that you can take advantage of today. We're also going to get our hands on some new accessories from my lovely team, the Designed for Xbox Program, and our amazing partners, but I am but one man, and I can only know so much, which if you ask my wife is very little. Luckily, we have Ashley McKissick and Jason Beaumont here to be our experts on all things cloud gaming and the Xbox platform. Ashley, Jason, welcome. Thank you for being here.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Oh, thanks for having us.

JASON BEAUMONT: Thank you so much.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, it's good. I love this because we've never done one of these together. It's always fun to kind of get to -- we've met briefly here and there, but this is the longest conversation we're ever going to have.

JASON BEAUMONT: It'll be great.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: It's going to be recorded for posterity, so it's going to be good. Well, I want to kick things off. Ashley, you're CVP of Xbox Experiences and Platform Engineering. That is an incredible title. Let's talk about what that entails.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty good gig. So I run the engineering team that builds everything that makes Xbox, Xbox. So it's the console operating system. It's the dashboard. It's our app on the PC, Game Bar. We have mobile apps as well, in addition to we've got a store on the console, and we have tons of experiences on Xbox.com. So it's a lot, it's a lot. It's fantastic. I get to watch a lot of demos. The team builds some amazing stuff.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: That's kind of fun, that's kind of fun. Now, Jason, you're VP of Experiences and Platforms. How does your day-to-day go?

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, so my team is composed of product managers and designers that focus on the player experiences, so when you turn on your console or you use our PC app or our mobile app, those are the things that my team helps build, and that includes everything from chatting with your friends, buying things, using Game Pass, etc.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Awesome. Well, I feel like there's no better way to get to know each other and coworkers other than asking what you're playing right now. So Jason, I want to start with you. What are you gaming?

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, so these days I play across all sorts of devices. I'm primarily a PC gamer. I've got my crazy 4090 base.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, nice.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, yeah, but I've also got a ROG Ally, my console and stuff like that, and so I've been playing the Final Fantasy pixel remasters.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, how are those?

JASON BEAUMONT: I love it, I love it. Well, first of all, what I love is it works across all of those devices, so I kind of dip in here and there, but what I really like is that in these remasters they added this auto-battle feature, so a lot of these JRPGs are super grind-heavy, a lot of random battles, and I can just hit X on the controller and it auto-battles for me, and that feels great and just kind of lets me kind of relax and grind through it. So this makes that part of it actually enjoyable because you can just hit a button and kick back.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Okay, nice. Ashley, are you in the Final Fantasy zone? Are you trying something else?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Yeah, I played a little bit of the pixel remaster when it first came out. I played those games as a kid with my little brother, and so the music just hits so hard, but I really like to play co-op looter-shooters with my husband. It's a thing that we kind of do together. So there's one that came out that's really similar to Destiny. It came out this summer called "First Descendent" that I'm playing with my husband. I'm having a lot of fun with that. I play a variety of games. I tend to like to have a puzzler and then a shooter, just sort of different moods. Remnant II, I love that game.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: What a game.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: So good.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: What a looter-shooter.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: I know. So, yeah, that's one. Those co-op looter-shooters are really something I do with my family, but the puzzlers are definitely my own thing. Nobody wants to do those with me.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: For me, I always have a competitive game that's, like, I need to decompress from work, get online, get really sweaty, whether that's Call of Duty, or playing a lot of the finals right now, or I guess, adjacent to puzzle games, I'm always a card game player, so Balatro. I think there's a new Pokemon card game came out on mobile. I've been playing that. It's really good. Always have a card game in the back pocket.

JASON BEAUMONT: Ashley, I think you one-hundred-percented Slay the Spire, didn't you?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Really?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: 100%, yup, all of them.

JASON BEAUMONT: Some of those, the last things you have to get are absurd.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, I'm so bad at it. Hey, well, we can connect after this.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: We can connect after this. I'll give you some tips on Slay the Spire, but yeah, 100%, one of my more proud achievements, I think.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Did you look up anything, or you played that totally blind, to, like, a hundred-percent it?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: No, no, no. You have to do some research. You're not just going to stumble into a hundred-percenting of it. I don't think anybody does it without watching Jorbs on YouTube, instructor, but still, you've got to build the skill yourself.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Fair enough, I definitely feel that. Every time I play it, about halfway through, I'm like, I don't think I know what I'm doing, and then I have to start over, but that's kind of the fun of roguelikes in general. Well, let's get to the topic at hand. We have a lot to cover and not a lot of time. So I know you both have been significantly involved in streaming and the updates therein, and I want to discuss today some of the new things that are coming to the platform. I want to talk about Xbox Cloud Gaming because there's a really exciting update for folks. Ash, it sounds like we can stream a lot more games now.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Yeah, so starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members will be able to stream games that they own and not just ones that happen to be in the Game Pass catalog. So it's something we wanted to deliver for years now. We're excited that it's coming out today. It's a limited catalog to start. It's 50 games to start with, but it will grow over time, and it's just nice that people will be able to stream games on their television or on the web.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Walk me through how this works, because this is obviously an important thing. It's going to be a new experience for folks. So I am gaming in my home. I buy a game. I buy that game or I already own this game. How do I actually go play it?

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, absolutely. So you just -- I'll walk you through it. Pretend you're on a TV. You're going to launch the Xbox app and sign in, and then there's going to be a part of the screen that says "Stream Games You Own," and you click on that, and it's going to show the games you own that are now available for streaming, and it's also going to show you all the ones you can buy that you could also make available for streaming as well.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Awesome. Similar experience, I imagine, on xbox.com/play.

JASON BEAUMONT: That's right, that's right, yeah.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: That's awesome. Huge, I mean, this is a big update and a stepping stone to our gamers taking their library everywhere. This is a big deal.

JASON BEAUMONT: This is part of what we've been working towards for such a long time, and getting all of the different apps people use, getting all of the ways you can play your games, making those universally accessible, we just keep grinding away at scenario after scenario, month after month, to keep expanding those capabilities. And what I love about the release today is it's a major step forward, but even more so, it's just kind of the beginning of a whole new kind of set of things that are coming that really just allow you to play your games on whatever screen you want.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Crucial, I think, crucial to our fans, especially with the -- this isn't Xbox stuff kind of just coming out, and, yeah, it seems so important, and this is something that's going to happen in all 28 countries where cloud is available?

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, that's right, and then we're starting on smart TVs and web right now, I believe literally right now.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Today? This minute?

JASON BEAUMONT: Today, right? And then next year, that's where we're going to bring it to PC and console, etc.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love it. Can we talk about some of the games maybe, so some of the games that are going to be available? I know I mentioned -- I think I saw that Balatro is one of them, which I love.

JASON BEAUMONT: Balatro is one of them.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Very healthy addiction to, currently, so I'm excited.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, Baldur's Gate 3.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, my God. This is huge.

JASON BEAUMONT: I know.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love this one because I have a D&D campaign. I got a group at home, and my best friend who's in the group, he moved to the Netherlands, and so we've transitioned our entire campaign to Baldur's Gate.

JASON BEAUMONT: Have you really?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, just to make it easier, super fun, but we only get to play once a month because just availability and stuff like that, so it's going to take us, I don't know, three years to beat this game. But I love that it's on this list because it's just going to be easier for us to connect, to be able to boot it up on a laptop. I can just be like, "Where are you? We're playing. I'm sick of this. I don't want to wait anymore. I want to get to Act 3."

JASON BEAUMONT: You're away on vacation, there's a Samsung Smart TV there, you log in to the Xbox app that you're playing, it's great.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: You got to check if hotels have Samsung TVs.

JASON BEAUMONT: No, so my wire, my poor wife has to live with me trying this kind of stuff all the time where we check into a hotel and I'm like, okay --

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: What's it got?

JASON BEAUMONT: Right, exactly. Can I load the Xbox app on there? Can I turn off motion clarity?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: It's not unlike back when you had the Nintendos in hotels. It's pretty great.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Do you turn off the interpolated frames, too? They drive me wild. I can't watch a movie.

JASON BEAUMONT: They drive me wild.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: What do you turn off?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Frame interpolation.

JASON BEAUMONT: Motion smoothing and everything else like that.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: You don't want that.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: No, I want it to look like 24 frames per second, as the filmmaker intended.

JASON BEAUMONT: Right, exactly.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It drives me crazy.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: It makes movies look cheaper sometimes.

JASON BEAUMONT: It does. It's a soap opera.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It's a soap opera, totally.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, yeah, totally. I feel like I'm on set.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: We've never talked about this.

JASON BEAUMONT: So literally if we are on vacation, we go to a hotel, I spend like a half an hour being, "How can I jailbreak this television so I can change all the settings on it and do color calibration?"

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Your wife's like, "I'm going out. It's vacation. I've got to take care of this TV."

JASON BEAUMONT: Right, yeah, I can't lay in bed and watch Star Trek until it looks proper, right?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: But this is like -- the meta-point of all this being like wherever you travel, your digital games are coming. Your saved data, your achievements are coming to more and more games. I'm a remote play addict, and so this is a huge step up just in terms of the titles available. I know we've shouted out a couple. I see NBA 2K25 on there, Witcher/Wild Hunt.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, that's a classic.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, Cyberpunk, though. It's not just super old games by any stretch.

JASON BEAUMONT: No, not at all. Not at all. And again, this is just kind of the next step in something that we keep working towards and we work towards every month, so just expect to see more and more of not only more games coming, but more features like this coming as well.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love it. I love it. Now, next year I think this is more -- you had mentioned that it's on Samsung Smart TVs, xbox.com/play. Sounds like maybe next year more devices.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, yeah, we'll have it on PC and console next year, and one of the things that the team is working on, and this is kind of gets into the innards of the engineering a little bit, is how can we make it so that when we release a feature, it shows up on all of those apps at the same time? And so a major investment that we're just kind of making as a team, well, Ashley's team, the devs are hard at work on this, is how do you make it so that when you release something, our customers can experience it everywhere? Because it's not just the games we want you to play everywhere. We want you to have access to every new feature that we release everywhere as well.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Amazing. Really excited to, honestly, like more Balatro. That is huge. Awesome. Well, I also think you -- I know you guys have been -- I've been hearing through the grapevine, and I've seen a few of these updates in the previews, that you've been updating the "Home" tab for Xbox players on Windows. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that, Jason.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, absolutely. So the Xbox app on PC just grows every single month. We see more players every single month, and every time we do, we talk to them, we ask what they want, we learn from them, and one of the things that we really started to see over the last year or so was that a lot of our players were not just coming in to play Game Pass games on PC, but they bought games. They had bought many of the dozens and dozens and dozens of Xbox Play Anywhere games, and they wanted to play those through the app, and so it just kind of became a natural thing that we needed to build the home screen, the place that when you launch the app, the first thing you see had all of those scenarios. It had things that you could play games that you owned, you could buy new games, you could see what's new in Game Pass, you could see what your friends are playing, just like you do on your console, and so that's really what we decided to invest in and bring to PC.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: That's honestly great news, as someone who's been playing mostly on an Ally the last couple of years since it came out. I guess that was probably spring last year. Huge improvements, I've got to say. Shout out to everyone involved on your side that's been working on it. I've really been happy.

JASON BEAUMONT: One thing we added to the Ally and other handhelds is that that new home screen has your most recently played games at the top of it, so that way you could just jump right back into whatever you were playing most recently as well.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Super handy when you have limited control.

JASON BEAUMONT: Absolutely. We've been doing a lot of work. Those screens are smaller. You only have a controller in your hand, and so we've been doing a lot of work to make the Xbox app just more friendly for those devices.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Well, yeah, because we built the Compact Mode for the apps. It works way better, so it's a lot less dense, so it works much better on a handheld. We did Compact Mode for Game Bar, so that also feels a lot more natural to use on the handheld, and then we're doing tons of stuff with Windows to make gamepad navigation work with the virtual keyboard and all sorts of things.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: And I've got to say, and make no mistake, all the things you highlighted, which are amazing, that's great for PC gamers, too. I PC-game a lot. I use a controller for a lot of games on PC. It's nice to navigate.

JASON BEAUMONT: Absolutely.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: You kind of mentioned it earlier, the at-a-glance view, and that's not just recently played. That's going to be game releases, discounts, what's new on Game Pass.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, as you go through "Home," it'll highlight some of the Game Pass discounts that Ashley mentioned.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Deals for you.

JASON BEAUMONT: Deals for you, big sales that are happening, things that your friends are playing, events that are happening in games that you play, and then also things that are coming new to Game Pass, and different, collections of games that we create in there.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: That's awesome. Now let's talk about "Jump Back In," because I think that's the other improvement that you guys have added to this and just making it easier. It's kind of like what we talked about with Compact Mode, just the ability to kind of easily get to the games you've just been playing without it being so hard to find.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, and these are things like, features like that, when Ashley and I, our teams work together, you just don't get fancy about some of these things. The thing that a customer wants is just to play one of their last few games, and so just show those to them, let them click on it and play.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, that's awesome. I know Xbox Insiders have kind of had access to some of these things for a few weeks now, and hopefully they're providing feedback and that's resonating, and also, definitely, if you're interested, join Xbox Insiders, like, shout out.

JASON BEAUMONT: Join Insiders and then leave feedback. We read every single piece of feedback. We review it all the time. It really does heavily inform what we work on.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It's literally true. It is literally true, and the new "Home" is out. It's not quite fully available for everybody, but it's out to some portion of the audience.

JASON BEAUMONT: That's right, that's right. It's in Insiders and we just keep expanding.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Well, and that's a good segue because, alluding to you listening to all this feedback, and I will temper my feedback, but let's talk about some of the other features coming because I know in that same vein you guys have been releasing features. There's features that are out today that are directly because of feedback from the community. The one that comes to mind first and foremost is probably friend requests. Can we talk about that a little bit?

JASON BEAUMONT: It's one of those things where every time you start looking at a new social feature design, you're like, man, this would be a lot easier if we just had mutual friends instead of the followers model, and then our customers kept asking for it. They would get confused. And so that was an investment that we had to make, and I'm just very happy to see it out there. It seemed to do a great job.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, I love to hear it. One of the other things, I know this one has come up a lot in feedback, and we have heard it, improved search. This is a good one. This is exciting, honestly.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: This is really actually super rad. We're having so much fun with it.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Never in my life, maybe it's because I'm in my 30s, did I think I'd be this excited about a search function update, but here we are.

JASON BEAUMONT: Do you want to start?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Well, I think you should -- what was the thing you were just searching before we got here? Games where you can be a jerk?

JASON BEAUMONT: Games where you can be a jerk.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: You can now search straight on the dashboard, games where you can be a jerk.

JASON BEAUMONT: And it was Gang Beasts and Goat Simulator, which is good.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Yeah, but I think Untitled Goose Game should be on that list.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, yeah, a jerk in all of those.

JASON BEAUMONT: Absolutely.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: No, but it's super cool, so you should talk about it.

JASON BEAUMONT: It's super cool. So there's a really straightforward thing you could do, which is, hey, what if when someone has a typo, it fixes the typo? What if people could use the kind of words and language they use every day? And we show results for them. So the improvement that we really made here was to build out the infrastructure so you can use more natural language. It would detect things like typos and stuff like that, but it's fun to play with. Just use some cozy games, spooky games, those are simple ways to start, but come up with your own kind of search queries and I think you might be surprised at what shows up, and then let us know how you feel about it.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Games that will give me an existential crisis.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Disco Elysium is the number one there.

JASON BEAUMONT: Disco Elysium, yeah, there you go, yeah. That would be a perfect one for that.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It would be fun to, like, you know, looter-shooters where you have pets.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love that.

JASON BEAUMONT: I think games where you can pet a cat was one that

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: That's a must. >>JB: Yeah, that's a must. Honestly, we need somebody curating that one.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: No, it is not curated. It is algorithmically generated.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I also think that this is a cool feature for maybe indie games or games that just maybe didn't get their time in the sun because they were launching against a bigger title or whatever. I feel like it's a great way to find some gems.

JASON BEAUMONT: I'm so with you on this. So much of the team, what they're energized by is helping independent creators get their games discovered.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It's totally true, and that's where, I mean, Game Pass has been amazing. Because you really see so much just intense creativity coming out of the indie space that I find, like with Lorelei I mentioned earlier, I find just so super inspiring, or like the Remains of Edith Finch, and at the cannery level, like, blew my mind.

JASON BEAUMONT: I would say well over half the games I hear you talking about are --

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Totally, yeah, because they just push the envelope of the medium of what you can do in the space of video games.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: A hundred percent. The amount of creative muscle that you see in indie games time and time again, just blown away, and I'd like to shout out to Game Pass because it is a huge avenue to kind of source those games, but as someone who sits on it all the time, there are those days where it's like, man, it's too many games. I don't know what to play. I don't know what I want. And so I like that paired with this new search where it's going to deliver more useful results when I don't even know what I'm looking for.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Well, yeah, because you can just check what your mood is, because a lot of times people, they'll play a game based on sort of the mood that they're in, like I'm in the mood for a cozy game with fishing, or I would really like to go and take down some massive monsters and you could jump on Monster Hunter with my dog and get it done.

JASON BEAUMONT: Game Pass is also how you and I met. You formed the Game Pass team.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Oh, well, that's not -- no, no, because you came to Xbox before that.

JASON BEAUMONT: Just slightly.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Yeah, just slightly, but that is where our bond was formed, in Crucible of Game Pass in the very early days.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: How many years ago was that now?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Seven?

JASON BEAUMONT: Six, seven, something like that?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: It's going all right.

JASON BEAUMONT: But Ashley started the team. I was lucky enough to be your first hire.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: I was the lucky one, so, yeah, no, it's been amazing. Amazing ride, for sure.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Very cool. Well, I am of the belief that if you don't look good gaming, does it really matter? And so I want to talk about personalization options, and yes, I am a cosmetic whale, but let's talk about personalization options and updates therein. What do you have to share there? I know there's some new experiences, new ways to personalize folks' gaming experiences.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, absolutely. So we wanted to create some new ways for gamers to create their -- customize their gamer pics and their backgrounds on the console, and that's everything from taking a screenshot of an achievement or clipping an image that you have, so if you have a really prized achievement and you want people to see that right away, that's something you can do now.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I want to get to Xbox accessories, because, obviously, we have some really intense gamers. Call of Duty just came out, and so I know with that comes people throwing their controllers across the room as they lose a match. I know I am putting work in on my triggers right now, my joysticks. So I'd love to talk about some of the improvements. I know we have improvements for the Series 2 Elite Xbox Wireless Controller, Adaptive Controller, and the Xbox Accessories App. Let's talk about some of that.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, do you want to start?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Well, I was going to say, my house is really heavy on controller use. So we have three boys, and my husband and I will play, and we're all controller gamers, and we put some wear on the controllers, and so we've had some issues with drift, but now there's a fix for it.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, yeah. We have a stick controller configuration feature that's inside of the Accessories app now and it will fix your drift issues for you.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It's amazing.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, just like you -- I've got one of my closest friends would text me. I don't know what he was doing with his controller. It was kind of shocking how like -- and I was like, we kind of need to build this feature just for my friend.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Also for my family.

JASON BEAUMONT: Also for your family, right. So I'm really glad we got that out there. So now you can recalibrate your sticks and be off to the races.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I think there's updates to replacement parts, too, which is kind of nice, extend the life -- I can't talk, extend the lifespan of the controller.

JASON BEAUMONT: That's right.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Which is a big update, too. I also think that there's some updates to mapping thumbsticks and joystick movement to kind of move things easier with the Series 2 and the Adaptive Controller, and I think it's kind of awesome that we're making updates. The Xbox Adaptive Controller has been out for so long. Obviously, we announced the Adaptive Joystick earlier this year, but for all external joysticks and hat switches, you can now map the hat switch to operate as the opposite stick on the Zac, which is nice, just another improvement. Shout out to that team.

JASON BEAUMONT: So Ashley and I, we have a section of our team that works on that, and every week we get updates on new things that they're adding in, and I know that that Adaptive Controller joystick was something that was really, really important to them, and they worked really hard on it.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: The team is just super passionate about it, and it started, the Adaptive Controller, as you remember, it started as a passion project, a hack project so many years ago, and it's just awesome to see that turn into a product that is just super helpful to tons of people.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love that team, and I was so lucky to go to Gamescom this year and see the announcements in real-time. I got to host a panel on accessibility with first and third-party hardware partners that are making this stuff, and I got to say it was very rewarding and gratifying to -- it's just a reminder of why we do what we do.

JASON BEAUMONT: No, absolutely.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: It felt good, and just the crowd and the vibes at the demo stations, the fact that that team could run to any demo station, hook up a Zac so someone could try the newest games, it was cool. It was very special. I felt lucky to be there. Again, I just want to thank you all for doing all this work. Shout out to your teams. We feel fortunate because we get to come up here and talk about it, but the reality is, this is, the work, the culmination of so many people, and the teams we get to work with are some of the smartest people I've ever worked with in my life. I feel lucky.

JASON BEAUMONT: It's really meaningful and really a lot of joy just to work on the team that we were super lucky to be part of.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It's an honor, it really is, and we sort of sit as sort of the overhead position, and the people, the people who are doing the real work, who are building the features that connect gamers to one another, that make gaming accessible for folks, they're the real heroes doing the work, and it just is such an honor and a privilege and just such a joy to be able to work in a space that we do.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, good group of folks. All right, you guys have talked a lot. No disrespect. I'm glad for it. You guys have done the heavy lifting. It's my turn to share some of the joy of my team. I'm the lucky one that gets to come on camera and talk about this kind of stuff all the time, but our wonderful hardware partners have been making product alongside us all year, and we're kind of doing a little holiday guide review that you can find online, but I wanted to bring some of the toys to show you guys today.

JASON BEAUMONT: I can't wait to see these. I'm so excited.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Sure, we're working on the accessory space. We're going to start with this one.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, that's a flight sim stick. What? Oh, that's cool.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Now, this is nice. This is the T.Flight Hotas One, and this is, I want to say, this might actually be their best-selling flight stick. This is co-branded for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and I got to say, this is a special place in my heart. This product is what I cut my teeth on when I first started flying since joining the Accessories team, and so this is obviously a newer one. This just came out. It's all done up for Flight Simulator, but this is the perfect flight stick if you've never played before. If you're trying to just get into it and you want to play some Flight Sim or, hey, maybe you want to play some Star Wars Squadrons or Elite Dangerous, whatever your flying needs, be it space or aircraft, this thing is going to work, and it's not too hard to figure out. Some of these peripherals have so many buttons, so much going on, and this one really streamlines it. There's a lot to love in here. What you can't see there is the base actually comes apart as well, so you can stretch them out if you need to, the throttle and the stick, so if you were going to mount it to a desk, or just depending on your space, you need more room, less room, what have you.

JASON BEAUMONT: We just put MechWarrior 5 into Game Pass on PC.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: It's so good.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, and I was like -- because this has the -- when I saw this, I was like, I could do the torso twisting, so yeah. Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, I'm buying this.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: That's what I'm talking about. We made a sale.

JASON BEAUMONT: Got one sale today.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: But this is plug-and-play compatible. I think it can be a daunting task to have to bind so much of a flight stick, and it can be a little overwhelming to some people, and so we're working with the team to really improve that process, make it easier to kind of just plug in these sorts of flight sticks and they just work out the gate.

JASON BEAUMONT: So cool.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Just one of the amazing products I've got. Next up, we got a fan favorite. This is the WD-Black. This is going to be -- this is their new storage expansion card from WD. This is two terabytes, so just bigger, a lot more space, which, as you know, we got some big games coming out. Call of Duty, that's a lot of gigs. STALKER 2, pretty big, pretty big, but this has the Velocity Architecture. It's got that NVMe SSD core, so it's going to be great for gaming. It's going to have quick resume, ultra-low latency, all that fun stuff.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: You literally can't tell if you're running a game off of that or off of the internal storage.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Super, super useful. So shout out WD. Okay, so we've done a flight stick. We've done some memory. Next, we're going to go with audio. Take a look at these. These are the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds. Oh, I have the over-the-ears. GLHF right there in the cup. This is great because I am a big fan of earbuds. We do have some offerings, but it's nice to see more earbuds kind of coming to Xbox. These are ultra-low latency, and I really am a big fan of the SteelSeries app. They have 100 presets for these, for different games, so depending on what your needs are, you're going to have the audio settings you need pretty much out the gate if you download that app. It's got 10 hours of life plus three additional charges within the case itself. So very similar, if you're used to modern wireless earbuds, charge the case, take the case with you, and you can charge them over and over again. So really, really just great for that mobile convenience, and it's nice because they do just fit in your pocket, so they're a little bit easier to take on the go if you're going to be using these for more than just gaming, or perhaps you're going to a friend's house or something.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, for sure.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, shout out the Arctis earbuds. I love SteelSeries. I'm a huge fan.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, their over-the-ear ones are my -- those are my go-to. They're so good.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, probably the Pros.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, I have the Pros.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: They're awesome, they're awesome. Yeah, so shout out SteelSeries, and again, everything you see on this table is available now, so we got to plug that.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Does the creator get a commission?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Maybe. Also, I do love the little, in the SteelSeries earbuds, I do love the little GLHF there. That's a subtle plug. Can you hand me the last little treat here?

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Do I have to? Can I just take it?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: You can. I might get in trouble with work, but you probably can.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: It's really cute, guys.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: So this is the -- I got to stay close to the mic or I'm going to get yelled at. This is the PDP Realms Wireless Controller. This is made in partnership with Minecraft. Look at that guy.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Look at the little Steve in there.

JASON BEAUMONT: So Steve's a real figure inside of this.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, he's a real boy.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Super cute.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: But, yeah, look at the design. Love the see-through, obviously. I think folks are fans of that. This also has LED lighting effects that you can change. Thanks PDP for whipping this up. Again, programmable back buttons. You can remap those, 40 hours of battery life, and I think maybe the most important feature, it comes with a digital item for a Minecraft "Time Flies" T-shirt in-game, which I think is important. We alluded to the --

JASON BEAUMONT: You like all the cosmetics.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I like the cosmetics.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: You're a fashion guy?

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Oh, yeah, come on, at least in games. I am very much -- if I'm going to show up in someone's kill cam, I better look great.

JASON BEAUMONT: You better look good? Yeah, yeah.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Love it, love it.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Come on. So, yeah, these are just a smattering of products that we've been working on at D4X and our wonderful partners have been making. We have many more. Next year is looking really promising, really exciting, but you guys can check out the Xbox Wire post for a holiday guide. That's going to be launching very soon, and it'll have even more products if you're trying to figure out what to get for yourself, for a loved one. Should be some pre-order stuff in there, too, that's coming early next year, so be on the lookout for that. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the Xbox Podcast.

JASON BEAUMONT: That was awesome. Thanks for having us.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: All right, good stuff.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I took a drink of water at the worst possible time. Thank you guys both for coming. Seriously, this was great. It's a lot of info. I feel like we don't get a ton of Xbox podcasts with this kind of content, which has been nice to kind of talk about the platform, talk about the updates we're making, really appreciate your time, and like we said earlier, shout out to your whole team. I know they're working hard.

JASON BEAUMONT: Yeah, I can't say enough about them. They're a great team.

ASHLEY MCKISSICK: Yeah, it's fantastic.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Very excited. Well, thanks again, you two. That is it for this episode of the official Xbox Podcast. We'll actually see you again really soon for another special episode as the love of my life, Malik, went to Obsidian Entertainment to talk to the devs about their upcoming game, Avowed. You do not want to miss that. We'll see you then.