Forza Game Awards nominations and taste testing an edible Wonka Xbox controller

ANNOUNCER: Games in this podcast range from E to M.

[XBOX SOUND]

- Hello. And welcome to the Official Xbox Podcast. We are back here on the cheese couch. We've got some familiar faces. We've got some new faces we'll be talking to in just a minute.

But I just want to let if you're joining us here on youtube.com/xbox, you could be taking us on the road. We're available on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and on Google Podcasts. All you got to do is search for Official Xbox Podcast.

Likewise, if you're listening to us, youtube.com/xbox is our home. And welcoming into our home again some fresh faces here. So, Hailey Galler, you're part of the Xbox Social Team, tell us who you are, what you do.

- Yeah, Thanks, Jeff. Hailey Geller from the Xbox Social Team. I support first-party titles, partnerships, events, sports, and social good and social impact, so our awesome moments that you might see across all the surfaces at Xbox for Black History Month, Pride, Women's History Month, the whole onslaught. So yeah.

- Just all the things. You just cover all of the things.

- Basically everything. Yep. It's awesome.

- Dan Greenawalt, you are now the Studio Head at Turn 10 Studios. We'll be talking more about that. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

- I'm doing pretty well. I'm doing pretty well. We just released a patch, which was a big deal for us. But yeah, I'm Dan Greenawalt. I'm the newly-minted Studio Head at Turn 10.

We make Forza Motorsport. We make the Forzatech Engine. And we partner with Playground Games to make Forza Horizon as well as other things.

- Very cool. Newly-minted as the studio head, certainly not a new face here at Xbox. So we're going to want to dig into your history in a little bit of time. We missed you last-- Tina, you missed a messed up show last week.

- I saw. I saw. I was glad, though, to leave space on the cheese couch for our illustrious guests.

- We got into some weird places, some weird conversations. It was really cool having blondenerd, Britt Brombacher and Jenn Panattoni here talking about lots of stuff. We definitely will have to have them back at different times. But perhaps, I missed your steadying influence and your professional demeanor at times.

- I don't know what you're talking about.

- All right, so you've been traveling. Have you had a chance-- do you ever finish Alan Wake? Where are you at?

- I didn't sadly. I hit point of no return just before I had to travel last week. So I was fretting about that frankly all week. I just wanted to get back, which is an awful existential place to be in when you're traveling and want to be like out and exploring different cultures. But instead, I was thinking about Alan and our journey that I have yet to complete. So I will be doing so this week.

- I feel you very deeply, because I'm planning a holiday trip and all I'm thinking about is, how do I not-- what are the games I'm going to be playing? I'm the person who gets on the plane, and they've got like-- OK, I've got my iPad. I've got my Asus ROG Ally. I've got my Switch.

I've got my phone. And it's like, this is a two-hour flight, all right? Like you don't need to worry about it.

- Yeah, I'm the person that brings my Switch, and then just completely doesn't touch it either after the fact. It's lofty goals, lofty traveling goals.

- Tears of the Kingdom, my playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom would like to sympathize with you as well. I have so much more. I've got to go back and do that. Dan Greenawalt, I feel like we learned a lot about people by what they're playing. My expectation would be you're playing Forza Motorsport. But do you even have time as the head of the studio to get behind the sticks?

- Well, I need to make time. And yes, I have time. So I play a lot of Forza Motorsport. Some of it's pre-release, so not necessarily on my actual account. But yeah, playing the releases of the patch and new tracks that we're working on.

I find that there's kind of a zen of just like doing laps on the track and really dialing in a car. So I love racing and I love racecraft. But I really find the zen of car physics incredibly relaxing.

Now, outside of that, I've got a hankering for Assassin's Creed. I always have. And so the new Mirage came out, and I started playing that. I'm not very deep in yet, played a ton of Valhalla. It's kind of my guilty pleasure-- the running around in the Assassin's Creed world.

- You've got some fans here on Assassin's Creed Mirage. We've both--

- Yeah, we've talked endlessly about this game on this podcast. Yeah, it's a return to form in a lot of ways. So it's been nice to kind of feel out a stealth environment, especially if you're a stealth player, which I absolutely am.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Also relatively short. So if you played Valhalla and you put in triple digit hours, that is not Mirage. I think I was less than 20--

- Which isn't that a relief?

- --I want to say.

- 20, yeah, I would say. Especially if you want to-- I did everything, and it was 20 hours.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it's a nice return to form for me. I've been on this ride with Assassin's Creed for all of these years, all the way back to XO6 when Jade was on stage and we were debuting the first Assassin's Creed with Xbox. I've been a fan of the team. I've been a fan of their work. And it's-- again, it's a place I like to lose myself.

- Kind of crazy, 16 years of Assassin's Creed and more than that for Forza. So we will come back to that. Hailey Geller, we know what-- you're doing all the things on social. You have a chance to play anything this week?

- Yeah, I actually jumped into Halo last night. I was visiting my family and got to jump in and play their newly-released Halo 3 Refueled Playlist, so kind of like the nostalgic throwback playlist, which was just great timing for being back at my parents' house. My little brother was there. His buddies were over. So I got to jump back into guardian and play a little bit.

Yeah, it was just very fun and weird. Because I mean the last time I probably played that was middle school for me. So very fun to explore it now much older. But yeah.

- Yeah, I don't want to think how old I was when Halo 3 came out. But I know the number, and it was-- I could have been teaching in high school.

- It won't be said out loud.

- Sure.

[LAUGHTER]

- We won't get into that. It's fine.

- So something else you've been working on this week is-- I think you put together that great graphic of the Xbox nominations for the Game Awards.

- Yeah, I feel like it's just like endless news-- all positive in gaming. We love it. But yeah, a huge week-- another huge week in gaming, I should say, an especially big week for Xbox and Game Pass. There are 11 nominations for games that are already playable in Game Pass. The team did a great job for all of you.

And you can actually play those in a collection now. So check that out. We also had 10 nominations across eight categories for first-party titles, so a great showing for the team. And Hi-Fi Rush, I feel like was kind of the unexpected slay for the team with five nominations, which is just awesome.

And a huge shout out to the Tango team. They've been awesome partners for Bethesda, obviously. But I also got to work with them. And I love the team. So yeah, it's been great.

- Yeah, across like graphics and music or soundtrack.

- Yeah, audio.

- It's such a great game. I'm glad that it was not overlooked coming out in January.

- That's always touch.

- Because there's always that recency bias.

- And it was a shadow drop game. So it's not like there was a lot of marketing going into keeping it in people's memories. But clearly memorable for the community, for the media that voted on it. So that was cool.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I need to go back and play that again. Actually, one of the games I wanted to call out that I'm playing, because it also was nominated for two categories this week. I'm in a little bit of shock, but I beat Lies of P last night.

- I'm not in shock.

- I'm in shock.

- You've been making great progress.

- Because I am not that good at these games.

- [LAUGHS]

- And I will say I kind of cruised a little bit. Pro tip, if you suck at gaming, but still want to play a hard game, like in this game go to the Motivity build, which is like the big ol'-- like I'm literally swinging a giant wrench around, and that helped a lot, and eventually, a giant saw on a stick. Just keeping these gross things at arm's length. I beat the game.

- Make sure you parry.

- Amazing ending, which I probably can't talk about here, but really foreshadows where the Round8 and Neowiz people are going to go next. They've already talked about DLC. And they've talked about that-- I think they said they're going to make a second game, which like, yes, please. I think it's probably my favorite game of the year.

And we'll talk about-- there's a patch actually that just went-- literally, I went online to look up the other endings after I beat it, and it was like new patch rolls out making the game easier in certain ways. And I was like, cool, great with the timing on that one, because that final boss was no joke. But if I can do it, I guess, believe me, you can do it.

This would be like the equivalent of me running a marathon, which also I probably could not do. But maybe. Who knows? Now, I feel like I can--

- Maybe now that you've trained in Lies of P.

- Yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

- You just need a patch.

- So afterwards, I-- yes, exactly.

- A life patch.

- The patch will help. So I'm a pre-patch boy. I beat it. So afterwards, I was like, I need to calm down. And you were talking about going zen by running the laps.

And I jumped back into my Builders Cup last night. And I don't know what it was. And I don't know if it was like, look, if I can handle like this giant beast-god thing, then I can tame this Volkswagen Golf. And I got my first ever 10.0 segment in-- for me, I was like, I'm never-- looking at the achievements, I'm like, I'm never going to get the 10.0. It's just-- I've gotten a few 9s.

And there's an achievement I think for getting a 9 or a 9.5, which is great. And I got in there, I was on the Lime Rock track, the one from Connecticut. And I zenned out so much on that. And I ended up getting on the practice. I got the one 10.0.

I jumped out of my seat when the achievement popped, because I was like, I can't believe I just did that. And then in the final race, I was like I'm dialing myself back. I'm going to start in 20th place. And I ended up getting like four 10.0s in that. Lime Rock is now-- I got to make a pilgrimage to Connecticut or something, because that is my jam now.

So I totally was feeling it, because the night before I was not able to beat Lies of P. And I literally dreamed all night about this final boss. And even in my dreams, I couldn't beat the boss. It was that much-- it had gotten in my head. It was living rent-free, as the kids used to say, probably when Halo 3 came out.

- Quick little note, even when that track system was being designed, we were using the idea of bosses as corners. So your goal was to have a focused section, and you really learn it. And that would be like beating kind of a mini boss.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Interesting.

- So that was how cross-genre kind of affects design in different areas.

- And it does require that repetition too to really get familiar with it. I actually wanted to ask you, do you just have the tracks all memorized and nailed all those bosses at this point?

- I wish I was that type of driver. There are people that are so good at that. I mean, it's amazing. We've worked with a lot of professional drivers over the year. And there's one way to stay humble-- work with professionals.

Their skill at the track and understanding the car is just uncanny. And it's put me right in my place. So can I learn tracks? I can. But that is a year-long process and I really take my time.

And it feels amazing once I've got it. But when we add a new track, it takes me quite a while to really get it dialed in. There's a new layout for Yas Marina that we just added into the game. And it was an unfamiliar layout after having done years in the old layout. And I'm still getting used to that.

- Throws you for a loop, you might say.

- It does.

[LAUGHTER]

- I had to it was there.

- Yeah, I feel like the dark for me-- my Dark Souls boss, my Lies of Pi boss of a turn is the corkscrew in Laguna Seca. The amount of times I've just gone flying over the edge or-- that one, you know what I'm talking about.

- I do. And I got to say it's one of those places where people need to learn to go slow in and fast out. And of all the corners, you're heading up a hill. There's a little bit of a crest. It's a bifurcated braking zone.

If you're in a fast car, you've got to slow down. And everyone just goes rushing through it. It's amazing to watch. I think that's why I like the zen of it all. It's kind of a riddle that you have to drive slow to drive fast.

And I just find that intriguing. It's different than gaming, though. That's the thing I like is that, flight sim, Forza, some other games, there are skills that you can learn in the real world that apply in the game directly. And there are things that you can learn in the game that actually would apply in the real world if you choose to go that route.

- I have no rewind button in my car.

- No, you do not.

- No problem going slow.

- Yeah.

- So let's talk-- we were just talking about the Game Awards.

- Yeah. And there's a couple congratulations in there for you just these last few weeks and in terms of the nominations that your team got. So massive congratulations to that. Very cool to see that the franchise just in general continue to be recognized for accessibility as well. But also you, yourself, you also have congratulations in order for the new title, for the new role as well.

- Thank you. Thank you. It's been a very-- well, it's just been a big year for Forza getting this release out. It's a big deal to the team. The accessibility side is something that's just baked inside of Forza and has been since its inception.

When you look at the green line and things like rewind, there have been features added in this game over time that were really about bringing more players into gaming and into racing in general and into cars. But this Blind Driving Assist, in particular, which is actually a collection of assists, is something that I feel exceptionally proud of what the team did there. We worked with a community. It's a series of assists you can turn on and off, which means it actually is helpful for everybody. It's not just for one community in general.

And I think that makes for great design. But on top of it, that vision-- and we heard this when we were working with the community. Talking with someone who has never driven a car in the real world because of challenges with sight and being able to then successfully drive the game, like I still-- it's going to happen again.

- You get to experience it for the first time.

- I get really choked up about it because it's a moment when what we do is more than entertainment. It's meaningful to people's lives. And that's really the vision behind Forza. We want to be bringing car passion and gaming passion together and create a massive global community. Excluding people just feels wrong.

Now, we have to make choices. This was an area we really focused. And the recognition is nice.

It's really nice for the team. But for me, it's the ability to bring this just different community together. It's so exciting.

- Yeah, what it means for the larger community to be able to make progress year over year, it's kind of incredible how much the team clearly learns over time and from talking to communities to be able to get to that place of understanding of how other people might experience these things.

- Absolutely. And it's different in different games too. Because we leave it up to the team to really embrace communities and also the design of the game. So Horizon had British and American Sign Language baked into the game. That's not something that's in Motorsport. But Horizon has more dialogue, it's got the radio, so it's really letting it talk to-- letting the game talk to the community.

- And there's a lot of history there. Especially for you, you've been at Turn 10 since day one for over 20 years now. There's a lot of Forza history, a lot of your own history, especially coming up to the point of your career now where you are at the studio head. So can you just talk about what that experience has been, like the personal journey, the franchise journey?

- Yeah, I've got stories-- I love storytelling by the way. So this could be storytelling with Dan.

- Then on a couch, so we're good.

- It suits it.

- I started in games when I was 25 as a tester. I was a contract tester on a basketball game. And Bonnie Ross actually was the PM. So Bonnie Ross of 343, she was the PM on this.

So people go back a long way at XGS. And this is all before Xbox. This is when we were just PC. And then, I started working in racing games. So Midtown Madness, and Monster Truck Madness, and Motocross Madness, and Madness Madness Madness, and eventually on to PGR.

And that team, Bizarre Creations-- I went and lived in Liverpool for a while with them and shipped. And it was like cutting my teeth. It was boot camp. I learned everything that I could possibly learn from that team. And it was amazing.

Shortly after that, a group of us got together and pitched the original Forza. So this is back in 2001. It was a small group of us. I've told this story before. But I got to be honest, I wouldn't have greenlit it.

[LAUGHTER]

I had an old boss of mine send over the actual documentation when he was leaving. And he sent over, hey, this is the original pitch. And I read it, and it's horrible. And I was like, please don't be my writing. And sure enough, as I'm reading through it, it's like, oh, that's my writing.

We were a young team. We were very excited and very passionate about this bringing gamers and car lovers together, really making a difference in automotive culture. That has cut through from that day back in 2001 all the way now to 2023. This is the red thread it connects everything we've ever done is building this kind of community-- new features, innovations, Xbox features, like I don't know, SmartGlass, Connect, these are things we've integrated in the game.

And that red thread is community. It's car love. It's gaming love. And that's always been there. Now, we've got this massive team-- world-class talent, incredibly specialized, and I couldn't be more honored to be working with this team.

So I get to tell stories. The team does incredibly good work. And I don't know. It's a dream job that I have. And I couldn't be more thankful.

- You've got the benefit of scope, like having worked across eight mainline Forza Motorsport games and, of course, being part of now, what, five Horizon games, countless updates. How things changed would you say? So you had that core vision, but it feels like every game-- I've been here since Forza Motorsport 5. I think I started working here maybe a week before Forza Motorsport 5 came out.

And it seems like there's a different innovation every time. So I'm just curious like, how do you look at things? And how internally-- is there always something that we left this on the table this time, but now we're looking forward and this is something we want to tackle next time?

- We do try and tackle large technical and innovation challenges with every title. Sometimes, these are in partnership with the platform. We are a first-party studio. And so we're there to showcase what the Xbox can do and what new capabilities and services are capable of. And we'll draw from that to find some inspiration.

But you ask how I look at it. And this is perhaps more telling of me. I'm not a celebrate success guy.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm just one who-- I love learning. It's a hallmark of who I am. And part of that means really interrogating where things didn't go where you wanted and how can we get better. So I see a string of-- I won't even call them failures, because they really weren't-- learning opportunities that we had from Forza Motorsport 1 to 2 and 3. Each one had a key learning component.

Even to the birth of Horizon and working with Playground Games and this idea of, what about an open-world Forza? What would that mean? And their team, the skill they grew, like the things that Horizon does in this category, blending between open world-- I mentioned Assassin's Creed. Blending that open world exploration with racing has brought so many people into cars. So that red thread, building communities around cars and around gaming, Horizon is a perfect expression of that.

And Motorsport, they almost operate like a left and a right hand in giving this community a big hug. Motorsport is about skill and competition. It's about mastery. And it's that skill gap is required.

Horizon is exploration and fun. So it's this big-- I don't know. It's a big community we're able to build there. And I love it.

And the red threads been all the way along. With Forza Motorsport 5 being there at the launch of the Xbox One, that was a big deal. Now, there with a Gen X exclusive-- or sorry, Gen X.

- Don't date me.

- No, I know. Me too. Me too.

A Gen9 exclusive with Forza Motorsport and also building a racing platform. So we've been supporting our games for years with updates. But now, having a platform that we can grow that community over time with cool updates, like the new one with the Yas Marina, and just grow it, and grow it, and grow it, it allows both of these product lines, Motorsport and Horizon, to have a unique place in creating a broader community.

- Yeah, I will say Horizon, specifically, turned my daughter into a car person. She just became obsessed with driving Lamborghinis off road, like the least appropriate off-road vehicle. And but now it's like, oh, my god, look at this car I just saw. It's like, she's more into cars I think probably than I am.

Which is-- suddenly, I just-- it came out of the love of getting to experience something you would never probably get-- I'm sure you've driven them in real life-- but something that most-- you don't have to. It's fine. It would be it would be crazy if you hadn't, right?

So but for the rest of us, that is the experience we get to have. And I guess I just tend to enjoy driving cars that I used to have or that I could attain. So I'm like driving around in a Volkswagen Golf. But if you ever want to put a '91 Ford Probe into one of these games, that was my first car. It was not amazing. I was able to start it with a pocket knife. Yeah. Turns out. And the passenger side--

- That a feature for the next one.

- Driver's side window didn't go down either. So if you want to go for the Fords of Vista on that one, I'd be like, no, that window doesn't open.

- I think my first car game was actually Midtown Madness, so that's kind of fun that you worked on that as well. But yeah, I've definitely since graduated from Midtown Madness. I think that was the first time I saw like 90% of the cars that existed outside of the US and Chevy's. Because they had like the Koenigsegg and amazing colors.

And you could-- it was just-- yeah, I think the exploration is definitely something that has really extended itself into car culture in general and just seeing the possibilities and all the hype around F1 and that becoming more US-centric as well. I just think it's amazing what can happen over just a few years. But, yeah, that's cool.

- I think people sometimes worry there's a limited definition of car passion and car culture. And I've been around enough to realize it's not. It's very open. So you mentioned like your first car, right? And Hailey would know this from putting a car around the track, "slow cars," quote unquote, are some of the most fun cars to drive on the track.

That idea of skill gap and mastery, if you're in a Koenigsegg, I mean, that's so far beyond my capabilities-- light years beyond my capabilities. But you put me in a Golf, you put me in maybe an older Lancer or SDI, maybe as fast as like maybe a NSX, a GT-R, that's a little bit outside my capabilities. There's a sweet spot in there. And it really showcases what Motorsport can do in particular, like that growing with the car and falling in love with that first car that you had.

That's a big deal to people. But it's a broad world-- Formula One and fandom, yep. Horizon-- exploring, seeing the sun go down over the top of your Lamborghini on a hill in Mexico, it's a broad, broad world to bring people into.

- Yeah, we had talked about this when-- as we were leading up to Forza Motorsport releasing. God, it was really only about a month ago, wasn't it?

DAN GREENAWALT: Yeah, it was.

- Time goes by slow and fast at the same time. But about having a relationship with that particular car, and I will say that particular Golf, as I put every update into, I'm not just like jumping from car to car. So I would love if you just talk a little bit about that building relationship with a car and how that's so core to the Forza Motorsport experience now.

- Yeah, we wanted this to be a very modern game and a modern take on both racing and gaming in general. And so building a racing and competitive platform, embracing skill and competition, that was really at the heart of it. But we also wanted to hark back to Forza Motorsport 1 through 4. In those games, you built your car. And in building the car, you built a bond.

You went through things with the car and in many ways found an appreciation for the stock car and stock tires. You jump straight into a really fast car and put racing tires on it, and it's thrilling. It's exciting. But the skill gap is so great. The ability to get 10/10s, right? So you're saying you got 10/10s on a corner.

To try and do that in a Ferrari, oh, that's incredibly hard. Now, it shouldn't be exclusionary, so that you never drive a Ferrari. And in fact, that's one of the great things about Horizon is bombing down the road in a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, something like that. But in Motorsport, you can slow down and develop that real appreciation of a front-wheel drive car, a rear-wheel drive car. What if I go to sport tires and I stiffen the suspension?

These are things where people say, well, I don't really understand cars. They play the game for a couple of hours, and they start developing an opinion. I love that. I love it when people develop-- I don't have to agree. I just want them to have an opinion, because that is the road to passion and love about cars.

And it brings them into our fold. So I think that's a great thing. And yeah, so the design was there to help you learn the tracks as if they were bosses you were fighting, and then upgrade your car like an RPG, and then develop that real love affair with the car.

- So let's talk about Forza Motorsport as a platform. A platform by nature evolves over time. And a big update hitting today. Can you tell us about it, what you've been hearing from the community, and how you've ended up here with this particular update?

- Yeah, so the game shipped and the team knew we were building a platform. So this was not one of those things where the team ships, and then we kind of let off the gas. I didn't mean to belabor a pun. But we knew this was about listening to the community, looking at how people are playing telemetry, and start to do fixes where needed and start doing vestments as well. But we also knew we wanted to have more cars and more tracks just coming into the game.

So rather than waiting, we started building those and we've got them timed to be released. So Yas Marina was the track that dropped in there. And then, we have-- there's new cars that come into the game and new spotlight cars as well. So we build events around those cars. And that's part of the platform is-- let's say you fall in love with these five cars through the main career, that Golf might be one of them, we want to every week have new cars that kind of entice you to try them out.

And we think there's something exciting about them. There's something unique, something new. And if you try them out, you might develop a little bit of a relationship with them.

The most interesting one to me right now is how much feedback I've gotten on one of our categories in the Builders Cup in particular. It has the 718 Porsche, the Boxster-- Cayman, actually. And it has the new Toyota Supra. And those two cars are so different. And yet they're rear-wheel drive.

People might think they're similar. And I've loved hearing even within the team and among players these camps evolving, where people are like, this car is great, that car is great, this is why, this one upgrades that way. They're getting those arguments. I love that.

So our goal of this platform is to keep releasing cars and tracks that create these arguments in the community, where actually there's no one really wrong. Both cars are incredibly fast. And it's up to the skill of the player to really get that last 10/10s on the car.

- What's the best way for those who become car fans, and start getting in there, and want to share those opinions to do so with each other and with Turn 10?

- Well, we have an incredibly strong community that is in our forums, and then they're in Discord. They're in a lot of places that you would expect. And we jump in there as well sometimes listening, sometimes silently, sometimes engaging. And that's how it goes.

But there's also-- I'm amazed how many of our fans show up at Cars and Coffee. It's you'd expect car fans at Cars and Coffee. But when I wear a Forza shirt, I'm amazed how many people step up and say, oh, wow, the first game I played was Forza Motorsport or Forza Horizon, younger fans. It's awesome.

Actually, the craziest one was I was at a race-- an IndyCar race. And I was meeting one of the drivers, a hero of mine. And I was like, oh, my god, huge hero. He was like, oh, I play your game in my trailer. I've been playing it for years since the first one.

It's the first game my kid played too. And I was just like, oh, I love this. This is what brings those communities together.

- I will say we got to do something with an influencer named Austin Evans a few years ago, where he made a PC for Checo Perez. And we went down to Mexico to give it to him. He built it in one of his wheels. And we sat down with him.

At the time, it was Forza Horizon 5. And he was like, this looks exactly like the roads we took to get here. And he just like totally geeked out on it. So that's kind of cool.

- Well, talk about a person who can memorize a track. Checo has memorized the Mexico City track and can do it with his eyes closed. So it's real. It's crazy.

- It is real. And it's very crazy. We actually at one of those events were down somebody from our community that works at Turn 10. And so Evans, racer boy, he is this insanely fast driver in the real world and in our game. And so we step up to one of the consoles, and I put down a hot lap, and it wasn't bad.

I won't say it's my best work, but it was pretty good. And he-- while talking, he stepped up like, oh, OK. And he's talking to me, and he's racing. And he beat my time by three seconds.

It was insane. There is speed out there that I cannot comprehend. And I love that that's capable in the games. It's not-- this isn't a puzzle. This is not a timing game.

This is real physics. And they're very complex. And that means there's always room to improve. And back to that learning side of being a game developer, of leading a team, I realize I've got a ton of room to improve. And I find that very exciting.

So I like games that give me a room to improve. I like story games too, like Mirage, and I like open world games that I can explore. But that go-to zen moment for me is a moment where I can just do the repetition and it's not the same every time. It's like, oh, I got 10/10s of a second out of that. That's amazing.

- Yeah, it is-- you always get good feedback. I want to see that little green arrow even if it's just a fraction of a second that I did that segment little bit better. You had mentioned you don't want-- you're one that likes to learn. You don't spend too much time celebrating. So let us celebrate for you and your team.

Congratulations on the two nominations-- one for Best Sports and Racing Game, and then, of course, the one for Innovation and Accessibility. I'm very biased, but I think that is tremendous innovation that the team did with the Blind Driving Assist. So we'll be rooting for you during the Game Awards in just a few weeks.

- Yeah. And thank you. And it's a big deal to the team. We've got a lot of people on the team who hadn't shipped a Forza before or hadn't shipped a game before. It's a new generation of game developers coming into our team.

And so to ship a massive AAA game, like Forza, and then be nominated is a really big deal. And so it's, of course, big. And I should do a better job of celebrating. I'm just not that guy.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm working on it. I've got things to learn.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Humble is good too.

[AUDIO LOGO]

- So Dan had to jet, or dash off, or whatever, as you can see. But we still got plenty of other games to talk about-- stuff that's coming out this week. First up on my list is Persona 5 Tactica, which is a Day One on Game Pass, spin-off of the mainline series. It's actually a turn-based RPG tactical game, grid-based navigation, slightly different art style. But, Jeff, I think you've actually been playing Persona 5 Tactica.

- Yeah, I'm quite a few hours into it. Persona, they love a spin-off.

- They do.

- Some of the fighting games. Some of them are like dancing games. This is the first time we've had a tactical-- that I can think of. Someone's going to be like--

- Yes, it's in their roots as a developer, but not within the Persona series.

- Exactly.

- So it was perhaps overdue time.

- Yes, yes, Atlus, no stranger to a tactical game. And so, yeah, this takes place-- I want to say in the story past the events of Persona 5 Royal, but then takes a left turn-- like don't worry about it is what I would say. And you're right. The style is completely different. And it's kind of fun seeing these characters in this new style.

But even the music has been remixed. So when you've played like Persona 5, like these are hundred hour games, but in a great way. And you know every track in that game. Oh, when I'm in the cafe, I hear this music.

And when I'm in the city, I hear this music. And when I'm in the Velvet Room, I hear this music. And hearing them remixed is kind of fun.

But then tactically, the gameplay is completely different. The way handle Personas is completely different. So essentially, yeah, it's more of instead of constantly exploiting elemental weaknesses, it's all about positioning and trying to chain these moves together. So when you knock someone over, you get another turn.

So usually, it's thinking about, OK, like three steps in advance, like, OK, if I move this person here first and do this, they can knock, and then they can knock. And I can get five moves for the price of three or something like that. And so I love that type of stuff and trying to figure out the best ways to do it.

There's always this light pressure in terms of-- if you finish a map, and they're all pretty short, within X amount of turns, you get a bonus or something like that. And so I always have that in the back of my mind. How can I do this in three turns, or four turns, or whatever it might be?

But if you're just into that world, the voice actors are the same. I love the voice actors from Persona 5 specifically. So getting to hear them again is also really fun.

So yeah, it's in Game Pass. Give it a shot, especially if you played Persona 5 Royal and you're like, I want more of this, which is I think why they keep making spin-offs of these games.

- I think they do it for themselves as well.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Perhaps.

- Yeah, just to be able to live in the world and tell different stories. Because it's a non-canon but alternate universe kind of a story set-up. So not something that will necessarily be revisited, but extends it in a different kind of way.

- Very much a don't worry about where this fits in the story.

- [LAUGHS]

- But if you just want to spend more time with them, than, yes, you get to do that.

- And they have a cat. So we should play.

- I mean that's a winner already exactly.

- Although, the cat doesn't like to be called a cat. Even though, Morgana is very clearly a cat.

- OK, we'll work on it.

- That's very cat-like behavior, I feel like.

- Yeah, well, honestly, perfect segue, because there's a dog-based game based off of Bluey-- Bluey the Video Game. Which is interesting because it's such a pop culture icon for kids, so much so that I'm just an aunt but even I'm very aware of Bluey. So it's kind of a direct translation into this interactive adventure kind of a game. So that's another one that's out this week as well.

- Is Bluey and Paw Patrol-- are those like rival factions or is there plenty of room to love all cartoon dogs?

- Within the kid community perhaps.

- Yeah, maybe. Bluey is very popular in the UK and Australia too. So maybe Paw Patrol is like it's US.

- Does Bluey have an accent?

TINA AMINI: Bluey does have--

- I think so, yeah.

- I think it's like an Australian accent. I've only watched a few episodes.

- OK, well, this warrants more investigation.

- More investigation. We'll research.

- I'm getting some heavy nods that Bluey is indeed Australian.

- OK, good, I got it.

- Yes.

- Our producers say Yay. [LAUGHS]

- And none of us wants to chance that accent, because--

- No.

- --an Australian accent is not easy.

- That is not on the agenda.

- Well, rewinding quite a bit to the '90s, I've never played Flashback. I did play Out of This World. So there's some--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, very good.

TINA AMINI: --some like stylistic connection. So if you've played video games in the '90s and played Flashback, it was at the time this very burgeoning cinematic kind of an experience. The art style was very unique. It was rotoscoped animation. So very of its time and I think something that-- it had been remastered I think a few years back.

And it did have a sequel as well, but we're getting a new sequel, Flashback 2, which has the same vector art style inspiration in some of it, but drastically different graphics, a very different look, but the same kind of storyline in terms of you are this agent and you're kind of fighting an alien race that has infiltrated Earth. And you're going through the investigation of some of that. So very story-driven kind of platform experience. Did anybody play the original or the remastered?

- I did on Sega Genesis.

- Yeah, there you go.

- And that was a game that pushed the tech. You couldn't believe how good the animation was in this game. I'm sure if I look back, you'd be like, OK, it looks a game that came out in the early '90s. But at the time, it was super ambitious, like you said. So just the fact that 30 plus years later, they're coming out with a sequel, that has my attention to be like, OK, I want to know what this team has to say.

- Very much so. Yeah, I think it's interesting to see it newly formed, but also very familiar to the original as well and cinematic in its own right. So interesting to see.

- I like that you used rotoscope. And this next-- which I think has something to do with the way they did the animation.

- Yeah, you draw on live action essentially. So it's got this like fluidity to the movement, which was again groundbreaking at the time in the '90s.

- So this next game has one of my other favorite--

TINA AMINI: Ah, yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --sort of arcana, you know where I'm going with this?

TINA AMINI: Destructible voxels?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Voxels. Yes, I love a voxel.

TINA AMINI: I'm actually very interested in this game. So Teardown has quite a community behind it. It's interesting if you look at what they've been announcing on social, just being very transparent about the development. So it is also an investigation kind of a setup for the plot, but you're really just destroying things to get from point A to point B.

So there's a backdrop of a story where you're going through heists, and then there's different challenges per level. You either need to build runways for things to get to different elevations, different levels of each map. But at the end of the day, you need to kind of create a path for the heist vehicle, the getaway car, to make it out within a 60-second timer. But it's kind of gorgeous with the voxels and how you're destroying things and they're just exploding into these cubes essentially. And that's your main emphasis for playing the game.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'm getting like Payday meets Minecraft vibes.

TINA AMINI: Yes, yes, exactly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That alone makes me want to play those.

TINA AMINI: That alone as well as there's a recent-- so they haven't done a lot of traditional marketing. It's been a lot of the developer talking on social media just being transparent about what direction to take and taking in community feedback. But there was a trailer fairly recently, I believe, that is no joke narrated by Owen Wilson.

So this game has gotten such a pedigree that they have an incredible voice acting backdrop to this trailer. And the trailer is kind of a little short film in itself. So go watch that-- if we haven't already convinced you on the game, perhaps that trailer will do a good job of it as well.

- Owen Wilson, he just seems so nice.

- Sold. Sold.

- Yes.

- I don't know where that-- it was the most random thing. There's another game out this week Super Crazy Rhythm Castle. That's a kind of combo rhythm game with puzzles. And you can play with I think up to four friends as well. So it's a bit of a mash-up experience.

But however, if you are in more of a cozy game territory, there's a couple of those out this week as well. There's one called Spirittea. That's Day One on Game Pass. So you can get easy access to that one. You're basically running a bath house while looking for lost souls who have been abandoned by humankind, because humankind stopped worshiping them, so they're all sad and doing nefarious things.

And you have to go and kind of help them through their experience, and then maybe convert them to be your bath house customers as well. So it's a little bit of that Stardew Valley like life sim experience where you're talking to townspeople, and you're running your bath house, and cutting up wood for the bath house. And it's just very cozy experience in time for the holidays.

- It's that time of year where you want the cozy games.

- Exactly, I think so too. And there's another one that's-- not new, but new to Game Pass is Coral Island. That's a farm sim game, so again, a very Stardew Valley like experience. So if you like Stardew Valley, you're eating well this week.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes, Game Pass has covered, very well covered.

- Has very well covered. And then last but not least, another Warhammer experience. This one's Warhammer Age of Sigmar Realms of Ruin. So that's a real-time strategy game from Frontier, obviously, based off of the Warhammer universe.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Something that the team did, because it's a console RTS-- we've seen a few of them-- Age of Empires Definitive Edition and Age 4 are both-- have made the jump to Xbox console. And they did a really good job with the controls. A different take on RTS controls, they're calling it direct step control scheme. And you basically directly control where they should go using, I want to say, it's the right stick. And the further you push it, the further it'll go.

And it automates some of the pathing and things like that. So that alone sounds really interesting. And if you're interested in trying this out, this is where we're getting into-- and this is what you missed last week-- the return of Free Code Friday. If you tune in to twitter.com/xboxwire at noon Pacific on Friday, you have to answer this question here.

So you're going to know if you're listening to this on Thursday, if you get ahead of the game. And all we want to know, because we want to talk about this, what party games do you like to play with your family and friends during the holidays? So I'm going to ask you that question here in a second.

But if you answer that once we tweet about it on X-- I almost said X.com. You know what? You won. You won-- x.com/xboxwire, we will ask that question noon on Friday.

Answer then, and we will randomly pick winners. We'll leave it up for about two hours there, and then you can win a copy of Warhammer Age of Sigmar Realms of Ruin. And you can let us know if that direct step controls works as well as I say.

- So are you going to answer what your favorite party game is then?

- Yeah, this is something that we will be playing. We're having-- none of us is from Seattle of our group of friends, and so we just tend to have people over. You all are welcome if you don't have any plans. I will happily extend that over.

- How kind.

- Yes, you have to bring something.

- It's on the record now.

[LAUGHTER]

- It's there.

- You can ask him later.

- This podcast is admissible in court. So what I would say is the game-- because we have a mix of people that are really into games and people that never pick up a controller is the Jackbox Games.

HAILEY GELLER: I was going to say the same.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think they're up to Party Pack 10 now.

HAILEY GELLER: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And the way it works is everyone just plays using their phone. So once you just set it up at the very beginning with a controller, everyone can just participate with the phone. I love Drawful. Drawful is something that's good for all ages.

Then, there's ones that are a less objectionable version of Cards Against Humanity, like something that is more inclusive. Let's say that. And so there's just lots of fun little games in there that everyone gets very into. And then the night, before you know it, goes much later.

HAILEY GELLER: So competitive.

- What about you? When you have folks over, do you end up playing any games?

- I was going to say Jackbox also. My family's not really like the gamer family, so maybe not for Thanksgiving. But I feel like Jackbox does a really good job of having different options for the given vibe you're trying to do, whether it's like pre-game night before you go out to the bars with your friends or maybe it's Thanksgiving with a bunch of different family members or friends-- maybe Tina and I. I don't know.

I feel like it's just kind of a catch-all of any type of game. So I was going to say Jackbox also. What would yours be?

- So same as you, we're not really a game-centric family. So I think what my parents are always drawn to, especially my dad, is just like what is new tech? So like when the Wii came out, he was very into Wii Tennis and Bowling. And it was just the concept of feeling something out, but that's more solitary. There's some multiplayer involved in that, but not really a true form party game.

- It sounds like someone who has not been whacked in the head with a Wiimote in 2007.

- He's like, this is cool. Yeah, exactly.

- We got very into the tennis.

- And it's the same with VR, like VR has that veneer, that what is this super futuristic sci-fi thing. So there's still that layer of interest just in the tech behind it. But for a true party game, I want to say Smash Brothers. But that is just like-- brings out the worst in people sometimes.

So it's really Mario Kart is the thing that's a little bit more accessible. And it's interesting, we were talking about this with Dan, where video games often kind of break the barrier of just the video game community, and just the industry, and our own kind of bubble around these things, like it's entertainment, it's pop culture. It reaches a level of familiarity to people who have nothing to do with games that you can connect with. And I think Mario Kart is one of those experiences.

- One more I want to call out, because I had forgotten about it. We had some folks over maybe a month ago. Again, not the biggest gaming crowd, but people that had familiarity with games. Street Fighter 6, there's a more of a simplified control scheme that they really pushed on you early in the game. And I'm old school and the forward, down, diagonal dragon punch that I could never do until I was like in my late 20s. But it took a while to learn.

TINA AMINI: It takes practice.

- That's my point. It takes practice. And not everyone has put in that effort. But with the simplified control scheme, it's very similar actually to Smash Brothers. Anyone can get in there and start spamming hadoukens.

And so we actually had a great time. We adjusted some of the settings a little bit until we could all get in there and just have a lot of fun. So I would say Street Fighter 6. It's a lot more approachable than, you know, old school fighters.

- That's good call out. We're going to have to try that with our respective families.

- Yeah.

- Test the boundaries.

- I don't know. I'm like trying to picture this. I'm like, maybe, maybe not. We'll just have to see for ourselves.

- Pull out the fight sticks and everything.

[LAUGHTER]

- Competitive.

- Cool.

- Awesome.

- Do we want to talk about some of the updates that are coming to some games?

- Yeah. So I think Grounded has an update. Have you been playing it, or experiencing it, or talking about it? Well, tell us about the Grounded update then.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah. So it's called the Make It or Break It update. This is like the little game that could. And we've been playing it now for quite some time. And what is the thing that I think really creative people want to do is actually make their own backyard.

And you get to do this. And so I sat in on a call-- we're working with a few content creators. And you'll see some stuff come out in the next couple of weeks. And the dev team demoed all the things you can do. And it is amazing what dedicated people are going to be able to do, like to put together full on games and you can make guessing games to open a door and really create an entire experience.

So you would think, OK, I can build. I can make a static thing. And it's a beautiful yard or whatever it is. Sure, but you can actually program spawners to make certain bugs come out at certain times or certain robots come out at certain times. You can make an arena battle so that you're out there like in a circular Roman-style arena versus a wolf spider.

I think what the community is going to do with this is going to blow people away. And so kudos to Obsidian and what they've done with this. So it's out there now. If you see cool things, let us know.

TINA AMINI: Just no stick bugs.

- And I think we'll want to feature some of that.

TINA AMINI: No stink bugs.

- We got stink bugs for real here. I'm not a fan.

- Exactly. That's so-- first off, they accosted me in the game and terrified me for life, and then I moved here and there are real life stink bugs here.

- They are-- I feel like it's like as soon as you have one--

- Oh, you have a billion more.

- You have a whole family or they all find you.

- And if you kill one, it actually attracts others. Yeah.

- We've also had bad spiders recently. I don't know if it's like--

- Recently, did you just move here?

- We have wolf spiders too.

- No, no, no, no, no, I feel like-- I mean, recently, in weather and moving into fall. I've lived here my whole life. Thank you. I'm from here unlike you.

[LAUGHTER]

But I feel like the spiders, the transition from summer to fall, I don't know what it is. I don't know how they get inside.

- It gets cold. They want to come into your house.

- They always find new areas to travel within the home. And I just it hits too close to--

- Can I ruin your week?

- No, don't.

TINA AMINI: Oh, no.

- I'm going to ruin your-- have you ever heard of a giant house spider? That is a thing this time of year or just in the past month. They basically hide out in corners. They don't bother you. They're not any danger.

But they can get big, and they are insanely fast. And this is the time of year where they go out searching for your hubby or-- I don't know which one goes out and looks for who. But that is what you were probably seeing.

And by the way, if you're like, oh, I'll catch it and I'll put it outside. They'll actually die out there. They have evolved to live in your house.

- Oh.

- Well. I mean if it balances out with a stink bugs. That's one thing. But they don't seem to go after each other. That's my problem with it.

- Well, maybe you can create the giant house spider version. Exactly. You can make it or break it.

- The wolf spiders against the stick bugs.

- We need to bring arachnophobia mode to IRL though.

- That would be great.

- No more. We're done.

- I want to see sweet baby potato spiders, not real spiders.

- Those are really cute.

- They are cute.

- [LAUGHS]

- We need more of those. We did talk about the update that hit for Lies of P as well. I believe that's the 1.3-- also 1.3, 1.2 or 1.3 update. You should be seeing that roll out now. And I'd say the big benefit if you're like, well, what does this do?

If you're like some way through the game, you would know that getting Quartz, which allows you to put skill points into places, is one of the rarest things in the game. Well, if you go and talk to Polendina inside Hotel Krat, who's the butler who does the really cool animation with his fingers, a little store situation. It's mesmerizing to watch him do that.

Anyway, you will now see that he's got more Quartz to sell and early on in the game. And that will allow you to get a few extra health canisters or get a few extra moves. So anyway, there's a whole bunch of stuff over at liesofp.com on what it does. But in a game where fine margins mean the difference between life and death, you take it.

- I was going to say the same exact thing. I'll take any advancement you can.

- Very cool. All right, one other thing I wanted to call out-- this is something that the team from Football Manager and Xbox have partnered to it. So in the US, I don't know how big Football Manager is. It's probably not as big as it is in the UK. It is a-- when we say football, we're talking soccer and you get to manage a team.

So if you're ever one of those people that are like, why are they starting this person and not that person, this is the game for you. But this is a really cool thing. So we're doing a competition effectively called the Everyday Tactician. So if you think you're great, the way this works is if you play through a season and you end up winning the season, you can enter in to say I deserve to be able to manage a team and you'll get brought on by Bromley FC, which I don't know what level-- there's all these different levels of football teams from the premiership on down. So they're in something called the Vanarama National League.

But you get to join as a support performance tactician. So if you think you're great, you think coaches don't know what they're doing, you want to learn from the best, well, you're going to get to do this. So check out our on news.xbox.com. We have it up there. And by the way, this is a paid full-time role.

So this could be your chance. Earlier, Dan was talking about can learn a lot about real life and real-life driving from playing Forza Motorsport. If you think you can learn a lot from playing Football Manager and become a football manager, this is your chance to put up or shut up. So I'm very interested to see what happens.

- I mean, Ted Lasso can do it.

- Yeah.

- Yes, exactly.

- What a cool opportunity though. Just thinking about the experience, and the potential travels, and storytelling that comes with that, that's amazing. And it's even cooler that we can have that within a gaming community, because that's unreal, amazing.

- So there you go. You could basically be Nate from--

- There you go.

- From Ted Lasso. From kit man to--

- To full-on coach.

- Jose Mourinho clone. Yep.

- I think we've got a Black Friday deal as well.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This is a lot to talk about at once. But yes, our Black Friday deals are out there now. You can find them. They will roll out over time. So not all of them are live now.

But you can save up to $50 on Xbox Series X and S. Look it up. $10 off of controllers. This is the key thing that I always love is, for the games, there's huge sales, huge digital sales on games. And if you go over, we have a post on news.xbox.com, kids call it Xbox Wire, where it has every game that's on sale. And you can sort it by the amount of the discount.

So if you click on that, you can see games-- there's games that have 90% off. So you're talking like single digits to buy games. And some of them are like really classic games, like Star Wars Squadrons-- 95% off. I had a great time with that game. Mirror's Edge Catalyst is 95% off.

A lot of the LEGO games-- LEGO Marvel's Avengers, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2, LEGO City Undercover-- 90% off. LEGO Batman 3, which was also a really good one. The XCOM 2 collection, one of the best strategy games of all time-- 90% off. So check it out. You can sort through literally hundreds of games, maybe a thousand games that are on sale.

And those sales are really beginning today and going on through-- all the details are there. I don't want to get it wrong-- but going on through Black Friday. So you don't need to wait till Thanksgiving.

You don't have to be in a food coma and fight your way through it, and then go, wait, what was on sale again? Do it now. Be ready.

- And play it during your food coma.

- Also true.

- Exactly.

- Yes.

- Well, we have one last item, which is this elephant in the room-- this giant table in front of us that normally is not here.

- Yeah, I feel like we need to get your gloves on.

- All right.

- I think we're starting with on this side.

- Yeah, once again, let's do it.

- So you may or may not have seen on social, Xbox has a really amazing partnership with Wonka. So I think we're going to start here with dun-dun-dun-dun.

- Why, this looks a typical Xbox Series X. What could ever be different?

TINA AMINI: Yeah, Power Your Dreams. Look at that logo.

- So we're going to start here with the console. I would just say like while the console may look like one of the famous Wonka chocolate bars, it's not edible. So don't bite it.

- Oh, my god.

- You might be tempted.

- This is like the trick-or-treat house you want to hit. This is like the full-size, king-size bar.

TINA AMINI: Everyone gets a console.

- Oh, here we go. So tell us about it.

DAN GREENAWALT: It certainly looks a chocolate bar.

- Yes, they basically-- it was inspired by the art that could be found in the original movie even through the books.

- It's just like this golden ticket sort of surface on the top.

- It's super cute. And then, it has the movie logo, which I think they've done a nice job just reimagining the classic. And then, Tina, is this a card? Should we open the card?

- It is a card. Yeah, I mean is this my invitation to the chocolate factory?

- I think it might be your golden ticket, girl.

- With these gloves. Oh, I can.

- Look at the dexterity.

- It just gets a little stuck. [LAUGHS] OK. Here's to sweet dreams. So it's an explanation essentially of what you get in a box of truffles. You can go from flavor to flavor on a whim or in gaming, where we can go from castle to space stations in a day.

Dreams allow us to experience all we can be, so we created this box to have everything you need to power your gaming dreams further. So a customized Wonka Xbox controller. Oh, so this is I'm spoiling--

- Oh, there's more to come here.

- I'm spoiling some information.

- Open the box.

- Should I pass this one off to you?

- What's in the box?

- Oh, it has-- so I think on the left is actually the edible controller.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'm sorry?

- So it's the first ever official edible Xbox controller made of 100% pure chocolate. And they beautifully wrapped it in a signature wrapper.

- They did.

- Get after it.

- I don't know. I don't want to open it or don't want to rip it while I open it.

- Here's the thing. If you don't eat it, the stink bugs will get to it.

- Oh, no.

- And the giant house spiders.

- It's true.

- Giant spider.

- It probably attracts them. OK, perhaps, I should have left the gloves on. Jeff, would you--

- Oh, yeah.

- --do me the favor of lifting it for presentation? It's heavy.

- Oh, oh.

- It's a chunky one.

- That's real chocolate.

- How does it smell? Oh, I can smell it over here. It smells good.

- Yeah.

- You take a whiff.

- Looks like it was dipped in-- it was just dipped in chocolate. Smells great.

- Is this something that people can win?

- Yeah, so there is a retweet to win in usual Xbox fashion. I believe it went live earlier this week on Monday. So be sure to check out that post if you're interested in potentially winning this amazing package yourself. So, Tina, now has the burgundy colored wireless controller, which was inspired by Wonka's coat, which is so cute.

TINA AMINI: It's got a little W here.

HAILEY GELLER: Yeah.

TINA AMINI: Nice little--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's a nice color.

TINA AMINI: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: A look kind of like matted out.

HAILEY GELLER: It's super pretty. And then last but not least, in the middle, there are five chocolate truffles uniquely crafted to compliment your Xbox gaming adventures.

- What was the A? It was like white chocolate, right?

- A is dark chocolate with white chocolate, maybe? Yeah.

- OK, I either want the spicy one or the orange one. OK. [LAUGHS]

- And I think you want the coffee one.

- What about you? You're the guest here.

- Oh, I'll just take the purple one, I guess, unless you want that one.

- No, let's do it.

- That's chocolate on chocolate, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, well, cheers.

- Are we cheersing?

- Yes.

- I feel like the mom and daughter on TikTok that cheers their food.

[LAUGHTER]

- We did that.

- Oh, it's actually good.

- Yeah. All right. What about this controller? Who's taking it?

- It's not too spicy. It's more cinnamony. Oh, man.

- You got to take a bite of that.

TINA AMINI: We have to display it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, it's chocolate. It's going to rot.

- As it melts slowly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Someone's got to take a bite out of that.

- That's all you.

- Do it. One of the thumbs-- what's the strategy here?

- I think-- yeah, I think you got to start at a handle, right?

TINA AMINI: Yeah. It's too big. It's too dense.

- Get the dentist outside ready.

[LAUGHTER]

- I think I've bit into a rumble motor.

[LAUGHTER]

- Turns out they did all the interiors in chocolate specifically too.

- That's really good.

- We didn't have to give this back, did we?

- I hope not.

- Not at this rate. [LAUGHS]

- No, it's fine. It's fine. It's completely in mint condition.

- Can't wait for somebody to make a GIF of you eating that.

- No, no. Unacceptable.

- [LAUGHS]

TINA AMINI: No ideas. Don't throw ideas out there.

- We have to burn these gloves now too.

- That is true. Good thing you have about a thousand of them.

- All right.

- So I think, yeah, with that, you will be able to start watching Wonka in theaters and in IMAX beginning internationally on December 6th, and then nationwide December 15th, so just in time for your holiday vacay.

- They should send these-- they should have these in the theater.

- Yeah, get your chocolate ready and bring a controller.

TINA AMINI: There's nothing more holiday-esque than chocolate.

- No, never. Yeah.

- Yeah, very true.

- I think that wraps up the show.

- I think that's everything.

- All right.

- Success.

- Now, I'm all hyped up up of espresso, chocolate, and--

- A little sugar boost.

- Just a little bit. Thanks to everyone who's joined us this week. Over on youtube.com/xbox or on many fine purveyors of audio podcasts, we appreciate your comments. We appreciate your ratings. We do read them.

And don't forget tomorrow, Free Code Friday. We're going to be doing it again noon Pacific. So please tune in to twitter.com/xboxwire.

For Hailey, for Tina, so great to see you. We're taking next week off. We hope you have a great Thanksgiving. Play those games. Get some good stuff on the sales. And we'll see you in two weeks.

- Bye, everybody.

- Bye.

[XBOX SOUND]