569: We catch up on the latest Xbox News

Larry Hryb:
Why hello there. Welcome to show number 568. You have found the podcast. My name is Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. This is my show. 568. Did I mention that Jeff? That's Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
How many episodes?

Larry Hryb:
I don't know.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Who's counting? Who's counting?

Larry Hryb:
What is this, like the 10th season or something if we look at seasons.

Jeff Rubenstein:
If you were in the UK, it would be like series 58.

Larry Hryb:
Right. Right, but we're here. It's Jeff and I. Laura who's normally on the show couldn't join us this week. She's got a couple of urgent meetings and deadlines and work she has to prepare for.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Major Nelson radio, table for 2. Turn down the lights. Light a candle. Put on some Barry White.

Larry Hryb:
Hey baby.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's just the 2 of us.

[00:01:00]
Larry Hryb:

Just the 2 of us. We're going to be doing some slow jams today. Let me tell you a funny story for those listeners. This is true. Jeff and I, obviously we're in the same office. We come in to work this morning and I park in the parking garage. I get in the elevator to go up to the building. It goes up 2 floors. Then you get on Jeff. We talk briefly. We kind of don't talk a lot because we didn't want to spoil it for the show. It was kind of this awkward ...

Jeff Rubenstein:
I wanted to talk about what I was playing. Then I was like, "Yeah, you can't use the good stuff up."

Larry Hryb:
Sshh. Jeffrey ssshhhh.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We'll get there.

Larry Hryb:
Save it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We're not there yet.

Larry Hryb:
Save it. It's been a crazy couple weeks. I was down in San Francisco last week for the Battlefield 1 reveal.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I was watching that.

Larry Hryb:
You were?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Half a million concurrent viewers. Kudos to EA. I love the stream as reveal thing that we've been seeing a lot. I saw Final Fantasy 15 did that recently. You have my attention.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. Did you watch it?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I did watch it.

Larry Hryb:
We had a good time it. I want to fly the zeppelin.

[00:02:00]
Jeff Rubenstein:

Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
Right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
You have to, right?

Larry Hryb:
The zeppelin, and trench warfare.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's the thing, when you think of World War I or at least when I do, I think of trench warfare, you think of just the Belgium/Netherlands area. Just moving a couple of yards back and forth per day, and awful carnage.

Larry Hryb:
You know what the Siegfried line is?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I don't. I just was nodding.

Larry Hryb:
Go look it up on Wikipedia. It's actually a line that goes through, during World War I, they built, which it's like a wall. It's like the Great Wall of Germany. It was a defensive line that went down the center of Germany. You found it. You never know what you're going to learn on this show. I'm looking forward to everyone digging in on their World War I history.

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:03:00]
I guess it's maybe a little more ... World War II gets all the attention in video games, in the History Channel, whatever it is. I think there's interesting, obviously great carnage and horrible things, but now as we hit pretty much the 100 year anniversary before the US entered, there's a lot of stories to tell.

Larry Hryb:
There are. There are a lot of stories. I'm looking forward to it. One of the big, I think you and I talked about this, "The World at War" which is a BBC documentary from the 70's. I love that, it's like 23, 24 episodes. If you want to watch one thing on ... What is that behind you? We're in the studio. What is that bottle? It's this bottle of lemonade.

Jeff Rubenstein:
"Me and the Bee's Lemonade with ginger." I think this was a girl who had a lemonade stand when she was six and she was able to turn it into a business.

Larry Hryb:
It's a bottled lemonade. I don't even know what that is. I'm sorry.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Can you drink it?

Larry Hryb:
I wouldn't. It's been in here for how long? Is there a website on there we can link off to bees and knees.

Jeff Rubenstein:
No high fructose corn syrup. That stuff will kill you. It's made with love in Austin, Texas.

Larry Hryb:
[00:04:00]
World War I is going to be interesting. I was talking about "The World at War" which is World War II based, I'm hoping that there is a World War I version of that. I think there is. I got to go dig it up. There's something on YouTube I found.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I ended up reading your story. You were very big on this group during World War II who's job was, they were sort of like set designers and sound effects people and they made a fake division basically to fool the Nazis.

Larry Hryb:
Did you read all about it?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I read the really deep story.

Larry Hryb:
It's fascinating, isn't it? It was all about subterfuge. They had inflatable tanks and sound effects. They were doing the craziest things. There must be a movie about that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
This is our history podcast, right? We shoot these back to back, I never know which one it is.

Larry Hryb:
I don't know what's going on here, but we're not talking about ... Battlefield 1, of course, and then prior to that was the Call of Duty reveal last week which was very well received.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The trailer looked great. You were down there, so what did you ...

Larry Hryb:
For the Battlefield one.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah.

[00:05:00]
Larry Hryb:

Well, it was interesting. We saw the Battlefield trailer. It was like "Wow, okay, cool." They played it a couple of times, I was there with the press. I was on the EA campus. I don't know if you saw the photo. I saw a good friend of mine, Peter Moore. Peter Moore was down there.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Did he reveal a Battlefield I [inaudible 00:05:15]?

Larry Hryb:
That's what everybody asked. Do you remember that?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I was in the stands. I don't know if it was the first time he did it, but this was at E3 2007, my first E3. About to hit my tenth. This was at Santa Monica High School. He played Rock Band. This was the year that Peter Moore famously paused Rock Band, he was on the drums. Was he on the drums? I think he was on the drums.

Larry Hryb:
I think he was on the guitar.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Maybe he was on guitar.

Larry Hryb:
That's when he had [Caporio 00:05:45] there, too, doing the Halo theme.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. He had that. Then, Reggie Bush was there for Madden. That was a fun show. You were one of my first tweets. I had just gotten on the twitters back then. I was like "Oh my god, it's Major Nelson." I need to find that tweet.

[00:06:00]
Larry Hryb:

Here you are.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, here I am. My future boss.

Larry Hryb:
Now we're working cheek to jowl.

Jeff Rubenstein:
If only they could see us.

Larry Hryb:
You're still man-handling that lemonade, by the way.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm looking for a date because I want to drink it.

Larry Hryb:
I think it's up here. It's up on the neck. Isn't it on the neck?

Jeff Rubenstein:
It is. 10-29-16. We're getting close.

Larry Hryb:
Okay, save that. We'll put a link on to that. Battlefield I, looking forward to that. That's coming out in October. I think it said October 11th, that's the date that sticks to my mind.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Why don't I just link to the trailer?

Larry Hryb:
Link to the trailer, and they said we're going to see more next month. That's all they said.

Jeff Rubenstein:
What's next month?

Larry Hryb:
Next month is E3.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh yes, oh my god. Thirty days, give or take.

Larry Hryb:
We've been planning for E3 since January, right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
My first meeting was in December.

Larry Hryb:
That's what people forget, it just keeps going on.

Jeff Rubenstein:
This trailer has 26 million views, good on them.

Larry Hryb:
How many likes?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Over a million. Yeah, October 21st.

Larry Hryb:
That's it, October 21st, thank you. Sorry about that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You run into Peter Moore, anything else?

[00:07:00]
Larry Hryb:

I ran into Peter Moore, he introduced me to the CEO and the CMO and all the EA folks that were there. It was nice to chat with them and it was beautiful. I was in and out in a day. I didn't have a lot of time, and I came back. What are you playing though, Jeff? I'm playing some stuff, you're playing some stuff. You are Dark Souling it up big time.

Jeff Rubenstein:
This has been a trend throughout my life. I end up becoming what I hate, I think. Maybe 'hate' is a strong word, but I'll disparage something, and then I'll get really into it. I grew up ... I didn't grow up, but I went to high school and college in Florida, and I always hated Mustang drivers.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, it's interesting that you pointed out, you were very clear you didn't grow up in Florida.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I am not from Florida. I was there long enough. I've lived there longer than any place else I've lived. In Miami especially, in the 90's, there would be Mustang drivers just blasting bass and driving really aggressively. For one beautiful month in 1993 ...

[00:08:00]
Larry Hryb:

Were you hanging out on A1A?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Beachfront Avenue. Yeah. It was funny because that song came out about a month after. It was 1990, right when I had moved to Miami. I'm like "I know where A1A is!" No one calls it Beachfront Avenue.

Larry Hryb:
It goes all the way up to Daytona and beyond. Jacksonville.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yup. Exactly. What ends up happening is, after college, and I can finally buy my first car, and what did I end up buying? I end up buying a Ford Mustang.

Larry Hryb:
Did you?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. I only had it for a month, that's a story of woe, but I did.

Larry Hryb:
Did you have a convertible?

Jeff Rubenstein:
No. I couldn't afford that.

Larry Hryb:
You can't really have convertibles in Florida. It's too hot.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You need the sweet spot where it's sunny, but you're not dying. They're made for the west coast.

Larry Hryb:

[00:09:00]
I think I've told this story before, and if I have, please stop me. Growing up in New England, that was the area to go vacation during school breaks, was Florida. As you know, Central Florida, you go to Disney, Universal, and Sea World. I just remember, we went down one year, and I don't know what we were there for, but I think it was January or February, and it was unseasonably cold. When you see the people that are at Universal and Sea World and Disney, when they come in from New England, and it's January or February, they're going to wear those damn shorts.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Doesn't matter how cold it is.

Larry Hryb:
Doesn't matter how cold it is. I remember it was so cold, we were at Disney, they don't sell overcoats ... This is a true story. People were buying the oven mittens. The Mickey Mouse oven mittens and using them as gloves. It was spectacular.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It gets pretty cold in Orlando like once a year. God forbid you're the tourist during that year because then there's nothing but complaining. "It's Florida, it's supposed to be warm."

Larry Hryb:
Unfortunately, Laura is not here today.

Jeff Rubenstein:
[00:10:00]
This is what happens when she doesn't keep us on track. Anyway, I was talking about, I become things I don't like. I grew up hating soccer. I was a red-blooded American.

Larry Hryb:
Why?

Jeff Rubenstein:
We played baseball.

Larry Hryb:
I played it. I loved it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The neighborhood I grew up in Philly, we had baseball facilities, that's it. Next neighborhood over had soccer, we didn't like them.

Larry Hryb:
I see. They were Shelbyville.

Jeff Rubenstein:
They were Shelbyville, exactly. They had the lemon tree and they had soccer, and we didn't. We hated soccer. Then what happens, I'm a huge soccer fan. I try to go England once year to watch an Arsenal match. Go to Seattle Sounders match's. Here's another one: Dark Souls. Not for me. I would always try it. I always knew. People that I respect, your [inaudible 00:10:29] and other high level journalists who, I respect their writing and they were super into it. Michael [McWater 00:10:39] is another one. They were always talking about Dark Souls. It just wasn't for me.

Larry Hryb:
You never got it, huh?

Jeff Rubenstein:
For whatever reason, and I think it was mostly cause of Andy who works on my team now. He made it his goal after spring showcase this year that when we had Dark Souls 3, he was going to get me into it. You know what, it took, and now it's all I want to play.

[00:11:00]
Larry Hryb:

It's interesting because I remember when we were at our event in San Francisco a couple of months ago showcasing, I remember you guys, he was huddled over you, and he was showing you everything. I was like "Uh-oh. I've seen this look in your eyes." I was like Jeff's hooked.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. Is it a difficult game? Yes. Is it as hard as an old school Megaman or just like these impossible shmups or anything? No. It's just a matter of it's unforgiving if you're going to be careless. Once I learned how to reframe my mind towards it, and that it doesn't have friendly checkpoints, but there's a reason for it, it's a great game. Now am I going to go back and play Dark Souls II: Sins of the First whatevers that is on Xbox One? I don't know. I now have Dark Souls 1 because of backwards compatibility, maybe I'll go back. Let's see if I can beat this.

Larry Hryb:
You know what you should do, if you're on the fence about Dark Souls and you're looking for somebody to talk to about it, can we put Andy's link ...

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes. Bother Andy, he will talk you into it.

[00:12:00]
Larry Hryb:

That is the Dark Souls III help desk. Feel free to ping him.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We check in almost every day. He's like "Where you at? What boss?"

Larry Hryb:
You heard me, yesterday, I called him your Dark Souls III midwife.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I was going to go Sherpa, but midwife works as well.

Larry Hryb:
Hit up Andy. He hasn't really gotten me hooked on it yet.

Jeff Rubenstein:
As someone who played through Aliens: Colonial Marines, [crosstalk 00:12:24], I think you can learn. You might not love it, but maybe you will. You did beat Ori. Which I feel is probably just as challenging.

Larry Hryb:
I did beat Ori. That [ginzo 00:12:34] tree. Enough about that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I just played through it a second time actually.

Larry Hryb:
You did? Ultimate Edition?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Definitive Edition, I'm playing on Windows 10. I just played up through the ginzo tree. You know what, it's still beautiful, maybe more. I was hoping for more checkpoints. They did not add more checkpoints. You still got to get through that in one shot.

[00:13:00]
What else? Blast from the past, and I know you've been playing this too is Shadow Complex. Remastered. Chair put it out for Xbox One, they put it out for Windows 10. It's available on Steam as well if you prefer that. Oh man, still such a great game. Every bit of it is just phenomenal. It's great to play a game this week that's got Nolan North in it. Otherwise, I feel like whatever happened to him?

Larry Hryb:
He's not really doing much anymore, is he?

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's a joke. I did start playing Uncharted 4 this week.

Larry Hryb:
Congratulations to Naughty Dog. I have a lot of friends at Naughty Dog. You do, too.

Jeff Rubenstein:
This is actually the first Uncharted game that I wasn't part of the team for.

Larry Hryb:
Were you in the credits of any of the previous ones?

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:14:00]
Two and three, I would have been in the credits for that. Actually Uncharted 1, it was the first game that launched after I had started at PlayStation all these years. See, I even changed from PlayStation to Xbox. I always become the last thing I expect. Congrats to that team. It's a great team and it's a great game. Naughty Dog always deliver in quality, so congrats to them. Yeah, Shadow Complex, same voice actor if you didn't get the joke. Nolan North is Nathan Drake and also whatever his name is in Shadow Complex, can't even remember his name right now. He even looks the same. Such a good game.

Larry Hryb:
Shawn.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Shawn. Thank you.

Larry Hryb:
Is it Shawn?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I think it is. It's an amazing game. Finally, the other game that's been really taking up a lot of my time, free, if you have the computer that can run it and Windows 10 is Forza Motorsport 6 Apex Beta.

Larry Hryb:
I ran you into the wall a couple of times.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I haven't seen your drivatar on there. There's a few that I've seen that I recognize.

Larry Hryb:
The rain levels ...

Jeff Rubenstein:
So challenging.

Larry Hryb:
Do you do first person view inside the cockpit?

Jeff Rubenstein:
No, because I'm not good enough.

Larry Hryb:
Okay because when you do that, then the wipers are actually working. It's unbelievable.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's the way to play it, I think, if you care for realism, if you actually want to finish the race. For me, at least.

Larry Hryb:
Are you third person?

Jeff Rubenstein:
[00:15:00]
Third person, zoomed out. The furthest away I can get, because then you have a little better view.

Larry Hryb:
I've been playing a little bit with the first person hood mounted view.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That sort of splits the difference there. The most beautiful view, and you have a better computer than I do, but it looked great on my laptop, is the night one that you do in sort of the spotlight matches that you lead off with it.

Larry Hryb:
Is that the one in [Abu Dhabi 00:15:21]?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, because they don't have any lights on the track. It's just the headlights. There's quick fall off on the light. It looks beautiful, very challenging race. I finished in third on that one.

Larry Hryb:
If your computer can handle it, it's free to download right now.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There's achievements and there's no reason not to play it.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, it's ooh, so delicious.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's my week. What about you?

Larry Hryb:

[00:16:00]
Boy, I tell you, I've had a heck of a week. We were talking about, of course, I was down there doing Battlefield. Played some of the Overwatch Beta. You and I did that, we did it with Ryan [Try 00:15:51], one of our producers here who loves that. I just had such a great time with that. Really felt good. The characters are good. Bastion's your jam.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Have you felt like you found your niche?

Larry Hryb:
No. No.

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:17:00]
I'm not sure that I have either. When we were playing capture the flag, I generally like defense, but there's so many characters here. I noticed actually you playing with Mercy a little bit, who is a healer. I played Bastion. My first couple of matches with Bastion, I think he's maybe a little bit overpowered, but then, there's certain matches, certain game modes where he didn't work really well. I really enjoyed [Farrah 00:16:29]. Farrah's on offense. She's got a missile launcher, so every shot has splash damage, which I thought was really fun. Can also fly, which is pretty great. I think there's obviously a huge amount of depth to this. There are plenty of characters that I never even touched. I didn't use any tanks. I don't know how to use a tank. That's a little more nuanced, I think. I look forward to us playing as a group, because we're always playing with like two or three of us, and then some other randos, and you really need to coordinate, I feel like to win.

Larry Hryb:
We had a good time with it. That'll be out in a couple of weeks. Working on an event for that. No details to share yet, but we're working on something for that. Launching soon. In any event, of course I played that. Let's see, I'm just opening the Xbox app on my Windows 10 PC here to see what else I'm playing. Really, I'm playing that?

Jeff Rubenstein:
What is it?

Larry Hryb:
Why is solitaire sitting here?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Why wouldn't it be? There's 1,000 gamerscore [crosstalk 00:17:24].

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, I guess you're right. I have to apologize in advance right now. If you follow me on Xbox Live, my avatar may be a little disturbing.

Jeff Rubenstein:
What did you do?

Larry Hryb:
You'll see.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's not angry toast anymore?

Larry Hryb:
No, I changed it from angry toast. I used to be angry toast, but I was talking with the avatar team and I said "Okay, I'll go change it."

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh my god, all right, let's see.

Larry Hryb:
If you want to pull that up. I'm warning you, Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:18:00]
What am I looking at? Oh, why? See, what makes this work? It's not just the fact that you look exactly like the clown from that episode of Seinfeld, Crazy Joe Devola, from whatever Italian opera he's in, but that you have one of the sort of skeleton bandoleras from Epcot in there as your avatar.

Larry Hryb:
Doing a little shuffle. Playing a little Halo 5. Of course, we talked about Shadow Complex, Ori and the Blind Force, Elite Dangerous, I played a little Star Wars: Battlefront. I think it was last week, you can log and get some extra XP on May the 4th. Then, of course, Super Hot had that interview last week. Super Hot.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That is a very interesting game.

Larry Hryb:
Are you playing it hardcore style? I saw Phil Spence and asked him if he was playing it hardcore style.

Jeff Rubenstein:
What's that mean?

Larry Hryb:
Where you keep moving. You don't stop.

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:19:00]
Actually my problem is that I do keep moving, and then I'm dead, and I'm like "How could I have avoided? Oh wait, if I actually slowed down." It's a puzzle game. It's not a shooter. It's a puzzle game. You do need to stop. My brother beat it. I saw a little bit more than I needed to see. I need to get on that.

Larry Hryb:
That's kind of cool. That's kind of what I'm playing. We've got a bunch of news. Do you want to go over some of the news, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Sure. The big news last week was, indeed, Battlefield 1 becoming available for digital pre-order. You can do that now. The trailer was out. Definitely something I know we're going to be playing a lot of. I wonder how we're going to handle this. We're going to have [Troop Chompers 00:19:24]. It's just not Battlefield with team dysfunction if you're not on the flying minivan of death.

Larry Hryb:
I'm looking forward to that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We'll have to see how that goes. Only one game release that I can see this week and that was Raiden 5. That would be a shoot 'em up.

Larry Hryb:
There's actually two game releases.

Jeff Rubenstein:
What was the other one?

Larry Hryb:
Well, by the time people hear this, Doom.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Oh. That's right. That's an unusual Friday release.

Larry Hryb:
Well, Friday the 13th. Going to be scary.

[00:20:00]
Jeff Rubenstein:

If you've got Minecraft, and if you're listening to this podcast ... Please say you do. For either Xbox 360 or Xbox One, it is the birthday of Mincraft Xbox edition. It is now four years old, so there's a free skin pack available. I found it right off the dash above your smiling head. Actually I think you were making a gesture of some sort. Oh, you were pointing at the free [inaudible 00:20:18].

Larry Hryb:
Or the blimp.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I didn't get it. Well, anyway, so there's a bunch of new shirts for Steve and Alex for you to download, including a nice creeper shirt. Also new for Halo 5 is the Memories of Reach. There's a new map, a new [Rex 00:20:35] to download. Also, the infection mode. A couple of games I saw that were announced in the last couple of days that [inaudible 00:20:45]. One, very excited, Banner Saga II will be coming out to Xbox One on July 26th. This is Oregon Trail meets X-Com in a fantasy viking setting. First one is out, I loved it. Very unforgiving.

[00:21:00]
Larry Hryb:

Just take a minute to process what he just said, please.

Jeff Rubenstein:
With a heart. Also, I did not see this one coming, was Star Trek: Online will be coming to Xbox One this fall.

Larry Hryb:
How do you feel about that?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Seems interesting.

Larry Hryb:
[inaudible 00:21:12]

Jeff Rubenstein:
Wow, you're back to Star Trek 1. That was not a good movie.

Larry Hryb:
With [Persis Khambatta 00:21:18]. Go ahead, look it up. Then of course, that was ... Who was it, it was her debut movie? I'm blanking out. What's her name from Cheers?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Kirstie Alley?

Larry Hryb:
Yes. That was her first movie. Go look it up. You have the Wikipedia page in front of you? '79?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I was still in diapers when this came out.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, but you had to see it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Let's see, you had the usuals. I actually don't see her on the cast. Persis Khambatta.

Larry Hryb:
That's what I said.

Jeff Rubenstein:
[00:22:00]
You did. Fair enough. Billy Van [Zandt 00:21:56] was in that? Isn't that somebody famous? I'm thinking Billy Zane and Steven Van Zandt. It's neither of those people.

Larry Hryb:
Neither of those people at all.

Jeff Rubenstein:
He's got a name just destined for greatness. I don't see her on this.

Larry Hryb:
Go. I'm pretty sure she is. I'm pretty sure she is. Are you on IMDB?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah.

Larry Hryb:
All right, while Jeff looks at IMDB, we'll go through some of the things we're working on. Of course we said Doom is out. We'll have that covered on This week on Xbox. That's the show that I do every Friday on your console. You just tune in and you'll see my ...

Jeff Rubenstein:
It comes to you.

Larry Hryb:
It comes to you, you don't have to do anything. You just press play. You'll see me making goofy faces.

Jeff Rubenstein:
She was in Star Trek II.

Larry Hryb:
Oh, I missed it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The Wrath of Khan.

Larry Hryb:
Sorry about that. Khaaaaan!

Jeff Rubenstein:
Perfectly, perfectly timed.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you. What do you mean? Khan. What do you mean? What are we going to do? You've met him, right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Ricardo Montalban?

Larry Hryb:
No, William Shatner.

Jeff Rubenstein:
No. How would I have met William Shatner?

Larry Hryb:
I met him. I met him at Comic Con a few years ago.

Jeff Rubenstein:
He's not just hanging out.

[00:23:00]
Larry Hryb:

He's a panic. He's funny. He's exactly what you'd expect him to be.

Jeff Rubenstein:
He's stayed surprisingly relevant considering his age. He's got to be close to 90.

Larry Hryb:
It's got to be Priceline, right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, Priceline helped, but he's spry. Occasionally, he'll show up in a music video.

Larry Hryb:
All right, so we're going through some of the headlines. Anything else there Jeffery, because, like I say, this is a fairly quick show this week because of the fact that we're not going to be doing Name the Game and I had an interview that I was holding for this week, but I put up last week.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Just want to make sure everyone downloads Sunset Overdrive while there's still time.

Larry Hryb:
Tick tock, folks.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's on the Games with Gold, so that will expire on May 15th, which may be about the time you're listening to this.

Larry Hryb:
Or if you didn't and you missed it and if you don't want to miss any future Games with Gold, follow me on twitter @MajorNelson or head over to my blog every once in a while at MajorNelson.com.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Do what I do which is, even if you're near your Xbox, go on through xbox.com, go ahead and reserve it for yourself.

Larry Hryb:
As long as you download it, quote/unquote "purchase it," then everything's fine.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Then you get it, and you come back to it whenever you can.

Larry Hryb:
What can possibly go wrong?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Don't get me started.

[00:24:00]
Larry Hryb:

Anyway, so those are some of the headlines for this week for Xbox. Jeff, do you have anything else, otherwise I'm okay with wrapping it up so we can let these folks get back to their gaming.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I guess we could do that.

Larry Hryb:
You sure? E3's coming up. Why don't you pull up the E3 hub and kind of walk through what we've got planned for that because that's actually really exciting. Xbox.com/E3, that's where you're going to see things. That's where you should keep an eye on everything. We've got a daily show I'm hosting along with other folks. Two daily shows. I believe it's Tuesday and Wednesday of E3, so we'll have some cool stuff there. They haven't told me anything yet. I've just been told we're going to have cool stuff. Right?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I would imagine so.

Larry Hryb:
If you're in the LA area, we're going to be doing a cool fan event.

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:25:00]
It's something that we've done in the previous years where we've gotten into our briefing and everything and I know there's actually a whole team, as the page loads, I'm just tap dancing here, but there's a whole team that is dedicated to making this an awesome experience. Having sat in on a couple of those meetings, their goal is always "How can we do more? How can we make this ...?"

Larry Hryb:
Better. Bigger. Faster.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. I think we did it sort of a couple of years ago, we were in charge of that. My goal was "How do we make this the best day ever for an Xbox fan?"

Larry Hryb:
We did that, I think.

Jeff Rubenstein:

[00:26:00]
We did. Then the viewpoint they've gone since then is "How do we make this the best week ever?" They did announce, we announced, Xbox Fanfest, and I'll link off to that. Five hundred lucky fans will get a one of a kind ticket for E3 week and that will include access to our briefing in downtown LA, a custom built backpack filled with gaming swag. It says access to play all new exclusives, biggest blockbusters. They have a bunch of surprise stuff. I've sat in on this. They're planning some really cool stuff. The folks that we bring in for this always get the best seat in the house. Media, you're going to be up in row 6 and you're going to be on the wings of the mezzanine. The fans are going to be front and center. First row.

Larry Hryb:
You're going to be about like 20, 30 feet away from Phil Spencer and the rest of the team and all the developers and whatnot we bring on stage.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Make some noise. It'll be good. I'm looking forward to it.

Larry Hryb:
E3, it's so exciting, isn't it?

Jeff Rubenstein:
It is. My 10th E3.

Larry Hryb:
Is it? This is my 15th, 20th, I can't even keep track anymore.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's not a contest, Larry.

Larry Hryb:
No, I know that. It just seems like just yesterday when we were joining the industry, right, Jeffrey?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Very much so.

Larry Hryb:
Very much so. Where does the time go? It goes into playing great games. I went by Phil Spencer's office before I came over to the studio here.

Jeff Rubenstein:
How's he doing?

Larry Hryb:
He's doing great. I'm going to get him on the show, working on getting him to come back on the show probably either right before or right after E3 to talk about some of the stuff when we were just hanging out and he was showing me. What was he playing? He was playing a couple of things in his office. We were talking about Overwatch and he's still playing Destiny.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I've noticed that.

Larry Hryb:
[00:27:00]
If you follow him on Xbox, then you've seen him do that. We were just talking about cool future stuff, too. That's all I can say. Dammit, there's the headline right there. There it is.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Cool future stuff. I feel like you've done pretty good. Last year, that didn't happen. Two years ago, you put just the right combination of words together. Headlines. Hey, guess what, it's E3. Every year there are things.

Larry Hryb:
Newsflash, we're going to be talking about games and things at E3. All right. Jeffrey, I want to thank you for taking the time. Hopefully, we can come back next week. We've got some really cool stuff lined up in the coming weeks. You can come back and join us and hopefully Laura will be here as well. You think she will?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I hope so. Otherwise, we just start talking about Florida, generally.

Larry Hryb:
And Dark Souls.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And Dark Souls.

Larry Hryb:
All right, gang. We'll talk to you guys next week. Jeff, thanks so much. You, the listener, thank you for being awesome and downloading the show and we'll talk to you next time. We'll see you online everybody, bye bye.