576: Mike Ybarra, Xbox One S launch and more

Larry Hryb: Hi it's Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Show #576, we're here together. I got Jeff in the studio. Hello Jeffery, good morning.

Jeff Rubenstein: Very good morning to you, sir.

Larry Hryb: Or good evening, I don't know how that goes, wherever you're listening to the show. Laura couldn't join us this week, so- I don't want to say filling in, this is actually an extra special guest. You know him as, uh, XboxQwik on Twitter, Qwik on Xbox, Mike Ybarra. Hi, Mike!

Mike Ybarra: Hello everybody.

Larry Hryb: It's so nice to see you, it's, uh, it's, you know, you and I usually- we do videos together, we do this other stuff, but I was like, "I gotta get you on the show.", so that's why you're here.

Mike Ybarra: Yep.

Larry Hryb: Among other reasons. But we're going to talk what we're playing, we've got, uh, Xbox update that came out, uh, earlier in the week, depending on when you're listening to this, came out in the week. Your team's been real busy, Mike.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, it's been a crazy time. We're so happy to get this out to fans. Millions of people have it right now, and engaging with some of the new features. It's just great for the team, it's great for the fans.

Larry Hryb: And you guys got a lot of stuff you're working on, we're not going to talk about that, we'll talk about the other stuff, but, uh, we're going to jump right- Jeff, how about you? How you doing, you all right?

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm not contributing anything to society, or to the Xbox-

Larry Hryb: So, now I want to point something out-

Jeff Rubenstein: Sorry.

Larry Hryb: And now Mike, you can see us, obviously the people listening can't see us, but this is a little awkward. Jeff and I had to go to a team event yesterday, and if you look up in the corner of Jeff's face, you'll notice he's got a little sunburn.

Mike Ybarra: A lot.

Larry Hryb: (laughs)

Jeff Rubenstein: It's at the back of my legs.

Larry Hryb: We were out on the lake Washington here in Seattle, and it was really sunny, and I got a little burned as well.

Mike Ybarra: Well, I was going to say, you have the same sunglasses.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, exact- like the exact same.

Mike Ybarra: One of the rare times where it's 85 degrees in Seattle.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so we got to go outside, we enjoyed that. The Blue Angels are in town, so we were actually out there, looking at them. That was, uh, that was a lot of fun.

Mike Ybarra: Nice.

Jeff Rubenstein: And you were racking up gamer score, weren't you?

Mike Ybarra: Uh, a bit.

Larry Hryb: Again.

Jeff Rubenstein: Like you do.

Mike Ybarra: A little bit.

Larry Hryb: You know, since you're our special guest, we're going to let you lead with what you're playing. I mean, if anybody follows you, I think most people know what you're playing, but you've got- you're playing a lot of different games, aren't you?

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I played a lot of the new indie games. There've been kind of a rush indie games that have been released.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Of course, I play a lot of Crucible on Destiny lately.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: And so that's what most people see-

Larry Hryb: What are some of the indie games you're playing?

Mike Ybarra: Uh, I started Battleship just a couple days ago, you know-

Larry Hryb: We should play that.

Mike Ybarra: Which is really fun- I have a 12 year old son.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Mike Ybarra: And so, he actually hardly plays console.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Much to my despise.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: But with Battleship, it's something that we sit down and play together, and he has a good time.

Larry Hryb: How do you do that split-screen, because, I mean, Battleship is all about the, you know, you're seeing your layout, and-

Jeff Rubenstein: Close your eyes.

Larry Hryb: (laughs)

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, they have this little, like, "Make sure the person you're playing isn't looking, and then push A."

Larry Hryb: Okay. (laughs)

Mike Ybarra: And of course, my son is always peeking around the corner-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Trying to see where I place my ships and whatnot.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Uh, but that's been in pretty fun. There's also an interesting twist on a Tetris-like game.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Mike Ybarra: Uh, called Quatros Origins.

Larry Hryb: Can we make sure we get this on the next show.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, I'll get a link in there.

Larry Hryb: Sorry, go ahead.

Mike Ybarra: You know, which is pretty, uh, pretty interesting game, in terms of, like, imagine you have a cubic Tetris game, and each piece you put down impacts the other sides of the cube. It's pretty good brain puzzler.

Larry Hryb: That sounds like fun, yeah I'll have to check that out. Yeah, there's a lot of indie games coming out. In fact, uh, we're actually- we talked about this- actually I tweeted this out ID@Xbox is doing an event at PAX.

Mike Ybarra: Yep.

Larry Hryb: I don't know if you saw this, and I'll have det- I'll have a blog post up on that in the coming week or so, but if you're coming out for PAX West, which is, uh, towards, uh, beginning- is it beginning of September? Like, I don't remember, is it the first-

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, yeah. It's right around Labor Day.

Larry Hryb: First, second- anyway, uh, we did this last year, we've actually done this for a few year, and Mike, I don't know if you've come over, but we throw the doors open on campus, and we invite people in, we have indie games, and people come over to campus and play before they go to PAX, and it's a lot of fun!

Mike Ybarra: Oh what, here on campus?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Oh wow, very cool.

Larry Hryb: We would do it on building 92, and just- would you join us?

Mike Ybarra: I would. Absolutely.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, last year we had well over 500 people in. Actually, it might have been a thousand.

Larry Hryb: It might have been a thousand. It was jammed, so we're looking forward to doing that again, so I'll have details up on my blog later this- probably next week or so, you know, as we get closer. But, so you're playing Destiny.

Mike Ybarra: I am, how's Overwatch going? I see you every night, playing.

Larry Hryb: Uh, Jeff and I are having a good time with it.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's going quite well.

Larry Hryb: You're welcome to join us anytime.

Mike Ybarra: I will have to do that.

Larry Hryb: It's, it's-

Mike Ybarra: I know, like, two characters, I believe.

Larry Hryb: That's all, that's okay. That's how you get started. Start somewhere. [crosstalk 00:04:13]

Jeff Rubenstein: You play around with those two characters. And then what happens is you start getting killed by a particular character, and you're like, "You know, I should try this, they look- they seem really effective, I should-", and you see how they do it, and you're like, "I could do that too.", and then-

Mike Ybarra: Then they nerf the character.

Jeff Rubenstein: You- (laughs) They've been pretty good-

Mike Ybarra: (laughs)

Jeff Rubenstein: All the characters have been nerfed have definitely deserved it.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: I lost no sleep when McCree got nerfed. None at all.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's, uh, but if you join us, you know, of course Jeff and I play, and we play with, uh, Ryan [Trite 00:04:37], one of our producers who's kind of hardcore, he gets really kind of crazy when he's playing the game.

Mike Ybarra: Great, I love that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, he's really intense on that, but we have a good time, we have a good crew, and you're welcome to join us anytime. We, uh, yeah I'm playing Overwatch. You know, it's funny, have you been playing Red Dead?

Mike Ybarra: Uh, I played it, um-

Larry Hryb: Originally.

Mike Ybarra: Probably for an hour, on-

Larry Hryb: On back and pack?

Mike Ybarra: [inaudible 00:04:57] through back and pack.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I started playing it, because I forgot that I that hadn't uploaded my cloud save, and was like, "Oh, okay. So I'll just start-", and all of a sudden, 20 hours later, because it's so good.

Mike Ybarra: It looks so beautiful. Talk about a wonderful studio in Rockstar that creates a game that you can play on Xbox One, and looks like an Xbox One game versus a 360 game. It looks awesome.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it looks phe- and the story is just phenomenal.

Mike Ybarra: It is.

Larry Hryb: As we all know, so ...

Mike Ybarra: I mean, I can sit and play poker in the bar for five hours.

Larry Hryb: (laughs) That's true, that's- it is a lot of- do you wear your poker outfit?

Mike Ybarra: Because you can dress up in full western gear.

Larry Hryb: That, well, yeah-

Mike Ybarra: Six-shooters.

Larry Hryb: Oh, so you're- because apparently there- remember there's- I think there's one of the, um, one of the outfits you can wear, a piece of wardrobe that gives you- I don't know.

Jeff Rubenstein: Does some sort of bonus for you, yeah.

Larry Hryb: It give you a little buff, somehow, so I don't know.

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm more of a Liar's Dice man. I can never figure out how to play that.

Larry Hryb: I have to go figure that out. Anyway, Jeff, what are you playing?

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, so, Hyper Light Drifter is a game that came out-

Larry Hryb: You talked about this on the last show.

Jeff Rubenstein: Uh, I think I just started it at that point, and now I've gotten into it, and I've beaten about half of the game, or half of the initial four worlds. This is a game that tells you nothing when you come in. Reminds me a lot of the Legend of Zelda, the original one, uh, where you're dropped in, you've got a sword, uh, you happen to have a gun as well, and, uh, that's it, and there's no words, and everything is told through pictograph, but the music is phenomenal, the colors are very, uh, just blues and purples, and it's just a really good looking game.

Mike Ybarra: This is the 8-bit game, right?

Jeff Rubenstein: This is- yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Or 8-bit looking game.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, yeah. Maybe, like, maybe into the 16-bit era a little bit, but they made them look like this then, and, uh, there's just something about it that, uh, it's very satisfying, and it's challenging almost in a Dark Souls kind of way, uh, where when you die, you know it was your fault. It was never cheap, it was just, I could have done better, and it just keeps you coming back, and back, and I was reading some stuff just to figure out- there's a lot of very hidden things, and found out that I'm not doing myself any favors at first. Went to the East side, which is where they say most people go, and it's the easiest way. Like, there's sort of the four cardinal directions you can go in, and fight a world. Uh, and then I went West afterwards, and then I've been have- I've been struggling mightily, and I found out that I should have gone North next, so East, North, West, South if you start to play that out.

Larry Hryb: East, North, West, South.

Jeff Rubenstein: And, uh, another challenging game, Banner Saga 2. Uh, been into that.

Larry Hryb: You love that game.

Jeff Rubenstein: I do, because no matter what you do, it's always the wrong decision. In a way, it's kind of like a Telltale game, but with strategy involved where, uh, they give you these heart-wrenching decisions, and what I've learned is, and as I go- at least in the first game, and at some point I'll get to that, where I'll just say, you know what, you have to mercilessly make decisions, and, because no matter what, people going to die.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: So you just, you just got to plow forward, and do the- keep your tribe along as- alive as long as you can. So that's a great game, but all of those things are really just palette-cleansers for Overwatch.

Larry Hryb: Well, all right.

Jeff Rubenstein: The [inaudible 00:07:41] oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Mike Ybarra: I really want to try Telltale's new Batman game.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: I have it installed, but I haven't started episode one yet.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Either of you?

Larry Hryb: No I have not.

Mike Ybarra: No.

Jeff Rubenstein: I heard- hearing good things, I'm looking- actually, I have the Xbox, uh, Xbox app on my Windows 10 computer, and two of my friends are playing right now at 3:15 in the morning.

Larry Hryb: That's weird.

Mike Ybarra: It's a sunny Friday, they're in their home.

Larry Hryb: It's okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, hopefully they're taking the day off.

Larry Hryb: Big week this week, he had, uh, the Windows 10 anniversary update, for those of you using Windows 10, so don't forget to update that. Some cool stuff in there, Mike.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I mean, you know, we're working on a lot of great gaming features, and anniversary update brings some more of those features in the Xbox app.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: And taking screenshots, grabbing game clips, sharing those.

Larry Hryb: Some buffs up to the DX 12 area, and things like that. Yeah, I did an interview earlier this week with Kevin Unangst, who works on PC gaming here with you, and whatnot, so if you want to check that out, it should be in your podcast feed already. I posted that the day the anniversary update was up. PC users there's- I didn't know if you saw my tweet last night about one of my favorite features, Jeff? In the Windows 10 anniversary update there's all the great-

Jeff Rubenstein: I don't follow you on Twitter.

Larry Hryb: Oh, you don't? Okay, unfollow.

Jeff Rubenstein: Are you on there?

Larry Hryb: Uh, yeah I am on Twitter.

Mike Ybarra: I think he has five followers.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: I think it's I follow five.

Jeff Rubenstein: I guess so. You always want to try these little fads.

Larry Hryb: But there's a (laughs) that's right. There's actually this cool feature now with audio outputs, and I put an animated GIF that kind of shows if you have multiple audio outputs, and as an audio nerd, you know I always do, you just click on the speaker, do you see it, Jeff? You click it-

Jeff Rubenstein: Scrolling? You tweet a lot. Is this a new development?

Larry Hryb: I don't know, it just feels like one of those [inaudible 00:09:13].

Jeff Rubenstein: Here we go, yeah. Quickly switch between audio- oh, that is new.

Larry Hryb: Right? So, uh, put a link to that tweet in the-

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, definitely.

Larry Hryb: So take a look at that, but there's a lot of stuff. There's Cortana, there's inking if you have a, uh, a pen enabled device.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is my favorite little thing you can do with inking. If you, uh, if you have a pen, like, uh, I have a Surface book here, you click it once, and it now brings up- it used to bring up, uh, OneNote, and now it brings up this Windows Ink workspace. At the very top, there's this sticky notes, and, uh, we've traveled a lot for this job. I'll just jot down the flight number, so like, you'll, AS for Alaska 342. Give it one second, it'll turn blue, and all of a sudden it's tracking that flight for you, which I though-

Larry Hryb: Really?

Mike Ybarra: Wow.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's very cool how it does that.

Mike Ybarra: Very cool.

Jeff Rubenstein: And it does it with it- you don't have to tell it it's a flight, it just knows.

Larry Hryb: It's like, "Oh."

Jeff Rubenstein: So I'm curious what else does it know?

Larry Hryb: The secrets of Cortana. Cortana also- uh, we have an update Xbox One this week that came out, Cortana's now on Xbox One, right Mike?

Mike Ybarra: It is. Lots of people are using it, and you can use it with headsets.

Larry Hryb: That's right. Yeah, for those of you that, uh- obviously it works with Kinect, but if you have headset then it'll work with that as well. You and I did a video earlier this week, or that was released earlier this week that kind of went through some of the features. I figured we can kind of do that now, not the whole thing, because they can always go back, and watch it, but there's a lot going on, and I want to talk about that in terms of what, uh, what the features are we've got, Cortana?

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I mean, in Cortana the biggest feature I use with Cortana right now is getting someone into your party so easy now.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Like, I'll be playing a game like Destiny, I'll be like, "Oh, Larry's on.", and I can just verbally say, "Hey, Cortana, add Larry to the party.", and boom, you're in the party.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Like, no more clicking, uh, it's great.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, there's that. Um, you can say hey- you're right, you can say, "Hey, Cortana, start a party with Mike Ybarra.", and then invite goes out, puts you in the party, you're off to the races. It's kind of cool.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, at first, you know, when it first came through, and a couple people have asked me, like, "Well, so this is just- you're changing the name of, like, Xbox.", watch this, and really there's so much more you can do. I'll just say, especially in my living room, like, "Hey Cortana, did the Phillies win?", and it- usually the answer's no, but at least I can see it, and it'll bring up the box score really quickly in a snap, while I'm watching TV or something like that.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, it's a good point. A lot of people think that, you know, Cortana is just the gaming commands, but it's the full commands that are the desktop, the phones, uh, and so it's super rich, like my other thing that I use a lot is, "Hey Cortana, what's the weather?" So I can see, kind of, what's the day's going to look like, and go from there.

Larry Hryb: So it'll be warm in like-

Jeff Rubenstein: And you put in a command actually, that lets you know what Cortana can do, right?

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, that's right. Um, there's a simple command of, uh, "What can I say?", and that'll- it doesn't list all the commands, but-

Larry Hryb: Get's you started.

Mike Ybarra: It gets you started. Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, kind of gets you started. The other feature that kind of shipped, but is- there's a couple dependences, is background music. A highly requested feature, let's talk about that, Mike.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I mean, background music's awesome. You know, for those in preview, we're using Groove right now, it's going to release very, very soon to everybody, so that people can use Groove, but, you know, very interesting story earlier this week, Mark Bolter, who's on my team released his background music app.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: So you can go up to the store, and search for his app. Just search for "background", and you'll find it there. It's a free app that lets you play mp3s, FLAC, WMA off of USB sticks or hard drive.

Larry Hryb: So if you have any local music, you can just plug it in, and so Mark on your team said, "Hey, I want to- here's a problem we're going to solve.", and he went off, and made UWP, I guess.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, well there was kind of two things to that: One, let's get an app out there, because a lot of the fans are saying, "Argh, we really want, uh, other applications that let us play off of a hard disk."

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Or deal in a- and those applications have come in, of course. Some of the biggest names are coming-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Uh, very soon, but also, the fact that soon, any developer can write an app, and deploy it, and have it in the store, and Xbox One, which is incredibly cool. Imagine all of the background music apps that the community will create together, and release on Xbox One.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Or weather apps, or whatever the app might be, uh, and so Mark was, you know, sitting at home, writing some code, and wanted to release an app, and-

Jeff Rubenstein: Like you do.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: (laughs) There you go.

Mike Ybarra: That's going to be great.

Larry Hryb: So, there's that, and also, I want to be clear, so background music is out from a platform support, but now it's up to our development partners to, kind of, implement their side of it, and that's the, you know, that's the chocolate to our peanut butter that really makes the magic.

Mike Ybarra: That's right, that's exactly right.

Larry Hryb: So that- so those will be coming soon.

Jeff Rubenstein: Some other apps that available too, I saw the folks at Windows Central, which is a site I go to, pretty much everyday, they're messing around with maps on Xbox, which is kind of cool.

Larry Hryb: What?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah. And there's-

Larry Hryb: How interesting.

Jeff Rubenstein: You can still get all these 3D maps, and, you know, I wonder if, like, at some point, and I think it would be amazing if this happened, you know, if people would, uh, put in maps for, you know, games or things like that. That you could map in.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Mike Ybarra: There's a few new-

Jeff Rubenstein: The future's there.

Mike Ybarra: Features out there now, and I think once we open those gates, uh, it's going to be a, uh, innovation central in terms of what developers will be able to do, and some of theme will make their, uh, apps opensource, and community will build on those, and it's going to be a very exciting time.

Larry Hryb: There's another, uh, there's another Reddit reader, Bacon It that from-

Mike Ybarra: Bacon It app, out on Xbox right now.

Larry Hryb: Bacon is on XO. The other- one of the other features, um, that we also shipped is language region independence. Mike, can you explain that? I mean, it's- that's a lot of fancy words.

Mike Ybarra: It is. I'll do it in the context of the conversation we actually just had. Mark released his background music app in I think English, um, or for US, UK, and a couple other regions, and a lot of the feedback from the fans was, "Hey, we want this in, uh, Germany.", for example.

Larry Hryb: Well, is it- well, I want to talk about that, because, you know, Mark, here's a guy that wrote an app. What we call a localization, so when you make, when you create an app, or an asset, it has to be localized in different languages for different regions, and he doesn't know German, so he doesn't know how do it.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, and so he, you know, we don't release it there, because, you know, releasing English and German is a little weird, and so, um, but one great thing about that is you just change the language of your console, and you can go download that from the store.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: So that's one of the benefits of language region independence.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: That people can get other apps that may not be localized in their country.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's a neat feature. I know people have been asking for a while, and it's not as easy just kind of making it happen, you had to do some work on your side, on the platform.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, that's right, I mean, there were some pretty deep technical adjustments we had to make, and so some of the fans would say we're a little bit late in delivering that feature, but I'm glad it's out there for them now.

Larry Hryb: Uh, the Xbox and Windows store conversion, so now there's one store, right? That's looking pretty good?

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I mean, there's lot of little bugs in the store, duplicate entries, uh-

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I saw that this morning, when I was looking- when I woke up. I was like, "What's going on here?"

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I there's some elements like that, that, you know, the system's still going through as we do convergence, but, you know, this is the update on Windows that enables XPA, Xbox Play Anywhere program.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, right, right.

Mike Ybarra: Where if you buy a game on Xbox One or on Windows 10, you get it free on the other, uh, the other platform, which is something our fans are really looking forward to. Uh, but, you know, a lot of people think the store convergence is just about getting one store, but there's features like being able to pre-order.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Which has existed, but was actually a manual process inside, and now that's all just automated in store. It'll be a lot smoother.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: You'll be able to see prices, and discounts, just the way the store, and the categorization communicates, and uses, I think they'll like it a lot.

Larry Hryb: And there's also a lot of new features. I've seen the roadmap that we can't really reveal right now, but some of the user requested features that you guys and girls have wanted, we're working on those.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, that's right.

Larry Hryb: We'll just say that.

Jeff Rubenstein: How's ever? I mean, hundreds have been already developed, or in groups.

Mike Ybarra: That's right.

Jeff Rubenstein: From Xbox feedback.

Larry Hryb: Uh, one of the big ones is- one of my favorites is the improved game collection. This is for anybody who has, you know, any more than, like, 10, or 15, or 20 games, and I know you have a couple hundred, Mike, as well as I do. This is amazing.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I mean, I like two things about this, and the fans have been really been vocal about it, as well as on Home, you can now see on the top right a little tile that lets you know if you're installing a game, how fast it's installing, and what the progress is. Super helpful to not have to go into menus to do that.

Larry Hryb: Because we've all had those games that ... they tell you it's ready to play, but it's not.

Mike Ybarra: That's right.

Larry Hryb: So, this'll to tell you when it's all done.

Mike Ybarra: And collection is just great, because, you know, like us, you said we have hundreds of games, but even people with 20 games, being able to adjust the tile size is just huge in terms of finding something.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Being able to categorize, or jump from A to Z as- if you're looking for a particular game. Uh, something that, you know, I think that has landed really well, and I use it every single day.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's just a- it's a tremendous upgrade. I'll just say that. Would you agree with me, Jeffery?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, and there was a cool little, um, shortcut there that somebody tweeted out the other day, I think it was [Stime 00:17:16] on- if you've hidden things, which is something people wanted, like, at demos, especially, or old betas, and whatever, but you want to bring those back. Um, I believe, he just hit the, uh, both bumpers and X.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, it was interesting, because that's actually always been in the product, but it was RT, LT, X.

Jeff Rubenstein: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Now, it's RB, LB, X.

Larry Hryb: I see.

Mike Ybarra: And so we made a little change there, and some people kind of noticed that, because they're like, "I can't unhide things anymore. What happened?"

Larry Hryb: Why don't you just move your fingers up a little bit.

Mike Ybarra: Yep, move your fingers up, and you're good.

Larry Hryb: And you're good, and that's- so anyway, that update is available, uh, it's available now for all Xbox One owners, of course, and of course earlier this week also, simultaneously, we shipped Xbox One S.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, this update also adds 4K upscaling capabilities. The ability to watch 4K, both steaming media and physical disk, and of course HDR support for games and video.

Larry Hryb: You know we got a new- the TV you can't really see it, because it's behind you, we just got a new TV here in the studio that's HDR.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I walked in, and I saw this mysterious open box that says SUHDTV, and I was like, "They have a new toy in this room."

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we had- well we had to get it, because I'm like, "We need to see what things look like.", and then some of the HDR images, they're- I've said this before, they're tough to describe, um, but it's amazing when you see them.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I did an interview with, uh, Dan from Turn Ten yesterday.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: And it was funny, because Dan was telling a story of the first time he saw a HDR in a movie, in a big screen, and he had to actually kind of close his eyes a little, because the colors are so bright, and so vivid out of it, and I think that's just- it's a huge difference that I hope everybody gets to actually see, and if you can't, if you don't have it at home, go into the store, and take a look at it, they'll soon be everywhere in the stores.

Larry Hryb: This is actually a good point, were going to- we're actually going to stop, because we have a good friend of the show, Albert Penello. Uh, I chatted with him, he couldn't join us live in studio, so I pre-recorded this interview with him, uh, yesterday, where he tells us about 4K, and there- it's a very complicated scenario of what to do, and how to do it, and Albert kind of breaks it down pretty straightforward, so let's take a break, we'll listen to the interview, and we'll come back on the other side, and talk more about 4K.

Albert Penello, always good to have you on the show, Albert. How are you doing?

Albert Penello: Hello, my friend. Always good to be here.

Larry Hryb: It's fun, I haven't had you on in a long time.

Albert Penello: Too long.

Larry Hryb: It's like three, four, five years.

Albert Penello: Every time we say we're going to do it, get on the show, never happens.

Larry Hryb: But the reason I have you here is I talked about in earlier on the show is, you know, are kind of the de facto expert around here. One of many, uh, for 4K and HDR gaming, and with the Xbox One S out this week, I said, "Albert, now's the perfect time for you to come on, and talk about this.", because it can be a kind of a complicated issue. A lot of people are scratching their heads, going, "Wait a minute, does my TV support it, what is this HDR, how does it work?", so I've wanted to get you in here, and talk about it.

Albert Penello: Yeah, great, sounds like a lot of fun.

Larry Hryb: So Xbox One S, um, supports. Let's talk about Xbox One has launched this week, what is its support?

Albert Penello: Uh, well, I mean, look, there's a lot of great things about the Xbox One S, but as you said earlier, we kind of want to focus on the 4k, HDR, UHD, Blu-Ray aspects, because we're just seeing a lot of people have questions, and it's, kind of, one of the things that's fun about the forefront of technology, this is tech that's just now coming into the consumer market.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: We're right on the forefront, so I think a lot of people just have questions about how it all works.

Larry Hryb: You know, it's funny, I was thinking about this when I knew you were coming in is, um, you showed me the Xbox One S design, do you remember that? Do you remember when you showed- I'm going to say how long ago it was, but it was quite-

Albert Penello: I was going to say, are you going to out me here on-

Larry Hryb: No, no, no, but it was quite some time ago.

Albert Penello: It was quite some time ago.

Larry Hryb: And I remember that, and what you guys showed me, and what we shipped is- they're pretty close, and I was like, "Wait a minute, the power supply is inside?"

Albert Penello: Oh yeah.

Larry Hryb: I remember that.

Albert Penello: It was super small.

Larry Hryb: So well done to the team, by the way, congratulations to our hardware team.

Albert Penello: A lot of people are very proud.

Larry Hryb: So where- when we- when people get their Xbox One S home, and they want to make sure they're getting the real, the ulti- the most out of their box-

Albert Penello: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: What do they need to look for?

Albert Penello: Well, uh, like we said, so 4K is just coming, and so the standards are still being developed, the way TVs talk about 4K-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Albert Penello: The features they support are all slightly different.

Larry Hryb: There's that- the SHD, SUHD, Ultra HD.

Albert Penello: Cinema 4K.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Albert Penello: 4K UHD, the HDR wide color, all these nicknames and people call them different things. So I think the first thing is just to start with the basics. Um, the Xbox One S is an awesome product for people who have 1080p HDTVs.

Larry Hryb: Yup. We'll talk about that later. Yup.

Albert Penello: So, it is not a requirement at all that you ned a 4K television to take advantage of Xbox One S.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: But, if you want to, there's just a couple basic things you're going to need.

Larry Hryb: All right.

Albert Penello: The first thing, obviously, is you need a TV that supports 4K.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: I think that's pretty straightforward.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Albert Penello: Uh, 4K UHD, uh, is the television standard for, uh, 4K sets, uh, you'll need 4K content.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Albert Penello: Uh, so you'll need, uh, subscription service like Netflix that supports 4K.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Albert Penello: Uh, you'll need 4K Blu-Rays, or something like that.

Larry Hryb: Now, how- I don't even know- I don't think I- you, I know you have 4K Blu-Rays.

Albert Penello: I do, yeah.

Larry Hryb: I don't have any.

Albert Penello: Well, I kind of knew this was coming, so I might've bought my stuff a little early.

Larry Hryb: I knew, I mean, I knew it was coming too, I just haven't had a chance, because most of my stuff is digital. What's a- ooh, you know which one I need to get? The Martian.

Albert Penello: Yes, that is a great HDR showcase.

Larry Hryb: Because I remember, I remember, like, when Blu-Ray came out, everyone said that the best movie to get- do you remember what the- at least at that time, was the Fifth Element.

Albert Penello: That's right.

Larry Hryb: Right, that was kind of like the standard. That was, "Oh, you got to get this, and look at it.", and it really made everything- so it feels like for this generation, we need to get the Martian.

Albert Penello: The Martian is definitely- probably the best overall, I mean, you know, Ridley Scott movies are always beautiful, but the lighting in that really takes advantage of the HDR.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so, and let's talk about HDR, what it means, because it's people- it's hard to describe until you see it, because you can't put, really put screenshots up to show it, right? Yeah, I can't show it in this week on Xbox videos.

Albert Penello: That's right, you're not going to really- you can see things that are kind of faked, and there's been, uh, H- simulated HDR on, like, cameras, and things like that.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, but really, so HDR is an acronym for, "High Dynamic Range", and it's one of things that's getting talked a lot about, because, um, aside from the resolution bump, um, going from, uh, 1080 to-

Larry Hryb: 4K.

Albert Penello: To 4k. You know, you have four times the pixels, um, so things are sharper, uh, than they are in 1080p. Uh, what HDR does is it basically expands the, sort of, brightness and darkness of a TV.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: And really, for many years, so that number is expressed in nits, by the way.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: That is the amount of brightness that a television puts out, and, uh-

Larry Hryb: Was it like one nit, two nit, we're talking thousands, are we?

Albert Penello: I think it's, like, 300 or something nits would be, like, a normal television.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: And a- you know, like, 1,500 nits is the sun, or something like that.

Larry Hryb: Got it. (laughs)

Albert Penello: You can see from here.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: I don't know, I don't know the exact numbers, but um, the- it- basically- HDR basically increases the brightness, and richens the blacks that you get in a television.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: So, um, TVs can display brighter bright colors, and still preserve the detail and the richness of things that are in the dark.

Larry Hryb: That's always been a problem, like when you're watching a movie, and you see, like, maybe a character's going from a dark room, out into the sunlight, or something. It's always the disparity of the textures, and the quality of it, and this really helps out with-

Albert Penello: Right, the TV usually has to give something up.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: But there's a Netflix show called, um, The Man in the High Castle.

Larry Hryb: Oh, I love that.

Albert Penello: It's a Noir, uh-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Albert Penello: It's a Noir show.

Larry Hryb: You've seen the whole thing. Did you binge it?

Albert Penello: I did binge it.

Larry Hryb: I did too.

Albert Penello: It is an excellent HDR showcase as well, because it's- since it's got Noir, it'll have these bright lights, and these very dark and moody colors.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: And the, uh, the uncompromised clarity of the image that you see in HDR with those bright brights, and the dark, uh, is something I don't think a lot of people are used to seeing on a television.

Larry Hryb: You know, before we get going, I want to talk about one thing. I was down in LA earlier this week, doing an unboxing of the Xbox One S, and there was a lot of people that had questions, um, about, hey, I have a 4K TV, um, or maybe I don't have a 4K TV, but I really want that new console, what are the benefits for those folks, that maybe don't have a 4K TV yet?

Albert Penello: Well, I mean, obviously you get all of the great benefits of the 40% smaller, and the great new controller with Bluetooth, and the range-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: And the integrated power supply, and everything that comes with, uh, the Xbox One S.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: Um, but you know, even, uh, it still supports- you won't get to take advantage of the 4K aspect.

Larry Hryb: Of course.

Albert Penello: You don't have a set.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: But, you can still play 4K Blu-Rays, and then you get a different thing that happens, which is called "super sampling," or "down sampling," which is where the bits are still in very high resolution, but are then shrunk down to a 1080p screen.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, and so it's kind of like taking this awesome- imagine you have this awesome 10 megapixel picture that was take in some professional DSLR camera, and then you view it on your phone.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Like, it looks amazing, you've got a ton of detail, and there's more image detail than the screen can display.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Albert Penello: So, even watching 4k Blu-Ray on a 1080p set, you might notice, um, that there is a, uh, improvement in the quality of the picture.

Larry Hryb: Right. By the way, I just remembered. We're talking about Man in the High Castle.

Albert Penello: What did I say?

Larry Hryb: That was Amazon, you said Netflix.

Albert Penello: Did I say- I meant Amazon.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we know that. I'm sure people are, like, they've actually sent the emails already.

Albert Penello: That's right.

Larry Hryb: So ...

Albert Penello: I think I'm probably in trouble as we speak.

Larry Hryb: That's okay. (laughs)

Albert Penello: It hasn't even aired, and I'm already in trouble from someone.

Larry Hryb: That's okay. Um, but yes, so, I mean, that's- the only you've talked about the Xbox One S, if you don't have a 4K TV, then of course, you'll be prepared for the next wave of displays which- and that's really what I wanted to get you in here was, it's shaking out right now. There's a lot of things that are happening in the industry that this holiday that are going to even be changed from now, right?

Albert Penello: Yeah, prices are coming down.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, a lot of 4K TVs that shipped a couple of years ago didn't support HDR.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, you know, I have one of those.

Albert Penello: Right.

Larry Hryb: I've got a curved, uh, beautiful, like, 70 inch, that I was like, I had to tell my wife, "Hey, you know, I think we need to get a new TV.", and she's like, "Get out of here."

Albert Penello: It's for work.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's for work, exactly. Air quotes.

Albert Penello: (laughs) I need to demo things, air quotes.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, she had none of that.

Albert Penello: So, yeah, you're going to see, I think you're going to see more HDR sets, you're going to see the quality, um, continue to improve, you'll see the prices continue to drop.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, so I think if you haven't bought a 4K TV set, now you're going to have, you know, you'll have access to streaming services, you'll have access to disks, you've got a great device to drive the TV, and, you know, I just upgraded myself, and, uh, I can honestly say I had a really great plasma, a really great 1080p plasma that I loved.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: And I did not feel any buyers remorse moving to 4k, it was nervous.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Albert Penello: That I wouldn't feel the benefit of moving-

Larry Hryb: But you're feeling-

Albert Penello: Oh yeah, totally.

Larry Hryb: Now, when you- we talked about the fact that people are buying Xbox One S's now, they're going- they're sold out a lot of places, but, you know, if looking at building- getting a new display this holiday, what should you look for, for a 4K, um HDR display, because there's a couple of HDR formats floating around, and things like that. What are some good guidelines?

Albert Penello: Uh, well look, I mean, first I would just say whatever's in your budget.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Albert Penello: Whatever fits in your living room.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Right now, uh, any of the 20- all the 2016 sets are pretty high quality.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: That are out, this year's models. Um, but you know, again, um, really the only thing besides what size do you want, what technology do you want? OLED, or LED, or LCD.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Albert Penello: Is to make sure that your TV support has HDR support.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: Particularly HDR 10.

Larry Hryb: HDR 10, okay.

Albert Penello: So HDR 10 is the, um, the Blu-Ray specification standard for-

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Albert Penello: Uh, high dynamic range.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Albert Penello: So as long as the TV supports HDR 10, uh-

Larry Hryb: You're good to go.

Albert Penello: You're good to go, you'll be able to take advantage.

Larry Hryb: So you'll be ready, like, for instance not only for your Blu-Rays, but later this year, for instance, Gears of War 4 is going to- if you've got an Xbox One S, it's going to be available. You're going to be- you're going to enjoy some HDR goodness there.

Albert Penello: Right, when the HDR enabled games start shipping out, you'll be ready for that as well.

Larry Hryb: Now, we talked about that, you know, what happens if I've got- so I got my great 4K display that Albert says I should buy. This one here. Got my Xbox One S, but what does it do with the content that perhaps isn't 4K native?

Albert Penello: Well, that's the great thing about having the upscaling ability is, um, and being- and having it done in the console is that the Xbox One S will upscale all of your 1080p content to 4K.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: Uh, I think, like, the savvy viewers out there will say, "Hey, wouldn't my TV do that too?"

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Uh, and yes, the TV does, but having, um, having the console, uh, do the upscaling of the game engines before it gets sent out-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Uh, you know, in our experiences that that sort of provides the best version of upscaling. Having it come right out of the box.

Larry Hryb: Great.

Albert Penello: You know, we upscale today.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Albert Penello: Um, from whatever resolution the game is, to whatever your output resolution. We downscale, by the way, as well, for people that have, you know, 720p TVs-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Albert Penello: Games need to go down. So we used that same algorithm to upscale the 4K.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: I could tell you, you know, again, like, for me, um, just games like Doom, that was one example of- when I, um, Doom's a 1080p game. When I saw it for the first time on a 4K display upscaled, it looked like a new game.

Larry Hryb: It's even Doom-ier?

Albert Penello: More Doom.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: More Doomy. More gloomy, but more beautiful, I mean, it looked great.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: So it'll upscale all of your 1080p, it'll upscale your movies, it'll upscale your games, the dashboard and UI will be up to scale.

Larry Hryb: Fun, fun. Now, all right, so I've got my 4K TV, I've got my Xbox One S, what are some of the things that we're seeing that people are maybe a little bit confused by, or what can you do to say, "Okay, here's what you need to do to make sure that you're all set up and good to go.", because there- because it's not- it's just some of these things are complicated right now.

Albert Penello: Oh totally. I feel like I've spent the last 24 hours doing online tech support. You know, I'm sort of reading the forums, and on Reddit, and on Twitter, and sort of watching Facebook, and all my friends who are hooking everything up.

Larry Hryb: Thank you for calling help desk, this is Albert, how may I help you?

Albert Penello: (laughs) I have done more PMs, DMs, IMs-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: In the last 24 hours. I really breaks down to, like, their, you know, every TV is different. The names of these features can be different, how 4K is implemented is different.

Larry Hryb: Right, right.

Albert Penello: And I can really narrow it down to sort of the, like, there's three big things that I see people get caught up on.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: So, um, the first thing is that, um, a lot of TVs have- will only have maybe one or two specific inputs.

Larry Hryb: So you'll have five or six inputs, maybe HDMI 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, but only the first one or two-

Albert Penello: Right, might support the actual 4k 60.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: So, um, one of the things that we see people, um, have happened is that their Xbox will say they support 4K, and when they go through the 4K TV details, like everything's red.

Larry Hryb: So, what you're making reference to, and people may not know this, but when we detect a 4K TV, the console actually has this series of tests that it runs, and we put little checkmarks. You may have seen these in maybe some online forums. I can post a photo if you want to see what it looks like, but we actually tell you that, "Hey, you're all good to go.", and if you've got all green, obviously you're good to go, but there's some areas that people are getting tripped up on?

Albert Penello: Yeah, exactly. The TV, um, can report that it's a 4K TV to the Xbox.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: And so the Xbox will then try, uh, to go in to 4K mode.

Larry Hryb: Yup.

Albert Penello: Um, and then it runs a series of tests to see what- do you support HDR, do you support 60 frames, and I'm seeing a lot of people say yes I support 4K TV, that's green, but everything else is red.

Larry Hryb: So what's going on, Albert?

Albert Penello: So that means there's something broken in the chain. Somewhere along the line, there's something that's not right.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, again, we find that kind of go into three main issues.

Larry Hryb: So the first one you mentioned is maybe, I've got it in the wrong input.

Albert Penello: Almost, almost-

Larry Hryb: In the TV.

Albert Penello: I would say 75% of the problems I see is that HDMI 1 inputs already taken with something else, and they put it-

Larry Hryb: The satellite box, or the cablebox.

Albert Penello: In HDMI 2. Right, and so that's number one problem. Make sure your TV input is set to the one that supports 4K.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: Uh, number two is, a lot of guys-

Larry Hryb: And check- you need to check your TV manufacturer for that.

Albert Penello: That's right, check your manual. Sometimes they're labeled, but check your owner's manual-

Larry Hryb: Got it.

Albert Penello: Or to find out which one.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: Second one is that I have an AV receiver, or a splitter or something.

Larry Hryb: Ooh, yeah.

Albert Penello: And that might not support 4K.

Larry Hryb: So if something going on there, where the signals are getting crossed, or they're not getting- they're not speaking cleanly to each other.

Albert Penello: Right, and I had this- this was my personal experience, right-

Larry Hryb: That's my problem too, yeah.

Albert Penello: I have an AV receiver that, uh, that supports 3D.

Larry Hryb: Uh-huh (affirmative).

Albert Penello: Um, but does not support 4K.

Larry Hryb: You got to get a new one, Albert.

Albert Penello: I just went directly into the TV, so problem solved. I can't- I got the TV past the wife, I'm not getting a new stereo, too.

Larry Hryb: That's right.

Albert Penello: Uh, the, uh- so if you have a splitter, or an AV or something, that could be a problem.

Larry Hryb: If you're doing something funky in a chain, that's not a direct connection from your console to your TV, then that may also be an issue is what you're saying?

Albert Penello: Exactly right.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Albert Penello: The last thing, which is not super common, but is something that-

Larry Hryb: People need to be aware of.

Albert Penello: Be aware of is that, um, you know, there are differences in HDMI cables.

Larry Hryb: Oh, that's right.

Albert Penello: Um, and, uh, you know as you talked about in the unboxing, the original-

Larry Hryb: Ah, the infamous boxing and unboxing. (laughs)

Albert Penello: Unboxing video. The reboxing, uh, video that- the Xbox One that shipped in 2013 comes with a HDMI high speed cable.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, the Xbox One S comes with an HDMI high speed cable. Not all HDMI cables are rated for high speed.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, and so, uh, the- you need to make sure that the cable itself is actually capable of outputting the signal.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so this is really important. What you need to do is, um, because I ran into this where I was like, "Why isn't it working?", and realized that I had purchased some cables, I don't know, off Amazon or Monoprice, and they didn't support the high speed, so once I went and got the regular Xbox one, I was like boom, all of a sudden, it happened.

Albert Penello: Yeah, exactly.

Larry Hryb: So ...

Albert Penello: I think also, the thing I should say is just to get the basics, make sure you have the latest system update.

Larry Hryb: Of course.

Albert Penello: Right, that came down. Make sure that you have the latest versions of the apps.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: In some cases, Netflix, for instance, you actually have to go activate, um, 4K. It's actually a premium subscription-

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: On top of their streaming.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, so even if you have your box set up right, like, individual-

Larry Hryb: Yeah. There could be something a little here and there, and this is just- this is what happens when we're at the beginning of any new technology.

Albert Penello: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Right? With HDR 4K there's a lot going on, and there's a lot of dependencies, and these need to talk back and forth, and standards are ratified, and early, so it's just a little bit of a challenge, isn't it?

Albert Penello: Precisely.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's, uh, I mean, there's a lot going on there. So those are some really great tips, just really, to remind people that, uh, check your, uh, input to make sure your 4K input is- you're on the right input that can handle 4K, because not- most TVs only have one or two, versus all of them.

Albert Penello: Right.

Larry Hryb: Because it's cheaper for them just to enable it on one or two, right Albert?

Albert Penello: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: The second is to make sure that you have a clean line, you don't have a splitter, or an amplifier, or God only knows what else in between your console, and the third one is to make sure you're using a high quality cable.

Albert Penello: High quality cable, yup.

Larry Hryb: So there you go.

Albert Penello: Exactly, those are the three big ones.

Larry Hryb: Those are the three big ones. So it's going to be a great holiday, I mean, we got a bunch of great games coming out. Some of them are going to be HDR, and it's, you know, I need to come over to your house, because now I don't have an HDR TV. I need to get that, uh, I need to get that figured out.

Albert Penello: Yeah, well, you know, bring the wife over, and then we'll convince her to get a new one.

Larry Hryb: I also want to talk before I forget, um, there was a question about game mode.

Albert Penello: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: So let's talk about game- some TVs have this concept of game mode, which is designed to reduce lag, right?

Albert Penello: Yeah, a lot of TVs today, I think, uh, you know, I would say even I don't fully understand it, but, uh, in order to, sort of, display these images, and display this audio, and keep everything synchronized, and work with these fancy displays, there's a lot of processing that goes on in the television.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, and that could be things that are designed to reduce motion blur, or change the color, and make the picture brighter, or whatever for your viewing environment, and so, but all of those things introduce latency, or "lag" which doesn't matter in a movie, because there is no lag, like, it just starts the movie, and then it plays [inaudible 00:36:20], so you don't know. Um, but from a game perspective, when you're playing a video game, I press the button, I expect the character to do something.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: And it can take many milliseconds between the button press, the console, the AV receiver, and then the television-

Larry Hryb: Well this is what everyone's worried about in, like, multiplayer.

Albert Penello: Right, yeah, because, like, lag- reducing lag and latency. So game mode on a television generally shuts off all of the fancy-foo.

Larry Hryb: All the processing.

Albert Penello: All the processing, and tries to have the quickest path to, um, you know, button press to character action.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, one of the things that we're seeing on many TVs right now is one of the things that gets shut off with that is HDR.

Larry Hryb: Oh, interesting.

Albert Penello: Uh, so when I go into game mode, then HDR is disabled, so I think, um, you know, and TV- every TV is different-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Albert Penello: In how the latency works, and every TV is different, and what they turn on and off.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Albert Penello: Um, so I always sort of say, you know, your mileage may vary, you know, if you're- but if you're putting it in game mode, and HDR is turned off, that's probably an expected behavior.

Larry Hryb: And the other thing you pointed out, you know, make sure you have the latest update version of your apps, and obviously for your consoles. Maybe your TV manufacturer has a firmware update, because we now live in the world where things are being updated all the time.

Albert Penello: Yeah, there's, like, one or two TVs in particular we've seen that are- that actually launched an update yesterday as well, um, to support some of the 4K functions of the Xbox One S.

Larry Hryb: It's a lot of fun, so Xbox One S available now. Albert, I really appreciate to coming by, either helping people, or confusing the heck out of them, I'm not sure.

Albert Penello: No, helping is awesome!

Larry Hryb: Helping, helping.

Albert Penello: It's great. You guys will love it, it's a great box, and, uh, I can just tell you, I think the 4K is meaningful, and worth it. I think people are going to love it.

Larry Hryb: And, uh, we got a lot of stuff going on with that, so I really appreciate you coming on the show, and I'll have you on again in the future to talk even more. Does that sound good?

Albert Penello: Sure. Sounds good.

Larry Hryb: All right, thanks Albert. Take care.

Thank you very much, Albert. Uh, as I said, it was a- there's a lot of little things you need to do to make sure your 4K experience, and HDR experience is accurate, right Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, and if your, you know, it was a lot to take in, and if you're- you didn't memorize everything that Albert said, or you're a visual learner, uh, Xbox Wire put together a huge guide on 4K HDR, everything you need to know, and we're going to link to that in the show notes.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so that's, uh, so you got to make sure to get the right cable, and the right input, and all the rest of the stuff, and if you turn game mode on while it's- that could throw everything into kerflooey, and again, this is just where the industry is right now, this reminds me of when we went from SD to HD.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I-

Larry Hryb: Reminds me of when we went to black and white to color, Mike, so ... (laughs)

Mike Ybarra: I got to tell you, I have an OLED TV now.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Mike Ybarra: And it is unbelievable.

Larry Hryb: So you have an OLED HD ...

Mike Ybarra: OLED HD 4K-

Larry Hryb: Which one do you have?

Mike Ybarra: I have the E6 and a C6 model.

Larry Hryb: What, the Samsung?

Mike Ybarra: No, no, LG.

Larry Hryb: LG, okay.

Mike Ybarra: Samsung doesn't make an OLED.

Larry Hryb: Oh.

Mike Ybarra: LG, and one other, uh, manufacturer makes them, but it is incredible on the Xbox One.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Mike Ybarra: It's incredible.

Larry Hryb: So, what are you playing- so it- Destiny looks good? (laughs)

Mike Ybarra: Well, I was telling people yesterday, Destiny looks like a different game, because in Destiny, there's lots of blacks, and there's some bright colors-

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Mike Ybarra: And you do some of the, you know, strikes and whatnot?

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: And on an OLED, the blacks are like, pitch black.

Larry Hryb: Right, they're completely black.

Mike Ybarra: It's funny, I was watching a show with my wife, who doesn't play any games.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Mike Ybarra: And it went into a black screen as it was going from scene to scene, and she thought the TV turned off. She went to get the remote to turn the TV back on, because the black was just, black.

Larry Hryb: Just black. Like the TV's off.

Mike Ybarra: It's awesome, yup.

Larry Hryb: Well, that's cool. So anyway, uh, so yeah, so Jeff will put the link to that again if you missed any part of the Albert interview, or you had trouble keeping up, because he kind of went quickly, and there's a lot to discuss, then you can go over to the Xbox Wire, and we'll help out there, so yeah, so it was a great- I was in, uh, I was in LA earlier this week. I did the unboxing at the Microsoft Store, which was a lot of fun. We had a few hundred people there, gave away an Xbox One S, gave away a TV, nice Samsung TV, then had a little fun there, and then Monday night. Can we talk about Monday night?

Jeff Rubenstein: Can we talk about Monday night? On Food Network?

Larry Hryb: You know what I did on Monday? I was on Cake Wars, Mike.

Mike Ybarra: I saw those cakes, it made me hungry.

Larry Hryb: It was, uh, I so- I just- a lot people have been asking me about that. I haven't been able to talk about it. We shot- when did I shot that, Jeff? Must've been March, or April.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, it was about three months ago.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so we shot a few months ago, and I haven't bee able to talk at all about it, because, you know, you want to keep the surprise, and it was a lot of fun, and the cake- yes I did get to eat all the cakes. Yes they were good.

Jeff Rubenstein: The bleu cheesecake was good?

Larry Hryb: It was phenomenal. I was- I didn't- I was not expecting bleu cheese, red pepper jelly to be good, because they-

Jeff Rubenstein: It sounds disgusting.

Larry Hryb: They had these Halo themes, and that particular round it was, you know, use- you have to use one red ingredient, one blue ingredient for Red VS Blue in Halo, so it was a lot of fun, and this particular, uh, baker chose bleu cheese, and red pepper jelly, and I was like, "That is not good.", and one of the other judges kind of leaned over to me, say, "No, no, try it, it's probably going to be pretty good.", and I was like, "Holy-", because I love bleu cheese.

Mike Ybarra: Wow. I was amazed by some of those cakes that I saw on that show.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Ybarra: I mean, it was impressive.

Larry Hryb: Well, you had to be in the, you know, I was sitting there, and we, you know, they have the four hours in the final, in the second segment to build those, and we were- I was sitting there, and I just was like, I couldn't believe it. I was like, these guys are creating masterpieces in front of my eyes, you know, the detail with the med-packs, and the Master Chiefs, and the flag, and all- I was like, "Wow!" Those are some incredibly talented people, and Pete did a great job, and his bakers, the guys that wo- I guess I kind of did a spoiler, because they won if you haven't seen it yet. Uh, but it was a lot of to be there. So, Cake Wars was a lot of fun to do that, and thank you for tuning in, and watching. A lot of people watched it, I was surprised.

Mike Ybarra: It was great. A lot of people on social networks were talking about it as well. Kind of saying, "Man, I wish my birthday had a cake like that."

Larry Hryb: Yeah, when they came to me earlier this year, and said, "We'd like you to be on Cake Wars.", and I said, "Look, I love cake, I'm the guy." I love video games, and I love cake, so I'm the guy. They actually had to take some of the cake away from me.

Mike Ybarra: (laughs) You want to take some home?

Larry Hryb: No, I was, like, eating, and [inaudible 00:41:53] we need to do the next set, I'm, "No, no, no! I'm not done, I'm not done.", and shoveling it into my mouth. Oh, I love cake, so ...

Jeff Rubenstein: So it's still airing, uh, you can't watch it- you can't stream it as of the time of this recording yet.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Um, but a lot of folks that have On Demand through their cable company would probably be able to see it, and they are airing it again this Saturday, August 6th, which may be around the time you're listening to this.

Larry Hryb: I think I'll probably be up against, like, you know, the javelin for the Olympics or something, because the Olympics start this-

Jeff Rubenstein: As long as you're not against the opening ceremony.

Larry Hryb: Right, as long as- right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Or gymnastics.

Larry Hryb: Or, uh, swimming, or some of the other- anyway, so, uh, you know, Cake Wars, there you go, that. Um, so yeah, we're kind of cooking along on the show here. We're making good time. Mike, it's so good to see you, and have you on the show.

Mike Ybarra: It's great to be here.

Larry Hryb: Your team's been busy. You guys, I mean, you ship this huge update. What- can you kind of give us a little peek- look down the pipe what you guys working on? I don't want to talk about features, but just your planning for the next set of features.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I mean, at E3, you and I actually, uh, announced that we have another, uh, update coming this year.

Larry Hryb: Yup.

Mike Ybarra: And we talked about some of the features-

Larry Hryb: Yeah, let's recap those real quick, if you can?

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, there's three main features that we're working on really hard right now. That's Arena-

Larry Hryb: Yup.

Mike Ybarra: Ability for, you know, people to play in tournaments and win prizes, and have fun. Looking For Group, so that you can find people to play with very easily that fit your style in what you want to achieve in a game.

Larry Hryb: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Ybarra: And of course, Clubs. Places where people can hang out, and talk about their, uh, their hobby that they love, which is gaming, or anything else.

Larry Hryb: We'll have, I'm sure we'll have the major announcement radio club.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, are you going to come in there, and-

Larry Hryb: Of course I will.

Jeff Rubenstein: Give some VO lessons?

Larry Hryb: I don't know about that- well it's going to be about playing games.

Mike Ybarra: Talk microphones, and set ups.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, microphones, all that audio nerd stuff. Um, but it's exciting- I go to tell you this funny story. We were talking, uh, where were we? Mike and I were working on something, and do you remember this? And we were working on something, and he was talking to be me about the headset, and why it brings audio in back- it's got that little, you know, because you hear your voice a little-

Jeff Rubenstein: Side tone.

Larry Hryb: He's like, "What is that?" Exactly, and I said, "Well, Mike, that's actually side tone.", and I went into a fairly complicated explanation of that, that you rolled-

Mike Ybarra: And I was deer in the headlights.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, you rolled your eyes, like, "Okay, whatever.", because-

Jeff Rubenstein: That was something we added. At launch, it wasn't there, and I've really missed it, and once it came in- oh, so much better.

Larry Hryb: What it is is, and I'll give you the brief version of what I told Mike was, back in the early 60's, when the Bell Network was, you know, developing touch tone phones, and whatnot, they realized also that people were screaming into their phones, because it's just the human nature, "Can you hear me?" So what they did, is they brought a little, just a little bit of your voice back into your ear to kind of let- okay yeah, it hears you. The device hears you, so that's- it's critical, so anyway.

Mike Ybarra: Do you actually use it?

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, absolutely.

Larry Hryb: I do, yeah, I use it.

Mike Ybarra: Oh, you do?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: We're both radio people, ex-radio people-

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we're both audio nerds.

Jeff Rubenstein: So maybe that's part of it.

Larry Hryb: We need to hear our own voices, Mike.

Jeff Rubenstein: Otherwise then, like, I'm talking to my grandma, "Yeah! Larry, get the point! Get the- can you hear me?!"

Larry Hryb: "Jeffery, Jeffery! Hello, is this thing on?!" Anyway, I don't know how we got into that. Uh, so anyway, so Looking for Groups, and tournaments, and, uh-

Mike Ybarra: Arena, Looking for Groups, and Clubs.

Larry Hryb: And when can we expect to hear more about that?

Mike Ybarra: Well, if you're in the preview audience, sooner than you think.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Mike Ybarra: Can't announce a date here, but, uh, we are hard at work at that. I see it every single day, and Larry comes in, and gives us a bunch of feedback-

Larry Hryb: Yes, I do.

Mike Ybarra: One of the most valuable things that we appreciate about, you know, you is just the community insight that you have-

Larry Hryb: Well, it's also, um, I'm- I love all that- your team is amazing, and I love the fact that, you know, I'll send you an email, "Hey, how about this feature?", and they go, "I'll go talk to this person.", and that- whoever the project manager, program manager is on it, they just want to sit down, and talk, and kind of talk about what it is, "Oh, we want to do this.", and nine times out of ten, they've already- they're already working on what I've thought of. Nine times out of ten, they're already working on it, but it's always just fun to talk to people about that, and the passion's amazing.

Mike Ybarra: It is. You know, we all play games here, and that's part of, uh, what's great about Xbox.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Everybody's on at night playing, and using the product, and listening to fans, and their feedback that they have, and so, yeah the update was have coming later this year, we're very excited about it.

Larry Hryb: You know, I was over in Phil's office, Phil Spencer. Uh, and he was showing me his PC, remember that PC? The one he has at his desk? Have you been over to his office lately, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein: No, I've been out of the principal's office.

Larry Hryb: It's- what is that PC that he has? It's an all in one with an Nvidia 1080 graphics card.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, where you can see it, like, sort of jammed in the back?

Larry Hryb: Yeah!

Jeff Rubenstein: I've seen that.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, you know, about five months ago, he sent me a mail saying, "So what's the next PC I should get for my office?", and I went up to a place called Main Gear.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Mike Ybarra: And I sent him to that, and I said, "Check out this all in one. It's a 34 inch curved screen,"

Larry Hryb: It's gorgeous.

Mike Ybarra: "4K, and it's not very thick like you think.", wow if it has a 1080, it must be a super heavy-

Larry Hryb: Oh course, the CPU, and the hard drive and everything else.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, everything is baked in there, and it's super high performance, and he has one of those arms, desk arms, you know-

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Clamp on, holding it, so it's not very heavy.

Larry Hryb: It's like one cable, two cables.

Mike Ybarra: Yes.

Larry Hryb: You know, keyboard and a mouse, and the power, and that's it.

Mike Ybarra: And it's quiet.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: It's really cool.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, he was playing- actually, it's funny. I was in his office the other day, and he- because we're looking at it, can you put a link to this if we can remember what it is?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: What was the name of it again, Mike?

Jeff Rubenstein: Main Gear, maingear.com.

Larry Hryb: And he, uh, he's like, "Okay, let's play Forza.", so he opens up Forza Apex, and of course, the Nvidia started spinning up a little bit at that point to- because Apex is, kind of, pushes it a little bit, but you're right, it was gorgeous, that screen. Unbelievable.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, it's a very impressive set up, and if the link's on here, go check it out.

Larry Hryb: What do you have a home for your home rig?

Mike Ybarra: Well, I actually have a Main Gear full desktop.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Mike Ybarra: So the big thing to the side.

Jeff Rubenstein: Is that the one?

Mike Ybarra: Uh, that is the one. Yep, if you link to that-

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, that is so beautiful.

Mike Ybarra: It's a beautiful screen, and I have a curved 34 inch display.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: I just ordered the new Titan that Nvidia released. So they just released the, uh, 1070 and 1080.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: And the, uh, just a couple days ago, they announced availability of the Titan, and so I order that, and I can't wait to get it home, and plug it in.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I've got my order in this, because I've got my two older Titans that are SLI'ed together. So I've got, I'm going to try to get a couple of those, and do the same thing, just because you can.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, when you got to have the latest, and the best.

Larry Hryb: (laughs) Well, it's, "Honey, it's for work."

Mike Ybarra: That's right, "I got to do testing all night, I'm doing a raid."

Larry Hryb: That's what we're doing.

Jeff Rubenstein: That worked for a couple of times with my wife, and now it's ...

Larry Hryb: Well, it's funny, because I have that same problem. I have this beautiful, uh, TV at home that I bought, 4K TV about two years ago, but it doesn't have HDR, so I'm like, "We need to get a need to get a new TV.", and she's looks at me, she's like, "Why, this one's perfect.", I say, "Well, that has HDR.", she's like, "I don't care. We're not buying another TV, we don't need another TV."

Mike Ybarra: You know, there are a lot of people socially, a little bit confused on HDR, and 4K.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, let's talk about that.

Mike Ybarra: Perfectly fine to have a 4K TV that doesn't have HDR.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Uh, and so some people say, "Oh, I don't have HDR, my 4K TV is broken.", or something. It is not broken. You'll still get upscaling, it works great.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I still like it.

Mike Ybarra: So our [inaudible 00:48:18] very smart.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Uh, and, you know, we got to wait a little bit for a lot of games to come out. The Netflix app has some HDR shows-

Larry Hryb: Gears of War 4 will support it.

Mike Ybarra: Gears 4, Forza Horizon 3, you know, the list is going to be, uh, big.

Larry Hryb: Growing. Yeah, going to start growing, so if you don't have HDR, don't worry about it, I don't have it either. I'll get it soon, I hope. Jeff, are you up to that?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, uh, planning in December.

Larry Hryb: How's your Trinitron? (laughs)

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, I used to-

Jeff Rubenstein: I have an XBR.

Mike Ybarra: 720p?

Jeff Rubenstein: At the time, it was an amazing screen, yes.

Larry Hryb: God, remember those big tubes that were like, 30 lbs? I had a-

Mike Ybarra: More than 30.

Larry Hryb: I had a 16x9 Toshiba, that was, like- you're right, probably closer to 50 lbs. Damn that thing was heavy.

Mike Ybarra: It's so funny, because the OLEDs are paper thin.

Jeff Rubenstein: Right.

Mike Ybarra: Paper thin, and I was talking to my 12 year old son, and I was like, "You will never know what TVs were really like." He's like, "What do you mean, like, when they were like, four feet thick?", you know, and 400 lbs if wanted a decent-

Larry Hryb: Well, the other thing that I remember was when I first started working here at Microsoft, uh, you've been working here a long time, right Mike?

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, coming up on 16 years.

Larry Hryb: So, um yeah, I'm just a little bit shy of that, but when we started working here, you- we had these big monitors, and they didn't- they didn't have monitor arms to hold those things, so back in the day, Jeff, what we used to do was, we'd go into the copy room, and buy- get the stacks of paper. You know those-

Jeff Rubenstein: The environmentally friendly choice.

Larry Hryb: The 8 1/2, yeah 8 1/2 x 11, and you would just- that's how you basically get your monitor up higher, is you would just stack all the paper.

Jeff Rubenstein: Do these monitors have, like, wood paneling on the side?

Larry Hryb: Oh, some of them did, oh yeah.

Mike Ybarra: You turn it on, the lights dim.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, and then they would make that popping sound. Of course, you staring into photons.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, all day.

Larry Hryb: For eight hours a day. That was great for my eyes.

Mike Ybarra: Inches from your face.

Larry Hryb: Look at this sunburn, my God. You thought this sunburn was something? You should see coming off thoses- something coming off of things, I'll tell you. Anyway, all right, so I guess we kind of drift into the gadget section, but you want to do- we got to do some of the news. We got to do some of-

Jeff Rubenstein: Well, you know, we did touch on, I think the key things about Windows 10 coming out, the anniversary update, Xbox One S, of course. Uh, lot of games. You were mentioning you're playing a lot of indie games, and a whole lot came out in addition to Quatros Origins, which you had mentioned since the last time we spoke. Uh, Batman, the Telltale series, like you had mentioned Chapter One hit this week, and hearing very, very good things-

Larry Hryb: I'm Batman.

Jeff Rubenstein: Of episode one, Realms of Shadows. Uh, Breach and Clear: Deadline came out. Overcooked. A lot of people are talking about this game. This cooking game.

Larry Hryb: What is this game?

Jeff Rubenstein: Um, it is a chaotic couch co-op cooking game, uh, full of alliteration apparently, and it seems to me like it's something like a Cooking Mama-esque game. I mean, even if just looking around. Uh, on some of the screens?

Mike Ybarra: Can we make a cake?

Jeff Rubenstein: Um, one would hope so, although everyone look very menacing in the key art, like for a cooking game.

Larry Hryb: Wow.

Jeff Rubenstein: They look unhappy to be cooking, although I've worked in a restaurant, so I can get that. Um, but right now, uh, if you are an Xbox Live Gold Member, uh, it's discounted at launch, uh, for in the US $13, so might be worth checking out, but a lot of people are tweeting about that this week; and, uh, on the free side, uh, happy dungeons is now available via Xbox One Game Preview, and it's a free download so, no reason not to check it out.

Larry Hryb: What are you waiting for? Can we put a link to that?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah. Can do.

Larry Hryb: If you have that available?

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, it's available.

Larry Hryb: And if you ever want to keep a track of what's going on, you can follow me on Twitter, because my Twitter account is growing, uh, and you can also check out my blog at majornelson.com we try to get all the updates, and releases, and whatnot up there as quickly as possible. Um, a lot of people ask me why I've got a blog when there's xbox.com. One of the reasons why is, xbox.com is blocked by a lot of, uh, company, uh, firewalls, because, you know, it's gaming, and they classify things, so my blog is not yet, so can- and it's also highly mobile optimized for you guys and girls on phones and tablets, and whatnot, and black-

Mike Ybarra: Have you tried We Happy Few, yet? It's in preview as of a week ago?

Larry Hryb: I have. I have, and I need to get back into it, but, you know, see earlier conversation about Overwatch.

Mike Ybarra: (laughs) I have not tried it yet. I need to do that this weekend.

Larry Hryb: So, Jeff, do you have a tip for him about how to get out of that first room?

Jeff Rubenstein: Ah, just make sure you learn the inventory. Uh, I've seen a lot of- so at E3, I was taking a lot of folks through it, and everyone wanted to see We Happy Few, and there's one part very early one everyone would get stuck on, where they were stuck in this room before they go out into, like, the more open world area, and you basically need to make a pry bar, uh, but you have to combine two things together, and if you're looking for it- it's not-

Larry Hryb: It's not there in it's native state.

Jeff Rubenstein: You have to look around a little bit more than you think, yes. I think when the game's done, they'll have built in a hint there, but it's still in Game Preview.

Larry Hryb: That's been stopping a few people.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Me included. (laughs) So I'll just say that.

Jeff Rubenstein: You're not just a tipster, you're also a client.

Larry Hryb: Yes, that's absolutely right, so anyway. Uh, what else do we have there, Jeffery, otherwise we're going to probably going to wrap things up there, Mike.

Jeff Rubenstein: Quite a bit more.

Larry Hryb: Oh, okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is the big one-

Larry Hryb: Let's go through it.

Jeff Rubenstein: In terms of those titles, but I definitely recommend just heading on over to store.xbox.com.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: And, uh, we're getting into that point. We're really close to what I would say, probably be the first blockbuster triple A Hollywood game, uh, is only a couple weeks away in Deus Ex.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: So, which I cannot wait for, so-

Larry Hryb: Yeah, usually the start of the blockbuster holiday season is Madden.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, which is also-

Larry Hryb: That's usually the starting gun, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Madden, and FIFA's not that far behind, so, um, I would say if there's any games you were looking to finish up- I finished up the Witcher the other week, anything your backlog, uh, this is a good time to tear through it a little bit, because we're going to have maybe the best ... I would say definitely, the best line up I've seen this generation so far, just in terms of everything. It's crazy.

Mike Ybarra: It's incredible, I mean, when you think about Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Gears of War 4.

Larry Hryb: Jeff and I played Titanfall 2, we talk about it on the last show. So good.

Mike Ybarra: I cannot wait. You know, it's kind of under the radar right now, which is kind of interesting to me, but I think that game is going to surprise a lot of people.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, I totally agree.

Jeff Rubenstein: And I know I'm going to pour so much time into Forza Horizon 3.

Mike Ybarra: Yes.

Larry Hryb: We're, uh, normally, you know, when we do the show, we've got a bunch of features, one of them is Name the Game. That's Laura's feature, but she is not available this week, so you got another week of trying to figure that one out, got to the last show to hear it. Uh, I will be- we don't know if we're going to do a show next, because I'm headed over to Germany. It's Gamescom, Mike.

Mike Ybarra: Oh.

Larry Hryb: You went last year.

Mike Ybarra: I went two years in a row.

Larry Hryb: Two years in a row.

Mike Ybarra: I'm not going this year, you've got the helm.

Larry Hryb: Yep, it's-

Mike Ybarra: Uh, but wow, what an awesome event. Hundreds of thousands of fans-

Larry Hryb: It's and we're doing a cool fan event there which is going to be a lot of fun. Um, I'll be there- I think I-

Jeff Rubenstein: You know what you need to do?

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: You need to bring back some of those gummi bears.

Larry Hryb: Oh God. Yes I do. There's this- I'll tell you, Mike, there's this place, I think it's Bear?

Jeff Rubenstein: Bear and Company.

Larry Hryb: Bear and Company. They can only get them in this particular area of Germany, I believe, um, but they are the best gummi bears I've ever had, and I liter- I put, like, five lbs into my luggage. They are unbelievable.

Jeff Rubenstein: Just make sure that they're G-rated gummi bears this time.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, they make them, um, (laughs) the ones I got- I sent- I got some for my sisters, and they were male parts, and female parts, and they were slightly- they were mortified/amused, but I'm like, "They're the best ones ever!"

Jeff Rubenstein: They were good flavors.

Larry Hryb: Exactly. They certainly were tasty, so all right, so headed to, uh, headed to Gamescom. I'm going to be at, uh, I think only for four days. I won't be there all weekend, unfortunately, because I need to come back, but I'll be there, we'll be there for the fan event. We're going to be this- we're going to do This Week on Xbox from there. Speaking of This Week on Xbox, can we talk about that?

Jeff Rubenstein: Sure.

Larry Hryb: We, uh, you know, daily sh- or weekly show that I do on the console, YouTube, Twitter, et cetera. Uh, there's now a new show called, This Week on Windows.

Mike Ybarra: I saw you link to that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Mike Ybarra: Uh, yesterday.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, that is, uh, the same award winning team that is producing This Week on Xbox is doing This Week on Windows. I do the gaming segment, they have other people doing the other parts of it, and it's coming along pretty well.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, so this is, you know, a lot of stuff on the Windows 10 stores. They'll be highlighting the big things there. They're going to make sure to add a tip, uh, because there's so many new features in there, uh, like, uh, I think next week's sneak preview will be, uh, you know, how to switch on dark mode, which is a- I love on Windows 10 anniversary update, and there's just so many things there that they'll be highlighting. I guess if you only read, or see one thing in a week about the Windows world, we hope it's that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, and there's all these cool, uh, all these cool Cortana- I think, like, one of the new Cortana features in the Windows anniversary- let me try it. Let me see if she's going to work for me. Hey Cortana. Hey Cortana, tell me an interesting fact. Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: It loaded mine too.

Larry Hryb: It did, oh it loaded everybody's. All right, so it doesn't work when there's multiple in here, so anyway, go try that out yourself, but This Week on Windows, uh, is coming. It's available now, and you can go check it out on, uh-

Jeff Rubenstein: We'll link to that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, link to that.

Mike Ybarra: Yeah, that'd be great.

Larry Hryb: It's on the Windows blog. So Mike, I got to let you go, because we're- you got to get your next meeting, um, playing cool stuff like Groups, and Clubs, and yet unannounced features, but I want to thank you for coming by, filling us in on the update, and tell us what you're playing.

Mike Ybarra: Thank you, it's been great to be here.

Larry Hryb: And-

Mike Ybarra: Love talking about games.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's even better at this early in the morning, isn't it? (laughs)

Mike Ybarra: It ain't my Friday, folks.

Larry Hryb: Any of us- it's nothing but fun in there, so ... All right, we'll get- we'll let you go next time. You can find Mike on Twitter at?

Mike Ybarra: XboxQwik.

Larry Hryb: Find him right there, we'll put a link in the show notes, it'll be right there. Of course you can find Jefferey at?

Jeff Rubenstein: @JeffRubenstein.

Larry Hryb: And I'm Major Nelson, your host. I'll see you guys next time. Look for me at, uh, Gamescom. You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, all that other fun stuff. We'll talk to you guys next time. Bye bye, everybody.