Of Gods and Agents | Official Xbox Podcast

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

- Hello and welcome to the official Xbox Podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox in case you missed the giant icon here behind us. I'm Jeff Rubenstein from Xbox Wire, and we're into September. I've got my fall palette on. I've heard my first pumpkin spice latte of the season, and the games are coming thick and fast. There's far more than we could possibly talk about, any one of us, so that's why we brought a lot of friends here.

Before I introduce you, I also want to let we're going to be meeting with Riot Games' Arnar Gylfason about Valorant's latest agent coming to the game. Of course, Valorant came to Xbox earlier this summer, and we'll be talking more about that. And we even have hands on on a new controller everyone's talking about, which is the Razer V3 Wolverine. It looks really cool, and we'll be trying it out. You're looking like you're going to want to go hands on it.

So let's meet the cast of characters here this week. First of all, our director of premier broadcast, Tina Amini. Great to see you again.

- Great to be back, especially in the studio with you guys in person. I feel like it's been a year that I've been on the road traveling for events, so it's good to have my feet back on the ground.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: But if you're a podcast viewer, we saw you just last week when you were part of the deep dive for--

- Atomfall, yeah. That game looks incredible. Joe Skrebels and I were having so much fun talking about it, and it had a really big presence at gamescom, including at our stream. But more to come on that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, put a pin in that one. We'll be talking about gamescom here in a minute. Happy to welcome back our resident meme master and pumpkin spice latte general? I don't know.

TINA AMINI: General!

- Josh Stein, how are you-- how does that taste right now?

- It's cold brew. So I switched to cold brew a couple of years ago because I'm getting older. I need something a little bit more of a kick--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: More of a jolt?

- Yeah, I don't know if that's a bad sign or a good sign about my sleeping habits.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We'll see if you flip this table over by the end of the show.

- Maybe at least twice. At least twice. But it's good to be here. I also went on the road recently. Not as much as Tina, of course, but--

- About half the time.

- Got to do the gamescom spin and then did a back to back and thought two days at Pax, why not? My sleep schedule is fully destroyed.

- Why sleep when there are games?

- Exactly. Why sleep when there are games? I like that. So finally starting to recover, though. Dealing with 18 in-laws now coming to my house.

- All right.

- I've got my own--

- That's your--

- My own personal strife.

- Yeah. Yeah, we'll save that for your self-help familial podcast, but we will want to hear all about what you did at Pax here in a minute. But we were talking about all these games coming in, and one of those games is Age of Mythology Retold, and so I'm really happy to welcome you, Emma Bridle, director of player engagement for World's Edge, back here to the show. How's things going? You released last week for early access.

- I was at gamescom. Bumped into Josh on the streets of Cologne. That was wonderful. Got back. Had one day of sleep, then started getting ready for early access. So that's been going for about seven days, and yeah, we're getting ready to launch, and very, very exciting.

- All right, very, very good. So not too long ago, seems like a long time ago, we were at gamescom. You two were in-- all of you were in Germany. Right?

- Yeah. Yeah.

- How was it? I wasn't there. I didn't get to have schnitzel this year. I get to-- we did do some stuff in LA.

- You'll be able to talk about what you did, though. That was--

- Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that, but I want to hear what you did because I had a little bit of FOMO. I didn't have any tiny beers. Tell me, what did you play? What did you get to do?

- Oh, my god, I actually didn't play a single thing because I was in our production compound the whole time. We had three days of programming, so that keeps you busy. And it's basically just kind of monitoring the feeds and the gameplay. Everything's live, so we're punching things in b-roll at the same time as someone's talking about a subject, and three days is quite a lot. We had about three hours of programming every day.

JOSH STEIN: You guys were hustling.

TINA AMINI: Very exciting. Yeah.

- You guys had a Hollywood level compound back there with 18 trailers. I walked in one, and it was a screen across the whole thing and a bunch of really important people.

- I think probably our main control production room in that case. You walk in, and it's like the-- yeah, it's like a Star Trek--

EMMA BRIDLE: Like NASA.

- Yeah, kind of like NASA. Yeah, let's go the real world version. We're not, like, doing anything impressive other than talking about video games, so we're--

- That's the fun stuff. When I got to our booth, you guys were filming b-roll, so I walk up, and there's gods and goddess cosplayers and people yelling "for Stagma."

TINA AMINI: Yeah, yeah, we had Age on the stream.

- Yeah.

TINA AMINI: A lot of games featured. I think it was 40 to 50 games by the end that we had both in the booth, but also in our stream.

- I was going to say, the booth was the biggest booth I've ever seen for XBox.

- Biggest booth we've ever made. I think it is--

- Half the hall, I think. That was half the hall we were--

- Yeah. We definitely expanded this year because we had-- this was the first time we had Activision--

EMMA BRIDLE: The new family members.

- --alongside us with Bethesda and Xbox Game Studios. So it was really momentous, I think, for the team to just have everyone in Germany in this big community moment. This is kind of our chance to connect with some fans--

EMMA BRIDLE: And some big booths. We had a temple. We had a castle-- two temples, a castle. It was really--

JOSH STEIN: It was buy one, get one free on temples.

- Yeah.

JOSH STEIN: Did anything catch you by surprise? I think, going into these, we know some of-- we knew people would probably be really excited about Avowed, for instance. But when you have that many games from different creators, big and small, were there any things where it's like, oh, I didn't-- this game's on my radar now?

- I did. There was a really good juxtaposition, I think, that there were two games next to each other, and I think it was Date Anything and--

TINA AMINI: Date Everything?

- Date Everything and King of Meat next to each other.

- I love that they connected to each other.

- I just like that they were next to each other. Yeah, it was great. But some friends of mine are working on King of Meat, and that was a really great moment.

- I have an image in my mind. I don't know how I feel about it. King of Meat? What is this?

- It's very cute.

- So did you-- you spotted it in opening night? Like, they worked Jeff Keeley into the trailer as a cartoon. Did you guys see that?

- Yes.

- Yeah, and so everyone I was sitting with in the room was going, I don't know what this is, but god, it looks fun. I'm going to play this with my kids, and I still am not 100% sure. Just popped into the booth. They had fake laxative adverts in all the restrooms.

JOSH STEIN: Yes.

- Did you see those.

JOSH STEIN: I saw those at the urinals.

- Yeah. Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Gotta read something.

- It just looks like a lot of chaotic fun. Maybe like a Fall Guys type game. But I was excited about Two Point Museum.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, yeah, I love the Two Point games.

EMMA BRIDLE: I love Two Point Campus, but also, when they have the in-game radio stations, for me, as a Brit who lives in the US, it's like home. It's all very British humor, and so I was really excited to see that they were on the booth as well. I'm really excited for that one. Didn't get to play it because I was so busy, but--

TINA AMINI: Yeah, that's the problem with us working at gamescom.

- I think Josh got Ryan more than we did.

- You're probably the most floaty of all of us.

- We had to cover it for social. Yeah, so we were there with a remote team, and we were trying to cover everything. We just have so many partners there, both first party and third party.

- Oh, no, I have to go and try everything.

- I know. I know.

- So what did you play it? Let's talk games.

- Yeah, go on.

JOSH STEIN: So I think one of the best things to start off was with a World of Warcraft experience. You can't talk about the gamescom without talking about that, which basically, they bought and built these--

EMMA BRIDLE: I saw those!

- --riding rigs. And so you hop on this thing, think of it kind of like a motorcycle, and you hold on. You put a VR helmet on, and then they've got wind tunnels blowing at you. And you get in the game. It's a cut scene, and suddenly, you're riding a dragon in World of Warcraft. And I swear to God, there were moments where I felt like I was at a 90 degree-- ahh! And then there's a video of me, and I'm two inches lifted and elevated going, ahh!

TINA AMINI: It's the VR and the imagination.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah.

TINA AMINI: I heard that from a lot of people, though.

JOSH STEIN: But it's super-- and I didn't get nauseous, which I guess the fans is the trick. You're supposed to have-- if you have a little bit of air blowing on you, which is just me on a hot day, I guess it just makes you feel all the better.

EMMA BRIDLE: gamescom is really hot, so that must be a nice little break.

- So I started with that. Then I went over and did the Indiana Jones star field like theater experience, which was really fun. I'm a big Indiana Jones fan.

- Did you get your hat, your Indy hat?

- I did get my hat. I may have brought it.

- Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Props?

- I do have some props. I do have some props, and--

- Props to props.

- We went from that, and then there's-- it's worth mentioning there's a two story Doom statue, Doom Slayer.

TINA AMINI: Yeah.

JOSH STEIN: I'm going to say it's two stories because it was-- I mean, I'm only 5 foot 4.

TINA AMINI: We didn't measure it.

JOSH STEIN: Everything is two stories to me.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It was eight feet tall.

JOSH STEIN: But I literally-- I mean, pretty much from around from there, the Diablo had an experience, then Avowed had an experience. Walked over. Ara had an experience. Then they got to play Towerborne for the first time. I hadn't played Towerborne yet, so I got to play Towerborne, which was really cool, which--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's only a week away. Right around the corner for early access.

JOSH STEIN: Tied in nice. I got a little windmill preview before I actually went to Amsterdam and saw real windmills, which was kind of fun.

- You do that point of comparison?

- Yep, and then curved around to-- was it Warhammer? We had Warhammer booth, and that's coming out, I think, on the 9th, and really excited to play that one with friends. And then tailed it back over to ESO had-- not ESO, Genshin. Genshin was also on our booth, and I--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Which is coming to Xbox.

- Which is a big deal.

- Yeah, yeah, for sure.

- People were really excited about that, and so that was my loop, I made around. And then of course, in the middle, was the swag stuff, so you could do claw machines.

EMMA BRIDLE: Did you do the plushy wall? Because I was so excited.

- All right, just go get your stuff.

JOSH STEIN: OK.

- What are you waiting for?

- So, yes, I did the plushy wall, so they had a really fun game where you could buy a ticket to one of 12 doors, and so I bought a couple tickets. Of course, I have a young one at home, and the cutest one of them was definitely this collaboration Blizzard did with an artist, where they could do murlocs. And so they did this adorable little hand-knit murloc, and so I got that for my youngest.

- Yeah.

- She was like, daddy, where are you going with my stuff?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I was about to say, how did you get away? I said, I just have to show it at work. She's like, you're going to bring it back.

- You were like, show and tell day at work, yeah.

- And so I got out of the house, but I definitely got stopped by the plushie police on the way out. And then I might as well show it off.

- And wear it.

- I went over to the Diablo booth, and what was really cool about the Diablo booth is they were giving out these little coins, little coin pouches, depending on which Vessel of Hatred you played. I think I actually may have dropped--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You may have dropped one.

- I think I dropped the coin.

EMMA BRIDLE: You've got the bag.

- But I do have the little baggie, but you got a coin for whichever class you pick. So I did the Centipede poison class, so I have this cool Centipede custom coin. And this one wasn't in our booth, but it is coming out, and I was excited for it. This is the first berserker Kazan. I actually won a poster for this, and I didn't bring the poster because I thought I'd be a giant nerd rolling out a giant poster.

- I love that this is a postcard. You were supposed to mail this back from Germany.

- Correct. It's also worth mentioning out our accessibility team was there.

- Yes.

- They gave me this.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We'll be talking a little bit about--

- They gave me this really cool pin. I'm going to wait and let you talk about what they brought to the booth. And then, of course, they gave-- I'm going to like--

EMMA BRIDLE: Put it on this.

- [HUMMING "INDIANA JONES" THEME]

- No, it's perfect. You're basically--

EMMA BRIDLE: It's like Indy's in the room.

- But they gave out these Indiana--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, you can leave that on. Yeah.

- --that in the theater.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's good.

- I think it looks terrible. My wife's going to tell me, I never should have put that on.

EMMA BRIDLE: What about the souvenir that you got from the party?

- Yeah. So--

EMMA BRIDLE: Can we show that?

- I also brought back a permanent gift from gamescom. I brought back a tattoo.

- Oh, wow.

- So Diablo-- our wonderful friends at Blizzard held an event. It's upside down, but-- I have to explain this. So I'm with my friend and co-worker Ethan, and we walk in.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Who we're going to see later in the show.

- Yeah, we are going to see him. So I walk into the event, and it's beautifully decorated like Vessel of Hatred. There are vines everywhere. There's people cosplaying.

I walk in. I see three DJ-- DJ and two guys, and they're in those inflatable suits.

EMMA BRIDLE: You showed me.

JOSH STEIN: I have a photo of this, but in the flatable cow suits. So they're dancing and thumping. They're doing Remix of the Butcher, and these big, giant, cow, fat suits are just bobbling everywhere, which I think two of them were developers, by the way. I think I found that out later.

EMMA BRIDLE: Just DJs on the side.

JOSH STEIN: So I see this, and it's thumping. I turn around the corner, and out of the vines comes this man. And he's like, do you want a tattoo? And I was like, what? He's like, do you want a tattoo? And I go on the corner, and you can pick one of 12 designs if you want and get a tattoo.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Please do not accept tattoos from strangers.

- So I accepted a tattoo from a stranger. Please don't do what I do. And I got the necromancer corpse explosion because I'm a necromancer main, and I felt like it was very apt. My wife was very shocked when I sent a picture of that, and I was like, so I had a good time last night. And then what is funny is, right after that, though, they have-- we have places in the US you can go and build stuffies. They had destroy a stuffy. So they had Kill-A-Bear.

EMMA BRIDLE: No!

- --then open this bear up. Blood and eyeballs.

EMMA BRIDLE: No, no, no, no, no.

- But I mean, very in the theme of Diablo.

- I guess, but--

- So I have to say--

- We've all seen the trailer from showcase.

- Yeah. Right? The splinter from hell? Yeah. So I have to say, the Blizzard people know how to have a good time, and it was great to just sit there and talk to the developers.

EMMA BRIDLE: Yeah.

- Enjoy-- I'm obviously a big Diablo fan. I've been playing the hell out of Diablo IV. My season five character is maxed out, ready for the Vessel of Hatred as it comes and drops here on October. And so I had a good old time.

And then last, but not least, I'm leaving that event, and one of the fans of Xbox, he opens up his bag. His name is Daniel.

EMMA BRIDLE: I love Daniel.

- Oh, I know-- Daniel with the pins?

JOSH STEIN: Yes.

- Everyone knows Daniel.

- Daniel. We love him.

JOSH STEIN: Daniel with the pins.

- Yeah.

JOSH STEIN: And he's like, I have something for you. And I'm like, what? He's like, my license plate. And I go, what? He's like, I have my license plate for you. And so this is a real license plate. There's a picture of it on his car.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And he gave it to you?

- No longer registered to an address or anything, I hope.

- Yes, license plate has been changed. But I came home, and my wife was very confused. She's like--

- That's awesome.

- So an Indiana Jones hat, a stuffy, a tattoo, and a real--

- And someone else's license plate.

- That's how you know gaming is for all ages.

- This is why I love gaming in general.

- There's something for everyone. Exactly.

- How many times can you say that kind of experience.

- So you had the most fun at gamescom?

EMMA BRIDLE: He did, and I bumped--

- We just worked.

EMMA BRIDLE: I bumped into him when he had the tattoo fresh, and I kept being like, it's a temporary tattoo. Right? And he's like, no.

TINA AMINI: No, all in. All in on this one.

- So these were great stories.

JOSH STEIN: Maybe I had too much fun. I'm so sorry.

- You failed the assignment where I asked if you played anything at all, but that's fine. It sounds like a good time.

- We were working.

- Tell you what, I-- So we-- we did a bit of a companion event, if you would, in LA for people that weren't able to make it out to Germany. I think it went really well. We had about 75 creators in-- You probably saw, if you saw anything from Paris Lilly or Trisha Hershberger or a great write up on IGN on Avowed from Destin Legarie. All those things happened at that LA event. It was great to just reach more people there.

But then when we were wrapping up for the day, I was like, it's my turn to play Avowed because I had really been wanting to do that. And everyone was coming down and saying, oh, my god, we had a great time. Again, you don't have to take my word for it because they wrote it, or they made videos about it.

It's really fun, and what I want to say about it, my favorite part, I was playing as a barbarian because that's normally not the class I will do. So I was like, I don't want to use my rogue quite yet. But a ton of flexibility in the way you can play Avowed. But I'm looking for the humor, the type of thing that you expect from an Obsidian game, exactly. And so I'm running a quest that's in the game, and very early on, I realized I'm getting played by this quest giver. They're using me to get a thing.

- Oh, yeah.

- But I'm going to play along. Normally, I'm like, they're setting me up where I'm going to have to fight this dude and keep whatever this thing I got is. And I come back with the thing, and he's putting it-- he's trying to reanimate this robot god, and it doesn't work. And then he's like, I think I know what it is.

We need a human soul for this, or we need-- and so the choices, you can fight them immediately. You can say, no. You can argue, oh, different skill checks, or you can go, yeah, I'm in. And I was like, I'm in. I will choose that.

JOSH STEIN: When in Rome.

- And they were like-- and your companion Kai-- and one of the things we love from an Obsidian game is your companions have lots of dialogue and-- you really should not be doing this. You should reconsider this. This person's playing you. And I was like-- and I'm like--

- Telling us we need to go home right now.

- Yeah, and I'm like, nope, I'm in. And the game is like, are you sure? And so then this quest giver is like, well, then you can stand right here and await the shock. And your quest, the objective that appears on the left side of the screen, it was just like, contemplate your imminent death, because that's-- And then I stood there, and it killed me, and I got a game over. But then you could reload, and then the next time, I fought him.

- I appreciate that it lets you follow through.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, because it's just rewarding your curiosity.

EMMA BRIDLE: Yeah, I was going to say, lean into and going, yeah, go on then.

TINA AMINI: Yeah, sure. Why not?

- Yeah.

- And that was--

TINA AMINI: And that's when you hit Save, and then you--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Exactly. Save.

[ALL SPEAKING AT ONCE]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Exactly. But even then, it sort of took me back to-- it conveniently had a checkpoint right before I said, yes, I'm going to stand here and sacrifice myself. So anyway, very cool. It was really great to play it, and many other games that we had as well. But we will save many of those for another time because there's a game that you all can play literally right now because just coming to Game Pass, Age of Mythology Retold.

- Yeah.

- As we record this, it's been available for about a week.

- Yeah. Yeah, we went live 5:00 PM Pacific last Tuesday, so that people who had bought the premium edition could have just a little over seven days. We threw in a few extra hours of Advanced Access, and so that's been going really, really well. Fantastic reviews, so thank you to everybody who's played. We've been listening, gathering all the feedback.

We've already issued an update with a whole load of improvements, and we're working on our next one. But the big global launch is, as time of recording, is tomorrow. So as you listen to this, you can play right now, and please do. So yeah, have any of you guys played Age of Mythology, the original? Played Retold before? How familiar are you with it?

- I got to start with it, and so you're really following-- so one thing I thought was really interesting. I was reading an interview with Earnest Yuen, who's the executive producer, and he's working on the Age franchise for literally decades.

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

- And when he was talking about how people were playing the original, that you all went back to the original game, and were looking at what people were saying in forums to see what to address.

- Yeah, we've got 20 years worth of feedback to work through.

- Which is wild.

- Yeah.

- And he was saying that, where some people sort of didn't have as much fun as they could have back 20 years ago is they were playing it too much like Age of Empires. Too on the nose. There's strategy involved, but you also get to throw lightning bolts out.

EMMA BRIDLE: Yeah, lightning bolts, earthquakes, laser crocs. There's all this going on, and so it's really leaning into-- we've said we're leaning into the mythology. There's magic. There's chaos. There's god powers.

God powers used to be single use, so a god would bless you with a power, whether that's meteor storms or the lightning bolts, and you'd have it one use. And people would hold on to it, and they'd be like, I'm just going to wait for the right moment to use it and never use it. So we've made them rechargeable now. So it's just like, yeah, you want to do meteor storms multiple? We're going to do that.

We've added another age called the Wonder Age, where everything just becomes cheaper. So you want to just start spawning loads of myth units?

JOSH STEIN: Can I get one of those in real life?

EMMA BRIDLE: Yes. Yes. And so there's just so much fun. So yeah, it is RTS, but we think it's the most approachable game we've ever done. The mythological theme, I mean, I feel like everybody's nerded out about Greek mythology at some point growing up and gotten super into it. And in what other games can you have Odin go up against Ra?

So there's so much good stuff in it. There's more than 50 missions in our campaign, so you follow Arkantos, our hero, as he travels through the world tasked by Athena. You can play skirmish. You can play multiplayer. We've got another game mode coming post-launch that we'll be talking about soon.

We've got two expansions coming, so whilst there's a ton of stuff to play right now, there's also a ton of stuff coming. We released a roadmap just the week of gamescom, actually, as we were talking about all of that stuff. So there is so much good stuff.

- And this is the first Age game that has launched on PC and on Xbox console at the same time.

- Yeah, so with Age of Empires 2 and Age of Empires 4, we established them on PC and then brought them to console later. But this one, we've taken everything that we've learned from Age 2 and Age 4 and made sure that we've got that console version ready to go on day one. So if you want to play on console, if you want to play on Win Store PC, if you want to play on Steam, you can play, and you can play together.

And that's been really great because playing RTS with a controller is a challenge. It's a different experience, and we've had the opportunity to learn. We've got systems that will help you take out some of that micromanagement so that you can really focus on what you want to focus on. And I think we've done a really-- I mean, I'm biased, but we've done a great job on getting that experience really good with-- and you can play on console with mouse and keyboard, or you can play with controller on PC. So however you want to play, we've kind of made that possible for you.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, I have to give you guys kudos. So I grew up playing Age on PC, mouse and keyboard, and then I tried the beta out for Age of Mythology. And I tried it with just a controller, and I was worried. I was skeptic, but I have to say, the systems that you guys built in, it was super helpful, and I had no issues with it whatsoever.

EMMA BRIDLE: I played no part in it, but I will tell the team.

JOSH STEIN: Voice of one here, but pass it on. As someone who grew up playing those RTS with keyboard and mice and jumped to the controller, it was really intuitive, and I actually really enjoyed it a lot.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What's really interesting is, when I'm playing an RTS, I'm doing one of these. I'm leaning forward. I'm looking at my monitor. And I also, when I played it on console, I'm leaning back.

- You're on your couch, and you just--

- Just the A and B button for the most part to select and deselect and move things around. It's a completely different sort of mindset to play that way, and I think that's really fun, especially for playing through the campaign.

- Yeah, I mean, one thing I really like is villager prioritization system, struggle with that one, where you can basically say, hey, can you just assign my villagers to what they need to start building the economy? Because I want to go over here, and I want to start planning my army. You take care of my economy.

And so you can do that. There's just so many things that we've tried to build in so that people can play in different ways. If you want to be the super pro player that's micromanaging every unit individually, you can, but if you want to just have us take care of some bits whilst you go and start building your army of laser crocks, you can do that, too.

So I think it's going to be really, really fun, and we're seeing a lot of new players come in who are new to franchise. Possibly been hooked by the mythology theme, which is just so much fun. And so it's really excited to bring it back both for the people that played it originally.

We did the original release in 2002. It came to Steam in 2013. So there's folks that have that attachment to it, but also people who've never played it before play it in 4K with raytracing, with all these great systems, and have a great time causing chaos. Bacchanal of chaos is one of the phrases we like.

- That's a good--

- The bacchanale of chaos. Put it on the--

- Yeah.

- So all right, where can you play? Where are all the different ways that you--

- So you can play on PC. You can play on Xbox. You can play on Steam. You can play on Game Pass. You can play with your different inputs. So if you have any of those platforms, go and add it to your library. Join the fun. So yeah, it's so exciting.

- Where can people find out more about the mode that you mentioned that's coming down the line, the roadmap, all that stuff.

- Yeah, so we've just put a whole load of stuff on ageofempires.com that will detail all the pantheons. We've got the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Norse, and the Atlanteans, and we've released in depth pages so that you can go and research which pantheon do you want? Which gods do you want to pick? Which myth units do you want to do?

So there's a whole load of stuff on ageofempires.com, and then Age of Mythology, social channels, as well. We've got a ton of stuff we'll be publishing so that you can learn how to play. We'll be helping new players. It's just a really exciting time for us, and we had a great showing at gamescom, and we had so many people come and tell us their stories of how much they loved playing this growing up.

My favorite, actually, was I was speaking to a young woman who said, I've been playing Age of Empires my whole life. And it's so important to me. And I tried Age of Mythology originally, and I didn't like it. Age of Mythology was just not for me. But I heard you were remaking it, so I came to your booth, and I tried it. And she played our show floor demo, and she's like, and I love it. Retold has changed this for me. I'm going to pre-order it right now. So the team has just done such a great job of just adding just more into the game.

- And it's been so fun seeing them passionately talk about it. Earnest and the team out after showcase in LA. He did kind of a talk for the others there. He was incredible, but on our Gamescom stream, too, just hearing everybody's so excited about how the team is modernizing things in a really clever way and preserving the experience for old time players. But also that new players that you're talking about.

- It's a lot of hard work by a lot of people all over the world who have just so much respect for the original game. And one of the things Earnest has been talking about is it had so much potential back in 2002, but there was limits with the tech as to how far it could be pushed. And so now, we have the benefit of modern day machines that we can really just keep pushing that envelope of just more.

JOSH STEIN: A little bit more. A little bit more. Yeah, that's awesome.

- More chaos. More magic. More fun.

- More laser crocs.

- More laser crocs.

- That is not the only Game Pass game hitting this week. We're actually kicking off September. When there's a new month, immediately, people start asking what's coming to Game Pass?

- Yeah.

- So this September, we're kicking off with truck driving, extreme outdoor sports, and a locomotive situation, one that has an interesting story. Jump in. If you've played any of these games, let me know.

First off, available now, Star Trucker, annunciation very important there. It's available day one with Game Pass. Hop into the driver's seat of your rocket powered big rig as you haul cargo, scavenge for salvage, and interact with an eclectic cast of star hopping truckers in this Americana infused journey on the ultimate open road-- space. That was the one. That's the open road.

Also, I know people that are very into this. Expeditions, a mud runner game out September 5th. Hey, that's today. Embark on a scientific expedition with this new off road adventure from the creators of Mud Runner and Snow Runner. Lead research missions. Drive a variety of all terrain vehicles. Use high tech tools, and manage your camp and crew to ensure your success in the wild. You ever play any of these? The Expeditions, the Mud Runner games?

TINA AMINI: I haven't, but you're right that there's a huge contingent of people out there--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: These are fun to watch games.

TINA AMINI: Yeah, definitely.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I have played this, Riders Republic coming out September 11 on Cloud Console and PC. I'm a bit of a snowboarder myself. Not that I can do anything that you do in Riders Republic, but this is really cool because it's like an MMO in a way. It's a massive multiplayer playground, but the mountain is sort of like the lobby where everyone's at, and you can see other people skiing and snowboarding and doing all kinds of tricks and other things like that. And it has some real life parks from across the US.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, like recreated.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, real mountains and stuff like that. But you can do bikes, ski, snowboard, or wingsuit, which is very fun to do. I will say, you got to work up to that. It's not the easiest thing in the world in real life and in the game, actually.

JOSH STEIN: It turns out--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Turns out, yeah, yeah. And then also coming in about two weeks on September 17, Train Sim World 5 available, day one on Game Pass. The rails are yours in Train Sim World 5. You take on new challenges, new roles. You want to master the tracks, go through tons of iconic cities, and immerse yourself into trains.

What I thought was really interesting, I was listening to a podcast with Rod Ferguson on it. It's called the Fourth Wall? Maybe it's the Fourth Wall. I can't remember. Game developer podcast, really cool, hosted by Alex Seropian. Definitely worth checking out. And Rod Ferguson's first game that he worked on was Train Simulator.

- Was it really?

- Yeah, so he was brought in originally to work on Flight Simulator back in the late 1990s or early 2000 and ended up producing Train Sim, and then ended up on Gear.

- --goes deep there.

- I know. You would not-- not what you necessarily-- maybe that's where coal train came from. I don't know. Making that up. Probably not true. We should ask him. We definitely we need to have him back here before Vessel of Hatred ships, so mental note made.

All right, this weekend, do you have plans? Do you know what you're playing?

- Call of Duty 6, Black Ops beta.

- Right. How did you know that? Yes, this is actually-- we're going into week two of the Black Ops beta. Last week was for people who pre-ordered. This is open. Everyone can try it, and that means, even if you don't have Game Pass core, you can play. And so that's great--

EMMA BRIDLE: No reason not to.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No reason not to. This is from-- it kicks off September 6 going through September 9. Includes all the other maps and modes from last weekend, and if you did play last weekend, the good news is, during this early access period, you'll find that your leveling has carried over. You want to try to get up to level 30. That will allow you to unlock all kinds of cool stuff. There's going to be two new maps this weekend that weren't there last weekend, Babylon and Stakeout, in addition to the gunfight and Face Off Kill Order game modes.

- People were having fun with that one.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah.

- For sure. Yeah, there's people on my team that are already unlocking--

JOSH STEIN: The hostage.

- Yeah.

- There's some pretty great clips on social. I did the whisper. I was like, (WHISPERING) hey, little mama, let me whisper in your ear, (SPEAKING NORMALLY) when I grab somebody, and I don't think they laughed as much as I laugh. But I was cackling like a kid.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's going to happen to me a lot, is just what I--

TINA AMINI: Yeah, that's what I'm predicting for myself.

JOSH STEIN: That's pretty good.

- So Call of Duty Black Ops 6, of course, is launching next month, October 25, on Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Windows PC, and yes, it is coming day one to Game Pass. Cannot wait. I've always loved the Black Ops campaigns, but zombies, I feel like I'm already putting together my zombies crew.

- And if you're not sure, you should rewatch because we just had it, gosh, last week. Time is but a figment to me now. But Call of Duty Next was right after gamescom, so I did the wild thing of traveling from Germany--

- You were there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You were in DC? Tell us about that.

JOSH STEIN: Please, because that museum looked insane.

TINA AMINI: It was incredible. Yes, absolutely insane. I mean, all of the creators walking through were just floored immediately, which, thank you for all the people who came and thanked me, but I had nothing to do with that event. That was completely Activision. So happy just to be there and invited and checking out how they do a major moment for Black Ops 6.

- So this sucker, though, we have to-- this was in a museum. They cleared the lobby, moved the paintings and the marble statues.

- And had our own little statues there with some of the blindfolding, and there was just huge drapes scaling all the way to the giant ceilings. And obviously, the main event was the two stages. There were two round stages, and circling each of those stages were, I think, up to 250 creators.

- Hundreds, yeah. Was it really 250?

- I think it was 250.

- That was some impressive shots.

- Don't quote me on that.

- Showing that whole circle, and everyone was creating content. Everyone was alive. I have to shout out Snow Bike Mike. I saw him.

- He was having the time of his life.

JOSH STEIN: The sun--

TINA AMINI: --these pre-stream stretches, which was adorable because I was up on the-- the staff had access to some of the higher railings, and I went to go take my pictures, of course. And there's Snow Bike Mike just doing his pre-stream stretches. Yeah, yeah, you got the-- [LAUGHS]

But it was so impressive, and they had a whole motorcade out there as well.

- Of course, they did. Man, nobody does an event like Call of Duty.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No.

- We kind of took over the city momentarily just for that weekend, so it was a very-- or week? Couple of days. But I love the strategy. And actually, on our podcast right here, back when things looked a little different, and we had the yellow couch, and we had Phil out here post the acquisition, I specifically namedropped Call of Duty Next because I think the format is so clever. They had tons of information just from that one broadcast stage, Stephanie and Alex--

- Of the COD Pod. You need to check out the COD Pod. Very good. We need to get Stephanie on the show.

TINA AMINI: That would be great. I would love to have Steph out. She does an amazing job every year hosting the event since they've had it. So even just their content alone was really wide ranging. They had a bunch of the dev team members out come and talk about each of their disciplines, talk about--

- I was collecting those while I was--

- Nice, nice. That was all for you, Stein.

- Thank you.

- But they went through a bunch of multiplayer reveals, a bunch of gameplay, but they're also simultaneously swapping and almost kind of casting, which Golden Boy is perfect for, some of the actual gameplay. So I think Snow Bike Mike, they had him up for a moment. Our Xbox On team friends were also on the stream. Sam actually won a game of Warzone.

- Did he win?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: He did, yeah.

- He's never letting that down.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, I was about to say, let's not give him any more air time.

JOSH STEIN: We're going to hear about that for the next two years.

TINA AMINI: Yes, exactly. But it was very cool to see how people were already adapting to the omni movement system and some of-- and then they also, at the end of the stream, Stephanie got to announce the very popular map Verdance coming back to Black Ops 6. So it was jam packed with news, and I thought it was so-- it's just such a clever event with how it's intertwined with the community.

EMMA BRIDLE: I mean, for those of us working on community and events, it's great to watch the new family members and be like, hey, could we do a little bit like that?

TINA AMINI: And kind of join in on this news moment because, often, it's the post-release content. But this is leading up to the beta, and so people get that opportunity to go hands on. So if you want to know what Black Ops 6 experience is like, there's four hours of content out there.

- Times 250 creators.

- Yes, exactly, exactly.

- I want to know how they plugged in that many computers into one building, and--

- Oh, it's a lot.

- It did all the lights--

- I want to see the-- maybe I don't want to see the power bill.

- Yeah, exactly.

- So I'm going to tap you in here, Stein, because there was a really interesting and awesome tweet that went out this morning, or earlier this week, I should say, from our friends over at Capcom USA. Can you sum it up for us?

- That's right, we are very happy to announce, alongside with Capcom, that Marvel VS Capcom Fighting Collection, Arcade Classics, and Capcom Fighting Collection 2 will be released on Xbox One. This is going to be coming in 2025. It will work with your Series X, your S, your Xbox One. Stay tuned for more information. You'll want to stay tuned to the Capcom official channels, but we're really excited with this partnership and excited for the announcements dropped today. And we've already been seeing the reactions, and people are thrilled.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool. Yeah, I love my Marvel VS Capcom, and then Capcom Fighting Collection 2 was actually recently announced, I think it was during a Nintendo Direct, and so confirmation that's coming to Xbox as some of the Capcom VS SNK games, I want to say, which were really cool. So a lot to look forward to, and we look forward to sharing much, much more.

- Stay tuned.

- So one of the things that we had talked about very briefly-- in fact, your pin had something to do with it. We mentioned some big announcements over at gamescom, and a couple of announcements came out during our broadcast, involved our focus on accessibility in gaming.

So two things, one is the Xbox adaptive joystick, and then also joystick toppers. So the Xbox adaptive joystick is designed as a companion for the Xbox adaptive controller and other Xbox controllers. It's made to meet the needs of players with limited mobility, and the Xbox adaptive controller is sort of a singular, one handed controller. It can help make gaming be just more accessible for how ever you play.

We were showing this off on site actually at our event, and everyone really liked that. What's really cool is you connect the Xbox adaptive controller, and this way, you get the full adaptive setup. You can plug it directly into your console as well, or PC, or you can link it with an Xbox controller to play solo with full controller functionality. There's just a ton of flexibility. You can just figure out what works for you, and I think that's what's--

- It lets you cater to your specific needs.

- Yeah, I have to really shout out the accessibility team. I had the pleasure of working with some of them, and the accessories team, when we built the social plans for this. And through that, I got to see how they built the video for this. You got to meet three cast of characters who use this IRL.

There's an adorable little boy. I think his name is Leo, if I remember right, and he was so-- he was nonverbal, but he was so excited to see his reaction to this. And the use cases of this, I just have-- I think our accessibility team, removing any bias, working here, absolutely sets the bar extremely high. And the 3D print is really cool.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, let's get into that.

JOSH STEIN: That's a brand new experience.

TINA AMINI: The toppers?

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, so there are now, I believe, six toppers available online, and the team's obviously looking at what kind of options exist. But you can 3D print these for different needs. They will pop on to that, pop off, depending on what you want to do. I know a lot of libraries, at least here in the US, offer 3D printing services for free.

- That's cool.

- So you can also take those plans to a local library, and you can have it 3D printed and then bring it back home and then use.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, so the way this works is you go over to Xbox Design Lab and just search for that in your search engine of choice, and it pops up. And you're used to designing controllers and stuff to buy. This is actually to design the right type of thumbstick topper for you, and then we just give you the CAD files.

And then however it is that you want to get these printed out, you do that. There's no cost. Obviously, if you're going to get these printed, and you don't have a 3D printer or the access to do that-- but the point is, we give you the design, and you just go ahead and do that. And you make it, what works for you, and if you need to refine it and try it again, you just go back and readjust those things. So that's it.

JOSH STEIN: And it's worth saying these work on the regular controllers, too. It's not just the joystick.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah.

- So if you are a person who uses any of these accessibility services, or maybe you use-- some people already use a one hand on a standard issue Series X, Series S controller, these thumbsticks will also work with that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It just clicks right on to the existing thumbstick.

JOSH STEIN: Correct. Yeah, these are printed in a way that they snap right on. It's just a really cool program, and again, it's great to call it-- the toppers, we're not charging for that. You can preview the design, pick it off, and then go to, like I said, a local library. I heard a lot of people talking about that.

And then the number one question at the booth was, can I do two at once of the joysticks? And just theoretically, you can. You just need the XAC to be able to plug it in.

EMMA BRIDLE: The adaptive controller is one of the things that I always talk about that makes me really proud to be at Xbox. I'm an ambassador for an accessibility gaming charity called Special Effect. Hopefully you're all-- Worked with them for a long time, and I was visiting Redmond from the UK the day that we announced the adaptive controller was in the accessibility lab.

And so it's really special, and just getting to work with that team and see how it changes lives. And you can just customize it to what you need so that you can continue to play, and you can have that joy. It's just-- I get a lot of tears whenever they send me videos because--

TINA AMINI: Happy tears, yeah.

- Such wonderful stuff that we get to do.

TINA AMINI: There's so much thoughtfulness from that team, too. I love that we sort of pioneered it with the adaptive controller, and there's all this thoughtfulness going into, well, how do you expand and innovate on that? And of course, it's done in deep collaboration with the disability community.

And I love one of the stories coming out of our gamescom broadcast, which I was very proud to debut this news on our stream, was also-- because we had conversations with the product marketing team and the hardware designers. And they were just talking about how they actually worked with people at local Seattle hospitals and working with people who use gaming as rehabilitation. So also just thinking about what is that experience? And how can we also come in and contribute and help just offer more flexibility there, too?

- That's awesome. I wonder if they work with programs like Gamers Outreach, too. That's another one where they put consoles in children's hospitals, so that way they can play video games.

- It has so many different applications. You think about disability is permanent, temporary, and situational. If you have an injury, and you can't use your arm for a bit, then you can adapt your setup whilst you recover. Or if you've got a new sleeping newborn, and again, you've got limited movement, it can apply to so many different situations. And I just think it's such great work and really makes me proud of Xbox.

- Yeah.

- All right, We have talked and teased a little bit earlier on a bit about Valorant, but recently, our friends over at Riot did a surprise launch of Valorant on Xbox, and recently, they just released their newest operator, Vice, across all platforms at the same time. And of course, if you have Game Pass, no better way to get a hold of all of these different operators.

So Riot's director production, Arnar Gylfason, sat down with Ethan Rothamel to discuss everything going on in the world of Valorant. So let's check it out.

- Hey, folks, I'm here with Arnar Gylfason, production director of Valorant at Riot Games. Arnar, how are you doing today, man?

- I'm doing great, Ethan. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for having me on. Excited to be here.

- Of course. I've been playing so much Valorant these last couple of weeks, kind of leading up to getting to meet you. This is the first time we've met. And so honestly, I've just been living, eating, breathing Valorant with my friends after work. And obviously, the game has been out for years on PC, but this is-- it was a surprise launch on console in early August. I'm curious how the vibes have been at work and how reception has been from the console fans.

- Yeah, I mean the vibes have been immaculate, I think. We're super excited to have launched the game on console now. It was obviously a journey for us to learn how to take Valorant, both the product itself, and make it right on console, and also for the team to learn how to ship on console. That's a whole new platform that this team has not shipped on before. And so I think we're pretty excited both in player reception of the game and also just in our ability to launch and now serve this entire new player base.

- Heck, yeah, man. I am curious, with that in mind. I am a bit of a gamer on console and PC, and obviously, there's drastically different inputs, drastically different play styles across them. I got to ask, while I have you here, are you seeing any differences between the two, maybe agents that are getting picked more often on console? I don't mean to throw shade at my console brethren, as someone who plays with a controller mostly, but we have a tendency to look up a little less than maybe a mouse and keyboard player. I'm curious if you've seen differences like that already.

- I would say nothing that I would ascribe to console players specifically. Valorant is obviously a fairly deep and complicated game with a high mastery curve, and so I think what we're seeing is more just a whole swath of new players coming in who are learning how to play the game and kind of understanding the basic mechanics and the strategy behind it. It's actually very similar to what we saw when we first launched the game on PC in 2020, which is just people are learning how to approach the game and how to play it.

That said, there are some very sweaty console players out there, and the high skill bar of console play right now looks-- it looks scary. It's crispy gameplay.

- I can vouch. As someone who's sat and ranked and is not the best at it, I can definitely vouch that there are some quality, quality players. But you brought up a really good point, which I thought was interesting. I've been playing-- a lot of my friends I play with on Xbox, they're not PC gamers. This is their first foray into Valorant.

And so while I get to be better than them for maybe a month or two before they catch up, I'm kind of curious, in your mind, because there are things that they brought up that they-- we played many games where they didn't realize, one, you could ADS. That was, I think, something that was like, oh, I didn't realize this was a feature. I'm curious what features and mechanics in Valorant that may be unique to console players you think would give folks an edge if they're booting up Valorant for the first time.

- Yeah, I think the-- generally speaking, I think the important thing to remember about Valorant is that it's not a game where you run and gun. This is a game where you need to be methodical about the fights that you take. You need to stop, aim, and shoot. And--

- Yeah.

- With that in mind-- yeah, exactly. But with that in mind, having features like focus mode, which is something we made specifically for controller play, is so important because it allows you to engage that trigger and then slow down the rate at which-- hello, there's a new guest on the podcast.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: My new cat! Nice.

- It allows you to slow down your turning rate when you engage the sticks. So using that to your advantage, kind of being able to quickly peek around the map, taking in the sights, understanding, hey, where is there a potential threat, where is there an enemy? And then when you take the gunfight, coming to a stop, engaging that focus mode, slowing down your sensitivity to get that crisp headshot. That's really a trick. That's the magic behind it.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Totally. Totally. And you feel it. I mean, it is extremely satisfying, but I'm glad you brought up focus mode because I do want to shout out you and the team there for-- I think you do have to do some unique things sometimes when a game transitions to console like this. And it feels so intuitive. It feels so snappy.

Frankly, and candidly, I was really worried about the transition as someone who was played a lot on PC, and it really felt effortlessly-- effortless, excuse me. In a few games, I was kind of feeling it pretty quick, and it felt really responsive, really intuitive. So I just want to take a moment to shout out the team because it is-- you guys did great work there.

- Thank you so much. Yeah, it was super important to us that Valorant on console is still just Valorant. It's not a different game. It doesn't play any differently. It's still that same 5v5 tactical shooter.

So while we obviously had to adapt the game to controllers, we had to innovate things like focus mode, we had to retune some of the agents and think about how does this game, at the end of the day, whether you are playing mouse and keyboard on PC, or whether you pick up a controller on your Xbox, how do we make sure that this game still feels the same and plays the same, even if there are slight unique variations between the platforms that you play on. I hope we got it. I think we got it. I hope we got it.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I think you did. I mean, I'm just one man, but I have played quite a lot, and I've really enjoyed it. My team can vouch. We may not be winning as many games as we'd like, but it's definitely not because of the controls that you implemented. I promise you that.

I'd love to talk about Vice because just rolled out. Brand new operator. First agent that was kind of rolled out simultaneously across platforms, and she looks like a lot of fun. I imagine you're pretty excited to see console players jump in with a new agent launch. I'd love to talk about how that experience has been on your side.

- Yeah, it was one of the-- I mean, it was one of the fundamental questions we asked ourselves, of like, how do we show up for console players? And one of the key ingredients there is Valorant should be one Valorant no matter where you're playing it, which means bringing content to all of our players at the same time is very important to us. And what's super exciting about Vice is she's the first agent that we now ship to all of our players at the same time.

So this is kind of the first time that players on console and players on PC are all getting access to a brand new gameplay content right at the same moment. And so I think what's going to be interesting now is we see how they both adapt at the same time, how they learn how to play the new agent, how it fits into team comps, what the style is, et cetera. Is not something that console players are going to be looking to PC players maybe and say, how do they play it? Everybody's discovering it kind of at the same time.

- Yeah, super cool. As someone who works on the game, is there something that gets you most excited about a new agent dropping, when you're watching the community? I know you highlighted a few things, but I'm curious.

- Yeah, absolutely. It's always-- we do a lot of internal play testing, obviously, for agents, and we have our own theories about how do you best play. What's the optimal way to play this new agent or play on this new map? It's the same with Vice. It's like, yeah, we've done tons of play testing, and we think we've figured out how exactly she fits into the lineup and where she's a power pick, et cetera.

And now, players are going to tell us, hey, how right were we? How wrong were we? Did we overbalance, under balance? But that's always the most exciting part, is just what will players do with this new thing that we gave them, and what are we going to learn from them when they get their hands on it.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, never underestimate gamers' abilities to get creative or come up with scenarios that you guys didn't even think of.

- Absolutely.

- I love that. Arnar, I got to ask, while I have you, I appreciate all the time you've already given us today for this interview, but I'm curious who you're-- maybe a cheesy question, but I'm curious your favorite agents yourself, and maybe if you resonate with any agent the most maybe on a personal level.

- Oh, on a personal level.

- I don't want to assume Breach. I don't want to assume Breach.

- Let's make no assumptions there. Yeah. Actually, it's funny. I have two favorite agents, and they're very, very different. So my favorite agent to play when I'm kind of just having fun, vibing out, is Raze. Just turn off my brain, satchel in, you know, guns, just having fun.

If I'm playing ranked, and I want to sweat it out, and I want to win, that's actually-- I usually switch to Sova. And I play much more reserved. I play for information and picks, and I set up my team.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Nice.

ARNAR GYLFASON: But I would say that's more try-harding than--

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: Yeah, sure.

ARNAR GYLFASON: Raze comes out when I'm having fun.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love that. Similarly, I am very much a Sova main in ranked. I play a few characters. Sova, I love, and Rayna when I'm getting a little sweaty. But then I also got a shout out Deadlock because I just started playing Deadlock this week, actually, and just really, really fell in love with her. But I always--

- Deadlock is super fun.

- Yeah, she's awesome, and I will say, the first three games with her, and I'm telling you this transparently, I was like, Deadlock sucks. She's not my style. I cannot stand her. And then I was forcing myself to keep playing her, and within two games I was like, oh, no, she's a new main. I love her so much, and it just comes down to, you brought it up earlier, figuring out your playstyle, figuring out your team, because you do kind of have to roll with the punches of, what is your team doing? And I love-- even if I'm at the bottom of the leaderboard, I like characters like Sova because, to your point, it's like, well, I'm the king of communicator-- communication. You wouldn't have--

- I helped.

- --got that kill without my-- yeah, exactly. I helped, bro. Yeah, I knew where that person was, so you could get the kill.

- Enjoy the top fragging. That's all me.

- Yeah. Yeah, and I helped. Armar, I could talk with you forever, but I know it's a busy week. Vice is out pretty recently, so I'm going to let you get back to your team. But I really do appreciate the time. Any parting words for the fans?

- Thank you so much. I mean, it's been out for a while now on console, but we are so excited about having this entire new community of players to serve and to work with and collaborate with, and just excited to see where the next years take us as Valorant continues growing and players get more comfortable with it on console to start seeing that, what does that real top tier gameplay look like on console.

ETHAN ROTHAMEL: I love it. I love it. Arnar, thanks so much for your time. Folks, Valorant is available now on PC and consoles, and if you have Game Pass, you have all the agents unlocked for free. So get out there and enjoy it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Thanks so much, Arnar and Ethan, for the interview. Now, this week, Razer released its newest controller, the Razer Wolverine V3s, not to be confused with the Deadpool controller from--

- --hell name, though.

- It's true. It's true.

- Wolverine V3.

- Yes, well, the V2 was actually considered a very great controller. We'll have to see what happens with the Deadpool V2. Anyway, this is Razer's first wireless Xbox controller, and I don't-- you didn't realize this, but Indie snuck this in here. It's right here. All right, I'm going to-- do you mind?

- Yeah, sure.

- Emma, you can open this up. I'll release a little bit about it-- or reveal a little bit about it. Very nice. This is an elite level controller. This is a high end controller. It retails for $199.99, and it's got all of the bells and whistles. If you hold down the Nexus button, you'll see where it lights up. They did not go overboard on the chroma. Yeah, see, it lights up right there.

- With a nice vibration there, yeah.

- The V2 had a bunch of chroma on the side. This is a little bit more restrained.

- Matte.

- But it's all about, for this one-- yeah, I'm a big fan of the Xbox Elite Controller V2.

TINA AMINI: Same.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This feels very different in terms of everything from its feel in the hands to its clicks. So they do have mouse click back paddles and claw grip bumpers as well as-- I would say the face buttons, as well, have a real pronounced click to them. It feels like very-- it feels a lot different.

- Yeah.

- There you go. Do it again.

- Yeah.

[CLICKING]

- You can hear that. That--

- Feels good as well.

- I love a good tactile feedback.

- Yeah, it's a nice weight in the hands, yeah, and I do like that click sound.

- I was playing a bunch of Star Wars with this.

- And the Razer's changing color.

- All those things are, of course, programmable. It has Hall Effect precision thumbsticks. People love the Hall Effect because it's an anti-drift, accuracy. And this is, again, the first wireless Xbox controller from Razer. It has a dongle. Once you pop it in there, I didn't think about it again. It was there, and it just worked like you would expect it to.

You can customize it. Of course, it works for Xbox and for PC. You get unlock advanced features and personalize it via the Razer controller app. And of course, it comes with the carrying case, a 10 foot long USB Type C cable. So if you want zero latency, that's how you do it. You just go ahead and wire it.

TINA AMINI: For that Black Ops 6 weekend beta.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah.

EMMA BRIDLE: Oh, yeah. Nice tie-in.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: They also worked with Snipe Down. I don't know if you know Snipe Down. He's a Halo professional esports player, and so he consulted on this one.

- Always good to get the pros in to make sure you're doing it right.

- Exactly. What I would recommend, because it feels quite a bit different, you might say, I have an Elite. Is this for me? There are Razer stores around the country. There's one here in Seattle. I know there's a bunch. This is one where you're going to want to go in, and you're going to hold it because it feels-- to me, it felt a little bit smaller, and just the angles were a little bit different. And that might--

- Yeah. Actually, yeah.

- So that might be what you want. I think, in terms of the button, the sticks, all those things are great. It's top quality. It's all going to be about how does this feel in your hands, and do you like it? Personally, I don't use back paddles, but I will say the back paddles here, they're not obtrusive, and so that's good. So they don't come off. But I never found them in my way. I played about 15 hours on this controller playing Star Wars Outlaws, and I very quickly got used to this. So it's a really nice controller.

- Because my controller at home is an Elite 2. So this feels familiar, but also--

- It's a little bit.

- Familiar, but different. Can you say that? Yeah.

- So try it out because it's a sizable investment in a high quality controller.

- I like playing controller on my laptop and maybe--

- Yeah, and it will work for that.

- --this is the solution because otherwise I have to keep unpairing my Elite from my console.

- There's actually a secret I can tell you about that.

- Yes. Well, I can just tell everybody.

JOSH STEIN: Give us a little tip for that.

- Yeah, yeah, if you-- for any Xbox controller, if you double tap the Sync button it switches between connecting to your console and using the Bluetooth transmitter, and you'll see it'll blink--

- This'll save me so much time.

- So you can look that up. There's lots of YouTube videos, but you don't have to resync every time. Double tap. Yeah.

- Life hacks.

- Yeah, learn something if you made it 58 minutes into this episode.

- --zombies, double tap gets you anymore.

- There you go. We buried all the value to the very end here because that actually just about wraps us up for this week. So please feel free to follow the show on twitter.com/xboxwire, YouTube, and actually, we are now over on WhatsApp. So if you search for Xbox news on WhatsApp.

- So was Age of Empires.

- And so is--

- So is Xbox.

- And so is Xbox. Xbox has millions of followers. If you're watching this, you're probably already following.

- But congratulations on launching the Wire Channel on WhatsApp, so now, you guys are providing the latest and greatest--

- I had a bit of good advice from somebody.

- All Megan, all Megan.

- Yeah. OK. All right, so thank you, Tina, Stein, Emma, for joining us this week. Any final thoughts? Anything you're just dying to say before we get out of here?

- Play Age of Mythology Retold. just plug that again. We'd love to have you.

- --way to end it.

- I didn't get the chance to talk about how much I'm loving Star Wars Outlaws, so play Star Wars Outlaws as well. Pack your whole--

- Play all of it.

- Play all the game.

- --did a little profile takeover for us, and we put a little cuteness.

- Oh, I saw that. Yeah. Yes.

- I know. Getting in a little--

- Yes, exactly.

- Yeah. Please give us a follow over on the global channels at Xbox on all your local and favorite social media handles.

- Very good. Thank you all for joining me, and thanks to you for joining us. We will see you on the next one.

- Bye.

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