Star Wars Outlaws: The Hype(rspace) Is Real| Official Xbox Podcast

SPEAKER: 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. We've got a lot to talk about today. We've got multiple Star Wars games, actually, to talk about. We have we're going to talk Valorant. We're talking Gamescom 2024. It's August already, and we're also going to have a couple of unboxings. Last week, we had the bootylicious controller from--

- Hard to top.

- I mean, really it is-- there's not too many places you can go from there. Well, why don't we go full see-through because see-through translucent controllers are coming back, and we have that with us, the Sky Cipher controller. And you know the Duke. But have you met the Duchess? You'll be doing that later today. First, let me introduce you to our co-host, Hailey Geller, your product marketing manager at Xbox. What are you working on right now?

- I am working on content updates for Halo Infinite, which I think we will be getting into a little bit later. And yeah, I think I mentioned this last time I was on, but also helped the team at the coalition with the exciting announce of Gears of War-- E-Day. So it's been a very exciting summer, and yeah, lots to come. But while it's August--

- Yeah, like sand through the hourglass.

- New Year's in five weeks.

- No, literally. Happy Holidays.

- I got to reserve my turkey for Thanksgiving right now.

- Costco's probably ahead of you.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- That's true. We'll be seeing Christmas decorations before too long. Josh Stein, it says here you're the senior Marcom manager, but I know you as the resident master of Xbox Social. How are you doing, Sir?

- You're too kind, yeah. Corpo version of saying I help run the social media channels, along with a very wonderful group of talented people. Doing great. Here to talk about video games and what we've been announced. We've had a busy week this week. We've got some stuff to talk about.

- We do. But you know what I like to talk about here on the show? Because it usually comes back. It always comes back to the games. And that is what have you been playing. Well, we'll start with you, Josh.

- Yeah, I've been dabbling around a lot. Game pass has been giving us a buffet of options lately, plus my own usuals. So Fallout 76, of course, the skyline update. So I've been playing with my friends and some coworkers as we're going through the story mission exploring the new area. Ghouls are a big part of it, so I've having a lot of fun learning about the lore. And I would say, check it out. The story is really good. They delve into all sorts of mysteries. And maybe not everything is as it seems.

And then also Kunitsu-Gami. I did not expect this to hit me as well as it did. I, like many people, saw it on Game Pass, was like, oh, try this out. Trailer looked really beautiful. He's like sword-dancing with ribbons flailing out. And so I downloaded it, kept it on my hard drive for a week. And then I was like, all right, let me try this out. And I, it's like a tower defense game, but it's way more involved. So it's got this old-school tower defense feel, a little bit like the ones I play on mobile. But then you are so much more in control of that. You yourself are fighting. You're protecting your tower, which is this gal, who you're in love with. I think you're in love with her. Maybe not,

- Let me tell you. All right. So having finished this game, you will figure out, so is at the end.

- There's some mystery there, so I don't quite know yet.

- And that's the best part about the game, I think.

- Or you can assign spearmen, bowmen on the different baddies and ugly, torturous monsters--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes, Yokai.

- --come at you. It's really cool. And then Marvel Rivals, check that out on Steam, and some Valorant beta. So checking out some betas.

- Yes, there's been plenty to play there. Talk to me about the Valorant beta because we had an article on Xbox Wire, news.xbox.com, that really talked about how cross-play is going to work and how they've adapted the game to console. And one of the things I thought was really interesting is they had to rethink aiming entirely because when-- I've watched a lot of-- Valorant is huge on Twitch. And so it's always in the top 10. And so I've watched a lot, but I hadn't ever really played it until this beta.

And a lot of times a lot of hip firing on PC. And then they realized they had to redo it for a console. And so they're not actually going to have-- console will have cross-play. PlayStation, I'm sure will have. Valorant, I don't know if it's going anywhere else. And so they'll be cross-play there, but not with PC because it's so much different. How did you find the aiming and the shooting moving around?

JOSH STEIN: Yeah. So I've played a bit on PC, obviously, CS:GO back in the day, etcetera. So I'm really comfortable with some of that stuff, and I understand it is a different mechanic when you switch from that mouse and keyboard PC setup to a controller setup. But I have to say they've done a really good job. I still suck at PC, and I still suck on console. But boy, howdy, do I have some fun? I'm the entertainment hire of the group when I join in the squad, but it's been really fun. I've just been getting to know the heroes because I picked one or two on PC and stuck with them. So I've been kind of forcing myself to rotate around the heroes and check those out. And we did some cool stuff, yeah.

- You can rotate around the heroes.

- Yeah, I know you're going to plug this.

- Go for it.

- If you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you unlock all the heroes.

- 24 heroes, to be exact.

- So there's a plethora, depending on your style-- support, medic. I don't know all the names of the-- there's warlord classes, where you can--

- There's a duelist.

- There's a duelist. There's more than I can remember. So I'm still going through some of the cycles and checking them out. So it's been cool to just get to know them. And the beta provides a good spot to of just get familiar with which ones are going to be more my, like I'm more tanky and running-play style. So just been dabbling in that. But the bay has been fun. And I got to say, I was worried about the controller integration, and they did a phenomenal job on it.

- There's a full tutorial that runs you through how everything works.

- Yeah, they walk you through it really well.

- And I think the key thing to note, while there's no cross-play with PC for reasons that we talked about, there is cross-progression. So if you've been playing on PC, you actually link your Xbox account with your Riot account. And so anything you've unlocked or bought previously.

- My trash caddy history follows me right to--

- Yeah, you thought you were rid of that, and you could start over fresh. I'm sorry, Sir.

- I know you wanted it.

- Yeah, maybe. Can I unlink that?

- All right, Hailey, you've been playing what I feel like is the game of the summer.

- Is it the game of the summer?

- Oh, it's the game of the summer.

- OK. Yeah, College Football 25. Stein probably knows, as he had to hear me yap about it all the time. But I'm a huge college football girly. I went to University of Oregon. So big football.

- Right? OK, I'm learning.

- It's the Beaver. So proud of you. But [LAUGHS] huge college football town school, obviously. But being from Washington, my entire family went to the University of Washington, so they're all Huskies. So it was like an immediate need to get the game and beat my little brother at his own game because I am not nearly as good as he is at football video games. But Oregon offense is really fun, so that's amazing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I've read something where-- I can't remember-- maybe it was like si.com or something-- did 25 years of simming. And they found that the Ducks did the best over the course of all that, so. It might be good. They might be the Man City pick this year.

- Oh, yeah. I mean, they--

- To make an analogy that does not work, whatsoever.

- Really broke my brain. That did [LAUGHS].

- There's bandwagon pick. You have a good reason to pick them.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I don't know any of these references, but go Man City? Isn't that football?

- Yeah. The one where you use your foot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- But Yeah, it's been really fun, an excuse to play with my little brother, which doesn't happen often because he just drags me through the mud in most games. But Oregon is the one way to beat him. So, yeah, go Ducks.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah. My brother also just kills me in sports games, FIFA and 2K mostly.

- Yeah.

- So down with little brothers is the real theme here. So we were talking Stein before we came in here. We're also really big into Shadow of the Erdtree. I'm happy to confirm.

- Yes.

- I beat it.

JOSH STEIN: Did you beat it?

- I did finally beat it.

JOSH STEIN: I'm at the end, but I don't want to. So I keep going to other areas and exploring. I just want the Cerulean Coast.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yep. Oh, it's really beautiful with all the flowers.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, I could just walk through that field forever.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Until something tries to kill you.

JOSH STEIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Which it will.

JOSH STEIN: No, fire giant, or not fire giants. Fire golems. Because I took all those bad boys out.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, did you?

JOSH STEIN: I did.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It took me forever to figure out how to beat them.

JOSH STEIN: So same. And then when I finally figured out how to beat the standard fire giants, I went and hunted everyone down. It was like Van Helsing on the hunt for vampires.

- All right, well, let's talk about it. There's a lot of hidden stuff.

- It feels so big, I have to admit. You saw the map. And if you played the base game, OK, this would be a good area, but it's another one of those depth areas. I feel like there are three. When you see the map, it's really three levels to that whole map. So that whole first floor, there's a whole bottom floor that you go down and around.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, like in the south.

JOSH STEIN: And then there's literally towards the end of the game, just the whole northern floor area. And then all of those have three floors. So you can go to the northern area, but find new routes to go. And there's a medium area with a bunch of dungeons underneath platforms. So it's really a lot bigger than I thought.

- Level.

- Like taking notes in.

- And so yeah, I'm at the end boss. I've tried it a few times, haven't quite beat them, but trying to figure it out. But I keep going back because I didn't do like the haunted forest, which is terrifying.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes.

- Let me tell you what, I was so proud. The untouchables, they're invincible. There are six of them, I think, in the swamp. And you can't kill them, unless a perfect parry. And I got all of them. And I was so proud of them.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I did not even encounter this at all.

JOSH STEIN: Oh, I'm a parry. I'm trash. I am trash. That's why Sekiro, I'm terrible at those games. Elden Ring, I don't play any parry. I'm just bad at it. And there are people who do like godmode parries, and they never get touched. That's not me. Because I was running like a homebrew build, and then that's why I switched to perfumer because I needed something a little bit more--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Interesting.

- A little bit more damaging. But it's a lot of fun, and it's big. And I keep going back to it.

- Yep. I'm ready to start new game, plus I will say I did have to cheese the final boss a little bit because my build just did not work at all. So I got one of these big shields that's like-- it looks like a gravestone.

- Yeah.

- It's called the fingerprint, something.

- Fingerprint of god.

- Yeah, something like that. And use the tortoise talisman that lets you regen your stamina really quickly. And then it was just a little pokey boy. And then until they bled to death.

JOSH STEIN: Do you use the story-based summons?

- Here's the thing about summons. If you let me summon them, I'm going to use them

- Totally. And the creator has set himself-- the social BS about summons, whatever.

- If that makes me a casual, then I don't care. I still beat the games.

- It wouldn't be in the game. And I think cool. You do it on hard mode.

- Look, you're better than I am. I will not disagree.

- Correct. They're just like there are people who play games on hard. People play on easy story mode and in the middle. I have to say, though, I love the story-based summons because they have dialogue, and they add depth to it. It's not just some random schmo with uber-bleed bill just going in and sorting everything.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That would be cool, though, if they had that option. I wouldn't say no.

JOSH STEIN: There's some good ones, though. The guy who's like Curse You Bayle. I know that went viral, but there's some other really good ones. And I think it wraps the story around better when you use the story-based summons because they had little dialogues and betrayals if they die and all sorts of cool stuff.

- All right. Well, let's get into the news.

- Sorry for the Erdtree section.

- It's good now, though. Once we start, I cannot stop.

- I can keep going, but I'll stop.

- But I have no idea what you're talking about, so I just nod my head and I'm like, yeah, one day I'll play in Karlstein

JOSH STEIN: That's fair.

- So enough talking about games that we can play now. Let's talk about where we can learn about games that are coming out later. And where's that happening? Well, we're in August. It's Gamescom 2024. It's happening in about three weeks in Cologne, Germany.

JOSH STEIN: Have a lot of work to do, still.

HAILEY GELLER: I went for the first time last year. It was a lot.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's a lot. I think it's the best way of putting it.

- Yeah, I feel like no matter how much people tell you what the experience is like, you don't understand what that means until you get there, and you're in these massive rooms. And there's just like a gazillion people. And I'm very short, so people just look over my head and run into me. And I have to duck and cover and elbows out.

But it was really cool, and it's fun to just see everyone show up in such a big way and explore the booths. Nintendo had a really cool booth showing last year, so it's fun to even see things outside of our usual day-to-day remit. It was also just like a lot of potatoes. I don't think I've ever eaten so many French fries in my life.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: They call them Fritz out there. It's completely different. You dip them in mayo. You know what? I liked it.

HAILEY GELLER: It's good, but after, I was really excited to find vegetables.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I will say after-- you'll figure it out. I've been probably 10 of these, and day four is the salad day. And I'm like, I'll take a chicken Caesar salad.

- Day four con salad day.

- I was so happy to see a tomato after I left because I was like, oh, god, I don't think I could eat another potato.

- Yeah, you're beta-carotene just screaming out. Your body needs it. So it's funny because day one, you're like, schnitzel. Schnitzel it's so good.

HAILEY GELLER: Fried food.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah. And day two, you're like, you know what? I could do more schnitzel. And you do. And then day three, you're like, I might have hit my maximum here.

JOSH STEIN: I may be more schnitzel than man or woman.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, exactly.

HAILEY GELLER: Also, not being able to find water. Or drinking kolsch, as if it's the water.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It is cheaper than the water, and that's not a joke.

HAILEY GELLER: It is. Water bottles are hard to find.

- Also true. Is this hydration? I guess so. Well, look, if you're going, we hope so, because we've got so much for you. We're going to have over 50 titles to check out if you're at the booth-- Age of Mythology-- Retold, ARA-- History Untold, Diablo IV-- Vessel of Hatred update, Fallout 76-- Milepost Zero, Elder Scrolls Online-- Gold Road, Towerborne, tons more. And there's not just the things to play, but there's actually going to be photo ops, gear store. There's a theater. That's where last year at this time, there was the first surprise reveal of the Fallout TV show. So the theater experience is always a lot of fun.

- Starfield one, though, is sweet.

- Yeah, they're themed out the Starfield theater. There's another themed-out theater for this year.

- Oh, cool. All right. Looking forward to seeing that. And then there's also going to be a FanFest. So if you're going on August 21, the FanFest is returning a special community event to kick off Gamescom week. We'll be bringing players together to connect around gaming. And so if you're going to be there, you can enter for a chance to win tickets to attend xbox.com/fanfest. And you're going to want to use the code FANFEST, all caps, F-A-N-F-E-S-T, to unlock the sweepstakes. But if like me, you're not going to Cologne this year. You're perfumer. Imagine you're going to be in Cologne.

- We'll do great there.

- Exactly.

- Can use some perfuming in there. I'll just dash it around.

- Maybe not the electric build. But if you can't make it, don't worry about it. We're bringing the show to you. We're doing that digitally. It's actually going to be your team doing that. So join team Xbox and friends on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, starting August 21 through the 23rd for a deep dive into all the highly anticipated games, as we talked about. Developer tracks, gameplay, trailers, all that type of stuff, they go all day long. It's a lot of the folks from the Xbox on team, so a decidedly European flair. They're really good at that. Also, the Bethesda team will be having daily content streaming live from the booth over on their Twitch channel. So just keep an eye on the Xbox Social. Where should we go? Where should we go?

- Head on over to x.com/xbox. You can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Snapchat, YouTube, and many more.

- If it exists, just type in Xbox.

- And we are probably there with the social team. And yeah, I would just double down and plug. This is three full days of broadcast. I've seen the run a show now, and no spoilers. But keep an eye on our social. We'll be sharing more details as we get closer to Gamescom. This is one of the biggest-- so I haven't been since 2017, back in Mixer days-- shout-out Mixer. But it is massive. This is one of the coolest booths I've ever seen us build. So if you're going there, you're in for an amazing experience. If you can't go there, of course, because we not everyone can head out to Germany, there's going to be a really great three-day coverage.

So both from the Bethesda and the Xbox team. I myself, obviously, no shame a nerd, for many of the things that we've announced, and we've shared and discussed. And they're doing some really cool showing on some of the games like Diablo, Vessel of Hatred. I'm so excited to see what the Diablo team show up and bring a bunch of really cool content around that. And there's so much more. So definitely, it's just worth tuning in. I think people really enjoy what they see here, and it's a different flavor. We bring showcase. You bring that Super Bowl kind of gaming, and we show off 30, 40 games or something crazy. And this is like, I love how this is the second act to that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, yeah.

JOSH STEIN: Really brings it together.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So it's always been where you announce the game.

JOSH STEIN: Yep.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And then Gamescom was always like where you could probably play.

JOSH STEIN: Show me more.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, exactly. Lots of hands on.

JOSH STEIN: Show me more, that I always feel like is a nice one two punch from our showcase. So I think people are going to really enjoy it. So

- After Gamescom, you end up coming back, and that's when you're like really into the flow of all the holiday titles. And I feel like holiday really kicks off this year. That sort of run of amazing stuff to play with Star Wars Outlaws. It's out. At the beginning of the month, that comes out. The end of the month, August 30, a lot of folks, media creators, and our own Danielle Partis from Xbox Wire got to play three hours of the game.

JOSH STEIN: So jealous.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Let's go into footage right now. We're going to talk a little bit about what she got to experience during this preview event. Huge part of the open world and really got into a lot of different locations. And the thing that really jumped out at me is the way the different factions work together. So you're going to work as Kay Vess working with four different crime syndicates, the Crimson Dawn, the Hutt Cartel. We're familiar with them. The Ashiga clan and the Pike syndicate. We've seen them in the Mandalorian.

JOSH STEIN: I hate the Pikes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So each of them has their own sort of idea of how they want to run the underworld. This takes place, I want to say, in between empire and Jedi. So the empire is like at its height. And you have a different reputation for each of these. And depending on what your reputation is, they might like you, they might hate you. You might be able to have access to their districts, to their different benefits.

But if you have a negative reputation with some of these folks, they might be less receptive, or they might even just try to shoot you on sight. And you get to make those choices, which I think is-- looking at this footage, it was really exciting. So early on, Danielle was saying in her playthrough, she aligned with gorak, who was part of one of these syndicates, and she gave him some information. Is that the Pike?

JOSH STEIN: It it's the Pike.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So she gave him some information, and that allowed her, then, to explore this area. And then later on, when she got to play further into the game, since she was already friendly with him, she had the opportunity to either steal from that syndicate or from a different syndicate to get a blaster piece. She was like, well, I already got a good reputation with them. I'm going to keep that going. And even if you have a good reputation with one group, that might in its own piss off another group. So I think the way you balance those things out, and I'd imagine you're going to have a lot of shifts and changes, just seems really interesting because your playthrough is probably going to be different than my playthrough, depending--

- Feels all morally gray, but depends on which flavor you want to lean.

- You're scoundrel. I mean, morally gray is the name of the game.

- Yeah, I feel like no Pike's going to be alive when I'm play through but to each their own.

- You've really got it out for them.

They had it coming.

- It won't be gray, is these amazing landscapes. You're seeing a bunch of open-world stuff, seeing caves on this hover bike and just going through, getting into some chase scenes, which seems really fun. Even the UX has a lot of great color. I'm a teal fan. So the video that we were watching--

JOSH STEIN: It was pretty good-- teals, reds. They bring alive those really poppy colors. I'm sure there'll be a sandy planet somewhere in there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: One would imagine. There's also, as part of a preview, got to get behind the helm of her ship against some battle with TIE fighters. She said that the controls felt were reminiscent of Starfield, and the ship's tracking module made short work of some of the ships. She ended up landing on an icy planet named Kijimi that is ruled by the Ashiga clan. And I guess they're in a fight with the Crimson Clan. So you can see how if you side with the other one's, not really going.

- There's not ice fighters. You remember that episode in the Mandalorian? Maybe I'm too nerdy for this. There's an ice spider species. They're the ones that-- they're pillars. They're really long. And then they have 18 legs sticking out the bottom. They're absolutely terrifying. They can be as little as this mug. They can be as giant as like a two-story building. And they have eyes all around it. They're disgusting. I don't know if they're in the game. I know they're going--

- Those are based in real life, I'm told.

- Star Wars games are--

- Pretty big in Western Washington.

- --really good at throwing really gross bugs and alien animals at you. So I'm curious to see what kind of habitats we're going to run into. But the speeder bike looks great, looks gorgeous. I need to practice my pistol-spinning, too. She does a lot of pistol-spinning in the footage.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Press X to pistol-spin. We'll have to find out how that works.

- We know what. Stein will be playing after game.

- Oh, yeah.

- So that's out August 30, fun to see with that one. Very exciting. What about this week? Let's say you want some Star Wars right now. You're real hyped up for it. Well, guess what. There is available, Star Wars-- Bounty Hunter. So if this looks familiar, it's a classic third-person action adventure. Actually, originally came out in 2002, but it has been enhanced for modern consoles. When you play it, you definitely can see that it's a classic game, but they've made it run in 4K 60. So it'll run better than it's ever ran before.

You will play as Jango Fett, probably someone that is familiar. If you're up on your Clone Wars, they were the prime clone of the Grand Army of the Republic, hired to capture a deranged Jedi. And it takes place before episode two, Attack of the Clones, if you remember that game. That's available now. It's a discounted price. I want to say you can get it for like 1999. They scratch that Star Wars itch because we do have a whole month.

- It's pretty good price for just a nice, classic feel. So if you're getting the itch before Outlaws comes out, you can dabble a little bit in Bounty Hunter as you get ready for that. It's a good price to jump right in and try it out. And they did a pretty good job remastering it, so it feels nice. Looks a lot better. It's like one of those ones where you ever go back and watch a show or what, like we're back and be like, ooh, that didn't age very well. And then you watch it today. I love when they do like these uprisings of these ones because they do a really good job on them pretty well, and this one looks great.

- They're at their best when they play like you think they play it back.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember looking this good. It didn't, but it looks great today because they did a great job.

- Exactly. And then you go back to the original, and you're like, oh, we were not--

- Now I know why you did that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Exactly. Do you ever look out the window when you're flying, when you're about to take off? This was a hard, right?

- He does. [LAUGHS]

- I get the Instagram. I get the Gram post for the window.

- I always like watching the people loading the bags into the plane or the people that do this thing.

- Oh, the orange--

- And then they put it into an x. And then they wait. You ever noticed? They actually like, they salute the pilots.

- Wavey vibe.

- At least I've seen that. There's a whole game about this. I'm not just like musing randomly. I mean, I am.

- Just a fan of airport

- There is. And this game is called AirportSim, and it is out now. It's optimized for Series X and S. It's praised for its accuracy by real-life ground-handling crew. So imagine on one hand, you have Microsoft Flight Simulator. When you turn that on and you select what airport you want to fly out of and what plane you want to be on, boom, you're in the cockpit. You're off and running. This is all the things that would lead up to that. So this is the other half of the coin, the people that get you to the point where you can take off. So an advanced airport ground handling simulator has true to life visuals and operations. You use the different vehicles that refuel the plane, that move the baggage. You actually get to unload the baggage.

- What are you doing today? Run an airport sewage. Got to go clean out a 747 on tarmac 13. I'll be right back.

- Smoking on the tarmac is highly dangerous.

- Stein, do you think it'll delay your flight?

- Can get into role playing, I feel. If you're a streamer, content creator, I feel like you could role-play that pretty well and have some fun.

- Here's the thing. you might say, why would I want to emulate a job? But after PowerWash Simulator, I think everything is in play. So there you go. I think it looks really interesting. I'm going to be playing it. I'll talk about it next week.

- I want to learn the hand signals.

- And I won't be judged for it.

- No judging. I want to learn the hand signals that you see on aircraft carriers when they're just all like doing dance moves and then like-- [GROANING]

- You got to enjoy it. Yeah, there is a bit of that.

- I feel like there's some sauce on that one. There's got to be some meaning there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You're helping people land on a platform that's like 100 yards long. You should all feel like--

JOSH STEIN: Flying like a $20 million fighter jet, yeah.

- Exactly. Sea of Thieves, this came out, actually, last week, but I don't think we had a chance to talk about it too much. Sea of Thieves Season 13, Captain Flameheart has returned. Done it with lying low after his long awaited resurrection. The Warmonger has now taken his place in the reaper's hideout. The key thing you need to know is the flagship, the burning blade, which can actually shoot flames. That's amazing.

And if you take it over, you can either sink it, or you can pilot it yourself. I think we all know what we're going to do. This was a bit of a surprise announcement here. We're talking about Game Pass. We're in a new month. We haven't announced all the things coming out this month, but Mafia Definitive Edition has been announced. It's going to be coming out to Game Pass on August 13. I played Mafia II and III. These are cinematic third-person shooters taking place during distinct periods of American history.

JOSH STEIN: The Prohibition era, right?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This one does take place in the '30s. So, yeah, that would be right in that era before you got into World War II. So, yeah, I want to say that was Prohibition era. I remember Mafia II took place. It was much more like a little bit in that. But then later on into the '60s and '70s, it was almost like Goodfellas, the game. And then Mafia III took place in like a New Orleans area. Oh, again, over the course of decades. That's where these games really excel. So this is the definitive edition of that game. I was looking back, it was pretty popular. It was well rated. I had never played it. So it's coming to Game Pass mid-August. That'll be a good thing for you to try out.

- Crime lord syndicate's a theme this month so far.

- Yeah, exactly. If you don't like the Pikes, maybe it'll be OK.

- Yeah, Outlaws.

- Like this group.

- Bounty Hunter. Yeah.

- Yeah, exactly. Look, we're living in a fantasy land, so these are things you wouldn't do in real life.

- God, I love escapism.

- There you go. All right, so what happens when you take the best-selling game of all time and mix it with the second best-selling game of all time? You end up with Minecraft and Tetris DLC. Two blocky games unite. You want to sell a lot of copies of a game Blocks.

- Biggest block in history.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Classic 2D Tetris in a 3D world. So you can dig into the Tetris DLC for Minecraft, blending the strategic two-dimensional Tetris with 3D dungeon crawling. So there's not just that you play Tetris within the game, although you can do that, there's actually a whole adventure that you're going to be undergoing through this that happens in 3D.

JOSH STEIN: I love the idea that the blocks have backstory.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, exactly. More than you ever thought. So you can battle tetra monsters in this matrix dungeon as you unearth its secrets. You can get an iconic wardrobe. And then you can play with four players together.

- What is a tetra monster?

- It sounds blocky and scary, but it's just like this bricky, little monster. I don't know.

- You're going to have to play to find out. But check that out.

- I am terrible at Minecraft.

- How are you in Tetris?

- I don't think I'm very good at that one either.

- Well.

- Maybe it'd be fun to play Tetris in Minecraft. I think that sounds fun. Yeah, like bring the old school into the new school. That could be a lot of fun.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: There's some great pictures to give you an idea and some video in minecraft.net. So check that out. And of course, it's within the game. So again, you're taking the two best-selling games of all time and putting them together. It feels like that's a good recipe. Also, you want to tell us about this Halo Fleet Com update?

- Yes. So it launches, I guess, our today, it'll be July 30. So a couple days backwards. This is so confusing because you'll be watching this in the future.

- This isn't live, in case you didn't realize that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I can be paused, rewound, scrubbed.

- I scored 13 times. You'll never know.

- Yes.

- Just rewind. But yeah, it brought a whole bunch of content updates and improvements to the game. The team is doing a fantastic job just making sure to keep things rolling and updating as they put out these on a monthly basis now. But this one specifically brings back the return of two very much beloved modes from Halo 3 and Halo Reach respectively. So we have VIP and Headhunter, which will be coming later on in the operation. A lot of major sandbox updates, along with a new free Operator Pass. So definitely check it out. If you haven't been playing Halo Infinite recently, I would just say there's a lot of great stuff that is now in game and available with match composer, too. So, yeah.

- Very cool. All right, I'm going to have to ask you to-- this is the stunt part of the show. Hailey, can you reach down there and grab a box?

- I bet some surprises here the whole time.

- Yes.

- Yeah, my neighbor that you can't see.

- All right. So last week, we had Deadpool controller. Wolverine controller was announced after that. You want to check out if you're interested in winning the Deadpool controller that's on Twitter X. It feels weird saying that. /xbox. And that you can find that tweet, and you can retweet that to potentially enter to win, right?

JOSH STEIN: Yeah. Yeah, you can head on over to x.com/xbox and enter to win. And then I think even the Microsoft team on their Instagram is also running their own Wolverine version.

- Wolverine, yeah.

- If you're a fan of the Wolverine version, head on over to Microsoft, Instagram.

- Not the Xbox Instagram, but the Microsoft Instagram.

- Correct.

- All right. I'm really excited about this controller. I love controllers. I collect them. I don't collect all of them, but the ones I really love end up on a spot on my wall. And I work at Xbox, so there's a lot of--

- You're talking to Stein.

- This is my favorite one of the year so far. I'm going to let one of you open this.

- Do you want to?

- Yeah.

- Here we go. This is the Sky Cipher control. So, do you remember back in the day in the '90s and the early 2000? Maybe you don't.

- Is that 30 years ago?

- We're not talking about when. We're just saying these were dates, where things were clear. My Gameboy was clear.

- Purple? You have the purple edition?

- I did not. Although that was a nice one.

- I think I had a pinkish one.

- Yeah, they had a pink version. Yep. I had the purple.

- My N64 controller was see-through. I had a PS1 green controller that was see-through. I didn't have this, but I've seen some around campus. There was an OG Xbox in halo green that was also translucent.

JOSH STEIN: I borrowed one.

- Those were good days. I think we can all agree those were good days. You borrowed one.

- They were throwing it away. It was five years ago. It's mine.

- It's like it's missing from the museum.

- So Translucent in tech has had a wonderful story. It started, I think, back in the day, like Apple, those old Apple 50s.

- It was the iMacs, yeah.

- That's some of the first iteration I remember. And then, yep, I had the purple Game Boy color with the little battery light matching. And then Y2K early 2000. And even-shout out to our friends, Nintendo, PlayStation. They did some wonderful translucence. And we know people have been requesting these since this generation started, which is like four years ago. People have been requesting translucent hardware back. And we dabbled in it when we did the Forza controller and a few other ones.

And so we have now brought it back. And this is the Sky Cipher edition. This is really cool. You're going to notice a little bit of a shimmer. It's going to look stronger, actually, in person, but the innards are actually silver. They've got a silver lining on them just to help them pop through the shell. And it's really amazing to see the kind of tests that they have to do because you have to find the right kind of plastic. They do drop tests on these things. Scare myself there.

- Yeah, let's not do that here.

- They do throw tests, anger management tests. But this is really cool, yes. This is in our Standard SE Edition. This is out for now. Would you see this? It'll be out on pre-order. So it's about a two-week pre-order window. And then it'll launch in most available retailers, in most available Xbox markets. It's a $69.99 because it's one of our special editions, adds this transparent blue. Again, it's got a silver design on the inside just to make it pop out.

And this will work with all of your favorite gaming devices. You want to play on PC. No, I won't tell anyone. I play PC games with controller. It'll work with that. This will work with our cloud gaming, iOS, Android. And of course, good old fashioned Xbox. So this is one of the new additions, and this is brand-new. And I have to agree with you, this is probably the prettiest. I'm about what's on the inside. It's not always. But when it comes to my--

- You can see what's on the inside?

- When it comes to my hardware, I like to be pretty. And this is a gorgeous controller. I think it's even more of a sapphire-rich in person. We tried to do it justice. I hope you guys enjoy. We put together a little social video, actually, for the reveal.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, we're probably watching that right now.

JOSH STEIN: Yep. If you're an OG fan of Xbox, you'll notice we put a few Easter eggs in there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It also has the grips. So I think it's important to note that some of the things that people like, like the rubberized grips on the inside and then more of the textured--

JOSH STEIN: No sweat slip.

- You can actually see the rumble motors moving, which is what I thought.

- Is it lighter?

- I think it's about the same.

- Standard. yes. It's the same standard. And then this is just a fun fact, but OG fans will notice we changed our packaging. So this is now our new sustainable packaging that you'll see going forward with our hardware. We've been working really--

- Although it's made out of paper, not out of plastic.

- Yeah, yeah. And it's small. It's actually a lot smaller than the original packaging. I know it's the box. People probably throw it away. Or if you're a millennial, you put it in your closet and never get rid of it.

- Yes.

- I know about your 17 iPhone boxes.

- You never know when that'll come in handy.

- You never know. You're never going to need them. I triggered the internet one day when I unboxed my Series X, and immediately I threw all of the packaging away in the trash. And the internet was very mad. But you know what? Four years later, I have never needed that box.

- It was probably something in there that you really wish you had.

- No.

- You just don't know it.

- There's nothing I've ever need it.

- I'll go back to an old iPhone box, and I'll find the EarPods or something like that.

- Oh, yeah, because you would hide them underneath the layer of the packaging. Yeah.

- So you're robbing yourself of the potential of that treasure hunt.

- We should do one of those-- you ever see those fake ones where if you rip the packaging open, there's actually a secret?

- A hidden surprise.

- Yeah. And then there's not. Yeah, we should do that in some of our packaging. But, yeah, no. Obviously, Microsoft and Xbox has a green effort in sustainability effort. So we shrunk down our packaging and made it more even more recyclable. So throw it in the recyclable, get it out of that closet, and enjoy the new Sky cipher.

- You what else we shrunk down 20 years ago? The Duke.

- The Duke.

- We've got more controllers. Bring them out here. So you may recall when the Xbox launched back in 2001, it launched with a pretty chunky controller. There's another one. Why don't you have the other one?

- Oh, yeah, the big one.

- Which was well known as the Duke at the time.

- You get the Duke. I'm sorry. It's not the Duke.

- And our good friends at Hyperkin, not related to Steinkin, I don't think.

JOSH STEIN: Not biologically.

- Not biologically. Yeah, why not? You're familiar with the Duke? This is the Duchess. This was, basically, at some point, they released, and I want to say 2003, the Xbox controller S, which was a smaller version that went alongside the-- that replaced the Duke.

- This was my controller of that generation.

- This was my controller, too.

- I had a Duke. But then when the black S came out, I bought that, and that's what I used for all of my Halo. Formative years and pivotal moments were built on that black one.

- The good folks at Hyperkin, they have released a version of it. Of course, this one has one thing that didn't. So if you look at this controller, it has two buttons where you're like, if you're of a certain age, you're like, what the heck does that do? And that is the black button and the white button. There were no bumpers on the OG Xbox. There were just the triggers.

JOSH STEIN: Pre-bumper era.

- Pre-bumper, and then 360 added them. Now, this one fortunately does give you a bumper as well because as nice as it is to be accurate with the white and black buttons, you still-- games use bumpers now, and you're going to want to do that. So this also has Hall Effect sticks that's--

- It's important to call out.

- Or really into. They do not drift or degrade over time. It's compatible with Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Windows 10 and 11. So you've pretty much between Hyperkin, all of their different things. You've got all of your generations.

- I love this modernization of classic tech that we have going on here. We have the Duchess coming back with the Hall sticks. Like you said, almost like anti-drift sticks with some of the new, updated buttons and features. And then we're also throwing it back to the translucent. So it feels like it's a great era in accessories this month that we've been launching out. And big shout out to our partners. They've done some great jobs on a few like the Duke and whatnot, and I love that they remade this one.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Not that they remade it, but they remade it better. Like I mentioned, has the bumpers. It also has a headphone jack on the bottom. Of course, it has the capture button as well. And even on the original one, that sort of Xbox symbol in the middle didn't do anything.

- Yeah, just there. Yeah.

- Here, of course, it functions as the Xbox button.

- Oh, I love that. Nice, big, old button there.

- All right. Nice little touch. So, yeah, let's just lay out our controllers here. That's all we've got for this week's show. I think there's plenty there. So any final thoughts from you two? That's a look.

- No, we both looked different.

- I know. [LAUGHS]

- Go, Ducks even.

- Ducks. [LAUGHS]

- Please take a look at some of the new hardware. And again, the Sky Cipher is going to be a pretty popular one. I would get your pre-order in before they-- they shouldn't run out, but I know people are going to be very excited and make a little bit of a run for them. And then follow us on twitter.com/xbox.

- Yeah. And Xbox Wire, which is where you find all of your news, twitter.com/xboxwire. YouTube, of course, is where you'll find this show and all of your favorite podcast apps. Thank you, Hailey. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this week. We will see you next week.