Streaming to Twitch from Xbox

[MUSIC PLAYING] LARRY HRYB: Hi, it's Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to The Xbox Podcast, another episode for you. We got the team coming together. We got a little bit of something different this week you. Ready? 3, 2, no Jeff.

I got Rebecca over there on the right. And then, that is definitely not Jeff over on the left. He's much younger, much more stylish, Malik Prince. Hi, Malik. How are you?

MALIK PRINCE: I'm doing well. Nice to join both of you, Larry and Rebecca. Thanks for having me. My first-ever podcast hosting, I will say Jeff and I have gotten mistaken a few times in meetings. And so I don't blame you

LARRY HRYB: Well, it's great to have you. People may know you used to host quite a few shows over on Mixer when we had Mixer. So you now moved over to the communications team, right?

MALIK PRINCE: That is right. I'm joining both of you on the communication side, which is great. But, yes, people may know me from Mixer shows. I hosted the 104 episodes of Mixer's number one show, Tips and Tricks.

LARRY HRYB: 104 episodes, really?

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's a lot of episodes.

MALIK PRINCE: Next level. So somebody should cut me a check.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: We just got to get it picked up, I guess. So I did that. I also worked on the Xbox ambassadors and Xbox MVP team, which was really community-focused teams working on making the gaming space a more inclusive and welcoming environment.

And so now I can use all that learnings to work with Jeff, actually, who is my manager, a little sausage making there, to kind of carry over some of those community management learnings and bring it into the creator space. So it's been a really wild journey. I've been an Xbox for seven years, which is wild.

My thing is all about making-- I want to be used as sort of an inspiration. I feel like some people have even told me that in DMs, which is really flattering. But, from a kid who was playing Xbox as a young kid to now working here, I would have never imagined that I would have been able to have the opportunities.

So, hopefully, people can kind of look to me for inspiration if possible. So it's been a wild ride. It's been a wild ride.

LARRY HRYB: It's great to have you on the team, and it's so lovely to see. You've been so active in the space. When you were over at Mixer, as I said, about 108 shows-- I didn't know you went that long. And you used to host that with Ethan, right?

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, Ethan. Now who knows where he is?

LARRY HRYB: Who knows where he is?

MALIK PRINCE: I think we're going to do a where are they now--

LARRY HRYB: He's got a deal somewhere. He's in Hollywood.

MALIK PRINCE: Nah, he's great. I couldn't have done the show without him. And he actually is working on the design for Xbox Team, who makes a bunch of really great accessories. So, yeah, it's been kind of cool to have somebody that you can come up through Xbox with as a friend, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Here we are. And then, Rebecca, it's good to see you. You're in New York, back in New York. How are things going over there?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Going pretty well. I got in some time to play games over the nice three-day weekend--

LARRY HRYB: What did you play?

REBECCA GORDIUS: --also some sunshine.

So I started playing this game called The Gunk. It's an Xbox Game Pass game. I think it's an indie title. Have either of you heard of it?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, we did an interview-- Jeff did interview with it, boy, a couple of months ago, I believe.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I was going to say I think it came out in December.

LARRY HRYB: Yep.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But, yeah, it's cool. I think that I've been drawn to some of the games, especially on Xbox Game Pass, that are more action/adventure leaning, a little bit of exploration, really beautiful art styles. And this definitely fits all of those buckets.

You play as this gal named Rani, and you're kind of working to clean and excavate this world of the gunk, which is this parasitic mess that's falling all over. So there's something really relaxing about just holding down the right trigger and sucking up this infectious mess from the world. And, aside from my room, my apartment is kind of messy. So I'm kind of ignoring the real-world cleaning and doing that in-game instead.

LARRY HRYB: Good. Well, yeah. We actually interviewed the lead voice for her. She's on-- what is she-- she's on, is it Funny? I can't remember where she is, Kinda Funny? Or maybe she's does at IGN.

MALIK PRINCE: Man, no--

LARRY HRYB: But, anyway--

MALIK PRINCE: --I'm not sure.

LARRY HRYB: --the main voice, her name is escaping me right now. And I'm sure, internet, you'll straighten me out. But, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And, as you said, Rebecca, it's on Game Pass. So there's no reason not to check it out.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. What about you guys?

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, I mean--

REBECCA GORDIUS: What are you playing?

MALIK PRINCE: Oh, well, I was kind of nervous for this question. I will say that The Gunk is actually in my to-play list. And you brought up messes, and we were talking about this before. But I have a huge mess in my apartment, but you can't see it because Larry has the shot right now.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I wasn't going to say anything.

LARRY HRYB: How's that?

MALIK PRINCE: So you can see, actually, that poster back there was designed by Carl Ledbetter, who helped design--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, nice.

MALIK PRINCE: --designs all of our consoles. So that is an original poster designed by Carl Ledbetter that I have yet to hang on my apartment because--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Wow.

MALIK PRINCE: --you can see the stuff over there. And I need an interior designer for this. But all of the whole mess is pushed off camera, so you can't see.

But, yes, what am I playing? I was actually nervous for this question because I am one of those gamers. There's a few different kinds of gamers. There's the gamer that plays every new game that comes out. I think maybe we'll talk about Elden Ring, which just came out, which is going to be huge. And then, there's the gamers that kind of stick with one game. And I'm more of that kind of person--

LARRY HRYB: What game are you sticking with right now?

MALIK PRINCE: Apex Legends. I have so many hours of Apex Legends, Lifeline main, there's no better character. Any other arguments are invalid. But, yeah, I love Apex Legends. I play it religiously.

I'm playing a little bit of Halo Infinite, I guess, so that's an addition. And I will say that I did jump back into Cyberpunk with the new update out. And it looks amazing. It feels great.

LARRY HRYB: Did you--

MALIK PRINCE: And so, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: We were talking about it last week on the show. Did you restart your character? Because I did that over the weekend. I was like, let me just completely restart because I don't know what's going on.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, I wanted to so bad. But I didn't want to throw away all-- I was about 10 hours in, and I didn't want to throw away all the progress. So I'm in that space now where every gamer kind of knows, where you haven't played a game for a long time and you're trying to remember, where was I in the story?

REBECCA GORDIUS: What was I doing?

MALIK PRINCE: What am I doing?

LARRY HRYB: How do I do it?

MALIK PRINCE: Exactly. How does it work? Exactly. And so--

LARRY HRYB: Oh, this brings up the map?

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah. Yeah, it is tough. But the game is beautiful. Shoutout to the team at CD Projekt Red, really putting in the work to continue working on that game and making it better. And so I'm enjoying that as well.

LARRY HRYB: All right. Oh, before I forget, Fiona Nova, she is the voice-- the main voice on The Gunk. She's the host of G4 TV. So she used to be-- she's been all over the place.

She's great. We had her on the show a few months ago. So I just want to wrap up on that internet. You can settle down and not complain.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's funny.

MALIK PRINCE: They're like, oh, Larry's out.

LARRY HRYB: I got I got to fix that, real time. So that's what you're playing, Malik. What am I-- I'm playing some Halo. Jeff and I were playing a little bit of Halo over the weekend. I want to show this to you because what it means when these come out, right?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh.

MALIK PRINCE: Larry.

LARRY HRYB: I have a pot friend.

MALIK PRINCE: Famous Larry gloves.

LARRY HRYB: I have a pot friend. Look at that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Elden Ring?

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

REBECCA GORDIUS: What is--

LARRY HRYB: That is Pop Friend from Elden Ring. So he's joining us for this show and this show only. So he's here, and I'm looking forward to playing Elden Ring when I finish this podcast. So that's when I finish this episode.

MALIK PRINCE: Ooh.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. Malik, are you going to play that one?

MALIK PRINCE: I don't know if I'm going to play it. I want to. I'm just a little-- I don't know. I'm a little nervous to play it because my backlog, again, is so long. And I really only play one-- I can play one game single-player at a time.

But I will say the reviews have gotten me-- the reviews that are coming out-- 10s, five out of fives-- it's making me, I don't know, a little FOMO, fear of missing out. So I might actually have to jump in, give it a little test, and see how it goes. But we'll see.

LARRY HRYB: I'm looking at this right now. You're right, Malik. I'm looking at that. GameSpot gave it a 10.

REBECCA GORDIUS: The reviews are crazy.

LARRY HRYB: The Metacritic is off the charts. It looks-- I'm very much looking forward to-- we don't want to say too much of about it right now. But it's very, very-- congratulations to FromSoftware for everything they've done in it.

And we'll talk a little bit about it as best we can without spoiling it because we don't want to do any spoilers. So we'll talk about that in the coming weeks. But here we are. So it's fun.

MALIK PRINCE: Exciting, exciting times. February, what a release calendar.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, it's--

REBECCA GORDIUS: A short and exciting month.

LARRY HRYB: We've been talking about Elden Ring for quite a bit. It's amazing. It's got-- I'm looking at 97 right now on the Metacritic, which is one of the highest games in a long time. So, anyway, we'll have good games to play. We've always got great games to play.

I need to get back into Halo. They've got another 10 Riven. Are you playing Halo at all, Malik?

MALIK PRINCE: It is a game that I jump back to.

LARRY HRYB: That's a no.

MALIK PRINCE: I know so many of those folks over there at 343. No, no. It's this funny thing, again, when you only play a certain amount of games at a time.

So I got into Halo super heavy when it came out. And then, I went back to Apex, and the controls-- it's just one of those things. It's a little disorienting.

But Halo Infinite-- and Halo 5 was my most played game for the longest time.

LARRY HRYB: Really?

MALIK PRINCE: So getting into Halo-- yeah, it was my most-played game. And, in fact, I don't know. I think it's still up there. But you can kind of go see the Xbox museum. I forget the URL. But Halo 5 was my number one most-played game of all time.

And so Infinite is just even better. And so it's just a matter of how much time I have in the game. But I've been watching the show, and I know that you all have been excluding Rebecca from your Halo Infinite parties--

LARRY HRYB: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

MALIK PRINCE: --and from your most--

LARRY HRYB: We have not been purposely excluding her. It's just because she's on the East Coast. The timing is kind of a little wonky. It has not been on purpose at all.

MALIK PRINCE: Rebecca? I can imagine...

REBECCA GORDIUS: I will also-- I have to take some blame in it, too. I haven't been-- I don't know, with shooters. I feel like, for me, at least, personally, I have to invest a lot of time in it, and I want to be really, really good. And I'm very competitive. And so, when I've been playing Halo Infinite, I haven't felt like I'm-- I used to feel like I was so good at Halo, but then I've been playing, and it's been like I feel like it's more difficult because I haven't been playing as many shooters lately.

So I've been a little bit shy on it, and I've been leaning more toward kind of relaxing games these days. But it is always way more fun and way better of an experience with your friends. So I would like to play sometime.

LARRY HRYB: We will.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But it's just things are also kind of tough.

LARRY HRYB: We will. We will. I was talking to Jeff. He's on holiday this week with his family. And he's been playing XCloud. And, remember, Rebecca-- and I don't know if you've noticed this over the past few shows, Malik, but I was talking about-- remember The Pedestrian?

I kept talking about-- he's been playing The Pedestrian, which is kind of a puzzle game that's on Game Pass. He's been playing it over XCloud, which-- it's a great XCloud game, so you should check it out.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Interesting.

LARRY HRYB: But that's nice. I just wanted to-- so I guess I'm telling you what Jeff's playing since he's not here

MALIK PRINCE: There you go. That works perfectly, although I will say, Rebecca, to your point, and kind of what Jeff's playing with The Pedestrian, there are so many great games that you can play that are kind of more mellow. I don't know if you've ever tried-- it's called Lake. And it is a game--

REBECCA GORDIUS: No, I haven't.

MALIK PRINCE: And I might have missed a few episodes of it. So it's an indie game. I forget the developer's name, but it's not an Xbox game. And it might be on Game Pass. I'm not sure. Don't quote me on it.

But it's a game where you literally go around and deliver packages. And it's in this nice, little, serene town with a huge lake in the middle. And all you do is go around, and you deliver packages

LARRY HRYB: So it's Parcel Delivery Simulator.

MALIK PRINCE: Basically, basically. But it's the most serene game that you can play. The music is great. The characters are really wacky in there.

And you just go around town, and you meet the locals. And so I highly recommend that if you all are looking for another kind of game breaker kind of game where you're just kind of just laid back a little bit.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That sounds cool.

MALIK PRINCE: I'm a fan of simulator games. Yeah, that's all.

LARRY HRYB: That's OK. I would love to see maybe a crossover between that game and maybe Angry Neighbor. Remember that one?

MALIK PRINCE: Yes.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Ugh. That game gives me anxiety. I don't know.

LARRY HRYB: It gave me anxiety, too, where it comes running after you. So maybe there's a crossover where just one house is the angry neighbor because there's always one house that's the angry neighbor in a neighborhood.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's funny.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah. Hello Neighbor was one of those--

LARRY HRYB: Hello Neighbor. That's it.

MALIK PRINCE: --games where--

LARRY HRYB: That's what it was.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah. To your point of--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Basically Angry Neighbor.

MALIK PRINCE: Well, yeah, exactly. Exactly. He was very angry, I think. But, yeah, it's one of those games where-- I always will say the games in the indie space, they do things that you just wouldn't imagine. I guess their creativity is on a whole other level with the concepts that we come up with, how they do the art style. And so that's a great example of a game that is interesting.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. Exactly that. So, by the way, I don't know if you guys noticed, but this weekend, I noticed on Netflix that the Cuphead series is out. So Cuphead--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: --is now on-- yeah, so I need to-- speaking of indie games that kind of do interesting things there. That's Cuphead. I was thinking about that.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah. Have either of you watched it? Or, Larry, you haven't watched it. Rebecca, have you watched it?

REBECCA GORDIUS: I watched the trailer for it. It looked pretty cool. But it wasn't what we were looking for at the time. I think we ended up watching another episode of Single's Inferno instead, so. But it looks pretty cool, though. Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: All right, then.

MALIK PRINCE: Larry, what's your reaction to that?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, it's-- anyway. I just want to make sure we point out that. We're going to talk about some news on just the other side of the interviews. In fact, we should probably stop down and do the interviews right now.

Now, Malik, you know one of the people I'm going to interview here, right? Why don't you set us up and bring us into the interviews?

MALIK PRINCE: That's right. So, if you didn't know, Twitch-- you can now natively stream from Twitch, and it's super simple. And one of the people who worked on it is Brenna Duffitt, who I have had a pleasure of working with. She's phenomenal, and Larry got to interview her to learn more about Twitch and Xbox streaming.

LARRY HRYB: All right. As we've been talking about Twitch streaming coming to Xbox, joining us is Brenna Duffitt from the software team. Brenna, great to see you.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you so much.

LARRY HRYB: Well, this is exciting. We talked about it a little bit earlier in the show. Twitch streaming directly from the console is now available for everybody on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, right?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yes, yeah. It's available for everyone, and it is so easy to get started. And we're really excited to bring this fan favorite feature back. We had it in the past, and so we're thrilled to have everyone have the ability to stream really easily again.

LARRY HRYB: It's interesting because you're right. People may not know this, that we had this ability before. And then, for whatever reason, it went away. But now it is back and worked today.

You can go over to news.xbox.com. We had a blog-- you had a blog post up a couple of days ago--

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: --which kind of outlined it. But we figured, for the podcast, because a lot of folks watch this on video, and obviously, for those who are audio will play along and listen and understand it. But we're going do a live demo, which may go one of two ways, really great or not so much. But I'm sure it's going to be fine.

BRENNA DUFFITT: I hope it goes great.

LARRY HRYB: It's going to be fine. So why don't you walk us through how people-- and I'm going to bring up my dashboard here. So why don't you walk us through how people get into-- because here's my dashboard. This is actually it. And what should I do first? I'll let you kind of--

BRENNA DUFFITT: So you want to hit the Nexus button. Tap the Nexus button. And then, go over to the Share tab.

LARRY HRYB: Here it is.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Capture and Share tab, sorry.

LARRY HRYB: Yep.

BRENNA DUFFITT: And then go down to Livestreaming. Start your stream.

LARRY HRYB: There it is. So this is a new entry point that you don't-- and, also, I want to point out you don't need to take a system update for this. It'll just automatically appear there. You guys will do some magic on the back end, and it'll just automatically appear. So, if you didn't get a system update and go, I don't think I got it, well, don't worry about it. You actually--

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: --probably did. So, anyway, you go down to Livestreaming. And then, from here, ah, the magic begins. Now, we must say, Brenna, I have already connected my account.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yes.

LARRY HRYB: So that's--

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: That's important to point out, right?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah, it is. So, if your account has already been connected, we did have to request some new permissions. So you might have to reconnect your account. Or, if you haven't connected your Twitch account already, you will have to connect.

It's really easy. We give you a little QR code that you can scan with your phone and then enter in the digits, and you're good to go.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. So, and then, once you do that, then you see this beautiful little purple thing with my Twitch icon at the top. And then, it shows you your channel at the top there. Your stream name, you can go in here and decide whatever you want to name your stream.

Now, there's some really interesting options here is we now have camera options, which-- I don't have a camera plugged in here. But you can just plug in-- now, can you plug in any USB camera? How does that work?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah, so we do have a list of suggested cameras. But, for the most part, it would be any USB camera. And, on the Xbox One, you can still use a connect with an adapter.

LARRY HRYB: That's right. That's right.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: So you can use a camera. You turn your microphone off and on. In here, under here, I want to point this out, the More Options. You can include party audio.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yes.

LARRY HRYB: If you and your friends want to get your party on-- and make sure you tell them, because there's privacy and whatnot issues. Be cool. But you can stream your party audio directly to Twitch. You can change your game volume.

Here's something interesting. You can actually also change your bit rate, right?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah, this is brand-new. We used to automatically detect it. But now you have the ability to actually decide what your bit rate is.

So, if you have great internet connection, you can bump it up to 1080p, 6,000 kilobits. If you don't have the best internet connection but still want to stream, you can drop it down. So we really tried to create-- support everyone that wants to stream.

LARRY HRYB: Now, in here, I just booted up Halo Infinite. So I'm going to go over here and start my livestream. And it's just as simple as this. Again, I've already connected my account. I can change it to Halo Infinite here.

And that's kind of it. I just click Go Live Now. It's going. We're on, right?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah. Yep. And people that follow you, they have an ability in their settings to actually say that they want to receive Go Live notifications for people that they follow or people that they've favorited.

LARRY HRYB: Sure.

BRENNA DUFFITT: So there is the option that they can get the little toast. And, if they click on the toast, it'll launch the twitch app and take them straight to your stream.

LARRY HRYB: So it's really-- as you saw, I just did it. It's right here. It's all native. You get this essentially as part of owning an Xbox. You just got to go make sure you sign up for a Twitch account first. And you do this.

Now, a lot of folks are going to ask, but what about the chat, right? Because people like to see chat. Tell me about that.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah. You can view chat from your phone or from your PC.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

BRENNA DUFFITT: I would really-- it's a feature that I personally think is really important. So I would love to see us bring it back in the future. We do have some awesome updates that will be coming in the future. So keep an eye out. This is not the end.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. Well, it's exciting that it's back in there. And, again, you've made it easier. And you've made it, actually, more robust because you've got the webcam support.

You don't have to have Connect. You can pretty much use any compliant webcam. And there's tons of them out there. You can buy one for, like, $10 on Amazon, right?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: You work with-- you've got the party audio. You can control your bit rate, all of these little features you saw earlier on. I moved around-- where you want the status bar of how many viewers you have and the fact that you're live. So you saw me move that around.

So this is the beginning, right? You're going to continue to do some great things in the space, aren't you?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah. We absolutely have plans to continue to do awesome things, and we are listening to feedback. So, if you hit bugs, let us know. You can report through the Xbox Insiders subreddit. We want to make sure that this is the best feature available, right?

LARRY HRYB: Right. We want to make it sure it's the best. It's easy.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: It's going to look great. I'm going to try to-- I may stream Elden Ring this weekend, although I don't know if I want to do that, because I don't want to have any spoilers, right? That's always the thing, right?

BRENNA DUFFITT: You get some good mods.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

BRENNA DUFFITT: And then, put a chat delay. Twitch has a chat delay setting. You won't see any spoilers.

LARRY HRYB: There you go. Look at this. You know exactly what's going on. You're so good with this.

Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys are going to do now. I'm going to have somebody on from Twitch in just a minute just to talk about working with them. And they're going to talk about how you can kind of start streaming and maybe a couple of tips there.

But more importantly is you can start streaming today with your Xbox Series X, with your Xbox Series S, or your Xbox One, and you're off to the races. And this will allow you an easy way to kind of figure out, is streaming for you? Right, Brenna?

BRENNA DUFFITT: Yeah, it's a good way to dip your toe into the water and get started.

LARRY HRYB: All right. I appreciate it, Brenna Duffitt from the software team. I appreciate this great feature. People have it right now. You don't have to take a system update. It should just automatically be there.

And let us know what you think, and send me a link to your stream. Thanks, Brenna.

BRENNA DUFFITT: Thank you so much, Larry.

LARRY HRYB: As we've been talking about, we're very excited to have Twitch back with Xbox integrated into the operating system. Joining us today is Jeremy Forrester, VP of product at Twitch. Jeremy, great to see you.

JEREMY FORRESTER: Nice to see you too.

LARRY HRYB: It's really exciting. I know a lot of folks on our side have been waiting to be able to broadcast to Twitch directly from inside the operating system within the-- we call the guide or the dashboard on Xbox. And that's really exciting.

We talked to an engineer a little bit ago about it. I want to hear from your side. How excited you guys are to have that capability native now in the Xbox operating system?

JEREMY FORRESTER: Yeah, obviously, we're really excited about it. I think the Xbox integration is one of-- a really powerful integration, and it's a great way for streamers and new streamers to get started on the platform. And the new integration makes it really simple to go live, makes it really easy to go live just from the guide itself, and saves a lot of the overheads and frustrations that I think some of our users felt from having to go through the Twitch app previously to stream to Twitch.

So we're really excited to have this integration back on Xbox and just really excited to see what streamers do with it.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, that's the beautiful part about it is is as we're showing here some of these screenshots, it's just so simple now. And it allows folks that-- because most-- a lot of people watch streamers on Twitch or on YouTube or some other services. But, when they're watching them, they've got-- you and I have the lights and the cameras, and it can get complicated.

Then you have to have a high-end PC to stream and maybe another one that you're playing the game on. But, with this integration, it's really all one-- it's like one-touch access and away you go. So it really lowers the barrier of entry. And that's exciting as well because people that maybe never had the ability or budget to get into streaming now can kind of get a taste of it, right?

JEREMY FORRESTER: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a really-- I think the Xbox is a really great way to kind of get started and see if you like streaming and building a small community and growing it from there.

You'd be surprised just the number of people who are large streamers today, when you go and speak to them, and they say, oh, yeah, I started on my Xbox in my living room. And I just had a camera, and I'd sit on the couch and stream. But that's how I got my first taste of streaming.

And it's a really great way to just kind of get introduced, in a very affordable way, to have a high-quality stream with a camera with a decent quality microphone that the Xbox integration supports, and then just start streaming. And it's a lot less hassle than having to figure out how to set up all of the complex applications, or as you said, having two streaming PCs, as an example.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, there's a whole sliding scale of things you can do with streaming. I've streamed quite a bit. And I streamed from my console when we had the Twitch integration before, which was great because, again, it's so easy. But I've also streamed from here. And it can get complicated and time-consuming.

If you're into it, then that's great. But some people, frankly, just don't have the time. And they just want to go play a game and maybe build their own community, right?

JEREMY FORRESTER: Yeah, absolutely. And I think integrations like this are really key to enable people to do that. Just a few clicks, you can go live. You can start playing a game. You can start engaging with people in chat. And it saves a lot of those hassles.

I think, as you said, I've started-- I've tried streaming before. And it's so easy to stream and then realize, like, oh, I don't have any game sound or I don't have any-- my microphone is not particularly clear.

LARRY HRYB: I can hear me. You can't hear me. My audio-- I'm looking at the chat. They're saying I'm echoing. I've had all the problems. We've all had all the problems, right?

JEREMY FORRESTER: All the problems, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: But we've got a blog post up. We announced it earlier this week. And it's available for folks right now. If you don't have it, you'll get it very soon with a quick little-- we're going to turn some things on on the back end. But most people have it right now.

But being able to go live and see how many people are watching, controlling your bit rate and some of the resolution-- because everybody has different bandwidth and things like that-- adjusting the overlay, there's all sorts of custom options. We talked about that earlier with our engineer.

But, from your side, Twitch is about building community and really doing that. When you think about some of the gamers that are watching this, or some of the players that are watching this podcast right now that have never streamed before, there's still time to get on the streaming bandwagon, isn't there, right?

JEREMY FORRESTER: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I would say streaming in general continues to grow. I think the industry continues to grow. I think it's amazing when I look back and I think, I've been working at Twitch for five years, but Twitch has been around for 10 now, just some of the things that you're able to do as a career, as a profession, that just didn't exist 10 years ago.

So I would say, yeah, there's a lot of opportunity in streaming. And streaming on the Xbox is a really great way to get started because I would say, if I wanted to give people a piece of advice, I personally wouldn't go and invest thousands and thousands of dollars before you've ever streamed, before you realize if you like it, before you realize-- you don't want to invest all that money and then realize you're nervous on camera and you're just not very good at talking to people.

So I really like some of-- these integrations allow you to kind of not just dip your toe but basically jump into the shallow end of the pool and get started really easily and see if you can build a community, see if there's an audience who are interested in watching the games that you play and how you play them. And I think I've been really excited for kind of the future generations of streamers.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, and what's interesting-- you talked about that, and I love the community on Twitch. And I have a lot of friends, yourself and a bunch of other folks that work over at Twitch. And I love talking to them about how you all just want to enable the community.

And there's so many different-- whether you're a big streamer with millions of followers and you're playing every day, or you're kind of maybe more of a smaller streamer than you've got a-- built up a nice, really robust community, there's lots of opportunities.

One of the things that I've done is when I was-- I used to stream quite a bit was I love playing things like GTA and running around and looking at the different architecture because these developers put so much time into it. So it's just something different. It's not about the gameplay. It's just about the game environment.

So, as a streamer, you have to find something that you really enjoy and kind of just have fun with it and lean into it. Lean into what you love, right?

JEREMY FORRESTER: Yes, yeah. That's great advice for everyone. I would say don't stream something you don't enjoy because you think it's what's going to be best to help you get an audience or find a community. You want to do something you enjoy doing.

You want to find people who enjoy watching you do that thing. And it may be that you like playing a game just for fun or just play-- you're just playing with friends. That's great. I would say don't feel like you have to want to go and become a platinum-level player on a particular game just because that's what's going to get you audience.

Ultimately, streaming should be fun, and building a community and having fans and audience who really want to engage with you. They should come and watch you for something you enjoy doing. So I 100% agree with you.

LARRY HRYB: And the easiest way to do that now is right in the Xbox guide on the Xbox Series X or S or on the Xbox One. It's integrated right into the guide now. It's just one click. You can set up.

First of all, make sure you go set up your Twitch account first. And then, we'll walk you through it on the console side. It's very simple, but it's just so great to have you have Twitch back on the Xbox platform and really integrated in a nice way. So Jeremy Forrester, VP of products at Twitch, thanks to you for your time. Thank you for your time today, and we look forward to seeing what everybody out there is doing with Twitch. Thanks again.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Thank you, Brenna from the Xbox team and Jeremy from Twitch for those interviews. Larry, you're the one guy chatting with everyone this week.

LARRY HRYB: And, if you notice, I wore my purple shirt because it was Twitch, so.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I noticed you also got a haircut, too. You look great.

LARRY HRYB: Oh, yeah, because, remember, last week, we were talking about this. I was I don't know if you remember, Malik, but it was kind of-- it had a lot of volume.

MALIK PRINCE: You growing a fro, Larry? You growing a fro?

LARRY HRYB: A bro fro, yeah. It was getting a little big. So Rebecca called me out on it. And you didn't have to, but I knew that I had to do it. I just couldn't get it done. But I did get it done last week. So thank you for noticing.

But, anyway, thanks to Brenna, like you said, from Xbox team, Jeremy from Twitch. Go check out twitch streaming, native on your Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S right now. And, if you have an old webcam sitting around the house, you can plug that puppy into your console, and away you go. So that's fun, so.

MALIK PRINCE: Easy peasy.

LARRY HRYB: Easy peasy, exactly right. Hey, we got to talk about some news. Jeff's not here to do the news. And then, we're going to get to your-- we're going to talk about the question we asked last week.

A couple of things to point out-- let's see. We talked about Pot Friend and Elden Ring now available. So check that out, one of the highest-rated games this year, and frankly, in a long time.

Otherwise, you've got-- what do we got going on here? Alien Invasion, Carnivals, The Pitt, and more in store, and Fallout, 2022. That post went up yesterday. So they have a whole kind of a roadmap of what's going on in Fallout 76. Be sure to check that out, news.xbox.com.

We got a couple of things in here. We got some new SMITE gods. Do you play SMITE, either of you?

MALIK PRINCE: No, but I know there are some dedicated SMITE players out there. I think, at one point, it was one of the most-played games on the platform. And so--

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: --shoutout to the SMITE players.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. Speaking of most-played, Roboquest brings FPS mayhem to PC Game Pass. That's kind of a-- if I remember correctly, that's a game that's in preview right now.

Let's see, going through some of the headlines. Of course, The Witch Queen-- were you ever into Destiny 2? I wasn't. I know Rebecca wasn't. How about you, Malik?

MALIK PRINCE: No. Destiny was one of those games where I saw it come out, and people started playing it. And then, at some point, I was way too far not into it. I wasn't into the game as much as--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Too far behind.

MALIK PRINCE: --people who'd been playing it. Exactly. And I was like, there's just no way that I could come in here this late in the game.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: So I never got into it. But I will say shoutout to the team at Bungie because the way I've seen it from as an outsider looking in, they've just done a phenomenal job at not only putting out updates but also getting their community so invested that when they put out an update like this one, the amount of enthusiasm and anticipation is like-- it's almost like a new game release. And so it's just been really cool to see community management 101 going on with the folks over there at Bungie.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, well, they've always done great work. I used to work with them when we owned them, and it's great to see them continue with Destiny. So there's that.

Also, one more-- there's a few more things, but one of the ones I wanted to point out is Shrouded Isles on Sea of Thieves is the first adventure. It's live until March 3. So that's coming up quickly. So go get your Sea of Thieves on. I know-- that's a game that I missed here.

MALIK PRINCE: Are we going to--

LARRY HRYB: I love that.

MALIK PRINCE: Are we going to sail, all four of us with Jeff? We need to hit the seas.

LARRY HRYB: I'll tell you. Halo is a commitment. Sea of Thieves is a super commitment, just in terms of time.

I would love to. I think I'm the only one on the show that's a pirate legend.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: Oh.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: What about you, Rebecca? No?

REBECCA GORDIUS: I'm not.

LARRY HRYB: She's a legend in her own mind, so.

MALIK PRINCE: That's fair. I am one of those Sea of Thieves pirates who-- I will do the water bailing or pailing, whatever, I don't know. And I'll do, like-- I'll load the cannons. But, outside of that--

LARRY HRYB: So you're more of a first mate.

MALIK PRINCE: --I'm not a captain.

REBECCA GORDIUS: The support, yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: Exactly, the support. Yeah, I can do anything besides the fighting, navigating, and everything else.

LARRY HRYB: So what I'm hearing is that's a lot of your lifeline support character coming in to Sea of Thieves, right?

MALIK PRINCE: You know, I feel like this has been a really nice therapy session. I'm learning a lot about myself.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Learning a lot, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: The first step--

MALIK PRINCE: Are you helping each other?

LARRY HRYB: --is understanding and noticing and admitting it, Malik. That's the most important thing.

MALIK PRINCE: There you go. There you go. I'm more of a support person.

LARRY HRYB: Anyway, news.xbox.com. Go check that out. We've got it.

We asked a question last week on the show, Rebecca, right? And I think you've got that information in front of you. The question was, if we-- do you want to remind everybody?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. So, last week, we had King of Fighters 15 come out, and I did an interview. And so, in honor of the release, we wanted to ask folks what their favorite fighting game character was. I had a couple in mind from Tekken that I played when I was a kid. I'm glad to see Tekken showing up in the answers, too, so--

LARRY HRYB: What are some of the answers we have?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, so MitrollFox said King from Tekken. "As a kid, I was scared of him but played Tekken 2 growing up. Now he's my go-to. Funny how that happens."

Damian said that his favorite fighting game character was Robin, a.k.a. Damian Wayne-- that seems a little sus. Just kidding-- from Injustice 2, which-- did you guys play Injustice 2?

LARRY HRYB: A little bit. I played a little bit.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, I didn't. I didn't.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So there was a point in the time where the team I was working with, we had an Xbox in the office, and we would all go play Injustice 2 when it came out. And it was a really good kind of stress reliever thing to do in between meetings.

And so I really liked Injustice 2. It was a good one. It was probably one of the more compelling fighting games for me. And I loved the-- gosh, what do you call them?-- the animations, like if you get all the combos right and then it does the big power ending move.

LARRY HRYB: Right, the ultimates or the finishers, yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. Injustice 2 had some really good ones. So OogaBooga said Iago from Killer Instinct-- so smooth, so easy, absolutely deadly.

MarekTazinsky said Kilik from Soulcalibur, which I didn't play that one, so I hope I pronounced it right.

LARRY HRYB: Soulcalibur, that sounds right.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Let's see. Another-- oh, I meant the character name. But, yeah, thanks, Larry. Let's see, and then another one from Killer Instinct, HuanG said Aganos? Again, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that one right. I didn't play too much of Killer Instinct from 2013. But I do remember when it came out on the original Xbox One. I think it was one of the launch titles--

LARRY HRYB: Yep.

REBECCA GORDIUS: --which was pretty cool.

And then, there were a lot of answers for Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So--

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, that's one--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, so thanks, everyone.

LARRY HRYB: --of the classics. But, yeah, as Rebecca said, thank you to everybody that joined us now. If you listen on Spotify, we often ask a question. You scroll down, you'll see it, and you enter it there, and then it goes back.

And we can look at them and pin a few. I think we can only pin five or 10 of them. But we had a lot of people chiming in and letting us know what they thought.

We'd love to hear from you, whether you want to do that when we ask a question or whether you want to hit us up on YouTube or even here on Twitter. So there you go. Malik, you're now the complaint desk because that's what Jeff is. So you're the complaint desk this week.

MALIK PRINCE: I'm just happy for the exposure. So thanks for putting my Twitter handle there. I will say that a fighting game-- I know the fighting game community is like-- I think, yeah, FGC is how they're referred to-- they are just the most hardcore.

And, whenever I pick up a fighting game, it's literally just button mashing and hoping for the best. And it never turns out great. But--

REBECCA GORDIUS: I know.

MALIK PRINCE: --I really respect-- I know. I respect how the evolution of the fighting game community has happened from the arcades, which I'm sure it's still the thing in many places. But now it's on console, and I just saw Street Fighter 6 got announced, which is really cool. But it's been really great to see the evolution of those fighting-- I don't think I have a favorite character, though. I don't know. I'll do Ryu.

LARRY HRYB: You know what?

MALIK PRINCE: Is that a cop-out?

LARRY HRYB: We're going to let you off the hook right now since we're kind of putting you on the spot. Last week, Jeff and I and Rebecca kind of talked about it off the air. So we'll let you-- when we have back on, I expect an answer if I remember.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: OK.

LARRY HRYB: If Jeff lets you back on.

MALIK PRINCE: That's a commitment for me to be back on.

LARRY HRYB: I know, right? I know.

MALIK PRINCE: We'll see.

LARRY HRYB: Anyway, what else you got there, Rebecca?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Those were most of the answers.

LARRY HRYB: Yep.

REBECCA GORDIUS: We had a few others, but like I said, a lot of entries for Scorpion. But, thanks, everyone, for sending those in. Love to read through them. I don't think we're going to have a question for next week. Larry, do you want to talk about the schedule at all?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, we've got a couple-- thank you for the programming note. We got a couple of things going on. There is no show next week. We're preparing for a big show the following week that Rebecca is going to host all by herself. So more details on that. So there's--

MALIK PRINCE: No pressure, Rebecca.

LARRY HRYB: As we say here as we say in the entertainment industry, we're dark next week, but we'll be back the following week. And then, we'll return to our regularly-scheduled shenanigans shortly thereafter in mid-March. But we have a lot to talk about, a lot going on. So you won't see Jeff for, like, god, two or three weeks, right?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, no.

MALIK PRINCE: Wow. It's like he doesn't exist

REBECCA GORDIUS: Just kidding.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. I'm not-- your words, your words, not mine, Malik. He's going to--

MALIK PRINCE: I know, I know.

LARRY HRYB: --come after you with that one.

MALIK PRINCE: Hopefully, he doesn't watch this one.

LARRY HRYB: So we've got a couple of-- like I say, so no show next week. But, yeah, if you listen to us on Spotify, thank you for your comments over there. We love to see your comments. We love to see the ratings. We got, like, a 4.8 or 4.9 rating out of 5 on Spotify.

MALIK PRINCE: Oh.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. We're one of the-- we're actually the only regular news and information video game podcast on Spotify that's video. So we're on Spotify. We're on Google Podcasts, Apple, of course, over on YouTube.

If you like us on YouTube, you got to hit the little Like and the Subscribe and the bell, and you got to run around in a circle and do all that stuff. But we also love seeing

MALIK PRINCE: I feel like you--

LARRY HRYB: --you.

MALIK PRINCE: --all don't plug those superlatives enough. I feel like that's a pretty nice superlative right there. That should be on a plaque or something. It should be-- I don't know. I don't know.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Larry's working on it--

MALIK PRINCE: I didn't know that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: --I'm sure.

LARRY HRYB: We're going to have a special intro or something like that. But, no, we've-- also shoutout to, over on YouTube, as we all do every week, to Rebecca's mom. So let us know what you think. Rebecca's mom, please let us know what you think of Malik. Should we have him back on? You're being judged.

MALIK PRINCE: That was another-- I've been watching the show, and I've heard of Rebecca's mom-- Rebecca, your mom, and how much of the show she is. And so I'm hoping that I'm good enough to--

LARRY HRYB: I don't know if she's a fan of the show. She likes seeing her daughter. I think that's really it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. I don't think she understands or is interested in most of what we're talking about, like video games and TV and stuff. And she's like-- she's like, oh, I guess that these things ended up being a career, so.

LARRY HRYB: It's like, now what do you do again?

MALIK PRINCE: I totally get that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: I totally get that. My dad is the same way. My dad, he'll send the folks videos that I've been on. And he doesn't really get it, but he's like, my son's on TV.

LARRY HRYB: But he's a proud dad.

MALIK PRINCE: He's proud of me

LARRY HRYB: That's the most important thing.

MALIK PRINCE: I know, I know.

LARRY HRYB: That's important.

MALIK PRINCE: That's important, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Anyway, all right. Well, we're going to wrap it up here. We're going to get folks going. So thank you for all your comments and feedback. Wherever you watch or view the show-- or listen to it, because, again, it's available on video on Spotify and YouTube. But we know a lot of folks listen to us on Apple Podcasts. We also love that you're giving us the feedback there.

But you can also hit me up. [email protected] is the way you find me if email's your thing. If you just want to be on social, then the best way you can find us is just by hitting us on the Twitters, which are down below. So see that right there.

Anyway, anything you guys want to add? Malik, thank you for joining us on the show this week.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, it was great to have you.

MALIK PRINCE: Thank you for having me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it-- longtime listener, first-time host. I really appreciate it. It was an honor

LARRY HRYB: Co-host, pal, co-host.

MALIK PRINCE: Oh, look at me--

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK, semantics.

MALIK PRINCE: --already overstepping my bounds.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. He's getting too comfortable.

MALIK PRINCE: Honestly-- exactly. Already. But, no, honestly, it's been great what you all have built here. And so I'm happy to fill in any time. Thank you for having me.

LARRY HRYB: Well, of course. And, of course, Rebecca, great to see you in New York City. Stay safe out there, and I know you got a lot of weird weather drifting your way. So-- says Malik and I out here in Seattle, who had snow this week. So it's just kind of weird. But--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

MALIK PRINCE: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: So stay warm out there, and we'll-- and, again, we're not-- we don't have a show next week, but Rebecca will be back in two weeks with her own show. This is going to be really exciting. Are you excited, Rebecca?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Very much. I'm so excited.

LARRY HRYB: You have a couple of weeks to get your feet under you. So all right, gang. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you later. Bye-bye.

REBECCA GORDIUS: See you soon.

MALIK PRINCE: See you.