Xbox Spring Collection, New Minecraft Dungeons & Jeff Beats Elden Ring

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

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LARRY HRYB: All right. Hey, it's Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show. We're excited to have you. We're in studio. We've got Rebecca here, we've got Jeff there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Hello.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Hi, Larry.

LARRY HRYB: Usually you're in New York and Jeff is pied-a-terre in Seattle. And I'm over here.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: (LAUGHING) Pied-a-terre?

[LAUGHS]

LARRY HRYB: We're off to a great start. But we're excited to have you all here. I mean, normally, we do the show pre-recorded and air it on Friday. We said, hey, you know what? Let's do one live on Wednesday. Rebecca, you had some business-- you had to come out here for some meetings.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, it was halfway meetings and half I just wanted to see you guys.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You missed us. You missed us.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I mean, it's so much more fun to do it here than in my small apartment in New York, so.

LARRY HRYB: Well, we agree.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes.

LARRY HRYB: We agree. So it's great to have everybody here. But you're here. We've got a lot of stuff. In fact, if you're following us on Twitter, you probably noticed that we've got some giveaways, we've got some cool stuff sitting in front of it-- Jeff, tell us what we have sitting in front of us, because this is ridiculous.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, this whole thing?

LARRY HRYB: That whole thing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That whole thing?

LARRY HRYB: Not the controller.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well-- yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That is also an old thing.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's a special occasion, Rebecca, with you being here. And so it was really important that we share that special occasion with you, the audience. Thanks for joining us. And so we're going to be doing some giveaways today. Some cool stuff coming later. But in honor of the fact that I beat Elden Ring--

[APPLAUSE]

Yes, thank you.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Honestly, well done.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Which now everyone has done. I was weeks behind everybody else. But I also beat Melania, the toughest boss in the game.

LARRY HRYB: Why is she the toughest boss, without any spoilers?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's not really spoilers.

LARRY HRYB: Is it one of those where it's like, health bar, health bar, oh-- and then she comes back with a whole big health bar and a separate set of attacks?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This guy.

LARRY HRYB: OK, got it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's almost as if you've done this. Also, do you see the sword? Do you see this--

LARRY HRYB: I see that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That it's longer than--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Hard to get close to her, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And by the way, the size of your character, by scale, is about that big. So you're here, you're looking up. And she can destroy you. And did, several times from F. Double digit times. And then we actually have footage somewhere, and I'm going to--

LARRY HRYB: We do?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --roll it. I'll admit, I cheesed her.

LARRY HRYB: How?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I used a spell.

LARRY HRYB: How did you do this? All right, we have the footage here. Because you recorded it. Tell us what we're seeing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So we basically-- there's a spell called the Blood Flies, or Swarm of Flies. And so basically, I had my Mimic Tier agroing, drawing agro, which you see getting its butt kicked as I basically stood back and used ranged attacks.

LARRY HRYB: Well it's funny, because I'm watching her health go up.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, no, it's--

[LAUGHS]

Well, when she does the attacks, they go so--

LARRY HRYB: Right, there we go. There we go.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I definitely cheesed her. Which funny, is literally the day after I did this, they nerfed that attack.

LARRY HRYB: They did?

REBECCA GORDIUS: What?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: They did. So basically--

LARRY HRYB: In before the nerf.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So this was not an honorable victory, but it was a victory all the same.

LARRY HRYB: It's a victory nonetheless.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And so, anyway in honor of that, I have the-- actually the entire Super Deluxe Elden Ring Collector's Edition, which has this. And actually--

LARRY HRYB: Does it include the game?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It includes the game.

LARRY HRYB: Look at that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Actually, there's a lot of cool stuff.

LARRY HRYB: Wait, we'll look at this. Look at this. Let's clear off the table here, because Jeff has--

REBECCA GORDIUS: You should have brought your gloves for Jeff.

LARRY HRYB: Well, as a matter of fact, I do, Rebecca. So funny you say that.

[LAUGHS]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Are they clean? This is the first time anyone else has ever worn these gloves. Ooh, there's a good amount of elastic in there.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, there is. There's a little bit of-- there's a little a bit of--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: These are not-- everything's first class with you.

LARRY HRYB: By the way, that was not set up. She had no idea I had the gloves.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I really didn't know. I thought they would have been left at home.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So there are many elements to this. And by the way, we're giving this away, which is the whole point we're doing this. Really cool art book here. And then underneath the art book--

LARRY HRYB: But wait, there's more.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All the silica gel you can eat.

LARRY HRYB: What do you do with those, by the way, when you have them?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, no, you don't eat them.

LARRY HRYB: No, it says don't.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So there's a steel book.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And then there is the actual disk.

LARRY HRYB: Still wrapped in cellophane there.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Nice.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, this is unused. So all of this is going to be given away later on in the chat. And oh wait, there is one other element that comes with this.

LARRY HRYB: Look at this.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Actually.

LARRY HRYB: Oh, all right. Here we go.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: There we go. You are now--

[LAUGHS]

LARRY HRYB: I feel complete now.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --an Elden Lord.

LARRY HRYB: I feel complete.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Look, it even has room for the mic. So it works out great. Rest of the show--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Doesn't hit the caller, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: I love this. I love this.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I could use the gloves.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I confuse the gloves. Don't think he'll let me use them again.

LARRY HRYB: There we go.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, a little bit. Really going on a power trip there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This reminds me-- and I don't know if we have the footage-- but have you been playing WWE 2K22? Well--

[LAUGHTER]

LARRY HRYB: No, I haven't, Jeff but-- or have I?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, I think you-- a call went out--

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --to maybe if anyone wanted to put you. Amazing character creator mode in WWE 2K22--

LARRY HRYB: Well, we need to back up a little bit to explain. So a couple of weeks ago-- I can't remember--

REBECCA GORDIUS: It was Millie. Yeah, I was there.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, but you were there, but Jeff was on holiday and Malik had joined us who's on the team, and Malik had spent some time in the WWE character creator, Jeff just said, making me. And it was--

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK, I-- initially, I only gave it an 8 out of 10 but actually the more I saw, I was like--

LARRY HRYB: You watched it again. You played it back.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah and for a-- I don't know, just because I've seen so many friends make characters through like the NBA 2K. Right. Like yours was actually-- it was pretty spot on. I would give it a 10 out of 10.

LARRY HRYB: So during that show, we called out to the community and said, hey, see what we-- feel free to have at it. Bring it. Let's go. So we have one here that Jeff-- that we pulled up on Twitter and I don't know if we've got the video, if we can play it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I haven't seen this.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, it's--

REBECCA GORDIUS: I'm so excited.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's very good.

LARRY HRYB: You kind of see it up there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Is it rolling? OK.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So this is the intro and it's all about the issue-- he got the gloves.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, he got the gloves.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: He actually got the gloves.

LARRY HRYB: I don't know how he did it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Wow.

LARRY HRYB: I don't know how he did it, but--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh my gosh. This is so cute.

LARRY HRYB: --I'm getting on the turnbuckle--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Wow.

LARRY HRYB: --there and I'm looking pretty good.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You're a spry gentleman.

LARRY HRYB: By the way, I've got quite the upper body. It's a nice build, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You've been working out. People don't with the blazer what's going on under there, but I--

LARRY HRYB: I did not skip pec day.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No.

[LAUGHTER]

LARRY HRYB: So--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So--

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's pretty well done.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So thanks so much to the community member who contributed that. I don't know if you've got their name handy, Larry, because--

LARRY HRYB: I don't have their name handy, but I'll find--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'll look it up.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, we'll see if--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's really great work and WWE 2K22, you can even make Larry -

LARRY HRYB: I'm looking right now to see. I've got his Twitter name right now. His name is Michael @realmikewalsh on Twitter. He's the one that made that. So thank you for that, Mike and it was really great though so--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Throw him a follow and great work on that.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, he seems like he did some good work. I'd love to see actually you, Jeff. I don't know what you would look like or Rebecca.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What would my move be? What would your finisher be?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Finisher? I don't know. I feel like mine would just be getting angry and storming off. Like I would just give up.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, to me, Jeff's finisher would be like dumping hot coffee on somebody.

[LAUGHTER]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, that's a good one.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I can see that. That's a nice one. That's a nice one.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Whereas you, I feel you would take a mic and--

LARRY HRYB: Right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That would be your steel chair.

LARRY HRYB: Just go through them. That would be my thing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Anyway, we got our eye on the Twitch chat. If you're watching this on Twitter, head over to twitch.tv/Xbox. We've got the chat up here. I've got a little bit of Twitter open, so I'm kind of watching in all over the place. But it's great to have everybody in studio. We're going to try to do more of these in studio, and it's all dependent on Rebecca, when you're back here.

What we may do, works-- I'll give you a little clue. A little bit of inside baseball. We're trying to figure out how when Rebecca's not here that we can put you on this big screen right here.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That would be nice.

LARRY HRYB: So you would be coming in on a very 1984 -esque--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Well, I guess hologram technology isn't really there yet, so--

LARRY HRYB: Yet, so-- anyway, it's great to see everybody. We've got a little bit of news. We've got special guests coming on later on.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We do, we do. Have you been playing? Either of you been playing anything?

LARRY HRYB: Well, I finished-- the new Halo series or Halo season starts next week or the week after. I think it's next week.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's next week.

LARRY HRYB: And I finished my Tenrai, so I'm all Tenraid out. So I feel pretty good about that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Nicely done.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So that's the full samurai armor and all the accouterments?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, in fact, my-- I wish I could bring it up, but I don't have a clip of it. My character looks pretty good, I'm just going to say that. I've done nice coloring on him, and his coding looks good, but it's fun. Big T battle, we go in there. It's a nice, quick, let's get a couple of games for like 20 minutes in the evening, and then I can go back to work.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Do you have a game that you go to real quick when you want to just scratch an itch?

REBECCA GORDIUS: No, it's more like I always default back to my Minecraft house--

LARRY HRYB: Sure.

REBECCA GORDIUS: --if I'm like on the couch, I'm bored, and I'm like, OK, I just want to do something for like 30 minutes.

LARRY HRYB: Right, right.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, but I've been having a lot of home improvement problems, so it's been--

LARRY HRYB: Like what?

REBECCA GORDIUS: I keep having a really grand vision for my house and carving all the way into the countryside wanting to do something really picturesque, really grand and then I change my mind.

LARRY HRYB: So your skills are not up to your vision?

REBECCA GORDIUS: No. I only get like 20% of the way done with the house, and then I start over from scratch but--

LARRY HRYB: OK.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, aside from that I don't know. I have so many games on Game Pass. I keep starting them, trying them out, getting a feel and then moving on to the next one. So--

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, it's funny. I was also playing-- you asked me what I was playing, Jeff. Doing that one-- what was the game we were just watching on the stream right before this? The tax evasion one?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, it's Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.

LARRY HRYB: I played that and it's on Game Pass, and you have to try it out because it's just-- if you were watching the stream earlier right before we started here on Xbox, they were playing it. It's kind of zany.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Tell us about-- have you played it?

LARRY HRYB: I played about 20 minutes of it. It gets dark quickly, we'll just say that.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Enough to commit at least some light tax evasion.

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Maybe you didn't deduct things properly.

LARRY HRYB: You were aggressive but not illegal.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes. Loopholes.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So the enemy is a master auditor or something.

LARRY HRYB: Exactly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Press x to loophole.

LARRY HRYB: Exactly. Anyway, check it out it's on Xbox Game Pass, which you probably--

REBECCA GORDIUS: What have you been playing lately?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, what about you, Jeff?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So actually there was another Game Pass game that came out this week that I've been getting into, and that is Research and Destroy. And I think we do have some footage of this one and--

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's so clever these days.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's a game and what hooked me is I read a description of it, and it was a turn-based strategy action game. And you don't see a lot of games that--

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What does that even mean? And so there are shades of XCOM to this game. There are shades of, I would say, Superhot in a way. There are shades of Valkyria Chronicles--

LARRY HRYB: Right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Which is one of my favorite games of all time. So basically what happens-- and you're seeing some footage here-- is it's post-apocalyptic times, and the supernatural have taken over the world, ghosts and zombies and mummies. And three scientists are coming back to prove that they're not real, I guess. And so you control these three--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Kind of like Scooby-Doo looking members of the team, and what happens is with each turn you take control of each one of these three characters. They have 8 seconds, and in that 8 seconds, you can use that 8 seconds to move around, to fire, to collect an item, to do an objective, something like that, or sometimes all of the above. And as soon as you let go of the controller, it stops and the time stops.

And so you're figuring out, OK, I've got 3 and 1/2 seconds left. I could probably get two shots off, and I could pick up this power up or something like that. And the different characters, as you can see, a ton of customization and there's also-- each one has a different weapon that they will use. So one can heal--

LARRY HRYB: Right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --and hurt. One has a rocket launcher, so it's-- very quickly after the first map, I realized I haven't played anything quite like this before. Again, elements of XCOM. You're taking over a map of Europe. You're liberating it. You're building universities to research the different mummies and the different enemies.

LARRY HRYB: Research and destroy.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes. There's elements that definitely felt right out of XCOM and elements that felt right out of Valkyria from that real-time action.

LARRY HRYB: Somebody just mentioned-- where is it? They just mentioned in Apex Accent in their Twitch chat, it looks a little bit like Destroy All Humans. I love Destroy All Humans. Did you ever play that?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I actually never did. I know it's a classic and they redid it.

LARRY HRYB: I don't know why, but I love that game. I don't know if it was the campy '50s aliens or invading the world, but I don't know, I really enjoyed that, so--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, someone in the chat mentioned that it kind of looks like Lemnis Gate. I can't remember if that's-- Lemnis Gate.

LARRY HRYB: Lemnis Gate.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, Lemnis Gate, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And that is when I heard action strategy like shooter. That's also another thing. I wouldn't call it a genre. It's a mashup of genres. What I want to say is a first-person. But yes, if that was a game that worked for you and that you found something to like out of it, I think this is worth your try. It's on Game Pass.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Give it a shot. I gave it an hour and I kept finding OK, actually I'm going to do one more level. I'm going to do one more level.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes, OK.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And I think I'm going to be seeing this one through. So Research and Destroy--

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's good.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --came out this week. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

LARRY HRYB: What else we have coming out? You got some stuff to talk about here, right?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, yeah. And other games that are out this week, so 7 Days to Die is a long-running zombie survival sandbox RPG that is now also on Game Pass.

LARRY HRYB: Survival sandbox RPG?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Sounds kind of State of Decay-ish?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Look, it's all about mashing together--

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --all these other things. Yeah, so that also has zombies but completely different. That's out.

LARRY HRYB: Here's a little bit of-- I think we got a little bit of video of that right here.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: As I can tell by the ESRB.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So I on PC, this game's got a long-running--

LARRY HRYB: You have to gather supplies.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --life to this. Yes. Yeah, so it's from the first-person perspective. I actually have not played this yet, but I know it's got millions of players obviously.

LARRY HRYB: And this one's on Game Pass too, right?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And this is on Game Pass.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. Are you good at--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Is it awful that this is reminding me of Minecraft this whole time because it's like get resources, build your defenses, you're fighting zombies.

[LAUGHTER]

LARRY HRYB: That's a lot of-- no, there's a good recipe there.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: So they're building on that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think the idea of the resource gathering, scarcity, danger and then defending. There's barricading. And then going out and that risk reward of going further.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That is quite a good form.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: You forgot-- we were talking about what we were playing. Before we get back to-- I want to mention one more thing because we're all fans of this. MLB The Show. I was playing the Home Run Derby, which-- Did you ever play Home Run Derby when you were a kid? There was a bag. You were trying to get as far as possible.

I played Home Run Derby-- this is actually a true story-- it was Thursday or Friday night and Phil Spencer was on playing Elden Ring, so I sent him a party invite, and we're in a party. He's playing Elden Ring which he's all into, and I was playing Home Run Derby in MLB The Show, and we were just talking about games and all this other stuff. But MLB The Show, we should play.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: There's co-op--

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --this year, which is here.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, there is co-op.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And I think that would be really fun because--

LARRY HRYB: It's on Game Pass.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Twice the errors.

[LAUGHTER]

You could throw a bad pitch, and then I could dive and miss the ball, and then you could take over the catcher and then the ball could go past you. How many errors in one game?

LARRY HRYB: I set it up where I was-- and then I played a game in Fenway Park in Boston, which I spent a lot of time in. So there's nothing like the outfield bleachers at Fenway, I'll tell you that. So--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Have you sat on top of the Green Monster from before?

LARRY HRYB: I've not been on top of the Green Monster because those seats were put in after I left the East Coast, but I have spent some time in the bleachers and there's nothing like that in the sun, being baked in the sun.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Nothing like it, Larry.

LARRY HRYB: nothing like it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: were not wearing sunscreen in those days.

LARRY HRYB: Drop in the chat if you've been there.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes.

LARRY HRYB: Anyway, so we've got a little bit more news, and we're going to have special guests coming in.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right, so normally we record later in the week and so stuff that happens later in the week, we're talking about it in the past tense. But it's Wednesday. It is 11:15 Pacific, and so this is not out now, but it's going to be out tomorrow and that's Bugsnax.

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And this is a game that you might remember due to its Kero Kero Bonito soundtrack. It had a very good band and very catchy theme song. So--

LARRY HRYB: Can you hum a few licks for us?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I'd love that. I would love that. Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Sure? You really don't want that. I promise you, you don't. I'm not on that register.

LARRY HRYB: Here's it right here. Here's the--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yes and so--

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's so cute.

LARRY HRYB: It's adorable. Go on.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So I haven't played this one. I've seen this trailer before. It looks really cool. I don't know if it's more-- it kind of reminds me of Viva Pinata, but I don't think it is. And then I also really like Super Animal Royale, just really cute games, like what's the-- Do you know the genre for this one?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I think there's a lot of collecting. It looks like open world platforming.

LARRY HRYB: You're crafting, you're building, and you're killing-- oh, never mind.

[LAUGHTER]

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That would be-- it looks like there might be a little bit there.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So it looks adorable and it's got the good soundtrack. So that is available on Xbox Game Pass tomorrow.

LARRY HRYB: Tomorrow.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So you'll be able to try that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I love this. I would love to see it. I can imagine there would be such good collectibles and merch from this game too and like-- oh, this looks so cute.

LARRY HRYB: In the chat, I'm an idiot 19 says the genre is collecting.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that sounds kind of nice actually. So it is maybe a little bit more a graduated Viva Pinata then.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. All right.

LARRY HRYB: All right we got a little bit more news here.

[LAUGHTER]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, also coming to Xbox Game Pass tomorrow, 28th, is Unsouled. So--

LARRY HRYB: Wait a minute, tomorrow's the 29th? Where did April go?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Tomorrow's the 28th, yes.

LARRY HRYB: Where did April go?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, you wouldn't it because it's still cold here.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Tomorrow's 28th or 29th? 28th?

LARRY HRYB: 28th.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: 28th.

REBECCA GORDIUS:

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's OK. This is good content here. Look at a calendar.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah, so Unsouled-- which we're taking some footage here-- is punishingly difficult but fair. Hmm soul, difficult, fair.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Sounds familiar.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I don't know. I might have heard of such things before. So it's an action RPG.

LARRY HRYB: Is it fair?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: The developers say that it's fair but difficult. Tough but fair. So you will--

LARRY HRYB: That's what my teacher would tell me.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Soul combos, counterattacks. Now, I'm getting something like Hyper Light Drifter vibes off of this.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, you are.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Where you have the really advanced 16-bit look but with effects that they could never have done on Psychonauts or Sega Genesis. So it looks good. Hyper Light Drifter was a heck of a game. So Unsouled, that will be also available on Xbox Game Pass and if you like what you're seeing here, give it a shot.

LARRY HRYB: All right, next up.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right, so coming soon. So last week we announced Sonic Origins, which is a remastered Sonic the Hedgehog experience with upgraded version.

LARRY HRYB: I forgot the furry controllers.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, I know. Oh, that was my one opportunity to touch them.

LARRY HRYB: Yes. I wanted to send them back and they said, no, keep them. I'm like, OK.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We literally USPS--

REBECCA GORDIUS: They're like, we can't dry clean them. Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: They don't want them back. They don't want it back. So my daughter picked one up. She's like, what is this? I'm like, don't ask.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So this was announced last week. We didn't do a show, so worth calling out. Love to see Green Hill Zone.

LARRY HRYB: Oh, I love Green Hill Zone.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So it's remastering for titles, as you see here.

LARRY HRYB: Ring, ring, ring, ring.

[LAUGHTER]

REBECCA GORDIUS: This is great. I like this.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Are you that guy that's got the Sonic ring--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Larry has had his coffee.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --as your text message alert?

LARRY HRYB: I don't think I do, but you know what.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Did You see the new Sonic movie?

LARRY HRYB: I have not seen the movie.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Heard very good things.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Really?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, like that both the last one and this one are legitimately good.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that's fair. Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very good movies.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I was just talking to some people about video games turning into movies yesterday, and we're like, oh, yeah, I recently watched Michael Fassbender as Assassin's Creed. Oh, not the best. But yeah, the Sonic one was mentioned as a good one though.

LARRY HRYB: I interviewed everybody on that cast.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, it was a weird.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That was at Comic-Con or something.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I was wondering where you were going with that.

LARRY HRYB: No, I actually flew out to New York for that. What's funny is I have kind of a connection to the Sonic series, is that one of my good friends from Syracuse, he does the voice of Dr. Eggman in the animated series.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, really?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Wow.

LARRY HRYB: And he is--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So you're good friends with Jim Carrey is what you're saying.

LARRY HRYB: No, his name is Mike Pollock.

REBECCA GORDIUS: One degree away from Jim Carrey.

LARRY HRYB: He actually does-- oh, I didn't realize he was in Viva Pinata. Mike, we've got to talk about that. Anyway, Mike and I went to school together. He had amazing voices, so I'm glad to see he's doing that. But he was bummed when he didn't get the motion picture.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Beat out by this no name Jim Carrey. What are the odds? So coming up after this show, I'm looking at Josh. He's going to be playing along with Kelly weekly Apex Legends.

LARRY HRYB: Oh, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And--

LARRY HRYB: Which you and I have not been into in forever.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Well, look, we can only have so much time. Definitely been-- Elden Ring took up literally-- is a smoking crater. I did not play anything else for two months.

LARRY HRYB: But now it's done.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So a new legend coming to Apex Legends.

LARRY HRYB: Tell us.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And that is Newcastle who is a defensive character, like if Reinhardt from Overwatch was coming in to Apex Legends. Is that roughly good? Yeah, we'll go with that. So uses the shield to defend squadmates. I'm always a support character. I'm a lifeline main, so maybe another defensive character.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes, I remember this.

LARRY HRYB: Imagine my disappointment when you said Newcastle-- and out here in Seattle, we have a golf course named Newcastle-- that their ultimate does not involve a golf club.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: See, I was a little upset that it did not involve brown ale, but then again, we have anything from that yet?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Has the full kit--

LARRY HRYB: Who knows?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --been revealed for Newcastle yet? Probably not. Anything could happen.

REBECCA GORDIUS: These are stretches.

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And also, you might have seen this coming to Call of Duty Warzone. There was a new teaser that both King Kong and Godzilla will also be coming to Warzone. What does that mean? We don't know, but Operation Monarch comes out May 11th.

LARRY HRYB: May 11th.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Like Combat Evolved.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I like this. Call of Duty has gotten a lot less serious over the years. That's great.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Snoop Dogg recently added to the game. Also I don't know if you saw. Fortnite added like Wu-Tang merch.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, I didn't.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So I want to buy that.

LARRY HRYB: I saw that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: All right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Why not? These are like the real-- you have the MCU, but then within games, they have their own Fortnite and Warzone cinematic universe of IP.

LARRY HRYB: God bless them. It's good stuff. Rocket League, got some Rocket League news?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, yeah. Looking like-- oh, Knockout Bash. So this is something we've been talking about, and I think we're doing some streams with that. So basically, it's a limited time mode--

LARRY HRYB: I was just looking at-- oh, here we go. Here we go.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah. So it's a limited time-- I want to say it's one-on-one. It's definitely different. You can walk the grab mechanic.

LARRY HRYB: But it looks one-on-one here, yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, interesting. I was just talking about Rocket League the other day. I used to play this so often because--

LARRY HRYB: You did?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I used to play a lot of Rocket League, maybe like four years ago or something because it was one of those games where people who weren't gamers-- so a lot of my girlfriends would be able to play with--

LARRY HRYB: That's today. I have a--

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's easy to pick up and play it, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: I have a skin and a flag in here, the Major Nelson flag, yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I didn't know that. Oh my gosh. That's so cool.

LARRY HRYB: We'll come back. I'll have to show that to you.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Still one of the most popular games on platforms, so--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, it's not going anywhere.

LARRY HRYB: Or what do people call it? Soccer football? Soccer? Car soccer.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Car soccer, yeah. Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So anyway, that mode, as you saw, starts today.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: A couple of real quick hits. There's a new game plus mode now for Dying Light 2.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Really the first big release of the year, Dying Light 2 Stay Human. Diablo II Resurrected--

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --added. So they had a patch update number 24.

LARRY HRYB: I should get Rod on the show.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That would be great.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Why not?

LARRY HRYB: Right, Rod Fergusson is working on Diablo.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, so they're adding new content, the first balance changes in over a decade and some new runes and some other stuff like that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And now through May 17th, Rainbow Six Siege has a Rengoku event with special weapons and a remodeled skyscraper map.

LARRY HRYB: Wow.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Now you know.

LARRY HRYB: Lot of news.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, lot of news.

LARRY HRYB: A lot of news this week. Yeah, it's been a great week. We actually have some news from-- it's not really last week, but we've talked about this on the show. We talked about some of the controllers that are now available. The spring collection.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes, love them.

LARRY HRYB: That's why I'm wearing a lighter color.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Look at that.

LARRY HRYB: Trying to be spring--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What would you call that?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, it's great.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Pastel blue? Sky blue?

LARRY HRYB: Robin's egg blue.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Robin's egg blue.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Robin's egg blue.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Wow.

LARRY HRYB: We've got some controllers that we announced last week. Let's take a look at the trailer. We're going to come back and we have a special guest to talk about.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Spring collection 2022, Scott Weber is here. Scott-

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'm starving.

LARRY HRYB: Good to see you!

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, that was hard to watch without the snack.

LARRY HRYB: Scott from the hardware team. Good to see you, and you have them right over there to the right.

SCOTT WEBER: I do, my treats.

LARRY HRYB: I don't know if we can take a look at them, if we can--

SCOTT WEBER: They're not a cake, as we were discussing.

LARRY HRYB: There we go.

SCOTT WEBER: They're not cake. They are controllers.

LARRY HRYB: Wait a minute, can we talk about that for a little bit? How did you guys put them in the-- I can't even imagine the legalities of that.

SCOTT WEBER: I don't know. I believe there were some disclaimers there as well. They said, don't do this with the controllers. They might not--

LARRY HRYB: Please don't do this with the controllers. You've got something to show off right here. These are now available.

SCOTT WEBER: Yes.

LARRY HRYB: And these are from some of our third party partners.

SCOTT WEBER: These are available for pre-order. This one's available now.

LARRY HRYB: OK, show us what we go.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: So let's start out here with the PowerA because there's actually five colors to this. I have four with me.

LARRY HRYB: And don't go away because we're going to give away a couple of these.

SCOTT WEBER: Yes, we're giving away them. This is PowerA controllers here. Like I said, there are five different colors. We wanted to do something-- I'll take a step back-- for the spring collection. There's a lot of black controllers, a lot of white controllers--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes.

SCOTT WEBER: --a lot of things for everyone and--

LARRY HRYB: Primary colors.

SCOTT WEBER: Exactly and so Pamela Wong on my team had this idea that just said, let's take a look at what is underrepresented in the ecosystem of Xbox hardware. And she went to Twitter and sourced it. And we heard a lot of colors, like this is what people want. And so we work with PowerA on these, and they're based off their enhanced wired controller, which is one of my favorite controllers. It's got mappable buttons here on the back that you can use, super comfortable.

LARRY HRYB: So I want to point out that is a wired controller.

SCOTT WEBER: It's a wired controller.

LARRY HRYB: You can see port on the top there if you spin it around.

SCOTT WEBER: Yes, just right there. That's a port in the front.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah and love these. And obviously the designs are just gorgeous. We were fortunate to get a lot of wonderful feedback and rightfully so. This one, the pink lemonade, come on.

LARRY HRYB: Right. Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: So good.

LARRY HRYB: Do you have a favorite, Rebecca?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Well, I'm inclined toward the purple camo. Is it purple or blue?

SCOTT WEBER: Yes, it's purple camo.

REBECCA GORDIUS: When you were talking about how some of these colors are underrepresented, I remember when the design lab first came out, I made my controller bright purple. And then any time anyone ever came over, that was always the first one that-- it's like, OK, we're going to play something. I was always like, it's my special controller but sure, you can have it. So I love these colours.

LARRY HRYB: But look at that look at that D-pad by the way. It's got a nice little metallic bling going on there.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes, nice finish.

LARRY HRYB: Nice sheen on it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Good idea for my next manicure, so yeah, I love it.

LARRY HRYB: Yes, awesome.

SCOTT WEBER: We're thrilled with how these came out, and we're excited to do more of these in the future or collections.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, it feels nice too. I've used the elite, but haven't used one with like the buttons on the back, so--

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, it's super easy. That button at the top there, you just press and hold that and you can map buttons on the back, yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I like that's the mic control.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, push it into mute and side-to-side for volume.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So you don't have to get the big, fat--

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, exactly. It's really nice.

LARRY HRYB: What is that thing called? Is that just-- we used to call it the puck--

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: --back in the day.

SCOTT WEBER: Expansion port device.

LARRY HRYB: OK, sure, whatever.

SCOTT WEBER: I don't know.

LARRY HRYB: Expansion port device. Puck.

SCOTT WEBER: What Is the customer-M friendly name versus what do we call--

REBECCA GORDIUS: What we actually use, yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: Hardware organization. I don't know how to speak normally.

LARRY HRYB: The digital to analog customer port. Yeah, whatever.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's the puck under the hamburger button.

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: It's the one that we're talking about.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Starting back, always will be. Anyway, what else we got?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, so we also worked with 8BitDo on this controller.

LARRY HRYB: Oh, those guys.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I like that one. This peak controller is so cool. This one, also available for pre-order. By the way, these are $37.99, so an amazing deal on these. This is $44.99. This also has remappable buttons on the back but also has different profiles that you can go through and swap to your different profiles if you've got that set up.

LARRY HRYB: Can you bring that over here? I want to show you something because this is actually-- I love 8BitDo stuff because I've got a lot of stuff, a lot of their old Sega-type controllers.

SCOTT WEBER: Sure.

LARRY HRYB: But this one, not only does it have the buttons on the back, but here it's got--

SCOTT WEBER: Quick release.

LARRY HRYB: --the breakaway. Wow, you call it quick release. I call it breakaway.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Because we had this on the original Xbox.

SCOTT WEBER: I don't know how to speak normal.

LARRY HRYB: We had this on the original Xbox, and it saved many an accident in my--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Many cards...

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, absolutely, had that too.

LARRY HRYB: Because in those days, you had the 200 pound CRT, and you didn't want that thing coming down. That would be embarrassing. But this is really-- what's the star button for?

SCOTT WEBER: The star button is how you remap everything at the top and then you have-- so this is your remappable thing here. There's also a way to adjust the stick sensitivity on this and the trigger sensitivity, so they've got an app that goes along with it that's really cool. So lots of customization that can be done on this.

LARRY HRYB: And is there Bluetooth on that or is that just wired?

SCOTT WEBER: This is just wired.

LARRY HRYB: Just wired, OK.

SCOTT WEBER: But we do have a Bluetooth controller with them too. It's the SN30 Pro.

LARRY HRYB: That's the one and I don't know-- I know this is the last minute. I don't think we can pull up a picture of it, but it looks like a SNES controller.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, exactly.

LARRY HRYB: It's black. You look at it and you're like, this is the Xbox controller. This is the SNES controller. You cock your head a little bit and go, what is that? So I don't know. If you do a search for it online--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's great for smaller hands.

SCOTT WEBER: It's absolutely great for that. It's great for on the go. That's the controller that I was playing Celeste with a bunch when that was out just because it's basically a 2D side-scroller, very punishing game. You were talking about fair but punishing games before. Celeste last would be one of those.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: And it's great for streaming. It's a Bluetooth controller, so I take that on the go. Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, that's fun. So tell us a little bit about what you do on the hardware team because you with a lot of our third party partners.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, so at design for Xbox, we have 40 plus different partners that sit across a number of different categories. We have controllers like this. We also do headsets, both wired and wireless, wheels, flight sticks, fight sticks, storage. We're in so many different categories. Charging is huge for us and stands and all sorts of other stuff too, which is really cool.

We try and fill the gaps in the Xbox accessories experience. So if there's something that is a need of the community that they aren't seeing, we listen to that feedback and then we go and work with these companies to bring those products to market so that everyone can support their gaming experience the way that they want to.

LARRY HRYB: And if you look on the boxes there, you can kind of see that little badge that you put on.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh.

LARRY HRYB: And what does that mean?

SCOTT WEBER: So--

LARRY HRYB: Because lot of folks ask me on Twitter like, OK, that's cool. What does it mean? Did you make it? Did you not? What does it mean?

SCOTT WEBER: Well, if you see this, I know about it.

[LAUGHTER]

Our program basically, we have a board that sits and reviews every concept that comes through, and we say, is this suitable for Xbox? Do we have any concerns around it from a safety standpoint? Is it going to be great from a usability standpoint? Is it going to work great on the platform?

And then once we get through that, we're aiding the partners in development. We have technical specs that say, hey, how do you build accessories for the platform? And then beyond that we have a validation process to ensure that just what you're buying is a step above. And there's some things that you can't use, like you can't buy a controller that's not designed for Xbox because there's security associated with it.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: But other things like charging and storage, there's a level of validation that we go through to just ensure that it's working perfectly every time right out of the box, that is worthy of the Xbox brand.

LARRY HRYB: Right and we're actually going to give a couple of these away in the chat. So if you're watching this on Twitter or over on Twitch, just go over the Twitch chat and check it out and we'll put in-- I believe it's an Exclamation controller. We're going to pick some random folks to give those away, courtesy of you and your team.

SCOTT WEBER: Hey, I love it, and we got one more here.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, what is that? Let's talk about this.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: OtterBox Easy Grip Power Shell. And by the way, all of these exist in our program already with the standard colors. These were just cool variations that we did to do something new.

LARRY HRYB: Right, the spring collection.

SCOTT WEBER: I love this one so much. Exactly, spring rejuvenation.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: Right. This one is so cool. These grips are actually swappable out here too, so you can put different grips on the side of them, but this purple and sparkle is really cool. We did all the product shots in white, and you really can't see the sparkle as well on white.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: And so in blue it's this really cool starry silver that's on top of it. But this is for the Series X and S controllers, so make sure you have one of those.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, can you square it up to the camera if you would? And you can kind of take a look at it. There you go.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: So it gives them what? Extra ruggedness and protection?

SCOTT WEBER: Extra ruggedness. Again, if you're playing one of those punishing but fair games, you might have trouble with your controller making its way to the wall or you'll be protected here.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: And that just snaps on there, right?

SCOTT WEBER: It just snaps on, yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's awesome.

SCOTT WEBER: And so I have this-- first of all too, you should all feel the ergonomics.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, I'd love to.

SCOTT WEBER: It definitely feels very natural and just if you have bigger hands and you feel like the Xbox controller the way it is, you wish it was-- maybe you were a fan of the Duke, right.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: You might want to try that out just for ergonomics too. And so it protects it.

LARRY HRYB: Gives a little extra-- also feel like with this grip, when I go to throw my controller after Goderich takes me down for the 20th time, I'm really going to get extra distance.

SCOTT WEBER: You really are. Yeah, for sure.

LARRY HRYB: Carnage brought something up in the chat. It says, the glitter won't get all over your hands. Oh,

REBECCA GORDIUS: That's important, yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: Absolutely true but if I did--

LARRY HRYB: Is it a problem? I don't know.

SCOTT WEBER: But if I brought the treats and the cookies, it would have been all over by a now.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's nice-- when you were holding it, I thought it looked really like jelly almost, but it's actually pretty firm. It feels more like a phone case for a controller. That's good, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: That's a good way of putting it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: Which is OtterBox's primary business.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Right, yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: And so we were so excited to work with them because they're obviously a great company, and they make amazing products, and this thing is just rock solid.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: I've had one of those on my controller in my backpack forever and nothing has ever happened.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Honestly--yeah.

LARRY HRYB: We got a question. Do these work on the Xbox One controller as well as the Series controllers?

SCOTT WEBER: These specifically are built for the Series X and S controllers.

LARRY HRYB: So the answer's no. OK.

SCOTT WEBER: Yes. Yeah, just wanted to make sure.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, I agree.

SCOTT WEBER: Slightly different industrial design.

LARRY HRYB: Because people may not-- or we certainly talked about it when Xbox Series X and S launched, is the controller is was it 33% smaller?

SCOTT WEBER: I think it's just 3%.

LARRY HRYB: 3%, OK. I knew there was a three, sorry.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: But the controller is a little bit smaller because your hardware team did some research that x number more people could hold it and it was more comfortable.

SCOTT WEBER: For sure. Yeah and that had impacts across the way that we do things now. If you buy a charging solution now, it will ship with two different battery doors, one to fit your last generation controller and one to fit the new generation.

LARRY HRYB: Sure.

SCOTT WEBER: Again, that's a Designed for Xbox thing. We're thinking about those things and making sure that it's going to be great no matter what you have.

LARRY HRYB: Again, controllers are obviously controllers on headsets or what people think when they think about the design. You also do monitors.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, that's true.

LARRY HRYB: Because you guys sent me one and I've been using it. It's amazing.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, I use one too. Gaming monitors is a new business for us. Gaming monitors, it's tricky. The whole experience, we're in a bubble. I think a little bit when it's just like, oh, you just play Xbox and you have these amazing displays and you know how to light up HDR 10 and VRR and all that.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: So to be able to have Designed for Xbox monitors, where all that stuff is clearly indicated on a compatibility bar right on the front--

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: --that when you plug-in your Xbox, it's like, oh, there's an Xbox. All these features are already on and it looks amazing, refresh rate, all that stuff. So we're excited about those partnerships. I use the Philips Momentum monitor. That's a great partnership that we have. We also work with Asus and Acer and some other ones too, so-- I see Momentum over there actually.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. No, there's a lot of work that your team does and, as you said, validating, which is just making sure that when people get home and unbox it, that everything works much that much better.

SCOTT WEBER: Exactly.

LARRY HRYB: Right.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah because it can be the Wild West, especially in the modern display space. It's challenging. You have to go online and figure out which settings to change and sometimes like that. And so there's also work that we do as part of Designed for Xbox that's not our licensing business, where we're working with other TV manufacturers just to make sure that the experience of opening and unboxing an X or an S and plugging it into a TV, it's a great experience to set up through them, even if you don't have a licensed monitor. It's just using an LG or Samsung or whatever.

LARRY HRYB: Right, right, right. Well, what's on the horizon for you guys? You guys still working on stuff? You're thinking of holiday right now, right?

SCOTT WEBER: We're thinking about holiday, so--

LARRY HRYB: We don't have anything to announce, but we just wanted to--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: A lot to be announced in the coming months. Naturally, there's some beats coming that--

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, some moments.

SCOTT WEBER: --we'll align to and so we're excited. But definitely a lot happening on the audio space this year, which will be fun. You'll see some things continue to happen with flight as we continue to build out the ecosystem for flight sticks, which will be very exciting. Those are massively complex products.

LARRY HRYB: With the flight sticks, have you used the flight stick, Jeff or Rebecca?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I have.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, me too.

LARRY HRYB: It's pretty amazing because you've got the range of-- and we unfortunately don't have photos here, but you've got the affordable ones all the way to the ultra luxe versions, right?

SCOTT WEBER: Yes and there are flight sticks. It's like do you spend your time flying around a little Cessna or do you want to literally fly a Boeing commercial aircraft? Like Thrustmaster makes a Boeing yoke that's like-- they've got a partnership with them and ran through our program. And it's got the full quadrant that goes alongside of it and stuff.

It's pretty cool for the enthusiast. That community is so passionate, and that's one other thing that's so fun about Designed for Xbox is being able to work with the community and understand exactly what they're looking for and then work with our partners to make sure it's reflected in the products they ship.

LARRY HRYB: Right, right. What's the best way that people can give feedback to your team on like, hey, this is what we want for the next collection of colors?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: Well, we hear it on Twitter. We definitely hear it on Twitter, but also I know personally myself and other members of my team, we read the Xbox subreddit quite a bit and see topics that come up there.

LARRY HRYB: Is that rXboxOne? That one?

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, yeah. I read that one and then there's a number of other ones too. And I always go through the comment sections whenever I see one of our partner products announced on an Xbox Wire post or anything like that. And see what people are saying and see what the concerns are because I think in hardware development sometimes you can, again, be a bit siloed and think that something is maybe not as important. And then when you actually reach out and you understand what the community is talking about, you go, oh, maybe we've missed something here.

That's kind of the whole genesis of this program too, is that you do things a certain way for a long time and you go, maybe there's something that we're not thinking about. So let's do this. We've got a roadmap of three or four more of these collections to come and more than just colors. We're thinking about other things that the community has really come to us and said, this is important to us. We wish you would do more of it.

LARRY HRYB: And that's something that Phil has always said is, we're putting gamers at the center, and that's what we do know in everything we design, and we're listening to-- as you said, on Reddit and Twitter and all the places that gamers are so that you can help us and Scott and his team and everybody else make the product better.

SCOTT WEBER: Sure, yeah. Even YouTube comments.

LARRY HRYB: Really?

[LAUGHTER]

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: The last time I read those they were like, why doesn't this guy shave his beard?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. He's on camera.

LARRY HRYB: That was Rebecca's mom.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I know, I know. Tell me about it.

LARRY HRYB: It looks good though.

SCOTT WEBER: This side-- you know.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, trying to get Larry to grow the beard, telling him it would really make your wrestling character look much tougher.

LARRY HRYB: That's true.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that is true, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Like a full beard.

LARRY HRYB: I want to keep the focus on my pecs.

REBECCA GORDIUS: On that build, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I would too. So these are available now?

SCOTT WEBER: These are open for pre-order right now. They ship in the middle of May. So that's the 8BitDo and the PowerA, and then the OtterBox is available now. They're all at Microsoft stores.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Awesome.

LARRY HRYB: Right on, man.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Scott, it's always good to have you on. Can we have you on again sometime?

SCOTT WEBER: Absolutely.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Also quick little call out. You host a podcast.

SCOTT WEBER: Ah, yes, I do.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Let's talk about that real quick.

SCOTT WEBER: Oh if you like baseball and three people who know a little bit about it but also go off tangent quite a bit, it's called Dome and Bedlam. It's a Seattle Mariners podcast for the local folk in the stream.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that's nice.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Have you played RBI?

SCOTT WEBER: No, I haven't but I've been playing The Show.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: MLB, sorry.

SCOTT WEBER: I'm sitting back here and just dying over all The Show talk. I've been so hooked on Diamond Dynasty just going deep into it this year, deep. It's a problem actually.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Like I said, maybe we should have you on and play sometime.

SCOTT WEBER: I would love to.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We would love to do that.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's on Game Pass, so--

SCOTT WEBER: Sounds good.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Thanks for joining us. We've got some time left. What do you want to do?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah, we got about 15 minutes left. We're going to play--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Do you want to hang out with us?

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, let's do it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Do you mind?

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, sounds good.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We're going to play a little bit of Minecraft, which is a product you work on.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Minecraft Dungeons.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Dungeons, we're going to play Minecraft Dungeons. We're not going to see Rebecca's poorly constructed home.

REBECCA GORDIUS: No one wants to see that right now. At this point, it's basically just a really big hole, and then I have these big holes in my world, and I give up on that one and I move on and--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We call it negative space.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Negative space. All right, that's great.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, when I play creator mode with my daughter, I'm basically like the general contractor. She's like, build a wall 25 long.

LARRY HRYB: And then she'll come back later.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah and 10 high.

LARRY HRYB: Tell us a little bit about Minecraft Dungeons, Rebecca, for those folks that maybe aren't familiar with it.

SCOTT WEBER: Oh, sorry.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, so Minecraft Dungeons initially came out, I think, just shy of two years ago, but the game was just a fraction back then of what it is now. So if you tried it out at launch, you need to jump back in. There have been, I think, somewhere between six to eight DLCs that have came out, but we also recently in the last year moved to a seasonal model. So now there's new seasons with really free updates and big content.

The second season just came out last week, which is called Luminous Night.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's what we're going to look at here.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes. One thing I should mention, the first season came with-- I don't know what you're doing.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This controller's dead.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Just let me know when I need to pay attention to the game again. So the first season came out and it included a tower mode, which we were talking about what that would be called, if it's like Endless or if it's Horde.

LARRY HRYB: Describe what it is.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, so essentially it's a tower, and at the first level you enter without any items. You lose all of your armor, your level, and then you defeat all the monsters on that level. And then you start to gain some items, gain some health, and then it progressively gets harder and harder, but you get more items and gear as you go along. Oh, right, sorry. Oh, am I this one now?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: They were not fresh batteries in these controllers.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Ah, I see.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You got some?

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. By the way, we tested all of this before we started the stream and that's what happens.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. But so the tower gets harder as you go on, but that's why it's a really fun mode for someone who either hasn't played this game before, isn't a super experienced gamer. You don't have to worry about one person's difficulty wavering the experience for someone else.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Let's jump in. That's it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I am P1 now?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: You are P1.

REBECCA GORDIUS: All right, so what we're looking at here is--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh look, we're matching.

REBECCA GORDIUS: --the camp in Minecraft Dungeons and then if you go over here to mission select, it's the map. So this is the map for Minecraft Dungeons for those of you who haven't played. These are all the different levels. I think it starts either at Soggy Swamp or Squid-- I think Squid Coast is the first one. So you need to defeat that first level in order to go and play the tower just because it's really kind of the tutorial level. You learn the basics around how to move, all of these things. And then from there as you continue to play, you can unlock more and more levels, get more gear.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And there's tons of areas now.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Where you look at the top, you've got the island. There's so many levels.

LARRY HRYB: Have you played this, Scott?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This is not even the entire map.

SCOTT WEBER: I have. This is new to me. I think I fall into that group. I was obsessed with it when it came out, and then I made my way through it but so much new content.

LARRY HRYB: You're in the tower now. This is Rebecca playing. Rebecca works on the Minecraft product.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: She's using the daggers. That's--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, true. Oh my gosh.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh my God. Oh, you don't have anything equipped?

REBECCA GORDIUS: I know.

LARRY HRYB: Wow, look at that health go down.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This is--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Sorry, I'm not doing very well.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Because you start at level one. It's-- Oh, you have nothing.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK. OK.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That is challenging.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK, this is not going well.

LARRY HRYB: Exit, exit, exit.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: No, no, she's got it. Yes. Have some faith, Larry.

LARRY HRYB: Look at that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK, I'm a little out of practice.

LARRY HRYB: Good recover.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Back against the wall.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So one of the features with Luminous Night is the tower looks different now. So the tower has this-- now that it's calm, I'm going to walk around.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: The tower has these luminescent accents to it. It's a little bit spookier, a little bit darker. God, I can only imagine what's waiting for me on the second floor though. How about Jeff gives the tower a shot? Maybe it'll go a little bit better.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I don't know about that.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Here you go.

LARRY HRYB: Oh, wow.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Now I'm going to die because I saw what was ahead. All right, so you start with nothing.

REBECCA GORDIUS: You start with nothing. You have arrows, a bow and arrow, and then you also have, I think, a dagger.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: OK. Well, it looks like I've got a bigger weapon, which will hopefully be-- Oh, you've already cleaned the first level. Easy, it was a breeze--

LARRY HRYB: Wow.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --level one. Couldn't be easier.

LARRY HRYB: GG.

REBECCA GORDIUS: So I got some rewards for completing the first level, so you can equip some better things instead of just starting out with very--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So I can get better health.

LARRY HRYB: So this just keeps going.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes and with the second season, there's also the adventure pass, so you can get different emotes and content. Like you can get a pet.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Spiders.

REBECCA GORDIUS: The pet and these things won't follow you to the tower obviously--

LARRY HRYB: Sure.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Because you start at square one. But the pets are really cute. So one of them in particular that we just introduced is called the Wildfire.

LARRY HRYB: And what is that?

REBECCA GORDIUS: So it's-- I don't even-- it doesn't have an animal that resembles it in real life. But it kind of looks a triangle with a head and-- but the point I wanted to make, though, is that the Minecraft team does a broadcast every year called Minecraft Live. It's in the fall. It's where we share what's coming up with the franchise,

LARRY HRYB: Sure.

REBECCA GORDIUS: --Minecraft and Minecraft Dungeons.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: These are good.

REBECCA GORDIUS: One of the things we do during that broadcast is we introduce three new mobs.

LARRY HRYB: To vote.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Right and then during the show, we let the community vote and then at the end the winner will get implemented into the game within the next couple of years. But there are always two losing votes.

LARRY HRYB: Right, two non-winning.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, sorry.

LARRY HRYB: We don't lose. We just don't win.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Two non-winners.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah and we try not to let those go to waste because the team spends a lot of time thinking about what kind of utility these could add and so--

LARRY HRYB: So the voting is really about priority.

REBECCA GORDIUS: A little bit, yeah. But so the cool thing is because the voting is for a mob that will come into the main game Minecraft itself.

LARRY HRYB: Sure.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But so we found ways to bring it into other aspects of Mojang Studios products, so like with this one we are repurposing the Wildfire to be an enemy in Minecraft Dungeons.

LARRY HRYB: Makes sense.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But it's a cool nod to the community, like, hey, we didn't forget about this one.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah. Hey, look over there.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: We found a home for it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, basically.

LARRY HRYB: Jeff's doing a great job. You're watching Minecraft Dungeons, tuned in with the Xbox podcast. Excited to see everybody this week. We've got a--

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Go, go, go.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I actually realized I think that this is around the time I joined the podcast last year. So it's--

LARRY HRYB: Oh, has it been a year?

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's been a year already, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Wow. Congratulations.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Wait, what's going on?

LARRY HRYB: Yes.

REBECCA GORDIUS: OK. Someone --

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What's going on here? I-- yeah.

REBECCA GORDIUS: All right. Well, it was a nice effort.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: There we go.

LARRY HRYB: Wow.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, we're signed as somebody else. I think what happened.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, that makes sense.

LARRY HRYB: But anyway, you've been on the podcast for a year and are you enjoying it?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah. I feel like I had a lot of technical difficulties and just getting comfortable like talking and all of these things to get used to, but overall, it's been a really nice year.

LARRY HRYB: It's been great having you.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I've gotten to know you guys a lot better and it's given me an excuse to play more games.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And we get real-time feedback from your mom.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I know. I think she's watching live at home, so hi, mom.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: OK, hi, mom. Hi, mom.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I got some great feedback on my nose ring this week from her, so--

LARRY HRYB: Oh, that's-- did you notice that?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah, I got my nose pierced.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I noticed.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Mom loves it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Moms do. They tend to love those things.

REBECCA GORDIUS: But it's been a really nice year of podcasting with you guys, so thanks for having me on the show, and it's nice to be here in person with you.

LARRY HRYB: Everyone's got some nice notes in the chat as well, so thank you for that. Minecraft Dungeons now available on Xbox Game Pass. We talked about Game Pass today. We talked about all those amazing controllers that Scott brought by. Scott, we've had you on the show a couple of times already, so it's--

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: People love hardware.

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah, I think this is four or five, maybe.

LARRY HRYB: Yeah that's right because we had on before--

SCOTT WEBER: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: --COVID in the studio.

SCOTT WEBER: In the old studio, yeah.

LARRY HRYB: In the old studio, right. Totally forgot about that. We're going to have to wrap it up in just a minute, so we should probably-- if you guys want to-- do we have the winner? Oh, touch my dog apparently.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Touch my dog.

LARRY HRYB: Touch my dog.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Excuse me? What?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Don't touch anyone else's dog.

LARRY HRYB: Touch my dog, congratulations. We're going to get this amazing out-- Jeff, would you autograph it or should you autograph it?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I should not. I should leave it alone.

REBECCA GORDIUS: It will take the value down.

LARRY HRYB: It will actually go down in value if Jeff autographs it.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's exactly how it works. It will never have been more worthless, but the fact that I did beat Malenia is a stain on really everybody.

REBECCA GORDIUS: It's like, well, I'm watching you now. I'm like, did you really beat Malenia? Because I'm seeing you on floor one and--

LARRY HRYB: Wow.

REBECCA GORDIUS: I have no room to talk.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: The betrayal. The betrayal--

REBECCA GORDIUS: I know. I'm sorry.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --is real.

LARRY HRYB: I'll let you all battle that one out, but I want to just remind folks, if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to like and subscribe, the standard drill there. Spotify, love having you over there on Spotify. You know, it's interesting. We've been on Spotify with video for about six months now, probably about five months. They now have Spotify podcasts on video for everybody.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Oh, wow.

LARRY HRYB: You should get your podcasts on video.

SCOTT WEBER: Seriously? I don't know if anybody wants to see me.

LARRY HRYB: That's why you're here.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Nobody wants to see us either.

LARRY HRYB: As long as you show up with controllers, everything's fine.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

SCOTT WEBER: We'll do a crossover episode.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: Anyway, but, Scott, thank you for joining us. It's always great to see you. Jeff, thanks for coming in. Rebecca, welcome back to the West Coast for now. You're headed back to New York when?

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yes, couple more days.

LARRY HRYB: A couple more days. So floor one clear.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: This is good. This is going to be my new meeting game--

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: --when I'm not really tuned in because usually there's so much in the main game. And I do love the main game. There's a ton of exploration and you have to think a lot, but this, it's just clearing out relatively small areas. I really like it.

REBECCA GORDIUS: Yeah.

LARRY HRYB: We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for all the support in the chat, and we will see you next time. Bye-bye, everybody.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Bye.

[XBOX SOUND]