00:00SPEAKER- Okay, you're down to mere minutes.
00:01SPEAKERYou're down to one podcast length, I suppose, give or take.
00:06SPEAKER- By my math, it's about 47 minutes.
00:08SPEAKER- We might have to go a little longer.
00:10SPEAKER- Okay, okay, maybe an hour, at most 90, let's say that.
00:14SPEAKER- You are moments away from engaging "Goblin Mode."
00:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, look, I'm gonna go take a,
00:21SPEAKERthis is the role I was born to play, Brad.
00:24SPEAKER- How was your preparation going?
00:25SPEAKERI mean, we're here, like there's no prep left to do,
00:28SPEAKEReverything's in place, so maybe you can,
00:30SPEAKERmaybe you can let us in on, you know,
00:31SPEAKERlike how'd you stock the fridge,
00:32SPEAKERor did you set up a kiddie pool in the living room,
00:36SPEAKERor I don't know.
00:37SPEAKER- I hard boiled a bunch of eggs.
00:39SPEAKERNo, no, no, I'm kidding, kidding, kidding.
00:41SPEAKERI picked up some groceries the other day, nothing to,
00:46SPEAKERlike I do have a pack of hot dogs in there,
00:48SPEAKERI'm not gonna, I cracked into my first hot dog
00:50SPEAKERof 2023 earlier today for lunch.
00:52SPEAKER- Okay, is that a standard eight wiener?
00:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm a blue Applegate Farms.
00:57SPEAKERI like the salted, the uncured hot dog, it's delicious.
01:02SPEAKER- Do you anticipate getting through all eight this week?
01:05SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, I don't know that my heart
01:09SPEAKERcould take all eight of those in one weekend.
01:11SPEAKER- Okay, just trying to, I'm trying to gauge
01:13SPEAKERthe level of moral degradation that is about to take place.
01:16SPEAKER- I mean, look, I went, last night I was like,
01:18SPEAKERoh man, we don't have any ice cream in the house.
01:20SPEAKERI saw my way home, I stopped at the grocery store
01:22SPEAKERand got a tub of ice cream, and I thought about getting two,
01:24SPEAKERjust 'cause I couldn't decide on flavors,
01:27SPEAKERbut I ended up with just one, 'cause I was like,
01:29SPEAKERI'm not old enough to have two tubs of ice cream
01:31SPEAKERto go through in a weekend.
01:32SPEAKER- Okay, here's something, have you ever done,
01:35SPEAKERhave you ever, I assume you own an air mattress
01:38SPEAKERfor guests and stuff. - Yes.
01:40SPEAKER- Have you ever just blown up the air mattress
01:41SPEAKERin front of the TV, just like moved the coffee table
01:43SPEAKERout of the way and just turned the entire living room floor
01:46SPEAKERin front of the TV into a bed?
01:48SPEAKER- We have done that, in fact, actually that was the setup
01:51SPEAKERlast night, 'cause the wife and kiddo are going camping,
01:54SPEAKERand we wanted to inflate the air mattress before they left
01:59SPEAKERto make sure that it hadn't developed leaks or whatever
02:01SPEAKERin the garage, so they would find that out here
02:04SPEAKERrather than in the campground away from civilization.
02:08SPEAKER- Okay, so that's going with them.
02:09SPEAKER- Yeah, so I don't have their, sadly, I do not have
02:11SPEAKERan air mattress here.
02:12SPEAKER- No lounging in front of the television then.
02:14SPEAKER- So right now, the TV, the couch is arrayed
02:20SPEAKERso that it's perpendicular to the TV,
02:23SPEAKERso I can get a full recline on and still be aimed at the TV,
02:28SPEAKERwhich I think is gonna become important 'cause the Zelda
02:31SPEAKERgame came out yesterday night at like nine o'clock.
02:34SPEAKER- The Zelda, the Zelda is out.
02:35SPEAKER- Yeah, the new Zelda.
02:37SPEAKER- Can I ask, I mean, speaking of moral degradation,
02:39SPEAKERhow do you intend to play that game?
02:42SPEAKER- So I have two switches charged and preloaded right now.
02:48SPEAKERGina got an OLED for her birthday a few years ago
02:52SPEAKERwhen it came out and 'cause she didn't have,
02:54SPEAKERshe wanted her own Animal Crossing island.
02:57SPEAKERAnd so normally kind of, it's a shit runs downhill situation
03:00SPEAKERin the house where I get the new thing and it runs downhill,
03:02SPEAKERbut we made the choice to get her the OLED that year.
03:06SPEAKERSo I put it on her OLED.
03:08SPEAKERI'm gonna play it on some OLED.
03:11SPEAKERI'm gonna go tell you, I have Yuzu.
03:14SPEAKERI have Yuzu'd things in the past.
03:16SPEAKER- Okay.
03:17SPEAKER- 'Cause it's pretty easy to pull the file off of your switch
03:20SPEAKERto do the thing with my launch switch
03:23SPEAKERand pull the file off and grab the save files.
03:25SPEAKERI don't know if I want to spend that much time
03:28SPEAKERfucking around with something
03:29SPEAKERinstead of actually just playing the game.
03:31SPEAKER- Sure, I mean, your time is limited.
03:33SPEAKERThat's kind of where I'm at right now.
03:35SPEAKERLike looking at 33 step tutorials going,
03:38SPEAKERhow do I want to enjoy this game?
03:40SPEAKERMaybe I'll just play it in its default state, I don't know.
03:43SPEAKER- If I could go to Best Buy and buy a Switch Pro
03:46SPEAKERthat ran at 60 frames a second or didn't frame sag
03:50SPEAKERor whatever, I'm sure that I haven't even,
03:52SPEAKERI am so dark on Tears of the Kingdom
03:56SPEAKERthat I haven't even looked at a digital,
03:59SPEAKERlike a hey, how does this game run report yet?
04:02SPEAKERI want to know nothing about it.
04:04SPEAKERI know that Zelda and Link are in it.
04:06SPEAKERThat's all I got.
04:08SPEAKERI don't even think I watched the last trailer.
04:10SPEAKERSo, you know, if performance is real bad,
04:14SPEAKERmaybe I'll reevaluate my choices.
04:16SPEAKER- Fair, yeah.
04:17SPEAKERI mean, you have to make good use of your time.
04:19SPEAKERClock is about to be ticking.
04:20SPEAKER- Well, but the question is what,
04:21SPEAKERwhat's like, I'm going to do takeout one night, right?
04:25SPEAKER'Cause I have stuff to make dinner tonight
04:26SPEAKERand I'll probably do takeout tomorrow.
04:27SPEAKERI was thinking about getting some like Korean,
04:30SPEAKERKorean chicken wings maybe.
04:31SPEAKER- Sure.
04:32SPEAKER- I got to go in for something that like
04:34SPEAKERthe rest of the fam usually isn't down for, right?
04:37SPEAKERSo like pizza, fried chicken, you know,
04:40SPEAKERdude, like a bucket of Taco Bell,
04:43SPEAKERall of that's in the normal shit my family will eat.
04:47SPEAKERI needed to go to something like,
04:48SPEAKERI was thinking maybe some pho and like,
04:51SPEAKERI don't know where I'm, I don't know where I should go.
04:54SPEAKERI don't know what my goblin mode takeout meal is.
04:58SPEAKER- That's quite a conundrum.
04:59SPEAKER- I got a bucket, I got a box full of Captain Crunch here.
05:02SPEAKER- Okay.
05:03SPEAKERNothing like a little mouth laceration
05:05SPEAKERto kick the weekend off.
05:06SPEAKER- If your mouth doesn't have Captain Crunch calluses,
05:09SPEAKERI don't know what you're doing.
05:10SPEAKERYou're playing your games wrong.
05:11SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:39SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
05:41SPEAKERI'm Will.
05:42SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
05:43SPEAKER- Hello.
05:44SPEAKER- Hi, hello.
05:44SPEAKER- Hi, it's a podcast.
05:46SPEAKER- This week, yeah, we have a new thing.
05:48SPEAKERWe're doing a new thing.
05:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
05:49SPEAKER- We're going to rate every piece of software.
05:52SPEAKER- Uh-huh, go on.
05:53SPEAKER- And we're going to-
05:54SPEAKER- Okay, CorelDRAW.
05:56SPEAKER- Which version?
05:56SPEAKER- Versus Descent, okay.
05:59SPEAKER- Three or four, four was bad.
06:00SPEAKERThree was pretty good in my opinion.
06:02SPEAKER- Yeah, CorelDRAW three versus Descent.
06:03SPEAKER- No, no, we're not going to do this.
06:04SPEAKERPeople didn't like this.
06:05SPEAKERThis was, this was, this was an up and down topic.
06:08SPEAKER- Very divisive.
06:09SPEAKER- Are we ever going to finish that or is that just gone?
06:11SPEAKER- I think we're just not going to ever talk about it again.
06:13SPEAKER- Oh man, I had fun.
06:15SPEAKER- I, look, I enjoyed that conversation immensely,
06:18SPEAKERbut we didn't make very much progress on the topic.
06:21SPEAKERAnyway, this time we were talking a few weeks ago,
06:25SPEAKERyou and I were, about the things
06:28SPEAKERthat were kind of inflection points in an industry, right?
06:31SPEAKERLike the moments where before that time,
06:35SPEAKERthings were moving in one direction
06:36SPEAKERor maybe we thought things were going to look like
06:38SPEAKERa different way than they ended up.
06:39SPEAKERAnd then all of a sudden this thing came out
06:41SPEAKERand everything changed.
06:42SPEAKERAnd then the rest of the industry was racing to catch up.
06:44SPEAKERAnd it was like in this, in this world,
06:46SPEAKERit's like the iPod's a great example
06:48SPEAKERbecause there were MP3 players before the iPod.
06:51SPEAKERBut, and when you looked at the iPod,
06:54SPEAKERyou kind of initially thought,
06:55SPEAKERoh man, that's just a lot of marketing crap.
06:57SPEAKERIt's nothing different.
06:58SPEAKERAnd then you use an iPod and you're like,
06:59SPEAKERoh wow, I got to get one of these.
07:01SPEAKERAnd as a result, everybody else that was making MP3 players
07:04SPEAKERat the time suddenly either shifted
07:06SPEAKERto like a kind of different market niche
07:08SPEAKERor they just disappeared.
07:11SPEAKERSo we want to talk about these both
07:13SPEAKERfrom a what it was like at the time perspective, right?
07:16SPEAKERCause there was, there was definitely,
07:18SPEAKERthere's definitely a vibes about the moments before
07:22SPEAKERand the moments immediately following
07:24SPEAKERand then the kind of longer term bits.
07:27SPEAKERBut then there's also, it's nice to go back now
07:30SPEAKERcause there's historical perspective
07:31SPEAKERand we know what was actually right and wrong
07:33SPEAKERabout a lot of this stuff and especially the stuff
07:35SPEAKERin the like early, mid 2000s, even early 2010s now.
07:38SPEAKERSo.
07:39SPEAKER- Yep.
07:40SPEAKERAnd I mean, we'll see how this evolves over time.
07:42SPEAKERBut I mean, we've even thought about products as trivial,
07:47SPEAKERis trivial the right word here,
07:49SPEAKERas minor as like the Microsoft Intellimouse, for example.
07:52SPEAKER- Yeah.
07:53SPEAKER- It doesn't have to be some world shaking,
07:56SPEAKERlike industry redefining thing necessarily,
07:58SPEAKERor you know, in mice that kind of was,
08:00SPEAKERbut it's not quite on the level of the iPod,
08:02SPEAKERbut it was still, I definitely looked at mice
08:04SPEAKERvery differently before and after that Intellimouse.
08:07SPEAKER- I would argue that the Intellimouse
08:08SPEAKERprobably birthed an entire, like it,
08:11SPEAKERit was the beginning of mouse as a specialized input device,
08:16SPEAKERrather than a general purpose input device
08:17SPEAKERwhere everybody had the same mouse.
08:19SPEAKER- Much like most of the rest of the PC industry,
08:21SPEAKERit felt like the period, or it felt like the point
08:23SPEAKERwhere mice stopped wearing khakis.
08:25SPEAKER- Yeah, kind of, but it, well.
08:29SPEAKER- It was the point when the computer went
08:30SPEAKERfrom the thing you did your spreadsheets on
08:31SPEAKERto, you know.
08:34SPEAKER- I mean, I guess there's two ways to look at that.
08:35SPEAKEROne is that it's the one where the capitalism
08:37SPEAKERreally took hold of the mouse.
08:38SPEAKERYou know, it's the Oreo, Oreos with Pop Rocks embedded.
08:45SPEAKER- Wait, what?
08:45SPEAKER- Have you ever had the fireworks Oreos?
08:47SPEAKER- Is that a thing?
08:48SPEAKER- Pop Rocks in the Oreo cream, yeah.
08:51SPEAKER- Fireworks Oreos?
08:52SPEAKER- I'm gonna tell you, I often like to use it
08:54SPEAKERas a perfect example of late stage capitalism,
08:57SPEAKERbut also they're very good, so fuck me, right?
09:00SPEAKER- Oh, this is horrifying.
09:02SPEAKERFirework Oreo with popping candy, says this package.
09:05SPEAKEROkay, no, thank you.
09:06SPEAKER- So you should try them, they're delicious, so.
09:08SPEAKER- Nothing against Pop Rocks, but anyway.
09:10SPEAKER- Anyway, the point is historically important,
09:14SPEAKERcaused a shift in the industry,
09:17SPEAKERhopefully have some historical perspective.
09:20SPEAKERAnd we're gonna do the first one today.
09:22SPEAKERWe've been researching for a bit.
09:24SPEAKERI don't know about you, Brad,
09:25SPEAKERbut I've watched a lot of videos
09:26SPEAKERof men wearing hoodies and sport coats.
09:31SPEAKER- As was the style at the time.
09:33SPEAKER- Yep, all of my rings have turned red.
09:36SPEAKER- Uh-huh, well, three out of four of them have.
09:38SPEAKER- Well, sometimes four, though, too.
09:39SPEAKERIt depends on the type of, if you unplug that AV cable,
09:42SPEAKERyou get all four, and that was a, anyway.
09:44SPEAKERWe're talking about the Xbox 360.
09:46SPEAKER- Yes, yes, a console that, I mean, I would argue,
09:52SPEAKERessentially defined video game consoles from then on.
09:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's fair.
09:57SPEAKER- Pretty much everything that has come out since
09:59SPEAKERhas been made in the image of that thing.
10:02SPEAKERDespite, I think, I need to double check,
10:05SPEAKERprobably globally in the final analysis
10:07SPEAKERbeing the number three console of the generation.
10:11SPEAKER- That is a thing we probably should have looked up.
10:13SPEAKERI didn't actually do the research on that bit.
10:15SPEAKER- I can answer that in the next seconds
10:17SPEAKERas we continue to talk.
10:18SPEAKER- But the point, the thing about it is
10:21SPEAKERI think it defined the modern internet-connected console.
10:24SPEAKER- Yes, not just interconnected, but social as well.
10:28SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I mean-
10:29SPEAKER- I guess those go hand in hand, to be fair.
10:31SPEAKER- Well, they didn't have to, 'cause the PS2, the Dreamcast,
10:34SPEAKERthe Xbox, original Xbox, all were internet-connected,
10:38SPEAKERbut they didn't have that social component.
10:40SPEAKERI guess even the GameCube had a modem, right?
10:43SPEAKERYou could jam a thing on there?
10:45SPEAKER- Yes, it was add-on, as was the PS2 at that time.
10:50SPEAKERThey both had modems.
10:51SPEAKERThe PS2 also had an ethernet adapter eventually.
10:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:55SPEAKER- I don't think the GameCube did,
10:56SPEAKERbut obviously the original Xbox-
10:57SPEAKER- Dreamcast, you could plug an ethernet cable in eventually,
10:59SPEAKERright?
11:00SPEAKER- Yes, there was a broadband adapter for the Dreamcast,
11:02SPEAKERbut I mean, that lasted for about eight minutes,
11:04SPEAKERjust like the rest of the Dreamcast.
11:06SPEAKER- But I mean, the point is,
11:07SPEAKERit took the idea of a network-connected console,
11:12SPEAKERsomething, and instead of just saying,
11:13SPEAKER"Hey, you can play multiplayer games on this,"
11:15SPEAKERthey took the next step,
11:16SPEAKERand they looked at what was happening
11:17SPEAKERwith the early social networks
11:19SPEAKERleading up to the 2005 launch of the console,
11:22SPEAKERand built everything around that
11:26SPEAKERin a way that I don't think anybody else,
11:28SPEAKERlike, I don't think Sony and Nintendo
11:31SPEAKERwould have ever gotten to,
11:33SPEAKERor would have taken much, much longer to get to
11:35SPEAKERwithout Microsoft saying,
11:36SPEAKER"Hey, look, the ability to play games with your friends
11:39SPEAKER"and to be participating in an ecosystem
11:41SPEAKER"across multiplayer and single-player games
11:44SPEAKER"is something that people want."
11:47SPEAKERAnd they were absolutely right.
11:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, as somebody who tried to set up online stuff
11:51SPEAKERfor PS2 games and looking at what the onboarding
11:54SPEAKERand the setup network configuration process was like
11:57SPEAKERfor games on the PS2,
12:00SPEAKERthey never would have gotten to where they're at now
12:01SPEAKERwithout the 360 coming in and saying,
12:03SPEAKER"Hey, that should all just work at the platform level,"
12:05SPEAKERwhich is a big part of what we're going to heap praise on
12:08SPEAKERhere, I think, is things working at the platform level.
12:10SPEAKERI will say, real fast, 360, indeed,
12:13SPEAKERnarrowly the number three console of that generation.
12:16SPEAKER- And that's even counting that everybody had to buy
12:17SPEAKERlike three or four of them.
12:19SPEAKER- Yes, indeed.
12:21SPEAKERJust barely buy single-digit millions behind the PS3,
12:26SPEAKERobviously way out in front,
12:27SPEAKERbut of those three, easily the most lastingly
12:30SPEAKERinfluential console of the three.
12:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.
12:35SPEAKERSo yeah, the platform level features,
12:37SPEAKERwe're going to talk about,
12:38SPEAKERlet's talk about why it was special first,
12:40SPEAKERand then we'll get into the backstory on how they made it
12:42SPEAKERand marketing and all that stuff.
12:45SPEAKERBut the platform level features a big deal.
12:47SPEAKERThe main thing is you started with the gamertag,
12:49SPEAKERwhich was a whole platform user ID
12:55SPEAKERthat tied all your other stuff.
12:56SPEAKERSo previously, I remember seeing people play
13:00SPEAKERTony Hawk Pro Skater 3 on the PlayStation 2,
13:04SPEAKERand it was almost like you were using GameSpy
13:06SPEAKERor some other PC lobby search thing.
13:11SPEAKERYour user accounts were not tied
13:13SPEAKERto the platform necessarily,
13:14SPEAKERso you had to create a new account for each game,
13:16SPEAKERand it was fraught.
13:20SPEAKERThe original Xbox had a little bit of this stuff,
13:23SPEAKERlike it had the hints, the kind of beginnings
13:26SPEAKERof a lot of this stuff, including gamertags.
13:28SPEAKER- So did you use Xbox Live on the original Xbox?
13:31SPEAKER'Cause that's like a huge blind spot for me.
13:32SPEAKERI actually never had an Xbox account.
13:34SPEAKERI never really got online with that thing.
13:38SPEAKERI must've plugged it into an ethernet cable,
13:39SPEAKERI guess, at some point,
13:40SPEAKERbut I never signed up for Xbox Live
13:42SPEAKERand experienced whatever proto-online was with the Xbox.
13:46SPEAKERSo if you could speak to that,
13:47SPEAKERI'm actually curious to talk about it.
13:49SPEAKER- So yeah, I played Links a lot with some friends.
13:52SPEAKERI had a regular Tuesday night,
13:54SPEAKERwe're gonna play video game golf
13:56SPEAKERon the internet with each other.
13:57SPEAKERAnd it had a lot of the stuff that came to the Xbox 360.
14:01SPEAKERYou had voice that you could talk to each other
14:03SPEAKERwith headsets on, and you had a gamertag that you shared,
14:06SPEAKERand that was the way you made friends inside Links.
14:10SPEAKERLinks was a first-party game, I think, by that point,
14:13SPEAKERand I think Microsoft had bought them by them.
14:14SPEAKERI can't remember. - That sounds right.
14:16SPEAKERSounds like the kind of game Microsoft would buy.
14:18SPEAKER- Yeah, and then never do anything with again,
14:20SPEAKER'cause why would we not need more good golf games,
14:23SPEAKERbut what do I care?
14:25SPEAKERBut yeah, but those friends lists were inside the apps,
14:29SPEAKERso you didn't have a way on the Xbox, the original Xbox,
14:33SPEAKERat least at the times I was playing it,
14:34SPEAKERthat I recall, to look in and see what your friends
14:40SPEAKERwho weren't playing that game were doing, right?
14:42SPEAKER- That was like quietly kind of the coolest thing
14:46SPEAKERabout the Xbox 360 when it came out to me
14:48SPEAKERwas what they called rich presence,
14:51SPEAKERwhich I know people who are Giant Bomb listeners
14:54SPEAKERhave heard us talk about that phrase many times,
14:56SPEAKER'cause it's kind of silly and very Microsoft,
14:59SPEAKERbut it was literally just the flavor text of,
15:02SPEAKERlike, it was cool enough, you could see what people,
15:04SPEAKERwhat game people were playing, but the fact that they,
15:06SPEAKERthat there was some kind of API or some sort of system
15:08SPEAKERwhere the game would actually tell you
15:10SPEAKERwhat they were doing in that game.
15:12SPEAKER- It was like, hey, he's in chapter three of Dead Rising
15:14SPEAKERor whatever. - Right, yes.
15:15SPEAKERSlaughtering zombies and blah, yeah, whatever.
15:17SPEAKER- Yeah, the eighth hole of Pebble Beach.
15:25SPEAKER- Pebble Beach?
15:26SPEAKER- Pebble Beach, that's a golf course.
15:28SPEAKERYeah, the other thing is the voice and all that stuff
15:32SPEAKERwas limited to one, like you couldn't,
15:35SPEAKERif your friend, there was no way to do cross-game planning
15:40SPEAKERon the original Xbox,
15:41SPEAKERso if you wanted to say, if you like,
15:43SPEAKERI saw you were online and you were playing,
15:45SPEAKERI don't know, MechAssault or MechWarrior,
15:48SPEAKERsome game that I wasn't playing,
15:49SPEAKERthere was no way for me to connect to you
15:52SPEAKERand have a conversation about,
15:53SPEAKERhey, let's go play a game together, what do you have,
15:56SPEAKERand have that kind of conversation.
15:58SPEAKER- Interesting, so I'd, huh, if you had asked me,
16:01SPEAKERif I'd had a guess, I would have thought
16:02SPEAKERthey would have had kind of a platform-level voice chat
16:06SPEAKERon the original. - I think they had text chat,
16:07SPEAKERbut you had to do it with the gamepad
16:09SPEAKERand you know how that, it's not great.
16:11SPEAKER- Yes.
16:13SPEAKER- So yeah, and then stuff like patching,
16:15SPEAKERand there were some games that patched,
16:17SPEAKERbut it wasn't, it definitely wasn't universal.
16:20SPEAKERThere was some DLC stuff, but it wasn't,
16:22SPEAKERit was, you had to almost always access it
16:24SPEAKERfrom inside the game, so there wasn't like a store
16:27SPEAKERon the platform until way, way late.
16:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I actually kind of want to look up a list
16:33SPEAKERif I can find one of original Xbox games that had DLC.
16:36SPEAKER- So like Halo was one of them, Halo 2.
16:39SPEAKER- Halo 2, right, but if I had had to guess,
16:41SPEAKERanother thing where if I'd had to guess,
16:42SPEAKERI would have said like, oh, there was no DLC on that.
16:44SPEAKERIt was like, you could do online games,
16:46SPEAKERbut surely they weren't selling content,
16:47SPEAKERbut I guess they were.
16:48SPEAKER- I don't believe they sold a whole lot of content,
16:51SPEAKER'cause it was, the horse armor was Oblivion, right?
16:55SPEAKER- Yeah, well, that was on the 360, though.
16:56SPEAKER- That was a 360 game, yeah.
16:57SPEAKER- We'll get to that for sure.
16:59SPEAKER- But I mean, I guess my point is,
17:02SPEAKERso the other thing that's worth mentioning,
17:04SPEAKERmy Xbox, I went in to try to plug it in
17:06SPEAKERto see what I can experience with this.
17:10SPEAKERI think it's let loose the mortal coil.
17:11SPEAKER- Oh no, have you opened it up?
17:13SPEAKER- I haven't opened it up yet.
17:14SPEAKERIt's impossible to search for original Xbox stuff.
17:18SPEAKER- It really is.
17:19SPEAKER- Because of the stupid Xbox One name
17:21SPEAKERfor the third generation Xbox.
17:23SPEAKER- That just didn't heap another reason on the pile
17:26SPEAKERto despise the Xbox One.
17:27SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, okay.
17:29SPEAKER- I'm in the middle of that process right now.
17:30SPEAKERI typically will just type an original Xbox.
17:33SPEAKER- Yeah, or Xbox first generation is sometimes good,
17:36SPEAKERbut I couldn't find, I was looking for videos
17:39SPEAKERof people going through the menus and you can't find,
17:40SPEAKERthey're just impossible to find.
17:42SPEAKER- Yes, it's hard, it's very hard, anyway.
17:46SPEAKER- It's possible it's the power supply
17:48SPEAKERand not the capacitors, leaky capacitors.
17:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know how widespread it actually is
17:54SPEAKERfor that capacitor to kill boards.
17:56SPEAKERObviously, it's not great to have the contents
17:58SPEAKERof that thing leaking out onto the PCB,
18:00SPEAKERbut I haven't actually seen a lot of people
18:01SPEAKERwho have confirmed that it killed their system.
18:04SPEAKER- Well, the other thing is I didn't hear
18:05SPEAKERa hard drive spin up when I plugged it in,
18:07SPEAKERso it could just be that the bearings
18:08SPEAKERin the hard drive are frozen
18:09SPEAKERand that's a relatively easy problem to fix.
18:11SPEAKERAnyway.
18:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I think there's weird stuff around,
18:14SPEAKERlike, you know, there's some encryption on the drive
18:17SPEAKERthat they used or, you know,
18:17SPEAKERyou just gotta be blessed in some way.
18:18SPEAKER- I'm sure that's a solved problem at this point.
18:20SPEAKER- And it definitely is, but I'm sure it probably won't boot
18:23SPEAKERif it can't read the hard drive.
18:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, I literally dug out the old Xbox
18:29SPEAKERto see if I could go see what of this stuff still works
18:32SPEAKERand what this experience was,
18:33SPEAKERand it sadly did not cooperate.
18:37SPEAKER- Well, it's all gone also.
18:38SPEAKERThey shut down that version of Xbox Live years and years ago.
18:40SPEAKER- But I'd still be willing to load the game
18:42SPEAKERand see where the friends menus and stuff are.
18:44SPEAKER- Anyway, you could at least look at the software.
18:47SPEAKER- So yeah, platform level stuff,
18:48SPEAKERand attached to the gamertag stuff like achievements, right?
18:51SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, like if you would just want to get
18:54SPEAKERinto the list of things this thing kind of debuted
18:56SPEAKERor made better as a package,
18:58SPEAKERlike we could probably sit here
19:00SPEAKERfor the rest of the episode and talk about it.
19:01SPEAKERI mean, it's kind of crazy.
19:02SPEAKERIt's like achievements.
19:05SPEAKERYou know, people obviously have their feelings
19:06SPEAKERabout achievements at this point,
19:08SPEAKERbut they were mind-blowing,
19:09SPEAKERa mind-blowing concept at the time,
19:11SPEAKERif you set aside like the achievement hunting,
19:13SPEAKERlike people debasing themselves for more points
19:16SPEAKERand stuff like that.
19:17SPEAKER- Well, yeah, it gave you a thing to do
19:19SPEAKERthat was social with your friends
19:21SPEAKERthat worked in single-player games
19:24SPEAKERin addition to multiplayer games, right?
19:26SPEAKERLike gave you a way that could be competitive
19:30SPEAKERor comparative or whatever verb you want to use there.
19:33SPEAKERIt let you see what,
19:35SPEAKERit let you see how you kind of stacked up
19:38SPEAKERand where you were.
19:39SPEAKERAnd that, my problems personally with achievements aside,
19:44SPEAKERthat's a cool thing.
19:45SPEAKERAnd it gave you a reason,
19:47SPEAKERlike it was a reason to connect your thing to the internet,
19:49SPEAKEReven if you only played single-player games.
19:51SPEAKER- Sure, I mean, I've said it a million times,
19:52SPEAKERbut like really well-designed achievements
19:55SPEAKERare incredibly valuable in and of themselves
19:58SPEAKER'cause they expand the game, right?
19:59SPEAKERLike there were so many one-off objectives
20:02SPEAKERthat they could give you that would not have been surfaced
20:04SPEAKERin the core game design, you know?
20:05SPEAKERBut it's like, hey, land a jump off of some weird feature
20:08SPEAKERof this one map type thing, you know?
20:10SPEAKERLike that would never fit into like the quote unquote rules
20:12SPEAKERof the game they were making.
20:13SPEAKERBut like, because they had this meta objective system,
20:16SPEAKERthey could write all this other bizarre stuff
20:19SPEAKERinto the things you could be doing.
20:20SPEAKERAnd those became like the bragging rights were real there
20:23SPEAKERfor truly really difficult or rare achievements.
20:27SPEAKERPeople actually would go like, oh my God, you did that.
20:29SPEAKER- Well, and things like nudging players
20:31SPEAKERto find things that they might not find otherwise
20:34SPEAKERand weren't exposed, like that would be difficult
20:36SPEAKERto expose outside of the, inside the meta of the game.
20:40SPEAKERYou know, like I quite like,
20:46SPEAKERI think the intent behind achievements is really good
20:47SPEAKERand they got kind of weird for a while,
20:49SPEAKERbut they're kind of back to a nice place now
20:50SPEAKERit seems like overall.
20:51SPEAKER- Yeah, they really just, not even just on the Xbox,
20:54SPEAKERbut Steam, you know, PlayStation trophies,
20:56SPEAKERlike they're just kind of in the background these days.
20:58SPEAKERI just, I feel like people don't really talk about them
21:00SPEAKERor acknowledge them these days.
21:01SPEAKERThey're just sort of there.
21:03SPEAKER- What's just a thing, I mean, the one exception
21:05SPEAKERis the Platinum's on the PlayStation.
21:06SPEAKERPeople seem to be, I see tweets about that.
21:10SPEAKER- There's definitely still some bragging rights there.
21:13SPEAKERAnd the smartest, I've said it before,
21:15SPEAKERthe smartest games on the PlayStation will make it
21:17SPEAKERso that when you finish the game,
21:19SPEAKERyou're like three, four trophies away from the Platinum.
21:22SPEAKER- Oh yeah, the ratchet and click effect.
21:23SPEAKER- Yes, yes, like just to get you over the line,
21:26SPEAKERlike just kind of dangle that in front of people.
21:28SPEAKER- Just play a couple more hours, Brad.
21:30SPEAKER- Yeah, like honestly though, like booting up the 360
21:32SPEAKERand digging into it and seeing what was in there.
21:34SPEAKERI mean, it completely exploded my mind
21:36SPEAKERas far as what a console could be.
21:37SPEAKERAnd mostly because it felt more like a computer.
21:40SPEAKERAnd I don't mean that in like the,
21:42SPEAKERlike the boring khaki wearing negative sense, you know,
21:45SPEAKERbut more just like, oh my gosh, there's actual software.
21:48SPEAKERThere's like a real operating system running on here
21:50SPEAKERthat's tracking stuff.
21:52SPEAKERAnd the way that can tie into games at a global level
21:55SPEAKERis just kind of amazing, right?
21:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it was, the console became more than the thing
22:00SPEAKERthat you jammed the disc into and became the glue
22:03SPEAKERthat held all your games together.
22:04SPEAKER- Yeah, like I think we'd kind of been inching there.
22:07SPEAKERLike, I mean, I was similarly mind blown
22:09SPEAKERby the PlayStation 1's like memory cards,
22:12SPEAKERmanagement interface and CD player.
22:14SPEAKERYou know, it was like, what do you mean
22:16SPEAKERwhen you turn this thing on without a game in there,
22:18SPEAKERit still boots up and lets you do something.
22:19SPEAKERLike that's crazy.
22:21SPEAKERThere's an opera, but like, I don't know if that lived
22:23SPEAKERin like ROM or something like that was not some real OS.
22:27SPEAKER- It was just, it wasn't real OS.
22:29SPEAKERIt was just a really light, tiny little one, right?
22:31SPEAKER- Right, right.
22:32SPEAKERI mean, I should probably give some examples here.
22:34SPEAKERLike the stuff I'm talking about is like the fact
22:36SPEAKERthat you could set your inverted control preference
22:39SPEAKERat the system level and then just have every game respected.
22:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
22:43SPEAKER- Like that was just like, there were so many things
22:45SPEAKERon this console that were just like,
22:47SPEAKERwhen you saw that they had done them,
22:48SPEAKERyou would just like slap your forehead and go like,
22:50SPEAKERof course, of course, like why did nobody done that before?
22:52SPEAKERLike that's incredible.
22:54SPEAKER- It makes sense that Microsoft understood the value
22:57SPEAKERof setting defaults, right?
22:59SPEAKER'Cause they had, at this time they were five, six years off
23:03SPEAKERfrom the IE stuff and were like, they'd gotten in trouble
23:07SPEAKERfor abusing defaults and the fact
23:09SPEAKERthat people never changed defaults.
23:10SPEAKERAnd they were like, oh, what if we use this power
23:13SPEAKERof defaults for good and not evil?
23:15SPEAKERAnd by making the API require you to honor stuff like that
23:19SPEAKERand using their power as a platform holder for good,
23:22SPEAKERit meant that the game developers had to support their APIs.
23:25SPEAKERAnd it was stuff like cross-game voice.
23:29SPEAKERBut just voice as a system level feature, honestly,
23:31SPEAKERwas where it started and the cross-game party stuff
23:33SPEAKERcame fairly late, I think.
23:35SPEAKERIt was even maybe after the blades
23:36SPEAKERhad run their way out.
23:39SPEAKER- My memory is yeah, around the time they moved to the NXE,
23:41SPEAKERthe new Xbox experiences around when parties rolled out
23:45SPEAKERlike three years after launch.
23:46SPEAKER- I think there was a little bit of blades in parties
23:48SPEAKERand then the NXE came and that's when the party interface
23:50SPEAKERkind of got good, well, the rest of the interface got bad.
23:53SPEAKERBut the parties were a cross-game voice system.
24:00SPEAKERI wanna go back to having voice as a system level feature
24:03SPEAKER'cause it's hard to remember now in a world with Discord
24:06SPEAKERand even Nintendo has voice for their,
24:09SPEAKERI mean, it's bad and it uses phones.
24:13SPEAKERIt's not to be--
24:14SPEAKER- You're being very generous to Nintendo right now.
24:16SPEAKER- But I was working at a PC magazine
24:20SPEAKERand a lot of people that were on PC magazines
24:22SPEAKERwere stoked about playing Halo 2 on the Xbox 360
24:26SPEAKERbecause we could talk to each other while we were playing
24:29SPEAKERwithout having to fuck around with the team speaker
24:31SPEAKERor one of the other, Mumble
24:33SPEAKERor whatever the other servers were at the time.
24:35SPEAKER- Ventrilo. - Ventrilo, God.
24:36SPEAKERYeah, I guess Mumble wasn't around then.
24:39SPEAKER- Gotta hop on the vent, bro.
24:41SPEAKER- Yeah, but it was a nice, it was just,
24:45SPEAKERhey, all you have to do is plug in your headset
24:48SPEAKERand put on your head and it just works.
24:50SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
24:51SPEAKERI mean, really it was just the idea
24:52SPEAKERof cross-game everything, right?
24:53SPEAKERLike cross-game voice, cross-game invites.
24:56SPEAKERAnd even the way the messaging worked,
24:58SPEAKERlike contextual actions actually I think
25:00SPEAKERis what I'm really getting at here.
25:01SPEAKERLike the way that the notifications,
25:03SPEAKERI think they called them toasts.
25:04SPEAKER- Yeah, the toasts.
25:05SPEAKER- Like the fact that you could hit a guide button
25:07SPEAKERwhenever one of those was on the screen
25:08SPEAKERand it would activate whatever was relevant
25:10SPEAKERto that notification, right?
25:11SPEAKERLike that was, again, it sounds so simple
25:14SPEAKERand straightforward and duh at this point,
25:16SPEAKERbut like the fact that you could be playing a game,
25:18SPEAKERsomebody could send you an invite,
25:20SPEAKERyou could hit the guide button
25:21SPEAKERwhile the invite was on the screen
25:22SPEAKERand it would just launch the other game
25:23SPEAKERand take you right to their game.
25:25SPEAKER- You say that now and I'm thinking about it.
25:27SPEAKERIt's the first place I saw
25:28SPEAKERsystem-level notifications probably.
25:32SPEAKER- On a console? - On a device.
25:34SPEAKER- Oh, interesting. - 'Cause it was before phones.
25:36SPEAKER- Oh, of course.
25:37SPEAKERI hadn't even actually thought about that.
25:37SPEAKER- Remember, iOS didn't get system-level notifications
25:40SPEAKERuntil iOS 4 in like 2010.
25:42SPEAKERWindows Mobile had, you could have,
25:45SPEAKERlike an app could pop up a notification,
25:49SPEAKERbut it wasn't like a system UI thing
25:50SPEAKERand it wasn't, like the two parts of that were,
25:54SPEAKERhey, letting you know it's here
25:55SPEAKERand then giving you a call to action
25:56SPEAKERthat took you to the right place.
25:58SPEAKERPrior to this, the phone apps would do one of those,
26:01SPEAKERbut not the other usually.
26:02SPEAKER- Sure, and also, yeah, we should mention
26:04SPEAKERthe 360 came out in November of 2005
26:06SPEAKERand so like smartphones generally were relegated
26:09SPEAKERkind of the world of like business with Blackberries
26:11SPEAKERand stuff like that. - Yeah, it was like
26:12SPEAKERBlackberries and Windows Mobile and Palm phones
26:15SPEAKERand stuff like that. - Right, this is still
26:16SPEAKERa couple of years before the iPhone even debuted.
26:19SPEAKER- Yeah, so like a system-level notification thing,
26:23SPEAKERI don't think Windows had that at that point.
26:24SPEAKERI'd have to go back and look,
26:25SPEAKERbut it feels like that was a much later feature.
26:28SPEAKER- I mean, I guess 98% of the world
26:30SPEAKERwas still on XP at that point, right?
26:31SPEAKERWhy, Vista wasn't even out, right?
26:32SPEAKERVista wasn't out until 2006, I think, I can't remember.
26:36SPEAKER- Right.
26:37SPEAKER- But yeah, so like the ability to say,
26:40SPEAKERhey, to pop on and see you playing a game
26:43SPEAKERand say, hey, do you wanna come play Halo with me
26:44SPEAKERand hit the button and you get a message
26:46SPEAKERthat then brings you directly into my Halo game
26:48SPEAKERand puts us on voice together.
26:50SPEAKERAnd also because voice was a system-level feature,
26:53SPEAKERpeople who made games like Halo and ChromeHounds
26:55SPEAKERwere able to do crazy shit with voice.
26:57SPEAKERLike if you were standing next to somebody
26:59SPEAKERon the other team in Halo and you were talking,
27:01SPEAKERthen they would hear your half of your party comms
27:05SPEAKERbecause it was being broadcast
27:07SPEAKERin the physical space of the game.
27:09SPEAKERAnd like a kind of a privacy issue in retrospect.
27:13SPEAKER- Sure.
27:14SPEAKER- Really fucking cool, nonetheless.
27:16SPEAKER- That strikes me as like kind of the Ultima online style
27:21SPEAKERof like we haven't fully thought through
27:22SPEAKERthe social ramifications
27:23SPEAKERof what we're doing with this technology here.
27:25SPEAKERWe're just gonna let everything, like anything go here.
27:28SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's the UNO thing too.
27:30SPEAKERWhen they released the webcam for it, they were like,
27:32SPEAKERand all of a sudden there's people
27:33SPEAKERand you're seeing a lot of hog and cocaine mountains
27:36SPEAKERand all sorts of weird shit on playing UNO.
27:39SPEAKER- Yeah, like the camera is yet another example.
27:42SPEAKERI guess we'll get to it.
27:44SPEAKERThere's so many things to talk about here.
27:46SPEAKERI'm like having to restrain myself
27:47SPEAKERfrom just going off on eight tangents,
27:49SPEAKERbut like putting the headset in the box,
27:51SPEAKERmandating the headset in the box was like,
27:55SPEAKERwhoever thought of that, like that was a genius move
27:57SPEAKERof like, nobody's gonna use this voice feature
27:59SPEAKERunless everybody can use this voice feature.
28:01SPEAKERSo we have to enable that.
28:02SPEAKER- And it's also one of those situations where
28:05SPEAKERif they had said, oh man, this headset costs us 75 cents
28:09SPEAKEReach when we put them in the box,
28:11SPEAKERwe're gonna sell a billion of these things.
28:13SPEAKERWe can't spend that 75 cents for a billion headsets.
28:18SPEAKERNobody would have used them.
28:20SPEAKERSo yeah, so, okay.
28:21SPEAKERSo friends list, messaging, all the normal stuff
28:23SPEAKERfrom social networks, a huge, huge deal.
28:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so I would even say, I mean,
28:30SPEAKERit was platform level features, it was cross game features.
28:33SPEAKERAnd then there was also just mandating standards.
28:35SPEAKERAnd like, we already talked about some of that
28:37SPEAKERwith like being able to set preferences globally,
28:39SPEAKERbut there was even stuff like they mandated for a long time
28:43SPEAKERand this evolved over time,
28:44SPEAKERbut they mandated how big patches could be.
28:45SPEAKERThey mandated how updates had to roll out
28:48SPEAKERbecause broadband was still relatively new.
28:50SPEAKERAnd they had to make sure that nobody was gonna,
28:53SPEAKERnobody was going to launch a game
28:55SPEAKERand sit there for 30 minutes or 45 minutes waiting.
28:58SPEAKER- Well, that went out the window, huh?
28:59SPEAKER- I mean, yes, granted internet connections got faster.
29:03SPEAKERAnd I also, I think developers probably bristled
29:07SPEAKERpretty regularly at the patch limit early on or later.
29:11SPEAKER- They had size limits for patches.
29:13SPEAKERThey also had size limits for like the difference
29:15SPEAKERbetween downloadable, like downloadable games
29:16SPEAKERhad really small size limits in the beginning.
29:18SPEAKER- I think originally XBLA games
29:20SPEAKERwere limited like 50 megabytes.
29:22SPEAKER- Or 100 megabytes, so they put on memory cards, right?
29:25SPEAKER'Cause it was the hard drive was optional on the 360.
29:28SPEAKER- Right, but like, I'm sure there were all kinds
29:31SPEAKERof development headaches that went along
29:32SPEAKERwith these pretty onerous restrictions,
29:34SPEAKERbut on the end user side, especially somebody,
29:36SPEAKERlike I was covering games by the time the 360
29:38SPEAKERcame out professionally, you know?
29:39SPEAKERSo this was like a work tool as well as a video game console
29:43SPEAKERand like never having to wait for patches, you know,
29:46SPEAKERlike having that whole part of the experience
29:50SPEAKERthat streamlined was really meaningful.
29:52SPEAKERYou had to engage with it all the time.
29:56SPEAKERDownloadable games, since we're talking about patches, like.
30:00SPEAKER- There were downloadable games before, I think.
30:04SPEAKER- Yes.
30:05SPEAKER- But it was pretty limited and if I recall on the Xbox One,
30:08SPEAKERyou had to put a disk in to download the games.
30:11SPEAKER- I'm once again trying to search
30:14SPEAKERfor any downloadable games. - First generation
30:16SPEAKERdownloadable games, yeah.
30:18SPEAKER- It's such a nightmare.
30:20SPEAKERBut I mean, even if there were some downloadable games
30:23SPEAKERavailable, like the concept came into its own
30:26SPEAKERon the 360, inarguably.
30:28SPEAKER- Look, the first downloadable games were on
30:30SPEAKERfor the Nintendo DD in Japan in the '80s, we all know that.
30:33SPEAKERWe don't need to get into it.
30:35SPEAKERThe point of this is that like when stuff
30:42SPEAKERlike Summer of Arcade happened,
30:44SPEAKERit changed the conversation about an entire class of games
30:48SPEAKERand basically gave birth to like
30:51SPEAKERcommercially successful indie games.
30:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, even before that, even at launch,
30:56SPEAKERmaybe some would disagree, but I think Geometry Wars
30:59SPEAKERis genuinely one of the best games ever made.
31:00SPEAKER- It was the game I bought on Xbox 360 for.
31:02SPEAKER- Right, right.
31:03SPEAKERIt was the game I've spent all my time playing.
31:05SPEAKERI spent it, when I got my 360,
31:07SPEAKERI played at this $5 downloadable game
31:09SPEAKERmore than any of the big $50 disc games.
31:12SPEAKER- There was nothing else on the launch lineup
31:14SPEAKERthat I gave a shit about except for,
31:16SPEAKERI mean, Cameo was nice, I guess.
31:17SPEAKERBut like-- - I was like hexic
31:20SPEAKERand there were some other, actually some other XBLA games
31:22SPEAKERthat were cool, but like this is $5 game,
31:24SPEAKERthis $5 game that even then takes 60 seconds to download.
31:28SPEAKER- Yep. - You know?
31:30SPEAKERAnd is still one of the most enduring things
31:32SPEAKERon there, but yeah, like I think Summer of Arcade
31:35SPEAKERstarted in 2008, that was, if people don't remember,
31:37SPEAKERthat was a, it was really just a promotional event.
31:41SPEAKERIt was one game a week for X number of weeks
31:44SPEAKERevery summer for like five, six years in a row.
31:47SPEAKER- Yeah, right.
31:48SPEAKER- Where they essentially just put a lot of marketing muscle
31:50SPEAKERbehind the games that were chosen
31:51SPEAKERas the Summer of Arcade games,
31:53SPEAKERbut they were mostly all bangers.
31:55SPEAKER- The marketing muscle was that A,
31:57SPEAKERthey selected games that were bangers.
31:59SPEAKER- Yeah. - And B, they put 'em
32:00SPEAKERon the front page of the dashboard of that thing
32:03SPEAKER'cause they'd, by that point they'd made the dashboard
32:05SPEAKERof the Xbox a destination in and of itself.
32:09SPEAKER- Right. - So previously,
32:11SPEAKERlike you'd put the disc in the console,
32:13SPEAKERyou'd never see the OS, except for when you were
32:16SPEAKERchanging games or whatever.
32:17SPEAKERWith this, it was like, oh, even if I'm playing a disc game,
32:20SPEAKERI'm gonna probably go see what's in the dashboard
32:22SPEAKERin case like, 'cause Super Meat Boy is frickin' awesome
32:25SPEAKERand if there's a chance to have more Super Meat Boy,
32:27SPEAKERI'm gonna get more Super, I wanna play more Super Meat Boy
32:29SPEAKERor whatever the indie game was, so.
32:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I got to the point where I really looked forward
32:35SPEAKERto Summer of Arcade because I knew I was gonna play
32:37SPEAKERsome of the best games of the year there.
32:39SPEAKERI mean, Braid, Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2,
32:42SPEAKERShadow Complex, Explosion Man, Trials HD, Limbo, Bastion.
32:47SPEAKER- I forgot that Shadow Complex came out of that too.
32:51SPEAKER- Yeah, it was like some series, it was stacked for sure.
32:57SPEAKERAnd so, there's a conversation to be had that probably
33:00SPEAKERdoesn't live in here, but because they limited the number
33:02SPEAKERof slots that were available for games, period.
33:05SPEAKERIt wasn't like there was an infinite number of games.
33:06SPEAKERThere were maybe two indie games a week and one,
33:12SPEAKERthere weren't infinite downloadable games at that point.
33:15SPEAKERPartly because there weren't many people making
33:16SPEAKERdownloadable size scale games, but also partly
33:19SPEAKERbecause Microsoft really limited the number of games
33:21SPEAKERthat they allowed on the platform.
33:22SPEAKERSo if you got one of those slots, you had a pretty good
33:25SPEAKERchance of having a commercial success
33:27SPEAKERif you made something that was halfway decent.
33:30SPEAKER- I remember stories of developers having to sign up
33:34SPEAKERfor publishing deals with major publishers
33:35SPEAKERjust to get a slot, not because they necessarily needed
33:38SPEAKERthe publishing services, but because those big companies
33:40SPEAKERhad more inroads to publish more games.
33:43SPEAKER- Just to be clear, I don't think that this is a great
33:45SPEAKERsolution to the problem. - No, no, no, no.
33:48SPEAKERI would qualify it kind of the same way I did
33:49SPEAKERabout the limited patch sizes and stuff.
33:51SPEAKERI'm sure on the developer end it created no end of headaches.
33:59SPEAKER- We missed out a lot of good games because they couldn't
34:01SPEAKERget slots or they didn't want to deal with publishers
34:03SPEAKERor whatever. - Right.
34:04SPEAKER- But it was maybe the right solution for the time.
34:09SPEAKERI don't know, I don't know.
34:12SPEAKERBut yeah, the downloadable stuff, the backwards
34:15SPEAKERcompatibility was the other thing that was interesting.
34:17SPEAKERThey tied it to the hard drive because the original Xbox
34:19SPEAKERhad a hard drive and you had to have a hard drive
34:20SPEAKERto do the, to play the original Xbox games
34:23SPEAKER'cause some of them wrote insane amounts of data
34:24SPEAKERto the hard drive.
34:26SPEAKER- Yeah, there was also, I don't think this was ever
34:28SPEAKERconfirmed, but so the original Xbox had an NVIDIA GPU.
34:32SPEAKER- Oh, right. - And they moved to ATI.
34:34SPEAKER- Yeah. - They moved to ATI
34:35SPEAKERfor the 360 and forever after AMD slash ATI have made
34:41SPEAKERconsole GPUs pretty much. - What about that APU life?
34:44SPEAKER- It was always rumored that they kind of embedded
34:47SPEAKERthe licensing fee they had to pay to NVIDIA
34:50SPEAKERfor the backwards compatibility into the purchase
34:52SPEAKERof the hard drive. - That makes sense.
34:53SPEAKERI feel like the relationship with Microsoft and NVIDIA
34:56SPEAKERafter the first Xbox, maybe not great, I don't know.
35:02SPEAKERI always got that feeling.
35:05SPEAKER- NVIDIA never did a console again, except for the Switch.
35:09SPEAKERAnd I think that was kind of an accident
35:11SPEAKERbecause the Tegra already existed.
35:14SPEAKER- Well, they've also done those shield things,
35:16SPEAKERwhich are kind of console-y. - Yeah, but I mean,
35:18SPEAKERthey never did the graphics hardware
35:20SPEAKERfor another company's console. - Oh, no.
35:23SPEAKER- Except for the Switch, which again
35:24SPEAKERwas already an existing part. - Yeah.
35:27SPEAKER- I think they did the RSX and the PS3,
35:29SPEAKERbut that's kind of not the same thing.
35:32SPEAKER- Yeah, the other thing that, like on the hardware front,
35:36SPEAKERwe haven't talked about yet, is that the fact
35:38SPEAKERthat the controller was wireless.
35:39SPEAKER- Yes, yes, now I know, to be fair,
35:43SPEAKERI think that was only in the expensive,
35:44SPEAKERthe Pro SKU at launch, I believe the basic,
35:48SPEAKERthe Core, Xbox 360 Core, I think they called it,
35:50SPEAKERcame with a wired one. - Came with wired.
35:52SPEAKER- I believe. - I mean, but it still
35:54SPEAKERhad the hardware inside it to let you buy
35:56SPEAKERa $50 wireless controller and use it
35:58SPEAKERwith that upgraded SKU. - Yes, yes, yes.
36:01SPEAKERThey were happy to sell you more controllers
36:02SPEAKERif you wanted to get a wireless one for that basic system.
36:05SPEAKERAnd again, you could buy the hard drive separately
36:07SPEAKERand slap it on. - Yeah.
36:08SPEAKER- In fact, you could turn a Core into a Probe
36:10SPEAKERwith accessories, there was nothing fundamentally.
36:13SPEAKERI think the drive tray was not Chrome.
36:16SPEAKER- The drive tray was not Chrome on the Core, yeah.
36:18SPEAKER- The drive tray was just matte plastic.
36:20SPEAKER- It was sad, white plastic.
36:24SPEAKERThe wireless controller was a big deal
36:25SPEAKER'cause we'd had wireless controllers
36:26SPEAKERbefore the Wavebird on the GameCube.
36:29SPEAKER- I never owned a Wavebird,
36:31SPEAKERbut people like worshiped the Wavebird.
36:33SPEAKER- I have two of them, they're great.
36:34SPEAKERI still use them occasionally.
36:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
36:38SPEAKER- But the wireless controller just being a thing,
36:41SPEAKERit didn't have physical switches,
36:42SPEAKERyou just press the button, it would turn on the console.
36:44SPEAKERLike it felt like it was integrated with the console.
36:47SPEAKERAnd it had the headset plug on it still.
36:49SPEAKERSo you could get good high quality voice
36:51SPEAKERover that wireless link and the range on the radio
36:54SPEAKERand the wireless controller was insane.
36:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it was quite good.
36:58SPEAKERLike everything you're describing,
36:59SPEAKERagain, it's all such old hat at this point,
37:01SPEAKERbut when I put myself back in that time.
37:04SPEAKER- Yeah, these are the table stakes now, right?
37:06SPEAKER- Right, but thinking about just being tethered
37:08SPEAKERto the consoles I was playing
37:09SPEAKERwith the controller cord back then
37:11SPEAKERand when this thing came out, not only was it wireless,
37:14SPEAKERbut for some reason the turning it on
37:16SPEAKERwith the controller part was the part
37:17SPEAKERthat really just like.
37:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
37:19SPEAKER- You know, it's like, man,
37:20SPEAKERare we really living in the future now?
37:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
37:23SPEAKER- There were some, like every one of these little things
37:25SPEAKERis like cool in its own right,
37:27SPEAKERbut it's only when you have like two dozen of these things
37:29SPEAKERacross this console that hadn't been done before
37:33SPEAKERthat you really go like, man,
37:34SPEAKERthis thing kind of changed everything.
37:36SPEAKER- Well, and also prior to that point,
37:39SPEAKERa lot of wireless stuff was janky, right?
37:42SPEAKERLike you would say, oh man, I don't want the wireless one,
37:44SPEAKERI'm gonna take the cord, and they were at the right time,
37:48SPEAKERthe radio stuff had gotten good enough at that point
37:51SPEAKERthat the 2.4 gigahertz data radios were reliable
37:54SPEAKERand had, it was massively over-engineered,
37:57SPEAKERso it had an enormous range.
37:58SPEAKERLike I used to use an Xbox 360
38:02SPEAKERand I had a long HDMI cable that went to the living room
38:06SPEAKERthrough two walls and I would set an Xbox 360 PC dongle,
38:13SPEAKERa USB thing that you plugged in your PC
38:14SPEAKERto give you an Xbox 360 controller radio,
38:17SPEAKERand I'd just run the HDMI cable,
38:19SPEAKERit would pipe the audio and video,
38:20SPEAKERand then I'd control the games from 25 feet away
38:24SPEAKERthrough a couple of walls in the living room
38:28SPEAKERwith Xbox 360 controllers,
38:30SPEAKERand it never, like it worked really stupidly well.
38:34SPEAKEROh, also through the TV is worth mentioning.
38:37SPEAKERSo yeah. - That's pretty impressive.
38:38SPEAKER- Like enormously over-engineered,
38:40SPEAKERso I mean, look, some parts were enormously over-engineered,
38:45SPEAKERsome parts maybe less so, I don't know.
38:48SPEAKER- Yes, yes, we'll get there.
38:52SPEAKERJust to, I guess, to wrap up the,
38:54SPEAKERyou know, we talked about XBLA games
38:56SPEAKERand where that went over time.
38:59SPEAKERYou know, they did have DLC on the original Xbox,
39:02SPEAKERbut DLC really became like a household word on the 360,
39:06SPEAKERyou know.
39:06SPEAKER- We gotta talk about Horse Armor, Brad.
39:08SPEAKER- Somewhat questionably, dubiously starting with Horse Armor.
39:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:12SPEAKER- Which was, I would have to look up.
39:15SPEAKER- You want a costume for your horse?
39:16SPEAKERIt's five bucks, that's a reasonable price.
39:18SPEAKER- You know.
39:19SPEAKER- I bought a backpack in Fortnite
39:21SPEAKERfor 150 Tim Epic bucks the other day.
39:28SPEAKER- Maybe they were just very ahead of their time.
39:30SPEAKER- I mean.
39:31SPEAKER- You can still buy it, you can still buy the Horse Armor.
39:33SPEAKER- Really?
39:34SPEAKER- I guess.
39:34SPEAKER- Can you even still play,
39:35SPEAKERis Oblivion backwards compatible?
39:37SPEAKER- They pretty much never, oh yeah, absolutely.
39:39SPEAKER- It's funny 'cause they released Skyrim like 23 times
39:42SPEAKERand I haven't gotten to see Sir Patrick Stewart
39:44SPEAKERin Oblivion in a good 15 years at this point, it feels like.
39:47SPEAKER- Man, I'm actually, there's so many like,
39:49SPEAKERdo you remember the Horse Armor articles out there
39:51SPEAKERthat I'm having a hard time getting to the store page,
39:53SPEAKERbut I'm quite sure you can still buy it.
39:58SPEAKER- It's, the Horse Armor, it was five bucks, right?
40:01SPEAKER- There it is, here it is, I found it.
40:03SPEAKER- It kind of makes sense 'cause like,
40:04SPEAKERif they told you a costume for your character in the game,
40:06SPEAKERyou'd never be able to see it.
40:08SPEAKERBut if they just tell you a costume for your horse,
40:10SPEAKERyou see it every time.
40:11SPEAKER- That's right, now look,
40:12SPEAKERdo you want your horse to get hurt?
40:13SPEAKER- Well, the mistake was they needed to make the horse
40:15SPEAKERlook like something really stupid.
40:16SPEAKERLike if they'd made the horse look like
40:18SPEAKERan Oscar Meyer Wienermobile,
40:20SPEAKERpeople would have been stoked.
40:21SPEAKER- Yes, indeed, yes.
40:23SPEAKERYou know, stealth marketing through the Xbox
40:25SPEAKERwas a whole other questionable innovation.
40:27SPEAKERI mean, you know, gamer pictures in and of themselves
40:31SPEAKERwere kind of ridiculous and goofy and stupid and fun,
40:34SPEAKERbut then once they started like, now you can download
40:37SPEAKERBurger King gamer pictures or, you know, now here,
40:41SPEAKERdownload this picture from the forthcoming
40:43SPEAKERmajor motion picture Men in Black 3.
40:45SPEAKER- Look, I have a lot of garbage Xbox avatars in my accounts.
40:51SPEAKER- Like ironically using branded marketing gamer pics.
40:55SPEAKER- Yeah. - It's a whole,
40:57SPEAKERit's its own whole stupid thing.
40:58SPEAKER- Also, you remember when they did the avatars,
41:02SPEAKERyou could buy the costumes for the avatars.
41:04SPEAKERLike I put money in the Henson Corporation
41:07SPEAKERfor some Muppet avatars and I'm pretty sure
41:10SPEAKERI bought a RoboCop costume from my guy.
41:13SPEAKERYou're welcome boys. - Money well spent.
41:15SPEAKER- You're welcome boys. - Money well spent, yeah.
41:18SPEAKERHorse armor is currently $2.49.
41:20SPEAKERI don't know if that's the original pricing or not.
41:23SPEAKERAlso, that would have been a Microsoft point.
41:25SPEAKER- Yeah. - To be clear at the time,
41:26SPEAKERthat would have been-- - That would have been $180.
41:28SPEAKER- I think that's $1,000?
41:29SPEAKERI think that's $1,000 Microsoft points.
41:31SPEAKER- No, no, no, it was 800 was 10 bucks.
41:33SPEAKER- Oh my God, I've got the conversion rate in my mind.
41:36SPEAKER- It was the $240.
41:38SPEAKER- It was 400 points to the $5.
41:40SPEAKER- Yeah. - It was 80 points
41:42SPEAKERto the dollar because they did the horrible--
41:44SPEAKER- You gotta make the math hard
41:45SPEAKERso the kids don't understand
41:46SPEAKERhow much money they're spending, Brad.
41:47SPEAKER- We're just gonna round down a little bit
41:49SPEAKERto make it seem like less than it actually costs.
41:51SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:52SPEAKERThey also did some kind of nutty tie-in stuff
41:56SPEAKERwith the, like they would,
41:58SPEAKERthey took advantage of the fact
42:00SPEAKERthat you could download entire games on the console
42:02SPEAKERby saying, hey man, if you buy this new,
42:05SPEAKERwe have a new franchise, we wanna put this out.
42:08SPEAKERIf people who buy this disc
42:10SPEAKERare gonna be able to play the "Halo 3" beta
42:11SPEAKERbefore anybody else,
42:13SPEAKERand that's why we have "Crackdown" now, it seems like.
42:17SPEAKER- And "Crackdown" was a great game in its own right.
42:19SPEAKER- I love, I collected all those orbs.
42:21SPEAKERI had to collect them all and I did.
42:23SPEAKER- What happened to the subsequent "Crackdown" games?
42:25SPEAKERBetter not discussed, perhaps.
42:27SPEAKER- Look, we don't need to talk about that,
42:29SPEAKERbut- - I mean, you know,
42:30SPEAKERwe straight up got ad for games eventually.
42:33SPEAKERLike, remember the "Toyota Yaris" game?
42:35SPEAKER- Oh yeah, well, didn't, was "Sneak King",
42:38SPEAKERwas that a Xbox 360 game, or was it BK games,
42:40SPEAKERor 360 games, right? - Yes, yes.
42:42SPEAKERAlthough you had to go to a Burger King to buy that.
42:45SPEAKER- I mean- - "Yaris" was free.
42:47SPEAKER- Oh, that's true, that's true.
42:48SPEAKER- Ain't nobody even paying for-
42:51SPEAKER- That "Yaris" game was bad, just for the record.
42:54SPEAKER- I had, look, it had achievement points
42:56SPEAKERjust like everything else.
42:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it did have charm.
42:58SPEAKER- Last thing about digital games on the console,
43:03SPEAKERI don't know for a fact,
43:04SPEAKERI guess it's possible the PS3 started doing it first,
43:06SPEAKERbut I don't think so.
43:08SPEAKER360 started selling proper retail disc games digitally
43:11SPEAKERbefore the end of this generation.
43:13SPEAKER- Oh, right.
43:14SPEAKER- Which, at the time- - Oh yeah, how could we forget?
43:16SPEAKER- Even that was a, like, even after five years,
43:19SPEAKERI think it was 2010 when they started doing that,
43:20SPEAKERand even after five years of XBLA games,
43:23SPEAKERstill, when they started selling games
43:26SPEAKERthat you could just walk into a store
43:28SPEAKERand buy on disc or buy them on the console,
43:30SPEAKERlike, still mind-blowing.
43:33SPEAKER- And 360 was DVDs, right?
43:35SPEAKERSo it was like an eight gig game max for a single DVD game.
43:38SPEAKER- Yeah, remember, I mean, you know,
43:40SPEAKERlike, their kind of weird, like, quasi-PC philosophy
43:43SPEAKERfor that thing continued to manifest right up to the end,
43:45SPEAKER'cause remember, eventually,
43:47SPEAKERthey started letting you install games to the hard drive.
43:49SPEAKERYou still had to authenticate, but-
43:51SPEAKER- Right, that's right.
43:52SPEAKERYou could copy the entire disc to the hard, or, yeah,
43:55SPEAKERand then it would load a little bit faster.
43:57SPEAKER- And, yes, it would load faster,
43:58SPEAKERbut also, by the end, they were getting to work around
44:00SPEAKERwhere, like, they would ship a two-disc game,
44:02SPEAKERand disc two would just be, like, some install disc,
44:05SPEAKERand then you would never have to change discs,
44:07SPEAKERbecause it would just be able to read from two DVDs
44:09SPEAKERworth of information off of, with one disc.
44:11SPEAKER- I feel like the other thing,
44:13SPEAKERone of the other things they did,
44:15SPEAKERthat was the first time you had games
44:16SPEAKERthat, like, could talk to other games' save files, right?
44:19SPEAKERIn an appreciable way, 'cause, like,
44:20SPEAKERthe Mass Effect thing would kind of import the save file,
44:22SPEAKERright? - Yeah, they did that.
44:23SPEAKERYeah, but remember Metal Gear Solid
44:26SPEAKERon the first PlayStation. - Oh, that's right.
44:27SPEAKERThat's right, PlayStation done that for a while.
44:29SPEAKER- Yes, yes, but, like, being able to sell games,
44:34SPEAKERlike, full games online, you know,
44:37SPEAKERobviously was where everything was going,
44:38SPEAKERand they did that first, like, covering games at the time.
44:42SPEAKERWe've probably talked about this before.
44:44SPEAKERThere was about a one, two-month period
44:46SPEAKERwhere it felt like we were entering a new golden age
44:49SPEAKERof covering video games.
44:51SPEAKER- At the beginning, or at the end?
44:52SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, or when they started doing
44:54SPEAKERdigital retail games. - Oh, right.
44:55SPEAKER- Because previously, you know, to cover games,
44:58SPEAKERwe had to get a physical copy of the game
45:00SPEAKERmailed to the office, right? - Yeah.
45:01SPEAKER- And typically, they weren't gonna send
45:03SPEAKERmore than one copy per outlet, like, maybe two,
45:05SPEAKERif you were lucky. - Yeah.
45:06SPEAKER- I just still remember getting the email
45:08SPEAKERfrom Microsoft when, no, it wasn't Crackdown, what was it?
45:14SPEAKERGosh, now I, oh, this is gonna kill me.
45:16SPEAKERIt was something that came out right before Halo Reach.
45:18SPEAKERIt was Crackdown 2, I'm sorry, that's what it was.
45:20SPEAKER- Yeah, Crackdown 2 was before Halo Reach.
45:22SPEAKER- Which, again, turned out to not be an incredible game,
45:25SPEAKERbut getting that email from Microsoft, it was just like,
45:28SPEAKERhey, here's five codes for Crackdown 2.
45:30SPEAKER- It's funny, 'cause that's one of the--
45:32SPEAKER- What do you mean?
45:34SPEAKER- That was one of the first things that,
45:36SPEAKERand I mean, I guess I'd gotten Fez, a code for Fez,
45:39SPEAKERbut that was an arcade game, so it felt different.
45:40SPEAKER- Yeah, so again, again, for like, you know,
45:42SPEAKERfive, 10, $15 games, it was one thing,
45:44SPEAKERbut it was, I mean, this is kind of inside baseball,
45:47SPEAKERlike, for consumers, who cares?
45:48SPEAKERBut it was very much like, oh my God, what do you mean?
45:52SPEAKERLike, everybody in this office can now play Crackdown 2,
45:54SPEAKERlike, all of us can play it at the same time
45:56SPEAKERand talk about it now, instead of the one person
45:58SPEAKERwho was assigned the review or got the code, the copy in.
46:01SPEAKER- Well, it changed the way you guys did the bomb cast,
46:03SPEAKERfor sure. - That's what I mean.
46:04SPEAKERBut so, that lasted for like a month,
46:07SPEAKERbecause the second game they did that with was Halo Reach,
46:11SPEAKERand then Halo Reach got leaked off the download server.
46:14SPEAKER- Oh no. - And then they stopped
46:15SPEAKERdoing that. - Oh, I didn't know that.
46:17SPEAKER- Yeah, so you can still go back
46:20SPEAKERand find the news articles from 2010,
46:22SPEAKERbecause they had Halo Reach up for download early,
46:24SPEAKERso people could redeem vouchers and get review copies.
46:28SPEAKERSomebody figured out how to extract
46:30SPEAKERthat whole bill of the game off the servers,
46:32SPEAKERand so the game leaked ahead of time.
46:34SPEAKERI don't know if it was fully playable,
46:36SPEAKERor maybe they just data mined it.
46:37SPEAKER- And found out, like, yeah, that sucks.
46:40SPEAKER- Still, it was compromised enough
46:42SPEAKERthat they instantly stopped that practice.
46:44SPEAKERI was like, God damn it.
46:45SPEAKER- It's funny. - That was nice
46:47SPEAKERwhile it lasted. - Yeah, like that,
46:49SPEAKERwell, then, I mean, yeah, the later platforms
46:53SPEAKERkind of tightened some of that stuff up, it seems like.
46:56SPEAKER- Yes, yes, like then it became a whole,
46:58SPEAKERthat's a, you know, it's more inside baseball of like,
47:00SPEAKERyou know, they only have so many codes to go around now.
47:02SPEAKERLike, you'd think they could just generate them,
47:04SPEAKERadd infinitum, but no.
47:07SPEAKER- But yeah, so the hardware stuff,
47:10SPEAKERwe touched a little bit on the controller before.
47:12SPEAKERIt's important to mention,
47:14SPEAKERlike, when they were pitching the Xbox 360,
47:16SPEAKERbefore they even announced the hardware,
47:18SPEAKERMicrosoft was going around to PC outlets and saying,
47:20SPEAKERhey, we're thinking about doing this thing.
47:23SPEAKERWe want to have a uniform interface
47:27SPEAKERfor PC games to use a gamepad.
47:29SPEAKERAnd up until this point, gamepads on PC were,
47:32SPEAKERlike, just calling them second class citizens
47:34SPEAKERis kind of being kind.
47:36SPEAKERBecause each game, you'd have to load up the game,
47:38SPEAKERand then you'd have to kind of reverse engineer
47:40SPEAKERwhat the developer intended the controls to be,
47:43SPEAKERprobably without having played the game at all.
47:45SPEAKERLike, you went into a menu and literally said,
47:47SPEAKERokay, I want A to be this, and I want B to be reload,
47:49SPEAKERand C and X to be slide or whatever it happened to be.
47:54SPEAKER- Were you still mapping literal up and down
47:57SPEAKERand left and right on the D-pad or the joystick at that time?
47:59SPEAKER'Cause you definitely, prior to that, you definitely had to,
48:02SPEAKERand I don't know if they had even standardized
48:04SPEAKERthat much at that point.
48:05SPEAKER- So kind of prior to Halo,
48:08SPEAKERthe controls were definitely non-standard.
48:11SPEAKERMaybe time splitters was the other one
48:14SPEAKERthat was really important, I think,
48:15SPEAKERfor using both sticks together.
48:18SPEAKERBut yeah, it wasn't, there was no consensus on,
48:22SPEAKERlike, left trigger would be aim down sights
48:24SPEAKERand right trigger would be aim and stuff like that.
48:26SPEAKERSometimes you'd click the stick to zoom in,
48:27SPEAKERsometimes it would be.
48:29SPEAKER- What I'm talking about is like, and again,
48:31SPEAKERmaybe this had been fixed by this point,
48:33SPEAKERbut like, remember, like in the '90s,
48:35SPEAKERyou would boot up a game when you had your game pad plugged
48:37SPEAKERin, and it literally, the first time you launched the game,
48:39SPEAKERit would be like, press up on the D-pad,
48:40SPEAKERpress down on the D-pad, press left,
48:42SPEAKERbecause it didn't know what up and down were.
48:44SPEAKERYou had to define them manually.
48:46SPEAKERSo like, I'm trying to figure out how rudimentary things
48:49SPEAKERstill were in that sense before the 360
48:51SPEAKERand the Windows drivers for it came along.
48:53SPEAKER- So if you had a common game pad,
48:56SPEAKERlike a Logitech or something that was like,
48:59SPEAKERcommon enough that the vendor, the game developer,
49:03SPEAKERwould have built in a preset for it,
49:05SPEAKERit would look at the USB HID and be like,
49:07SPEAKER"Okay, you're one of these, here's what we recommend."
49:09SPEAKERAnd it would probably fill in for you.
49:10SPEAKERIf you had anything, even the slightest bit weird,
49:13SPEAKERor you had janky USB drivers on your motherboard
49:16SPEAKERor any other number of failure cases,
49:19SPEAKERit would not, you'd have to do the thing
49:20SPEAKERthat you're describing.
49:22SPEAKERSo when they came, when Microsoft came around,
49:24SPEAKERI was like, "Hey, here's what we're thinking about
49:26SPEAKER"for a controller.
49:27SPEAKER"We think it should have bumpers and triggers
49:29SPEAKER"and four face buttons and a start and a select
49:32SPEAKER"and two sticks that you can click."
49:35SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah, that sounds fantastic.
49:39SPEAKER"Nobody's ever gonna support it."
49:41SPEAKERAnd then because the console was successful
49:44SPEAKERand because they made the drivers easy to use
49:47SPEAKERand the APIs to interface with,
49:49SPEAKERthe controllers were really straightforward,
49:51SPEAKEReverybody used it.
49:52SPEAKERAnd now you plug in a gamepad and it just works.
49:55SPEAKEREven if you plug in a PS4 gamepad or,
49:57SPEAKERI mean, this is largely due to some work
49:59SPEAKERthat Valve has done at Steam,
50:01SPEAKERbut you plug in a DualSense or a Nintendo Pro Controller
50:04SPEAKERand they work too.
50:05SPEAKERAnd I don't think we would have that
50:08SPEAKERwithout the Xbox either.
50:10SPEAKER- Definitely not, I mean,
50:11SPEAKERnot to sound like a broken record here,
50:13SPEAKERbut the number of times you were doing things
50:15SPEAKERfor the first time in this era
50:16SPEAKERand having your mind exploded, it was endless.
50:19SPEAKERBut that was another one was the first time
50:21SPEAKERyou plugged a wired 360 controller into a computer
50:24SPEAKERand it just started working.
50:25SPEAKER- Well, but also-
50:26SPEAKER- And again, the game recognized it.
50:28SPEAKERAnd then eventually, not too long,
50:30SPEAKERthey started putting the actual button prompts
50:33SPEAKERas iconography in the game, right?
50:35SPEAKERAnd it was just like, "Oh my God."
50:36SPEAKERThe stuff has reached a level of integration
50:38SPEAKERthat I didn't think it would ever get to.
50:40SPEAKER- Well, the other thing that's important
50:43SPEAKERabout this whole idea is that that resulted
50:46SPEAKERin the Xbox default controller layout
50:49SPEAKERbeing pretty much the standard layout for most games.
50:52SPEAKERLike there's some variants
50:53SPEAKER'cause Nintendo doesn't have analog triggers
50:55SPEAKERand Sony puts the sticks on the bottom
50:58SPEAKERinstead of a cattywampus up and down thing.
51:01SPEAKERBut two sticks, four face buttons, two bumpers,
51:05SPEAKERtwo triggers, the sticks click, start and select
51:09SPEAKERis the standard now.
51:10SPEAKER- Yep, and this is 100% where that came from, for sure.
51:14SPEAKERAlso, this is something I have to remind myself
51:16SPEAKERa lot of these days, to never be deceived
51:21SPEAKERby things working in a way that seems like they're magic
51:23SPEAKERwhere computers are involved.
51:26SPEAKERAnytime anything ever just seems like it happens,
51:29SPEAKERit's not, it didn't just happen.
51:30SPEAKERLike somebody probably had to sweat blood
51:33SPEAKERto automate that in some way.
51:34SPEAKERYou know, in terms of like plugging hardware into a thing
51:37SPEAKERand having it just work.
51:39SPEAKER- Oh yeah, and not just the hardware side
51:42SPEAKERor the Windows side or the driver's side
51:44SPEAKERor even the Xbox side,
51:45SPEAKERit's that they also went to all these studios
51:49SPEAKERand were like, look, we're gonna give you
51:51SPEAKERa shitload of controllers
51:52SPEAKERand we're gonna give you some early busted-ass APIs
51:55SPEAKERthat probably don't work real good.
51:56SPEAKERAnd we promise that by the time you ship your game,
51:59SPEAKERit's gonna just work.
52:00SPEAKERAnd then they did.
52:01SPEAKER- Yeah, like, you know, whether it's at the level
52:04SPEAKERof like firmware or a microcontroller
52:06SPEAKERor like plug and play logic and a driver
52:08SPEAKERthat goes along with it,
52:09SPEAKERor like developers using some API at the game level,
52:12SPEAKERyou know, like tons of work has to happen behind the scenes
52:15SPEAKERfor something to just get plugged in and go.
52:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
52:19SPEAKER- And like that was a huge, huge milestone
52:21SPEAKERfor kind of cross-platform between PC and console.
52:25SPEAKER- Well, it's funny 'cause it's like that development stuff
52:28SPEAKERand the outreach that happened with that
52:30SPEAKERwas the culmination of at this point 10-ish years
52:34SPEAKERof DirectX work.
52:37SPEAKERYou know, they shipped, the 360 shipped with DX9
52:41SPEAKERand a D3D9 capable GPU.
52:45SPEAKERIt had programmable shaders.
52:46SPEAKERIt had, it was a very Microsoft-y way of building software.
52:50SPEAKERYou know, you use Visual Studio
52:51SPEAKERand you compiled stuff to it
52:52SPEAKERand you send it across a network
52:54SPEAKERand you could do debug stuff on a PC.
52:57SPEAKER- Dude, I didn't get to be started.
52:59SPEAKERI think we've talked before.
53:00SPEAKERYou know, we had debug Xboxes in the office
53:02SPEAKERto run unfinished games on.
53:04SPEAKER- Yeah, and to get screenshots off of the consoles.
53:06SPEAKER- Yes, so we got our hands on the Xbox neighborhood tool
53:10SPEAKERthat was for developers at some point
53:11SPEAKERthat let you connect to an Xbox over the network
53:14SPEAKERand take JPEGs of whatever was in the frame buffer out of it
53:18SPEAKERand that's how we started getting
53:19SPEAKERhigh quality Xbox screenshots.
53:22SPEAKER- Yeah, to give a sense of not,
53:26SPEAKERso capture cards were difficult
53:29SPEAKERand produced kind of bad results.
53:31SPEAKERThe way we often would get screenshots for the magazines,
53:34SPEAKERnot in probably the PS, like once we had debugs
53:37SPEAKERand could get frame buffer images out,
53:41SPEAKERthat would obviously work.
53:43SPEAKERBut it wasn't too much, too long before that
53:47SPEAKERthat we had a dark room with a camera on one end
53:51SPEAKERand you would sit in the room that was dark
53:53SPEAKERwith the exposure on the camera
53:54SPEAKERset to a really specific place
53:56SPEAKERand shoot pictures of the TV
53:59SPEAKERon which you were playing the game.
54:02SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I think people don't realize
54:04SPEAKERhow janky it was to get screenshots
54:07SPEAKERand footage of video games back then.
54:08SPEAKERI remember, again, I was deep into making video game content
54:12SPEAKERon a website at that point,
54:13SPEAKERbut the day I realized, oh my God,
54:16SPEAKERwe're gonna be able to get screenshots
54:18SPEAKERfor the website of Xbox 360 games
54:19SPEAKERthat look just as good as the,
54:22SPEAKERI don't love the term bull shot,
54:23SPEAKERbut the kind of manicured shots that the developers--
54:25SPEAKER- The marketing screenshots that you were provided
54:27SPEAKERby the platform.
54:28SPEAKER- Yeah, the marketing screenshots
54:29SPEAKERthat are coming out before release,
54:30SPEAKERlike, oh my God, our screenshots are gonna be
54:32SPEAKERjust as high quality as that.
54:33SPEAKERAnd that was because it was a network connected console
54:35SPEAKERwith Windows-esque accessibility features
54:38SPEAKERfor developers and stuff, right?
54:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I did a handful of reviews for OXM back in the day,
54:43SPEAKERand they had a whole debug rig
54:45SPEAKERthat they'd send home with you to get screenshots,
54:48SPEAKERand it was like, hey, here's a foot pedal
54:51SPEAKERthat's just a keyboard that you would jam
54:53SPEAKERwhen you wanted the screenshot,
54:54SPEAKERand then you'd get 200 screenshots out of it,
54:56SPEAKERand you'd be able to go through
54:57SPEAKERand get exactly the thing you wanted.
54:58SPEAKERIt was amazing.
54:59SPEAKER- To be clear, the interface on the Xbox Neighborhood tool
55:02SPEAKERwas very much, it was very like programmer gooey.
55:05SPEAKERIt was just like, okay, somebody hacked this together
55:07SPEAKERwith like whatever Win32,
55:09SPEAKERlike this is just a very basic control panel.
55:11SPEAKERSo like the best you could do
55:12SPEAKERwas like tab the focus over to the screenshot button,
55:16SPEAKERand then like, yeah, use your foot
55:18SPEAKERto hit space over and over or whatever.
55:19SPEAKER- Yeah, it seemed like that same tool
55:21SPEAKERthat you probably would have used
55:22SPEAKERif you were in a big studio
55:23SPEAKERand you wanted to get debug builds over to testers
55:25SPEAKERand stuff like that.
55:26SPEAKER- That's exactly what it was.
55:26SPEAKERIt was for debugging.
55:27SPEAKERIt was not for whatever dumb thing we were doing.
55:29SPEAKER- Yeah, but having access to that
55:31SPEAKERmeant the coverage was better, frankly.
55:33SPEAKER- Yes, yeah.
55:35SPEAKER- The hardware, I mean, the Wii was the least capable console
55:40SPEAKERof that generation, but it was easier to develop for,
55:44SPEAKERbut less capable theoretically than the PS3, right?
55:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know how big that divide is.
55:50SPEAKERI think like in the final analysis,
55:52SPEAKERthe PS3 was a bit more powerful,
55:54SPEAKERbut I don't think it was a huge gap.
55:56SPEAKER- Well, the feeling I always had
55:58SPEAKERfrom talking to people who were working during that time
56:00SPEAKERis that even it didn't matter how much more capable
56:04SPEAKERthe PS3 was, 'cause it was such a pain in the ass
56:06SPEAKERto build software for, that like any hardware lead it had
56:15SPEAKERwas lost by the fact that you had to have
56:17SPEAKERone of like 12 people in the world working on it
56:20SPEAKERto suck that power out of it.
56:21SPEAKER- Right.
56:23SPEAKER- Whereas on the Xbox side,
56:25SPEAKERyou just wrote a Windows ass Windows program
56:28SPEAKERand hit the Xbox compile button and it kind of just worked.
56:31SPEAKERI mean, obviously it's not that simple
56:33SPEAKER'cause there was stuff like the memory pool,
56:35SPEAKERwhich was at that time pretty unique design
56:40SPEAKERfor a 3D accelerated console.
56:41SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure it was the first console.
56:44SPEAKERMaybe somebody can correct me
56:45SPEAKERthat had just one giant pool of memory
56:47SPEAKERthat everything could access,
56:48SPEAKERor not everything, but the CPU and the GPU
56:50SPEAKERboth were working off the same memory.
56:52SPEAKER- Definitely in the shader era.
56:53SPEAKERI mean, it was the first thing that had programmable shaders
56:56SPEAKERand had that kind of architecture.
56:58SPEAKERThere was some, I think there was some older stuff
57:00SPEAKERthat had unified memory, but pre-3D or early 3D like the N64.
57:07SPEAKER- Yeah, that was like kind of pre what we think of as a GPU.
57:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and the fact that it had
57:13SPEAKERa pretty good sized chunk of RAM with 512 megabytes,
57:16SPEAKERI think Epic took the blame.
57:24SPEAKERI don't know, they seem proud of the fact
57:25SPEAKERthat they got Microsoft to put an extra 256 megabytes
57:28SPEAKERof RAM in that thing.
57:29SPEAKER- That was always the story that went around,
57:31SPEAKERor they may have said that explicitly.
57:32SPEAKER- Mark Green said it explicitly.
57:34SPEAKERHe was like, "Hey, you're welcome.
57:35SPEAKERI saved a billion people."
57:37SPEAKER- Something he would say.
57:38SPEAKER- Yeah.
57:39SPEAKER- But yeah, they were basically like,
57:41SPEAKERhere is what we are working on.
57:43SPEAKERIt's going, you know, here's Gears of War.
57:45SPEAKERLike if you want this to run on your console,
57:46SPEAKERhe needs double the memory.
57:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
57:49SPEAKER- I mean, Gears is his own thing.
57:51SPEAKERLike I don't want to get into the nature of the game so much
57:54SPEAKER'cause I think the cover shooter era ended up being like
57:57SPEAKERkind of a bummer eventually or incredibly oversaturated.
58:01SPEAKERBut in terms of the way that game looked,
58:03SPEAKERI mean, that was like a top five ever moment of,
58:08SPEAKERoh my God, I can't believe video games look like this now.
58:10SPEAKER- It was real bumpy.
58:11SPEAKER- When that thing came out.
58:12SPEAKER- Everything was bumpy and shiny.
58:14SPEAKER- Also Gears, this is the generation where they realize,
58:17SPEAKERwhere people realize that if you took a popular song
58:19SPEAKERthat everybody knew and played it slower,
58:22SPEAKERmade a slow, sad version of it,
58:24SPEAKERthen it was real good for trailers.
58:26SPEAKER- It's not, you know, not all innovations are positive.
58:29SPEAKER- Yeah, fair.
58:32SPEAKERI mean, there's a lot of technology stuff.
58:33SPEAKERThe, there were also missteps on this one,
58:36SPEAKERlike the not having the hard drive be required.
58:38SPEAKERI think by the end of that generation,
58:40SPEAKEReverybody who was still at some point midway through
58:42SPEAKERin order to play games on the Xbox, you could not have done
58:45SPEAKERit with just memory cards anymore.
58:46SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
58:48SPEAKERI mean, you know, they stopped selling SKUs
58:49SPEAKERwithout hard drives eventually, of course.
58:51SPEAKER- Pretty quickly.
58:52SPEAKER- But I think at some point, at some level,
58:55SPEAKERyou always had to account for the possibility
58:58SPEAKERthat there would not be a hard drive.
59:00SPEAKER- One of the things we haven't talked about yet
59:01SPEAKERis that they cut the previous Xbox short, right?
59:05SPEAKERSo the development of this thing, they accelerated
59:08SPEAKERpartly because the first Xbox, I think,
59:10SPEAKERcost a ton of money to make 'cause it was an x86,
59:13SPEAKERx86 part in an Nvidia chip set with a GPU.
59:17SPEAKER- Essentially a GeForce 3, almost.
59:19SPEAKER- Yeah, and it was an N-Force mother,
59:21SPEAKERor what became the N-Force motherboard later on.
59:24SPEAKER- Right, and just an off the shelf, you know,
59:27SPEAKERthree and a half inch hard drive, like.
59:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:29SPEAKER- You pull that thing apart, obviously it had
59:30SPEAKERa custom main board, but it kind of,
59:32SPEAKERthat was the word even when it came out was like,
59:34SPEAKERthis thing's kind of just a PC.
59:36SPEAKERLike this thing is kind of just off the shelf PC parts.
59:38SPEAKER- When they were pitching it, they were like,
59:40SPEAKERhey, we're gonna make a console that's a PC.
59:43SPEAKER- Right.
59:43SPEAKER- The OG Xbox, the 360, they were like,
59:45SPEAKERwe're making a console as console.
59:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, like where the 360 got its own
59:49SPEAKERcustom power PC CPU, like it got custom hardware
59:52SPEAKERthe way that a proper console does.
59:54SPEAKER- Yeah, but so they raced it to market
59:57SPEAKERand they got it out, like they were so paranoid
1:00:00SPEAKERthat they were gonna get beaten to the punch
1:00:03SPEAKERthat they ended up beating Sony out
1:00:06SPEAKERwith the PS3 by a full year.
1:00:08SPEAKER- Yeah, that's always been my understanding.
1:00:09SPEAKERI have not read Dean Takahashi's 360 book.
1:00:12SPEAKER- So he talks about that a fair amount in there.
1:00:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, wasn't it the executives were convinced
1:00:18SPEAKERthat Sony was also going to ship in '05
1:00:20SPEAKERand that they had to be out?
1:00:21SPEAKER- Well, so they had the feeling that they were late
1:00:24SPEAKERfrom the very beginning.
1:00:25SPEAKER'Cause remember the original Xbox was late as well, right?
1:00:28SPEAKERIt was after the PS2.
1:00:30SPEAKER- Yes, and I think it was around the same time
1:00:32SPEAKERas the GameCube, but yes, definitely after the PS2.
1:00:34SPEAKER- Yeah, and they felt like Sony had been talking to IBM
1:00:41SPEAKERfor an extended period of time at that point.
1:00:43SPEAKERAnd they'd been working on GPU stuff
1:00:45SPEAKERand that they were convinced
1:00:47SPEAKERthat they were moving it for 2005.
1:00:49SPEAKERAnd then they did not.
1:00:50SPEAKER- I didn't, I knew that the 360 processor
1:00:54SPEAKERwas also PowerPC based, but I didn't realize
1:00:56SPEAKERit actually uses the same architecture as the cell.
1:01:01SPEAKER- The Xbox?
1:01:03SPEAKER- Yes, I'm just straight up reading from Wikipedia here.
1:01:06SPEAKERThe cores of the Xenon processor were developed
1:01:08SPEAKERusing a slightly modified version
1:01:09SPEAKERof the PlayStation 3 cell processor PPE architecture.
1:01:13SPEAKER- I did not know that, that's fascinating.
1:01:15SPEAKER- According to, so you remember the cell
1:01:17SPEAKERwas a kind of joint development effort between IBM.
1:01:21SPEAKERYeah, IBM, Sony and Toshiba.
1:01:23SPEAKERAccording to David Shippey and Mickey Phipps,
1:01:25SPEAKERthis doesn't say who they are, right?
1:01:26SPEAKERPresumably IBM employees.
1:01:29SPEAKERThe IBM employees were hiding, quote, hiding their work
1:01:31SPEAKERfrom Sony and Toshiba.
1:01:33SPEAKERIBM's partners developing the cell processor.
1:01:36SPEAKER- Of course.
1:01:37SPEAKERWell, I mean, usually that stuff is when you have,
1:01:41SPEAKERlike when, I don't know if this is how they do it still,
1:01:44SPEAKERbut my understanding is that they silo off
1:01:48SPEAKERthe different group, like the group that was working
1:01:51SPEAKERon the Wii processor and the, sorry, the,
1:01:56SPEAKERyeah, the Wii processor and then the groups working
1:01:59SPEAKERon the Xbox and PS, well, I guess there was no PS3 processor
1:02:05SPEAKERat ATI at that point, right?
1:02:06SPEAKER- Yes.
1:02:08SPEAKER- But they would have been completely firewalled
1:02:11SPEAKERfrom each other, so they don't have
1:02:12SPEAKERany kind of crossover at all.
1:02:14SPEAKER- Yeah, all three of the consoles in this generation
1:02:16SPEAKERwere PowerPC based, so they all had--
1:02:18SPEAKER- Had IBM people, yeah.
1:02:20SPEAKER- To some degree, yeah.
1:02:22SPEAKERI don't know, I'm not like suggesting anything illicit
1:02:24SPEAKERwas going on there.
1:02:25SPEAKER- No, no, no, but it was like,
1:02:28SPEAKERI'm sure there was, hey, I heard about something
1:02:31SPEAKERkind of like, you hear about stuff.
1:02:33SPEAKERThere's, honestly, there's a lot you can tell
1:02:36SPEAKERby watching what people are hiring for.
1:02:39SPEAKERIf you wanna do a little bit of totally legal
1:02:42SPEAKERindustrial espionage, you just watch
1:02:44SPEAKERwhat the hirings look like, so.
1:02:46SPEAKER- Sure.
1:02:47SPEAKER- Anyway, they got it out a year early.
1:02:52SPEAKERThe official announcement at E3 that year,
1:02:55SPEAKERI watched it again for this, I hadn't watched it
1:02:57SPEAKERin a really long time.
1:02:58SPEAKERIt is hopelessly optimistic, Brad.
1:03:01SPEAKER(laughing)
1:03:01SPEAKER- Okay, in what ways?
1:03:03SPEAKER- Well, they're, so, I mean, we can play the clip,
1:03:09SPEAKERbut they're talking about expanding gaming,
1:03:13SPEAKERand they're talking about reaching tens of millions
1:03:15SPEAKERof people and hundreds of millions of people,
1:03:17SPEAKERbut primarily focused in one demographic.
1:03:19SPEAKERBut first off, the whole thing's disjointed in a way
1:03:22SPEAKERthat is in a stark contrast to the kind of early,
1:03:28SPEAKERto mid-return to jobs, like pre-iPhone, post-iPod
1:03:32SPEAKERkind of Apple keynotes of the time.
1:03:34SPEAKER'Cause Apple knew with 100% certainty
1:03:37SPEAKERthat that room was full of press people,
1:03:39SPEAKERbut they were talking to people
1:03:39SPEAKERwho were gonna buy their shit.
1:03:41SPEAKERAnd on this, Jay Allard and Robbie Bach
1:03:45SPEAKERand Peter Moore are standing around,
1:03:47SPEAKERand they're having a casual, old suit guy,
1:03:51SPEAKERmiddle-aged suit guy, young, cool guy
1:03:54SPEAKERin a sport coat and a hoodie guy
1:03:58SPEAKERtalking about video games the way that business dudes
1:04:01SPEAKERthat wear khakis talk about video games.
1:04:03SPEAKER- As executives do.
1:04:04SPEAKER- Yeah, and they were like, they were at E3,
1:04:08SPEAKERso it's an industry event.
1:04:10SPEAKERThey're talking about market sizes, demographics,
1:04:11SPEAKERthat makes sense, but then they're also talking about
1:04:13SPEAKERhow they're gonna expand the demographic
1:04:15SPEAKERfrom the current 18 to 29-year-old male core
1:04:19SPEAKERvideo game player demographic into everyone.
1:04:23SPEAKER- That's right.
1:04:24SPEAKER- They're gonna leave those guys behind
1:04:25SPEAKER'cause we love those guys.
1:04:27SPEAKERThey're not, gotta reassure 'em, right?
1:04:29SPEAKERWe don't wanna offend the launch customers.
1:04:32SPEAKER- Yes, we're not just going to sell to hero protagonist.
1:04:35SPEAKERWe're also going to sell to velocity girl.
1:04:37SPEAKER- Yes, oh God, fucking hero protagonist.
1:04:42SPEAKERBut it's a weird contrast to watching
1:04:44SPEAKERthe first iPod keynote where Steve Jobs
1:04:49SPEAKERlaser focused on who he's talking to, right?
1:04:52SPEAKERHe's talking to people who love music
1:04:53SPEAKERas much as he loves music, and he wants you to know that.
1:04:56SPEAKERAnd I have no doubt that Robbie Bach and Jay Allard,
1:05:00SPEAKERespecially Peter, God, Peter Moore loves games.
1:05:01SPEAKERI know for a fact Peter Moore loves games.
1:05:04SPEAKERBut they were talking to people who buy games
1:05:06SPEAKERfor Walmart and Target and GameStop,
1:05:09SPEAKERand they were not talking, and oh, by the way,
1:05:12SPEAKERwe know that the nerds that play video games
1:05:14SPEAKERare also gonna be watching.
1:05:15SPEAKER- Yes, and to be fair, I mean, Steve Jobs' stagecraft
1:05:18SPEAKERwhen it came to product announcements
1:05:20SPEAKERwas pretty much unparalleled.
1:05:22SPEAKERI mean, the guy was a huge asshole in a lot of ways,
1:05:24SPEAKERbut he could command a room when he was showing you
1:05:26SPEAKERa new thing like nobody else for a sense.
1:05:29SPEAKER- And he clearly didn't have a team of marketing experts
1:05:31SPEAKERbehind him telling him to make sure
1:05:33SPEAKERthat he had all these different points.
1:05:34SPEAKER'Cause there are a couple of moments where like,
1:05:37SPEAKERthere's a moment where I think Robbie Bach
1:05:39SPEAKERputs his hand on the console, and he's like,
1:05:40SPEAKER"Shit, I put my hand on the console early."
1:05:41SPEAKERHe takes it off, and then he puts it back on on the queue.
1:05:44SPEAKER- Oh my God, I'm like cringing.
1:05:46SPEAKERI'm not even watching this footage,
1:05:47SPEAKERand I'm cringing just hearing you describe this.
1:05:49SPEAKER- Yeah, it's kind of sweet, actually,
1:05:53SPEAKERbecause it's like they're doing karaoke for the thing.
1:05:57SPEAKERThey're like, "Why are there millions
1:05:59SPEAKER"of people watching these things?
1:06:00SPEAKER"We gotta get millions of people to watch our things."
1:06:02SPEAKERBut they didn't exactly understand why people watch it.
1:06:05SPEAKERAnd they also were right about a lot of stuff.
1:06:10SPEAKERI wanna play this Jay Allard clip now,
1:06:13SPEAKERwhere he talks about expanding gaming.
1:06:17SPEAKER- 30 years ago, we saw the birth of this industry
1:06:19SPEAKERwith the arrival of the first 2D games,
1:06:22SPEAKERgames that appealed to everyone.
1:06:24SPEAKERThey found a very broad audience
1:06:26SPEAKERthat numbered in the tens of millions.
1:06:28SPEAKERAnd we all remember those great ads from that era,
1:06:31SPEAKERwhere entire families surrounded the TV on the couch,
1:06:34SPEAKERplaying games together.
1:06:36SPEAKERWell, then we made the leap, the leap from 2D to 3D,
1:06:40SPEAKERand we expanded and jumped our industry
1:06:42SPEAKERpast the 100 million mark.
1:06:44SPEAKERBut at that very same time, we narrowed our scope
1:06:48SPEAKERto a much more limited demographic.
1:06:51SPEAKERToday, we're poised to make the leap again,
1:06:52SPEAKERthis time from 3D to the HD era.
1:06:56SPEAKERNow, of course, the HD era is about high-definition graphics
1:07:01SPEAKERand unbelievable sound.
1:07:02SPEAKERBut the implications of the HD era
1:07:04SPEAKERare even more profound than that.
1:07:07SPEAKERIt's about the ability to connect with your community
1:07:10SPEAKERand to personalize your experience.
1:07:12SPEAKERIt's about unleashing the creative power of human energy.
1:07:16SPEAKERIf we work together to create games and experiences
1:07:19SPEAKERthat really deliver on the promise of the HD era,
1:07:23SPEAKERas an industry, we'll take games places
1:07:25SPEAKERthey've never been before.
1:07:28SPEAKERIn the HD era, we're gonna reach
1:07:31SPEAKERone billion people with our medium.
1:07:34SPEAKER(audience applauding)
1:07:40SPEAKERThis is a great industry, it's a great business.
1:07:42SPEAKEROur revenues keep growing faster than music,
1:07:44SPEAKERthan movies, than television.
1:07:46SPEAKERWe're at the cutting edge of technology
1:07:48SPEAKERand the leading edge of imagination.
1:07:50SPEAKERBut we used to fill the living room
1:07:52SPEAKERwith kids and adults, men and women.
1:07:54SPEAKERBut today, we're relying mainly on one type of consumer.
1:07:58SPEAKERNow, don't get me wrong, we love that guy,
1:08:00SPEAKERthe 18 to 34 year old male.
1:08:02SPEAKERHe's the backbone of the industry.
1:08:05SPEAKERAnd with guys like Dead or Alive 4,
1:08:07SPEAKERhe's guaranteed to get the incredible gaming experience
1:08:10SPEAKERthat he craves.
1:08:12SPEAKERBut 360 is also the product
1:08:14SPEAKERthat's gonna push gaming back into the mainstream.
1:08:17SPEAKERThe product that will fill that couch up
1:08:19SPEAKERwith people from every demographic and from every market.
1:08:24SPEAKERHow on the earth are we gonna do that?
1:08:27SPEAKERWell, it takes a product.
1:08:27SPEAKERA product with clear, compelling vision.
1:08:30SPEAKERA vision that living entertainment
1:08:33SPEAKERis powered by human energy.
1:08:36SPEAKERAnd Xbox 360 is that product.
1:08:38SPEAKERWe believe that when you unlock the power of human energy,
1:08:41SPEAKERwe're gonna bring everybody back to the living room.
1:08:43SPEAKERAt the same time, we're gonna unlock the potential,
1:08:46SPEAKERnot only of the medium, but of the entire industry.
1:08:51SPEAKERNext generation, a billion people will play our games.
1:08:55SPEAKERAnd it's not just because they figured out
1:08:56SPEAKERthe latest combo move,
1:08:57SPEAKERor they figured out how to get past level 14,
1:09:00SPEAKERbut because we've unlocked the secret
1:09:02SPEAKERto creating games and entertainment experiences
1:09:05SPEAKERthat they can call their own.
1:09:08SPEAKERGames that provide entertainment experiences
1:09:10SPEAKERthat appeal to everyone.
1:09:13SPEAKERWe've been working for years to fulfill this vision.
1:09:16SPEAKERAnd the result is Xbox 360.
1:09:18SPEAKERIt's the product I've always dreamed of creating.
1:09:22SPEAKERIt's the product that will fill the living room back
1:09:25SPEAKERwith people who can't wait to get their hands
1:09:28SPEAKERon the controller, to get into the game,
1:09:30SPEAKERto be part of the excitement,
1:09:32SPEAKERand to join us in the community.
1:09:34SPEAKERThey wanna bring their own creativity to the experience
1:09:37SPEAKERand pay off the true promise of our medium.
1:09:41SPEAKERThe essence of our vision is reflected in the name,
1:09:44SPEAKERXbox 360.
1:09:46SPEAKERIt's the product that delivers experiences
1:09:49SPEAKERwhere the player is always at center stage.
1:09:53SPEAKER- Yeah, he's really walking a line in there, huh?
1:09:56SPEAKER- Oh yeah, man.
1:09:57SPEAKERBut it goes on for such a long time.
1:09:59SPEAKERHe's like a billion people,
1:10:00SPEAKERand then he gets real excited about revenue.
1:10:02SPEAKERReal excited about revenue for a consumer talk, right?
1:10:05SPEAKER- As much as he's in there talking to buyers, like you said,
1:10:08SPEAKERhe's definitely also talking to investors.
1:10:10SPEAKERShareholders, investors, players.
1:10:13SPEAKERThey want everybody to be happy about this keynote.
1:10:15SPEAKER- It's like he strains to get to the highfalutin,
1:10:18SPEAKERlike pie in the skies.
1:10:19SPEAKERLike, oh, we're gonna unleash the power
1:10:22SPEAKERof human creativity with this.
1:10:23SPEAKERAnd then like immediately just slips right back
1:10:25SPEAKERinto like talking about narrowing scope
1:10:28SPEAKERand limited demographics.
1:10:31SPEAKERIt's like, it's so Microsoft.
1:10:32SPEAKER- And like, I could understand it if they broke this up
1:10:35SPEAKERby like business dad Robbie Bach and like industry icon
1:10:40SPEAKERPeter Moore, and then cool hip young executive Jay Allard.
1:10:44SPEAKER- Cool, maybe slightly questionable uncle Jay Allard.
1:10:47SPEAKER- Yeah, but no, he's just in here.
1:10:50SPEAKERAnd also, I have to imagine,
1:10:54SPEAKERbut think back to 2005,
1:10:56SPEAKERonline's still scary a little bit, right?
1:10:58SPEAKERThere's a little bit of like, man,
1:10:59SPEAKERyou don't wanna let your kids go online.
1:11:00SPEAKERThey'll get bad, they'll get kidnapped,
1:11:04SPEAKERand they'll get brought into a cult.
1:11:07SPEAKERAnd next thing you know,
1:11:08SPEAKERyour kids are gonna be like doing internet drugs.
1:11:11SPEAKERAnd so I think that's why they were pushing all the,
1:11:14SPEAKERthey were like, HD generation means it's gonna be social
1:11:17SPEAKERand you're gonna have your communities.
1:11:18SPEAKERThey don't say online at all in there.
1:11:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:21SPEAKER- It's just, and he just keeps going and going
1:11:26SPEAKERand going and going.
1:11:27SPEAKER- You know, I'll give him one thing.
1:11:29SPEAKERHe's in there talking about like, yeah, you know,
1:11:31SPEAKERhe mentioned the thing you said about,
1:11:32SPEAKERhe's like, you know, our core guy, we love that guy.
1:11:36SPEAKERWe're not gonna alienate that guy.
1:11:38SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:38SPEAKER- He was saying, you know,
1:11:39SPEAKERwe wanna get everybody else in front of the TV too.
1:11:41SPEAKERThey did it with the Netflix app.
1:11:45SPEAKER- Well.
1:11:46SPEAKER- It was not the games.
1:11:47SPEAKERIt was the fact that the 360 basically had
1:11:49SPEAKERlike the first really good Netflix app
1:11:51SPEAKERthat actually got everybody in the house
1:11:52SPEAKERsitting in front of the 360.
1:11:54SPEAKER- But also, you know who really did it?
1:11:56SPEAKERApple, Google, sorry, Microsoft.
1:11:59SPEAKER- Well, later, you know.
1:12:00SPEAKER- They were right that it was gonna be a billion people.
1:12:02SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:12:03SPEAKER- Just not their platform.
1:12:04SPEAKER- Yes, later, later, yes, for sure.
1:12:05SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I mean, during the life of this console,
1:12:08SPEAKERfor sure, the billion people got online,
1:12:10SPEAKERjust not so much on their couches.
1:12:12SPEAKER- That first Xbox Netflix app was a pretty big deal though.
1:12:15SPEAKER- Yeah, but they didn't sell a billion boxes.
1:12:17SPEAKER- No, no, certainly not.
1:12:20SPEAKER- Then the last part about this is
1:12:22SPEAKERafter all this launch stuff happened, they sent Xboxes.
1:12:27SPEAKERThey must have sent out so many Xboxes.
1:12:30SPEAKER- Yeah, there was a huge marketing push
1:12:32SPEAKERwith the Elijah Wood MTV special,
1:12:35SPEAKERthe zero-hour launch event in the Mojave Desert.
1:12:38SPEAKER- Every basketball player and baseball player
1:12:40SPEAKERposting pictures of themselves
1:12:42SPEAKERplaying Xbox in their hotel rooms.
1:12:44SPEAKER- Musicians, I mean, they blanketed the press
1:12:46SPEAKERwith 360 stuff.
1:12:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:12:49SPEAKER- They got behind it big.
1:12:50SPEAKER- Magazine editors were important enough to get Xboxes.
1:12:54SPEAKERIt was shocking.
1:12:58SPEAKERAnd then, this is the part,
1:13:00SPEAKERthis was like a behind the music,
1:13:02SPEAKERwe'd play this, the dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun music.
1:13:07SPEAKERThe failures started to pile up, Brad.
1:13:11SPEAKER- Yes, yes they did.
1:13:13SPEAKER- I remember the first time
1:13:14SPEAKERI heard the phrase red ring of death,
1:13:16SPEAKERand it was, "Hey, do you have an Xbox we can borrow?"
1:13:19SPEAKEROne of ours conked out,
1:13:21SPEAKER'cause there was a pile of Xboxes
1:13:23SPEAKERin every magazine in the company,
1:13:26SPEAKERand we were funneling them into OXM
1:13:28SPEAKERso that they could keep working.
1:13:30SPEAKER- Oh, you guys had that, too?
1:13:31SPEAKERThe pile?
1:13:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:13:33SPEAKERWe had a good pile and a bad pile.
1:13:35SPEAKER- Well, yeah, eventually.
1:13:36SPEAKEREventually, the bad pile outweighed the good pile, of course,
1:13:39SPEAKERbut yeah, we straight up had a stack of extra Xboxes
1:13:43SPEAKERand sitting in the original cardboard shipping boxes
1:13:46SPEAKERjust waiting to be broken open
1:13:48SPEAKERbecause you knew eventually they were going to be needed.
1:13:51SPEAKER- The coffins never lay empty.
1:13:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:55SPEAKER- So, the red ring of death started out
1:13:59SPEAKERin the way that major manufacturing defects do
1:14:01SPEAKERwith people posting in there,
1:14:02SPEAKER"Hey, my Xbox just stopped working.
1:14:05SPEAKERHas anybody seen this before?
1:14:06SPEAKERWhat does it mean when three red lights are on the front?"
1:14:09SPEAKERAnd it turns out it means that it was going to crash
1:14:12SPEAKERany time it was under any kind of load,
1:14:13SPEAKERand then eventually it would stop working.
1:14:17SPEAKERPeople before Microsoft acknowledged that it was an issue
1:14:20SPEAKERand started repairing them,
1:14:21SPEAKERpeople came up with some crazy fixes,
1:14:23SPEAKERincluding load up the CPU and GPU
1:14:28SPEAKERwith a high-powered game and wrap it in towels
1:14:30SPEAKERso that the vents don't work,
1:14:32SPEAKERand it gets hot to the point that the solder remelts
1:14:35SPEAKERand maybe reflows long enough
1:14:36SPEAKERfor it to work again for a while.
1:14:39SPEAKERDid you ever actually try that?
1:14:41SPEAKER- I might have once, actually, I can't remember.
1:14:44SPEAKER- I was always afraid to.
1:14:45SPEAKERI was afraid it'd burn the house down.
1:14:47SPEAKER- I don't think it was very effective.
1:14:49SPEAKER- It seems like it would buy you a couple of months, maybe.
1:14:51SPEAKER- I don't know if we've ever gotten an answer on this,
1:14:54SPEAKERbut I don't know, was it a 100% failure rate
1:14:56SPEAKERon that first run?
1:14:57SPEAKER- No.
1:14:58SPEAKER- Was it not?
1:15:01SPEAKER- There were people that did repair companies before.
1:15:06SPEAKEROkay, so it's hard to know,
1:15:08SPEAKER'cause also there were probably some consoles
1:15:09SPEAKERthat were only used for Geometry Wars
1:15:11SPEAKERand stuff that wouldn't hit it hard enough
1:15:13SPEAKERto heat it up to the point that it actually died.
1:15:15SPEAKERMy first one died when I was playing, I think, Dead Rising,
1:15:19SPEAKERwhich was one of the first games
1:15:20SPEAKERto use multiple CPU cores, which generated a lot of heat,
1:15:23SPEAKERwhich then, you know, blah, blah, blah.
1:15:26SPEAKERThere were almost certainly some consoles out there
1:15:27SPEAKERthat people used for Hexic and Geometry Wars
1:15:30SPEAKERand nothing complicated
1:15:31SPEAKERand never got hot enough to cause the problem.
1:15:33SPEAKER- I think I would exempt those from my question
1:15:35SPEAKERjust because they weren't subjected to normal use,
1:15:37SPEAKERbut I guess what I mean is like given normal usage patterns,
1:15:41SPEAKERwas it guaranteed that every,
1:15:42SPEAKER'cause anecdotally, that was certainly my experience.
1:15:45SPEAKER- So the range of failures as reported by repair companies
1:15:49SPEAKERup until that point who looked at large sample sizes,
1:15:53SPEAKERlike thousand plus sample sizes,
1:15:54SPEAKERwhere it was like 30% probably.
1:15:56SPEAKER- Wait, really?
1:15:57SPEAKERMan, I would have thought it was a lot higher than that.
1:15:58SPEAKER- Industry standards at that time
1:16:00SPEAKERwere like a 3% failure rate.
1:16:02SPEAKERSo it's 10X worse.
1:16:05SPEAKER- Still catastrophic. - It's still pretty bad.
1:16:07SPEAKER- When one of every three you're selling
1:16:08SPEAKERis becoming inoperable, that's pretty bad.
1:16:11SPEAKER- Yeah, they didn't really acknowledge it for a while,
1:16:15SPEAKERbut when they did, they actually did a pretty good job
1:16:18SPEAKERdealing with it, I would say,
1:16:20SPEAKERespecially given that up until that point,
1:16:22SPEAKERI don't think I remember anything of this scale failing
1:16:25SPEAKERthat people acknowledged and made right,
1:16:28SPEAKERwhich makes sense for a product
1:16:29SPEAKERdesigned to last for eight to 10 years, right?
1:16:32SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and also,
1:16:33SPEAKERlet me look at the investment they made in this thing.
1:16:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:16:36SPEAKER- From R&D to marketing to the whole push
1:16:38SPEAKERbehind trying to break into this emerging market,
1:16:41SPEAKERlike they kind of had no choice but to make this right.
1:16:43SPEAKER- Yeah, this was essentially them,
1:16:46SPEAKERlike had they not made this right,
1:16:47SPEAKERthey would have lost the multi-billion dollar beach head
1:16:49SPEAKERthat they spent, the beach head they spent
1:16:52SPEAKERbillions of dollars establishing.
1:16:55SPEAKERAnd there's a story where Peter Moore shared
1:17:04SPEAKERthe experience he had of walking into Ballmer's office
1:17:06SPEAKERto tell him about the fix,
1:17:08SPEAKERwhere he was just repeating to himself,
1:17:10SPEAKERokay, we're gonna send him an empty box via FedEx,
1:17:13SPEAKERthey're gonna pack the console in that empty box,
1:17:14SPEAKERthey're gonna send it back to us,
1:17:15SPEAKERand then in the next three weeks,
1:17:17SPEAKERthey're gonna get it back fixed.
1:17:20SPEAKERIt was gonna cost more than a billion dollars,
1:17:24SPEAKER1.15, 1.25, somewhere in their billion dollars
1:17:27SPEAKERto fix all the failed consoles.
1:17:30SPEAKEROf that, a quarter of a billion dollars
1:17:31SPEAKERwas gonna go to, according to this story, Peter Moore,
1:17:35SPEAKERto FedEx, and he went to Ballmer and he's like,
1:17:38SPEAKERtold him what was gonna happen.
1:17:40SPEAKERBallmer's like, how bad is it?
1:17:41SPEAKERHere's what we're gonna do.
1:17:42SPEAKERWhat's it gonna cost?
1:17:43SPEAKEROkay, do it.
1:17:45SPEAKERThat was it, that was the whole thing.
1:17:47SPEAKER- Okay, I was bracing for something like
1:17:49SPEAKERBallmer blew his top kind of thing, but.
1:17:52SPEAKER- I don't know that Peter Moore would tell
1:17:53SPEAKERthe true version of that story.
1:17:55SPEAKER- Yeah, fair. - Ballmer blew his top.
1:17:56SPEAKER- Fair.
1:17:57SPEAKER- I mean, the way this stuff happens, typically,
1:18:00SPEAKERis that somebody's like, eh, you know, we're gonna,
1:18:04SPEAKERso Microsoft doesn't say that this is actually what happened
1:18:07SPEAKERbut the German magazine CT,
1:18:08SPEAKERwhich is a famous computer magazine,
1:18:10SPEAKERclocked the problem at the time,
1:18:12SPEAKERthat was later confirmed, 10 years later,
1:18:14SPEAKERconfirmed by Microsoft, which was
1:18:17SPEAKERthat they used a lead-free solder
1:18:19SPEAKERthat didn't handle heating and cooling cycles particularly
1:18:23SPEAKERwell and develop microfractures.
1:18:25SPEAKERIn 2021, Microsoft finally, as part of this big,
1:18:28SPEAKERgiant documentary about the Xbox,
1:18:31SPEAKERthe 20-year anniversary of the Xbox,
1:18:33SPEAKERthey did officially say, hey, the problem was bad solder
1:18:39SPEAKERon the GPU flip chip, which developed very small cracks
1:18:42SPEAKERover heating cycles that caused it to have a bad connection
1:18:46SPEAKERand crash when under a load.
1:18:51SPEAKERAnd most certainly, everything I've been able to read
1:18:54SPEAKERis that most certainly that was a result of
1:18:58SPEAKERan EU requirement to use lead-free solder,
1:19:00SPEAKERwhich was not a common thing at the time,
1:19:02SPEAKERnot super common at the time in 2005,
1:19:05SPEAKERand they used the wrong lead-free solder,
1:19:06SPEAKERwhich probably saved them a hundredth of a cent per unit
1:19:09SPEAKERor something ridiculous,
1:19:10SPEAKERand they spent billions of dollars fixing.
1:19:11SPEAKER- Well, the compounding problem was that they rushed
1:19:13SPEAKERthe market as fast as they could and just didn't do
1:19:16SPEAKERthe due testing to uncover something like this.
1:19:19SPEAKER- No, the things I've read have said
1:19:21SPEAKERthat they did the testing.
1:19:22SPEAKERSo there was a person who was vetted
1:19:24SPEAKERby a couple of publications to be a former Microsoft employee
1:19:27SPEAKERwho came out with, hey, here's what actually happened.
1:19:31SPEAKERThat person reported that on early like hundred unit
1:19:34SPEAKERfirst runs off the line batches,
1:19:36SPEAKERthey would have 38 working Xboxes out of a run of 100.
1:19:41SPEAKERSo they probably knew that there were some problems.
1:19:45SPEAKERI don't think they expected it to be a 30% fail rate.
1:19:48SPEAKER- Sure.
1:19:50SPEAKER- Or, and just to be clear, that 30% fail rate
1:19:53SPEAKERis a number that came out of people who were testing
1:19:56SPEAKERand repairing consoles that were not covered
1:19:58SPEAKERby the three-year extended warranty that Microsoft made.
1:20:01SPEAKERSo it is a number that I would describe as suspect.
1:20:07SPEAKERMicrosoft never gave an official fail rate.
1:20:09SPEAKERThey never listed it as anything more
1:20:11SPEAKERthan we had to write down on the red ring problem
1:20:13SPEAKERon their annual reports.
1:20:15SPEAKERSo it would likely never know what the actual fail rate was.
1:20:20SPEAKER- Sure.
1:20:21SPEAKERAnd also at the time, they rushed the first fix out,
1:20:25SPEAKERwhich is to try to epoxy the GPU down to the board
1:20:28SPEAKERto keep it from flexing.
1:20:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:20:31SPEAKERWhich worked for a little bit.
1:20:33SPEAKER- I think it was like somewhat effective.
1:20:35SPEAKER- That was the Jasper, that was the ones that had HDMI,
1:20:38SPEAKERI think, started with that.
1:20:41SPEAKER- No, 'cause I think these were existing boards.
1:20:42SPEAKERI think they were literally taking the boards
1:20:44SPEAKERthat they had already produced
1:20:46SPEAKERand trying to add this as a band-aid.
1:20:48SPEAKERBut then, yeah, they rapidly, you know,
1:20:51SPEAKERevery console goes through rapid hardware revisions,
1:20:54SPEAKEReven when you can't see cosmetically externally
1:20:56SPEAKERthat they have.
1:20:58SPEAKERSo yeah, they, you know, they added an HDMI port
1:21:00SPEAKERafter like a year and like pretty quickly
1:21:02SPEAKERthey were shipping.
1:21:03SPEAKERGosh, maybe it was the Jasper revision was the one
1:21:07SPEAKERthat you wanted to get, like once your first Xbox died
1:21:10SPEAKERand you used your Xbox enough that you were like,
1:21:12SPEAKERI just want to buy a new one that works.
1:21:14SPEAKERAnd you were like staring at product codes or UPCs
1:21:16SPEAKERor whatever on the box, trying to make sure,
1:21:18SPEAKERlike this, I've got to make sure this is a Jasper.
1:21:21SPEAKER- So I had a Jasper that died.
1:21:23SPEAKERSo they all, like the problem wasn't solved
1:21:26SPEAKERuntil much later.
1:21:27SPEAKEREven when they got to the Slims, really,
1:21:29SPEAKERwas when you knew you had a safe Xbox.
1:21:31SPEAKER- My memory was the S model, the first big,
1:21:34SPEAKERwhich was 2008, no, 2010, I think 2010.
1:21:39SPEAKER- I was working at Tested when that came out.
1:21:42SPEAKER- Yes, we were in the Sausalita basement.
1:21:43SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:21:44SPEAKER- The 20, that was five years after launch almost,
1:21:46SPEAKERthey rolled out the radical redesign.
1:21:48SPEAKER- That was the one with the,
1:21:50SPEAKERyeah, they had the Xbox 360 on the stage
1:21:53SPEAKERand he lifted it off.
1:21:54SPEAKER- Yes, we haven't even talked about the Inhale.
1:21:57SPEAKER- What was the Inhale?
1:21:58SPEAKER- They wanted the original design.
1:22:00SPEAKERLike they made a big deal out of the design houses
1:22:03SPEAKERthat they contracted to work on.
1:22:05SPEAKER- They worked with the people who ended up
1:22:06SPEAKERmaking the headsets, right, Astro?
1:22:09SPEAKER- I can't remember.
1:22:10SPEAKER- It was Astro Studios and,
1:22:12SPEAKERI can't remember the Japanese firm.
1:22:14SPEAKER- I can't remember, yeah,
1:22:15SPEAKERthere I think there were like three studios
1:22:16SPEAKERthat worked on it, but Astro Studios.
1:22:19SPEAKER- Astro Studios, yeah, they ended up making headphones.
1:22:22SPEAKER- Anyway, the whole, the joke,
1:22:24SPEAKERespecially around our office at the time,
1:22:25SPEAKERthe joke about the 360 was that they had said
1:22:28SPEAKERthey wanted it to look like an Inhale.
1:22:31SPEAKERThat's why you get this kind of concave look to it.
1:22:36SPEAKER- Wow.
1:22:37SPEAKER- Top and bottom, 'cause it looks like it's inhaling.
1:22:41SPEAKERAnd then, you know, once the S came along,
1:22:43SPEAKERthat look evolved and became more angular,
1:22:45SPEAKERbut it wasn't until that S model launched
1:22:48SPEAKERthat I feel like I truly thought like,
1:22:50SPEAKERokay, this thing works now.
1:22:52SPEAKERYou can just buy this and expect it to work.
1:22:54SPEAKER- Hero protagonist loves an Inhale.
1:22:56SPEAKER- Yeah, he sure does.
1:22:59SPEAKER- Yeah, like it's such a,
1:23:02SPEAKERI mean, there were other failures on the 360.
1:23:08SPEAKERThe disk scratching thing impacted a bunch of people.
1:23:12SPEAKER- It's somewhat forgotten, but early models of 360
1:23:14SPEAKERwould eat disks by scratching them
1:23:15SPEAKERuntil they became unreadable.
1:23:17SPEAKERI think that was only in vertical orientation.
1:23:19SPEAKER- It was in vertical orientation
1:23:20SPEAKER'cause they didn't balance,
1:23:21SPEAKERthey didn't lock the drive in the vertical spot.
1:23:25SPEAKERAnd if you bumped it while it was running,
1:23:27SPEAKERit would hit stuff and scratch.
1:23:29SPEAKERSo three symmetrical, three rings on the outside edge
1:23:33SPEAKERof the disk, I think, is what happened usually.
1:23:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I lost a game to that one time.
1:23:37SPEAKERIt was not pleasant.
1:23:38SPEAKER- They, the other non-technical failures,
1:23:42SPEAKERjust pure ecosystem failures in the HD DVD,
1:23:46SPEAKERwhich was, you know, the battle for high def disks
1:23:51SPEAKERwas quickly and completely won by Blu-ray.
1:23:56SPEAKERI still don't, I like, I mean,
1:24:00SPEAKERthat's probably a whole other episode
1:24:01SPEAKERis why A8 Blu-ray beat HD DVD.
1:24:04SPEAKER- It came out of business
1:24:05SPEAKERand I can't remember exactly what it was,
1:24:07SPEAKERbut I remember at the time, like some,
1:24:10SPEAKERsome investment got made. - Some of the studios, yeah.
1:24:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it was some kind of strategic alliance
1:24:14SPEAKERor something happened on the business side
1:24:16SPEAKERthat finally just kind of locked in Blu-ray's dominance.
1:24:18SPEAKERLike HD DVD was not bad.
1:24:20SPEAKERLike Blu-ray ultimately, from what I remember,
1:24:24SPEAKERlike Blu-ray definitely has the higher capacity,
1:24:26SPEAKERbut I believe the on disk software was better with HD DVD.
1:24:30SPEAKER- Blu-ray had a higher capacity.
1:24:33SPEAKER- Like I remember like the Blu-ray menus
1:24:35SPEAKERwere authored in Java and that got a lot of criticism,
1:24:38SPEAKERlike the capabilities of what the Blu-ray,
1:24:41SPEAKERgranted who cares about software running off
1:24:43SPEAKERof movie disks at this point, like whatever.
1:24:45SPEAKERBut at the time, like that's, that was,
1:24:47SPEAKERthat was the interface you had to work through, right?
1:24:50SPEAKER- My, the, the, the codecs that were available
1:24:55SPEAKERwere slightly better on the Blu-ray side.
1:24:57SPEAKER- That is definitely true, ultimately.
1:24:59SPEAKERAnd I think that was a,
1:24:59SPEAKERthat was downstream of the bigger disks, right?
1:25:02SPEAKERLike.
1:25:03SPEAKER- Partly it was due to the bigger disk,
1:25:04SPEAKERpartly it was because the HDTV was backed by Microsoft.
1:25:07SPEAKERSo it had Microsoft codecs at the time,
1:25:09SPEAKERwhich were kind of shitty.
1:25:10SPEAKER- Licensing stuff as well.
1:25:11SPEAKERSo yeah, like I've, I mean,
1:25:12SPEAKERI have ripped a number of HD DVD disks off of that,
1:25:16SPEAKERoff of that drive.
1:25:17SPEAKERCause you could plug it into a PC
1:25:18SPEAKERand also just use it that way.
1:25:19SPEAKER- It was VP8, right?
1:25:20SPEAKER- I think VC1, VC1 is the most common codec
1:25:23SPEAKERthat I've seen from HD DVD disks.
1:25:25SPEAKER- But I think largely the other thing was that there was a,
1:25:29SPEAKERthere was concerns about the copy protection
1:25:31SPEAKERon HD DVD from the studios,
1:25:33SPEAKERwhich ended up being boot
1:25:34SPEAKERbecause the Blu-ray copy protection
1:25:35SPEAKERdidn't fare any better in the longterm,
1:25:37SPEAKERbut it did last a little bit longer than HDTV stuff.
1:25:40SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
1:25:41SPEAKERAnd then.
1:25:42SPEAKER- This is the, like the, the,
1:25:44SPEAKERthe bullet point that's going to get expanded the most,
1:25:46SPEAKERI think in conversation.
1:25:47SPEAKER- Speaking, speaking of ill-fated add-ons, the Kinect.
1:25:52SPEAKER- I kind of like the Kinect, Brad.
1:25:54SPEAKER- Ah, man, even the second model Kinect on the Xbox One
1:25:59SPEAKERdidn't work anywhere near what they promised.
1:26:02SPEAKER- I think, I think for me,
1:26:04SPEAKERI liked the Kinect because I didn't,
1:26:06SPEAKERall of my memories of Kinect are doing fun things
1:26:09SPEAKERwith you guys at Giant Bomb
1:26:11SPEAKERand not having to deal with it in a review context,
1:26:13SPEAKERwhich would have been maddening.
1:26:16SPEAKER- Oh my God, failed product.
1:26:17SPEAKERLike just completely fucking failed to deliver
1:26:21SPEAKERon what it was supposed to do.
1:26:22SPEAKER- I, I, I think, I think about like the double fine thing
1:26:26SPEAKERthat they made where you could make the floor lava.
1:26:30SPEAKER- Yeah, that was, that was goofy and fun.
1:26:31SPEAKERLike occasionally somebody like somebody
1:26:34SPEAKERwith the creativity of a double fine
1:26:35SPEAKERwould recognize that thing for what it was
1:26:38SPEAKERand come up with something cool and interesting with it.
1:26:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:26:41SPEAKER- But all of the attempts to make like actual serious games
1:26:43SPEAKERaround it were complete disaster.
1:26:45SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no, no, that the Steel Battalion game was,
1:26:48SPEAKERthat was an Xbox One game, I think.
1:26:50SPEAKER- But it was one of the most infuriating
1:26:52SPEAKERreview experiences of my life, for sure.
1:26:54SPEAKERBut even at the platform level,
1:26:55SPEAKERjust like the interface elements
1:26:57SPEAKERthat it was supposed to enable
1:26:58SPEAKERjust never worked like they were supposed to.
1:27:00SPEAKER- What do you mean your pinching hand gesture
1:27:02SPEAKERto launch the app didn't work for, weird.
1:27:06SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, and it was also kind of stupid expensive
1:27:09SPEAKERfor what it, for the way it worked.
1:27:10SPEAKER- It was expensive, but it was successful.
1:27:12SPEAKERLike it sold Game Busters due to the promise.
1:27:15SPEAKERThey sold, like they sold it, by sold, I mean like-
1:27:18SPEAKER- Well, parents bought them because they wanted their kids
1:27:22SPEAKERto move around the living room
1:27:23SPEAKERinstead of sitting on the couch playing Call of Duty
1:27:24SPEAKERand eating Cheetos.
1:27:25SPEAKER- I think just everybody thought,
1:27:28SPEAKERthe pitch videos they made for the thing
1:27:29SPEAKERwere pretty enticing.
1:27:30SPEAKERIt's just that it never actually worked.
1:27:31SPEAKER- Yeah. - Right.
1:27:32SPEAKERBut because it sold so well,
1:27:35SPEAKERthat led to the ascendance of Don Mattrick
1:27:37SPEAKERand the focus on Kinect and TV
1:27:41SPEAKERand entertainment apps with the Xbox One,
1:27:44SPEAKERlike it kind of torpedoed,
1:27:46SPEAKERbasically what happened with the Kinect torpedoed
1:27:48SPEAKERthe entire next generation of the Xbox.
1:27:49SPEAKER- Well, it's interesting you say that
1:27:51SPEAKER'cause Phil Spencer came out last week
1:27:53SPEAKERand was talking about that.
1:27:54SPEAKERBut like, did they not look at the attach rate
1:27:57SPEAKERfor games on that thing?
1:27:59SPEAKERI can't imagine that they were selling
1:28:00SPEAKERlike 10 games per Kinect or anything ridiculous like that.
1:28:04SPEAKERLike people had to buy the first two games
1:28:06SPEAKERto be like, man, this doesn't work.
1:28:09SPEAKERAnyway.
1:28:10SPEAKER- You got me, man.
1:28:11SPEAKER- Hubris is all I can say.
1:28:12SPEAKER- Throw the pickle at the screen.
1:28:14SPEAKERThat's all I know.
1:28:16SPEAKERIt's a weird,
1:28:20SPEAKERlike it's been fun going back and looking at it
1:28:23SPEAKERand seeing what ended up being the important things
1:28:28SPEAKERand what ended up being not.
1:28:29SPEAKERAnd when you look at 360 Retrospectives now,
1:28:33SPEAKERthey do this thing that we did, which is just like,
1:28:36SPEAKERoh yeah, by the way,
1:28:37SPEAKERthey had this problem with the hardware early on
1:28:38SPEAKERwhere 30% of all the consoles probably died
1:28:41SPEAKERand then they had to spend a billion or two
1:28:44SPEAKERfixing them for the people that they hosed
1:28:46SPEAKERand then they never, honestly, they were never really great.
1:28:49SPEAKERIt just kind of was like better for a while.
1:28:51SPEAKERAnd then you bought one of the second rev consoles.
1:28:55SPEAKERBut I don't think that the PS4, PS5, even Switch,
1:29:03SPEAKERlike you wouldn't have a universal,
1:29:05SPEAKERyou wouldn't have multiple accounts on a Switch
1:29:07SPEAKERwhere everybody has their own friends list
1:29:08SPEAKERand the ability to join games
1:29:10SPEAKERand jump into other people's games
1:29:13SPEAKERin the same way that you do now.
1:29:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:29:15SPEAKERAnd I mean, even in the era,
1:29:17SPEAKERyou saw Sony pivoting constantly trying to keep up
1:29:20SPEAKERwith what Microsoft was doing, right?
1:29:21SPEAKERLike trophies were not a launch feature on the PS3.
1:29:24SPEAKER- Oh, and PS3 was the generation
1:29:26SPEAKERthat Sony went offline entirely
1:29:28SPEAKERfor like a three month period when they were hacked, right?
1:29:30SPEAKER- Right, right.
1:29:31SPEAKERBut stuff like, like they were adding,
1:29:33SPEAKERthey were playing catch up through large swaths
1:29:36SPEAKERof the PS3 era.
1:29:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:29:38SPEAKER- Like adding hacking features into the PS3
1:29:41SPEAKERto try to keep up with what Microsoft was doing.
1:29:44SPEAKER- Well, and then you also saw,
1:29:46SPEAKERthey also established the norms for things like,
1:29:50SPEAKERlike the owner rights for digital downloaded games, right?
1:29:56SPEAKERThe fact that like the idea of a home console
1:29:58SPEAKERthat you could always play whether it's online or offline.
1:30:00SPEAKERAnd if you were online with your non-home console,
1:30:02SPEAKERyou'd be able to play, but not if you were offline,
1:30:05SPEAKERwhich is, I mean, being real shitty for consumers
1:30:09SPEAKERcompared to just buying a thing
1:30:10SPEAKERthat you can move from machine to machine.
1:30:12SPEAKERBut it did let us do things like I played multiplayer games.
1:30:16SPEAKERI played multiplayer burnout with my wife on our second 360
1:30:20SPEAKERwhen we each had our own TV with one download
1:30:24SPEAKERbecause she had the home one
1:30:26SPEAKERand I had the one that was always online or whatever.
1:30:28SPEAKER- Right.
1:30:30SPEAKER- And then, I mean, that carried forward
1:30:32SPEAKEReven to stuff like the Switch and the PS4
1:30:34SPEAKERand the other games, like this is a console
1:30:36SPEAKERthat established literally almost all of the norms
1:30:40SPEAKERof the modern internet connection console.
1:30:42SPEAKER- Absolutely.
1:30:43SPEAKER- And then Microsoft blew it on the next generation.
1:30:45SPEAKER- They sure did.
1:30:48SPEAKEREven the Xbox One had a lot of interesting features
1:30:50SPEAKERthat I felt like carried on from the smart stuff
1:30:53SPEAKERthey were doing with the 360,
1:30:54SPEAKERlike automated dashboard updates and stuff like that.
1:30:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:30:59SPEAKER- That stuff was in the background of the failures with it,
1:31:02SPEAKERwith connect to and the cable box integration
1:31:05SPEAKERand all that weird stuff.
1:31:06SPEAKERBut like quietly behind the scenes,
1:31:07SPEAKERthey were still innovating on just basic usability stuff.
1:31:11SPEAKERLike, oh, this thing will just update itself overnight.
1:31:13SPEAKERYou don't have to, in fact,
1:31:15SPEAKERautomated patch downloads never existed on the 360, did they?
1:31:19SPEAKERLike, see, I'm forgetting.
1:31:21SPEAKER- You launched the game and it would download it,
1:31:23SPEAKERbut the downloads were small so it didn't matter.
1:31:25SPEAKER- Right.
1:31:26SPEAKER- That was the trade-off, right?
1:31:26SPEAKERIs like the Xbox One downloads could get to be like 20 gigs
1:31:30SPEAKERand it was really, really slow.
1:31:32SPEAKERSo you had to do it overnight,
1:31:34SPEAKERotherwise people would have to spend 20 minutes
1:31:35SPEAKERwaiting for their game to launch.
1:31:37SPEAKER- Right, but that's another example of a feature
1:31:39SPEAKERwith the Xbox One that now we just take for granted,
1:31:41SPEAKERbut games patching overnight while the console is in sleep,
1:31:44SPEAKERor the console even being in sleep, basically.
1:31:47SPEAKER- Yeah, and then things like,
1:31:48SPEAKERhey, you can have your console will tell you
1:31:53SPEAKERwhat's on TV on your cable box,
1:31:54SPEAKERwhich you have plugged into the input port on the back of it.
1:31:57SPEAKER- Maybe less.
1:31:58SPEAKER- Less good, that one.
1:31:59SPEAKER- Yeah, appealing, appealing, yeah.
1:32:01SPEAKERAnyway, yes, they have between mainly the 360
1:32:05SPEAKERand to an extent the Xbox One,
1:32:06SPEAKERlike they absolutely have defined what a modern console
1:32:09SPEAKERshould do at the system level.
1:32:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it's fun because,
1:32:15SPEAKERit's been fun going back through this
1:32:16SPEAKER'cause you forget what a big deal Stuff Like Voice was,
1:32:22SPEAKERright, and the historical ramifications of this
1:32:28SPEAKERare that they came into the,
1:32:32SPEAKERthey spent this entire generation, like you said,
1:32:35SPEAKERwith Sony on the back foot,
1:32:37SPEAKERand they came into the next generation
1:32:39SPEAKERwith an opportunity to just continue what they'd done,
1:32:43SPEAKERand then they launched the Xbox One
1:32:46SPEAKERwith a frankly incomprehensible
1:32:51SPEAKERdigital rights management scheme for games
1:32:54SPEAKERand a download only or download primary,
1:32:56SPEAKERlike even when you bought a disc game,
1:32:58SPEAKERit would be a download and all this stuff
1:32:59SPEAKERthat we understood because it was our job to understand it
1:33:03SPEAKERso we could explain it to people,
1:33:05SPEAKERbut consumers and people watching pretty roundly rejected
1:33:09SPEAKERto the point that they never really recovered.
1:33:12SPEAKER- Yeah, and they launched a console
1:33:14SPEAKERthat just didn't play games quite as well as the PS4 did.
1:33:17SPEAKERI mean, the difference was kind of negligible
1:33:18SPEAKERfor casual people,
1:33:19SPEAKERbut for people who were hyper into video games,
1:33:22SPEAKERlike this console is hitting 1080p regularly,
1:33:26SPEAKERthis other one is not, was kind of a death knell.
1:33:30SPEAKER- I don't know if stuff like that,
1:33:32SPEAKERlike I don't know if normal humans,
1:33:33SPEAKERnormal people who play games,
1:33:35SPEAKERI mean, people who follow games
1:33:37SPEAKERdefinitely care about that stuff.
1:33:38SPEAKERI feel like people who just play games
1:33:40SPEAKERaren't as aware of that,
1:33:42SPEAKERbut they are aware of things like,
1:33:44SPEAKERoh, hey, every time I try to start this thing,
1:33:46SPEAKERit's like downloading a patch and it's 20 minutes
1:33:48SPEAKERbefore I can play the game
1:33:49SPEAKERif I play a game once a week or once a month,
1:33:52SPEAKERand that kind of stuff is a bad time.
1:33:56SPEAKER- Yeah, 360 ended strangely,
1:34:00SPEAKERand obviously the console that came after
1:34:03SPEAKERwas kind of not great in a lot of ways,
1:34:06SPEAKERbut most of the 360 era was pretty industry-defining.
1:34:10SPEAKER- I mean, I think if we're being honest,
1:34:14SPEAKERkind of both of the next-gen consoles
1:34:18SPEAKERcarried on the crimes of the previous generation
1:34:21SPEAKERand didn't make some of that stuff better,
1:34:22SPEAKERlike the download speeds, all of that,
1:34:24SPEAKERlike there was a lot of high-level jank
1:34:27SPEAKERin the next generation that really wasn't solved
1:34:29SPEAKERuntil the PS5 and the series consoles came out,
1:34:32SPEAKERas far as I'm concerned, so.
1:34:34SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it makes me a little wistful
1:34:36SPEAKERgoing through all this stuff
1:34:37SPEAKERbecause it was such an exciting time
1:34:39SPEAKERbecause so many wildly new innovative things were happening,
1:34:42SPEAKERand now all of that stuff is just kind of,
1:34:44SPEAKERhas been hammered out and is just part of, like you said,
1:34:47SPEAKERlike you said, it's all just the table stakes now
1:34:48SPEAKERfor a new machine,
1:34:50SPEAKERand I don't think there's probably ever gonna be
1:34:53SPEAKERthat period of rapid innovation again
1:34:54SPEAKERbecause so much of it has just,
1:34:56SPEAKERthe work has been done already.
1:34:57SPEAKER- It's why, when people ask me what the most important,
1:35:02SPEAKERyou know, it's why I think it's one of the most,
1:35:04SPEAKERlike Microsoft lost to the living room,
1:35:07SPEAKERbut defined what consoles are,
1:35:10SPEAKERand like, they probably would've made more money
1:35:14SPEAKERif they hadn't lost the next generation,
1:35:18SPEAKERwhich, just to be clear,
1:35:19SPEAKERwhen we say that we're referencing Phil Spencer
1:35:22SPEAKERtalking about the first digital generation
1:35:25SPEAKERbeing the most important one specifically
1:35:27SPEAKERbecause that's where you establish your games library.
1:35:31SPEAKER- Yeah, that was a good point that he made
1:35:35SPEAKERthat I hadn't actually fully considered
1:35:36SPEAKERthat, you know, a lot of people are,
1:35:38SPEAKERespecially for my purposes,
1:35:40SPEAKERlike as somebody who covers games,
1:35:41SPEAKERbecause like I have games everywhere,
1:35:44SPEAKERbecause in a lot of cases,
1:35:44SPEAKERit's like whatever version we get sent, you know,
1:35:46SPEAKERit's like, oh, I have this on the Xbox One,
1:35:49SPEAKERI have this on the PS4,
1:35:50SPEAKER'cause that's just the review code that showed up,
1:35:52SPEAKERso I don't think about it in those terms,
1:35:53SPEAKERbut people who amassed a library on a console
1:35:58SPEAKERin the last generation
1:35:59SPEAKERare definitely going to be loyal to that console
1:36:01SPEAKERbecause they can keep all those games.
1:36:02SPEAKER- Well, especially with backwards compatibility
1:36:04SPEAKERbecame, again, table stakes for the next generations.
1:36:07SPEAKER- Right.
1:36:09SPEAKER- So yeah, how are you feeling about this, Brad?
1:36:11SPEAKER- This is up there among,
1:36:13SPEAKERI'm like, I'm sitting here thinking like,
1:36:14SPEAKERwhat are the most influential consoles of all time?
1:36:16SPEAKERLike this is absolutely up there.
1:36:18SPEAKER- It's like this and the SNES for me.
1:36:20SPEAKER- It's like this or the NES or something, you know.
1:36:22SPEAKERIt's like, it's definitely like top three probably.
1:36:27SPEAKERI started to say most important,
1:36:28SPEAKERimportant is a very broad word
1:36:30SPEAKERthat people can interpret and argue about
1:36:32SPEAKERall kinds of different ways,
1:36:33SPEAKERbut like in terms of influence,
1:36:35SPEAKERI think it is absolutely like a top three.
1:36:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the lasting influence is,
1:36:44SPEAKERlike you look at the Xbox series
1:36:46SPEAKERand you look at the PS5
1:36:47SPEAKERand you see the shadow of this console
1:36:49SPEAKERin almost every aspect of those devices.
1:36:52SPEAKER- Yep.
1:36:52SPEAKER- So anyway, so that's it.
1:36:54SPEAKERThis is our, if you like this, let us know.
1:36:58SPEAKERWe kind of, I like,
1:37:01SPEAKERwe were thinking about it as an inflection point, right?
1:37:03SPEAKERThis is the moment when this thing
1:37:05SPEAKERthat had previously been offline became an online thing
1:37:09SPEAKERand it's the moment, it's like the,
1:37:13SPEAKERwhat was it, the old three, two, one contact?
1:37:15SPEAKERIt's the moment where everything happens
1:37:17SPEAKERbecause the moment where online happened
1:37:19SPEAKERand where social happened for console games.
1:37:26SPEAKERSo yeah, let us know if you're on the Discord,
1:37:28SPEAKERyou can post feedback into this week's episode.
1:37:31SPEAKERIf you are not, you can send an email
1:37:32SPEAKERto techpod@content.town.
1:37:35SPEAKERAnd as always, it's 100% listener supported show.
1:37:38SPEAKERSo if you want to get into that Patreon
1:37:40SPEAKERand you're not there, into that Discord and you're not there,
1:37:42SPEAKERyou can join the Patreon for five bucks a month.
1:37:44SPEAKERExciting things are happening with Discord threads.
1:37:47SPEAKERNo, not those threads, the other kind of threads.
1:37:49SPEAKERI will say, well, the Discord threads thread
1:37:51SPEAKERis probably gonna become not a thread anymore
1:37:53SPEAKERand just be a channel 'cause it's much higher traffic
1:37:56SPEAKERthan I realized.
1:37:58SPEAKERWe did just this morning, we're trying something new
1:38:01SPEAKER'cause the Zelda game is generating a lot of games traffic.
1:38:06SPEAKERWe made forums in the Discord.
1:38:08SPEAKERThe mods made a good case.
1:38:10SPEAKERThe thread club made a good case.
1:38:11SPEAKERI think it was definitely the right move.
1:38:13SPEAKERI just, I give a bit of the side eye to Discord's
1:38:16SPEAKERkind of product design at the moment.
1:38:18SPEAKER- Look, we're dangerously close to opening a UBB
1:38:22SPEAKERis all I'm gonna say.
1:38:23SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:38:23SPEAKER- I don't ever want to maintain a forum again
1:38:25SPEAKERfrom an ops and backend perspective.
1:38:28SPEAKERIt's a pain in the ass.
1:38:30SPEAKER- Yeah, but these new types of threads seem better
1:38:32SPEAKERthan the old types of threads in Discord for what it's worth.
1:38:36SPEAKER- The thing I realized when we were talking about
1:38:38SPEAKERthis morning is that the old kinds of threads
1:38:40SPEAKERbecome invisible when you turn them on
1:38:42SPEAKERand it's where you put people who are like,
1:38:45SPEAKERmaybe you put the stuff off to the side
1:38:47SPEAKERthat you don't want to have front and center.
1:38:48SPEAKERAnd the new kinds of threads are very visible
1:38:50SPEAKERand it draws people in.
1:38:52SPEAKERYou're like, oh man, I do want to know about,
1:38:55SPEAKERI do want to know about truck driving on Thursday nights.
1:38:58SPEAKERBut anyway, you can join the Discord.
1:39:00SPEAKERYou can get in the Patreon for five bucks a month
1:39:03SPEAKERby going to patreon.com/techpod
1:39:05SPEAKERand we appreciate everybody who joins
1:39:09SPEAKERand helps support the show 'cause we don't run ads.
1:39:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:39:13SPEAKER- That's it.
1:39:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you are the reason we are here.
1:39:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:39:17SPEAKERWe would rather monetize us than monetize you, I guess.
1:39:22SPEAKER- Yes, we're the product, not you.
1:39:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:39:27SPEAKERBut we also, every week, thank our executive producer,
1:39:29SPEAKERtier patrons, including Nick Johnston,
1:39:31SPEAKERPaddle Creek Games makers of Fractured Veil,
1:39:33SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Brad's mid-size hoodoo voodoo switcheroo,
1:39:38SPEAKEROctothorpe Bunny Crimes, Just Wedge,
1:39:40SPEAKERJoel Krowska, Twinkie says Mike B is the Jif Lord,
1:39:45SPEAKERDavid Allen, and James Kamek.
1:39:47SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:39:48SPEAKER- No, thank you.
1:39:50SPEAKER- And I guess that'll do it for us this week.
1:39:52SPEAKERI hope people like this episode.
1:39:53SPEAKERIf they do, let us know.
1:39:54SPEAKERAnd if you don't, let us know, too,
1:39:55SPEAKER'cause we appreciate all the feedback.
1:39:58SPEAKERAnd we will see you all next week.
1:40:02SPEAKERBye, everybody.
1:40:03SPEAKER(upbeat music)