00:00SPEAKERWhen I was a kid and learned about Apollo, the Apollo missions, I always thought that the crap
00:04SPEAKERjob was the guy who was in the command module and had to watch his two friends go down to the moon
00:09SPEAKERand then didn't get to go to the moon. He didn't get to go to the moon. That's all there is to say.
00:14SPEAKERHe went to the moon but didn't go on the moon. But then when I got older and I realized the
00:20SPEAKERimplications of being the person who doesn't go down on the moon and how incredibly dangerous and
00:26SPEAKERhow close each of those landings was, like, and that is the scariest. I think that might be the
00:32SPEAKERsingle scariest job in the space program, right? Which one, the piloting of the command module?
00:37SPEAKERThe Michael Collins job? No, the command module. Yeah, like, if you, you close the hatch,
00:45SPEAKERthe LEM departs, it goes down for the landing, it doesn't work out. You know, your best case is that
00:54SPEAKERyou've got five days in the capsule on the way back by yourself. Oh my God, I never thought about
00:59SPEAKERthat. Right? I've never considered. Like, I can't imagine being more alone. I mean, in a lot of ways,
01:06SPEAKERthose command module pilots were the most alone people have ever been. Absolutely. Like, when you
01:11SPEAKERput it that way, I never thought about it because in my mind, if the mission fails, it's 100% loss
01:16SPEAKERof all involved. I never considered the part where the landing module somehow goes awry and the pilot
01:23SPEAKERof the command module is still there and has to come back on his own. Well, yeah. And I mean,
01:28SPEAKERit's not like there were communication satellites around the moon that they were bouncing signals
01:31SPEAKERoff when they lost. So we're talking about this because Michael Collins, the command module pilot
01:37SPEAKERfor Apollo 11 passed away at the age of 90. Rest in peace, great hero. I mean, one of the good ones,
01:49SPEAKERit seemed like. And even when things were going great and he went on those command module pilots
02:00SPEAKERwent on the far side of the moon, they were dark to earth for some period of time, every single
02:07SPEAKERorbit. And I mean, I can't imagine a more lonely feeling. Yes, that is a level of solitude that very
02:14SPEAKERfew people will ever experience. Yeah. But anyway, I haven't actually read a lot about him. I read a
02:21SPEAKERlot about, obviously Buzz and Neil and Jim Lovell and the Apollo 13 crew and some of the later folks
02:29SPEAKERtoo. But I never read a lot about Michael Collins. I kind of want to now. So if anybody has any good
02:34SPEAKERMichael Collins books, I guess shoot me a message. I'd love to hear. Somebody on our discord said
02:39SPEAKERthey met him a few years ago. They said he had a great dry sense of humor. I can see that.
02:43SPEAKERI looked at his Twitter feed right after he passed. Sadly, it took his passing to get me
02:47SPEAKERto do that. But people were saying that he was very active on Twitter and sure enough,
02:52SPEAKERlooked like he interacted with all kinds of people in the space program and science.
02:54SPEAKERA lot of memes. Oh, okay. That's better.
02:57SPEAKERLike his pinned tweet was from earth day. Basically saying, I'm super paraphrasing here,
03:05SPEAKERbut basically when you see all of the entire earth out your window, when you have that experience,
03:10SPEAKERyou realize that every day needs to be earth day. Let's preserve our biosphere and our environment
03:16SPEAKERfor future generations. That's the thing about those missions that always sticks with me.
03:21SPEAKERI can't speak for every single Apollo astronaut. I'm sure there are variations here, but my overall
03:27SPEAKERimpression is that so many of them came back as these very dedicated humanists and environmentalists.
03:35SPEAKERI've never met any Apollo astronauts, but all of the shuttle astronauts I have absolutely have
03:41SPEAKERthat vibe. Right. In later generations and with those types of missions, there were more
03:45SPEAKERscientists, more people that you would think would be predisposed to that kind of thing.
03:48SPEAKERMaybe I'm painting with an overly broad brush here, but those firsts, the Gemini and Apollo
03:53SPEAKERmissions were drawn from fighter jockeys, test pilots, these macho best of the best military
04:00SPEAKERguys. Not the type of people that you would think of as being very thoughtful, contemplative,
04:07SPEAKERconservationist types, but every single one of them that I have read after coming back from
04:13SPEAKERthose missions, they just seem to have such a thoughtful humanist bent to their outlook
04:18SPEAKERon the world. How could you not after having that experience? I'm looking at the Wikipedia page,
04:24SPEAKERbut this is something that I can't remember who I was talking to about this. The Wikipedia article
04:32SPEAKERdescribes it as a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during space flight,
04:36SPEAKERoften while viewing Earth from outer space. Michael Collins says specifically,
04:41SPEAKER"The thing that really surprised me was that if Earth projected an air of fragility,
04:45SPEAKERwas that it, Earth, projected an air of fragility. And why? I don't know. I don't know to this day.
04:51SPEAKERI had a feeling it's tiny, it's shiny, it's beautiful, it's home, and it's fragile."
04:57SPEAKERI talked to Chell Lundgren one time, and he had said there's a thing, he's a low Earth orbit guy,
05:05SPEAKERbecause he's been to the space station and shuttle flights. He said specifically that you sit there
05:12SPEAKERand you're looking at it and you see so much of the world at one time. You see billions of people
05:17SPEAKERin one field of view, and then you look off to the horizon and the atmosphere is just this tiny,
05:25SPEAKERthin blue line. And you can see all of life as we know it in the universe exists within this space,
05:32SPEAKERthat if you hold your fingers together as close as you can hold them without touching,
05:36SPEAKERthat's how thick it looks when you're in orbit. I can't imagine looking at that from the other
05:43SPEAKERside of the moon. You're coming back around the moon, looking around at the window and seeing...
05:49SPEAKERThere's the shot in Apollo 13 where Jim Lovell holds his thumb up to the moon,
05:53SPEAKERand it blocks it when he's on Earth, and then he does it when it's on the moon, and it blocks it
05:57SPEAKERon the... Is he going around the backside of the moon? I can't imagine. I can't even imagine.
06:01SPEAKERYeah. I started to make a kids in the hall, I'm crushing the Earth joke, but who would do that?
06:05SPEAKERWho would actually do that? Who would not be so filled with awe and reverence and spirituality
06:10SPEAKERat that moment that you would want to do something silly? I'm sitting here feeling a swell of it,
06:15SPEAKERjust thinking about this. Yep. If you have access to VR and you want to get the barest taste of
06:23SPEAKERthis, load up Google Earth because you can stand back and you can stand at whatever distance you
06:30SPEAKERwant. I don't know if I can handle that. It's incredible. I found it personally affecting.
06:36SPEAKERAbsolutely. But I mean, as much as what we were both just describing fills me with awe,
06:41SPEAKERthe image you painted of the lone orbiter behind the moon on the dark side for some period of time,
06:48SPEAKERthinking about what's in the other direction from the moon.
06:50SPEAKERYeah. Nothing for really a long time.
06:53SPEAKERA lot less awe and a lot more vertigo.
06:56SPEAKERWell, so I was wrong. Michael Collins didn't coin this name. It was actually
07:00SPEAKERFrank White who explored the idea in his book, The Overview Effect in 1987. So there you go.
07:07SPEAKEROkay.
07:08SPEAKERSo rip Michael Collins and we're down for a long time. I've been kind of, like I know-
07:14SPEAKERDon't say it.
07:15SPEAKERWe don't have that many people alive left who walked on the moon. So we got a real limited
07:19SPEAKERamount of time if we want to keep that chain alive.
07:21SPEAKERYou know, maybe we should start adding to that number.
07:23SPEAKERSeems like a good idea. It won't be long before there'll be an Applebee's up there. SpaceX
07:28SPEAKERlaunches their commercial rockets. It's out. Let's go and get a Chili's. You get your Apple Blossom,
07:36SPEAKERyour Onion Blossom, whatever. It's all going to happen, man.
07:39SPEAKERLet's just do the podcast.
07:58SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod. I'm Will.
08:14SPEAKEROh, hey, Will. I'm Brad. Nice to meet you.
08:16SPEAKERIt's good to meet you, Brad. Hope you're doing well.
08:18SPEAKERYeah. Thanks for having me. This is a podcast?
08:22SPEAKERYour name's in the show. Your name's in the show title. You're Brad.
08:24SPEAKERWow. That's very-
08:25SPEAKERI know.
08:26SPEAKERThis may be a little presumptuous of you to put me right on the masthead before I've even
08:30SPEAKERproven myself.
08:30SPEAKERThis is the 84th episode, not counting the 13 patron episodes we've done.
08:35SPEAKERIt's the 85th episode, dude.
08:38SPEAKERWait, hold on. That means this might actually be our 100th episode spectacular.
08:42SPEAKERAlso, hang on.
08:43SPEAKER13 patron episodes, one zero episode. That's 14 episodes. Oh,
08:46SPEAKERit's next week is the 100th episode spectacular.
08:48SPEAKERNot only is it literally the 85th episode in terms of what is going in the title tag,
08:54SPEAKERalso we did that episode zero, so I guess it's actually the 86th episode.
08:58SPEAKERWe did 86 plus 13. Have we done 13 patron episodes or 14 patron episodes?
09:03SPEAKERHighly accurate specific numbering on this science and technology podcast.
09:07SPEAKERHold on, hold on, hold on.
09:08SPEAKERWe are very rigid about our methodology around here. Very disciplined.
09:12SPEAKERThis is important. Next week is actually the 100th episode of this podcast.
09:19SPEAKEROkay. I don't know how I feel about counting the patron episodes.
09:21SPEAKERI feel like that's a separate category.
09:23SPEAKEROh, okay.
09:24SPEAKERI feel like it needs to say 100 or maybe 99 on there for counts.
09:29SPEAKERWe'll get there. Maybe.
09:31SPEAKERI don't know if episode zero may not count. I'm not sure.
09:34SPEAKERLook, episode zero was just there for iTunes. We had to put that there.
09:36SPEAKERiTunes didn't give us a feed.
09:38SPEAKERRight.
09:40SPEAKERHow you doing, man? What's up? What are you thinking about this week?
09:43SPEAKERI was going to say, interestingly enough, that's also how we arrived at the name of the show.
09:46SPEAKERWe need to put something in this field so we can have a show.
09:49SPEAKERYeah. And then I shared it with one person and they were like, oh man,
09:51SPEAKERthis is awesome. And shared it with everybody. Cause I didn't specify not to.
09:55SPEAKERHey, that's a good problem to have.
09:57SPEAKERI know I'm doing all right. Hanging out. Things are moving along. How are you?
10:02SPEAKERI'm good, man. I was having a conversation on the Twitter this morning.
10:06SPEAKEROh, why would you do that?
10:08SPEAKERWell, a mutual friend of ours said, hey, the hardest level of returnal is getting a PS5.
10:16SPEAKERThat's right. It's unbeatable for many people.
10:20SPEAKERAnd I was like, you know what? You're absolutely right. Cause like there was a period of time last
10:24SPEAKERNovember, December, whenever they came out that I was like, I'm going to get a PS, I want a PS5.
10:28SPEAKERAnd I like, I did all the things. Like I signed up for StockX and I did the,
10:32SPEAKERI got out of a couple of discords and I followed some people on Twitter and I unmuted them
10:36SPEAKERso that they pop notifications on my phone when they did a tweet.
10:39SPEAKERAnd I like went to, I got in Walmart queues. I got in the PS direct line. I did some Amazon work.
10:47SPEAKERI got some orders canceled from Best Buy. Oh, did you enter the new egg lottery?
10:51SPEAKERI did not enter the new egg lottery. I saw, I wish I'd saved the link for this.
10:54SPEAKERI saw somebody crunched the actual probability on the new egg lottery.
10:58SPEAKERBetter off just buying a real lottery ticket probably.
11:01SPEAKERIt's like, it was like 0.0001% chance or something. It was like astronomically low.
11:06SPEAKERYeah. So the games, the consoles came out and like that first wave of launch games came out.
11:11SPEAKERAnd then it seemed like nothing came out that was worth playing for a really long time.
11:14SPEAKERIt's been quiet on the new console front. Yes. So yeah, I guess we're kind of,
11:20SPEAKERI don't think we actually realized this until we started planning this episode,
11:23SPEAKERbut we are coming up on the six month mark on these machines in a couple of weeks.
11:27SPEAKERThey're old now. These aren't new consoles anymore. These are just consoles.
11:31SPEAKERMore like last generation. Anyway, yeah. So I guess we're just going to do kind of a little
11:37SPEAKERkind of six month check-in here on where these machines are at in terms of stock and how the
11:41SPEAKERsystem software is shaping up and how the games are doing for what games there are.
11:47SPEAKERYeah. Like usually by this time in a console generation, I've like spent a lot of time with
11:52SPEAKERthem. I'm poked at them to see how they work. And like, I'm just, as somebody who has no
11:55SPEAKERfirsthand experience whatsoever because of the Rona, I'm really curious what like, like, you
12:01SPEAKERknow, how, how they're doing, like what's, should I still be looking at like, I'm probably gonna
12:06SPEAKERstart looking for a PS5 soon. Cause I want to play Returnal and I'd like to play Miles Morales and
12:11SPEAKERDemon's Souls. Ratchet is almost out. I'm like 50, 50 on Ratchet. Looks cool, but we'll talk about
12:17SPEAKERit. I don't, I don't have a connection to Ratchet really. Cause I never was a PlayStation guy back
12:21SPEAKERthen. So, so yeah. How like, how's it, how's like, are there games? Not really. I mean,
12:28SPEAKERI'm trying to think if Returnal, I think is the first, first party release since launch. I think
12:33SPEAKERthat's right. Or was there like little, they're not even like little games that go around. It's
12:37SPEAKERnot like there's no RezoGun equivalent. I mean, I guess this is, I mean, Housemarque, the maker of
12:43SPEAKERReturnal would have been the studio doing a RezoGun or similar $15 arcade action game,
12:48SPEAKERbut they have moved up to $70 arcade action games. So no, let me, let me double check.
12:55SPEAKERWe just make absolutely sure I'm not getting that wrong. I can't think of any
13:00SPEAKERfirst party games prior to this. So, I mean, before we get into that too deep, like, so have you just
13:04SPEAKERgiven up? Like you're, you're just in, in stasis for now. Yeah. So at some point in like January,
13:09SPEAKERwhen I realized that there weren't any games coming for five or six months, I, I was like,
13:13SPEAKERI'll just wait at this point. And when, when I can order one from Amazon and just click the
13:16SPEAKERbuy now button, it'll get here in like two or three weeks. I'll do that. But like they haven't.
13:22SPEAKERSo when is that actually going to be though, man? Like that's probably, that could be years
13:27SPEAKERaway. I mean, like we're into Wii territory at this point. At this point in like the PS4 generation,
13:33SPEAKERthey had sold the same number of units or about the same number of units, but you could go to
13:37SPEAKERAmazon and you could go to Best Buy and just hit the button and they would come. It might not be
13:41SPEAKERlike, you know, shipping immediately. You might be shipping in like 10 days or something, but you
13:45SPEAKERwould get it. The fact that like we're still into sneakerhead territory here is, is real, is real
13:52SPEAKERweird. So it's bizarre. So yeah, like I, I stopped looking in January and kind of haven't been paying
13:58SPEAKERattention to it since then. Yeah. It seems like the Series X is maybe a little bit easier to get.
14:03SPEAKERA little, a little bit. Yeah. Just, just because the, the S, the 1080p model is kind of splitting
14:10SPEAKERdemand across two skews instead of like the, the, the, you know, the digital only and,
14:15SPEAKERor the disc version, which are equally desirable on the PS5 front.
14:19SPEAKERYes. I mean, also I, you know, not to get into it too much. I think there is a lingering like
14:23SPEAKERprestige and kind of brand loyalty around the PlayStation brand that has carried over from 25
14:30SPEAKERyears of previous generations. Well, and, and there's also like, it's funny cause like I was,
14:34SPEAKERI used to be an Xbox guy cause I played multiplayer with friends that were Xbox people,
14:38SPEAKERright? I like, I played Halo and stuff like that. And you know, now I play all of the first party
14:44SPEAKERMicrosoft stuff on my PC. And there's like, the only thing I've wanted to play on the Xbox is MLB
14:52SPEAKERthe show, which is like the weirdest conceptual. So it is.
14:58SPEAKERYeah. It's like, that's just bizarre. So yeah, I don't know. It's, it's a weird,
15:02SPEAKERit's a real weird situation. Yes. MLB the show for people who don't know
15:06SPEAKERis a Sony developed and published game that is now available on the Xbox as well as the PS5.
15:11SPEAKERBecause of the license with MLB, I believe. Yes. Because, because they are dealing with
15:14SPEAKERa major sports body. Yeah. That thing, that thing boots up with a PlayStation
15:18SPEAKERstudios, like intro animation and everything. I went through the whole thought process like,
15:23SPEAKERman, I could get an Xbox series X and then I could play, man, we'll be the show on game pass
15:27SPEAKERfor free. I was like, no, I'm an idiot. That is a $500 console to buy a $60 game. I'll just buy it
15:32SPEAKERfor the PlayStation when I get a PlayStation at some point in the future. Do you really like
15:36SPEAKERbaseball that much? I like baseball games. It's like golf. I like, I like golf and baseball games
15:40SPEAKERa lot. I can see it. You know, you can kind of play a baseball game with like a beer in the other
15:45SPEAKERhand. It's pretty low commitment, low stakes. Gina and I will sit down and play golf or baseball
15:49SPEAKERgame sometimes. Like that's a good time. It's kind of a Zen experience, right? Kind of.
15:54SPEAKERYeah. It's it's like a, it's. Get into a flow state.
15:57SPEAKERI mean, look, it's like, it's like playing golf in real life. Like the, the, if you,
16:00SPEAKERif you aren't good at golf, it's an, it's a, it's a structured way to spend an afternoon outside
16:06SPEAKERand maybe have a beer or two. Yes. It's kind of leisure, leisure sport.
16:11SPEAKERYeah, exactly. Real quick to correct myself. Yes. MLB the show and also Destruction All-Stars
16:17SPEAKERhave come out on the PS5 since launch. So I was, I was forgetting those. Destruction All-Stars
16:22SPEAKERthough, even they put that on PlayStation Plus day one though. So that was even.
16:26SPEAKERWell, cause it was a multiplayer thing, right? It's a multiplayer car combat game,
16:29SPEAKERbut it also seems to have kind of come and gone a little bit, which it's a tough market,
16:33SPEAKERthe multiplayer game. Yeah. I feel like Returnal is the first, like kind of marquee
16:39SPEAKERPS5 exclusive game to come out. It seems like the first, like, it seems like the first video
16:44SPEAKERis it, we had this conversation. I made the analogy earlier today that it feels like the
16:48SPEAKERdead rising of this generation and that it's the first kind of like, Oh, this is what this
16:52SPEAKERis going to be like. Yeah. So, but I mean, is it like doing like it's a first party title,
16:59SPEAKERso I assume it's doing like ray tracing or it's doing something that's fancy and new console-y,
17:03SPEAKERbut like, are we seeing the fruits of these labors already or not so much?
17:06SPEAKERI mean, it looks very nice, but it runs at 60 FPS across the board, which is like kind of one
17:10SPEAKERof the main topics I wanted to talk to you about here, which is how much longer are we going to see
17:15SPEAKERthat? Because I very cynically assume we're gonna hit the wall where we no longer see that. And I'm
17:20SPEAKERgetting really used to it. But like, you know, you think people are going to start releasing 30 Hertz
17:24SPEAKERgames because they want them to look good. Absolutely. I have assumed that since day one,
17:27SPEAKERlike I'm actually shocked that we are still getting 60 frames per second games even six
17:31SPEAKERmonths in. I mean, on the PlayStation, on the four pro, you could always choose between like
17:38SPEAKERresolution and performance. There are tons of games where they just handled, it was handled
17:43SPEAKERvery, it was very developer specific. So lots of games would not really know what options you had.
17:47SPEAKERIt was just like, here's a performance mode and a resolution mode. And you can't tell a huge
17:51SPEAKERdifference because the frame rates are not that different or like they wouldn't detail what the
17:54SPEAKERdifferences are very well. But when you're looking at PC games and you have the DLSS lever, do you
18:00SPEAKERchoose performance quality or balanced? I usually go for balanced.
18:04SPEAKERI always go for performance. But I haven't, I haven't done a lot of side-by-side on that stuff.
18:08SPEAKERNo, I don't, I don't ever look at it. I just always go for performance.
18:11SPEAKERI just want the frame rate. 400 frames a second. Yes.
18:14SPEAKERSo yeah, you know, Returnal runs at 60 across the board. I think even at 4k or on 4k TVs,
18:19SPEAKERthere is no like resolution mode and you know, it is a fast action game. Like it requires a
18:23SPEAKERlot of very quick reflexes and stuff and snappy dodging and stuff. So like the frame rate is
18:27SPEAKERappreciated for sure, but I can't help but think about the fact that there is all this
18:33SPEAKERbudget that is just going into, you know, slicing, slicing the game up into more frames per second,
18:40SPEAKERrather than making it look good. Right. Like there's, cause I mean,
18:43SPEAKERthe conventional wisdom was always, there was that back of the box screenshot effect.
18:47SPEAKERI don't know if you've heard people talk about that.
18:49SPEAKERWell, not bull shot. I mean, they're real, they're real screenshots, but the marketing wisdom was
18:55SPEAKERalways like, whatever the screenshot looks like on the back of the box, that's what's going to sell
18:59SPEAKERthe game. Do you think people look at screenshots to choose which game they're going to buy still?
19:03SPEAKERI mean, this is kind of metaphorical in this case. Cause like people aren't necessarily
19:07SPEAKERgoing to stores and looking at the backs of boxes to make decisions as much anymore.
19:12SPEAKERIt's funny. I set up the mystery this morning. I was playing the old games with my daughter
19:16SPEAKERand she was like, Hey, can we try this toy store? She saw a toy store in the list. I was like,
19:22SPEAKERshe was like, can I, can I play the toy story game? I was like, I have no idea. This could be
19:25SPEAKERa complete disaster. Cause like movie games back then were all over the place. And we loaded up the
19:30SPEAKERtoy story game from like 1995. It was a side scrolling platformer where Woody can like lasso
19:36SPEAKERstuff. And, and that is a game that 100% would have sold on the fact that Buzz Lightyear and
19:42SPEAKERWoody were on the front cover of that box. Right. And I can't imagine that anybody, except for like
19:47SPEAKERthe most uninformed grandmother goes to the Walmart and picks out a game based on what's on the cover
19:52SPEAKERof the game these days. Yeah. I mean, they don't even make those games anymore. Like movie games
19:56SPEAKERno longer exist because A, they don't sell as well. B, it's all in mobile. It's all in free
20:00SPEAKERto play games now. Or they end up in something like a Lego game. Like, yeah. But I mean like
20:08SPEAKERwe're going to hit that point, right? I mean, maybe the pandemic is going to push this back,
20:11SPEAKERbut at some point some developer is going to get so ambitious with this horsepower that they are
20:15SPEAKERgoing to spend every bit of a 30 Hertz budget on making the game look good. Right. I mean,
20:21SPEAKERI th I think that that's, that always happens, but I also think that because the ray tracing
20:27SPEAKERstuff is so new and we don't really have like a series of use cases that are well-defined,
20:33SPEAKERyou know, this is, this isn't like when they used to add God rays or something stupid like that,
20:38SPEAKERwhere it's just like, Hey, we're going to put some art in and then trigger the art and run a,
20:41SPEAKERrun a couple of shaders on the art. This is, there's, there's a, the, the range and spectrum
20:48SPEAKERof how you can apply the ray tracing stuff to current games and the traditional game
20:54SPEAKERinfrastructure is, is complicated and broad enough that I think there's like, I think you'll be able
21:00SPEAKERto hit whatever performance target you're looking for. The question is like, do you build a game at
21:05SPEAKER30 Hertz or do you build a game at 60 Hertz? And then if so, what are the trade-offs for,
21:10SPEAKERfor both of those things? Right. Cause even, even ratchet, which is like probably the
21:15SPEAKERmost intense technical showcase on the PS5 so far in terms of graphics has a 60 frames per second
21:20SPEAKERmode in it. Well, but like it's unclear to me how much of ratchet is ray traced. Like most of what
21:25SPEAKERyou see in that is, could be like reflection mapping, screen space, screen space reflections
21:30SPEAKERand stuff like that. Right. Yeah. I mean, they haven't been getting out there with too much
21:32SPEAKERtechnical detail on that stuff. So it's hard to say like the, obviously the digital foundries of
21:36SPEAKERthe world can pick that stuff apart from what they see, but like Sony and its developers are
21:40SPEAKERnot exactly out there like delivering complex breakdowns of what they're doing in most cases.
21:45SPEAKERI mean, that stuff usually comes like the week before launch when they want to boost juice,
21:48SPEAKERthe pre-orders right. Right. Or in a GDC a year from now or whenever GDC is safe. Again,
21:53SPEAKERthere will be a talk at some point where we'll know exactly what returnal is doing.
21:56SPEAKERWell, like it seems like the, the stuff that I saw in that ratchet, the stuff that they really
22:00SPEAKERshould say to play earlier this week with ratchet seemed like, like the, the stuff that struck me
22:05SPEAKERfrom a technical standpoint in that was the, was the SSD loading times and the access speeds,
22:11SPEAKERwhere they're throwing the portals, zooping through the portals into entirely other worlds
22:15SPEAKERthat typically would have had a level load between them, which I thought was really cool.
22:18SPEAKERYeah. Like, like, like the old way of doing that would be that you zoop into the portal,
22:22SPEAKERyou go through a wormhole and then the wormhole takes three seconds. And at the end of the three
22:26SPEAKERseconds, the load happens off the hard drive. And with this, you just zoop straight through with no,
22:32SPEAKERno, like there's no elevator. There's no mass effect elevator. Basically, no. I mean,
22:35SPEAKERI was kind of surprised to see there is sort of a two to three second interstitial there of kind of,
22:41SPEAKERyou know, weird energy field that you're flying through before you see the new level. Like
22:44SPEAKERI'm not complaining about that. I'm just saying it's not actually instantaneous. Like it's,
22:49SPEAKERthere is a load. It's just a very fast load. It's kind of interesting to see.
22:53SPEAKERI mean, it's, it's funny you say that. Cause I, I literally did not, I watched that video
23:00SPEAKERthree hours, five hours ago. And I didn't, I did not, I was looking for that kind of stuff. And I
23:06SPEAKERdid not track that those were level loads. I just thought it was an art asset. Yeah.
23:10SPEAKERWell, it is some kind of art asset. It's some kind of interstitial there, but it is,
23:13SPEAKERbut it is masking a load. Like the, the director of the game who was narrating that footage,
23:17SPEAKERI noticed did choose his words very carefully to say with the power SSD of the SSD, we can
23:22SPEAKERsend you a near instantaneously from world to world, you know, like he,
23:26SPEAKERhe hedged there a little bit. Like it's not frame to frame, you know, obviously like
23:29SPEAKERdata has to move across a bus. It's still a boatload of data. Yeah.
23:33SPEAKERIt's it's, there is still a load. It's just, it's just so fast that who cares? Like, again,
23:37SPEAKERI'm not saying like, Oh my God, they couldn't deliver instantaneous. No loading. I'm just
23:41SPEAKERsaying it's like, and from an academic standpoint, like it's interesting to see what they can pull
23:45SPEAKERoff and what the limitations still are, you know? Yeah. It's it's. And I think like, I think with
23:52SPEAKERas always it happens, the tools that are provided, I mean, the last generation was kind of the most
23:56SPEAKERunderwhelming of like, and I'm going to say this, and then somebody is going to post in the discord,
24:01SPEAKERlike screenshots of like launch PS4 games and like your last of us too. And I'll be like, well,
24:06SPEAKERI'm an, I'm an a-hole for saying that, but like this, this last generation did not seem to be
24:12SPEAKERlike, like the technology was pretty well developed by the time it launched and we didn't see,
24:18SPEAKERI mean, I'm making a head motion here, but go on. Yeah. But I mean, it seems like,
24:23SPEAKERlike think about the difference between like last of last of us one in Spiderman, right? Spiderman,
24:28SPEAKERSpiderman was interesting because it was big and because it was broad and because they did
24:31SPEAKERthe cube maps so that all the rooms looked like rooms instead of just flat textures on the side
24:34SPEAKERof a building and stuff like that. But it wasn't, it didn't look like a different generation from
24:41SPEAKEReven like late stage PS3 games. I don't think other than resolution and frame rate.
24:45SPEAKERYeah. So I mean, you know, more objects on the screen were maybe more pedestrians,
24:48SPEAKERlike it was an incremental improvement, but not generational or not like revolutionary,
24:52SPEAKERyou know, it was not a sea change. And like PS3 to PS4 was kind of the same,
24:57SPEAKERlike PS3 to PS4 was a pretty underwhelming, like the, the change was that we got higher resolution
25:02SPEAKERand that the frame rate was stable and that the developers had a much easier time with the,
25:05SPEAKERwith the, you know, just saying hardware versus, you know, Sony's.
25:10SPEAKERYeah. I actually, the more I think about it, the more I've come to think of the PS4 Xbox One
25:14SPEAKERgeneration as almost like a maintenance or a housekeeping generation where they felt like it,
25:18SPEAKERyeah. Like they finally both moved to a common well-known architecture instead of using these
25:22SPEAKERweird bespoke CPUs. Like they, they, the development tools became much more mature.
25:28SPEAKERThis is an embarrassing look into how I spend my spare time, but I was looking through the
25:32SPEAKER2013 presentation from somebody high up in Sony development about their move to, to LLVM from GCC,
25:40SPEAKERwhich is the compiler that they use in the PS4 development tool chain. And I was just kind of
25:46SPEAKERgoing through like a bunch of their rationale there, but it was like an interesting look into
25:49SPEAKERlike the the tools and the, the libraries and stuff like that, that they're using in the
25:55SPEAKERbackground or were at that time to get away from like the very complicated cell development to a
25:59SPEAKERmuch more familiar platform. Well, yeah, when you talk to developers about moving from like,
26:04SPEAKERif you talk to anybody, whenever I talk to friends who worked on Unreal Engine games in the PS3 era,
26:09SPEAKERthey all have like this haunted look in their eyes because, you know, building Unreal Engine games on
26:15SPEAKERthe PS3 was the, it was a disaster almost every time, at least at the beginning.
26:21SPEAKERRight. Like those consoles, it almost feels to me like they were just rebasing like development
26:26SPEAKERpractices and standards on a sturdier foundation, but maybe that's why like
26:32SPEAKERtechnologically, there was not a big leap there. You know, like you said, it was like
26:35SPEAKERslightly higher resolutions, like slightly more detail, like better shaders and stuff,
26:39SPEAKERbut not like not a revolutionary change, certainly nothing like the SSDs or the
26:43SPEAKERray tracing on these machines. So, so yeah.
26:45SPEAKERI mean, we're in, we're in a situation where the technology is brand new, like even like,
26:51SPEAKERand it's not even like with hardware transform and lighting or pixel shaders and vertex shaders like
26:55SPEAKERthat with the 360 where like the technology was mature on the PC side and then came to consoles
27:01SPEAKERafter it had been out for a while. We're two generations and like six or seven games in on
27:07SPEAKERray tracing on the PC side at this point, you know, we're going to see, my guess is that we're
27:13SPEAKERnot for the pandemic. This holiday would be the big ray tracing year on PC for the first time.
27:17SPEAKERThis is the year that we were like, "Oh man, I wish I had a ray tracing card."
27:22SPEAKERThat might get pushed back a little bit because of the delays related to the pandemic. And I mean,
27:28SPEAKERit maybe should have been last year. I mean, I don't know, Cyberpunk was supposed to ship and
27:32SPEAKERthat had its issues. And, you know, we saw Watchdogs Legion and that kind of stuff,
27:36SPEAKERCall of Duty shipped with actually a pretty good ray tracing implementation last year.
27:41SPEAKERI mean, like Cyberpunk has obviously more than a share of issues, but the ray tracing
27:44SPEAKERimplementation from everything I've looked at, the breakdowns and stuff out there seemed quite
27:48SPEAKERgood. Like it actually, that seems, that seems like one of the success stories of that game.
27:52SPEAKERYeah, no doubt. And then, and then they just rolled the Metro Exodus,
27:56SPEAKERlike the graphics revamp, the ray tracing revamp of that thing the other day. Did you
27:59SPEAKERwatch that video? Yeah, that's out next week for PC owners.
28:02SPEAKERI think so, yeah. I have not, I have not, yeah, it's the sixth.
28:04SPEAKERI have not seen that footage yet, but I'm very interested to try that.
28:08SPEAKERThat game looked good before and it's a whole, it looks bonk, like I'm going to load up my old save.
28:14SPEAKERAnd what's the, what did, what did they change? Is it a full, like global
28:17SPEAKERillumination kind of top to bottom? Yeah. Like they redid the renderer to
28:21SPEAKERuse ray tracing from soup to nuts. Oh, wow. Okay.
28:24SPEAKERMaybe not soup to nuts, but like way more implementation.
28:27SPEAKEROkay. I have to see that because like, that's the type of stuff I've been waiting for, you know,
28:30SPEAKERlike that's why I've spent so much time in Minecraft RTX, because that is, like you said,
28:33SPEAKERlike that is top to bottom, nothing but ray tracing. And you see, you see what that actually
28:38SPEAKERmeans when everything is affected by everything else.
28:40SPEAKERWell, so previously, as I understand it, Metro Exodus mostly used it for shadows,
28:45SPEAKERray tracing to determine where, where the shadow parts were. And there wasn't a lot of reflection
28:50SPEAKERand lighting and stuff like that in there. So I'm super stoked to play that and load that up again.
28:54SPEAKERYeah. I think the game, the game did not do a ton for me just in terms of enjoying it as a game,
28:59SPEAKERbut as a showpiece, I definitely want to see it. I liked it. I am not the kind of person who
29:05SPEAKERgets into Eastern European stalker-esque shooters. And I thought that was a much more accessible
29:11SPEAKERversion of that game than anything I had seen to date. Sure. So anyway, but okay. So
29:17SPEAKERlike, do you, do you feel like the 30 Hertz thing, like, does it bother you?
29:20SPEAKERDo you notice? I don't know. I'm torn. I mean, like,
29:24SPEAKERI feel like I'm getting very spoiled with every game coming out and having a 60 Hertz mode.
29:29SPEAKERYeah. It's not that I can't go back, but I think the more games I get with that,
29:34SPEAKERthe less I'm going to want to, you know, and eventually like,
29:38SPEAKERI'm trying to think what the game's going to be like last generation, I think on the PS4,
29:41SPEAKERit was Uncharted 4, like that Uncharted 4 was the first game on the PS4 that came out
29:45SPEAKERthat my eyes popped out of my head and said, Holy shit. Okay. Now they're making games for
29:48SPEAKERnew hardware that absolutely could not have existed on the previous generation. I don't
29:53SPEAKERknow what that's going to be this time, but like, that's the game that I assume is going to be the
29:56SPEAKER30 Hertz game because like, they're going to have to sacrifice half the frame rate budget to get
30:00SPEAKERthere. Right. Do you, like, like for me, it's as long as the frame rate is stable, I'm kind of okay.
30:07SPEAKERLike I like Dark Souls on the 360 is one of the classic examples of like that game. I was
30:13SPEAKERtrucking along and then I got to Blighttown. I was just like, I'm done. Yeah, I get it.
30:17SPEAKERNo doubt. You're not wrong. Like it depends on the genre, of course. Like obviously you've got your
30:23SPEAKERperformance intensive games, like fighting and driving and multiplayer shooters that you
30:27SPEAKERabsolutely need higher frame rate just for gameplay reasons. But like,
30:30SPEAKERsure. Of course I can play a single player story-driven game at 30. It's not the end of the
30:34SPEAKERworld. It's just so much nicer at 60. It does. It's funny. The 360 Hertz monitor on the PC has
30:42SPEAKERdestroyed my ability to perceive like, like everything under 160 frames a second feels slow.
30:49SPEAKERNow this is a very wine and cheese attitude about frame rate here.
30:53SPEAKERLook, just, I'm just saying, let him, let him eat, you know, 144 Hertz G-Sync monitors,
30:57SPEAKERBrad. So that's, that's, that's what we're, that's where we're at now.
31:00SPEAKERSay fine 360 Hertz vintage. Yes.
31:05SPEAKERSo yeah, I, I am, I'm interested. Like it's still kind of unclear to me what the DLSS situation is
31:12SPEAKERgoing to, or I mean, obviously not DLSS cause that's an Nvidia thing and these are AMD hardware.
31:16SPEAKERAMD based. Yeah. They, they are working on, I see different names for it depending on
31:21SPEAKERwho's talking about it. Like Microsoft has some DirectX based something or other, but like super,
31:27SPEAKERsuper resolution is the term I keep seeing used whatever the final feature ends up being called.
31:31SPEAKERMicrosoft and AMD have been working on, on a DirectX API for the, the SOCs and AMD graphics
31:38SPEAKERcards that were released last fall or last winter. But like, I mean, I don't know if that's going to
31:44SPEAKERcome to the Xbox and who knows what that'll do to the PlayStation, but like, it's, it's unclear
31:49SPEAKERlike, cause you know, there was the whole kerfuffle background launch of Microsoft coming out being
31:52SPEAKERlike, ah, we're the only console that's fully RDNA 2 compliant. Like we're the, you know,
31:56SPEAKERwe use the full off the shelf GPU part. Sony did a bunch of custom stuff. So yeah, it was, I mean,
32:02SPEAKERyou know, rest assured, like Sony seems to have made a lot of the right bets. I'm sure that they
32:05SPEAKERhave got plenty of capability there as well. But I mean, I mean, that's that, that machine learning
32:10SPEAKERupscaling up-resing type situation is a real wild card for perf. It means you can render internally
32:18SPEAKERat low resolution on Nvidia cards. I know we've said it over and over, but it's a game changer.
32:22SPEAKERLike it's kind of still blows my mind how big a deal actually is. So I don't, I don't know how,
32:28SPEAKERI don't know to what extent they will get there on the consoles. Maybe that does balance it out.
32:32SPEAKERMaybe you're right. Like maybe we do actually keep getting good performance modes through this whole
32:36SPEAKERgeneration. Like nothing would make me happier than that. What if the end of this generation is
32:40SPEAKERus just rendering at like 1280 by 768 and then upscaling it to 4k. Whatever works. God. So what's
32:49SPEAKERwhat's going on? So, okay. What's the, what's like the user experience? Has stuff changed? Have we
32:56SPEAKERseen, we're almost at six months. Have we seen a console, a big console UI refresh yet at this
33:01SPEAKERpoint? Big refresh. I mean, Sony put out, so they put out several firmware updates that were just
33:06SPEAKERvery minor bug fix performance increase type stuff. And then they put out one three weeks
33:11SPEAKERago, something like that, that they kind of, they went on their blog and were like, Hey, here we're
33:15SPEAKERhere with the first major refresh on the PS5 user experience. And it was very minor, really not the
33:22SPEAKERone, the one thing that they did add, which they kind of should have had a launch, but at least
33:25SPEAKERthey have it now is kind of cold storage to USB of PS5 games. Oh, so if you fill your drive up,
33:31SPEAKERthen it'll automatically dump the stuff you're playing less. You still have to manually transfer
33:36SPEAKERstuff over, but at least you have that option now. It's just having to delete games when you run out
33:40SPEAKERof space. The space, the storage situation is pretty dire on both, but extra dire on the PS5,
33:47SPEAKERcause it's a good hundred and something gigabytes smaller than the Xbox. Well, right. And if like,
33:50SPEAKERif you're playing Call of Duty or something, you can fill the drive, right? Yes. But I would say
33:55SPEAKERCall of Duty is actually the outlier there. Like most, most PS5 native games have been like pretty
33:59SPEAKERmodest in size so far, you know, like they talked about some of that stuff prior to launch that like,
34:04SPEAKERokay, we're not going to have to replicate assets 800 times across a game install anymore. So like,
34:08SPEAKERthere's going to be some nice savings there. Like they've got really nice custom compression
34:12SPEAKERhardware built in now. The hardware texture compression makes a huge difference it turns
34:16SPEAKERout. So like, I'm actually like Call of Duty aside and maybe wonder like destiny, well,
34:20SPEAKEReven destiny shrank. Like by and large, when I go to download games on these consoles,
34:25SPEAKERespecially on the PS5, like I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised at how small they are.
34:29SPEAKERWhat's the, like, what's a typical, like how big was your eternal? Do you remember? It was
34:34SPEAKERon the bigger side. I think it was about 50 gigabytes if I remember. So they're not like,
34:38SPEAKERit's not like out of the, it's not ridiculous. It's not like you're, it's not like downloading
34:42SPEAKERShadows of Mordor, Lords of War or whatever that was where it was 120 gigabytes. No, definitely
34:48SPEAKERnot. Like I'd say like 20 to 40 is kind of an average size. Like I want to say Demon's Souls,
34:52SPEAKERI could be wrong about this, might be in the 40 ish range. That is an upscaled PS3 game at this
34:57SPEAKERpoint. Well, no, they remade it. It's a full remake. I mean, like under the hood, it is the
35:02SPEAKERPS3 game, but they graphically it's a hundred percent new. Yeah. Like it looks very good. It
35:08SPEAKERlooks, it looks properly next generation. What about Xbox? Anything there?
35:12SPEAKERWell, actually, I mean, you want to talk about the user experience though.
35:15SPEAKERDemon's Souls is an interesting case where I found quite frequently when I launch it,
35:19SPEAKERit just never launches anymore. What?
35:21SPEAKERIt sits at the splash screen forever until I force quit it without actually launching a game.
35:27SPEAKERUm, after the first time that happened, this was coming off a bunch of rest mode issues.
35:33SPEAKERI, I literally wiped and like firmware install from USB, the PS5. Cause I was like,
35:38SPEAKERthis thing is fucking broken. I can't even launch this game. And then it happened again.
35:44SPEAKERYou think it's like a network connectivity thing? Is it just that game?
35:46SPEAKERIt's just that game. So I got to Googling after that and found a big Reddit thread of people with
35:50SPEAKERthe same problem. A hard reboot will fix it every time. And I didn't realize it because I'd just
35:54SPEAKERbeen putting it into rest mode, but everybody like a bunch of people ran into this and were like,
35:59SPEAKERHey, you just do a full restart of the PS5 and then it'll launch. It sucks. But
36:02SPEAKERthat's the fix. And sure enough, that worked console games, but dude, like for the, for an
36:08SPEAKERissue that specific, like that level of minutia required to fix like an intractable problem.
36:14SPEAKERBecause like from the user perspective, like what do you do on a console? When a game doesn't launch,
36:17SPEAKERlike you pull the cartridge out of your blow and then you jam it back in there and restart it,
36:20SPEAKERdude, like, you know, on the PC, there are like any number of their umpteen avenues of troubleshooting
36:25SPEAKERyou can do to try to fix a game that will work. But like on a console, when the game doesn't work,
36:29SPEAKERwhat do you do? Like you're just kind of sit there and stare, right? Like it was a really jarring
36:33SPEAKERexperience to have a con on a console. And you know, that was on the back of like rest mode,
36:38SPEAKERnot working for two weeks straight for me on there. Wait, what? Like it rest mode broke for me.
36:44SPEAKERRest mode, meaning like you suspend mode on the PS5, but you put the whole console to sleep,
36:49SPEAKERnot like the thing where it suspends the state of the game. Well, it does both. I mean,
36:52SPEAKERit suspends the game and the console and that's how it, you know, it'll pull patches when it's
36:56SPEAKERasleep and et cetera, et cetera. Like it was just hard powering itself off every time I tried
37:00SPEAKERto go into rest mode. And then, and then after a couple of weeks, it just started working again.
37:04SPEAKERLike was there a firmware patch or something or just, it just started working? There was,
37:08SPEAKERbut that didn't fix it immediately. Like three days after that firmware, it then started working
37:12SPEAKERagain. It's a little, it's a little all over the place. Complicated systems fail in complicated
37:18SPEAKERways. I hate harping on this stuff on some level because like every, I feel like everything that
37:23SPEAKERis coming out right now is compromised in some way because look at the conditions people are working
37:27SPEAKERin, you know, like I'm not like, I hate feeling like I'm throwing shade at the engineers trying
37:33SPEAKERto fix this stuff because like they're all sitting at home trying to develop the stuff on hardware
37:38SPEAKERwithout being able to go into an office and being in like a common testing environment. Like I'm
37:42SPEAKERsure the challenges are immense. Well, and also as like, like, if you think about this in, in the
37:49SPEAKERlast three generations, we've gone from machines that basically only have foreground processes,
37:53SPEAKERright? Like the Xbox one and PS2, there was no background process on those. They add them with
37:58SPEAKERthe 360 and the PS3 kind of, and then the PS4 and Xbox one. You just reminded me when the PS3
38:06SPEAKERlaunched, you could not, if I'm not mistaken, you could not open the X and B while in game.
38:10SPEAKERThat was a feature, that was a feature they literally patched in later, like a year after
38:15SPEAKERthe PS3 came out, it was like a big deal. Like, Oh, you know, you can pop up the system interface
38:18SPEAKERon top of the game. Well, and remember the Xbox one was supposed to be a hypervisor with like,
38:24SPEAKERyou know, the, the O S and on one, on one VM and the, and the game that you were playing on the
38:30SPEAKERother one. And then you could open your TV on a third one on a side pane. Kind of panned out,
38:34SPEAKERbut not really. Well, but, but I guess my point is like they're building these consoles. Now the,
38:39SPEAKERthe background stuff is working well. So like, they can do stuff like, Hey, we're going to,
38:44SPEAKERlike, it's, it's just like your phone has a bunch of processes that run like a Unix machine where
38:50SPEAKERthe PS5 literally is a Unix machine or a Unix like rather. Right. But it, but it like runs,
38:55SPEAKERit runs maintenance processes in the background to clear caches and, and, you know, fixed database
38:59SPEAKERcorruption and stuff like that. And, and so you can have a problem like your rest mode thing where
39:04SPEAKERlike you do the patch, the, the thing that gets fixed doesn't, isn't scheduled to run for two more
39:10SPEAKERdays. Right. And then that's, then all of a sudden magically it starts working. It's funny. It's
39:15SPEAKERfunny. It's funny. The PS5 being a BSD machine, just like my NAS is a BSD machine. And I've spent
39:20SPEAKERenough time fiddling with, with the init system on there and shutdown scripts and stuff like that,
39:24SPEAKERthat like when the rest mode was broken, I was like staring at the light blinking, wondering,
39:28SPEAKERlike, I wonder if like one of the shutdown scripts is just like broken or like calling something that
39:32SPEAKERis not working right or something. And it just freaks out and doesn't know what to do. Like,
39:36SPEAKERI don't know enough about that stuff to like really diagnose it, but I know enough to like
39:39SPEAKERsort of envision in abstract terms, like what might be going wrong there. Yeah. It's a weird,
39:45SPEAKERit's a weird situation. Like they're computers. They are, they're embedded computers now,
39:48SPEAKERyou know, like they're not like, that's like I was saying, they're not these like weird bespoke,
39:52SPEAKERlike, you know, the 360 was like this weird tri-core power PC design that was just made
39:57SPEAKERfor the 360. Like they are just, they're not off the shelf APUs, but they're pretty close,
40:02SPEAKERyou know, they're custom designed, but they are same style of APU that is available on
40:06SPEAKERthe desktop, right? Same basic instructions with some extra stuff glued on. Yeah. Like they are,
40:10SPEAKERthey are computers now. And I guess that means that they're also prone to all of the kind of
40:15SPEAKERdrawbacks and idiosyncrasies that computers are. Okay. So we've talked about the PS5 a lot. We
40:19SPEAKERshould talk about the Xbox. What's going on over there? It's the PS5. I'll just say the PS5 is
40:23SPEAKERgetting better. Like they, they made some interface changes that were not amazing,
40:27SPEAKERbut at least they are making interface changes, which means that they are willing to clean up
40:31SPEAKERsome of the UI stuff. That's not great. Do you still have to do the thing where you download
40:35SPEAKERboth versions? Like if you're trying to port your PS4 saves, you have to download the PS4 version
40:39SPEAKERof the game. You still have to open it. Yep. Yes. Every, every PS4 game has to manually export a
40:44SPEAKERsave to the PS5 format or whatever. Like there's a lot of problems there, but whatever. We'll
40:49SPEAKERrevisit that stuff in a year or let's say the Xbox, not exactly a lot of games shipping there
40:56SPEAKERthat aren't third-party or out, you know, also on an Xbox one. So on the PS5 side, we've got three,
41:03SPEAKERright? Post launch. Yes. Yes. Microsoft has not shipped a new first party game since launch.
41:08SPEAKERThat is an infinity more PlayStation five games. This is a really easy decision. It seems,
41:12SPEAKERno, I'm a halo infinity. Oh wow. As of right now, halo infinite is still scheduled for this year.
41:20SPEAKERCause that was pushed last fall, right? That was the launch game. In fact, I assume to this day,
41:25SPEAKERcertainly at launch, if you bought an Xbox series X, the back of the box was just a giant picture
41:31SPEAKERof the master chief. Do you get it? Does it, does it come with a code for halo infinite in there?
41:36SPEAKERAbsolutely not. Oh man. That's unfortunate. Remember when you used to get games with
41:40SPEAKERconsoles? That was cool. I guess I love, I miss the era. Well, Astro, Astro's playroom on the PS5
41:46SPEAKERis that it's a pack-in and it's a substantial game. And it was my favorite game of last year.
41:50SPEAKERHuh? In the grand tradition of super Mario world. It's that good? Astro bots or Astro playroom was
41:59SPEAKERmy favorite. Like I literally put it at number one on my game of the year list. Just wow. I mean,
42:04SPEAKERit's very well made. It's pretty, it's a pretty simplistic little platform. It is the, it is the
42:08SPEAKERcharm and the nostalgic elements of it that put it up there for me. The VR thing that they made
42:13SPEAKERtwo, two years ago, three years ago was really good. So, so imagine that the people that made
42:18SPEAKERthat then made another platformer like that. Yeah. And also put like the most,
42:22SPEAKERlike the deepest reverence for the PlayStation brand and the whole history of that
42:26SPEAKERplatform. I'm kind of apathetic about that. It turns out, but if you're not nostalgic about
42:30SPEAKERold PlayStation stuff, like it's probably not going to hit you the same way it did me, but
42:35SPEAKERit is a pack-in game though. Like to their credit, they made a fricking five plus hour
42:39SPEAKERgame. There's like actual meat on the bone. Was, was Reso a pack-in game or did I buy that?
42:43SPEAKERYou had to buy that. Anyway. Yeah. Okay. So Xbox. So not a lot of games on the Xbox,
42:50SPEAKERbut I was going to say, I, I, I fully think that they made the right choice in just carrying the
42:54SPEAKERdashboard over. Oh, it's just the Xbox one dashboard? Yes. Which I have never seen a
42:59SPEAKERconsole do before. And like that speaks to their, their Apple like strategy of just kind of like
43:03SPEAKERthe Xbox is the Xbox, right? Just like iOS is iOS. Like they're, they're trying to establish
43:08SPEAKERthis kind of smooth continuum of, you know, the platform and not discrete boxes so much.
43:13SPEAKERXMB has been more or less the same until they started adding all that crap to the bottom.
43:17SPEAKERHasn't it? On the PS4, what do you mean on the PS5? Like PS3 to PS4? No, no, totally different.
43:24SPEAKERCompletely PS3, 4, 5, all completely different interfaces. Like there are some, there are some
43:28SPEAKERabstract commonalities, but in the specific completely different. Okay. I'll have to go
43:34SPEAKERlook at some YouTube videos after this. You know, I mean, there are some system settings on the PS5
43:38SPEAKERthat look very, very much like the PS4, but in terms of the way it lays things out on the,
43:42SPEAKERon the kind of dashboard. Okay. There they are, they are different. This one is somewhat cool,
43:48SPEAKERbut nothing like this Xbox situation where it is literally the dashboard. Like is the home is the,
43:52SPEAKERcan you scroll through games fast on the Xbox? So that's like, that's, I don't, you tell me if
43:59SPEAKERthis is a positive or negative that that's maybe the best thing about the dashboard on the Series
44:03SPEAKERX is how fast it is. Dude, if, if like when I find, I have a launch Xbox in the living room,
44:08SPEAKERstill Xbox one. And when I turn that thing on, it's like, you hear the grinding inside as it's
44:14SPEAKERthinking. Cause it's, it takes so long to scroll through the games. When I, when I hooked up the
44:19SPEAKERSeries X for the first time back in November, I, I, I let out some kind of nonverbal exclamation
44:23SPEAKERwhen I first started using the dashboard, I was like, not believe it because I think that thing
44:27SPEAKERwas so seared into my memory as being incredibly sluggish and awkward and annoying to use.
44:33SPEAKERJust seeing that cursor move smoothly and responsibly, like having that list of games
44:37SPEAKERpopulate like, like super fast is like, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a dramatically better
44:43SPEAKERexperience. It's impossible to overstate how much of my just general kind of like apathy for the
44:48SPEAKERXbox in the living room. The one that I bought and paid money for is tied to that fucking UI,
44:54SPEAKERjust being slow as shit all the time. It's so bad. It was never fast. I was on a one X at the end
45:00SPEAKERfor the last three, four years. And even that was not great. So I can't even imagine what a launch
45:04SPEAKERXbox one is like at this point. It's not like I don't review games. Like I have a normal human
45:09SPEAKERnumber of games on that thing. It's not like I have 2000 titles that it has to index and run
45:15SPEAKERthrough the list or anything ridiculous. It's like the normal 40 games that most people buy
45:19SPEAKERfor their consoles or whatever. It was always an edge case, but I did always feel like, you know,
45:24SPEAKERyou should try to accommodate your most dedicated users. Well, but I'm just saying the experience is
45:29SPEAKERbad for normal people too. Like you guys always say on the, when you talk about this on the
45:33SPEAKERbomb cast, you're like, I think this might just be something weird that affects us. No, it affects
45:37SPEAKERfucking everybody. It's bad. That's good to know. I mean, everything about it is faster. Like I use
45:41SPEAKERKodi on the Xbox, which is the kind of open source media app, and it's got a Plex plugin and all that
45:46SPEAKERstuff. Like even stuff like Kodi launches like five times faster than it did before. Like the
45:51SPEAKERentire experience is so like that dashboard has matured pretty nicely. I was never, I was never a
45:56SPEAKERhuge fan of it during the Xbox one, but from the kind of the appearance, like the widgets and UI
46:03SPEAKERChrome or whatever you call it to the functionality, the way things are laid out, the level of
46:07SPEAKERcustomization that they've put in there now, like across the board, like that thing has gotten very
46:11SPEAKERnice to use actually. That's really cool. Like I use the customization on the old one so that like,
46:16SPEAKERwe can tell who's logged in at any given time. So like, cause we have profiles for my daughter
46:21SPEAKERand my wife and me. And it's good about letting you tweak, just lay out of tiles and stuff like
46:26SPEAKERthat backgrounds and colors and all that stuff. But like that stuff's really good.
46:30SPEAKERIt's fantastic. Although you really drill down on that thing. Like if you go try to set a custom
46:35SPEAKERwallpaper or whatever, sticking with the theme of these things, just being computers, you can get
46:40SPEAKERsome straight up windows ass file selection dialogues in there. Like it is a slightly
46:46SPEAKERsimplified version of file explorer is embedded in that thing. And it like, it pulls from some user
46:52SPEAKERprofile that straight up has like the 3d objects, pictures, videos, you know, the standard folders
46:56SPEAKERin a windows profile. They're all there. Like you go to, you go to select a custom wallpaper and all
47:02SPEAKERthose folders pop up isn't a file explorer. It's the weirdest thing. Is my old Xbox 360 avatar in
47:08SPEAKERthere somewhere? Maybe, I don't know. Like, I mean, I know, you know, I know those things have
47:12SPEAKERalways run a windows kernel underneath. Like that goes without saying, but to expose the guts of the
47:16SPEAKERUI in a windows like way like that was really jarring. Well, remember there was talk for a little
47:21SPEAKERwhile last generation about being able to just run windows, windows executables on like the windows,
47:28SPEAKERbut the, the, the, the Metro ones that not, not did you just, you did that on purpose,
47:33SPEAKERdid one on purpose. Nevermind. God damn it. But yeah, you could, the idea was that you'd be able
47:39SPEAKERto run windows program, windows, windows programs on the Xbox one. I don't think they ever really
47:43SPEAKERdid that without you. Yeah, the UWP stuff, you have to do some stuff, right? Well, I mean,
47:49SPEAKERyou have to submit to the, to the Microsoft store and I think it accepted and like, there's probably
47:54SPEAKERsome procedural hoops to jump through to get those out. Like you can just put a thumb drive in with
47:58SPEAKERyour program. Well, I mean, if you put it in like developer mode, you absolutely can. Yeah. But I
48:02SPEAKERwas going to say, but you can put it in dev mode and then it just works. It's kind of surprisingly,
48:06SPEAKERa lot of people are out there buying Xbox series S's to use as retro arch machines. I was going to
48:11SPEAKERsay like the fact that you can just download retro arch from the windows store from the Microsoft
48:15SPEAKERstore is bonkers. I don't, I don't know. Don't quote me on this. You might be right, but I'm not
48:19SPEAKERa hundred percent sure that one is on the windows store. You might have to go sideload it somehow.
48:23SPEAKEROh, okay. So you might have to do the dev mode thing. I can't say, well, you definitely have to
48:27SPEAKERdo the dev mode thing to run it. Okay. That makes sense. But I don't know how you get it after you
48:31SPEAKERdo that. But like apparently the series S will run everything up through like PS2 and GameCube quite
48:36SPEAKERwell, which is really strange, really strange to think about. But I think the, the series X
48:44SPEAKERdashboard kind of user experience is a lot more robust than the PS5 as of right now.
48:52SPEAKERLike the thing you mentioned on the PS4 of like, you know, you accidentally download both versions
48:56SPEAKERof a game at the same time, PS4 and five, or maybe just the PS4 version does not exist on the Xbox.
49:02SPEAKERLike third smart delivery thing just gets you the right version of everything with no button presses,
49:07SPEAKERno thought whatsoever. And does it like, so I know my, my assumption is that the,
49:12SPEAKERthe problem with the PlayStation side is that they tie cloud saves to a title like in the system.
49:18SPEAKERYeah. So there are different skews on the store. PS4 and five games exist.
49:23SPEAKERHas a solve for that. That lets you transfer saves between platforms. Right. And the fact
49:26SPEAKERthat they've been sinking saves for every game that you own since the beginning of the Xbox one
49:30SPEAKERreally comes to bear here. Cause all those saves just come down as well. Like that's Microsoft's
49:36SPEAKERjust, you know, Microsoft's legacy as a software and services company, like is really evident in
49:41SPEAKERthe design of this thing because it does so much for you that the PS5 makes like very awkward and
49:46SPEAKERmanual. I was going to say that, that like that whole just conceptually that bit, like I never
49:53SPEAKERin the entire time I used the Xbox one and the PS4 looked at like how much space was left on
49:58SPEAKERmy Xbox one. Cause it just kind of worked itself out. And the PS4, it was always a,
50:03SPEAKERlike, I've got time to go do this and time to time to clear some old games off. Right.
50:08SPEAKERI mean, Hitman three is like the best test case for this. Like, cause I, I have that game on both
50:13SPEAKERplatforms and the, I don't know if you know, the split of DLC across that game. I mean, there are
50:17SPEAKERthree Hitman games that each one was published by a different company. You know, there are game of
50:22SPEAKERthe year packs that have certain content and like mission packs and there's stuff that carries over
50:26SPEAKERfrom one to two and then from two to three and like, it's a mess. And on the Xbox, the entire
50:32SPEAKERprocess of getting all that stuff installed was just download Hitman three. Like it all just came
50:37SPEAKERin. Like it got every piece of DLC I own for Hitman one and two, it brought all that stuff
50:42SPEAKERin. Like I literally just fired the game up and it was all there. And on the PS5, you have to like
50:47SPEAKERdig into your account, figure out like what's where and like download a bunch of extra packs manually.
50:52SPEAKERYou have to go into the store and like quote unquote buy something. See, that's easier than
50:57SPEAKERit was on the PC even. Cause on the PC I had to, I had like the, we didn't have Hitman two DLC,
51:02SPEAKERI think on, I think you could play Hitman one, but not Hitman two on Epic or something. I can't
51:07SPEAKERremember. It was, there was some, there was some shenanigans there. Yeah. Like I know I've said
51:12SPEAKERthis on the podcast before, so I'm kind of repeating myself, but when they announced smart
51:16SPEAKERdelivery last, you know, last summer or whenever it was, they were like, Hey, we've got this feature
51:20SPEAKERcalled smart delivery. It just gets you the best version of your game, no matter what you're on.
51:23SPEAKERLike it, you know, there it is. I was like, why are you naming, why are you giving this a snazzy
51:26SPEAKERtitle and marketing it? You know, like doesn't, isn't everybody going to do that? Like, why
51:29SPEAKERwouldn't you do it that way? And then I saw what it's like when they don't do it that way. And I'm
51:34SPEAKERlike, Oh, you know what? That actually was worth promoting. Like it was worth congratulating
51:38SPEAKERyourselves for. Well, and they've, I mean, it's funny cause like they've been, it's, it's,
51:42SPEAKERit seems like a logical outgrowth of what they did with like the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility
51:47SPEAKERstuff where like you put the disc in and it downloads the backwards compatible version
51:51SPEAKERfrom the store and like, you don't have any interaction with that. It just happens.
51:54SPEAKERKind of just works. Right. That's mostly like for the couple of minor exceptions. That's
52:00SPEAKERbasically been my experience with the series X is like stuff just works and it's fantastic.
52:04SPEAKERThat's really nice. The, uh, the quick resume is.
52:09SPEAKERWhat, what, hold on. What is quick resume where you turn the console back on and just go straight
52:13SPEAKERinto the game? No, that's not, I'm not sure. But it's quick. Resume Brad. It's their suspend.
52:19SPEAKERIt's their suspend to disc. So on a per title basis rather than persistent games. Games have to
52:24SPEAKERsupport it. Okay. What do you mean by system? Well, so like, like my PS4 will turn off and
52:30SPEAKERwhen I turn it back on, it comes right back to where it was. Yes. So yes, the, the PS4 and Xbox
52:34SPEAKERone could suspend with power. Yeah. With electricity. I mean, they're, you know, they're
52:38SPEAKERburning like what a couple of Watts or something to stay asleep and they're suspending the game
52:42SPEAKERin memory. Right. So if the power went out or you accidentally turn it off or something, you lost
52:46SPEAKERyour game state and the PS5 works exactly the same way. You can still suspend one game at a time.
52:52SPEAKERUh, if your rest mode crashes, you lose that progress, et cetera, et cetera. Um, quick resume
52:57SPEAKERon the series X is they are suspending games out to the SSD now. And because the SSD is so fast,
53:02SPEAKERthey can restore that image or whatever from disc back into memory in like a matter of seconds.
53:07SPEAKERAnd when it works, and I think it is still, it is still on a per game basis. They have to support it.
53:13SPEAKERAnd to be fair, they disabled this feature at launch. This was, this was like one of their
53:18SPEAKERbig bullet points. And then like a couple of days before launch, they're like, we have disabled quick
53:22SPEAKERresume for most games while we resolve some unexpected issues. And it took a while. It took
53:27SPEAKERlike some weeks before they turned it back on. But now that it's working again, it is fantastic.
53:32SPEAKERSo, so, so just, so I understand this, right? I'm going to, I'm going to give you a what if,
53:37SPEAKERso I'm playing, um, so like, so I can just tell you games I've used it with,
53:43SPEAKERyeah. Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Yakuza, Like a Dragon, uh, State of Decay 2, which now has a
53:48SPEAKERnative series X version. Does it have to be a series X native game for this to work?
53:53SPEAKERI want to, no, I believe it can suspend previous games. I got out. That's right. I think that's
53:59SPEAKERright. I swear I've done that. Okay. So I'm playing Yakuza. I'm like, I'm Yakuza it out.
54:05SPEAKERI want to go play some Ori. You just hit the menu button. You go launch Ori and it comes right back
54:10SPEAKERto where you're, where you were like, not, not going through title screens and stuff like that.
54:14SPEAKERLiterally where you paused it, or if you didn't pause it, it is literally in the game control.
54:17SPEAKERAnd then you're like, you know what, Ori is too hard. I want to go back to Yakuza. You go
54:21SPEAKERback and does the exact same thing again. I've done that exact exercise because it's so kind
54:25SPEAKERof magical to watch it happen where I just flew back and forth between the same two games for
54:29SPEAKERlike five times in a row. That's amazing. I, you know, it varies per game, but I would estimate
54:34SPEAKERthe suspend is like five-ish seconds, Jesus, five to 10, maybe 10 on the outside for a big game.
54:42SPEAKERAnd then that's ridiculous. And then the restore is about the same. It's about like a five-ish
54:46SPEAKERsecond. I on average, I would guess five, six, seven seconds. It's so close to instantaneous
54:52SPEAKERthat it's like magic. The amount of time you save, not having to look at that screen that
54:57SPEAKERhas the bink and the speed tree logo on it is enormous. Like it, it makes me play more games.
55:02SPEAKERLike it actually makes me want to play games more because it is so much less burdensome just to get
55:07SPEAKERin and out of games. Like honestly, I stopped playing animal crossing because it takes so
55:12SPEAKERfucking long to launch that game. Totally. So I think you're going to ask like how many you
55:18SPEAKERcan have suspended at a time. Yeah. How many can you have at a time? That's one of those things
55:21SPEAKERthey don't really detail super well. Cause it's not like they're come out and say like, here's,
55:25SPEAKERwe, you know, we reserve 80 gigabytes of the system drive for, you know, these memory.
55:30SPEAKERIt's like the most, the ones you've used most recently and then eventually something falls off.
55:34SPEAKERAnd if, if you're anything like me, it drives you crazy not knowing which games are suspended.
55:39SPEAKEROh, is there not like a, like a little dot, dot, dot icon on the, on the HUD or whatever?
55:44SPEAKERSo it'll tell you which games are quick resume enabled and it'll, it'll, you'll see it pop up
55:48SPEAKERwhen it is quick resuming or suspending. But until very recently, there was no way to tell what games
55:54SPEAKERwere suspended there, but they're adding that. They're going to add a little display in the
55:58SPEAKERgames list that shows like, here are the games that you have suspended right now, which, you
56:03SPEAKERknow, more information is always better than less. As far as I'm concerned, like you don't want to
56:08SPEAKERconfuse people too much in a console environment where they just want things to work, but like
56:11SPEAKERsomething like that. I want to know, did I leave this game on or not? I can't remember. Like,
56:14SPEAKERit's just nice to see that. Do I need to go save this? Yeah. Yes. I did lose one session that
56:19SPEAKERreally bummed me out though. On? Like an hour into a dungeon in Yakuza, like a dragon
56:27SPEAKERwhere you can't save cause it's a JRPG and they still hold you to the kind of arbitrary
56:30SPEAKERsave point restrictions. I was like, ah, it's late. I'm, you know, suspend seems to work great
56:35SPEAKERon this thing. I'm just going to go to bed. I'll get back to this tomorrow. Turn the X-Box on the
56:39SPEAKERnext day to immediately see the Yakuza tile with a little progress bar at the bottom because it
56:44SPEAKERwas patching it. And. Oh, and patches break this? I guess that makes sense. Yeah. I hope they have
56:49SPEAKERaccounted for this since then, but yes, like it, it just arbitrarily closed my session so we could
56:55SPEAKERpatch, which made me very angry, but that's what I, that's what I meant when I said like, there's
57:00SPEAKERbeen a couple of minor exceptions, like that is the exception to the rule. Like it is all the
57:04SPEAKERsuspend stuff. Like everything about that dashboard has been very good. It seems like the good far
57:08SPEAKERoutweighs the bad on that. Yes. And again, that's why I say, I think it was the right call for them
57:13SPEAKERto just bring that same dashboard over because I did go through that period very briefly when
57:17SPEAKERI hooked that thing up of like, it's kind of just the same thing, but faster and that's cool, but
57:21SPEAKERlike where's the new console smell, you know, like where are my new bells and whistles to play with
57:26SPEAKERon this thing, especially in a world where Halo slipped and there were not any real new games at
57:31SPEAKERlaunch, you know, like. Yeah, I want to hook my, my TiVo up to that thing and watch TV through that.
57:35SPEAKERI want to get some good features. Yes, of course. The stuff you really want to plug your HD antenna
57:39SPEAKERinto that thing. Yeah. Now we're talking. Yeah. Get an HD DVD drive, watch King Kong like 50 times.
57:45SPEAKERThat's the only thing I have on HD DVD. But you know, again, now having experienced some of the
57:49SPEAKERissues, the kind of growing pains the PS5 has been having, like it feels like the right move for them
57:54SPEAKERto have just taken that dashboard, you know, altogether and just kind of done the same thing
58:00SPEAKERagain. Well, I mean, look, how many times has Apple replaced the OS this, you know, the, the
58:07SPEAKERlook and feel of iOS like once in a big way, right? Yeah. In, in 12 years, 13, 14 years. And
58:13SPEAKERagain, it feels like that. It feels like kind of what you expect out of a modern platform.
58:18SPEAKERSo in terms of the continuity with what you know, we've gone way longer on this than I expected to.
58:24SPEAKERWhat's the, what's the perf like there mostly, it seems like the feeling I get from talking to
58:30SPEAKERpeople is that perf is pretty good on old games on the, on the series X. Yes. They've been weirdly
58:36SPEAKERprioritizing that in a way I didn't expect. Like they were kind of rolling out. Remember how on the
58:40SPEAKERXbox one, you'd get these occasional drops of like, Hey, here's the next 12 games being added
58:45SPEAKERto backwards compatibility. Yeah. I remember playing like red, the original, well, the second
58:48SPEAKERred dead game, the Xbox three 61 on the Xbox one, because it performed better there than it did on
58:54SPEAKERthe 360. And, you know, and they just didn't, again, in waves, they would just say, here's
58:57SPEAKERanother dozen games, you know, here's 20 more games being added this week. And I'm like, they're
59:00SPEAKERdoing that with performance now. So like there was unsurprisingly, it was a lot of Bethesda games up
59:06SPEAKERfront that got a bunch of 60 FPS patches. So I mean, Skyrim is 60 Hertz sounds a okay. Like it
59:13SPEAKERwas Skyrim prey, fallout four and 76. Let's see a handful of others got 60 FPS patches a few, a
59:21SPEAKERcouple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago. And then this past week, a round of EA games all got 120
59:26SPEAKERHertz patches. So. Can I play syndicate at 120 Hertz? Ah, syndicate. I regret to inform you that
59:34SPEAKEREA has forgotten syndicate ever existed. Aw, crap. However, if you want to play Star Wars Battlefront
59:40SPEAKERtwo at 120 Hertz, I'm probably okay. I've got much better news for you, but it's like, I mean,
59:45SPEAKERit's a lot of stuff though. It's like battlefields one, four, and five mirrors, edge catalysts,
59:49SPEAKERthe plants versus zombie shooters. Even some smaller stuff like sea of solitude and unravel
59:54SPEAKERtwo Titan fall one and two. Oh God, fall 220 Hertz. That sounds like I'm back. That's awesome.
1:00:02SPEAKERAnd I'm sure, I'm sure some of that was tied to the fact that EA play is now a part of game pass
1:00:06SPEAKERultimate. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. I don't know if they pumped money into that or developments
1:00:10SPEAKERsupport or what to get that to happen. I wonder, I wonder, I mean, maybe it's something that's like
1:00:15SPEAKERkind of easy to do, right? They talked about that. They talked about that last year. They said they
1:00:19SPEAKERdidn't go into a lot of detail, but they kind of implied the way that their graphics APIs on the
1:00:22SPEAKERXbox one works. Like it would be pretty trivial. I'm sure it was more than just flipping a switch,
1:00:27SPEAKERright? But they, they implied that doubling the frame rate on a lot of existing Xbox one games
1:00:31SPEAKERwould be like something that was not that hard to do. And sure enough, here we are like this list is
1:00:36SPEAKERgrowing. That's really cool. Pretty fast. Yeah. There's like some Ubisoft games on here too.
1:00:41SPEAKERWatchdogs 2, Far Cry 4 now run at 60 on Series S and X. So, so, okay. So having this conversation,
1:00:49SPEAKERI feel better. Like I don't feel like I've really missed a whole lot. I miss playing Miles. I'd like
1:00:54SPEAKERto stream Demon's Souls at some point. That sounds like it'd be fun. The story basically so far is
1:00:59SPEAKERthat PS5 has a handful of very good exclusives. Miles Morales, Demon's Souls, like Returnal,
1:01:04SPEAKERRatchet looks good. Small number of exclusives. Xbox has like nothing on the game's front,
1:01:11SPEAKERbut the platform is maturing. The platform and the kind of backwards compatible features are
1:01:16SPEAKERmaturing much faster there. Well, yeah, like folks in the Discord are regularly like, like there's a,
1:01:21SPEAKERthere's a dedicated cadre of, of Game Pass subscribers who are like, you know,
1:01:29SPEAKERhitting as much as their bandwidth cap will allow every month. Cause there's a bunch of good stuff.
1:01:33SPEAKERAnd that seems like, it seems like Game Pass plus an Xbox, if you're just going to get one console,
1:01:38SPEAKERseems like a really good choice. Series X is a Game Pass machine, as far as I can tell for
1:01:42SPEAKERalmost everybody. I mean, they've kind of, by default, there's really nothing else there,
1:01:45SPEAKERbut that's a lot of games, you know? That's a lot of games. And especially when these older games
1:01:49SPEAKERare getting these nice updates, like it's, it's a, it's a compelling platform except for the lack of
1:01:54SPEAKERgames, which is a strange thing to say. Well, I mean, but they'll get there. They always do.
1:01:59SPEAKERYes. And they'll be the show. So that's nice. Yeah. They got baseball. Yeah. They got baseball.
1:02:04SPEAKERHey, they got baseball. So they do have a new next generation game. Like, yeah. Yes. Yes. The
1:02:10SPEAKERPlayStation studios hit in the making and it'll be the show 2021. And if you pay for Game Pass,
1:02:17SPEAKERit's free. Just download it. It's there. I mean, you know, a lot of, a lot of what we're hearing
1:02:21SPEAKERout of people in the know is that this is going to be a pretty light year for releases just because
1:02:25SPEAKERof downstream pandemic effects. I mean, it makes sense. Well, I can't remember. I can't
1:02:30SPEAKERremember who it was. I think it might be Reggie Fils-Aime, the former president of Nintendo of
1:02:34SPEAKERAmerica. It was the one who said this in an interview a little while back. I think it was him.
1:02:38SPEAKERI hope I'm not misattributing this, but the upshot was so many games shipped last year because they
1:02:44SPEAKERwere all already close enough to the finish line that they were able to drag them over in those
1:02:48SPEAKERdifficult circumstances. But this is the year where games that were in a much more nascent form are
1:02:52SPEAKERnot going to be close enough to make it. I think that that makes, that reads right. So,
1:02:57SPEAKERso that kind of, kind of gird yourselves for there to continue to not be a ton of games.
1:03:02SPEAKERWe, we should talk a little bit about the, like why they're still like, cause at this point in
1:03:06SPEAKERthe PlayStation 4, I was talking with some folks this morning and they brought up sales numbers
1:03:10SPEAKERand they were like at this point, like they're tracking PS4, PS5 sales are tracking pretty much
1:03:15SPEAKERlike within a few percentage points of each other. There was an interesting stat. Did you see that
1:03:18SPEAKERthe PS5 is officially the fastest selling console in North American history? By like
1:03:22SPEAKER1% or something. Of course, it's like rounding error math or whatever, but like still the fact
1:03:27SPEAKERthat they can say that in such a supply constrained situation was kind of, was kind of shocking to me.
1:03:33SPEAKERSo I think, I think there's a, there's a thing that happened as part of the, as part of the
1:03:39SPEAKERpandemic. Like there was a period of time from like March until June when, when switches were
1:03:44SPEAKERreally hard to find because like suddenly having one switch that you shared with two kids became an
1:03:51SPEAKERimpractical situation because that was their only social outlet for six months or a year.
1:03:57SPEAKERSuddenly you had like four times more time to fill.
1:03:59SPEAKERYeah. And then that too, yeah.
1:04:03SPEAKERI don't know if I've ever brought this up before. I probably have. That led to that incredible
1:04:07SPEAKERsituation. I think the guy was on Reddit where he built his own switch out of, by sourcing.
1:04:11SPEAKERI love it for parts. Yeah, it was incredible.
1:04:13SPEAKERSourcing aftermarket parts from eBay. Like you bought the main board from one person and the
1:04:18SPEAKERdigitizer from somebody else and the case here and literally cobbled a switch together from parts.
1:04:24SPEAKERI got to imagine it's like one of the hand-built cars. Like when, when,
1:04:27SPEAKERwhen you build a new car, you build one by hand first to like get the tooling and stuff, right?
1:04:32SPEAKERRight.
1:04:32SPEAKERAnd then they start making them on the line and the ones that are built by hand,
1:04:35SPEAKERI have to imagine are the jankiest pieces of shit ever.
1:04:38SPEAKERDo what you got to do. It was a rough situation.
1:04:41SPEAKERSo like from talking to my friends who work in the electronics world,
1:04:46SPEAKERthe supply chain situation, especially like is, is real bad on everything from like
1:04:53SPEAKERtires and plastic parts, you know, like for cars.
1:04:57SPEAKERThat's the thing. It's not just, you know, integrated circuits anymore. It's not just
1:05:01SPEAKERmicrochips is what I'm gathering pretty quickly. Like.
1:05:05SPEAKERWell, like the electronics folks are like, I've been trying to get this tiny, this like a
1:05:10SPEAKERtransistor, not like a micro transistor on a, on a, on a chip, but like a literal square transistor.
1:05:15SPEAKERThat's like a super common thing that costs a third of a cent when you buy a thousand of them
1:05:20SPEAKERand they can't get them for months because the factory that does those is missing the
1:05:23SPEAKERsource that it needs to build the, the on down, like MOSFETs were hard to find for a little bit.
1:05:28SPEAKERYep.
1:05:28SPEAKERLike isopropyl alcohol was hard to find for most of last year. So you can't like,
1:05:33SPEAKERlike washing your boards when that stuff's done, even if you're just handbuilding stuff
1:05:37SPEAKERis challenging.
1:05:37SPEAKERYeah. The delayed reaction on this stuff is really something to see. I mean, I, so I bought a,
1:05:42SPEAKERI bought a refurb Steelcase leap chair about, gosh, pushing six weeks ago now.
1:05:47SPEAKERAnd still haven't gotten it?
1:05:49SPEAKERNot only has it not shipped, I just got an email from the president of the company,
1:05:52SPEAKERlike this week saying, Hey, the, one of the parts that we use to refurb these chairs sat off the
1:05:59SPEAKERcoast of North America for the last four weeks. Like, like literally our, our parts supply was
1:06:04SPEAKERsitting on a ship, unable to dock for the last month.
1:06:07SPEAKERBecause the, the docks are clogged?
1:06:09SPEAKERHe didn't go to detail, but I'm sure, I'm sure it's just backup. Yeah. In the, in the coordination
1:06:13SPEAKERof the docking and unloading and stuff. But like, he was like, Hey, the parts finally got here after
1:06:17SPEAKERa month's delay. It's like, we're, we've brought on extra shifts. We were working around the clock,
1:06:22SPEAKERlike blah, blah, blah. But like, that's a chair, you know, there are no electronics in the chair.
1:06:25SPEAKERLike I'd, I need a new microphone arm because this, this crappy one that I use is falling
1:06:30SPEAKERapart and I was going to get a road PSA one. Good luck with that.
1:06:35SPEAKERNowhere, man. I went to, forget Amazon. I went to B&H, Adorama, like you name it,
1:06:41SPEAKERlike kind of high-end, you know, supply vendors. Nobody has that thing. I mean,
1:06:48SPEAKERif somebody on the discord had a spare one that I'm very thankful to that person for,
1:06:53SPEAKERfor helping me out there.
1:06:54SPEAKERI, I at one point needed like gels to put over the window behind me last year. Cause I was working
1:07:00SPEAKERduring the daytime more and I needed to block the light coming in and you couldn't buy gels.
1:07:05SPEAKERSo I just, I just bought a piece of black cloth and tied it up and it's fine.
1:07:09SPEAKERIt's crazy to see the non-electronics issues that are popping up now. You know, it's not just,
1:07:14SPEAKERnot just chip fabrication.
1:07:16SPEAKERIt's one of the things like when the pandemic started and everything shut down,
1:07:20SPEAKERI follow a bunch of logistics people who are like fab,
1:07:22SPEAKERSilicon fab logistics and stuff like that because of past life work. And they were all like, look,
1:07:28SPEAKERit's much, it's going to be hard to shut this stuff down. It's much easier to shut it down
1:07:32SPEAKERthan it is to turn it on. And even after, even after things are back to, you know,
1:07:38SPEAKERI'm air quoting normal, we're going to see it's going to, it's going to be a long period of time
1:07:43SPEAKERbefore things get back before the supply chain re re re re-establishes itself. Yeah. So anyway,
1:07:50SPEAKERthat's that. So like, I don't think we're going to, I don't think I'm going to be able to go
1:07:57SPEAKERto Amazon and order a PlayStation five for a pretty long time.
1:07:59SPEAKERProbably not. I'm going to say I don't know. I'm trying to think
1:08:08SPEAKERif there's anything that will change that, I guess not like, it's still in the back of my
1:08:12SPEAKERmind. There's some irrational voice saying like, they'll figure it out. Like surely
1:08:15SPEAKERsomething will happen. But it's going to take time. It's like, this is a time thing, right?
1:08:21SPEAKERYes. There's no way to force it, I guess is the point like, you know, when you can't,
1:08:27SPEAKERwhen you can't get capacitors to build your console anymore, like there's no, no amount
1:08:31SPEAKERof clever thinking and like, you know, out of the box maneuvering is going to make that possible.
1:08:37SPEAKERRight. It's I can't remember. I asked, I was, I was on a car factory tour once and I asked like,
1:08:43SPEAKERhow long ago, cause they were talking about just-in-time manufacturing was like,
1:08:46SPEAKERwell, how long ago was this thing made? I'd pointed at something random. She was like,
1:08:49SPEAKEROh, okay. So that was made in probably made in China six months ago. And then it took three
1:08:55SPEAKERmonths to make its way from China to here. It sat on the back lot in a warehouse for three weeks.
1:09:00SPEAKERAnd then we rolled it out when we needed more of them. And like
1:09:04SPEAKERa lot of last year we were running through the back supply of that stuff.
1:09:08SPEAKERInteresting.
1:09:08SPEAKERBut like in businesses where you do actual just-in-time, like the China, like China
1:09:14SPEAKERmanufacturing stuff, like the shit runs in in the morning and it rolls out that afternoon. Right?
1:09:19SPEAKERLike there's no, there's no like warehouse cause they don't have room to warehouse this stuff. It
1:09:23SPEAKERliterally goes from the suppliers. They all swarm in at one time, get glued onto boards, assembled,
1:09:29SPEAKERsmashed together, sealed in a PlayStation five, put in a box, tested, well tested, then put in a box
1:09:35SPEAKERand then jammed on a boat to North America or Europe or someplace else in the world,
1:09:39SPEAKERwherever they're going. And like, it's, it's, it's tough. Like it's going to be the,
1:09:45SPEAKERI would assume that this stuff is going to continue for way longer than like the,
1:09:49SPEAKERthe last time I remember the consoles, new consoles being this hard to find in May was
1:09:55SPEAKERthe Wii, the original Wii. The original Wii was really hard to find for a long, long time.
1:10:00SPEAKERAnd that was just due to popularity.
1:10:01SPEAKERLike, I don't think you ever were able to get one, right?
1:10:03SPEAKERI never bought one. I never wanted one. I know I'm kidding. That was, that was my choice.
1:10:08SPEAKERBut yeah, like I, I got one at launch and I remembered like people would come over to my
1:10:12SPEAKERhouse in June of the following year because they wanted to play Wii Sports and like we would have
1:10:17SPEAKERWii Sports parties for a long ass time. So yeah, it's a, it's a, this is a weird situation.
1:10:23SPEAKERI wonder if this is going to be like one of the, or if not the last things to get back to quote
1:10:28SPEAKERnormal, you know, like the vaccination stuff is ramping up, I think faster than anybody expected.
1:10:32SPEAKERSo like our, our movie theaters and, you know, picnics in the park and birthday parties and like
1:10:37SPEAKERwork in an office again, like are all of those things going to have resumed for like months to
1:10:42SPEAKERa year before you can actually buy video cards and PS5 again?
1:10:46SPEAKERSo the, the logistics people that I follow are saying, like expect this short, weird shortages
1:10:52SPEAKERto continue through like, like the Boba shortage is the thing that's in the news right now.
1:10:58SPEAKERIf they can't make enough tapioca, we are screwed.
1:11:00SPEAKERWell, but, but it's like, like the, the, it's like when we ran out of beans last year, right?
1:11:06SPEAKERWe run out of beans because like people know how much beans people buy at certain types of the year
1:11:11SPEAKERand they just plan their crops and their warehousing and stuff to support that.
1:11:14SPEAKERAnd then if people buy way more beans than usual, then there just aren't any beans.
1:11:18SPEAKERAnd that's what happened with the Boba, except for the last year production was jacked up.
1:11:22SPEAKERSo yeah, I would expect this to continue into 2022 and maybe into 2023 in some cases.
1:11:29SPEAKERIt's a weird time, man.
1:11:30SPEAKERThat's a lot.
1:11:31SPEAKERThat's that sounds like a made up number.
1:11:34SPEAKER2023, it's not a real time.
1:11:35SPEAKERIt's not, it's not going to happen.
1:11:38SPEAKERBrad, we've reached the port of the show.
1:11:40SPEAKERDo we miss anything?
1:11:41SPEAKERI think we got all the high points.
1:11:42SPEAKERThat's a check-in that's a six month check-in.
1:11:46SPEAKERI don't regret not buying one of these machines.
1:11:48SPEAKERI think you're okay.
1:11:49SPEAKERI mean, you know, miles Morales is quite good.
1:11:51SPEAKERDemon souls is quite good.
1:11:52SPEAKERReturnal seems pretty good, but, but you know, there are games on the platforms you already own.
1:11:58SPEAKERI mean, by the time they come out, by the time I get a PlayStation five,
1:12:00SPEAKERthey'll probably be on plus.
1:12:02SPEAKERSo that is entirely possible.
1:12:04SPEAKERI wonder if I can sign up for PS five plus games without owning a PS five.
1:12:10SPEAKERYeah.
1:12:11SPEAKEROkay. I got to make sure I do that.
1:12:12SPEAKEROh yeah.
1:12:13SPEAKERWell, I don't think you've missed much.
1:12:15SPEAKERThere was destruction all stars.
1:12:18SPEAKERI think I did.
1:12:19SPEAKERYou know what?
1:12:20SPEAKERWhen you say that, I think I did that.
1:12:21SPEAKERCause I remember Danny telling me about that game.
1:12:22SPEAKERHe's like, Hey, do you have a place PS five?
1:12:24SPEAKERWe should play this.
1:12:24SPEAKERI was like, no, now I'm sad.
1:12:25SPEAKERThank you.
1:12:26SPEAKERI think, I think that was the only plus game on the PS five so far.
1:12:31SPEAKERI think it's all PS four stuff.
1:12:32SPEAKEROther ones for stuff.
1:12:33SPEAKEROkay.
1:12:33SPEAKERWell anyway, but yeah, let's keep up and make sure to keep up with that.
1:12:36SPEAKERIf you have an active plus subscription, just, you know, front load those for the future.
1:12:40SPEAKERYeah. Future future me, thanks me.
1:12:42SPEAKERUm, more games that I can just put in accounts that I never ever touch.
1:12:46SPEAKERYeah.
1:12:46SPEAKERCause that's where we're at.
1:12:48SPEAKERUh, this is the part of the show where we think our patrons and listeners.
1:12:50SPEAKERSo thank you all for listening.
1:12:52SPEAKERThanks for being a patron.
1:12:53SPEAKERIf you, if you are a part of the Patreon, if you're on the discord, whether you're lurking
1:12:56SPEAKERor posting, we appreciate you.
1:12:58SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:12:59SPEAKERAbsolutely.
1:13:00SPEAKERUm, the conversations about this month's patron episode, I think.
1:13:05SPEAKEROh boy.
1:13:07SPEAKERWell, first off people start, well, okay. So this month's patron episode,
1:13:10SPEAKERBrad and I dug up our ancient history, our embarrassing posts from the past, basically.
1:13:16SPEAKERYes.
1:13:17SPEAKERUm, I pulled a bunch of posts from my days at Ars Technica like 98, 99, 2000.
1:13:23SPEAKERI found, I found a disturbing number of Usenet posts that I wrote at the age of 16.
1:13:29SPEAKERI talked about our no SIGs rule on the message boards at Ars Technica.
1:13:33SPEAKERAnd now people are starting to put SIGs in the discord, which doesn't work.
1:13:38SPEAKERIt's not, not, not okay, man.
1:13:40SPEAKERI'm going to start signing every one of my, of my comments on the discord.
1:13:44SPEAKERI made a, there's a rule.
1:13:45SPEAKERYou can't do that.
1:13:46SPEAKERIt's against the rules now.
1:13:47SPEAKERSorry.
1:13:48SPEAKERUm, I can't, I'm trying to find the quote.
1:13:50SPEAKERSomebody was like, this is the bravest thing I've ever seen anybody do on the internet.
1:13:54SPEAKERUm, which it was painful.
1:13:56SPEAKERIt was painful.
1:13:57SPEAKERI've, yeah, it was, it was.
1:14:02SPEAKERHighly embarrassing.
1:14:03SPEAKERVery cringey.
1:14:04SPEAKERSo that's the kind of thing that you enjoy.
1:14:06SPEAKERUm, there you go.
1:14:08SPEAKERI also learned today that the counting threads on old message boards, I didn't
1:14:12SPEAKERunderstand why people did those for years.
1:14:14SPEAKERAnd I never bothered to ask, you know, where like you post a number and then the next
1:14:18SPEAKERperson posts another and the next person posts the next subsequent number.
1:14:21SPEAKERIt's just to get post count up.
1:14:22SPEAKERSo you look like you've been there longer.
1:14:25SPEAKERI had no idea.
1:14:27SPEAKERGotta do what you gotta do.
1:14:28SPEAKERYeah.
1:14:28SPEAKERSo, um, as always, uh, thank you to all of our patrons, but especially thank you to our
1:14:34SPEAKERexecutive producer tier patrons, the bunny fiend, Jacob chapel and James Cammack.
1:14:38SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:14:39SPEAKERWe appreciate you.
1:14:40SPEAKERYes.
1:14:40SPEAKERThanks to everyone.
1:14:42SPEAKERUm, and I guess that'll do it for us this week.
1:14:44SPEAKERWe'll be, uh, we were going to talk about switch rumors, but I guess we'll do that at
1:14:48SPEAKERsome point in the future.
1:14:49SPEAKERYeah, that stuff, you know, we'll do a little more digging in the tagger of product line
1:14:53SPEAKERbefore we can speak to that stuff.
1:14:55SPEAKERYeah, there's a lot there.
1:14:56SPEAKERThere's there's, can you believe they are potentially going to launch a new, I mean,
1:15:01SPEAKERnot new, it's technically just an upgraded version of existing one, but they're going
1:15:05SPEAKERto put out a new model of video game hardware in 2021.
1:15:09SPEAKERThere was a period of time when I would have been a first in line for an upgraded switch
1:15:13SPEAKERjust because better battery life would have been a real selling point for you as I take
1:15:17SPEAKERit on airplanes and stuff like that.
1:15:19SPEAKERWhat's an airplane, but like I'm probably fine.
1:15:22SPEAKERI don't know.
1:15:22SPEAKERI think you're good for a while.
1:15:25SPEAKERYeah, we'll see.
1:15:26SPEAKERSee you all next week.
1:15:27SPEAKERHave a good one.
1:15:28SPEAKEREverybody.
1:15:28SPEAKERThanks for listening.
1:15:29SPEAKERHi.
1:15:34SPEAKERWelcome.
1:15:36SPEAKERWait, which one is this?
1:15:37SPEAKEROh, okay.
1:15:38SPEAKERGot it.
1:15:39SPEAKERI don't even do the other one anymore.
1:15:40SPEAKERI almost said welcome to still entitled.
1:15:43SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Wilma.
1:15:44SPEAKERWelcome to Brett.
1:15:46SPEAKERFuck.
1:15:46SPEAKERHow do I do this?
1:15:47SPEAKERWhat do I say?
1:15:47SPEAKERWhatever.
1:15:48SPEAKERWhat do I say?
1:15:48SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Wilma to tech top tech file.
1:15:50SPEAKERI'm Will.
1:15:51SPEAKERThat's it, right?
1:15:51SPEAKERJust say whatever comes to mind, but that's just, no, that's what I've been doing.
1:15:54SPEAKERIt's not working.
1:15:55SPEAKERIt's not working.
1:15:57SPEAKERWelcome to brand.
1:15:58SPEAKERWe'll make a tech pod.
1:15:59SPEAKERI'm Will.
1:15:59SPEAKERIt's made.
1:16:01SPEAKERFuck.
1:16:03SPEAKERWell, it's never podcast on Friday evening again.
1:16:06SPEAKERNo, this is a Saturday.
1:16:07SPEAKERSaturday evening.