Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan stricklandhand I and both of us are jet lagged.
Speaker 1: Does it feel three hours later than what it should
Speaker 1: be to you? Or yes, that I can't count anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure. Lauren and I have both been
Speaker 1: on very long flights recently, and uh, Lauren, you were vacating, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I happened to be in l A. Jonathan was in
Speaker 1: l A for an entirely work related purpose for E three,
Speaker 1: and between the two of us, I think I think
Speaker 1: Lauren wins. You got to see dead Elephants and uh,
Speaker 1: Mastodon's Dead Mastodons elephants, and I got uh. I feel
Speaker 1: like the band Mastodon is playing in my right now.
Speaker 1: That's that's how I feel. That's a reference for all
Speaker 1: my Atlanta buddies. But yeah, I did go to E three,
Speaker 1: and so we thought it would be fun to record
Speaker 1: a quick episode of tech Stuff to kind of talk
Speaker 1: about the stuff, what I saw and uh, and sort
Speaker 1: of my my conclusions from the entire experience of E three. So, Lauren,
Speaker 1: where would you like to start? Well that how how
Speaker 1: many years have you been going to E three? Now,
Speaker 1: I've I've gone three times. So I did take a
Speaker 1: break because we there used to be a house stuff
Speaker 1: works show called pop Stuff. When pop Stuff came along,
Speaker 1: they decided that that video games kind of fell into
Speaker 1: their their umbrella, the whole pop culture thing. And I
Speaker 1: didn't disagree, and uh and I thought it was perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: But then pop Stuff went on hiatus. Um, the hosts
Speaker 1: of pop Stuff are now the hosts of Stuffy miss
Speaker 1: industry class. And so it came back round to who
Speaker 1: should we send to E three. And because of the
Speaker 1: fact that we had an opening, and because the fact
Speaker 1: that uh, two major companies were introducing brand new can souls,
Speaker 1: we really wanted to be there. Yeah. Yes, so that's
Speaker 1: that is the reason why I went so and and yeah,
Speaker 1: Jonathan one day came into the office and said, hey, Lauren,
Speaker 1: would you we can send one person to Eat three?
Speaker 1: Do you want it to be you? And I said
Speaker 1: that sounds terrifying, No, thank you. Yeah, so I I
Speaker 1: took one for the team. A lot of people, let's
Speaker 1: we'll get this out of the way first. A lot
Speaker 1: of people who have not been to Eat three think
Speaker 1: of it as This has got to be the most
Speaker 1: amazing experience. You know, get to play video games all
Speaker 1: day long. No, what you mostly get to do is
Speaker 1: wait in line to play a video game for between
Speaker 1: five and twenty minutes, and then you have to leave,
Speaker 1: and then you have to go wait in another line
Speaker 1: to play a totally different game for five to twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: So it's like a theme park, except with more video
Speaker 1: game trailers. Right, it's a it's a theme park where
Speaker 1: instead of a ride, it's a video game that you
Speaker 1: play for a little while. Um, and in some cases
Speaker 1: you don't even play a game. You wait in line
Speaker 1: so that you can watch a demo of someone else
Speaker 1: playing the game, but you don't get a chance to
Speaker 1: play it yourself. Are possibly a trailer or teaser trailer
Speaker 1: times it's just a teaser. Yeah, sometimes it's not even
Speaker 1: a full trailer. Now, to be fair, this whole show,
Speaker 1: the purpose of it is so that video game publishers
Speaker 1: and and distributors have a chance to meet with with
Speaker 1: retail establishments that could be carrying their games, as well
Speaker 1: as the media and other industry members to talk about gaming,
Speaker 1: the titles that are coming up, the hardware that's coming
Speaker 1: up gives companies like Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo a
Speaker 1: chance to say, these are our platforms, we want more
Speaker 1: games developed for them. This is how we are going
Speaker 1: to support developers so that they can make games for
Speaker 1: our platforms. It's really industry related. It's not open to
Speaker 1: the public, right right, Yeah, I think that they closed
Speaker 1: that down. What was it like, Circutit asn't too Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was there was a time where they experimented with
Speaker 1: having it open to the public, but it meant that
Speaker 1: all the people within the industry had that much more
Speaker 1: trouble getting access to the stuff that they needed to
Speaker 1: have in order to make their decisions. All that being said,
Speaker 1: there's still very much kind of a party atmosphere at Ether.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of very young people, a lot
Speaker 1: of the media, there were young bloggers. Like I felt
Speaker 1: like while I was in line to go to the
Speaker 1: Microsoft press event, I felt that I was easily the
Speaker 1: oldest person in line, apart from the security people working
Speaker 1: the show. How should I and I give you? I
Speaker 1: can I give you stuff about being older than me,
Speaker 1: but you're you're really not that. But the most of
Speaker 1: these kids were in their early twenties, well we'll get
Speaker 1: into some of the other members of the press, well,
Speaker 1: at least at least the people who went to the
Speaker 1: Microsoft event. Not all of them are necessarily pressed, but uh,
Speaker 1: I have some I have some opinions I would like
Speaker 1: to share about that. Uh. But all that being said, uh,
Speaker 1: there is still a little bit of a party atmosphere.
Speaker 1: People are still having fun. But it's not like the
Speaker 1: mecca of gamers everywhere the way it's seen because you're
Speaker 1: you're usually playing a game that's maybe not even finished,
Speaker 1: and if it, even if it is finished, you're playing
Speaker 1: a very small section of it, so you can just
Speaker 1: get a hint of what the game is like. Sure,
Speaker 1: sure so. And it's not something like a like like
Speaker 1: packs or dragon Con or Comic Con or anything like
Speaker 1: right where you've got I mean, all the people in
Speaker 1: costumes are being paid to be there. For the most part.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of members of the media who,
Speaker 1: as part of their their representation, they were they were
Speaker 1: dressed up. Yeah, there was a lady dressed up as
Speaker 1: Laura Croft who had a media badge and she was
Speaker 1: in the media lounge dressed as Laura Croft. And that's
Speaker 1: I guess, Yeah, I guess that's her thing, which is
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. But yeah, it's not like a convention that's
Speaker 1: open to the public where everyone's showing up in costume.
Speaker 1: Most of the people who are in costume are working
Speaker 1: for specific vendor or specific developer publisher. Although, yeah, the
Speaker 1: funny thing about about l A is that, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was down on Hollywood Boulevard, I did run
Speaker 1: into two Master Chiefs and a Cortana just walking down
Speaker 1: the streets. I didn't run into any Master Chiefs while
Speaker 1: I was there, but yeah, so anyway, that's the overview
Speaker 1: of E three. It is industry only. It is held
Speaker 1: once a year. It's held in Los Angeles. They've already
Speaker 1: got the announcement for the dates for the two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen E three. We'll see goes to that one. But
Speaker 1: let's let's get into some specifics. What do you want
Speaker 1: to know? Right, Yeah, so so you mentioned Microsoft. I
Speaker 1: heard that there was a few big announcements for Microsoft,
Speaker 1: right of course, the big one being that this is
Speaker 1: the year that they come out with the Xbox One. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a release data in November, No, will be
Speaker 1: the release date, and uh, the price is four hundred
Speaker 1: and nine dollars in the United States. Um, so that's
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars more than what the Xbox three sixty
Speaker 1: went for when it first went on. They also announced
Speaker 1: a brand new version of the Xbox three sixty, which
Speaker 1: was slimmed down and made a little more sleek. Uh heard.
Speaker 1: I heard it was going to be quieter and that
Speaker 1: they're going to be continuing to come out with games
Speaker 1: for it. They said that was as quiet as the
Speaker 1: previous versions, and that raised a couple of snickers in
Speaker 1: the audience. But yes, um and and there are some
Speaker 1: some they didn't announce some games there specifically for the
Speaker 1: three sixty there there. I think their point they were
Speaker 1: trying to make is that they aren't abandoning the three sixty.
Speaker 1: You know, when when the three sixty came out, it
Speaker 1: was very shortly thereafter that they stopped all development for
Speaker 1: the original Xbox and uh and, I think that this
Speaker 1: message they're sending is we're not going to do that
Speaker 1: with this generation. You're going to have games for the
Speaker 1: Xbox one, and we're still developing games for the three
Speaker 1: sixty because we still think of it as a viable
Speaker 1: piece of hardware. So for a while it's going to
Speaker 1: follow the same kind of model that's Sony tends to do,
Speaker 1: where you support the old generation while you're also pushing
Speaker 1: the new one. Now, when they were their press event,
Speaker 1: it was um divide it up into sections. They started
Speaker 1: off with a big preview of metal Gear Solid as
Speaker 1: I recall, which got a lot of people in the
Speaker 1: audience excited. Then they talked about the three sixty, and
Speaker 1: then they went on to the Xbox One. Microsoft had
Speaker 1: recently received a lot of criticism because they had an
Speaker 1: event about well about two and a half weeks before
Speaker 1: E three where they unveiled the Xbox One for the
Speaker 1: first time, and in that one they were specifically talking
Speaker 1: about its capabilities as sort of an entertainment center. They
Speaker 1: didn't really talk about games very much, and they cut
Speaker 1: a lot of flak for that, even though Microsoft had
Speaker 1: said that they outset we're not talking about games, will
Speaker 1: do that at E three. Uh So, this time they
Speaker 1: talked about games a lot, and they talked about some
Speaker 1: innovations that I think are largely not appreciated by gamers,
Speaker 1: or at least not it's not something that they're looking for.
Speaker 1: And I think that was a problem because when we
Speaker 1: get into the sony thing. We'll talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the various impressions that people got from that press day.
Speaker 1: Well Microsoft's press event. You know, they talked about how,
Speaker 1: uh they were integrating smart Glass, which is their mobile
Speaker 1: operating system integration with Xbox Live and Xbox so that
Speaker 1: would give you more control over games, it would give
Speaker 1: you access to other content that's related to the games.
Speaker 1: They showed a lot of games that have a tactical
Speaker 1: element where someone using smart Glass could influence a game
Speaker 1: by uh seeing an overview of an entire map. So
Speaker 1: let's say it's squad ace combat. This person might be
Speaker 1: able to call in an air strike against opponents or
Speaker 1: be able to warn someone like, hey, if you turn
Speaker 1: that corner, there's three guys waiting to ambush you. That
Speaker 1: so extra functionality that you wouldn't get from the game itself.
Speaker 1: But once you link a tablet into it, you get this,
Speaker 1: uh this added dimension, right, and and that's cool. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of gamers are thinking like, well, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm already paying five for this console, right, I
Speaker 1: don't want to have to buy another tablet or or
Speaker 1: even you know, people are just saying like I'm just
Speaker 1: that's just not what I'm looking for in the game.
Speaker 1: I don't think it. I don't think it had the
Speaker 1: big impact that Microsoft was possibly expecting for. They also
Speaker 1: talked a lot about their Connect and the connect um
Speaker 1: uh interaction with games, and again, I think that's one
Speaker 1: of those things that it's really cool. I think both
Speaker 1: the smart glass and Connect are really cool uh innovative
Speaker 1: approaches to gaming. But a lot of gamers just they
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to the point where they care about that, right. Sure,
Speaker 1: I felt like, um, like, the Connect is a really
Speaker 1: great like family party kind of thing most of the time.
Speaker 1: But but I don't know anyone who plays any quote
Speaker 1: unquote serious games with a Connect. It's all. It's all,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh like that the WE sports style
Speaker 1: thing or Connect Sports whatever that franchise. I could see.
Speaker 1: I could see it becoming more useful as it gets
Speaker 1: more deeply integrated into games. For example, again going back
Speaker 1: to like a squad based game, if you are human
Speaker 1: character and you are playing with artificially intelligent helpers, and
Speaker 1: you issue a command over the connect, and that way
Speaker 1: you don't have to press some sort of button sequence
Speaker 1: to tell your squad weight. Here then that could be
Speaker 1: very useful. And of course that's just one small example.
Speaker 1: And then there's always the gesture control stuff too, not
Speaker 1: just voice control. But again I don't think that's that's
Speaker 1: what their core gamer element is really. Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: asking for it yet, they're not they're not interested in
Speaker 1: it yet. And I think part of that is just
Speaker 1: because it's such a young technology that none of us
Speaker 1: have really seen how it benefits exactly. We haven't had
Speaker 1: a core example saying, look see how amazing this game is.
Speaker 1: When you put these other elements in with this game,
Speaker 1: it makes it a must buy. I don't think we've
Speaker 1: had a title like that yet, or at least if
Speaker 1: we have, I don't think it's gotten widespread enough acclaim
Speaker 1: for that to be a decision making factor. So most gamers,
Speaker 1: what they're expecting expecting is better graphics, better processor. Um,
Speaker 1: they're hoping for a decent price, and some of the
Speaker 1: other elements that Microsoft didn't really address, which includes the
Speaker 1: whole idea about what happens with used games, because Microsoft's
Speaker 1: approach is all about streaming and and cloud based and
Speaker 1: essentially moving away from the physical media that we tend
Speaker 1: to think of when we think of consoles, and that
Speaker 1: is a is a dramatic departure to the way that
Speaker 1: games have been done in the past. And it also
Speaker 1: means that there are some pretty strong restrictions, like if
Speaker 1: it's a digital copy, how do you sell a used game?
Speaker 1: And why would you pay less money for a used
Speaker 1: game if it's a digital copy in the media is
Speaker 1: exactly the same. It makes it makes the word used
Speaker 1: meaningless in terms of and that's that's a big concern
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of people who want Most
Speaker 1: people buy I'm not going to say most people, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people buy a second market. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: this way they can buy the games they want for
Speaker 1: a little less money than what they would have to
Speaker 1: spend at full price. And maybe it takes them a
Speaker 1: couple of months to buy it, but yeah, and then
Speaker 1: when they're done with it, they can sell it back
Speaker 1: if they want for a much lower price and a
Speaker 1: half dollars or whatever it is. But it's it's still
Speaker 1: it's still one of those things where if you add
Speaker 1: it up, they're like, Okay, look, over the course of
Speaker 1: this year, that meant that I I paid ten bucks
Speaker 1: for a fifty dollar title. Once you factor in all
Speaker 1: of this stuff over time, right, and now it's going
Speaker 1: to be well, they used doesn't really make any sense anymore,
Speaker 1: so I have to buy it new. Then you have
Speaker 1: the concept of you need to be connected to the
Speaker 1: internet and it has to Yeah, it does this once
Speaker 1: once every twenty four hours. Um. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are upset about that. Now, personally, from my own perspective,
Speaker 1: it doesn't bother me that much. But it's because the
Speaker 1: way I use my Xbox right now, it's always connected anyway,
Speaker 1: and so and I don't I don't tend to shop
Speaker 1: for games and used games. I don't sell off games.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't affect me personally because that's my own
Speaker 1: personal style however, Right, But that's that's very much a
Speaker 1: class issue. I would say of assuming that that there
Speaker 1: that their core basic gamer has a twenty four hour day,
Speaker 1: seven day a week Internet connection, that it never goes out,
Speaker 1: that they are interested in being online all the time,
Speaker 1: and that they are okay with spending that much money
Speaker 1: on as many games as they want to buy. Sure,
Speaker 1: I am the case the perfect case for Microsoft's approach,
Speaker 1: because that's how I play. But I recognize there are
Speaker 1: other people who have very different restrictions on them that
Speaker 1: have different life circumstances. I completely understand that, and I
Speaker 1: understand why they will be upset about it. Honestly, for me,
Speaker 1: that the cost of games is part of why I
Speaker 1: don't play more video games because I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: either I could buy this video game, or I could
Speaker 1: go to a couple of movies and have a couple
Speaker 1: drinks some friends and have a really nice dinner, and
Speaker 1: I would overall rather do all of that stuff. Then yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's the thing is that it's I think what
Speaker 1: Microsoft is doing is it's trying to push gaming into
Speaker 1: a new era, a new generation, and that means having
Speaker 1: to leave behind support for uh traditional forms of gaming.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a tough thing. It's really hard. It's
Speaker 1: hard to get people on your side when you do that,
Speaker 1: because in general, we don't really like change that much.
Speaker 1: We like improvements, we don't like change. Nerd nerds don't
Speaker 1: like change. That's crazy. Well, people in general hate to
Speaker 1: break it to you, not just nerds. So but change
Speaker 1: is one of those things where I mean, we've seen
Speaker 1: this with other companies like Apple is famous for this,
Speaker 1: where Apple will stop supporting one form of media force
Speaker 1: ing the industry to conform to Apple's new approach if
Speaker 1: they want to continue working with Apple. Usually that means
Speaker 1: that there's a year or two of struggle before things
Speaker 1: settle down and everyone either forgets what it used to
Speaker 1: be like or they actually prefer the new way. But
Speaker 1: it takes time for that to happen. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's the same thing with this is that you
Speaker 1: know this, this has upset some gamers. I don't think
Speaker 1: that the you know, unless Microsoft dramatically changes it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's strategy. I don't think that that's going to change
Speaker 1: anytime soon. But I do think that over time the
Speaker 1: objections will become less uh what's the right word, um adamant,
Speaker 1: They're going to be Maybe maybe that's maybe that's just
Speaker 1: their market too. I mean, you know, it's there are
Speaker 1: certainly different segments of the gamer market. Enough people are
Speaker 1: involved in gaming communities these days that I think it's
Speaker 1: very possible for them to target that market if they want. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say, I had a chance to play a
Speaker 1: few games using the Xbox One. Uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: if it's just me, it felt like the controller was
Speaker 1: actually a little smaller than it used to be. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe that was just you know, it could have
Speaker 1: just all been in my mind because I didn't have
Speaker 1: a chance to play Xbox three sixty and the Xbox
Speaker 1: One back to back. But it just felt a little different. Uh,
Speaker 1: not in a necessarily a bad way, but it took
Speaker 1: a little getting used to. Um, the shoulder buttons are
Speaker 1: a little different, and the trigger buttons are a little different.
Speaker 1: But the games I played were very responsive and very
Speaker 1: pretty to look at. They also had some interesting teasers
Speaker 1: at the Microsoft precedent, including one of a game franchise
Speaker 1: that's beloved by both people on this podcast, Halo. Uh
Speaker 1: it was. It was very much a teaser. It had
Speaker 1: a a robed figure trudging through the desert and you
Speaker 1: couldn't see any details on this figure at all, just
Speaker 1: as they're walking over the dunes and these beautiful particle
Speaker 1: effects with the sand and everything. Uh, this is obviously
Speaker 1: a pre rendered teaser, not in game footage necessarily. Then
Speaker 1: suddenly the ground starts to shake, sand starts to fall away,
Speaker 1: and this enormous um mechanical creature like bird like thing
Speaker 1: comes out of the desert. Essentially is like an evolved
Speaker 1: version of what the source of stuff you saw on
Speaker 1: Halo four. And then the wind from its emergence of
Speaker 1: from the desert blows back the cowl on the rope,
Speaker 1: revealing Master Chief. Uh. And then it just had the
Speaker 1: title for Halo five and the crowd went nuts. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, out of all the stuff that
Speaker 1: happened at Microsoft's press event, the one thing that got
Speaker 1: the biggest response. And this is very telling. You know,
Speaker 1: Microsoft is going through all these issues where gamers are
Speaker 1: worried about the future of the console and how you know.
Speaker 1: They're worried about the connect being required and having to
Speaker 1: have it connected all the time in order to play games.
Speaker 1: They're worried about the the consistent connection to the Internet.
Speaker 1: They're worried about the used games. Microsoft said one thing
Speaker 1: that got the crowd cheering, which was that they were
Speaker 1: moving away from Microsoft Points and going to real currency,
Speaker 1: right right, I heard about that. So no longer will
Speaker 1: you have to pay money to buy six Microsoft points
Speaker 1: to then buy a twelve hundred Microsoft point game left
Speaker 1: over with four hundred points. This was one of those issues.
Speaker 1: It's like there are a lot of places that do
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. I always call it the Disney
Speaker 1: dollar approach, where you buy into a platform specific currency,
Speaker 1: but the amount of real money you spend to get
Speaker 1: the platform currency uh never matches up with whatever the
Speaker 1: actual projects. Sure, and it's all, it's all. I think
Speaker 1: people are pretty aware that that's all spoken mirrors. It's
Speaker 1: a way of getting people to uh not pay as
Speaker 1: much attention to what they're buying, right. Well, and there's
Speaker 1: also and and there's also the fact that you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to spend more money than what you
Speaker 1: need to buy whatever it is you want to buy,
Speaker 1: because again, it doesn't match up exactly right. They're moving
Speaker 1: away from that to real currency purchases, and I got
Speaker 1: a huge response from the crowd. That was the biggest
Speaker 1: one of the night as far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: besides maybe the Halo teaser. So when when your biggest
Speaker 1: response is the fact that you're moving away from a
Speaker 1: points based currency to real currency, and it'll be it'll
Speaker 1: be real for whatever region, you know, like in the
Speaker 1: United States dollars, in the UK it'll be pounds, and
Speaker 1: in Europe it'll be euros, and you know, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it'll uh, but the fact that that was the
Speaker 1: biggest response was very kind of telling I think that
Speaker 1: that that it wasn't anything else from Microsoft that got
Speaker 1: that big of a buy in from the crowd. That
Speaker 1: they that they may be weren't catering enough to the
Speaker 1: people who were there with their content to uh with
Speaker 1: their with their presentation right right. And when I walked
Speaker 1: into E three, before I had seen anything, I was
Speaker 1: absolutely convinced that I would buy an Xbox one and
Speaker 1: I would essue the PS four and the Xbox One
Speaker 1: would be my only console. And I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: after the break, I'll tell you more about how that
Speaker 1: decision changed. But before I do, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: moment to thank our sponsor. Alright, we're back. So I
Speaker 1: covered Microsoft, right and and you just finished saying that
Speaker 1: you weren't too sure about Sony going into the going
Speaker 1: into E three. How did you feel about it once
Speaker 1: you've seen their presentation? Alright? So before I said that
Speaker 1: I would only buy an Xbox one and I would
Speaker 1: move away from the Sony platform because the reason why
Speaker 1: I said that is as a gamer. Right now, I
Speaker 1: have both consoles. I have the three sixty and the
Speaker 1: P S three, both current generation consoles. I should say
Speaker 1: I have the three sixty and the p S three,
Speaker 1: and I've got two games for the p S three,
Speaker 1: which I never play. I only use my p S
Speaker 1: three as a Blue Ray Player. Now on my Xbox
Speaker 1: three six, I've got lots of games that I play
Speaker 1: all the time. And the new Xbox one also is
Speaker 1: going to have a Blu Ray Player, which I thought,
Speaker 1: or a Blue Ray Drive, and I thought, well, this
Speaker 1: means that I could get rid of my PS three
Speaker 1: because I never use it except as a Blu Ray Player,
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine wanting a PS four. Sony has
Speaker 1: its press event, and Sony addressed all the concerns that
Speaker 1: people had about Microsoft, and they made sure to do
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it was a dig
Speaker 1: at Microsoft to every opportunity got it. So they said,
Speaker 1: you know, our games are gonna come on disc and
Speaker 1: you can put those discs in an EPs four and
Speaker 1: it's going to work. So if you want to trade
Speaker 1: that game in, if you want to sell that game,
Speaker 1: if you want to lend it to your friend, you
Speaker 1: can totally do that because your games are your games.
Speaker 1: And that was a shot across the bow and Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, you know Microsoft is looking at this
Speaker 1: cloud based approach where theoretically you could have cloud based
Speaker 1: computing where the game itself could be too complex for
Speaker 1: your console to play on its own. So with cloud computing,
Speaker 1: you have these massive server farms that are running the
Speaker 1: games for you. You're streaming the content, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, an ullah or on live or
Speaker 1: something like that, and you're able to suddenly, uh play
Speaker 1: these games that normally your console couldn't run. So approach
Speaker 1: was that we just made the console stronger and you
Speaker 1: can play whatever you want. Oh yeah, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's definitely a thing. No, I was I was gonna ask,
Speaker 1: have you heard anything about whether Microsoft's games for the
Speaker 1: Xbox One are going to be tied to a game
Speaker 1: or profile so that you can take them to a
Speaker 1: different box or yes, it is supposed to do that,
Speaker 1: So you're supposed to be tied to it so that
Speaker 1: you can do that sort of thing. Uh, you can,
Speaker 1: according to x or Microsoft. Rather, you can sell off
Speaker 1: a game, but there could be restrictions on that based
Speaker 1: upon h individual game publisher. So in other words, Microsoft
Speaker 1: is leaving it up to publishers to decide what the
Speaker 1: um the actual policy will be for selling used games,
Speaker 1: and the publishers, for their part, have said this might
Speaker 1: be true, but they haven't given us any details, so
Speaker 1: we don't know how that would be implemented. So at
Speaker 1: the moment, there's still a big question mark about used
Speaker 1: games in general. With the Xbox One. It's not to
Speaker 1: say that there will not be any way of doing it,
Speaker 1: but it may be very much restricted, and it may
Speaker 1: be a case by case basis, which is just going
Speaker 1: to drive players nuts. So that's impossible. But back to
Speaker 1: Sony any that they also had something to say about authentication. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they had stuff to say about everything, Like
Speaker 1: essentially every single point they made was that this is
Speaker 1: not the way we're doing things. The Microsoft way is
Speaker 1: not the way we're doing things. It didn't use those
Speaker 1: words specifically, but they were very careful to kind of
Speaker 1: go ahead with that and their and their conference was
Speaker 1: maybe six hours after Microsoft's conference, Yeah it was, And
Speaker 1: I don't know how much I think that most of
Speaker 1: their their points had to be pretty much in stone,
Speaker 1: because even even giving given six hours, there's not enough
Speaker 1: time to make the company multimedia presentation decisions on corporate
Speaker 1: not just multimedia decisions but you're talking about decision that
Speaker 1: will affect the business from that point forward. That's a
Speaker 1: huge decision. I can't think of any company that would
Speaker 1: be nimble enough to make that kind of change in
Speaker 1: real time and within six hours say all right, well,
Speaker 1: now we know how we're gonna answer or this question
Speaker 1: because Microsoft did this way and people didn't like it,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna do it this way. I don't think
Speaker 1: that was possible, I'm sure, but I, you know, the
Speaker 1: cynical part of me suspects that maybe they listened to
Speaker 1: xboxes presentation and watched the crowd response and had their speaker.
Speaker 1: I think they probably tweet the approach right so that
Speaker 1: they already knew what they were gonna say. Now they
Speaker 1: knew how they were going to say it. I think
Speaker 1: that I think that's fair enough. Well. Sony also managed
Speaker 1: to do a few other things. First of all, one
Speaker 1: of the first things he did was they showed off
Speaker 1: the console because because they hadn't previously. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: had a an event earlier inten where they announced the
Speaker 1: console and they talked about some of the games that
Speaker 1: would be coming out, but they did not reveal any
Speaker 1: pictures of the console. Itself. They showed off the controller,
Speaker 1: and they showed off what the p S I camera
Speaker 1: looks like, which is very similar to the connect, but
Speaker 1: they did not show off the console itself. That was
Speaker 1: one of the first things they did, and people's first
Speaker 1: reaction was, huh, it looks a lot like the Xbox one. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a certain and the console looks like a console.
Speaker 1: It's you know, yeah, it Well, the both of them
Speaker 1: looked more like something you would see in the home
Speaker 1: entertainment stack, right, because the PS three had that that
Speaker 1: curved The original one anyway, had that curved top, which
Speaker 1: meant that you could not stack anything on top of
Speaker 1: it because it would just be all wobbly. This one
Speaker 1: looks more like what you would see with a cable box,
Speaker 1: although it does have if you look at it in profile,
Speaker 1: it has these kind of it's almost like a little
Speaker 1: rhombus instead of instead of a rectangle. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a neat design and they showed off a
Speaker 1: lot of games. In fact, they showed it felt like
Speaker 1: they showed off a lot more games than Microsoft Dead.
Speaker 1: But they also showed a lot of games for the
Speaker 1: p S three as well as the PS four. They
Speaker 1: started off with some really powerful heavy hitters like The
Speaker 1: Last of Us, which the reviews have come in for
Speaker 1: the Last of Us, the game itself, as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast right now, is not yet out.
Speaker 1: It comes out the week this podcast should publish, but
Speaker 1: the reviews, the early reviews have all been amazingly positive.
Speaker 1: Lots and lots of perfect wars for this game. It's
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a survivalist game. You're you're playing, uh,
Speaker 1: an older male character who is looking after a younger
Speaker 1: like a teenage girl character. Uh, it's post apocalypse. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's zombie like critters that are after you, as well
Speaker 1: as other survivors who are not necessarily in the helpful mood.
Speaker 1: And uh, apparently it's just got a very emotionally impactful story.
Speaker 1: I got to play a demo of it and it
Speaker 1: was intense. Also a lot of creative little puzzle solving
Speaker 1: moments in it as well, so uh, yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: shortage of zombies at E three. But anyway, other stuff that.
Speaker 1: They then moved on to the PS four and talked
Speaker 1: about some of the games that you would see for
Speaker 1: that and the the interesting uh approaches they had they
Speaker 1: They also talked about a lot of games that were
Speaker 1: not really your traditional games that you would see on Xbox.
Speaker 1: Sony kind of excels in this space where they get
Speaker 1: some weird, funky game tames that have innovative style play
Speaker 1: and premises. There are things like like a Little Big Planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So if you look at Xbox, they have
Speaker 1: some of those, And if you look at Xbox Live Arcade,
Speaker 1: you see some of these kind of independent developer games
Speaker 1: that are really kind of quirky or push your expectations
Speaker 1: of what a game is and what a game can do.
Speaker 1: But I think Sony does this better than Microsoft does.
Speaker 1: In general, Sony tends to have at least Sony tends
Speaker 1: to support independent gamers to a more visible extent in Microsoft.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe both companies are doing the same amount
Speaker 1: of work, but Sony's is way more noticeable. And while
Speaker 1: they didn't dedicate an entire segment of their of their
Speaker 1: precedent to independent games, they did show off some independent
Speaker 1: games that got the crowd excited and some some jobs
Speaker 1: weird premises like uh my favorite was Octodad Octo Dad,
Speaker 1: where you play as an octopus who is posing as
Speaker 1: a human and your goal is to get through various
Speaker 1: scenarios without people suspecting that you are in fact an
Speaker 1: octopus in human clothes. It's so fun. I got to
Speaker 1: play a demo. So in this game, you are actually
Speaker 1: using the PS four's controllers and this this title, by
Speaker 1: the way, is going to be available not just on
Speaker 1: the PS four but also on Mac and Windows computers.
Speaker 1: But you use your various buttons on your PS four
Speaker 1: controller to control the legs, your tentacles. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: The physics of the game are trying to match what
Speaker 1: an octopus would be. In other words, you have no bones,
Speaker 1: so you're all flippy floppy as you're trying to walk
Speaker 1: around and as people as you draw attention to yourself.
Speaker 1: There's more likely to be at an incident of someone
Speaker 1: knowing that you're an octopus when when people start realizing
Speaker 1: that you have no bones in your legs, when you're
Speaker 1: all flippy floppy. Yeah. So the demo they had was
Speaker 1: that you had to get dressed for your wedding and
Speaker 1: then make your way down the aisle so that no
Speaker 1: one noticed that you were an octopus. So you had
Speaker 1: to find a tuxedo and you had to find an
Speaker 1: engagement ring or actually a wedding band and put it
Speaker 1: on your intended hand and uh and and controlling. You
Speaker 1: would switch between controlling the legs and controlling the arms.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't control all of them at the same time,
Speaker 1: so you're controlling you're controlling walking for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you switch to your arms. Controlling your arms,
Speaker 1: you had to use both duel stick, both both of
Speaker 1: the stick controllers to control the x, y, and Z
Speaker 1: axis so that you could do depth as well as
Speaker 1: vertical and horizontal control and judging how far you needed
Speaker 1: to put your arms so you could slide this ring
Speaker 1: onto your wife's arm. Was I mean, people behind me
Speaker 1: are laughing their butts off because it's just so ridiculous,
Speaker 1: And it was no matter who was playing the demo,
Speaker 1: that was what was going on. People were just laughing
Speaker 1: at how silly and absurd and and funny this this
Speaker 1: game was. Um. Honestly, I don't know if the game
Speaker 1: like could hold up for a full length game, but
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun playing that one demo. Uh.
Speaker 1: I also noticed, at least to me again, just as
Speaker 1: the Xbox One controller felt smaller in my hands, and
Speaker 1: again I might be just crazy, But the PS four
Speaker 1: controller felt larger in my hands. Anyone who's heard me
Speaker 1: rant about Sony has heard the problem I have with
Speaker 1: the dual shot controller I have. My fingers aren't incredibly long,
Speaker 1: but they're fairly long, and I get like crab hands
Speaker 1: I've I've always found the PlayStation controller is a little
Speaker 1: bit crampy. Yeah, yeah, I too. More so than that.
Speaker 1: I was actually the one kid who didn't want to
Speaker 1: put down that original like bear sized Xbox. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Duke Duke controllers what it was called. Yeah, No, I
Speaker 1: like that one too, and mean it was like it's
Speaker 1: like a big crayon. It's just more comfortable in your hands.
Speaker 1: And the Sega Dreamcast had a very similar kind of controller.
Speaker 1: It was these large controllers that felt more comfortable in
Speaker 1: my hands. The PlayStation controller, I've always felt as a
Speaker 1: little cramped for the way I hold the controller, and
Speaker 1: so the PS four controller felt a little more comfortable. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: keep in mind I was playing for five to ten
Speaker 1: minutes at a time times, so it's not like a
Speaker 1: true gaming session where I call in quote unquote sick,
Speaker 1: and uh sick means uncharted. Four just came out, Uh,
Speaker 1: then you know, maybe if I were to play a
Speaker 1: marathon session, I would realize that I could no longer
Speaker 1: open a jar. You know, I don't know, because I
Speaker 1: didn't have that chance. Jonathan really never does that. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't call in quote unquote sick anyway.
Speaker 1: So the PS four announcement also drew a lot of
Speaker 1: of acclaim because one they said that you don't have
Speaker 1: any problem with use games, which, really, when you think
Speaker 1: about it, the PS four got a lot of praise
Speaker 1: because of the things it didn't do. It essentially kept
Speaker 1: things the same, and by keeping things the same, it
Speaker 1: made gamers happy, which again goes back to that thing
Speaker 1: about gamers hate change, change, and yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: gonna be interesting to see how that how that shakes out. Well.
Speaker 1: They also announced that it would be a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: less expensive than the Xbox One. Yeah, I heard that.
Speaker 1: That was that. That was the last thing that they announced,
Speaker 1: basically in the presentations, and they said that it would
Speaker 1: be available by the holiday season of this year, and
Speaker 1: that it would be one would be three dollars in
Speaker 1: the United States, So that's one hundred dollars less than
Speaker 1: the Xbox one, and that got people really excited to
Speaker 1: I mean, they went nuts, and uh and I think
Speaker 1: that to me, that means that Sony has got to
Speaker 1: be this. This is just me guessing, this is my opinion,
Speaker 1: but I think Sony has to be taking a loss
Speaker 1: on those consoles. They have to be selling them at
Speaker 1: a loss and hoping to make up the money in
Speaker 1: game sales. But I can't imagine that because there's not
Speaker 1: that much difference between the PS four and the Xbox
Speaker 1: one when you get down the square wise, and I
Speaker 1: mean I always forget. You know, the last generation console
Speaker 1: came out in two five. That's a really long time ago. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they had said that they had planned for the PS
Speaker 1: three to have a ten year lifespan, like a from
Speaker 1: a life cycle as far as development goes. So uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this just says that they're going to again
Speaker 1: continue to develop for the p S three, just like
Speaker 1: Microsoft is going to continue you to develop for the
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty. So um, I did hear that they're
Speaker 1: putting off the game streaming that they talked so much
Speaker 1: about it their last press conference until Yeah, that's there's
Speaker 1: still a question about that. I think I think the
Speaker 1: gamers really gave Sony a big pass on on that.
Speaker 1: But it's um, you know, that is something that there's
Speaker 1: still questions about, and there weren't a whole lot of answers.
Speaker 1: It was more like, we're still not ready to talk
Speaker 1: about this. It'll be ready in another you know, year,
Speaker 1: So there's still some questions to answer. But I think
Speaker 1: the combination of the lower price tag and the the
Speaker 1: throwing a bone to gamers as far as the whole
Speaker 1: media thing is concerned, and also you don't have to
Speaker 1: have a persistent Internet connection to play games. You know,
Speaker 1: these sort of things were the things that made gamers
Speaker 1: really happy, and that's what led everyone to say that
Speaker 1: Sony quote unquote one E three and I can't disagree because,
Speaker 1: like I said, when I walked into E three, I
Speaker 1: was convinced I was going to buy an Xbox One
Speaker 1: and skip the PS four. Now I'm almost certain I
Speaker 1: will buy a p S four and I'm still pretty
Speaker 1: sure I'm going to buy an Xbox one. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure i'll buy both, but I can't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I can skip the PS four now. And part of
Speaker 1: that is because I looked at some of these independent
Speaker 1: games that are only coming out for the PS four.
Speaker 1: And I am really impressed with Sony's dedication to supporting
Speaker 1: new and innovative ways of creating games, because as much
Speaker 1: as I love video games, I have to admit I'm
Speaker 1: getting a little tired of the military shooters, the zombie games,
Speaker 1: sports games, and even the RPGs. You know, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and they and they, and they get so big and
Speaker 1: so shiny and clearly so much it's dedicated to the
Speaker 1: gorgeous artwork, and I certainly don't want to downplay the
Speaker 1: work that goes into that, because it's wonderful. However, sometimes
Speaker 1: you just really want a game that surprises you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well you think about some of the games that
Speaker 1: just got crazy love, like Kenda Marii Demassi. But how
Speaker 1: do you explain how do you explain to someone what
Speaker 1: that game is? I mean, so you try to, and
Speaker 1: people just look at me like I'm from another planet.
Speaker 1: And even if you do describe that game to any accurate,
Speaker 1: accurate level, people don't get it until they pick it
Speaker 1: up and start playing it and they realize fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's the thing is that Sony is
Speaker 1: getting really good at supporting that kind of development and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not trying to say that Sony is
Speaker 1: an altruistic company that has uh, that has a heart
Speaker 1: of gold or anything. They see the value in this,
Speaker 1: They see that there is room for this kind of
Speaker 1: development and that gamers respond to it. Like the gamers
Speaker 1: didn't respond and independent scene would be non existent. Um.
Speaker 1: And again it's not to say that the Xbox doesn't
Speaker 1: support independent developers, it's just not as it's not as visible.
Speaker 1: It's you know, and both of these events, it was
Speaker 1: very clear that they wanted to leverage the big name
Speaker 1: that big names in game development that are out there,
Speaker 1: because that makes a huge impact. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: lot easier to win over a crowd with an established
Speaker 1: brand than it is to show off something that's that's
Speaker 1: completely new and have to hope that your audience gets it. Oh,
Speaker 1: of course, of course. I mean you put you put
Speaker 1: Milk gear up on the screen and have Keith your
Speaker 1: Severland's voice coming at you, and you put Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: four up there, and you've got pirates. I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you not respond with yea when
Speaker 1: you see Assassin's Creed and Pirates? I said, yeah, by
Speaker 1: the way, that was one of the games I got
Speaker 1: to watch. I got to watch the game play in
Speaker 1: real time. I got to watch someone playing this game.
Speaker 1: It looked great, but they did not let people play it.
Speaker 1: If you weren't working for Sony, you were not playing
Speaker 1: that game. At least maybe they had some closed door
Speaker 1: sessions where people were able to get their hands on it,
Speaker 1: But I was not one of those people. What was
Speaker 1: that Your experience at a lot of bits or quite
Speaker 1: a few, I mean, like, uh, watch Dogs was the
Speaker 1: same way. Um, there are some games that I could
Speaker 1: have gotten up there and played, but it would have
Speaker 1: meant doing it in front of an audience, and I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to have my first experience with a
Speaker 1: game being when there's four people giggling, for example. UM.
Speaker 1: Moving away from now we've covered Microsoft and Sonny, we
Speaker 1: can talk about some of the specific games I saw. Fantasia.
Speaker 1: So Fantasia is the next game by Harmonics. That's, of
Speaker 1: course the company that did Guitar Hero and rock Band
Speaker 1: and everyone, and they did some crazy music and rhythm
Speaker 1: games before Guitar Hero and rock Band. They're known for
Speaker 1: integrating music and gameplay and making it a new experience,
Speaker 1: but they haven't come out with a game in a while.
Speaker 1: Fantasia was there game that they were showing off at
Speaker 1: E three. They talked about they were developing other games
Speaker 1: in house, but they weren't ready to talk about them yet.
Speaker 1: But Fantasia is a game where you are put in
Speaker 1: the role of essentially making mouse in the movie Fantasia,
Speaker 1: you know, as the SORCER's apprentice when he's up there
Speaker 1: on that peak and he's moving his hands around in
Speaker 1: big gestures to control the way. Exactly that's you. They
Speaker 1: play music and what happens is uh. They showed off
Speaker 1: a couple of different examples. The person doing the demo
Speaker 1: showed off Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and which is exactly what
Speaker 1: you would expect to see in Fantasia. But but what
Speaker 1: happens is you stand and the Connect is what this
Speaker 1: is for the Xbox three, six and the Xbox one.
Speaker 1: The Connect picks up your motions and there's a little
Speaker 1: indicator on the screen that shows you what direction you
Speaker 1: need to swipe with your arm, and then there's a
Speaker 1: little dot or a little uh figure that moves across
Speaker 1: the screen and when it intersects with that line, that's
Speaker 1: when you make the motion. So it's a rhythm game
Speaker 1: in the sense that you need to time it out.
Speaker 1: When the dot hits the motion, that's when you make
Speaker 1: the motion, and things like sweeping your arms to the left,
Speaker 1: to the right, up and down, or pushing forward. And
Speaker 1: this would control the volume of the music like a
Speaker 1: essentially the vocals. So if you started missing stuff, then
Speaker 1: the volume starts to go down when you're hitting it,
Speaker 1: the volumes going up until it reaches where it needs
Speaker 1: to be. And then you could also do things like
Speaker 1: at certain parts of the song, control what style of
Speaker 1: music is being played, so you can either go with
Speaker 1: the original composition right so the Queen's original cut, or
Speaker 1: in the in the version of Queen, you could also
Speaker 1: choose a hard rock version so it suddenly has a
Speaker 1: lot more guitar and drums in it, or you can
Speaker 1: choose an orchestral version, so suddenly you've got strings and horns.
Speaker 1: And you get to do this throughout the game. And
Speaker 1: not only does it change the nature of the music
Speaker 1: that's playing as you're playing the game, it's still the
Speaker 1: same song, but it changes the arrangement in the nature
Speaker 1: of it, it would also change the game play because
Speaker 1: each version would have a slightly different set of motions
Speaker 1: that were associated with that. So one of them might
Speaker 1: have more moments where you have to push forward with
Speaker 1: your hands, and another one might have when it has
Speaker 1: you moving your hands more like a conductor, you know.
Speaker 1: So it all depends on and again you would you
Speaker 1: would mix the song in various ways, so you would have,
Speaker 1: like in the case of Bohemian rhapsty which I believe
Speaker 1: is approximately forty seven minutes long, you would have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do this multiple times before the song is over.
Speaker 1: Um and it also would give you a chance to
Speaker 1: manipulate things like a guitar solo. You would get to
Speaker 1: a point where a symbol would show up on the
Speaker 1: screen and it would be like a cube or a pyramid,
Speaker 1: and each line of that cube would be represented by
Speaker 1: a motion. And if you hit all the different lines,
Speaker 1: like if you were able to hit all the motions
Speaker 1: that came up in a sequence, kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: Guitar Hero had the hero moment where you would move
Speaker 1: the guitar and suddenly you're playing like a crazy person.
Speaker 1: Uh solo, It's called a solo crazy person. Brian May
Speaker 1: a crazy person. So it would come up with this
Speaker 1: point where you could manipulate the sound by putting both
Speaker 1: hands forward and moving them apart or closer together, and
Speaker 1: you could or even tilting one hand forward in one
Speaker 1: hand back, and you could change the nature of the sounds,
Speaker 1: so you can make it. It's almost like a wah
Speaker 1: wah pedal with a guitar, and you could change the
Speaker 1: way the solos sounds. And after you were done, that
Speaker 1: modified version that you had just modified in real time
Speaker 1: would play in the background for the for the next
Speaker 1: part of the song, so you would still hear your
Speaker 1: version of the guitar solo playing playing yourself. So it's
Speaker 1: really kind of interesting. Again, I don't know how it
Speaker 1: holds up as a full game. Like thet For a
Speaker 1: few minutes, it was very cute and I wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, but not at the expense of my dignity.
Speaker 1: Uh So I didn't get up there, although like I
Speaker 1: kind of wish I had because I saw what the
Speaker 1: next song was that the person the next person chose,
Speaker 1: which was uh some nights by fun, and I would
Speaker 1: have had a lot of fun just going orchestral through
Speaker 1: that whole song. Like I just want to hear the
Speaker 1: orchestral version, this kettle kettle drums and violence all the
Speaker 1: way through. Um, but it was it did look like
Speaker 1: it was fun. I just don't know again how it
Speaker 1: holds up over a full game. Then again, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not meant to be a full game experience. Like you know,
Speaker 1: if you play Guitar Hero, you might play four or
Speaker 1: five songs and then say all right, I'm done. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: I've I've I've never played all the way through rock Band.
Speaker 1: I love playing it, you know it party kind of
Speaker 1: situations with a small group of friends. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that was one example I saw where I
Speaker 1: could have gotten hands on if I will hands off
Speaker 1: in a way because it's connect but if I really
Speaker 1: wanted to, but I did not. Other games, I saw Wolfenstein,
Speaker 1: the next Wolfenstein game. I did get a hands on
Speaker 1: with that. Um it's Wolfenstein. It's Wolfenstein with an alternate
Speaker 1: history where uh the Nazis one World War two and
Speaker 1: have subjugated essentially all of Europe including UH, including London,
Speaker 1: and um they have these crazy mech like robots and
Speaker 1: stuff that are making it even more difficult for your b. J.
Speaker 1: Blaskowitz character to kick Nazi butt, but um, it looked
Speaker 1: like the acting they had in the game. They showed
Speaker 1: a cut scene and the acting was phenomenal, like, not
Speaker 1: just from the voice actors and they were very good,
Speaker 1: but the modeling they did for the faces looked incredibly convincing,
Speaker 1: like you could see subtle motions like a person, the
Speaker 1: way a person tilted their head or the way their
Speaker 1: eyes moved. That gave it a much more realistic and
Speaker 1: the difference between acting for a camera and acting for
Speaker 1: a stage kind of thing. Yeah, and it and it
Speaker 1: also didn't feel too uncanny valley ish, like you didn't
Speaker 1: have or at least for me, I didn't feel creeped
Speaker 1: out by it, at least not any more creeped out
Speaker 1: than having a evil Nazi person in Terrygate. Me that
Speaker 1: it's kind of creepy on its own. But then I
Speaker 1: also got to play Elder Scrolls online for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: game is going to be amazing. I had so much
Speaker 1: fun with it. I I I mean, I guess since
Speaker 1: it is a multiplayer game, there's always the opportunity for
Speaker 1: other players to make your life miserable when you're online.
Speaker 1: But the game itself look like it looked like the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you should expect from Elder Scrolls. It
Speaker 1: was you know, engaging world, beautiful graphics, wonderful music. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of stuff you would expect. You know.
Speaker 1: Obviously a very deep and an established world in that game,
Speaker 1: and I got to see this is all from Bethesda.
Speaker 1: I also got to see a game called The Evil Within,
Speaker 1: which is a survival horror game where, um, it definitely
Speaker 1: looked like it had been inspired by movies like Hostile
Speaker 1: and saw a lot of hardcore gore and and torture
Speaker 1: kind of stuff going on in it. Not my cup
Speaker 1: of tea, yeah, but it certainly follows the other tenants
Speaker 1: of survival horror. You know, limited resources. Uh, you're trying
Speaker 1: mostly to survive, so fighting is not always the best choice.
Speaker 1: In fact, often it means that you should be sneaking
Speaker 1: around and running away rather than confronting the things that
Speaker 1: will kill you because they are way too strong for
Speaker 1: whatever you happen to have at your disposal. It looks
Speaker 1: like it would be a very intense game for people
Speaker 1: who like that sort of thing. It's just not for me.
Speaker 1: But I didn't get a chance to actually get a
Speaker 1: hands on on that. You know. I saw other games
Speaker 1: like World of Tanks, which is known online as a
Speaker 1: kind of crazy tank based game, is now coming to
Speaker 1: the Xbox three sixty. I also saw World of war Planes,
Speaker 1: which is a warplane version of that same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: as well as World of Warships, so that it's very
Speaker 1: arcady kind of version of these sort of military games.
Speaker 1: So they're not at all meant to be realistic, but
Speaker 1: they are. They do look exciting and the people playing
Speaker 1: them had a lot of fun. Disney Infinity, which was
Speaker 1: taking a really interesting approach. Disney is probably best known
Speaker 1: in the merchandizing world as being incredibly smart in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know, Disney makes tons of money in merchandising, right,
Speaker 1: So like like if you've ever been to Disney World
Speaker 1: or Disneyland or on a Disney cruise, anyplace that Disney owns,
Speaker 1: you know about pins, right. You collect these pins and
Speaker 1: you can trade them, and uh, some of them are
Speaker 1: really rare, and it's kind of like you can only
Speaker 1: get from a from a specific character in a specific
Speaker 1: parker from a specific store and exactly exactly well, Disney
Speaker 1: Infinity kind of takes this sort of approach but applies
Speaker 1: it to video games in the sense that there's a
Speaker 1: little base station that you attached to your gaming console,
Speaker 1: and the space station has three elements to it where
Speaker 1: you can put two characters and one overlay on this station.
Speaker 1: So the two characters represent player one and player two,
Speaker 1: and you can buy the figures that you put on
Speaker 1: this on this base um and Mick mixing up any
Speaker 1: way you want. So if you want to have uh,
Speaker 1: Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc. As one of your characters,
Speaker 1: and you want to have Captain Hook from Peter Pan
Speaker 1: as your other character, you could do that. You could
Speaker 1: buy those two figures and you put them together and
Speaker 1: suddenly they're together in this game and they interact together.
Speaker 1: You can also get overlays for from the various movies,
Speaker 1: and they will also be selling play sets, which will
Speaker 1: allow you to incorporate the play set in a virtual
Speaker 1: format into the game. So you're talking about a license
Speaker 1: to print money. There's they're gonna be selling, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's both a collectible in the sense of someone
Speaker 1: who is also yeah yeah, and the video game element
Speaker 1: also allows the player to create their own games within
Speaker 1: this this virtual sandbox world. So if you bought all
Speaker 1: the playsets. You could if you wanted to just create
Speaker 1: a virtual representation of Disneyland accurately, like lay it out
Speaker 1: the way Disneyland is laid out. Or you could create
Speaker 1: a fantasy world where you've got Cinderella's castle next to
Speaker 1: Captain Hook's ship, which is next to uh stitches spaceship,
Speaker 1: or you know, all this kind of stuff. You can
Speaker 1: make the match all you like, and you could create
Speaker 1: different kinds of game, like you could create a racing
Speaker 1: game where you could create a sneak game like a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of thief like roguelike game, where
Speaker 1: you could create a um uh beat him up game.
Speaker 1: Like there's all sorts of stuff you can do, and
Speaker 1: the tools are all within the game itself. Now, this
Speaker 1: is something we've seen in the past with things like
Speaker 1: the game Trials, which is a motorcycle game, but it's
Speaker 1: got a crazy amount of customization where you can build
Speaker 1: your own game types to the point where you would
Speaker 1: never know it was a motorcycle game. Because the game
Speaker 1: types that people have made, they've been able to recreate
Speaker 1: other types of games using the tools within Trials. And
Speaker 1: I've seen these videos and I think I do not
Speaker 1: know how you got that engine to do this, right,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing we saw that, you know, Disney
Speaker 1: Infinity was one example, but there are other examples as well,
Speaker 1: including games like Spark, where it gives the the ability
Speaker 1: for players to create their own types of gameplay, their
Speaker 1: own quests, their own challenges, share them online with other
Speaker 1: people so that they can write them out, or they
Speaker 1: can even take a design and tweak it and change
Speaker 1: it around and re upload it. It's sort of this
Speaker 1: open web kind of approach to video game design, but
Speaker 1: within the context of a specific engine. Right, So Disney
Speaker 1: Infinity obviously is not going to interact with the Sparks stuff,
Speaker 1: but Clear and you know, like like whatever Forage version,
Speaker 1: I'm sure Halo five will have. Yeah, So so we've
Speaker 1: seen this in the past. Obviously Forge is a great example.
Speaker 1: We've seen these tools and and even the States way back, right,
Speaker 1: I mean even way back before the whole console version.
Speaker 1: If you go back to things like Duke Newcomb or
Speaker 1: you go to uh Quake or Unreal Tournament, you know
Speaker 1: you had map editors where you could build these things yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: now that's becoming more and more of a standard, and
Speaker 1: in fact we're seeing games that are being developed specifically
Speaker 1: with that in mind, not just as here's another thing
Speaker 1: you can do, but this is the thing this does.
Speaker 1: And that was very interesting to me to think of
Speaker 1: that as a future for gaming, where you know, you say,
Speaker 1: we've given and you a version of game developer of
Speaker 1: tools that have a very easy interface compared to you know,
Speaker 1: coding line by line. Now it's your job to make
Speaker 1: the game. And that was and that's that's that's that's fascinating,
Speaker 1: especially since so many people are getting interested in programming
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, and you can never predict what someone
Speaker 1: will create, right, I mean, like, you know, a developer
Speaker 1: will have a very specific idea of what they need
Speaker 1: to do and how they need to accomplish it, and
Speaker 1: then they release this out to everyone and they think, huh,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can do this thing with these tools,
Speaker 1: and the developer never even considered it, and then next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you've got the next most amazing modification ever.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of encouraging innovation and design, which was
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah. Were there any other pieces of equipment
Speaker 1: there that you saw that we're really cool? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally forgot about that. Yes, I saw the Oculus Rift
Speaker 1: and I got to play with that did so this
Speaker 1: is this is the headset that has two screens, one
Speaker 1: for each eye creates that sense of depth by giving
Speaker 1: you the the illusion of depth. You know, your eyes
Speaker 1: are seeing two different scenes and then your brain combines
Speaker 1: the two into a full picture. And I got to
Speaker 1: use the Oculus Rift at the Indecade area. Indicade is
Speaker 1: an organization that supports independent developers. They said they get
Speaker 1: a lot of support from Sony, so that kind of
Speaker 1: goes back into what we were saying before. And so
Speaker 1: I got to play with one of those for the
Speaker 1: first time, and it was it was really really cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just an interesting experience to have
Speaker 1: this true first person view. In this case, it was
Speaker 1: a independent game that allowed me to walk around these
Speaker 1: um giant asteroid like structures. And I remember I was
Speaker 1: walking around the first one and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I've walked around this whole thing and I don't see
Speaker 1: anything else I can do. And I looked down off
Speaker 1: the edge and I saw another one further down. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, let's find out what happens if I
Speaker 1: walk off the edge. So I walked off the edge
Speaker 1: and I fell and landed on the next one, and
Speaker 1: then I discovered this weird little platform with this glowing thing,
Speaker 1: and I touched the glowing thing, and then suddenly, I
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't sure what else had happened, if
Speaker 1: anything else had happened. I just continued walking around that asteroid,
Speaker 1: but there was nothing below it, and I was like, huh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what else I can do. Have I
Speaker 1: already reached the limit that I screw up, And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna walk
Speaker 1: off the agency. What happens. The glowing thing I touched
Speaker 1: turned out to be a little uh platform maker, So
Speaker 1: if you if you step off into thin air, a
Speaker 1: platform appears and suddenly you're walking again. So then I
Speaker 1: started building a pathway to other asteroids that were way
Speaker 1: out of reach when I first started. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing was for me, it was a game about discovery,
Speaker 1: figuring out what I could do, What were the limitations
Speaker 1: of this world? What were my abilities? I kept coming
Speaker 1: across other stuff and I would pick it up and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't even really know what this does.
Speaker 1: And it would take me a while just through experimentation
Speaker 1: to figure it out, a little bit like like missed,
Speaker 1: but even more open in a way. Yeah. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I talked to the guy afterwards, the guy who developed it.
Speaker 1: He was he was the one who was guiding me through,
Speaker 1: and I said, it was really interesting, you know, having
Speaker 1: to learn like I saw that there was something interesting there,
Speaker 1: but I had no idea what it could do, and
Speaker 1: it would take me a while to figure it out.
Speaker 1: But once I figured it out, it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, that's exactly the experience I want people
Speaker 1: to have. Everyone who's behind you is not having that
Speaker 1: experience because they watched you play, so they know already
Speaker 1: what these things do because they saw you experimenting and
Speaker 1: figuring it out as but you had that moment where
Speaker 1: you're just oh, yeah and uh. So I was very
Speaker 1: happy that I was the first person in line, so
Speaker 1: I got to have the pure experience cool oh and uh.
Speaker 1: And then there was another one I have to talk about,
Speaker 1: Sony Move, Sony Move. When this was a game called Joust, Lauren,
Speaker 1: we need this game for the office. We need the
Speaker 1: game for the office because the competition would be insane.
Speaker 1: So Joust had nothing to do with a television, all right,
Speaker 1: you have the sony move. You are not looking at
Speaker 1: a display, so you know the sony move looks like
Speaker 1: a little wand with a ball at the and has
Speaker 1: a colorful led in it that can be different colors.
Speaker 1: Each person's wand would be lit up as a different color.
Speaker 1: Mine was orange, and it behaved as if it were
Speaker 1: a candle. And there's music playing on the system, so
Speaker 1: you did have speakers playing uh music, and the music
Speaker 1: plays at different tempos, and when's playing at a slow speed,
Speaker 1: your candle is very susceptible to going out if you
Speaker 1: move too quickly, and it'll it'll sputter out, just like
Speaker 1: a real candle would. When the music picks up tempo,
Speaker 1: you can suddenly move a lot more quickly. And the
Speaker 1: object of the game is to extinguish the light on
Speaker 1: the other players moves before yours gets extinguished. So you
Speaker 1: are trying to hit to bat the other person's controller
Speaker 1: or to make them move their hand away fast enough
Speaker 1: to make it go out while you're preserving the light
Speaker 1: on yours. We had four people playing. I was second
Speaker 1: to last, so I survived all the way up until
Speaker 1: the very end. UH. And it was so much fun
Speaker 1: and I could just imagine the chaos that would erupt.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I want Holly Fried to body
Speaker 1: check me, so I don't would take Well, that's the
Speaker 1: thing is that she would just she would just sacrifice herself, right,
Speaker 1: she'd be like screw it. Boom and uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was funny because as your as your candle was
Speaker 1: starting to become vulnerable, you would feel it vibrate and
Speaker 1: so you have to look at your light to make
Speaker 1: sure it was still on because if it went out,
Speaker 1: it would vibrate enough until you you're out of the game.
Speaker 1: And then you know, on our system, you would remove
Speaker 1: yourself from play. But anyway, again a very independently developed
Speaker 1: game has nothing to do with traditional video games, but
Speaker 1: was a really interesting way of using the hardware and
Speaker 1: a new unpredictable I think from the people who made
Speaker 1: the hardware, I don't think they would have predicted this
Speaker 1: kind of gameplay. Oh that's fascinating. Um I you mentioned
Speaker 1: something about SpaceX. Oh yeah, yeah, SpaceX had had a
Speaker 1: presence there, as did NASA and SpaceX. What they had
Speaker 1: was they had the dragon capsule on display so you
Speaker 1: can actually see it. Yeah, took a picture of it.
Speaker 1: Um so I got to see the space X capsule
Speaker 1: up there, and they had representatives who would tell you
Speaker 1: about the program, and that was really cool. It's neat
Speaker 1: to see it and and it's way smaller than you know.
Speaker 1: When when I sit there and I think about the
Speaker 1: Mars one mission that we had talked about and how
Speaker 1: they are planning on sending people up essentially using the
Speaker 1: SpaceX Dragon capsule. I took a look at that capsule
Speaker 1: and I was like, I cannot imagine being in that
Speaker 1: thing for eight to ten months to get to Mars.
Speaker 1: I mean, but it was yes, yes, So that was
Speaker 1: really cool. And NASA the thing they had was they
Speaker 1: had pictures of the next rover. It's very similar to
Speaker 1: the Curiosity Rover. They also had a game that has
Speaker 1: been out for a while for Xbox three sixty on
Speaker 1: Xbox Live Arcade. I think it's free to play where
Speaker 1: you use gestures as a connect game. So you use
Speaker 1: gestures to control the descent of the Curiosity Rover to
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars, and so the you know, the
Speaker 1: ideas that you're you're having to uh, you have to
Speaker 1: make the corrects that the Curiosity rover itself was making automatically,
Speaker 1: so when you have to adjust for the angle of
Speaker 1: attack that you have when you're coming in, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Well, the neat thing was I taket to
Speaker 1: one of the NASA guys and he was telling me
Speaker 1: about the next proposed mission. This is proposed and that
Speaker 1: it has not been budgeted and approved yet. But the
Speaker 1: idea is, he said, you know, we've learned about as
Speaker 1: much as we can with the sensors that we have
Speaker 1: developed on Mars. What we really need to do is
Speaker 1: actually get some samples of Mars back into our hands,
Speaker 1: really investigate them properly. So how would we do that, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're Mars one, you'd send people there. But NASA
Speaker 1: has a different plan. Their plan is send a rover
Speaker 1: that's like the Curiosity rover, that is going to collect
Speaker 1: data and send it back just like Curiosity rover is,
Speaker 1: but it's also going to collect samples and put them
Speaker 1: into a container that can withstand well actually beyond that
Speaker 1: it gets super crazy. So the container can withstand the
Speaker 1: conditions on Mars for up to twenty years. The rover
Speaker 1: collects enough samples to fill the container, sets the container down,
Speaker 1: rolls away. Then NASA sends a second robot. This job
Speaker 1: is to land on the surface of Mars and collect
Speaker 1: the container, then right itself and use thrusters to thrust
Speaker 1: off of Mars and go into Martian orbit. Then they
Speaker 1: send a third robot whose job it is is to
Speaker 1: go into Martian orbit and retrieve the canister and then
Speaker 1: come back to Earth. So you're talking about three different
Speaker 1: missions to accomplish this goal. So you think about how
Speaker 1: complicated that curiosity rover landing was. They have to do
Speaker 1: that same landing again with this other rover plus two
Speaker 1: other really complex missions in order to achieve this. But
Speaker 1: they said this is the only way we could think
Speaker 1: of too, that were the most plausible way we could
Speaker 1: think of to get samples back to Earth. And when
Speaker 1: they were explaining this to me, I'm like, that is
Speaker 1: the coolest thing I have heard today. Yes, that's so exciting,
Speaker 1: that's that's awesome. Yeah. Now, so there was a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff at E three that wasn't directly tied to
Speaker 1: video games that I was really excited about. So I'm
Speaker 1: very glad. I went that's a very savvy marketing choice,
Speaker 1: I mean, because that's absolutely the crossover demographics. Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got You've got people who are hardcore gamers. They're also
Speaker 1: the people who think that the thing like the Curiosity Rover.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who were watching that happen live, right.
Speaker 1: I mean I saw a lot of guys out there
Speaker 1: who were sporting the NASSA mohawks, so right, they're probably
Speaker 1: not thinking of as a NASA mohawk, but I did
Speaker 1: every time I saw it. But there were a lot
Speaker 1: of other great titles that I saw, things like titan Fall,
Speaker 1: where you're going to be a pilot that can jump
Speaker 1: into a mech and then uh do some serious damage. Um.
Speaker 1: There were you know, other zombie games. Plants versus Zombies
Speaker 1: had a big presence out there. That's coming back for
Speaker 1: some more plant zombie fun. My wife will be thrilled
Speaker 1: about that. She loves those games. I like them too.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that it's just my wife. I mean
Speaker 1: I like them too. She just loves them, um, you know.
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of other examples out there too,
Speaker 1: though hardly anyone was talking about Nintendo at all, which
Speaker 1: is kind of sad. I mean, when you think about
Speaker 1: Nintendo's the reason why we have a video game industry
Speaker 1: right now. Because three after that video game crash, Nintendo
Speaker 1: was the company that was able that happened. They were
Speaker 1: able to bring out bring it back from the dead.
Speaker 1: I mean the video game industry, the home video game
Speaker 1: industry was dead after Atari essentially killed it. Atari and
Speaker 1: Colico Vision and Television, the flood of all those systems,
Speaker 1: the flood of terrible games killed the industry. Nintendo was
Speaker 1: able to come back and resurrect that industry. And did
Speaker 1: you see anything from you that you were excited about. Nothing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did go through the Nintendo area. I mean, they
Speaker 1: they have another Mario Kart game. They've got another you know,
Speaker 1: we you Mario game. Uh. The game's look good, but
Speaker 1: it's a lot of the same stuff I've seen a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, and the wu integration gives it some new
Speaker 1: interesting twists with when you're using the Weiu controller as
Speaker 1: the screen in it. But a lot of the games
Speaker 1: for the we you depend upon something that I don't
Speaker 1: do very often, which is have people over at my
Speaker 1: house to play. Lauren and I are both the type
Speaker 1: of gamers who if we're playing with other people, chances
Speaker 1: are it's online right where we go on that multiplayer
Speaker 1: online mode. We don't tend to say I need three
Speaker 1: of my friends to come over so I can play
Speaker 1: Halo the way I want to play it. That's not
Speaker 1: what Yeah, that's actually my favorite thing about Halo these
Speaker 1: days is not having don't have to literally land uh Xbox,
Speaker 1: I don't have to clean my house. You can just play. Well,
Speaker 1: now I will because now I'm going to have that
Speaker 1: connect sensor on there all the time. I don't want
Speaker 1: Microsoft thinking, Wow, what a messy place. Also, the ability
Speaker 1: to mute your friends should you have to in case
Speaker 1: someone is trash talking to an extent, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't really mute someone who's in the living room. Well,
Speaker 1: let me get you in touch with my chloroform guy
Speaker 1: and we'll talk, all right, anything else? Uh no, No,
Speaker 1: now that we've done a chloroform joke, I think that
Speaker 1: we're I think that we're all right, well just about
Speaker 1: wrapped up. I'm glad a nat out on that one. Alright, guys.
Speaker 1: So anyways, that's the tech stuff. Look at E three.
Speaker 1: The future is going to be really interesting with video games,
Speaker 1: I think, I honestly, for my style of play, I
Speaker 1: think Microsoft is doing something very bold. I think that
Speaker 1: there are concerns. I mean, I the DRM issue is
Speaker 1: still very much concern that, you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: anything so intrusive that it actually ends up inspiring people
Speaker 1: to pirate games. I think that there are some things
Speaker 1: that Microsoft is going to have to look at and address.
Speaker 1: That being said, I still like the idea of digital
Speaker 1: delivery over physical media. It very much falls in line
Speaker 1: with the way I play games, so I do look
Speaker 1: forward to it, and they inescapably have a few titles
Speaker 1: that are just yeah, I mean, I gotta play Halo five.
Speaker 1: I can't not play Halo five. Um so yeah, It's
Speaker 1: not like I'm gonna abandon them. But I do understand
Speaker 1: why people are upset, and I think they're concerns are legitimate.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to give anyone that an implication.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say so An He's good, Microsoft bad.
Speaker 1: It's way more complex than that. But I will say
Speaker 1: that I wasn't playing on buying a p S four
Speaker 1: and now I am. So if you had, if you
Speaker 1: had to make the choice today, if if they were
Speaker 1: both out today and I only had enough money to
Speaker 1: buy one of them, I'd buy the PS four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, well go team Go Team Sony Change. I
Speaker 1: know and and uh, I would still buy the Xbox
Speaker 1: One once I saved up enough money, you know from
Speaker 1: my paper route. Al Right, So guys, that wraps up
Speaker 1: our discussion of the three. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of tech Stuff, here's an idea, why
Speaker 1: not let us know about that? You can write us
Speaker 1: all right address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter or
Speaker 1: handle at both those locations is tech Stuff H. S. W.
Speaker 1: Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and bathans of other topics. Does
Speaker 1: it have stuff work dot com? Churches