Larry Hryb: Happy Holidays. My name is Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Welcome to the show. I'm here with Jeff in the studio. Here we go.

Jeff Rubenstein: Look at us Larry. Look at us.

Larry Hryb: Look at us.

Jeff Rubenstein: Look at us. Who would have thought?

Larry Hryb: We're dressed in our Christmas sweaters, your very nice, ugly Christmas sweater.

Jeff Rubenstein: We made it to the end of the decade, and by the way, this is ... It's a Hanukkah sweater.

Larry Hryb: Oh is it?

Jeff Rubenstein: Each candle lights up individually.

Larry Hryb: Oh is that what they're doing?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: I've been doing this for some time. I've won many an ugly Christmas or holiday sweater contest.

Larry Hryb: Well I admire your commitment.

Jeff Rubenstein: Chutzpah.

Larry Hryb: Your chutzpah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes.

Larry Hryb: Thank you. Here we go. It's, like you said, it's the end of the year. It's the end of the decade.

Jeff Rubenstein: End of the ... No.

Larry Hryb: Not the end of the Century. We've already done that once.

Jeff Rubenstein: I've got another one coming.

Larry Hryb: Did you prepare your house for Y2K?

Jeff Rubenstein: I did not have a house.

Larry Hryb: Remember that, back in the day?

Jeff Rubenstein: I mean I remember it, but I was right, fresh out of college, and so I was the lowest rung of the ladder at the newspaper where I was working.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: They were like, "All right, everyone get ready for your Y2K millennium part ... Oh no, you guys are working, dude."

Larry Hryb: Oh.

Jeff Rubenstein: If the worst dreams had come true, that our robot overlords were doing to take us over and all the power was going to go out, I think ...

Larry Hryb: Put the interns in charge.

Jeff Rubenstein: It was, "You guys get to cover it," and I think the worst thing that happened that day was the fountain in the middle of downtown Orlando ...

Larry Hryb: Oh, the one on ...

Jeff Rubenstein: Lake Eola.

Larry Hryb: Lake Eola, yeah. Do they still have the swan boats there?

Jeff Rubenstein: It's been a little while, but let's just assume so, and that will actually seg way us to our first game. It caught on fire. It was like a firework that launched from there, like landed the wrong ... Of course, everyone was like, "It's Y2K," and then it was like, "No."

Larry Hryb: No, just something was mis-fired.

Jeff Rubenstein: No, it's just a thing, that was it. It was done, and so I got out around 1:00.

Larry Hryb: You were done.

Jeff Rubenstein: We moved on.

Larry Hryb: Your computer still worked.

Jeff Rubenstein: I missed all the parties.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, you did.

Jeff Rubenstein: Missed all ...

Larry Hryb: You're certainly making up for it now.

Jeff Rubenstein: And how.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, we're excited. We've got the year behind us. We've got a great year ahead of us. Big show today, we've got, of course Jeff and I in the studio. Later on in the show, I was able to catch up with Mr. Phil Spencer.

Jeff Rubenstein: How did you get him on the show?

Larry Hryb: I usually get him around E3, and around the end of the year, and so we booked it, and so we're just going to ... We haven't actually recorded it yet. You and I, we're doing things backward, recording the show now.

Jeff Rubenstein: Then I'll vacate the seat. Phil likes a nice, warm seat, I'm assuming.

Larry Hryb: Right, right he does. That's in the rider.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, and then I'll tag back in.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so anyway we've got Phil showing up later in the show to talk about a bunch of stuff there. We should probably just jump in and start talking about, do we do the games of the year, our favorite games, how do you want to handle this?

Jeff Rubenstein: It's the Major Nelson Show. It's not the Jeff Show, featuring scrappy Major Nelson.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, that's me, scrappy, young and scrappy.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, hungry, young and hungry.

Larry Hryb: And how, especially right now.

Jeff Rubenstein: We skipped lunch, yeah.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we can talk about what we're playing, big, big news of the year. I know you've got a lot ...

Jeff Rubenstein: There's so much. You want to talk about what you're playing? Let's just start with there. Let's keep it consistent. Let's end the decade as we began with me working at Sony, maybe not. Let's not go back that far.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I was going to say.

Jeff Rubenstein: Let's go back to 2013 instead.

Larry Hryb: No, let's see, what have I been playing? I finished Star Wars.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh yes.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so that was ...

Jeff Rubenstein: We were talking about having a spoiler cast on that at some point.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we should do that. I enjoyed that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Big week for Star Wars.

Larry Hryb: Big week for Star Wars. I saw the movie. The movie's not out yet, but I was able to see it a few days before.

Jeff Rubenstein: Just give me a thumbs up or down. Did you like it or not?

Larry Hryb: It wrapped up a lot of nice elements.

Jeff Rubenstein: That wasn't ... That was a thumb sideways.

Larry Hryb: I always like Star Wars.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay.

Larry Hryb: You always sit down, and you're like, "Whatever's going to happen is going to be epic."

Jeff Rubenstein: How about this, is it worth seeing?

Larry Hryb: It's better than Cats.

Jeff Rubenstein: I've heard that is also worth seeing, but for very other ...

Larry Hryb: For different reasons.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... Very other reasons, yes exactly. I'm seeing it tonight. I can't wait.

Larry Hryb: Cats?

Jeff Rubenstein: No.

Larry Hryb: Star Wars.

Jeff Rubenstein: Well, if Star Wars is full.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: They over booked it, I might end up in Cats. Taylor Swift's a cat, I mean what else do I need to know? What else do I need to know?

Larry Hryb: Your point, we've got a lot of Star Wars going on.

Jeff Rubenstein: Then, they've released the one, the Mandalorian early this week.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: It normally hits on Fridays.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: All of a sudden, I'm reading on Twitter, and I'm getting a text from you on a Wednesday night, like, "Have you seen it yet," and I'm like, "Excuse me?"

Larry Hryb: There's a very specific reason I asked you.

Jeff Rubenstein: I don't know what that is, but we will not be spoiling anything on this particular podcast.

Larry Hryb: No, we will not.

Jeff Rubenstein: We should do an over the holiday Skype, and we can just spoil everything.

Larry Hryb: You've got a little bit of travel for the holiday.

Jeff Rubenstein: Just a little bit.

Larry Hryb: I'm not traveling at all.

Jeff Rubenstein: You're traveling to worlds that your Xbox brings you to.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I am, I am. I'm going to be traveling to ... Funny you mentioned that, because I fired up Outer Worlds last night, because there was an update, and I was ... I wanted to see what was going on there.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh.

Larry Hryb: I did finish the game.

Jeff Rubenstein: They cut out all the things that don't let you do a 12 minute speed run anymore?

Larry Hryb: I did finish Jedi, played some ... You and I have been playing some of the Apex Holiday ...

Jeff Rubenstein: I love it. I love the train mode.

Larry Hryb: It's a lot of fun.

Jeff Rubenstein: It is a lot of fun.

Larry Hryb: It's different.

Jeff Rubenstein: My battle pass, I still have four weeks to go. I'm already at Level 50.

Larry Hryb: I think I'm at 48. You're a little bit ahead of me.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay, yeah. The last skin, I think is at Level 53, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to get that, so I'm feeling much better about my progress.

Larry Hryb: I started the party with your help.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes. We were late to the party, and yet we still started the party and wiped everyone.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, but not only were we late to the party, we wiped everyone off that ...

Jeff Rubenstein: We took out the trash. Yeah, so there's a mode, if you're wondering what we're talking about, there was add ins announced at the Game Awards last week, and throughout what actually was a live performance between the Voice of Mirage and Jeff [crosstalk 00:06:10].

Larry Hryb: It didn't feel live.

Jeff Rubenstein: There was a whole article on that.

Larry Hryb: It didn't feel live.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think maybe, you were in the audience.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I was.

Jeff Rubenstein: We'll talk about it. I was at home. I thought it landed much better, because a lot of times there's huge, long pauses when they're trying to ... When you're trying to interact with a pre-recorded piece of audio, and there wasn't that.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: The Voice acted, and I really should look him up, who is the Voice of Mirage, I think is just amazing. I laugh repeatedly at Mirage lines, because they keep recording new lines. Anyway, there's two holiday sort of features. One is they've decked out the map, the main map in sort of a holiday theme, but then there is, Mirage's party barge, which is sort of like the drop ship from the first match.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Jeff Rubenstein: Except it's landed, and when you land ...

Larry Hryb: It's got a bar.

Jeff Rubenstein: When you hit a button, it does have a bar and a hot tub. When you land, if you hit a button, it starts the party and all these holograms ... You go boo, boo, boo, it's like a very DJ call in sort of situation.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sounds just like that, I think I nailed it.

Larry Hryb: You did.

Jeff Rubenstein: It also makes it hard to concentrate, so everyone is there.

Larry Hryb: Everything's going on around you.

Jeff Rubenstein: Everyone's landing there. It's a high ...

Larry Hryb: It's a party.

Jeff Rubenstein: High tier loot, and it's just kind of crazy, so the recommendation I had for Larry, because he had to, you unlock a skin the first time you start the party.

Larry Hryb: Right, when you start the party, which resets throughout the game.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes. Don't drop there, drop near there.

Larry Hryb: Which we did.

Jeff Rubenstein: Gear up.

Larry Hryb: We did.

Jeff Rubenstein: Then come in when the party is in it's late stages.

Larry Hryb: Which you and I are known for arriving at the party just at the right time.

Jeff Rubenstein: Just at the right time, we cleaned up everyone, looted everything. You then restarted the party, got your skin, we moved on and where did we finish?

Larry Hryb: I think 6th. I think we had a 6 that round.

Jeff Rubenstein: Not bad.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we did okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, but we each had four kills.

Larry Hryb: Talking a little bit about Apex, that was one of the biggest surprises of 2019, that Apex just dropped. Remember, that was March, right?

Jeff Rubenstein: That was really well done. It was, yeah, February or March, at the end of February right there. When it comes down to it, that was my favorite game of the year.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: We were going to talk about our favorite games of the year. We're talking about it now. It's continually improved and it's won me over. I don't know, I've played all of the Battle Royales, PUBG, when that first came out, and that first dropped on Xbox, even messed around with it on PC before that.

Larry Hryb: I played a lot of PUBG.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, I played a bunch of Fortnite. I was very into that a year ago, but Apex came in, and it's just that is the multi-player game that I play now.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: We play.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Almost every night, one of us texts the other one, it was like, "Can you do it?"

Larry Hryb: Apex, question mark, it's a virtual head nod, let's go.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, so well done to the good folks at Respawn and EA. Congratulations on the success the game has had. They just announced an Esports initiative, and there's going to be some interesting things happening there, so hopefully 2020 is the year of Apex again, because I certainly want to continue playing.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it was ... Played a lot of that. Let's talk about, other than that, what were some of your favorite games of 2019?

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh sure.

Larry Hryb: We'll just jump right into it.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, why not?

Larry Hryb: Phil's waiting for us.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, well you did mention, and please ask Phil this by the way, I would love to know, so I have my top five, and I'll start with number five, is A Plague Tale: Innocence. This was a game that was nominated for a few game awards last week. It is a very interesting game. It's a, if you haven't played it, it's a stealth action puzzle kind of game.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Jeff Rubenstein: That takes place during, I believe it was the 100 years war between England and France, and ...

Larry Hryb: It's a history lesson.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, and you are a pair of siblings, who are forced from their home, and there's some very interesting elements. You, basically anybody that is an adult is probably a problem.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Whether they're the English, whether they're the French, whether it's the Knights of the Church, everyone's after you. I don't want to really talk too much more about it. The story's really interestingly done. I was hooked from start to finish, really enjoyed it. The one trigger warning is, if you're afraid of rats, there has never been a game that is less for you than this.

Larry Hryb: I'm not necessarily afraid of rats. I'm afraid of hundreds and hundreds of them.

Jeff Rubenstein: Thousands even.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: The rat rendering technology in this game, mind blowing. Years, I didn't think, even with Moore's Law, and computer, cloud rendering, we could ever have this many rats on screen, and they've done it. The thing that's amazing, it's a SOBO.

Larry Hryb: I know where you're going with this.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is the team that's also making Flight Simulator.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Which is just amazing.

Larry Hryb: I can confirm, this may be news, and I know we don't ... I guess we should talk about it. As far as we know, there are no rats in Flight Simulator.

Jeff Rubenstein: No. It's not rats on a plane.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, it's not rats on a plane. It is rat free.

Jeff Rubenstein: When I got to play Flight Simulator for the first time at XO, first thing I asked, I was like, "Did you work on the rat game," because I really liked it.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: He said he didn't, and of course a lot of studios have multiple teams.

Larry Hryb: I actually met somebody, who did work on the AI, the rat AI and the animation technology.

Jeff Rubenstein: The technology was amazing, and it became part of the game, and so, I mean suffice to say, it's a great game. Their next game is nothing like it, Flight Simulator, and yet, also seems amazing and technically impressive. One to watch, maybe?

Larry Hryb: Yes, as we go along.

Jeff Rubenstein: My only top five that's not an Xbox game, and we've played lots of stuff, and me and you, we travel a lot, and we're big switch players, big fans of the switch.

Larry Hryb: We do. We do our switches.

Jeff Rubenstein: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, man I got a lot of value out of this game.

Larry Hryb: You love that game.

Jeff Rubenstein: I got it night one, when it came out in July. I only beat it November, and then I ended up, and this is, I think the hallmark of a good game, and we do this a lot. We did this with Auto World, is also on my list, which is after you beat the game, you start to talk to your friends. You're like, "What did you do here?" Then it was like, "I have no idea what you're talking about, because I went down a completely different ..."

Larry Hryb: Yeah, did we play the same game?

Jeff Rubenstein: With the three houses, you can take so many different routes, and where I sided was not where other people sided. Fire Emblem's just a great strategy RPG. This one has a little dash, not a dash, a heaping helping of Harry Potter in it.

Larry Hryb: Yes, it does.

Jeff Rubenstein: Totally for me, totally probably not for you, Larry, but if you know, you know. I'll just put it that way. Probably my number three game of the year, and we played a lot of this together, which was part of that, Gears 5.

Larry Hryb: Oh yeah, we did.

Jeff Rubenstein: What a game.

Larry Hryb: We had a lot of fun with that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, loved the campaign. I thought it was ... I thought Kate was a strong, protective ...

Larry Hryb: That last level is ...

Jeff Rubenstein: That last level.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, pretty legit.

Jeff Rubenstein: The last level, in the last act, I think is the best level of any Gears game.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: It throws everything at you, just the right amount, even on normal level, you still get by, by the skin of your teeth.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: You have to use all the tools afforded to you. I won't talk too much about what some of those tools are because that really plays into the game, but ultimately what a game. What a game, and we've played so much Hoard, so I would say I probably played more Hoard in this game than any of the previous Gears.

Larry Hryb: When did Odyssey come out?

Jeff Rubenstein: Odyssey, I think I beat it this year. It came out last November.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, okay because [inaudible 00:13:05] great with Odyssey.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, which was phenomenal. I beat it this year. There's a couple games from last year, Spider-Man was another one that I beat this year, even Red Dead, I don't think I finished until January.

Larry Hryb: I finished that last year.

Jeff Rubenstein: We're going by when it was shipped, and for me, yeah Gears 5, and then we talked about Apex at number one. Number two for me, Outer Worlds.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: I am so glad that we get to work with Obsidian. This game ...

Larry Hryb: I sat next to Fergister in the game awards.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: He and I were sitting right next to ... We had a great conversation.

Jeff Rubenstein: Also a lot of nominees, Ashly Burch, who I was definitely pulling for as the Voice of Parvati. She was one of the most winning, engaging characters, so memorable, and just so human. I didn't find out until after I beat the game that was Ashly Burch, but yeah, she was phenomenal in that. That game, man did I love that game. There was nothing else I picked up in between starting and finishing that game.

Larry Hryb: I'm going to put one next, I'm going to do another Outer.

Jeff Rubenstein: Please.

Larry Hryb: Outer Wilds.

Jeff Rubenstein: Outer Wilds.

Larry Hryb: That, to me, was one of my favorite games. I didn't finish it. I need to go back, because the puzzle's ... It's one of those things where you, when you're in the heat of the moment, and playing it every night for two or three weeks, and you remember the puzzle. I'm not going to remember a lot of things, so I need to go back and re-eat it, but I just loved that game for some reason. It was just so mysterious, and the characters were good. The music was fantastic, and the world building was great.

Jeff Rubenstein: You're not alone in that affection for Outer Wilds. It's showing up in a lot of best of the years, and polygons, and IGNs, and nominated for, again, for a number of game awards. Part of Xbox Game Pass.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's the other thing to call out here. These are my top five, and top six with yours in there, but Outer Worlds, Gears 5, and Outer Wilds are all part of Xbox Game Pass. You have them. You might not have played them yet, but there's a good chance you've got access to these games right now.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, they're already in your library.

Jeff Rubenstein: You can still sign up if you're not a Game Pass member. I think it's a dollar for your first three months. That's just crazy, or a dollar per month, I can't ... Either way, pocket change, less than the cup of coffee that I'm staring at right now, for three of the absolute best games of the year, maybe even some of the best games of decade.

Larry Hryb: Go over to your ready to install on your console, and scroll down. There they are, click it, press it.

Jeff Rubenstein: What else? I've got a couple of honorable mentions here, but I want to know what else made your top five. I know Apex made it, Outer Worlds I'm assuming made it.

Larry Hryb: Oh yeah, Outer Worlds, Apex. I did enjoy Call of Duty. I need to go back and play more Control. Star Wars, we talked about that. I played one called, Kine, which is this musical puzzle game, which I really enjoyed.

Jeff Rubenstein: I haven't played this. Tell me about it.

Larry Hryb: It's a musical puzzle game.

Jeff Rubenstein: Spell it for me.

Larry Hryb: K-I-N-E.

Jeff Rubenstein: K-I-N-E.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. Kilo, Indigo, Nancy, Echo.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's the ID at Xbox Games? Okay.

Larry Hryb: Something like that.

Jeff Rubenstein: I think you got it.

Larry Hryb: I got to check, I don't know if that one's in Game Pass, but that one, it's just a musical and you're solving different puzzles with different instruments that, like an accordion that can expand, or what have you.

Jeff Rubenstein: Huh.

Larry Hryb: That one was definitely one of them. I'll tell you another one was a Wolfenstein game with the sisters.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes.

Larry Hryb: I love that game. That's the one that I basically put it down because they had to fix the end of it.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes.

Larry Hryb: You remember correctly?

Jeff Rubenstein: I do remember that.

Larry Hryb: They did, but I absolutely loved playing that one. That was lot of fun, so I'm just scrolling back through my list here.

Jeff Rubenstein: Here's a game we both play, that I feel like we both really enjoyed in the spring, Rage 2.

Larry Hryb: Oh yeah, I'm looking at Rage 2 right here on my feed.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is a game you didn't have to think too much about. The answer was always, blow it up.

Larry Hryb: Blow it up, shoot it, drive to it, kill it.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sometimes that's nice. Really enjoyed Rage 2. Around that same time, also Void Bastards came out.

Larry Hryb: Oh that's right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Which is a really interesting ...

Larry Hryb: You really liked that one.

Jeff Rubenstein: I really, I got very into it, also part of Xbox Game Pass, and it is a rouge-like, which normally that word just throws me off, and I don't want anything anyway.

Larry Hryb: It's overused.

Jeff Rubenstein: It is overused, but essentially there's just some randomness, and you're just going from ship to ship, and if you die, then they just essentially would 3D print another character out there, with a different flaw.

Larry Hryb: Right. There you go.

Jeff Rubenstein: With a different boon, and just really well done, very funny, very sort of an English sense of humor. There's sort of a HR robot, that ... I don't know, just very, very much, very dry sense of humor that I thought was really funny. Another game that I'm playing right now, haven't beat it yet, but it could have cracked into my top five, if I finished it. If I had the guts to finish it, Resident Evil 2.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: The remake that came out in February. They just announced Resident Evil 3 as well, looking forward to that.

Larry Hryb: You went back to that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Man, this is a heck of a game. I remember playing the original Resident Evil, and not long before Y2K, or Resident Evil 2 I should say.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: I know the broad strokes, but this game had the capability, and the fidelity now to just scare you in another way. With Mr. X, as he's known, stalking you throughout the police station, in Raccoon City, you would just hear these steps, and it would just ... You would just stop what you're doing ...

Larry Hryb: Now, I must share with the audience that you shared with me a piece of information. You made the fatal mistake of playing it at night.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, almost always at night, with headphones on.

Larry Hryb: Right, with all the lights in the house turned off.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, so didn't do myself any favors, but I'm at, what I believe is just about the very end of the game, and I intend to finish it before the end of the year, but really, really well done. I know it performed really well for Capcom. They had said some great things about it, so it's nice to see that this game really resonated, whether you were playing it again, or playing it again for the first time.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Really, really awesome game. I'll just shout out a few others real quick, Borderlands 3, we both enjoyed that. We've played a lot of that.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Jeff Rubenstein: Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, another Game Pass game that I spent, both on console and on PC, is the spiritual successor, I guess you would say, of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, really, really well done. Operencia: The Stolen Sun, which was a cool RPG, also in Game Pass. I just feel like a broken record here, but I played a lot of games, I think maybe I wouldn't have played otherwise.

Larry Hryb: Which is the beauty of Game Pass.

Jeff Rubenstein: Indeed, and Forza Horizon 4, it came out last year, but they've added a lot of content. The Lego speed pack, that came out around E3 was really good.

Larry Hryb: It was so good, but that Lego car.

Jeff Rubenstein: The reason I got back re-into it, because I've been playing Forza Horizon 4 for Eliminator.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Have you tried this at all yet?

Larry Hryb: Their Battle Royale.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's a Battle Royale sort of game. I just remember hearing about it, and internally I was like "How does that work?" Let me just tell you, it works. It just totally works. I've had a lot of fun with it. The people that are playing that game, it's really, you get into a game really quickly, which is great to see. People are really good. The best finish I've had so far is, I think 27th place, but you should try it out.

Larry Hryb: I will try.

Jeff Rubenstein: Again, of course if you have Game Pass, get on in there. It's a free game mode, and if you haven't loaded up Forza Horizon 4 in a while, the first time you load it up, when you get to the map, it's like boom, here's a new activity. Boom, here's a new story mission with 10 chapter.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Jeff Rubenstein: Boom, here's a new series of ... It just keeps adding a ton to it.

Larry Hryb: It just lights up.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's not even including the Lego speed or Fortune Island, which was another huge, separate map.

Larry Hryb: Right, that's right.

Jeff Rubenstein: The gift that keeps on giving, still the best racing game of all time.

Larry Hryb: Now we've got a bunch of, it was busy last week, so a lot of great games.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's a bit of an understatement.

Larry Hryb: It was busy last week. We were at the Game Awards, or as we affectionately call them, at least I do, is the Kelies.

Jeff Rubenstein: The Golden Kelies.

Larry Hryb: The Golden Kelies.

Jeff Rubenstein: When are you going to win one? When are you going to be a trending gamer?

Larry Hryb: Look, I've been in this industry so long, I'm not the flavor of the day.

Jeff Rubenstein: You were trending gamer before ...

Larry Hryb: It was trending.

Jeff Rubenstein: ... They ever used trending. Yes, exactly.

Larry Hryb: It was great to be down there. As I said, I was there with Phil and some of the other team. You, unfortunately, couldn't join us, but it was great to be there because we had some lovely, lovely announcements, including ...

Jeff Rubenstein: Larry, you're under selling. We announced, and revealed Xbox Series X.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: That was amazing. What was it like being in the room then? You know when they're showing it, they view, the audience, we don't get to feel like what it was really like to be in the audience. It had to catch people off guard.

Larry Hryb: It absolutely did, and Phil and I, Phil's coming up in a little bit, he and I are going to talk about that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay, great.

Larry Hryb: Phil has a funny story about how they kept it so secret.

Jeff Rubenstein: I was reading about this, so we'll ... I won't spoil that. We'll want to hear it from Phil.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so we had that. We had Gears, we had the Gears announcement there.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yep, so Gears: Tactics.

Larry Hryb: Gears: Tactics coming out.

Jeff Rubenstein: I am so looking forward. It's got a date. It is April 28th. It is coming to PC. Of course, if you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, or Xbox Game Pass 4PC, you're all set. In fact, I got a notification this week that said, "Go ahead and pre-download." I was like, "Excuse me?"

Larry Hryb: What?

Jeff Rubenstein: What?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: The point is, this game is going to be great.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: I love XCom. I love Gears of War. It just makes so much sense, we got to see some of these characters for the first time, Gabe Diaz is the character you saw, with sort of that shock of gray hair, and so I'm really looking forward to, I mean just on a mechanics perspective this game's going to be good. If there's a story that's going to be building into the Gears universe, which appears is absolutely going to be the case, then I am that much more excited for Gears: Tactics.

Larry Hryb: We've got, then we had, Ori was announced, that the date for Ori was announced.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, so Ori and The Will of the Wisps is going to be available on March 11th of this year. We have a lot of games coming out this spring, a lot of games.

Larry Hryb: It's interesting because I was thinking about this. You and I tend to make our annual trek back east for Pac East, where we do our show. Did you know how early it is next year?

Jeff Rubenstein: It's in February.

Larry Hryb: February 27th.

Jeff Rubenstein: Tell Gabe and Ty, "Go." I don't like being cold, or any kind of ...

Larry Hryb: We're going to be cold. We're going to be up to our rear ends in snow, okay? February in New England, no bueno gang, no bueno.

Jeff Rubenstein: I remember one year, a couple years ago, it was in March. It was so cold, and I was very unprepared.

Larry Hryb: Remember Laura came out? She was angry.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh my God.

Larry Hryb: I've never seen Laura angry, she was angry.

Jeff Rubenstein: No, and I had to, I was Tweeting, I was like, "Does anyone have a swag scarf or gloves, or a hat, or anything?" It turns out, I think it was Orks must die, or something like that.

Larry Hryb: Oh, Justin ... Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, and then it was like, "Guess what, I am the billboard for your game for the rest of Pacs, because ..."

Larry Hryb: That always reminds me of one of my funniest stories, when my wife and I were down in Florida at Disney once.

Jeff Rubenstein: As you do.

Larry Hryb: This is just a little side conversation. When people from New England, where I grew up, when they go to Florida, they're like, "I'm wearing my shorts and flip flops regardless, right? I'm on holiday. I'm on vacation. I'm going to drew."

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, and I'm not using sunscreen, by the way.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so sure enough, it was, I think it was September or October, it was, maybe it was November, but it was unseasonably cold there. There's all these tourists walking around in shorts in the Magic Kingdom, which is ... It was freezing. It was like 30 degrees.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Well so what happened was, they don't sell mittens. There's no mittens at Main Street, because it never gets cold usually down there, so people were going in and buying oven mitts, the Mickey Mouse oven mitts. I'll never forget it because they were walking, everyone's walking around with these Mickey Mouse oven mitts.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's pretty great.

Larry Hryb: It was the weirdest experience.

Jeff Rubenstein: Were they the white hands?

Larry Hryb: Yes, the whole thing.

Jeff Rubenstein: That would be a pretty good oven mitt. Yeah, I mean I would see this every ... I lived in San Francisco for several years, and there was no place colder in June, in this country, than San Francisco, I can assure you.

Larry Hryb: ... Which is weird, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's just a quirk of it being surrounded by water and the fog rolls in, and it's routinely in the 50s. You would have people coming for their summer break, or whatever, and if I saw them wearing a baggy, San Francisco sweatshirt, I knew they came off the plane, and were like, "What the heck?"

Larry Hryb: We're not prepared, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: We are not ready for this, because if you're walking around in shorts, there's about a two or three week period in San Francisco that you can wear shorts. It's in October, and other than that, forget it.

Larry Hryb: Of all things. Anyway, so yeah, Pacs is coming up late February, early March, and we're planning to be there.

Jeff Rubenstein: Are we?

Larry Hryb: Why not.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay, I guess I'm planning to be there.

Larry Hryb: I need to have you there.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, well we'll talk about that later, but to your point, what brought us there was we've got a lot of games coming out next year.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes.

Larry Hryb: Apparently, we have a new console.

Jeff Rubenstein: I'm very much looking forward to that. If you want to learn more, and of course there's two places I want to point you, because there's really only two places that have a significant amount of data. One is ...

Larry Hryb: Official news.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, so one of them is Xbox Wire, that won't surprise you. We will link out to that. Power your dreams with Xbox Series X, available holiday 2020.

Larry Hryb: That's a blog post by Phil.

Jeff Rubenstein: Indeed it is, and then Phil also, and Jason Ronald, a number of other people in the team.

Larry Hryb: Oh Jason, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein: Spent time with Peter Brown of Game Spot. There's some more details.

Larry Hryb: Texture.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, texture. They're both really good reads, and so I recommend you read that. It's where we saw things like, yes, confirmed. You can lay down the Series X horizontally, if that's what works for you, and for your entertainment system and setup, and everything like that.

Larry Hryb: It can have a good lie.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, it can have a good lie down, right? Yes, there's a lot of really good info here. I'm going to link out to both.

Larry Hryb: Thank you.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is good holiday reading. If you want to get hype, if you want to get real excited for the future, this is a good place to start.

Larry Hryb: We will, you know we're going to take a break now, so I can bring in this interview from Phil, is that all right with you?

Jeff Rubenstein: Who am I to object? No, I can't wait to hear what Phil's got to say.

Larry Hryb: As promised, Phil Spencer here.

Phil Spencer: Did you promise?

Larry Hryb: Well I did, because earlier in the show I said you were coming up, and I was very clear, because we recorded this show yesterday, and you and I are chatting today. I was like, "Boy, I hope I can get Phil." Here we are. I came down here and camped outside your office.

Phil Spencer: I was playing video games. He said, "Hey come on, let's go talk."

Larry Hryb: Just a little bit Phil, just a little bit.

Phil Spencer: I was playing games yesterday actually. I was playing Dungeons.

Larry Hryb: Yeah?

Phil Spencer: Yeah, you know we do the Giving Campaign.

Larry Hryb: Yes, we do, which is a big Microsoft thing.

Phil Spencer: Big Microsoft thing in October, and one of the things I put in the auction every year is play video games.

Larry Hryb: This is an internal auction.

Phil Spencer: Internal thing, yeah. It's cool because the money goes to good causes, and stuff, so there was a guy, I forget where ... He works over in Microsoft Research, and he wanted to get to play Dungeons. We did couch co-op, local co-op.

Larry Hryb: Where did you play, at his house?

Phil Spencer: No, we were here, right here in the office.

Larry Hryb: I was going to say.

Phil Spencer: I brought a Dev Kit over, and we played ...

Larry Hryb: Minecraft Dungeons.

Phil Spencer: Minecraft Dungeons.

Larry Hryb: Which is coming out sometime in the future.

Phil Spencer: In April, yeah. Really fun.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: Man, is it fun.

Larry Hryb: It is fun.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, it is. I played at a couple of events before, but this is the first time I may actually start a new character, start at level one.

Larry Hryb: Right from the out of the box experience.

Phil Spencer: Grind through the beginning of the game. We had a great time, it was fantastic.

Larry Hryb: You're playing a lot of games. I wanted to get you on the show because it's the end of the year. We've done this for the past few years. We're just like, "Hey, what a great year Xbox has had." You are like a lot of folks here at Xbox, and frankly a lot of offices around the world, they're getting ready to go home for the holidays and spend time with family. This is my last thing I have to do before I go home with my wife and daughter.

Phil Spencer: Sorry.

Larry Hryb: No, no, no. It's okay. It's kind of fun because whenever you and I chat, I know that the holiday, then I get the show ready, then I'm done for the holiday.

Phil Spencer: Then you're done. You do anything good?

Larry Hryb: No, we're staying around here in Seattle for the holiday. Of course, with my daughter and we're going to have a little bit of, just enjoy the cheer. We have some friends coming over.

Phil Spencer: You have a daughter, I didn't know. I hadn't seen a thousand pictures of her.

Larry Hryb: I am very ...

Phil Spencer: In the last week.

Larry Hryb: You're so funny.

Phil Spencer: You have a very cute daughter.

Larry Hryb: Thank you. She's lovely.

Phil Spencer: You are a great parent.

Larry Hryb: You're very kind. Thank you. Thank you, coming from somebody who's also a great parent.

Phil Spencer: We try.

Larry Hryb: I've met your daughters.

Phil Spencer: You have, yeah. Actually one of them, the one that's in school down in L.A. was supposed to come to the Game Awards this year.

Larry Hryb: Last week, yeah.

Phil Spencer: Last week, but she pulled the, "I have finals, Dad," which is true.

Larry Hryb: You got to appreciate the fact that she's like, "Let's see, I can go see my Dad at a video game award show, or I have to do my finals."

Phil Spencer: Yeah she seemed, actually, and maybe she was playing me, she seemed kind of bummed that she couldn't, and then she watched it. She watched the Game Awards, said I did okay.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Phil Spencer: I think she game me a B- or something, which you know, the family grades you.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: When you do stuff like that.

Larry Hryb: You're judged.

Phil Spencer: Always, always judged.

Larry Hryb: The Internet also enjoyed your appearance on the Game Awards.

Phil Spencer: I was just the get out of the way between two amazing assets.

Larry Hryb: The funny story is that, so you went on stage at the Game Awards last week, talked, and you introduced Xbox Series X.

Phil Spencer: I didn't intro it. Jeff, technically introed it.

Larry Hryb: Fair point.

Phil Spencer: I thought Jeff did a, actually Kelie, I thought he did a really nice job teeing up the Series X video and our reveal. It was nice, and then coming out after that, it was cool. I was back stage, and this is an industry event, really. Most of the people in the front are award nominees, and people from the games industry, a little different than our E3 conference.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Phil Spencer: Where the people in the front are Xbox fans.

Larry Hryb: Fans, yeah.

Phil Spencer: Loud Xbox fans, so this is a little more reserved, but I could see out, and it was interesting as the shot started, the video started, I could see people trying to figure out what it was. Jeff had teed it up in kind of an interesting way, so this was something special, and then I was trying to figure ... I'm always trying to figure out where, and then you've got to figure out what this actually is.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Phil Spencer: Of course ... Go ahead.

Larry Hryb: From what you were seeing, what point in the video, for those people who have seen it, where do you think it was?

Phil Spencer: I think two things that I saw from the people that I could feel their impression. One, I think most people, when Master Chief came, for those, "Oh, this is an Xbox thing."

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Phil Spencer: I think there was an ... Even though his green was a little different because we tinted it for the videos.

Larry Hryb: Kind of looks familiar.

Phil Spencer: Right, but I think the part where I really felt like people said, "Oh no, they're not," is when the two transparent rectangles come together.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: You actually realize, "Oh wait a minute, they're actually, this isn't about Halo, this is, they're actually going to show some form factor."

Larry Hryb: Something.

Phil Spencer: Then it fills in, and the Nexus or the Xbox button lights up, and then yeah, people are like, "I can't believe they're doing this here."

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: Which was fantastic.

Larry Hryb: Which was, by the way, and your view is just ... Clearly, you're back stage looking at the audience, which was thousands of people, but then online, I mean if you've seen ... I don't know if you've seen some of the reaction?

Phil Spencer: I have, yeah.

Larry Hryb: It's the same thing.

Phil Spencer: The one, I think bummer, on the online, I thought people did a, it was really good the way they shot, the whole show, I thought the Game Awards, I thought Churches was great at the beginning as a band to open it up.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: I think Jeff has continued to make progress with the show, but you could hear the gasps in the room as people figured out what we were actually doing.

Larry Hryb: The murmur.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and it was like this, then, "Oh, this is the next Xbox."

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: I think online, when you watch it, you don't get as much of the crowd reaction, just because of the way they shot it, but it was cool being in the arena, or in the theater and hearing the reaction. Yes, then the online things are always just specials people just completely lose their stuff.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, and it's great because it's fun going, first of all this is where we do our briefing at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, same place we do E3.

Larry Hryb: Same exact stage. You just came out a different way, but it's Jeff's show, not our show.

Phil Spencer: Feels a little less stressful that it's Jeff's show and not our show.

Larry Hryb: Right, but I will say this, is he does have pyro.

Phil Spencer: Oh yeah.

Larry Hryb: They had pyro for their bands.

Phil Spencer: They did, yes.

Larry Hryb: For Green Day.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and it was an interesting color. It was like orange or something.

Larry Hryb: Yeah wasn't it weird. We all said, "Is that real?"

Phil Spencer: You could feel it. I was sitting in the front row. It's always amazing to me the BTUs those things throw out. You could feel the heat.

Larry Hryb: Feel the heat.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and I was pretty far away from it.

Larry Hryb: It was great to see that, and that was a great moment. Jeff, I guess, or you were telling the story about how it was, obviously it was top secret. I haven't told this story either. I had not seen that asset until sitting right there in the stage with everybody else. You, obviously, had seen it before, but I hadn't seen it.

Phil Spencer: We've done a better job in the last couple of years, and there's a whole work stream on this.

Larry Hryb: Oh, there is.

Phil Spencer: How we don't leak things. In fact, I met with the security team again yesterday, and how do we continue to not leak things, and some of it's just laziness on our side. The fact that things were in public places that they shouldn't have been, but it was nice. It's not so much about us wanting to keep secrets or something. It's really, we want to be able to tell the whole story. Sometimes when things leak in incomplete ways, people don't, we don't at least, get to tell our whole side of the story.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: That might not clarify everything when we do it, but at least we get to tell our whole part of the story. It was really cool to be there. Funny thing is, and I think Jeff has talked about this, I think it was in an article, that when we did the rehearsals that day earlier, we didn't have the same script. I was running this Game Pass script, and the crew, I think some people, obviously, in the crew knew what was going on, but a lot of people ... There's a lot of people in the theater when you're doing the rehearsal.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Phil Spencer: The thing that freaked me out is they ran the video first, and I'm like, "Well if they run the video, and then I'm up there Game Pass, Game Pass, Game Pass, people are going to figure out, because the video obviously is the star of the show," but they wanted to get the color balance and everything right, so they actually ran the first 20 seconds of the video, and then it just looped.

Larry Hryb: Right, the first 20 seconds.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, so when we're doing the rehearsals, but I didn't know that's what they were doing to do, so I'm sitting back stage and the video starts to run ...

Larry Hryb: You're like, "Oh, here we go."

Phil Spencer: I'm like, "We're going to lose the whole thing right here. What are we doing?" Then, after the 20 seconds and it loops back, I'm like, "Oh, I get, that's very smart."

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: That's a very smart way to do it.

Larry Hryb: If you watch the 20 seconds of the video, again to your point, you don't really know.

Phil Spencer: You don't know what it is.

Larry Hryb: You don't know what it is.

Phil Spencer: You have the Dreams voiceover and all of that, and then I did my Game Pass thing. Tameam was there, Tameam the Creative Director at Ninja Theory, and he wanted to make sure that the Hellblade 2 asset was color balanced.

Larry Hryb: That ninja, oh my lord that was amazing.

Phil Spencer: It was crazy. Well we'd, I think certain people saw the Game Spot article that came out the same time, so earlier in that week, we had flown down Jason Ronald and I, to San Francisco, and I literally think we had to have blood finger prints to unlock those videos. We took them with us. They weren't quite finished to show them to the Game Spot team, so that they actually knew what they were going to be writing about, so we did show those to ... Yeah, that was, we kept it quiet. It was nice.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I work in a group with a bunch of folks, who were working on the video, and I, they're sitting in the desk right next to me, and I was, I'm going to respect, I don't need to know this yet, and I actually left the room at a couple points. I was like, "I don't want to know this." I like to be surprised just like everybody else.

Phil Spencer: What'd you think?

Larry Hryb: Oh, I new it was coming. I said, "This feels like it," and then I started, to your point, I saw the Master Chief, I was like, "Okay, here we go." I loved it. It felt great.

Phil Spencer: The thing I liked, and I talked about this with one of our internal meetings earlier this week, that idea came from somebody on our team that was just brave enough, in October I think it was, where she stood up and said, "How about if we do this at the Game Awards?" We were talking about doing our own event and all those kind of things that we normally do, there's multiple ways that we could have done this.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Phil Spencer: I love the fact that she stood up and had a point of view, was the bravery to say, "I'm going to push against some of the traditional things that we've done." I'll be honest, the first time I heard it I'm like, "I don't know."

Larry Hryb: I heard that. I remember hearing, "Phil's not right. I don't know, Phil's unsure about it."

Phil Spencer: I was. I'm thinking, okay this is a multi-platform event, there was a lot of stuff, but the other thing, on the flip side, Jeff has grown that event into so many people watch that thing, right?

Larry Hryb: Oh, did you see the numbers, 45 million or something ridiculous?

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and you just, we want broad exposure for this. We're proud of it. We don't think it's a partisan thing. We're not taking a shot at anybody.

Larry Hryb: No.

Phil Spencer: We had a game with it, which I thought was an important part, because we're at the Video Game Awards. I didn't want this to be just hardware, but I was really just proud of the way, her name's Cindy, I'm proud of the way Cindy stood up and had an idea. We iterated on it a couple times, think it through, and then the team made it happen. They made it happen pretty quickly. I think it was what, about four weeks to get all that done?

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: The Hellblade 1, and you and I know this, might have been at XO.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: There was ...

Larry Hryb: It was supposed to be.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, there was a discussion about, "Okay," because we're always planning forward, and looking and saying, "Okay, well XO, we've got these reveals." We knew there was a certain kind of artistic style to some of the reveals at XO, where we thought Hellblade would have been a nice mix in there. We also knew, with the announce of the console, that asset was just going to be so great, thematically it fit, so there were some other things that we were thinking about for the Game Awards that would have taken the place of that, that are now further out, but they'll be other events.

Larry Hryb: It's funny because I was talking with the producer for XO, Ryan.

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: He saw the early version of that asset, and he was bummed. He was like, 'Oh, we don't have it in." He was like, "It looks good." He didn't realize it was an engine. He was texting me after it aired. He was like, "Oh that was an engine? Oh my God." His jaw was on the ground. That was great.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, a lot more next year about Series X. We're not going to talk much more about it now because there's not much more to say.

Phil Spencer: No, the team's ... You and I, we were just talking before we jumped on here. You and I have our consoles at home.

Larry Hryb: Yep.

Phil Spencer: We're using them, which is a cool place to be this far in advance. We were chuckling that with Durango, we were not at this point.

Larry Hryb: Right. Xbox 360 we kind of were.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, we were closer on 360, but in terms of landing a solid launch, we feel like we've got the time to polish, to refine. I feel really good about the progress that the team is making. Another thing the audience might not care as much about this, the other thing I just want to give a shout out to is while you and I are getting ready, and others, to go away for the holidays, there are a large percentage of our team that's here during the holidays.

Larry Hryb: Oh there are.

Phil Spencer: To ensure that as new consoles are getting turned on, and people are logging in, and playing new games, that their experience is what we would want it to be. That's not just true at Xbox. That's true at Sony. That's true at Valve. That's true at Nintendo. It's true at a lot of different places. I think our industry has grown to the point now where there's a large number of people, who the busiest day of the year for them is the 25th and 26th of December.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: So many new consoles getting turned on, and I just wanted to thank all the teams that spend time to make sure people have a great experience.

Larry Hryb: Shout out to all the support engineers, network engineers, and data center operators, all those people that, to your point, that make, when we turn on our devices on Christmas morning or Hanukkah, whatever holiday you celebrate when you open it up, that it's a seamless experience, that it works.

Phil Spencer: That's right. That is right.

Larry Hryb: That is just works.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, a ton of dedication to that.

Larry Hryb: The other thing I was looking at is, here we are at the end of 2019, which there's a little bit of argument, is this the end of the decade or is next year the end of the decade? Where do you fall on that?

Phil Spencer: I think this is the end of the decade.

Larry Hryb: I have some notes that I put up on the board here about some of the big moments in the past 10 years. It's hard to believe that in 2010, that was when we launched the 360 Slim. Do you remember that one?

Phil Spencer: I do, yeah.

Larry Hryb: That's a fun one.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, there was, we had some work to do on the original 360 design, for some obvious reasons, and then having the Slim, I thought the team did a really nice job re-defining, but not in a radical way, what the 360 looked like.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: Some of the Slim, didn't we do a Star Wars Slim?

Larry Hryb: Well that was Albert's one. He worked on that.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, that's right.

Larry Hryb: That was one of my ... I mean that's when I got to interview Anthony Daniels, C3PO.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and I still have my C3PO controller from that one.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: That was awesome.

Larry Hryb: Right, with the wires, or the ...

Phil Spencer: That's it, and it still has all the Star Wars start up sound, very apropos, given that Star Wars is launching right now. Yeah, weird to think that was, I guess only 10 years ago, but also 10 years ago [crosstalk 00:41:15].

Larry Hryb: We'd connect and then we talk 2011, just kind of ticking through 2011, I mean these are just some of the things. 2011, Sky Rim, 2012 ...

Phil Spencer: Did you just do the stream of consciousness? Is this just in you, or you just type these things out?

Larry Hryb: I was going through some of these things. It's a big year and you forget.

Phil Spencer: I don't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. That's why I'm in awe of your ability to write all this down.

Larry Hryb: You and I talked about, in talking about 360 launch and so forth, is this will be my third console launch, and certainly yours as well.

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Which is a rare fraternity to be in.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, the thing I ... This is kind of an aside, but the thing I love about this console launch is it's a really interesting mix of people who have been around for a lot of the console launches, but also new voices that are there. I think that's important for us to continue to grow and continue to innovate in new ways, so it's not just the same old band playing the same old songs.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: As our ambition has grown, and as our, I'd say commitment frankly, as a company to this category, has grown. I just love when I look around the leadership team right now and I see some people who have been through three console launches, and some people this is their first one, and I think the dynamic from all of that is just fantastic. You need that mix. It shouldn't be ...

Larry Hryb: Oh absolutely.

Phil Spencer: All about new, and it shouldn't be all about if you haven't launched three consoles that you don't belong at the table.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: I think it's important for us to nurture a team that's inclusive to all those voices.

Larry Hryb: I was looking at this, and of course we launch Xbox One in 2013. 2014, that was a big year for a lot of reasons. You became the boss, the head of Xbox.

Phil Spencer: As I said, through a process of attrition, who's the last guy here.

Larry Hryb: No.

Phil Spencer: This guy that runs the studios, maybe we'll ... I like I just have a last name in this one, that Spencer want to lead Xbox. No, it is ... I tease myself about it. I'm self-deprecating about it, but this clearly will be the highlight of my career. If and when, or definitely if, or when I'm done and somebody else has taken over here, and I think back to my time at Microsoft and my professional career, there's nothing that's been more rewarding than my time as head of Xbox. The people I've been able to work with, both inside of Xbox and our partners. In that way, Xbox Series X is such a nice moment. It is us as a team, getting to build from scratch anew, and challenging a lot of things, and thinking about what our real direction is, and who we're really committed to.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: It started there, right?

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: It started there with getting the leadership team together, and saying, "Okay, what are we going to ... How are we going to make progress? How are we going to write some of the things that we needed to do?" I feel great about it.

Larry Hryb: Of course, 2015 talking about a Series X, that laid the groundwork for a lot of the excitement around backward compatibility.

Phil Spencer: You know, this is a journey, and I think this one's worth talking about. We had this plan, really from the beginning, and I've seen Albert talk a little bit about it online. The only reason I bring Albert up is because he was here at the time, and I was obviously at Amazon, but the reason so many of those people still have context for what's going on now is our plan from very early on was, okay we want to get ... We always felt like it was a miss at the launch of Xbox One that we were talking to people about a digital generation, and we weren't giving you the rights to play the digital games that you'd purchased on 360. That was just like a ...

Larry Hryb: Right, your catalog, your library.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, it was such a ...

Larry Hryb: Disconnect.

Phil Spencer: Disconnect, and frankly not consumer forward in thinking.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: We started back, and pat, I've said this before, really thinking about digital.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: Then the team showed, "Hey, let's go put a perfect dark in, which was the first game I saw was Perfect Dark Zero running. They put the disc in and all of the sudden it runs, and that really just opened up, "Wow."

Larry Hryb: Oh, wait a minute.

Phil Spencer: "We can go do more," but it was really about this journey that we were on of putting the gamer at the center and allowing them to play the games that they want to play, wherever they want to go play them, and making each one of those experiences great. It started with back compat, but even ... There was a showcase event, I remember, that we did in San Francisco, and I started on this thing about hardware upgrades, and I confused a bunch of people where they thought we were going to be taking screwdrivers to our consoles.

Larry Hryb: Oh I remember that. I remember that, right.

Phil Spencer: It was really about, we were going with Xbox One X, and we hadn't announced it yet, but our big challenge was, could we make games run better that hadn't been built for one spec of console on a new spec.

Larry Hryb: Right, entirely new platform, right?

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: A new CPU, everything.

Phil Spencer: That's right. Now, well CPU's close.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: GPU's much bigger, ram's different, but console games are very specifically written, usually, to a platform.

Larry Hryb: To the [inaudible 00:46:13], yeah.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, now the fact that there are multiple consoles out there, NPC, means there's very few games that are only written to absolutely run on one piece of hardware.

Larry Hryb: Hello Nintendo.

Phil Spencer: Yeah. Yes, other than Nintendo Switch, but even a lot of the switch games that you see have their Xbox versions, their PlayStation versions that are out there. This was, "Hey, we're going to try to go make these games run better. When this game comes out, we're going to try to make the 360 games run better. We're going to try to make the original Xbox One games run better."

Phil Spencer: We knew we wouldn't get all of them, but I love the fact that was part of the journey. Now maybe I confused some people when we were talking about it, but it was really, could we make games run better that were written for a different version of this console?

Phil Spencer: That continues to today. One of the things that we look at Xbox Series X is we want this to be the best place to play. The reason we call it Xbox is because it's going to be the best place to play your Xbox games. You're going to have some amazing series games that take the full power of Series X, but you're also going to have some games that were written generations before, and we want those to run incredibly well.

Phil Spencer: That journey was a difficult one. When we internally said, "We're going to go do this," PC had done this for a long time. You got a new graphics card, your game played better, but on console it was new. You're absolutely right, back compat, having Xbox One X come out. We're all part of this journey that we're on to the point where we're at today, where we can launch a console that we think will absolutely be the best Xbox anybody's ever seen.

Larry Hryb: Then of course, 2016 we had Xbox One S, 2017 we had Xbox One X, 2018 the adaptive controller.

Phil Spencer: So good.

Larry Hryb: Which has changed the lives for a lot of folks out there, gamers out there.

Phil Spencer: We should call out on the adaptive controller. I really love seeing Logitech put out their ... We wanted that to be a platform, not just for us.

Larry Hryb: You said that from day zero.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and it had to be. That was the only way it was really going to take on, and I think it's still building in momentum, but game developers are building games, where they recognize the adaptive controller's plugged in, and do certain things in the games.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: To have companies like Logitech coming in and adding functionality and accessories on top of that platform. This thing should be a platform for the next decade. I'd love to see as much support as we can get.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, so 2018, of course 2019 where we are right now, PC Game Pass. Game Pass was always big along here, but it's interesting to look back. We talked about back compat, and Game Pass, and all of the sudden all these things are kind of ... Your plan is happening, in terms of everything's kind of ...

Phil Spencer: Stop, it's not all my plan, our plan.

Larry Hryb: Our plan is happening. It all makes sense when you look back.

Phil Spencer: You know, that's kind of, I guess, the part I was trying to hit with back compat, and Xbox One X coming out and making your games run better. We just launched our preview of xCloud, and we have so many people using xCloud right now.

Larry Hryb: I also want to point out that it was a year ago that you and I sat in this room and did last year's end of year podcast, and you were talking about how you were playing Destiny in a ...

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: Do you remember that?

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: It's been a wild year for xCloud.

Phil Spencer: We put the video out in October of last year, about our vision for what we were going to do, but it is ... Even Game Pass, you and I have sat in leadership team meetings for five years. We called it Gameflix for a while. Internally, as we said, "Hey, we think there's, we should allow people to build their library of games in multiple ways." Arches was the code name for a while.

Larry Hryb: Arches that's right, I remember that.

Phil Spencer: You remember that? Now, to see Ashly and the team running this, it's doing very, very well on PC, and I know we're still kind of in preview, and there's, we're learning on that, but the success on PC has been incredible, and the catalog is building, and console is just blown the doors off.

Larry Hryb: You look, anywhere you go online, there's always .... It's the Internet, there's always usually a dissenting different opinions.

Phil Spencer: What do you mean? I don't know what you mean by that.

Larry Hryb: I'm saying when you bring up Game Pass, it's ...

Phil Spencer: Shiny, happy people on the Internet.

Larry Hryb: 99% of people are like, "Game Pass is great. It's worth it." There's no conversation. You have to, and especially now, like the Witcher's in it. The Witcher dropped this week.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, I know.

Larry Hryb: One of my favorite games of this generation.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, it is ... The only concern I ever see is people saying, "Is it sustainable? Can you continue this?" I'll say, "Game Pass right now is doing very well for us."

Larry Hryb: Right, and our developers.

Phil Spencer: The people who are in it, and it's something ... I think it's going to be a really interesting, as Xbox launches next year, and it will be an interesting thing as people think about, "Wait a minute, I already have this library of games on this platform." We've never had a console that's launched with a library of games that people are going to have available day one.

Larry Hryb: Right now, yeah.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and I think that's ... I was sitting with the live team today, and thinking through, "Okay, what is it mean when all the ..." Usually, you have the three discs that you bought when you bought your console, and you put those in. This is going to be a different transition for us, and we want to make sure it goes smoothly, and all that. It's a cool opportunity, but you're right. You can look at xCloud allowing me to play all of these games in so many different places, the PC launches that we've had, PC Game Pass. Now we're going to have the best Xbox anybody's ever seen launching next year.

Phil Spencer: It us the culmination of years and years of work, with a vision and a strategy to go get there. Sometimes with fits and starts and different ways to communicate it, but it is, 2020 is going to be a special year.

Larry Hryb: Well it's been, and these are just some of the highlights of the past 10 years. I mean we've had so many great events, so many E3s, so many great fan fests.

Phil Spencer: What's a highlight for you?

Larry Hryb: The highlight, from the past 10 years?

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Look, I could be the suck up and say, "Oh when Phil Spencer became the head of Xbox," because I remember doing that.

Phil Spencer: That wasn't it. That's clearly not it.

Larry Hryb: No, I think it's to your point, when we entered 2010, it was a Xbox 360 was a massive success, and we were getting ready for the next generation. We knew there was a lot of work to be done. We had some challenges. We saw that, and with everybody really rose to the occasion and set us up for such great success in this generation, and through Xbox One generation, but really, really moved us toward, moved the ball down the field towards Series X.

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: I think it's just really growing and learning, and seeing ... I mean you think about the beginning of the first generation, most people didn't even have broadband.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, that's right.

Larry Hryb: We made that bet.

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: Then they didn't have an HDTV, so all of those, that tactical stuff's out of the way. Now, it's how can we get really creative with this new technology of the cloud and the rest of it, and all the great work that the back impat team is doing. There's this incredible energy in the console, the power, it's a beast.

Phil Spencer: It's fun.

Larry Hryb: I think that's the term you use, right?

Phil Spencer: It's the Kareem ...

Larry Hryb: That's the Kareem.

Phil Spencer: What is it, it eats monsters for breakfast. Kareem's always good at ... Does he practice those things?

Larry Hryb: I don't know where he comes up with these soundbites, but they're always ...

Phil Spencer: Yeah, he's the soundbite king.

Larry Hryb: I want to get back to games though, what are you playing right now?

Phil Spencer: I'm playing After Party, which I'm having a really ... Have you played After Party?

Larry Hryb: I've interviewed Shawn a couple times. That's on my list to do over the holiday.

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Drinking with the devil.

Phil Spencer: It's the writing, and it is hilarious.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: It's great. I've been playing some Gang Beast, because I've had a little bit of co-op, couch co-op at home. If you haven't played Gang Beast ...

Larry Hryb: Yeah Jeff and I were talking about that.

Phil Spencer: It's incredibly fun. Funny enough, last night I was playing some Destiny, I'm back on the grind. I'm over 900 now with my light levels, but I need to get up, I saw a 971 or something.

Larry Hryb: Are we going to play Sea of Thieves again?

Phil Spencer: Absolutely, absolutely.

Larry Hryb: Ryan, you and I, we got to go ... We're dying to play some Sea of Thieves with you.

Phil Spencer: I finished Outer Worlds, was one of the things, when that came out, and fantastic.

Larry Hryb: Oh, that's right. Last time you and I chatted you hadn't finished yet.

Phil Spencer: I finished now, yeah. It took me out of the playing with people online. It was just like, "Okay, I'm going to go," and I am so, I have no constitution when I'm playing those games, which means I'm walking down the street and some NPC, "Hey, you got a second?" I'm like, "Yeah."

Larry Hryb: Sure, what's up?

Phil Spencer: I'm like, every side quest that somebody dangles in front of me, there I go, and I go off and do it. I had a really, really good time with that game. I said this at XO, that there was something when it booted up, and I figured out what it was, that was just like going home a little bit, and growing up as a PC gamer, playing RPGs, it was like, "Oh, this is a game with a beginning, middle and end, with a story that I'm going to craft, characters I'm going to customize." I really wanted to put the time in and finish it, which I appreciate that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I had a chance, when you were, when we were at the Game Awards, you were at the other end of the aisle. I was sitting kind of in your row, but I'm sitting next to Ferkis, the head of Obsidian.

Phil Spencer: Oh were you?

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I was sitting next to Ferkis. He had never been to an awards show, so I was telling him what, "Hey, this is what's going to go on. This is how it works."

Phil Spencer: He was more than at an awards show, he was nominated.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, but like I say, he had never been, so anyway, we chatted a lot about that, but we had such a great chat about the game, and just what a great team. I had a chance to go down and see them during launch.

Phil Spencer: Great.

Larry Hryb: They got so much, I mean there's such a great ...

Phil Spencer: Do you know what they're working on next?

Larry Hryb: I do.

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: I mean we saw Grounded.

Phil Spencer: Yeah. No, I meant the full team out.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, they're working on some cool stuff, but I mean that's just the other part of this that I didn't even put on this list, was just the portfolio of studios we now have part of Xbox game studios, all of these great ...

Phil Spencer: We finally got a good head of studios.

Larry Hryb: Matt Booth?

Phil Spencer: Yeah, and it's great to see those teams come together. I can't wait. I said this at one point when we look forward at all the things we have to announce, all the launches we have, it's just going to be a busy time.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: It's hard to look at a show coming up, where we're not going to be announcing a new game or two, which will be fun.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: I was just looking yesterday at the Dev Diary. I can't ... I'm so addicted to the Dev Diaries for Flight Sim, but if you look ...

Larry Hryb: Well yeah.

Phil Spencer: You put them out, and they're just crazy, the level for ... I can't wait for that game to come out.

Larry Hryb: It's a simulator.

Phil Spencer: Gears: Tactics showing at the Game Awards. This is going to be a fun year for us, and just seeing how those teams are challenged.

Larry Hryb: Wasteland.

Phil Spencer: Wasteland, yeah. Then, I watched the video that Compulsion put up, and I think it's a studio that some people might be sleeping on a little bit in terms of the creative capability at that studio, and the things that they're going to be doing, so there's just a lot of ... Then we got to show Hellblade, which was something we've been looking forward to for a long time, so there's a lot of great games coming to announce, Playground: The Initiative, and so many things.

Larry Hryb: We talked about all the studios that now are part of this family. The one that I didn't mention during our decade, kind of our quick decade drive by was, that was the decade that we bought [inaudible 00:56:59].

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: Right?

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: You were responsible for that.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, well I mean it's the company.

Larry Hryb: Sure.

Phil Spencer: It was more than I had in my checking account, but the ...

Larry Hryb: You had to go say, "Hey guys, we should borrow this. We should buy this, and I need how much money, Phil? What? Excuse Phil, could you leave the room for a minute, we need to discuss this."

Phil Spencer: Such a fantastic, fantastic game.

Larry Hryb: Isn't this weird, resurgence now, isn't it?

Phil Spencer: It's more than resurgence.

Larry Hryb: The baseline ...

Phil Spencer: It's the biggest year in Minecraft history.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: Right, this year.

Larry Hryb: Yeah.

Phil Spencer: That's from a user standpoint, from a business standpoint, the thing is Helen and the team there are just really doing a great job. Helen Chang who's the Studio Manager, doing a great job, the team at Moiang, it's awesome to see where that game is. I was looking yesterday, there's an AI for good, a coding mechanism that they've built that all these kids are trying. I mean it's just a new platform for fun, as it should be. It's a platform for video games, which it absolutely should be, and it touches people in so many different ways with the opportunity.

Phil Spencer: For me, it's the game of the decade. Obviously, it's a little bit of a homer, given that it's our game, but it's just hard to look at any game that's had the staying power over the last 10 years, that Minecraft has had, and I think really just create, brought in so many new players, and opportunities for games. Who would have thought, this thing that was written in Java, posted on website, that here we would be 10 years later.

Larry Hryb: It's a juggernaut.

Phil Spencer: It is, it's great. The team's doing a really good job, and I can't wait for people to get to play Minecraft Dungeons.

Larry Hryb: It's spawned Dungeons. It's spawned Minecraft Earth.

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: We now have Earth as our Minecraft war.

Phil Spencer: That's right.

Larry Hryb: There's so much going on.

Phil Spencer: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: I know you've got to get going, because you've, I mean you're a busy man, but I want to see if you had any, you wanted to just tell the audience, the Xbox and the gaming community for the holiday, and wrap up 2019.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, I love looking at the numbers that start to pump in, in terms of number of people getting online and playing, and things that people are playing together. I just think it's such a time where people get together with friends and family, certain people eat together, certain people watch TV together. Seeing more and more how gaming is just become one of the things that people do together, and it can be competitive. It could be cooperative. It can be hardcore. It can be, we're going to go laugh at each other playing something like Gang Beast together, or something.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Phil Spencer: It's, for me, is somebody's video games have been such an important part of my life, seeing that this art form and this medium has grown into the place where it's just a normal part of so many people's lives, and a constructive part of people's lives. I think this is a great time of year to just reflect on where this industry has come from, where it is today, and all of the space that we have to move into. I think that's an industry point, that's a community point, that's a fan point. Continue to support developers you love. Continue to support platforms that you think are doing the right thing for you. Continue to play and to be an advocate for what we're trying to do in gaming. I think we have a ton of space in front of us, so just have fun playing.

Larry Hryb: As we close 2019 out, I know that I had one this week. You probably have a couple E3 meetings for next year.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, it's crazy.

Larry Hryb: Here we go.

Phil Spencer: It feels like tomorrow.

Larry Hryb: Here we go.

Phil Spencer: It feels like it's ... E3, for us, I think this is a really important E3. I'm glad we're going to be there. I'm glad we're going to have, I think we've done a good job getting our shows together, and it's hard to believe that we're already talking about E3, but you're right, we are.

Larry Hryb: I mean it's there. It's going to be another great year. It feels like it's tomorrow, right?

Phil Spencer: Yeah, hopefully it's not.

Larry Hryb: To be clear, that's ... I usually get you on the podcast right around E3 and right around now, so we'll have you back on at E3.

Phil Spencer: That would be fine.

Larry Hryb: If not before, all right, Phil Spencer, thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great holiday.

Phil Spencer: You as well.

Larry Hryb: Say hello to your family for me, and we will chat later. We'll see you online.

Phil Spencer: Yes, absolutely. See you.

Jeff Rubenstein: Always great to hear from the big boss man, Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. That was a really cool story about the Game Awards.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I mean he's ... Phil's exactly what you think he is. He's just a great guy to hang out. We talk games. I mean he and I will play some games once in a while. It's always one of these awkward moments, and I use awkward in quotes, where I'm at home, and I've got my console out. I'm sitting in my home office, and I see the party invite from Phil.

Jeff Rubenstein: You're going to take that invite.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, I'm like, "Honey, I got work now." He always wants to just, he always wants to talk about, and usually he's got a couple people in there, we play with fans, and we just have a great time. What was the last one? I think we did Sea of Thieves. We've done State of Decay. There's a couple of others that we've done. It's just great to hang out. He loves games.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: You can tell, that's why he's head of gaming.

Jeff Rubenstein: He's in the right role.

Larry Hryb: He's in the right role. He has one of the best jobs, I'll say that, so thanks Phil, for a ... Like he said, I hope everybody has a great holiday, so there we go. The holidays are almost here.

Jeff Rubenstein: They are.

Larry Hryb: Kwanza, Hanukkah. When's Hanukkah this year?

Jeff Rubenstein: Hanukkah, just a little bit before Christmas.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: We're not there yet, but the menorah's all, it's all set up next to the stockings and the tree. We're doing it all.

Larry Hryb: Hung by care, aren't they?

Jeff Rubenstein: Hung with Command hooks, one fell off last night. Yeah, don't put too much in there kids.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, so there's ... Yeah, we've got quite a bit of stuff lined up for the holiday.

Jeff Rubenstein: We do have a few bits of news. In fact, some of this might plan to your holiday plans. One thing actually, just to throw back very quickly to the Game Awards, Obsidian, our good friends down there in Orange County, the makers of the Outer Worlds.

Larry Hryb: We talked about that earlier.

Jeff Rubenstein: They posted something on their forums. It was just a thank you for being nominated and everything, but they did confirm a real interesting bit of news. I'm just going to read it directly. The reception to the Outer Worlds has been unbelievable to see, and even just being nominated means a lot. However, the journey isn't over yet, as we are excited to announce that we will be expanding the story through DLC next year.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: Details will be made available at a later date. Of course, you will hear about that, maybe right here, or ...

Larry Hryb: Yeah, maybe we'll get Mikey on, maybe you and I will go down to Obsidian.

Jeff Rubenstein: [crosstalk 01:03:13] down there, I hope he's feeling well. I hope he's listening. I'm sure he's a big fan.

Larry Hryb: I hope so.

Jeff Rubenstein: I would like to think so.

Larry Hryb: We're a big fan of them.

Jeff Rubenstein: I would love to play a little more Outer Worlds. All right, so here's what I'm going to be playing a little bit of, actually, I started last night. New games, on Xbox Game Pass, which are now available. One, the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. If I think about ...

Larry Hryb: Oh boy.

Jeff Rubenstein: That's my favorite game of the decade.

Larry Hryb: That's up there with Red Dead 2, but the Witcher, I mean I played that so much, and you played that so ... We just got ...

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, and it still goes.

Larry Hryb: It is an amazing ... If you have not played the Witcher, then you are selling yourself short.

Jeff Rubenstein: It is an achievement. It is a ... I mean there's not superlatives superlatively enough to say how great this game is.

Larry Hryb: Yeah. It's on Game Pass.

Jeff Rubenstein: Just try it out, just play it. Pillars of Eternity, another great, what do they call them, an ARPG. You would also have plenty for you to do there. Life is Strange 2, Episode 5.

Larry Hryb: I need to finish that. I think I'm on Episode 3.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, well get on in there. Then, this is a game that got a lot of buzz this year, in sort of the second half of the year, when it first debuted on PC, debuted directly on into Game Pass on Xbox One, and that is Untitled Goose Game.

Larry Hryb: Oh.

Jeff Rubenstein: I started this last night.

Larry Hryb: You did?

Jeff Rubenstein: All right.

Larry Hryb: Honk, honk.

Jeff Rubenstein: You press X to honk.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yes, I don't know if there's a pay respects button, but you are basically ... It's almost, in a way, kind of reminded me of a more refined, like a European version of Goat Simulator. I think Goat Simulator was made in Europe as well, but if the French made Goat Simulator, it would be Untitled Goose Game. It's beautiful, and although at the same time your goal is to essentially be a nuisance to the town, and to ... If you hit the view button, you have a beautifully handwritten list of things that you need to do.

Larry Hryb: Have you ever ...

Jeff Rubenstein: Like throw this rake into the lake.

Larry Hryb: Have you ever been around a goose?

Jeff Rubenstein: Actually, we have a lot of geese here, Canadian geese.

Larry Hryb: Canada geese. They're not pronounced Canadian. It's Canada geese.

Jeff Rubenstein: Canada geese, I don't have a Canada goose coat, although these geese make me want one, because they are a but of a nuisance in town.

Larry Hryb: There's another campus, the Red West Campus, which is not the campus you and I are on here at Microsoft. They had a water feature, and there were a bunch of geese around there. You could not go to lunch. The shortest way to go there, you couldn't go because there were these nasty, nasty geese that were there. They would just come after you with their heads down, and honk, honk. They're flapping their wings. It was rough.

Jeff Rubenstein: Now you get to put yourself into their webbed feet, and be that goose. It's part of the game. It is charming.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: It's kind of fun to just be a nuisance.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: In the first segment, you have to make this groundskeeper, hit his thumb with a hammer. It's kind of like a puzzle. How am I going to do that?

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: You do a thing, which necessitates him to need to use the hammer, and then as soon as he's lining up, you honk at the right time.

Larry Hryb: Honk.

Jeff Rubenstein: It actually unlocks the next level, so fun little game. I can see why it is as popular and as, I guess, beloved as it has become. It's almost like an instant classic.

Larry Hryb: It's fun.

Jeff Rubenstein: Untitled Goose Game, go ahead and play it.

Larry Hryb: I have another game that I played.

Jeff Rubenstein: Go.

Larry Hryb: No, no. Go ahead if you want to continue because I have something ...

Jeff Rubenstein: No, no. You're, go for it.

Larry Hryb: This is one that I heard about at ... It's not on Xbox. It's on Steam, and I heard about it at the Game Awards. I was sitting there, and it's called Kind Words. Have you heard about this?

Jeff Rubenstein: I haven't, but I could deal with some kind words from you.

Larry Hryb: This is a, I think it was $4.00, so when I same game, I'm going to use those quotes, but essentially you ... You've seen all these lowfi beat channels on YouTube?

Jeff Rubenstein: No.

Larry Hryb: You've never seen ... You don't know what lowfi beats are?

Jeff Rubenstein: Should I?

Larry Hryb: Wow. Jeffrey.

Jeff Rubenstein: What?

Larry Hryb: Well I know that a lot of people ... It's basically just this like trans, ambient music that you can focus on, and whether you're working, school work, or ...

Jeff Rubenstein: Sort of background music, it's not going to distract you from what you're doing.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, we used to call it audio wallpaper back in the day.

Jeff Rubenstein: Sure.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, so you look it up, and one of the more popular channels has this, it's just this animated character, this girl who's writing. It's raining outside and she's got a cat and everything.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, that's all it is. Go look it up.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay.

Larry Hryb: This game, and I'm going to use these words in quotes, this "game" is essentially that. It's you're sitting in this little room.

Jeff Rubenstein: Found it.

Larry Hryb: Is it as I described?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yep, it is.

Larry Hryb: There is a, so this game called, Kind Words, which is fascinating. You sign up and you can see real letters from real people, and respond to them, but you don't know who they're from. Usually it just is like, from dash, dash, J for Jeff, or it doesn't matter, but you sit there.

Jeff Rubenstein: You described, I mean it looks like Studio Jubilee created a girl, who's writing. There's a cat.

Larry Hryb: It's raining.

Jeff Rubenstein: Is it a cat? It might be some sort of guinea pig, raining, headphones.

Larry Hryb: You got to listen to the music.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, well ...

Larry Hryb: Go ahead and do it. You've got to play a little bit of it.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right.

Larry Hryb: That's lowfi. Anyway ...

Jeff Rubenstein: We're going to be obsessed with this now. It's got 25 million views.

Larry Hryb: I know, it's huge.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right, all right. I'll link out to it.

Larry Hryb: This game is kind of based on that concept, but it puts you, it lets you read real letters from real people, and write back. These letters, some of them are heartbreaking, like, "Hey, I don't have any friends." Your job, or if you want to, is you can just go onto the next letter, or you can reply. The goal is to basically say, "Hey, you know what? You actually do have a friend," or "You have a lot of friends," or "You are a good person."

Jeff Rubenstein: You've been doing this.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is this like the people that answer the letters to Santa.

Larry Hryb: I've been doing it. I've been giving people, just anonymously giving people encouragement. You think I'm this hard person, doesn't care about anything. I spent a lot of time writing letters.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, all the affection you should be pouring on your co-workers and friends, is going out into the, at least someone's getting it.

Larry Hryb: Download this game if you can, again it's on Steam and it's just called, Kind Words, and it is ...

Jeff Rubenstein: I'll link out to it.

Larry Hryb: It's funny, because it's got different soundtracks similar to what you just heard. I had it playing and I was looking at this, and my wife came in. She says, "What is this?" She came in, and she's like, "What is this," and I explained to her. She says, "Oh," so she sat down. She was there for 40 minutes. My wife is an amazing writer, and she was writing all these replies, and helping people get through their tough moments, and "Hey," anything from, "Hey I'm having a tough day at work," or "My girlfriend doesn't understand me," to "Hey, what's your recipe for mashed potatoes?"

Jeff Rubenstein: A game about writing nice letters to real people. Write and receive encouraging letters in a cozy room. Trade stickers and listen to chill music, we're all in this together. Wow.

Larry Hryb: Did I describe it perfectly?

Jeff Rubenstein: I think this is, honestly, what the world needs right now.

Larry Hryb: I absolutely love that game, so ...

Jeff Rubenstein: It is on sale right now, through January 2nd.

Larry Hryb: Is it like $4.99 or something?

Jeff Rubenstein: $4.24.

Larry Hryb: $4.24, okay whatever.

Jeff Rubenstein: It checks out.

Larry Hryb: I'm just saying, I totally forgot about that one, because I ...

Jeff Rubenstein: You know what? You still have the capability to surprise me.

Larry Hryb: I was sitting there during the Game Awards and I was like, "This is really ..." I wrote myself a note, because I have a little notepad on my phone, wrote it down and came back, and then I downloaded it, and just spent a few hours with it over the weekend.

Jeff Rubenstein: How did you find out, oh it was the Game Awards.

Larry Hryb: The Game Awards, there was, I can't remember what the segment was, inside the Game Awards.

Jeff Rubenstein: Huh, all right.

Larry Hryb: There's a video about how they were surprised how many letters were sent and received.

Jeff Rubenstein: We need to look and see, what are the video requirements for this game?

Larry Hryb: Oh it's so loved.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, you need a 20, 80, yeah.

Larry Hryb: It was crazy. It's 4k 60.

Jeff Rubenstein: All right. Two last things.

Larry Hryb: Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein: Something that might keep you busy, if you're into it, Fantasy Star Online 2 has a closed beta test that is going on now. You can sign up. I have a link to it. It's all you need to know.

Larry Hryb: It's all you need to know.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is a good time of year to get into a longer type of game, one that you're really going to be grinding and spending a lot of time with. A type of game that, when you have folks over, that I enjoy playing is a fighting game. Anyone can pick it up, sometimes they can [inaudible 01:11:48]. Better to fight in a game than fight in real life.

Larry Hryb: I'm just, the picture of me is your in-laws coming over, and you're like, "Yeah, let's go."

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, I'm not going to ... When the cousins come over, of whatever.

Larry Hryb: I see, so couch co-op.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, exactly, same so, Dead or Alive 6, the Core Fighters plus of course [inaudible 01:12:05] is now available for Xbox One, and it's $4.00, also $4.00. I haven't tried it yet, but for $4.00 maybe I will.

Larry Hryb: I'll tell you another great thing that I like to do around the holiday is this is a great chance, games are coming out all the time, and then there's updates and downloadable content add-ons, whatever they're called, is to go back to some of your favorite games. I bet you there may be an add-on or two that you missed.

Jeff Rubenstein: Good chance of that, yeah.

Larry Hryb: Right?

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, I mean Forza Horizon 4's a perfect example of that.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, you talked about that earlier.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: There's that. I know there's some Witcher content that I haven't finished.

Jeff Rubenstein: Wait, oh so the add-on content, there were two major add-ons, phenomenal.

Larry Hryb: I finished one, I didn't finish the second one.

Jeff Rubenstein: Was it the ...

Larry Hryb: The one that's in the Italian countryside.

Jeff Rubenstein: Okay, that's the bigger of the two.

Larry Hryb: Yeah, that one is just, so maybe I'll go back to that.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, that was quite ...

Larry Hryb: I don't think I've played that on my X yet, so I should do that.

Jeff Rubenstein: It looks good. That's actually, I waited until the Xbox One X came out.

Larry Hryb: My One X, not my Series X, we don't have those yet.

Jeff Rubenstein: That would be nice, but the One X, yeah I waited for that, and then I played the DLC, and the load times and the performance it's great.

Larry Hryb: Anyway, so this is a good time to go back, and in fact, hit me up on Twitter at majornelson, let me know what DLC you found that you're like, "Hey, I totally forgot about this one," so ...

Jeff Rubenstein: We've love to know.

Larry Hryb: Right, love to know what that is. There we go. You know what? I'm so glad I was able to surprise you with Kind Words.

Jeff Rubenstein: You're full of surprises, Larry.

Larry Hryb: A, that you didn't know about the game, and B, you had no idea about this crazy sub-genre on YouTube.

Jeff Rubenstein: No, I usually go to sleep to some amount of music that will play through an Echo, or whatever the heck it is.

Larry Hryb: What kind of music do you sleep to?

Jeff Rubenstein: Actually my wife just picks it out. It's usually piano music.

Larry Hryb: Okay, so ...

Jeff Rubenstein: I don't really need the music to sleep, it just doesn't bother me.

Larry Hryb: I see.

Jeff Rubenstein: As long as it doesn't have words.

Larry Hryb: I'm with you on that, because I can't have words. I need to have just complete instrumental.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, plus it rains here a lot, so you get a lot of that white noise, which also is super helpful.

Larry Hryb: It's exactly like that video.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: You're sitting there with your cat. You have this anemone character, you're writing letters to your friends afar, Jeffrey ...

Jeff Rubenstein: You're reminding me now how terrible I am at correspondence. It's like if I don't ... Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

Larry Hryb: Oh, okay.

Jeff Rubenstein: I see you all the time.

Larry Hryb: Well that's true. That is true, but you and I also, not only do we ...

Jeff Rubenstein: You're unforgettable.

Larry Hryb: We work through the day, and then we're also communicating at night. It's, "What's going on?"

Jeff Rubenstein: My parents would like it if I called or wrote more often. Maybe I'll tell them to download the game and if they're lucky, they'll get a letter from me.

Larry Hryb: Randomly matched.

Jeff Rubenstein: If they're even luckier, they'll get a much nicer letter from some stranger.

Larry Hryb: I'll be sure to do that. All right, what else do we have on our docket to talk about?

Jeff Rubenstein: That's the new, Larry.

Larry Hryb: That's the news.

Jeff Rubenstein: We're going to be ... Is there anything you want to play over the break? Is there anything, you know control?

Larry Hryb: I think I need a control. I need to go back and find some of that DLC, this old DLC, that maybe I haven't taken a look at. I jumped back into Red Dead. I just like going back into those environments and those worlds that we know, and that we love.

Jeff Rubenstein: You certainly didn't do everything there was to do.

Larry Hryb: I certainly didn't rob the bank like you did.

Jeff Rubenstein: Oh, we're going to talk about that? Glitch the bank.

Larry Hryb: Glitch the bank, it was the bank too.

Jeff Rubenstein: This was a while ago. Larry, very excitedly, you were a little bit further ahead of me in Red Dead, when it came out a little over a year ago. You were like, "I've been reading about this thing," and I went, "What?" You were like, "It's a limited gold trick."

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: You go to this, near your first settlement, there was an abandoned ...

Larry Hryb: Down the hill.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah.

Larry Hryb: There was a second camp down the hill.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, there's an abandoned camp, and in there, in some run down cabin ...

Larry Hryb: The cabin's rundown, right.

Jeff Rubenstein: There was a chest, or a box that had a bar of gold in it, but apparently if you saved, or you did something right before you opened the box, and then you re-loaded it, you could just keep opening the box ...

Larry Hryb: Get a ... Was it, it wasn't unlimited, right?

Jeff Rubenstein: Then it'd reload ... I don't know, but I got a lot of ... I got to the point where essentially money was no longer a factor in the game.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: Then I went on, I played and enjoyed the game.

Larry Hryb: You bought everything?

Jeff Rubenstein: Then you just relentlessly, you told everyone how I cheesed the game, and how I didn't get the full experience, and that I debased it and everything. It was like, "I only did it because you ..." Then it was like, "Are you going to do it?" You were like, "Nope. No, I'm playing as the creators' intended." Meanwhile, now I feel like really dirty. I got over it pretty quickly because I bought ... I went into the General Store, and I was like, "Give me the whole catalog, I'm taking it all." Some of the stuff, I don't even know why I bought it, but I bought it.

Larry Hryb: I kept sending you the Clevon Little pictures from Blazing Saddles, where he's all duded up.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yep, that was me. I had all the ... I was the best dressed cowboy. I almost felt like I was cross playing as a cowboy.

Larry Hryb: You sure looked good, chief.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, yeah. Arthur Morgan and yeah, could we get a ... Could we ham it up a little more?

Larry Hryb: You were getting your hair cut every week.

Jeff Rubenstein: I know.

Larry Hryb: It was unbelievable.

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, I really was actually. I was constantly switching out the, getting the palmade, every time I could order the palmade.

Larry Hryb: Do you have anymore?

Jeff Rubenstein: I was like, "I can't walk around like this."

Larry Hryb: They eventually patched it, if you remember correctly. I remember reading that.

Jeff Rubenstein: After I was shamed, I didn't ... I didn't talk about it anymore.

Larry Hryb: After you made your millions in Bank, anyway that was ...

Jeff Rubenstein: Yeah, that was, I regret nothing.

Larry Hryb: Maybe we'll go back to Red Dead.

Jeff Rubenstein: The only thing I ever regret is trusting you.

Larry Hryb: Oh boy, anyhow ...

Jeff Rubenstein: This is it.

Larry Hryb: This is it.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is it for the decade. This is it for the year.

Larry Hryb: We were talking about, while we were rolling that Phil interview, you and I were talking about your favorite moments of the decade. Do you have one?

Jeff Rubenstein: Well, I mean I don't want to get sappy our maudlin or anything.

Larry Hryb: Right.

Jeff Rubenstein: This is the, you know, my life has changed a lot in the last decade.

Larry Hryb: It has, so has mine.

Jeff Rubenstein: In January 1st, 2010, I was working for