TechStuff Visits E3

I'm not really sure. Lauren and I have both been on very long flights recently, and uh, Lauren, you were vacating, right, Yes, I happened to be in l A. Jonathan was in l A for an entirely work related purpose for E three, and between the two of us, I think I think Lauren wins. You got to see dead Elephants and uh, Mastodon's Dead Mastodons elephants, and I got uh. I feel like the band Mastodon is playing in my right now. That's that's how I feel. That's a reference for all

my Atlanta buddies. But yeah, I did go to E three, and so we thought it would be fun to record a quick episode of tech Stuff to kind of talk about the stuff, what I saw and uh, and sort of my my conclusions from the entire experience of E three. So, Lauren, where would you like to start? Well that how how many years have you been going to E three? Now, I've I've gone three times. So I did take a break because we there used to be a house stuff

works show called pop Stuff. When pop Stuff came along, they decided that that video games kind of fell into their their umbrella, the whole pop culture thing. And I didn't disagree, and uh and I thought it was perfectly fine. But then pop Stuff went on hiatus. Um, the hosts of pop Stuff are now the hosts of Stuffy miss industry class. And so it came back round to who

should we send to E three. And because of the fact that we had an opening, and because the fact that uh, two major companies were introducing brand new can souls, we really wanted to be there. Yeah. Yes, so that's that is the reason why I went so and and yeah, Jonathan one day came into the office and said, hey, Lauren, would you we can send one person to Eat three? Do you want it to be you? And I said that sounds terrifying, No, thank you. Yeah, so I I

took one for the team. A lot of people, let's we'll get this out of the way first. A lot of people who have not been to Eat three think of it as This has got to be the most amazing experience. You know, get to play video games all day long. No, what you mostly get to do is wait in line to play a video game for between five and twenty minutes, and then you have to leave, and then you have to go wait in another line to play a totally different game for five to twenty minutes.

So it's like a theme park, except with more video game trailers. Right, it's a it's a theme park where instead of a ride, it's a video game that you play for a little while. Um, and in some cases you don't even play a game. You wait in line so that you can watch a demo of someone else playing the game, but you don't get a chance to play it yourself. Are possibly a trailer or teaser trailer times it's just a teaser. Yeah, sometimes it's not even

a full trailer. Now, to be fair, this whole show, the purpose of it is so that video game publishers and and distributors have a chance to meet with with retail establishments that could be carrying their games, as well as the media and other industry members to talk about gaming, the titles that are coming up, the hardware that's coming up gives companies like Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo a chance to say, these are our platforms, we want more

games developed for them. This is how we are going to support developers so that they can make games for our platforms. It's really industry related. It's not open to the public, right right, Yeah, I think that they closed that down. What was it like, Circutit asn't too Yeah, there was there was a time where they experimented with having it open to the public, but it meant that all the people within the industry had that much more trouble getting access to the stuff that they needed to

have in order to make their decisions. All that being said, there's still very much kind of a party atmosphere at Ether. You've got a lot of very young people, a lot of the media, there were young bloggers. Like I felt like while I was in line to go to the Microsoft press event, I felt that I was easily the oldest person in line, apart from the security people working the show. How should I and I give you? I can I give you stuff about being older than me,

but you're you're really not that. But the most of these kids were in their early twenties, well we'll get into some of the other members of the press, well, at least at least the people who went to the Microsoft event. Not all of them are necessarily pressed, but uh, I have some I have some opinions I would like to share about that. Uh. But all that being said, uh, there is still a little bit of a party atmosphere.

People are still having fun. But it's not like the mecca of gamers everywhere the way it's seen because you're you're usually playing a game that's maybe not even finished, and if it, even if it is finished, you're playing a very small section of it, so you can just get a hint of what the game is like. Sure, sure so. And it's not something like a like like packs or dragon Con or Comic Con or anything like right where you've got I mean, all the people in

costumes are being paid to be there. For the most part. There were a couple of members of the media who, as part of their their representation, they were they were dressed up. Yeah, there was a lady dressed up as Laura Croft who had a media badge and she was in the media lounge dressed as Laura Croft. And that's I guess, Yeah, I guess that's her thing, which is perfectly fine. But yeah, it's not like a convention that's open to the public where everyone's showing up in costume.

Most of the people who are in costume are working for specific vendor or specific developer publisher. Although, yeah, the funny thing about about l A is that, you know, when I was down on Hollywood Boulevard, I did run into two Master Chiefs and a Cortana just walking down the streets. I didn't run into any Master Chiefs while I was there, but yeah, so anyway, that's the overview of E three. It is industry only. It is held

once a year. It's held in Los Angeles. They've already got the announcement for the dates for the two thousand fourteen E three. We'll see goes to that one. But let's let's get into some specifics. What do you want to know? Right, Yeah, so so you mentioned Microsoft. I heard that there was a few big announcements for Microsoft, right of course, the big one being that this is

the year that they come out with the Xbox One. Yeah. Yeah, they had a release data in November, No, will be the release date, and uh, the price is four hundred and nine dollars in the United States. Um, so that's a hundred dollars more than what the Xbox three sixty went for when it first went on. They also announced a brand new version of the Xbox three sixty, which was slimmed down and made a little more sleek. Uh heard.

I heard it was going to be quieter and that they're going to be continuing to come out with games for it. They said that was as quiet as the previous versions, and that raised a couple of snickers in the audience. But yes, um and and there are some some they didn't announce some games there specifically for the three sixty there there. I think their point they were trying to make is that they aren't abandoning the three sixty.

You know, when when the three sixty came out, it was very shortly thereafter that they stopped all development for the original Xbox and uh and, I think that this message they're sending is we're not going to do that with this generation. You're going to have games for the Xbox one, and we're still developing games for the three sixty because we still think of it as a viable

piece of hardware. So for a while it's going to follow the same kind of model that's Sony tends to do, where you support the old generation while you're also pushing the new one. Now, when they were their press event, it was um divide it up into sections. They started off with a big preview of metal Gear Solid as I recall, which got a lot of people in the audience excited. Then they talked about the three sixty, and

then they went on to the Xbox One. Microsoft had recently received a lot of criticism because they had an event about well about two and a half weeks before E three where they unveiled the Xbox One for the first time, and in that one they were specifically talking about its capabilities as sort of an entertainment center. They didn't really talk about games very much, and they cut a lot of flak for that, even though Microsoft had said that they outset we're not talking about games, will

do that at E three. Uh So, this time they talked about games a lot, and they talked about some innovations that I think are largely not appreciated by gamers, or at least not it's not something that they're looking for. And I think that was a problem because when we get into the sony thing. We'll talk about, you know, the various impressions that people got from that press day.

Well Microsoft's press event. You know, they talked about how, uh they were integrating smart Glass, which is their mobile operating system integration with Xbox Live and Xbox so that would give you more control over games, it would give you access to other content that's related to the games. They showed a lot of games that have a tactical element where someone using smart Glass could influence a game by uh seeing an overview of an entire map. So

let's say it's squad ace combat. This person might be able to call in an air strike against opponents or be able to warn someone like, hey, if you turn that corner, there's three guys waiting to ambush you. That so extra functionality that you wouldn't get from the game itself. But once you link a tablet into it, you get this,

uh this added dimension, right, and and that's cool. But I think a lot of gamers are thinking like, well, okay, okay, but I'm already paying five for this console, right, I don't want to have to buy another tablet or or even you know, people are just saying like I'm just that's just not what I'm looking for in the game. I don't think it. I don't think it had the

big impact that Microsoft was possibly expecting for. They also talked a lot about their Connect and the connect um uh interaction with games, and again, I think that's one of those things that it's really cool. I think both the smart glass and Connect are really cool uh innovative approaches to gaming. But a lot of gamers just they

haven't gotten to the point where they care about that, right. Sure, I felt like, um, like, the Connect is a really great like family party kind of thing most of the time. But but I don't know anyone who plays any quote unquote serious games with a Connect. It's all. It's all, you know, like, oh like that the WE sports style thing or Connect Sports whatever that franchise. I could see. I could see it becoming more useful as it gets

more deeply integrated into games. For example, again going back to like a squad based game, if you are human character and you are playing with artificially intelligent helpers, and you issue a command over the connect, and that way you don't have to press some sort of button sequence to tell your squad weight. Here then that could be very useful. And of course that's just one small example. And then there's always the gesture control stuff too, not

just voice control. But again I don't think that's that's what their core gamer element is really. Yeah, they're not asking for it yet, they're not they're not interested in it yet. And I think part of that is just because it's such a young technology that none of us have really seen how it benefits exactly. We haven't had a core example saying, look see how amazing this game is. When you put these other elements in with this game,

it makes it a must buy. I don't think we've had a title like that yet, or at least if we have, I don't think it's gotten widespread enough acclaim for that to be a decision making factor. So most gamers,

what they're expecting expecting is better graphics, better processor. Um, they're hoping for a decent price, and some of the other elements that Microsoft didn't really address, which includes the whole idea about what happens with used games, because Microsoft's approach is all about streaming and and cloud based and essentially moving away from the physical media that we tend to think of when we think of consoles, and that is a is a dramatic departure to the way that

games have been done in the past. And it also means that there are some pretty strong restrictions, like if it's a digital copy, how do you sell a used game? And why would you pay less money for a used game if it's a digital copy in the media is exactly the same. It makes it makes the word used meaningless in terms of and that's that's a big concern because there are a lot of people who want Most people buy I'm not going to say most people, but

a lot of people buy a second market. Yeah, because this way they can buy the games they want for a little less money than what they would have to spend at full price. And maybe it takes them a couple of months to buy it, but yeah, and then when they're done with it, they can sell it back if they want for a much lower price and a

half dollars or whatever it is. But it's it's still it's still one of those things where if you add it up, they're like, Okay, look, over the course of this year, that meant that I I paid ten bucks for a fifty dollar title. Once you factor in all of this stuff over time, right, and now it's going to be well, they used doesn't really make any sense anymore, so I have to buy it new. Then you have the concept of you need to be connected to the internet and it has to Yeah, it does this once

once every twenty four hours. Um. A lot of people are upset about that. Now, personally, from my own perspective, it doesn't bother me that much. But it's because the way I use my Xbox right now, it's always connected anyway, and so and I don't I don't tend to shop for games and used games. I don't sell off games. So it doesn't affect me personally because that's my own personal style however, Right, But that's that's very much a

class issue. I would say of assuming that that there that their core basic gamer has a twenty four hour day, seven day a week Internet connection, that it never goes out, that they are interested in being online all the time, and that they are okay with spending that much money on as many games as they want to buy. Sure, I am the case the perfect case for Microsoft's approach, because that's how I play. But I recognize there are other people who have very different restrictions on them that

have different life circumstances. I completely understand that, and I understand why they will be upset about it. Honestly, for me, that the cost of games is part of why I don't play more video games because I'm like, well, you know, either I could buy this video game, or I could go to a couple of movies and have a couple drinks some friends and have a really nice dinner, and

I would overall rather do all of that stuff. Then yeah, And that's the thing is that it's I think what Microsoft is doing is it's trying to push gaming into a new era, a new generation, and that means having to leave behind support for uh traditional forms of gaming. And it's it's a tough thing. It's really hard. It's hard to get people on your side when you do that, because in general, we don't really like change that much. We like improvements, we don't like change. Nerd nerds don't

like change. That's crazy. Well, people in general hate to break it to you, not just nerds. So but change is one of those things where I mean, we've seen this with other companies like Apple is famous for this, where Apple will stop supporting one form of media force ing the industry to conform to Apple's new approach if they want to continue working with Apple. Usually that means that there's a year or two of struggle before things settle down and everyone either forgets what it used to

be like or they actually prefer the new way. But it takes time for that to happen. And so I think it's the same thing with this is that you know this, this has upset some gamers. I don't think that the you know, unless Microsoft dramatically changes it's uh, it's strategy. I don't think that that's going to change anytime soon. But I do think that over time the objections will become less uh what's the right word, um adamant, They're going to be Maybe maybe that's maybe that's just

their market too. I mean, you know, it's there are certainly different segments of the gamer market. Enough people are involved in gaming communities these days that I think it's very possible for them to target that market if they want. Now, I will say, I had a chance to play a few games using the Xbox One. Uh, I don't know, if it's just me, it felt like the controller was

actually a little smaller than it used to be. Um, maybe maybe that was just you know, it could have just all been in my mind because I didn't have a chance to play Xbox three sixty and the Xbox One back to back. But it just felt a little different. Uh, not in a necessarily a bad way, but it took a little getting used to. Um, the shoulder buttons are a little different, and the trigger buttons are a little different. But the games I played were very responsive and very

pretty to look at. They also had some interesting teasers at the Microsoft precedent, including one of a game franchise that's beloved by both people on this podcast, Halo. Uh it was. It was very much a teaser. It had a a robed figure trudging through the desert and you couldn't see any details on this figure at all, just as they're walking over the dunes and these beautiful particle effects with the sand and everything. Uh, this is obviously

a pre rendered teaser, not in game footage necessarily. Then suddenly the ground starts to shake, sand starts to fall away, and this enormous um mechanical creature like bird like thing comes out of the desert. Essentially is like an evolved version of what the source of stuff you saw on Halo four. And then the wind from its emergence of from the desert blows back the cowl on the rope, revealing Master Chief. Uh. And then it just had the

title for Halo five and the crowd went nuts. Um. Now, let me tell you, out of all the stuff that happened at Microsoft's press event, the one thing that got the biggest response. And this is very telling. You know, Microsoft is going through all these issues where gamers are worried about the future of the console and how you know. They're worried about the connect being required and having to have it connected all the time in order to play games.

They're worried about the the consistent connection to the Internet. They're worried about the used games. Microsoft said one thing that got the crowd cheering, which was that they were moving away from Microsoft Points and going to real currency, right right, I heard about that. So no longer will you have to pay money to buy six Microsoft points to then buy a twelve hundred Microsoft point game left over with four hundred points. This was one of those issues.

It's like there are a lot of places that do this sort of thing. I always call it the Disney dollar approach, where you buy into a platform specific currency, but the amount of real money you spend to get the platform currency uh never matches up with whatever the actual projects. Sure, and it's all, it's all. I think people are pretty aware that that's all spoken mirrors. It's a way of getting people to uh not pay as

much attention to what they're buying, right. Well, and there's also and and there's also the fact that you know you're gonna have to spend more money than what you need to buy whatever it is you want to buy, because again, it doesn't match up exactly right. They're moving away from that to real currency purchases, and I got a huge response from the crowd. That was the biggest one of the night as far as I could tell,

besides maybe the Halo teaser. So when when your biggest response is the fact that you're moving away from a points based currency to real currency, and it'll be it'll be real for whatever region, you know, like in the United States dollars, in the UK it'll be pounds, and in Europe it'll be euros, and you know, etcetera, etcetera. So it'll uh, but the fact that that was the biggest response was very kind of telling I think that that that it wasn't anything else from Microsoft that got

that big of a buy in from the crowd. That they that they may be weren't catering enough to the people who were there with their content to uh with their with their presentation right right. And when I walked into E three, before I had seen anything, I was absolutely convinced that I would buy an Xbox one and I would essue the PS four and the Xbox One would be my only console. And I'll tell you what after the break, I'll tell you more about how that

decision changed. But before I do, let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsor. Alright, we're back. So I covered Microsoft, right and and you just finished saying that you weren't too sure about Sony going into the going into E three. How did you feel about it once you've seen their presentation? Alright? So before I said that I would only buy an Xbox one and I would move away from the Sony platform because the reason why I said that is as a gamer. Right now, I

have both consoles. I have the three sixty and the P S three, both current generation consoles. I should say I have the three sixty and the p S three, and I've got two games for the p S three, which I never play. I only use my p S three as a Blue Ray Player. Now on my Xbox three six, I've got lots of games that I play

all the time. And the new Xbox one also is going to have a Blu Ray Player, which I thought, or a Blue Ray Drive, and I thought, well, this means that I could get rid of my PS three because I never use it except as a Blu Ray Player, and I can't imagine wanting a PS four. Sony has its press event, and Sony addressed all the concerns that people had about Microsoft, and they made sure to do it in such a way that it was a dig

at Microsoft to every opportunity got it. So they said, you know, our games are gonna come on disc and you can put those discs in an EPs four and it's going to work. So if you want to trade that game in, if you want to sell that game, if you want to lend it to your friend, you can totally do that because your games are your games. And that was a shot across the bow and Microsoft.

Keep in mind, you know Microsoft is looking at this cloud based approach where theoretically you could have cloud based computing where the game itself could be too complex for your console to play on its own. So with cloud computing, you have these massive server farms that are running the games for you. You're streaming the content, so it's kind of like you know, an ullah or on live or something like that, and you're able to suddenly, uh play

these games that normally your console couldn't run. So approach was that we just made the console stronger and you can play whatever you want. Oh yeah, yeah, that's a that's definitely a thing. No, I was I was gonna ask, have you heard anything about whether Microsoft's games for the Xbox One are going to be tied to a game or profile so that you can take them to a different box or yes, it is supposed to do that, So you're supposed to be tied to it so that

you can do that sort of thing. Uh, you can, according to x or Microsoft. Rather, you can sell off a game, but there could be restrictions on that based upon h individual game publisher. So in other words, Microsoft is leaving it up to publishers to decide what the um the actual policy will be for selling used games, and the publishers, for their part, have said this might be true, but they haven't given us any details, so

we don't know how that would be implemented. So at the moment, there's still a big question mark about used games in general. With the Xbox One. It's not to say that there will not be any way of doing it, but it may be very much restricted, and it may be a case by case basis, which is just going to drive players nuts. So that's impossible. But back to

Sony any that they also had something to say about authentication. Well, you know, they had stuff to say about everything, Like essentially every single point they made was that this is not the way we're doing things. The Microsoft way is

not the way we're doing things. It didn't use those words specifically, but they were very careful to kind of go ahead with that and their and their conference was maybe six hours after Microsoft's conference, Yeah it was, And I don't know how much I think that most of their their points had to be pretty much in stone, because even even giving given six hours, there's not enough time to make the company multimedia presentation decisions on corporate

not just multimedia decisions but you're talking about decision that will affect the business from that point forward. That's a huge decision. I can't think of any company that would be nimble enough to make that kind of change in real time and within six hours say all right, well, now we know how we're gonna answer or this question because Microsoft did this way and people didn't like it,

so we're gonna do it this way. I don't think that was possible, I'm sure, but I, you know, the cynical part of me suspects that maybe they listened to xboxes presentation and watched the crowd response and had their speaker. I think they probably tweet the approach right so that they already knew what they were gonna say. Now they knew how they were going to say it. I think that I think that's fair enough. Well. Sony also managed

to do a few other things. First of all, one of the first things he did was they showed off the console because because they hadn't previously. Yeah, they had had a an event earlier inten where they announced the console and they talked about some of the games that would be coming out, but they did not reveal any pictures of the console. Itself. They showed off the controller, and they showed off what the p S I camera looks like, which is very similar to the connect, but

they did not show off the console itself. That was one of the first things they did, and people's first reaction was, huh, it looks a lot like the Xbox one. Uh, it's a certain and the console looks like a console. It's you know, yeah, it Well, the both of them looked more like something you would see in the home entertainment stack, right, because the PS three had that that curved The original one anyway, had that curved top, which meant that you could not stack anything on top of

it because it would just be all wobbly. This one looks more like what you would see with a cable box, although it does have if you look at it in profile, it has these kind of it's almost like a little rhombus instead of instead of a rectangle. But anyway, yeah, it's it's a neat design and they showed off a lot of games. In fact, they showed it felt like they showed off a lot more games than Microsoft Dead. But they also showed a lot of games for the

p S three as well as the PS four. They started off with some really powerful heavy hitters like The Last of Us, which the reviews have come in for the Last of Us, the game itself, as of the recording of this podcast right now, is not yet out. It comes out the week this podcast should publish, but the reviews, the early reviews have all been amazingly positive. Lots and lots of perfect wars for this game. It's

and it's a it's a survivalist game. You're you're playing, uh, an older male character who is looking after a younger like a teenage girl character. Uh, it's post apocalypse. Of course, there's zombie like critters that are after you, as well as other survivors who are not necessarily in the helpful mood. And uh, apparently it's just got a very emotionally impactful story. I got to play a demo of it and it

was intense. Also a lot of creative little puzzle solving moments in it as well, so uh, yeah, there's no shortage of zombies at E three. But anyway, other stuff that. They then moved on to the PS four and talked about some of the games that you would see for that and the the interesting uh approaches they had they They also talked about a lot of games that were not really your traditional games that you would see on Xbox.

Sony kind of excels in this space where they get some weird, funky game tames that have innovative style play and premises. There are things like like a Little Big Planet. Yeah yeah, So if you look at Xbox, they have some of those, And if you look at Xbox Live Arcade, you see some of these kind of independent developer games that are really kind of quirky or push your expectations of what a game is and what a game can do. But I think Sony does this better than Microsoft does.

In general, Sony tends to have at least Sony tends to support independent gamers to a more visible extent in Microsoft. You know, maybe both companies are doing the same amount

of work, but Sony's is way more noticeable. And while they didn't dedicate an entire segment of their of their precedent to independent games, they did show off some independent games that got the crowd excited and some some jobs weird premises like uh my favorite was Octodad Octo Dad, where you play as an octopus who is posing as a human and your goal is to get through various scenarios without people suspecting that you are in fact an octopus in human clothes. It's so fun. I got to

play a demo. So in this game, you are actually using the PS four's controllers and this this title, by the way, is going to be available not just on the PS four but also on Mac and Windows computers. But you use your various buttons on your PS four controller to control the legs, your tentacles. Uh and uh. The physics of the game are trying to match what

an octopus would be. In other words, you have no bones, so you're all flippy floppy as you're trying to walk around and as people as you draw attention to yourself. There's more likely to be at an incident of someone knowing that you're an octopus when when people start realizing that you have no bones in your legs, when you're all flippy floppy. Yeah. So the demo they had was that you had to get dressed for your wedding and then make your way down the aisle so that no

one noticed that you were an octopus. So you had to find a tuxedo and you had to find an engagement ring or actually a wedding band and put it on your intended hand and uh and and controlling. You would switch between controlling the legs and controlling the arms. You wouldn't control all of them at the same time, so you're controlling you're controlling walking for a while. Yeah,

and then you switch to your arms. Controlling your arms, you had to use both duel stick, both both of the stick controllers to control the x, y, and Z axis so that you could do depth as well as vertical and horizontal control and judging how far you needed to put your arms so you could slide this ring onto your wife's arm. Was I mean, people behind me are laughing their butts off because it's just so ridiculous, And it was no matter who was playing the demo,

that was what was going on. People were just laughing at how silly and absurd and and funny this this game was. Um. Honestly, I don't know if the game like could hold up for a full length game, but I had a lot of fun playing that one demo. Uh. I also noticed, at least to me again, just as the Xbox One controller felt smaller in my hands, and again I might be just crazy, But the PS four controller felt larger in my hands. Anyone who's heard me rant about Sony has heard the problem I have with

the dual shot controller I have. My fingers aren't incredibly long, but they're fairly long, and I get like crab hands I've I've always found the PlayStation controller is a little bit crampy. Yeah, yeah, I too. More so than that. I was actually the one kid who didn't want to put down that original like bear sized Xbox. Yeah, the Duke Duke controllers what it was called. Yeah, No, I like that one too, and mean it was like it's like a big crayon. It's just more comfortable in your hands.

And the Sega Dreamcast had a very similar kind of controller. It was these large controllers that felt more comfortable in my hands. The PlayStation controller, I've always felt as a little cramped for the way I hold the controller, and so the PS four controller felt a little more comfortable. Now. Granted, keep in mind I was playing for five to ten minutes at a time times, so it's not like a true gaming session where I call in quote unquote sick,

and uh sick means uncharted. Four just came out, Uh, then you know, maybe if I were to play a marathon session, I would realize that I could no longer open a jar. You know, I don't know, because I didn't have that chance. Jonathan really never does that. No, I don't. I don't call in quote unquote sick anyway.

So the PS four announcement also drew a lot of of acclaim because one they said that you don't have any problem with use games, which, really, when you think about it, the PS four got a lot of praise because of the things it didn't do. It essentially kept things the same, and by keeping things the same, it made gamers happy, which again goes back to that thing about gamers hate change, change, and yeah, that's a that's gonna be interesting to see how that how that shakes out. Well.

They also announced that it would be a hundred dollars less expensive than the Xbox One. Yeah, I heard that.

That was that. That was the last thing that they announced, basically in the presentations, and they said that it would be available by the holiday season of this year, and that it would be one would be three dollars in the United States, So that's one hundred dollars less than the Xbox one, and that got people really excited to I mean, they went nuts, and uh and I think that to me, that means that Sony has got to

be this. This is just me guessing, this is my opinion, but I think Sony has to be taking a loss on those consoles. They have to be selling them at a loss and hoping to make up the money in game sales. But I can't imagine that because there's not that much difference between the PS four and the Xbox one when you get down the square wise, and I mean I always forget. You know, the last generation console

came out in two five. That's a really long time ago. Well, yeah, they had said that they had planned for the PS three to have a ten year lifespan, like a from a life cycle as far as development goes. So uh, you know, this just says that they're going to again continue to develop for the p S three, just like Microsoft is going to continue you to develop for the

Xbox three sixty. So um, I did hear that they're putting off the game streaming that they talked so much about it their last press conference until Yeah, that's there's still a question about that. I think I think the gamers really gave Sony a big pass on on that. But it's um, you know, that is something that there's still questions about, and there weren't a whole lot of answers. It was more like, we're still not ready to talk about this. It'll be ready in another you know, year,

So there's still some questions to answer. But I think the combination of the lower price tag and the the throwing a bone to gamers as far as the whole media thing is concerned, and also you don't have to

have a persistent Internet connection to play games. You know, these sort of things were the things that made gamers really happy, and that's what led everyone to say that Sony quote unquote one E three and I can't disagree because, like I said, when I walked into E three, I was convinced I was going to buy an Xbox One and skip the PS four. Now I'm almost certain I will buy a p S four and I'm still pretty sure I'm going to buy an Xbox one. I'm pretty

sure i'll buy both, but I can't. I don't think I can skip the PS four now. And part of that is because I looked at some of these independent games that are only coming out for the PS four. And I am really impressed with Sony's dedication to supporting new and innovative ways of creating games, because as much as I love video games, I have to admit I'm getting a little tired of the military shooters, the zombie games,

sports games, and even the RPGs. You know, yeah, and and they and they, and they get so big and so shiny and clearly so much it's dedicated to the gorgeous artwork, and I certainly don't want to downplay the work that goes into that, because it's wonderful. However, sometimes you just really want a game that surprises you. Yeah, and well you think about some of the games that just got crazy love, like Kenda Marii Demassi. But how do you explain how do you explain to someone what

that game is? I mean, so you try to, and people just look at me like I'm from another planet. And even if you do describe that game to any accurate, accurate level, people don't get it until they pick it up and start playing it and they realize fun. Yeah, you know. And that's the thing is that Sony is getting really good at supporting that kind of development and uh, you know, I'm not trying to say that Sony is an altruistic company that has uh, that has a heart

of gold or anything. They see the value in this, They see that there is room for this kind of development and that gamers respond to it. Like the gamers didn't respond and independent scene would be non existent. Um. And again it's not to say that the Xbox doesn't support independent developers, it's just not as it's not as visible. It's you know, and both of these events, it was very clear that they wanted to leverage the big name that big names in game development that are out there,

because that makes a huge impact. I mean, it's a lot easier to win over a crowd with an established brand than it is to show off something that's that's completely new and have to hope that your audience gets it. Oh, of course, of course. I mean you put you put Milk gear up on the screen and have Keith your Severland's voice coming at you, and you put Assassin's Creed four up there, and you've got pirates. I mean, how do you how do you not respond with yea when

you see Assassin's Creed and Pirates? I said, yeah, by the way, that was one of the games I got to watch. I got to watch the game play in real time. I got to watch someone playing this game. It looked great, but they did not let people play it. If you weren't working for Sony, you were not playing that game. At least maybe they had some closed door sessions where people were able to get their hands on it,

But I was not one of those people. What was that Your experience at a lot of bits or quite a few, I mean, like, uh, watch Dogs was the same way. Um, there are some games that I could have gotten up there and played, but it would have meant doing it in front of an audience, and I don't necessarily want to have my first experience with a game being when there's four people giggling, for example. UM. Moving away from now we've covered Microsoft and Sonny, we

can talk about some of the specific games I saw. Fantasia. So Fantasia is the next game by Harmonics. That's, of course the company that did Guitar Hero and rock Band and everyone, and they did some crazy music and rhythm games before Guitar Hero and rock Band. They're known for integrating music and gameplay and making it a new experience, but they haven't come out with a game in a while. Fantasia was there game that they were showing off at

E three. They talked about they were developing other games in house, but they weren't ready to talk about them yet. But Fantasia is a game where you are put in the role of essentially making mouse in the movie Fantasia, you know, as the SORCER's apprentice when he's up there on that peak and he's moving his hands around in big gestures to control the way. Exactly that's you. They play music and what happens is uh. They showed off

a couple of different examples. The person doing the demo showed off Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and which is exactly what you would expect to see in Fantasia. But but what happens is you stand and the Connect is what this is for the Xbox three, six and the Xbox one.

The Connect picks up your motions and there's a little indicator on the screen that shows you what direction you need to swipe with your arm, and then there's a little dot or a little uh figure that moves across the screen and when it intersects with that line, that's when you make the motion. So it's a rhythm game in the sense that you need to time it out. When the dot hits the motion, that's when you make the motion, and things like sweeping your arms to the left,

to the right, up and down, or pushing forward. And this would control the volume of the music like a essentially the vocals. So if you started missing stuff, then the volume starts to go down when you're hitting it, the volumes going up until it reaches where it needs

to be. And then you could also do things like at certain parts of the song, control what style of music is being played, so you can either go with the original composition right so the Queen's original cut, or in the in the version of Queen, you could also choose a hard rock version so it suddenly has a lot more guitar and drums in it, or you can choose an orchestral version, so suddenly you've got strings and horns.

And you get to do this throughout the game. And not only does it change the nature of the music that's playing as you're playing the game, it's still the same song, but it changes the arrangement in the nature of it, it would also change the game play because each version would have a slightly different set of motions

that were associated with that. So one of them might have more moments where you have to push forward with your hands, and another one might have when it has you moving your hands more like a conductor, you know. So it all depends on and again you would you would mix the song in various ways, so you would have, like in the case of Bohemian rhapsty which I believe is approximately forty seven minutes long, you would have the opportunity to do this multiple times before the song is over.

Um and it also would give you a chance to manipulate things like a guitar solo. You would get to a point where a symbol would show up on the screen and it would be like a cube or a pyramid, and each line of that cube would be represented by a motion. And if you hit all the different lines, like if you were able to hit all the motions that came up in a sequence, kind of like you know, Guitar Hero had the hero moment where you would move the guitar and suddenly you're playing like a crazy person.

Uh solo, It's called a solo crazy person. Brian May a crazy person. So it would come up with this point where you could manipulate the sound by putting both hands forward and moving them apart or closer together, and you could or even tilting one hand forward in one hand back, and you could change the nature of the sounds, so you can make it. It's almost like a wah wah pedal with a guitar, and you could change the

way the solos sounds. And after you were done, that modified version that you had just modified in real time would play in the background for the for the next part of the song, so you would still hear your version of the guitar solo playing playing yourself. So it's really kind of interesting. Again, I don't know how it holds up as a full game. Like thet For a few minutes, it was very cute and I wanted to do it, but not at the expense of my dignity.

Uh So I didn't get up there, although like I kind of wish I had because I saw what the next song was that the person the next person chose, which was uh some nights by fun, and I would have had a lot of fun just going orchestral through that whole song. Like I just want to hear the orchestral version, this kettle kettle drums and violence all the way through. Um, but it was it did look like it was fun. I just don't know again how it holds up over a full game. Then again, maybe it's

not meant to be a full game experience. Like you know, if you play Guitar Hero, you might play four or five songs and then say all right, I'm done. Sure, sure, I've I've I've never played all the way through rock Band. I love playing it, you know it party kind of situations with a small group of friends. But yeah, yeah, So that that was one example I saw where I could have gotten hands on if I will hands off in a way because it's connect but if I really

wanted to, but I did not. Other games, I saw Wolfenstein, the next Wolfenstein game. I did get a hands on with that. Um it's Wolfenstein. It's Wolfenstein with an alternate history where uh the Nazis one World War two and have subjugated essentially all of Europe including UH, including London, and um they have these crazy mech like robots and stuff that are making it even more difficult for your b. J. Blaskowitz character to kick Nazi butt, but um, it looked

like the acting they had in the game. They showed a cut scene and the acting was phenomenal, like, not just from the voice actors and they were very good, but the modeling they did for the faces looked incredibly convincing, like you could see subtle motions like a person, the way a person tilted their head or the way their eyes moved. That gave it a much more realistic and the difference between acting for a camera and acting for

a stage kind of thing. Yeah, and it and it also didn't feel too uncanny valley ish, like you didn't have or at least for me, I didn't feel creeped out by it, at least not any more creeped out than having a evil Nazi person in Terrygate. Me that it's kind of creepy on its own. But then I also got to play Elder Scrolls online for a while. Yeah, game is going to be amazing. I had so much

fun with it. I I I mean, I guess since it is a multiplayer game, there's always the opportunity for other players to make your life miserable when you're online. But the game itself look like it looked like the kind of stuff you should expect from Elder Scrolls. It was you know, engaging world, beautiful graphics, wonderful music. Um, you know, the kind of stuff you would expect. You know. Obviously a very deep and an established world in that game, and I got to see this is all from Bethesda.

I also got to see a game called The Evil Within, which is a survival horror game where, um, it definitely looked like it had been inspired by movies like Hostile and saw a lot of hardcore gore and and torture kind of stuff going on in it. Not my cup of tea, yeah, but it certainly follows the other tenants of survival horror. You know, limited resources. Uh, you're trying mostly to survive, so fighting is not always the best choice.

In fact, often it means that you should be sneaking around and running away rather than confronting the things that will kill you because they are way too strong for whatever you happen to have at your disposal. It looks like it would be a very intense game for people who like that sort of thing. It's just not for me. But I didn't get a chance to actually get a

hands on on that. You know. I saw other games like World of Tanks, which is known online as a kind of crazy tank based game, is now coming to the Xbox three sixty. I also saw World of war Planes, which is a warplane version of that same sort of thing, as well as World of Warships, so that it's very arcady kind of version of these sort of military games. So they're not at all meant to be realistic, but they are. They do look exciting and the people playing

them had a lot of fun. Disney Infinity, which was taking a really interesting approach. Disney is probably best known in the merchandizing world as being incredibly smart in the sense that you know, Disney makes tons of money in merchandising, right, So like like if you've ever been to Disney World or Disneyland or on a Disney cruise, anyplace that Disney owns,

you know about pins, right. You collect these pins and you can trade them, and uh, some of them are really rare, and it's kind of like you can only get from a from a specific character in a specific parker from a specific store and exactly exactly well, Disney Infinity kind of takes this sort of approach but applies it to video games in the sense that there's a little base station that you attached to your gaming console, and the space station has three elements to it where

you can put two characters and one overlay on this station. So the two characters represent player one and player two, and you can buy the figures that you put on this on this base um and Mick mixing up any way you want. So if you want to have uh, Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc. As one of your characters, and you want to have Captain Hook from Peter Pan

as your other character, you could do that. You could buy those two figures and you put them together and suddenly they're together in this game and they interact together. You can also get overlays for from the various movies, and they will also be selling play sets, which will allow you to incorporate the play set in a virtual format into the game. So you're talking about a license to print money. There's they're gonna be selling, you know.

It's it's both a collectible in the sense of someone who is also yeah yeah, and the video game element also allows the player to create their own games within this this virtual sandbox world. So if you bought all the playsets. You could if you wanted to just create a virtual representation of Disneyland accurately, like lay it out

the way Disneyland is laid out. Or you could create a fantasy world where you've got Cinderella's castle next to Captain Hook's ship, which is next to uh stitches spaceship, or you know, all this kind of stuff. You can make the match all you like, and you could create different kinds of game, like you could create a racing game where you could create a sneak game like a uh, you know, some sort of thief like roguelike game, where you could create a um uh beat him up game.

Like there's all sorts of stuff you can do, and the tools are all within the game itself. Now, this is something we've seen in the past with things like the game Trials, which is a motorcycle game, but it's got a crazy amount of customization where you can build your own game types to the point where you would never know it was a motorcycle game. Because the game types that people have made, they've been able to recreate

other types of games using the tools within Trials. And I've seen these videos and I think I do not know how you got that engine to do this, right, same sort of thing we saw that, you know, Disney Infinity was one example, but there are other examples as well, including games like Spark, where it gives the the ability for players to create their own types of gameplay, their own quests, their own challenges, share them online with other people so that they can write them out, or they

can even take a design and tweak it and change it around and re upload it. It's sort of this open web kind of approach to video game design, but within the context of a specific engine. Right, So Disney Infinity obviously is not going to interact with the Sparks stuff, but Clear and you know, like like whatever Forage version, I'm sure Halo five will have. Yeah, So so we've seen this in the past. Obviously Forge is a great example.

We've seen these tools and and even the States way back, right, I mean even way back before the whole console version. If you go back to things like Duke Newcomb or you go to uh Quake or Unreal Tournament, you know you had map editors where you could build these things yourself. Well, now that's becoming more and more of a standard, and in fact we're seeing games that are being developed specifically with that in mind, not just as here's another thing you can do, but this is the thing this does.

And that was very interesting to me to think of that as a future for gaming, where you know, you say, we've given and you a version of game developer of tools that have a very easy interface compared to you know, coding line by line. Now it's your job to make the game. And that was and that's that's that's that's fascinating, especially since so many people are getting interested in programming

these days. Yeah, and you can never predict what someone will create, right, I mean, like, you know, a developer will have a very specific idea of what they need to do and how they need to accomplish it, and then they release this out to everyone and they think, huh, I wonder if you can do this thing with these tools, and the developer never even considered it, and then next thing you know, you've got the next most amazing modification ever.

So it's kind of encouraging innovation and design, which was really cool. Yeah. Were there any other pieces of equipment there that you saw that we're really cool? Yeah, I totally forgot about that. Yes, I saw the Oculus Rift and I got to play with that did so this is this is the headset that has two screens, one for each eye creates that sense of depth by giving you the the illusion of depth. You know, your eyes are seeing two different scenes and then your brain combines

the two into a full picture. And I got to use the Oculus Rift at the Indecade area. Indicade is an organization that supports independent developers. They said they get a lot of support from Sony, so that kind of goes back into what we were saying before. And so I got to play with one of those for the first time, and it was it was really really cool. I mean, it was just an interesting experience to have

this true first person view. In this case, it was a independent game that allowed me to walk around these um giant asteroid like structures. And I remember I was walking around the first one and I was like, well, I've walked around this whole thing and I don't see anything else I can do. And I looked down off the edge and I saw another one further down. I was like, well, let's find out what happens if I

walk off the edge. So I walked off the edge and I fell and landed on the next one, and then I discovered this weird little platform with this glowing thing, and I touched the glowing thing, and then suddenly, I you know, I wasn't sure what else had happened, if anything else had happened. I just continued walking around that asteroid, but there was nothing below it, and I was like, huh, I don't know what else I can do. Have I already reached the limit that I screw up, And I thought, well,

you know what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna walk off the agency. What happens. The glowing thing I touched turned out to be a little uh platform maker, So if you if you step off into thin air, a platform appears and suddenly you're walking again. So then I started building a pathway to other asteroids that were way out of reach when I first started. And the interesting thing was for me, it was a game about discovery, figuring out what I could do, What were the limitations

of this world? What were my abilities? I kept coming across other stuff and I would pick it up and I'm like, I don't even really know what this does. And it would take me a while just through experimentation to figure it out, a little bit like like missed, but even more open in a way. Yeah. And in fact, I talked to the guy afterwards, the guy who developed it.

He was he was the one who was guiding me through, and I said, it was really interesting, you know, having to learn like I saw that there was something interesting there, but I had no idea what it could do, and it would take me a while to figure it out. But once I figured it out, it was really interesting. It's like, yeah, that's exactly the experience I want people

to have. Everyone who's behind you is not having that experience because they watched you play, so they know already what these things do because they saw you experimenting and figuring it out as but you had that moment where you're just oh, yeah and uh. So I was very happy that I was the first person in line, so I got to have the pure experience cool oh and uh. And then there was another one I have to talk about, Sony Move, Sony Move. When this was a game called Joust, Lauren,

we need this game for the office. We need the game for the office because the competition would be insane. So Joust had nothing to do with a television, all right, you have the sony move. You are not looking at a display, so you know the sony move looks like a little wand with a ball at the and has a colorful led in it that can be different colors. Each person's wand would be lit up as a different color. Mine was orange, and it behaved as if it were

a candle. And there's music playing on the system, so you did have speakers playing uh music, and the music plays at different tempos, and when's playing at a slow speed, your candle is very susceptible to going out if you move too quickly, and it'll it'll sputter out, just like a real candle would. When the music picks up tempo, you can suddenly move a lot more quickly. And the object of the game is to extinguish the light on

the other players moves before yours gets extinguished. So you are trying to hit to bat the other person's controller or to make them move their hand away fast enough to make it go out while you're preserving the light on yours. We had four people playing. I was second to last, so I survived all the way up until the very end. UH. And it was so much fun and I could just imagine the chaos that would erupt.

I'm not sure that I want Holly Fried to body check me, so I don't would take Well, that's the thing is that she would just she would just sacrifice herself, right, she'd be like screw it. Boom and uh. And you know, it was funny because as your as your candle was starting to become vulnerable, you would feel it vibrate and so you have to look at your light to make sure it was still on because if it went out, it would vibrate enough until you you're out of the game.

And then you know, on our system, you would remove yourself from play. But anyway, again a very independently developed game has nothing to do with traditional video games, but was a really interesting way of using the hardware and a new unpredictable I think from the people who made the hardware, I don't think they would have predicted this kind of gameplay. Oh that's fascinating. Um I you mentioned something about SpaceX. Oh yeah, yeah, SpaceX had had a

presence there, as did NASA and SpaceX. What they had was they had the dragon capsule on display so you can actually see it. Yeah, took a picture of it. Um so I got to see the space X capsule up there, and they had representatives who would tell you about the program, and that was really cool. It's neat to see it and and it's way smaller than you know.

When when I sit there and I think about the Mars one mission that we had talked about and how they are planning on sending people up essentially using the SpaceX Dragon capsule. I took a look at that capsule and I was like, I cannot imagine being in that thing for eight to ten months to get to Mars. I mean, but it was yes, yes, So that was really cool. And NASA the thing they had was they had pictures of the next rover. It's very similar to

the Curiosity Rover. They also had a game that has been out for a while for Xbox three sixty on Xbox Live Arcade. I think it's free to play where

you use gestures as a connect game. So you use gestures to control the descent of the Curiosity Rover to the surface of Mars, and so the you know, the ideas that you're you're having to uh, you have to make the corrects that the Curiosity rover itself was making automatically, so when you have to adjust for the angle of attack that you have when you're coming in, that kind of stuff. Well, the neat thing was I taket to one of the NASA guys and he was telling me

about the next proposed mission. This is proposed and that it has not been budgeted and approved yet. But the idea is, he said, you know, we've learned about as much as we can with the sensors that we have developed on Mars. What we really need to do is actually get some samples of Mars back into our hands, really investigate them properly. So how would we do that, Well, if you're Mars one, you'd send people there. But NASA

has a different plan. Their plan is send a rover that's like the Curiosity rover, that is going to collect data and send it back just like Curiosity rover is, but it's also going to collect samples and put them into a container that can withstand well actually beyond that it gets super crazy. So the container can withstand the conditions on Mars for up to twenty years. The rover collects enough samples to fill the container, sets the container down,

rolls away. Then NASA sends a second robot. This job is to land on the surface of Mars and collect the container, then right itself and use thrusters to thrust off of Mars and go into Martian orbit. Then they send a third robot whose job it is is to go into Martian orbit and retrieve the canister and then come back to Earth. So you're talking about three different missions to accomplish this goal. So you think about how

complicated that curiosity rover landing was. They have to do that same landing again with this other rover plus two other really complex missions in order to achieve this. But they said this is the only way we could think of too, that were the most plausible way we could think of to get samples back to Earth. And when they were explaining this to me, I'm like, that is the coolest thing I have heard today. Yes, that's so exciting,

that's that's awesome. Yeah. Now, so there was a lot of stuff at E three that wasn't directly tied to video games that I was really excited about. So I'm very glad. I went that's a very savvy marketing choice, I mean, because that's absolutely the crossover demographics. Yeah, you've got You've got people who are hardcore gamers. They're also the people who think that the thing like the Curiosity Rover. They're the ones who were watching that happen live, right.

I mean I saw a lot of guys out there who were sporting the NASSA mohawks, so right, they're probably not thinking of as a NASA mohawk, but I did every time I saw it. But there were a lot of other great titles that I saw, things like titan Fall, where you're going to be a pilot that can jump into a mech and then uh do some serious damage. Um. There were you know, other zombie games. Plants versus Zombies had a big presence out there. That's coming back for

some more plant zombie fun. My wife will be thrilled about that. She loves those games. I like them too. I shouldn't say that it's just my wife. I mean I like them too. She just loves them, um, you know. And there were a lot of other examples out there too, though hardly anyone was talking about Nintendo at all, which is kind of sad. I mean, when you think about Nintendo's the reason why we have a video game industry right now. Because three after that video game crash, Nintendo

was the company that was able that happened. They were able to bring out bring it back from the dead. I mean the video game industry, the home video game industry was dead after Atari essentially killed it. Atari and Colico Vision and Television, the flood of all those systems, the flood of terrible games killed the industry. Nintendo was able to come back and resurrect that industry. And did you see anything from you that you were excited about. Nothing? Yeah,

I did go through the Nintendo area. I mean, they they have another Mario Kart game. They've got another you know, we you Mario game. Uh. The game's look good, but it's a lot of the same stuff I've seen a lot, you know, and the wu integration gives it some new interesting twists with when you're using the Weiu controller as the screen in it. But a lot of the games for the we you depend upon something that I don't do very often, which is have people over at my

house to play. Lauren and I are both the type of gamers who if we're playing with other people, chances are it's online right where we go on that multiplayer online mode. We don't tend to say I need three of my friends to come over so I can play Halo the way I want to play it. That's not what Yeah, that's actually my favorite thing about Halo these days is not having don't have to literally land uh Xbox,

I don't have to clean my house. You can just play. Well, now I will because now I'm going to have that connect sensor on there all the time. I don't want Microsoft thinking, Wow, what a messy place. Also, the ability to mute your friends should you have to in case someone is trash talking to an extent, you know, you can't really mute someone who's in the living room. Well, let me get you in touch with my chloroform guy

and we'll talk, all right, anything else? Uh no, No, now that we've done a chloroform joke, I think that we're I think that we're all right, well just about wrapped up. I'm glad a nat out on that one. Alright, guys. So anyways, that's the tech stuff. Look at E three. The future is going to be really interesting with video games, I think, I honestly, for my style of play, I think Microsoft is doing something very bold. I think that

there are concerns. I mean, I the DRM issue is still very much concern that, you know, you don't want anything so intrusive that it actually ends up inspiring people to pirate games. I think that there are some things that Microsoft is going to have to look at and address. That being said, I still like the idea of digital

delivery over physical media. It very much falls in line with the way I play games, so I do look forward to it, and they inescapably have a few titles that are just yeah, I mean, I gotta play Halo five. I can't not play Halo five. Um so yeah, It's not like I'm gonna abandon them. But I do understand why people are upset, and I think they're concerns are legitimate. So I don't want to give anyone that an implication. I don't want to say so An He's good, Microsoft bad.

It's way more complex than that. But I will say that I wasn't playing on buying a p S four and now I am. So if you had, if you had to make the choice today, if if they were both out today and I only had enough money to buy one of them, I'd buy the PS four. Yeah, that's yeah, well go team Go Team Sony Change. I know and and uh, I would still buy the Xbox One once I saved up enough money, you know from my paper route. Al Right, So guys, that wraps up

our discussion of the three. If you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, here's an idea, why not let us know about that? You can write us all right address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter or handle at both those locations is tech Stuff H. S. W. Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and bathans of other topics. Does it have stuff work dot com? Churches