The Vergecast - Switch 2: the good news and bad news

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Last week, The Verge's Ash Parrish got to play with the new Nintendo Switch 2. We got over our outrageous jealousy long enough to ask her all about it: what it's like to hold, how the screen looks, whether the mouse-control is any good, and much more. Ash gives us the good news, and the bad news, on everything we now know about the Switch 2. (We do talk about the price, but we recorded before the Trump administration launched its massive new tariff push — so you can consider the price even worse news than we thought.) After that, The Verge's Tom Warren joins the show to talk about Microsoft's 50th anniversary celebration, how the company has stayed so resilient for so long, and whether AI is really the next five-decade project for one of the world's biggest companies. Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (866-VERGE11, or email [e-mail]!) about how you should change your shopping habits in a tariff-filled world. It's hard to know where we'll be in a few months, but it sure doesn't look like gadgets are getting any cheaper. Further reading: The Vergecast was nominated for a Webby, which means we can win a Webby People’s Voice Award and that’s voted online by you! So we’d love your support. You can vote at the link:https://bit.ly/3DXFgpN Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on: it’s all in the games All of the Nintendo Switch 2 news, hands-ons, and trailers Donkey Kong Bananza was best in show at the Switch 2 hands-on I’m not sold on the Switch 2’s mouse-like controls Microsoft turns 50 Why I’ve covered Microsoft for 25 years How Microsoft made it through 50 years Trump’s tariffs mean you’ll pay more for all gadgets Trump’s tariffs put the iPhone in a tough spot From The Wall Street Journal: Here’s the iPhone. Here’s the iPhone With Tariffs. New Star GP, the game The General Magic documentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Clippy. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I just need to briefly, very quickly tell you about this new gaming obsession that I have. So there's this company called New Star Games. They make games like Retro Bowl and Retro Goal, which are these like old school-looking kind of Nintendo-level graphics sports games. Bowl is football, goal is soccer. There are a couple of other ones, too, but those are the best ones. I love these games. You can play them on mobile.

They're also on the Switch. and I think maybe on other consoles, but I mostly play them on my phone, sometimes with a controller, sometimes just on my phone. And they're perfect. They're these, like, very simple, totally sort of grockable

with your fingers kinds of games, but still somehow they're endlessly complex, and I could play them forever. And there's a new one called New Star GP. It's a racing game. GP stands for Grand Prix. That is like my favorite game in a very long time. It is this exact right balance of,

there's a lot to do, and you have to kind of, you have to know the tires, you have to know the conditions, you have to follow the racing line to win, like all this stuff. But the game is so very simple to play. And with racing games in particular,

that is a really, really, really hard balance to strike. GP has sort of ascended to this rare plane of, like, games I can play for as long as I have to play them. I don't hit a natural stopping point or, like, finish a thing. And I'm like, well, that was delightful.

And now I shall go do something else. I just sit down and I start playing it. And then I'm like, oh, it's been several hours. It's alarming, but it is also, like, the true sign of a great game, at least for me. I also want to know what those games are for you. I sort of immediately regret asking this, because if I have like two more of these in my life,

I'm just never going to get anything done again. But I want to know, what are the games that for you, you can like, you sit down at 2 o'clock, and you're like, I'm going to play a little bit of this game, and then suddenly it's 7, and you're like, how am I still playing this game? I didn't, how has it been five hours? Those are the games I want to know about.

Email us, vergecast to the verge.com. Call us 866 Verge11. One, I want to hear everything. Tell me everything. Anyway, that's not what we're here to do on this show today. We are going to do two things. First, we're going to talk to Ash Parrish about the Nintendo Switch 2. She was there.

She was in New York last week. She's seen the Switch 2. She's played the Switch 2. She did the weird mousey thing. She has a lot of thoughts. And I caught her like immediately after the event because I wanted her sort of first immediate reactions to using the Switch 2. And she had some good ones. So we're going to talk about that.

Also, we're going to talk to Tom Warren, who was there for Microsoft's Facebook's 50th anniversary celebration last week, which was interesting. There were protesters. Steve Ballmer was weird. There's a lot going on. So we're going to talk to Tom about that. And also just kind of take stock of Microsoft as it enters its sixth decade as a company. Also, we have a hotline question about tariffs that I'm very excited about.

This is a question we've heard a lot of. And I think the answer is both really simple and really complicated. So we're going to get into that. All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I have to go play GP again. I have to play one more game. I'm going to do one more race, I promise, just one, and then we're going to podcast.

This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports.

And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938.

This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Ash Parish is here. Hi, Ash. Hi. You have had a wild last couple of days. We're recording this early, so it's Thursday, April 3rd right now.

We're recording this well ahead because I wanted to get you to talk about switch stuff while it's still fresh in your mind. But it seems like you're now like 30 hours into two. deep into the Switch world. That's fair? That's very fair. Yeah. I did sleep a little bit, but not that much. Yeah, that sounds right. So, okay, so what I want to do is, I want to kind of go through the good and the bad of what we know about the Switch 2, right? We talked when we first got some information and there was still a lot we didn't know. We know a lot more now. We talked a bunch about it on Friday show, but I'm really curious there's, we got a lot of games, we got a lot of spec announced, and so we got a lot of, like, weird new ideas. about things from Nintendo that I want to talk about. So what I asked you to do is basically, like, give me some good news and give me some bad news. And we're going to go through, like,

I want to talk about some of the stuff we're excited about and some of the stuff that we're worried, concerned, confused, have feelings about. Let's start with the good news. What is some of the stuff from the announcement that you are, like, particularly excited about? The good news is that upgrading your switch one to a switch two makes sense. I just remember I got the chance to play Breath of the Wild on the Switch 2

and I had the thought like, oh, this is what this game should have looked like eight years ago. Oh, interesting. Yeah, the Switch 2 is fulfilled. It feels like it's fulfilling the promise of the Switch 1. Like we all tricked ourselves into believing like, oh, this game looks great on the Switch 1. No, it actually looks like what it's supposed to on the Switch 2. And it's like, yeah, I'm not a person who early adopts consoles at all. Like, I just don't care about them all that much. But this is this seeing Breath of the Wild specifically. And even Mario Kart World on the Switch 2 made me like, yeah, this is a day one purchase for me. Wow.

Was it just like bigger, better screen, just does the job? It's the whole package. It's the bigger, better screen. It's the frame rate improvements. It's the HDR. It's the 1080P. It's all of that bundled together. Like, we know that Nintendo doesn't, is.

not the spec hound. It's not a big deal if they have like tarifflops of whatever. Like, because people still buy and play their games. And but now like seeing this is like, there's a reason why Xbox and PlayStation are so focused on letting us know that you're going to get the crispiest graphics and textures. And now that Nintendo has finally like gotten to, you know, the base level of that, it's like, okay, yeah, this, this feels like something that's supposed to compete, at least with a PS4 and an Xbox 1, if not the new consoles out right now.

I just feel like both things can be true at the same time, right? Like, Nintendo always says, you know, people don't love our games because they are the highest graphical fidelity and they do the best ray tracing. There are more important things about building great games than just that. And like, of course that's true. Yes. Unquestionably, I

agree with that. And yet, wouldn't it be better if it looked better? Both things can be true. Not only look better, but like play better too. Like, I remember at the, you know, now that we're at the end of the Switch's life cycle that some of these games that are coming out for the original Switch, like, it shows the age of the console, like, with the 30 FPS and you can see it chugging and you can see like the little tears on the edge of models and things like that, but seeing like a buttery smooth 60 up to 120 FPS on the Switch 2,

it's like, oh, okay, I get it now. Yeah, that is very exciting. And I think one of the things I've been wondering, like I have not touched the thing yet and you have is it's it is a much larger piece of equipment right but it's it seems like it's worth it my worry has been like i actually think the size of the switch is is if not exactly right like pretty close it's comfortable to hold in one hand or in two hands for a long time it's like it fits in most places it feels good and so i was like oh no if they made this thing like a lot bigger maybe it kills one of the things that i really like about it but it sounds like maybe the tradeoffs worth it even if it does do that.

Yeah, it was really hard to get like a good feel for like what the console actually will feel like out in the wild because Nintendo had them like weighed down with those anti-theft anchors that make everything super heavy. So I couldn't like... Like being in an Apple store trying to... Yeah, exactly. So I couldn't get a good idea of like what this feels like, but I don't mind the bigger switch. Like it's not big enough to where it like registers like, oh, this is a much bigger machine.

Like it just feels the same to me. Okay. And same with the controllers and the joycons. They just feel the same. They didn't do anything ergonomically different there. Okay. That all feels like what I would have hoped for. I've been saying all along, and I think you've said this too, that like, give me better switch.

Don't give me wild new ideas about the future of gaming. And I'll be very happy. And that's exactly what they did. Yeah, I'm glad. All right. What else? What other good news came out of this for you? I want to talk about games, too.

Okay. I was going to say, like, the games are also a good news. So there were a lot of the games that you saw. in the direct were at the presentation. You can get a hands on there. So you had, like, Hades 2 was there, and Street Fighter 6, and we got to try some GameCube games for Nintendo Switch online, so Wind Waker was there. We also got some of the new Nintendo Switch exclusive games like the Super Mario Party

Jambery TV expansion, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Metroid Prime 4, the 3V3 basketball game, Dragon Drive was also there to demo. So there was a healthy mix of games that we got to try. And playing the games myself and talking to all my journalists friends that were there, I'm pretty sure like the best in show was Donkey Kong Bonanza, which is... Yes. Yeah, which is exciting because, you know, we would have thought that Mario Kart World would have been everyone's number one. And to be clear, it's up there.

It's definitely number two. But everyone that I spoke to when I asked them, what was your favorite game? It was Donkey Kong Bonanza. And it is... It's this... cute game that feels like it will fill the hole that Mario leaves behind because we've got this new Nintendo console coming out, but no game dedicated to like Nintendo's big dude. Like, there's no new 3D Mario, and we haven't had one since Super Mario Odyssey. I mean, we can quibble

about Bowser's Fury or whatever if you want, but I'm not going to do that right now. So, like, I was thinking, like, I had on my personal bingo sheet, like, okay, they're going to announce the 3D Mario here, and they didn't. And I'm like, well, that's odd. I mean, it's not out of character for Nintendo, but I'm thinking it's odd because it has been so long since we've gotten a brand new, not DLC of a 3D Mario game, and still we don't, but Donkey Kong Bonanza

kind of like fills that hole. I play this and I'm thinking, oh, this is Donkey Kong Odyssey. Like, that's what this feels like. But not like, you know, Mario Odyssey with a Donkey Kong colored campaign. It's different enough, but still

feels like that quintessential Mario platforming experience. I'm like, This is pretty gas. I'm really excited about it. This statement is going to age me in a very specific way. But Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo is probably still to this day in my top three most played video games of all time. It's a great game.

It should be. It's so good. Like, I love that game to pee. I could probably still play most of that game with my eyes closed. And the idea that it is still kind of on the level of like the most important Nintendo characters, just that fact alone, like the fact that it was the last thing in the announcement and the signal that that sends about how much Nintendo cares about this game and this character and how much it matters to the ecosystem, that alone made me so happy. It's like Donkey Kong

is like so back in the best way. Oh yeah, we are so back. And he's got like a brand new character design that's really fun and expressive. And I'm looking forward to playing more of that game. It was a lot of fun. That's awesome. I'm also really excited just to hear that you could play that many games. I feel like we've been burned a lot recently by coming soon games and in the coming months games and, you know, in development games and everybody who like announces

and then announces and then announces games. So the fact that these are like done games or at least done enough games that you could play them, I feel like speaks very well to what the next few months are going to look like here. My cynical thought before I got into the event yesterday was that we were just going to get a bunch of Switch 1 games on the Switch 2. Like, I didn't think they would have the breadth of games that they did have there. I was quite surprised.

Yeah, I'm psyched about that. Oh, do you want to know a fun little insider secret that I thought was really funny? So one of the games that they announced at the direct was a switchport of Hogwarts Legacy, and that went over like a lead balloon. Like, nobody caved crap when we were watching it all together in the presentation room. I didn't even notice that. Yeah, exactly. And then when we got onto, like, the demo floor, like there were some stations set up to demo Hogwarts Legacy,

and nobody touched it and I thought it was the funniest thing. Like throughout the time I was there, it was empty. I love that. Just giant crowds around everything except two stations. Yes, exactly.

That's very good. What else? Are there other good news? Other surprising excitement coming out of the announcement? So one of the things that I thought on the game side that was like really interesting

that when I first saw it, I had like kind of like a lukewarm response to it, but then when I saw it in action, I'm like, actually, this works, is the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which is the game that you, I guess Nintendo made to, like, introduce you to the Switch 2. So it tells you, like, how it works and all these different new features with a bunch of minigames is very much Nintendo's Astros Playroom. And getting my hands on it, it's actually really cool and informative.

Like, we don't get to see very much how the sausage gets made. We have, like, Mark Serney talking about PS5 taraflops and things like that. your eyes cross and you're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. None of these words are in the Bible. But seeing Nintendo really break that down with how their joycons work or, you know, what, explaining frame rates. Like there was a tutorial or a little quiz or little info thing that explained, like, here's the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS and 120 FPS. And it's something like you know intellectually and you can see the difference, but actually having a technical explanation for why 30 FPS looks different than 60 FPS. was like really informative and I really appreciated that.

So that was one of those like little weird stand that's like, oh, okay, this is actually better than I gave it credit for it. So kudos to Nintendo on that. Yeah, that's cool. And I was actually going to ask you about that because there was some surprise maybe at the fact that this is a paid game, that's like you're going to make me pay to like play to like play the manual for the console. But even just describing it as like Nintendo's version of Aster's Playroom, it kind of makes that make a lot more sense. Yeah. I still think it should maybe be free, but that's neither here nor there. The way that we, you know, set this up, you told me, like, give me three good things and three bad things.

Nintendo Switch Welcome Tour is on my good and my bad side. And the bad part is because it is not a pack-in game like Astros Playroom was is something that you have to pay for. And that just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, that's very fair. All right. So let's switch to some bad news. Okay. I have a couple that I want to ask you about specifically.

But give me your list first. So the Astros Playroom shenanigans of it all. Yeah, the Nintendo Switch Tour is the bad news because there's no rhyme or reason that that is a paid game and just not included. It is interesting. The other bad news, which I have a feeling is going to be on the top of yours and everyone's list is the price. Like, what are we doing here, folks? Like, I know what we're doing here, and I think we have a good idea why we're doing what we're doing here. But holy crap, you're going to ask people to pay an additional $150 for this thing.

And then the thing with that is, is you're actually going to ask people to pay $500 for this because you're going to want the bundle that bundles Mario Kart World and the Nintendo Switch 2 because that game by itself will be $80 of God's own dollars. And that is ridiculous. You get a $30 like price cut if you buy it bundled and it just doesn't make economical sense to do it other than that. And then they're making a limited amount of it. When it's done is done. They're not going to do that anymore according to Nintendo. They might. it would make sense for them too,

but they said once they run out, like, we're not going to restock this. So you've got to get your pre-orders in. God, I just probably started a rush on Nintendo Switch to Pre-Oorders. I'm sorry. I may or may not have already filled out the form that promised to alert me when pre-rers are available. Okay, I confess I'm slightly torn on the price

because on the one hand, it is much more expensive. I think I expected it to be a little more expensive, but I would have probably pegged the price at like, I don't know, 379 instead of 450. But, you know, whatever, inflation,

tariffs, the world is chaos. Some of this is probably Nintendo's doing. Some of it is probably not. Consoles in general have gotten more expensive over time. So, like, I sort of understand. I do think the combination of substantially more expensive console and substantially more expensive

games is the thing. Yes, normalizing $70 and $80 games, I think is a real, real, real bummer. It's turbo bad. The one-two punch is really hard, and a lot of families, especially now with everything that's going on with these brand-new tariffs that hit just today, it's going to make a lot of families, like people are already choosing between, you know, buying their groceries and doing other things.

And overwhelmingly, people are going to buy their groceries. This is going to do nothing but hurt those families that buy these consoles. It's just, that's a tough, tough ask from Nintendo right now. but everybody's asking more money from all of us everywhere. So I understand it. Well, and I think what's weird is it puts Nintendo into the kind of like direct competition with Sony and Microsoft that it has always kind of enjoyed not doing. Right. Like Nintendo has just all, like, we make fun of Nintendo because like the gaming business is over here and Nintendo is just like all the way over there doing whatever Nintendo's doing.

And they're like inching closer to this other sort of messy, loot boxy. take all of your money no matter what world in a way that I don't love. The funny thing is, is they completely leaped over the competition because they're advertising $80 games. Like, we just blew past 70, all the way to 80. And I'm hearing some places, like, overseas are going to charge $90, $90 for the physical edition of Mario Kart World. And my eyes kind of bugged out of my head. Like, yeah, back in, you know, 1999, we were paying $120 for Nintendo 64 cartridges, but holy crap, like we've had the $60 has been normalized for a good long time. And to see a $30 price jump all at once is just going to create a sticker shock

for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, this goes from being like a thing you can buy a console and a couple of games for like a good Christmas present down to like you're going to run this thing into like $1,000 without trying very hard. Yeah. And the other thing attached to the games, not necessarily their price that makes this suck even more, is that some of these physical games won't even have the game data on them, but they will be required to be inserted into the switch to run the games. I'm seeing things called game keys where you actually put the cartridge in. You still have to download the game online, but you still need the cartridge to run it.

I'm like, what are we doing here? Like, this sucks. Like, I'm already planning to go fully physical for the switch to because I am seeing the shenanigans that these console companies are getting up to with like revoking digital game access and things like that. Like I have been completely physical media pilled, but now you're making it so that the physical cartridges don't even have the games on them anymore. You're just selling us plastic with just a little bit of thing that we still need. Like, this is terrible for game preservation, first of all, and it's anti-consumer. It doesn't make any sense. I hate it.

Yeah, so the game key thing was actually one of the ones I was going to ask you about because I think I just don't understand what Nintendo is trying to do here. Because... I have no idea. It is one thing to, like, you know, have digital games that are DRM'd in some way. Like, sure, whatever. And I think we're all sort of becoming increasingly physical media-pilled as a result, like, watching all of the stuff that happens to emulators and the way that games go away

and the way that all of this stuff is just being lost to time over time. Like, you should buy cartridges. I am fully pro-carriages. I kind of don't get the point of the game key thing. I don't either. I can't see it. Except if Nintendo is trying to just be more in control of everything. The idea is like we've seen Nintendo crackdown on emulators. We've seen Nintendo really start to push to stop people playing its games and it doesn't want to play its games.

And maybe this is just yet another way to do that. But I don't know. It feels like there has to be something I'm missing here. Or this just sucks. So my boss Andrew Webster is probably sitting right now in a meeting with Doug Bowser. and that is definitely one of the questions on his list. So hopefully Doug will give us a not mealy-malled answer for that. I don't have a ton of hope on that.

But if they do, if we do get a real answer, we'll come back and talk about it. What else is on your bad news list? The last thing on my bad news list is actually the mouse controls. So the big new gimmicky thing that Nintendo is bundling with this console is the fact that you can turn your joycon into a mouse. And I hate it. I hate it right now. I didn't see anything there that made me think, oh, this game is why this future makes sense. So they had Dragon Drive, which is the 3V3 basketball thing, and it's kind of cute to put the joycons like on a table and do like this motion like you're pushing a wheelchair.

But it is so awkward to hold in your hand like this. It's just... You basically like you pull the joycons out, sort of turn them sideways and stick them down on the, okay. And this is not a natural position to hold a joycon in because there's a reason why we design mice to be flat. So your hand can kind of like rest in this neutral position as you move it around. And the joycons as mice don't fit that natural neutral position profile. So I don't have any issues with like carpal tunnels or like joint pain in my shoulders or whatever. But just doing this for a little bit, like I could feel like pain and tension start to like aggravate my arm.

And I'm like, if you have any kind of like wrist issues, like this is going to play hell on your joints. It's painful. I didn't like it at all. And I just, I don't, I don't see it. Like, there's nothing that made me go, oh, this is good. And I tried it again for a Metroid Prime 4. And one of the things that annoyed me about that was that they have, you know, the two different control schemes. You could either play it like with gyro controls with the split joycons one in each hand, or you could split it where one is a mouse and one joycon is like free in your hand. And nothing with like a traditional controller setup. Like, I didn't have that option, or at least at the station I was at, I didn't have that option. And I wish I did because I think I would have enjoyed the demo a lot more. And it's just, you've got lock on still, but like I was just having a hard time trying to like figure this out and aim and move. And it seems like at least with mouse controls in Metroid Prime 4 that there's going to be a steep learning curve to get that right in order to play the game effectively. But then I realized like, y'all played the first three Metroid Primes on the damn Wii using

waggle phases, so it's like, oh shit, we're just doing that shit again. Well, so that's kind of what I wonder is I look at the mouse controls, and I can't decide if that's just a thing Nintendo occasionally does, and all really all these gaming platforms do, which is they just sort of invent a weird thing that you can build into your game if you want to, and no one really does, and eventually they phase it out. It's like the move controllers or the connect or whatever. Like, everybody has tried to come up with some new gimmick, and they're like, maybe this will be fun for your game.

And there are a few games that, like, really make use of it, but for the most they're just not part of the system at all. Or if this is a thing Nintendo is going to try to make like an actual sort of first class part of how people play Nintendo games. And as somebody who mostly sits here at my computer with my switch plugged in into the dock with a full-on controller, that would be a real bummer for me. Yeah, I have a feeling that Nintendo is going to make this,

like, their flagship, like feature of this, console in addition to like the chat and the video chat thing that was also announced. But whatever they have right now is not there to really demonstrate this is the vision that we have for this. Like you've got drag and drive, which is essentially a, you know, a paid tech demo for this, for this function. But that didn't really wow me or sell me on it. But I just not a faith, but I have this inkling because Nintendo at the end of the day, they kind of really, sometimes they really do

what they're doing in terms of like hardware and gimmicking and stuff like that. Because, you know, the Wemoat was, you know, we all complained about wackophysics, but at the end of the day, that was kind of fun. Not implemented all the time in the best ways, but it was still fun and unique and innovative. And I have a feeling this will be too. We just need to give them time to cook and figure out something that really makes it pop. I do worry about just the ergonomics of it on that front. It's not good. Right, because I think you're right that when Nintendo is like, when they're all in on something, they're right a lot. Right. Like it's usually when it's, kind of weird is when Nintendo is just like, here's a thing kind of off to the side, do what you want

with it. But when Nintendo is like, this is how we play games now, it's usually right, right? Like the DS universe is like that that's one version of that where they're like, this is how you do it. And it was pretty right. But just the sheer like what it feels like to, even just looking at like pictures of people's hands trying to hold the joycons on it, it just doesn't look right. It's not. It's awkward. Your hand isn't meant to do that. The joycon is too small. So you're fingers kind of curl around the back and then you get like this claw hand situation versus something where you can just lay your hands out like completely flat like this on a mouse. It just does not feel good.

So the idea is either they will figure out something that will make this work or Nintendo's about to pump out a bunch of accessories that you can buy that actually makes the mouse make sense. Fair. Yeah. There's definitely a there's like a holster you could make for that thing that would make it a lot more workable. Yeah. Like we're about to get those little, remember those little plastic diapers we used to wrap the Wii modes in or whatever.

We're about to get something like that for those joycons. A hundred percent. Okay, I have two more things that I want to know if they're good news or bad news and then I'm going to let you go. First thing is the Switch 2 is kind of obsessed with the GameCube. There's a GameCube controller for the Switch 2. There's a bunch of GameCube games coming. It's like this is a real GameCube asance happening with this console. Is that good news for bad?

news. It's a little bit of both. The GameCube has not been adequately represented on the Nintendo Switch online offerings, so that's good news. I mean, I know a lot of people are really excited about having Soul Calibur 2 with Link in it available to play again. But I personally, my pet tinfoil hat theory is that Nintendo got really tired of a bunch of people being like, where is the Win Wakeer remaster? And I'm like, best I can do is just give you WinWaker again. and you're going to pay $80 for it. That's fair. Yeah, and I think the GameCube is always very funny to me

because in my own gaming experience, I really jumped straight from the N64 to the Wii. So the GameCube was just never quite in my world. But I sort of feel like everybody loves the GameCube in retrospect more than they actually, like, loved it when they owned it. Yes, I think that's correct. But it is also like the true old head gamers are the ones who seem to love the GameCube the most.

Which is weird because they're, that, well, it is old, but it's not old head, right? Like, oh, that's just so weird to say. Like, I was a, I think I was a teenager when the N64 came out. And you're right. Like, my mind completely glosses over the GameCube and I went right from Nintendo 64 to the Wii. But some of those games are really fun. Like, we've got a new Kirby Air Ride game. Like, wasn't that a GameCube game? So, yeah, we're, I guess that's where they are as, you know, they're going back in their history and now it's time for the GameCube to come back because they've already done the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo. They've got some Wii stuff and now it's like, okay, yeah,

we got to go back and get the GameCube and bring that up to speed too. Yeah, that's fair. I have heard a bunch of people who are very excited just to have F0GX back, which like, sure, kudos. I'm happy for all of you. Okay, last one. This console is really into video chat, like game chat in particular, but specifically video chat. Good news or bad news? Good news. Yeah? Yeah.

This is one of the things. So you know that comic where it's like, you know, it's a hot guy knocking on a lady's like cubicle and she's like, hey there. And the lady's like, oh, aren't you cute? And then it's like a less attractive guy who's like, hey there. And she's like, human resources. This is the Nintendo doing that is like the same thing between the Connect and the video chat. So like the Connect is like human resources, hello what? But now that Nintendo's doing it is like, oh, okay.

Yeah, this is cool. I get it. are so many years late, but they are executing on this so much better. It's just like they can't keep getting away with it, and yet they are. It does these really cool things, like, where you can put your body in a game, like in the Super Mario Party Jamboree TV expansion. It takes a picture of you, and it puts you in the game, and you can do all kinds of weird, cool things that look cool that families are just going to love. I can look at that and see, like, yep, families with young kids are going to have a blast.

with this. And, you know, one of the things that we were talking about here at the verge was like, oh, we can do meetings on this now. Like, let's hold like our weekly stand-up meeting and then switch to video chat. Like, and that's something that you could do. And honestly, it's a really cool idea and I want to do that. Like, I think that would be great to, you know, I'm playing Zelda, whatever. And, you know, it's time to have a meeting with my boss and I can just hit the button and be like, hey, you know, working on this review right now and you can see me playing in the background. I just think that's cool. I totally buy it.

It's just cool when Nintendo does it. When everybody else does it, it's like, ugh. But when Nintendo does it, it's cool. I'm sorry, it's just the double standard. That's fair. And I'm with you on it, except I think the only part of it that makes me nervous is, I think Nintendo is one of the last companies doing a really great job of building games to play by yourself. I feel like everyone else has gone to like everything is a giant world.

Everything is open. You're supposed to everything is multiplayer all the time no matter what. And then Nintendo is just like, do you want to play Mario Tennis by yourself for six hours? Like, here you go. Let's do that. And I worry, like, I think I'm probably overshooting my fear that video chat leads to the death of one-player games. But that is the thing I worry about. I disagree because I think, if anything, this kind of shows Nintendo understands that the thing people do a lot nowadays is play with their friends. But some people don't want to do that, but they still want the experience of,

you know, communing, and this is a way to play separately together. So, you know, your friend, one friend is playing Breath of the Wild, another friend is playing some other game. You guys can play your two separate games, but still, like, talk to each other in this interface. And I think that's what Nintendo is doing, and I think that's really smart. Yeah, I agree. And I like the idea that it is sort of social first and not just game first, which is not how anybody else does it, which I agree is pretty cool. It almost like, it sort of learned. a lesson both from multiplayer games and from Discord all at the same time in a way that I kind of think is neat. I'm with you. I also want that camera. I just like for the I'm with you in the

sense that like I've put other cameras in my living room and they all creep me out and I don't want any of them. And then I see Nintendo's little camera on a stick and I'm like, well, that's adorable. I would put that next to my television. Did you see that they are having third party cameras and one of them looks like a piranha plant? What? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It's really cool. It's a third party one. It's in our slack, but it looks really cool and I'm like, I want that. That's such a good idea. I love that already. I want one that's Yoshi, but it's like Yoshi with his mouth open and the camera's just coming out, but it's telling you. Oh, like an egg? That would be cute. That would be good. All right. So are you, you're going to buy one of these,

right? Like, would you, you're going to get one for professional reasons, but like as a gamer, is this it? Is this, we're there? Yeah, as a gamer, I was already sold. I'm like, yeah. Like, Mario Kart World is really cool. Like, I've never had the Disney. to play a Mario Kart game. Like, they're fun to play with friends, but that's like a party game. Like, you know, you're going to a party with a bunch of friends and you want to play video games. Like Mario Kart is one of those games. But playing Mario Kart world make me like, I actually want this. I want this for myself. I want to play this for myself. And then seeing all of these Switch 2 versions of Switch 1 games, I'm like, I want that too. Like, I want to experience these games the way that they should have experienced them when they were launched. So the calculus has already been decided for me. Yeah. I mean, I was I was the same way that, like, I was going to end up buying this thing no matter what. But I think the thing that's really exciting for me is I want this thing on day one way more than I wanted the Switch on day one. Because this thing is going to feel huge on day one, which I think is very much to Nintendo's credit. There was not that much to do on the Switch on day one.

Yeah, that's how they get you. That's how they justify their $450 and $500 price is because they know we're going to be there no matter what because it's Nintendo. and damn if they don't know how to sell a console with these new bells and whistles, it just works. It's a real problem. It's like watching the thing, I'm like, okay, you showed Mario Kart, you showed a 007 trailer that showed nothing but is a 007 game. And then you ended the Donkey Kong. I'm like, name your price. Like, I am powerless at this point.

I have nothing left. They're really good at that. Ash, thank you as always. Thank you for having me. All right. We got to take a break. And then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about Microsoft. We'll be right back.

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Hello there. You just made it home, like very recently. Literally this morning. Okay. So I feel like this is a real, like, I cannot be held accountable for any of my words on this podcast kind of thing. Yeah, this is a jet-like podcast, so if I say something wrong, that's why. I'm excited about it. So you were there for the occasion of Microsoft's 50th anniversary. And I have some big, heady Microsoft stuff I want to talk about.

But first, just tell me about the event. This was like, I would say, a weirder, wilder anniversary party than anybody expected it to be. What was it like to be there? Yeah, I wasn't really sure what it was going to be like when I, like, agreed to go and stuff. I was like, they didn't really tell me.

me much about it. And then I was like, so on the day, I was thinking, oh, it's just going to be like a party atmosphere and all that sort of stuff. So it kind of kicked off with like Microsoft AI CEO, Mustafa Silliman. So he started talking about co-pilot and all the new features, all the stuff that we've covered. And Satya Didella and Microsoft CEO came on stage as well to sort of talking about the future and co-pilot and stuff. As that was going on, sort of, I'd say about 15 minutes in, we had our first protester. I hate the protest, thank you. Shame on you!

You are war-profited. Stop using AI for genocide, Mustafa. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How do you all delegate when Microsoft is killing children? Which kind of like threw the whole vibe of the event off slightly. Because obviously it was a Microsoft employee that was protesting,

which is super unusual, right? Like usually you go to a tech event, and there might be a protester about the company's policies or have their technologies used, et cetera. But it's not usually, you know, the company's employee that's doing it. So that was super strange. So, yeah, that happened.

And then we quickly moved on to, like, it was like a party atmosphere, really. And they brought out Brenda Song. She was, like, hosting it. Okay. And it was all, this part of it wasn't streamed live. So this was employee only, essentially, and the rest of the world's press that was in the audience. So, yeah, she sort of hosted it.

She brought up, like, Bill Gates individually, Steve Barmer individually, and then obviously Satya. And then they all came on together, all three. So they were kind of get questioned individually and then all together about the history of Microsoft and all that. And Steve Ballmer obviously came on, did his usual, you know, developers, developers, developers. We were expecting that. Did he actually, he actually did the developers? Yeah, yeah. He actually screamed it out, yeah.

Okay, this is something that I'm going to get in a lot of trouble with with my wife who I see sitting there, but developer. He was like, he looked at his wife in the audience and he was going to get in trouble with my wife. And then he just immediately did it. I kind of love Steve Balmer for doing it. Like, I have to say, that was such a, like, silly moment in the history of Microsoft that I kind of love him for just being like, this is my legacy now. I'll do it.

hear for it. If you look at our video that we did of it, I think Veroen or whoever edited it, put the old Bormer on the bottom as well. And they couldn't look further apart. Like, he looks really well now as well. And he wasn't swaying, you know, buckets on stage when he did did it this time. So that helped. Yeah, it helps when you're, you have all the money in the world, but don't have to run a company anymore. I feel like that, that tends to be good for your health, I think. Yeah. He also made up a new chart, which he was screaming, which was 50 more, 50 more. 50 more. That's good. Which was crazy.

That's really funny. Yeah, and I think he was kind of like the highlight, if I'm honest, of the sort of party atmosphere. So Brenda sort of interviewed them all individually. And then Cleo Abram came on for the Explain series to interview all three of them together. And then they were probably about halfway through, I guess that. Then another protester, another employee protester appeared onto the side of the stage. So was your sense of this whole thing that it was kind of a congratulations to us were so fantastic thing or like a you know, onward charge, forward thing? Because it's a, it's a weird thing to celebrate 50 years as a company. Because on the one hand, you're like, well, we did it. We're old. And we're on the downslope now. But on the other hand, it's like, Microsoft is like bigger and more powerful maybe than it has ever been. True. And in the. And in the. middle of lots of change on lots of front. So I'm like, what was your sense of like the vibe

they were going for in that sense? Yeah, the vibe was definitely, definitely party celebration vibe, rather than like, you know, like the future stuff came into it quite a lot because co-pilot, you know, they kind of tied the co-pilot news to this event. So it was kind of always like linked. But yeah, no, there was a lot of like looking back at the old stuff. And Bill Gates, when he first appeared, he came on and was like nerding out, like full on nerding out, um, recounting, pie, you know? It's that sort of nerd in that. Yeah.

And talk about qubits. So it was, yeah, it was kind of funny. But yeah, and then they had like a game show thing where they had a few Microsoft employees come up and stuff. And one Microsoft employee won a slot on the front row of the pie. They had to come over from some other building. Yeah, so it was a very game show vibe for sure. I mean, I kind of get that.

Like 50's a big thing. And it also helps that Microsoft remains Microsoft. Microsoft. And it's like if you're if you're like, I don't know, not to pick on IBM, but like this party would be a lot more embarrassing if it was IBM, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's true. There's still somewhat relevant Microsoft in many markets, but

whereas, yeah, IBM have gone for enterprise. But I think if they hadn't have done this sort of party vibe, then it would have been a bit weird. I don't know what they would have done otherwise because it would have been like, you know, awkward Bill Gates coming on stage. Steve Barmer, like, making all the noise and then Satya, who's quite like, you know, it's quite reserved.

So I don't know how they would have treated that dynamic without there being like a big host, you know, a big party. So I think that they kind of had to go this way either way. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I do, you mentioned the co-pilot thing. And I think it was really interesting to me that they tied these two things together, that they were like, Microsoft is turning 50. It's a huge moment. And also, we have some pretty big AI news. What do you make of that connection? Like, is this, should I take this as like a statement of values at Microsoft right now that like this is the push to the next 50? And, is about AI and co-pilot, or am I just kind of overstating two things that happen

that happen on the same day? No, I absolutely think so. They tied those together for a reason, right? And it was very much apparent of that was every time that Satya talked to was, you know, about AI. And Bill Gates joked that, you know, Microsoft's had three CEOs and then the next CEO might be co-pilot, you know? So there was jokes and, like, ties to it all day, regardless of that sort of first 30 minutes

or so focusing on it. But it very much felt like, yeah, co-pilot is our future or AI is our future. Yeah, like that's our next 50 years for sure. That was definitely all they were getting out. That's really interesting. I mean, that's a big thing to say. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft is that all in on AI at this point. But like that's a pretty meaningful statement of purpose to make at an event like this.

Where you don't have to, right? You can make it about Windows 95, but it seems like they went out of their way to be like, no, we are an AI company. and that is where we are going. Yeah, definitely. And they even treated it like, you know, like when you go to a product launch, like an Apple launch or Microsoft stuff, where they have a new surface,

and you see it on stage, and then you go hands on. So they had that of co-pilot. They had all these like pods set up with experiences with the new features that had just gone live. Like they had the Muse AI model, which generates gameplay and stuff. You could check that out.

Copilot Vision. Copilot vision actually was an interesting one because that one, is obviously open how I has done it, Apple's doing it, visual to intelligence, all that sort of stuff, but it's interesting how Microsoft's doing it

because it's like constantly rolling, so it knows, you don't have to like constantly hit a button or like really focus it at something very obvious for it to pick it up. Like I had one example, I had a game, there was a Game Boy in front of me

and I was like, tell me how old to power the Game Boy on. And it was like, I'll pop, you know, the batteries in the back. And then you flick the switch at the top. So I flick the switch at the top. top and it was like, oh, you've turned it on because it realized that the LED had lit up. Oh, wow.

Or it just assumed I was doing that and just, you know, and guessed. But that was an interesting one. I was like, okay, this really does feel like it's watching what you're watching. Yeah, it was really interesting to see the co-pilot stuff is kind of just like a grab bag of all of everybody else's ideas about AI. And I don't mean that as like a denigration of any of this. Like everybody has the same ideas, right? So I think it's fine.

Yeah. But it was like they did the shopping stuff. They're doing some agenic stuff. They had the sort of multimodal vision stuff. It's just like, yeah. Microsoft keeps doing this thing that like slightly drives me crazy where they're like, actually copilot is a million things.

And then they're like, never mind, co-pilot is one thing. And then they're like, never mind, it's a million things. And this felt like another sort of bring all the co-pilots back together. And they're like,

this is, we want to make sort of one holistic thing out of all of these many features inside of co-pilot. Yeah, it was feels. like they're almost one step behind because they take the Open AIO model. So Open AO does their streams and, you know, wows everyone with their new features.

And then Microsoft sort of rolls them out like a couple of months later or something. So this was very much that. Although it's always interesting how they roll them out because it does feel like they do them in a slightly better way and a better user experience, which is not usually what Microsoft does. So, yeah, so they are doing pretty good with how they're rolling it out. But yeah, you're right. it's like taking the top features of what everyone else has got. Yeah.

And polishing them essentially. Which is not, I mean, that is, to be fair, that's like, that's also Google strategy and Apple strategy. And it's just like, everyone's doing the same. Take the good ideas and roll them into your bigger products. It does kind of work. So you've spent a bunch of time over the last few weeks sort of reckoning with Microsoft at 50.

And this is a company you've been covering for a really long time. And I'm curious, like, how, where sort of Microsoft is in, in your head right now. Do you have sort of a grand theory of five decades of Microsoft coming out of all of this retrospective and research? Yeah, I think

I wrote about the reflection of the last 50 years and what Microsoft's kind of stood for and where they are now. And I think it is a matter of, they're obviously born as micro-hyphen soft, which is like micro computers and software. And I think we're still sort of in that era,

but it's just they're very focused on software now. They do have surface and stuff, but they seem to be kind of playing it safe with that stuff. And then you've got Xbox, which obviously was a big one of their hardware hits, and that's kind of going in the software direction as well. And it's obviously going towards AI as well. And then you've obviously got the AI push as well,

which is driven partly by hardware advances and a lot by software at the moment as well. So I think it's keeping true to that software stuff where Microsoft is going to go. I spoke to one of their, he described themselves as as mad scientist, Stevie B, is what we call him.

And he basically broke it down in the sense of like Microsoft would traditionally write code once. So say they shipped Word, they'd write that piece of code and then someone would install it and maybe customize it, however they want. Now they have to write a piece of code

for every person on the planet to use their software with AI. So they're kind of like, that's the way they're looking at it in this agent push so that you'll have your own personal agent that knows you and that's built for you. So that's obviously a very much a different challenge to how they've built software before. So I think they're in the early phases of that. Even Steve admitted there's a bunch of AI concepts out there, even Microsoft's doing them, but no one's really kind of put them all together. And I think that's really where Microsoft's going to go for the next. next of 10 years is figuring out all those distant concepts, bringing them together,

and then putting them in something that is a lot more coherent. Yeah. Well, I think there's an interesting sort of parallel between that. And I actually think that's about as sort of clean a straight line as I've heard someone draw through Microsoft that it is like fundamentally this is like a, it is a software company that actually sort of thinks about people in a very coherent way across time. But then like I look at, you know, we did the 50. best things Microsoft has ever made, and you ran down a bunch of kind of the weird ideas that

it's had over time. And also, this is a company that is just like fundamentally all over the place all the time. And they have tried so many things. Some of them have worked in huge ways. Some of them have not. And I think it was really interesting to read, because I don't think about Microsoft as a sort of wacky experimental company in the way that, like, when Amazon launches 100 things running Alexa, nobody thinks that's weird, right? That's sort of culturally make sense inside of Amazon. And when Google is like, here's 17 new messaging apps, you're like, oh, Google.

But I don't think Microsoft has quite that same reputation. And yet, it has tried and failed at maybe more big things than almost anybody. And I think one of the things that you argued is that Microsoft's sort of core competency is that it actually like moves

and pivots really fast. And so it was so interesting to just see those two things against each other. It's like Microsoft kind of had one idea 50 years ago that it was even more right about than it realized, and it has carried it all the way through, and then around the edges it's just like pure chaos. Yeah, it's tried to respond sometimes successfully.

Like I'd say when they moved to the cloud, that was obviously very successful, and it's kind of set them up for where they are now. And it's sometimes, like, spectacularly, unsuccessfully, like missing the mobile era, which probably cost them, I think, because the estimate is like $600 billion or something. So quite a lot of money.

When you put it like that, gee. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, but they've navigated throughout those, like, sort of eras. I'd break them down really by CEOs, to be honest, because you had the Bill Gates era, which was the PC on every desk, and Steve Balmer, which was kind of like the cloud and launching Xbox and all that sort of stuff. And then you had Satina Della, which is very much the AI era now, and sort of reset in their

culture as well. But, yeah, they've navigated interestingly throughout that because there's so many things they've done, like Connect, like the Zoom, like Barney toys. There's just so much that they've kind of experimented with. But I think my point when I wrote about some of that stuff is that even though some of those things are like blatant failures, like Connect, like the HoloLens, is that they take parts of that technology and then they use it elsewhere.

So it's like they are learning from those mistakes. And then they're like all the silicon work we've done on HoloLens is now our quantum work. Oh, interesting. The Connect stuff, like some of that early Connect work went into Windows Hello. where you look at your laptop and it signs you in now. So there's all these sort of like through lines. And even Cortana like helped them do the Surface ProX

and some of the Windows alarm stuff with Windows phone. So there's, yeah, there's always failures, but then there's successes through those failures, which is also, I don't think it's very obvious. When you look at the product, you think that was a massive flop. It's like, yes it was, but he also went on something. Like Skype helped power Microsoft teams. There's so many instances of it,

you could make up another 50. list. Yeah. Well, and I think that's, that actually speaks really well of Microsoft's culture. And I think Microsoft's culture has been, I would say, fairly correctly raked over the coals several times over the years. But that, that fact, because this is the thing we see a lot at other companies, something goes wrong, everybody leaves or gets fired and all the work that they did just sort

of gets mothballed. They're like, well, this is a mistake. Yeah. Moving on, we're going to go over this way now. And they sort of overcorrect in the wrong direction and try something. else. And so that ability of Microsoft to actually say, like, okay, this thing didn't work, but what did we do that might work somewhere else? It's actually a hard thing to do. And it's impressive that Microsoft has done that so well, so many times over the years. Yeah, it is. And when I

spoke to Stevie B for that, for that story, it was funny just going through the years of like, because he's been instrumental to a lot of the stuff, like the touch computing. Do you remember the first Surface table that they did? Oh, yeah. They had it at like CES and it was like pool table looking thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then they eventually had it in like a bunch of Vegas restaurants and stuff. It was, yeah, it was wild. But he was instrumental to all of that sort of stuff and helping him connect and everything. But when I spoke to him, it was interesting because he went through all the sort of successes and the failures and how they experiment with hardware and software. And then I was like, what is your favorite like paint?

And he's sitting in his office and he's like, uh, and he just reaches down and like clears like a path to the bottom of his. shelf and all the patent cubes are sitting there. He's like pulling them up going, I like this one. And this one led to whatever. It was just like, yeah, it was just interesting seeing the sort of, like, because he's been there for so long. It's just interesting seeing the various stuff that they have patented and how they've, you know, they've learned from those failures, if you will. Well, it's also, going back through that list of 50 things is like, it keeps occurring to me that maybe no company in tech is better at missing by a little bit than Microsoft. Like, Microsoft has been almost right so many times.

I was looking at, like, like, Clippy is just what we're doing now. Right. Like, Microsoft has been trying to do this thing in various iterations for forever. And it was in the right place at totally the wrong time. Here's something that Stevie said. He said, everyone is right if you wait long enough. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, and there's a million of those. Like, what was the smartwatch that Microsoft

was working on like way before? The spot stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Right idea. Wrong time and the tablets and the HoloLens and Cortana. It's like Microsoft is always just 10 degrees off. Yeah.

And it fits every time. And then it occasionally hits it right, like with the Xbox, and you see what happens. And it hit it right with Azure and you see what happens. And it's just, it's track record of almost hitting and just missing is like epic. for its history. But I guess it's the same for anything, though, isn't it? Right place at the right time is just such a, like, a common thing. Yeah, they've definitely had the right ideas, but yeah, the timing has definitely been not quite right. So look at, like, Hollolins, that was like, that was, like, genuinely, like, wow moment when I tried that on. I was like, I couldn't believe it.

And then 10 years later, and Meta still trying to make that sort of experience of reality, right? So it's not easy. No, and there's so many of like, did you ever watch that General Magic documentary? No, I didn't. It's very good. I recommend it. I'll put the link in the show notes.

But it was basically this group of people in like the early 90s who built a cell phone. And it had all of the ideas that smartphones would later have. They were just trying to build an iPhone, but they were trying to ship the thing 13 years before the iPhone.

And the world wasn't ready. The technology wasn't ready. And it was like, oh, everyone saw it. And it's just a matter of like, being the one who makes the right thing at the right time that is actually what hits. And it's not like some magical thing just happened. And I feel like there's so much of this in Microsoft's history that is like,

somebody sitting in the building was right. And they just didn't, they were, they were too early or they were like, they missed one piece of the thing that wasn't quite right. They just, they just were one turn away from having it right. And there's like, there's a fascinating like Apple-like hardware story that almost happened inside of Microsoft.

Like, almost. Yeah, it's like the ebb and flow of software and harder, isn't it? You get those hardware advances and that software that you were trying to build a decade ago then becomes suddenly very relevant, like Cortana and Clippy and stuff. Like, that's that now is where you could do it, a personal system. It would actually make sense. Which, funny enough, that's exactly what they're doing again, which they kind of teased on stage at this 50th anniversary.

Oh, really? They're like, yeah, they're bringing like characters to co-pilots. You have your individual and it visually will look different. I feel like they can't get away with bringing Clippy back. I just think it would be, that's like a funny joke, but I don't think you can do that seriously. But I think they could bring Bob back, right? You could do Bob again. Yeah, well, they did show Clippy at the end of the montage of characters.

And I don't know if that means the paper clip is back or I don't know. That would be the true ultimate sign of, confidence in AI is like we're doing Clippy again, but we're doing it well this time. Yeah. That's, I feel like they do it just to get people to download copilot. Because that's going to, like, everyone will write the headline about that, right? I mean, I would use it. I would, I would spend one whole day with new Clippy, for sure.

I get it. You can now talk to Clippy. Right. I'd be down. I'm ready for it. So I'm really fascinated by this moment of like seeing the three different eras and the three different CEOs sort of sitting next to each other on stage. And like you described, there's three very different people who ran the company three very different ways, but it still kind of keeps

being Microsoft. And obviously, there's no indication that Satina is going anywhere anytime soon. He's relatively young. He's doing very well. Companies going fine. Like, I feel like that is that dude's job for a long time. But what is your sense of kind of the next turn for Microsoft? Is there some big shift coming or are we in the middle of it already? because it's the AI story. Yeah, I think we're in the middle of it. If I'm honest, it's just the way they talk about it and the investments in the making

is clear that that's their next big bet. And they do these big bets occasionally. They kind of go all in because, and I think we saw it with the augmented reality stuff and then HoloLens and stuff. They really went for that because they genuinely thought, you know, computing was going to go in that direction.

Do you think, was that at the same level as this, though? I was trying to think, like what in their history feels, as big a swing as AI does right now. And like, cloud definitely is one. Cloud is the only one, isn't it? The whole Azure thing. And I was debating this with HoloLens and AR

because they certainly made a lot of noise about it, but it didn't feel like the future of Microsoft was inside of HoloLens in the way that it does with AI to me. But I don't know, maybe you feel differently. They did like a big swing with Windows 8. That's true. They really tried to make it so that apps would go across phone and Xbox and that failed.

spectacularly, especially the design. But another one, I, this is the hottest take I will say on this entire podcast. I think history will be kind to Windows 8. I think Windows 8 had some good ideas. It did, yeah, it did have good ideas. It was just too much for the, you know, the traditional power users of Windows. Yeah, I think if they had done like Windows 11 and then 10 and then 8, it might have worked a lot better.

Yeah, instead of, instead they're just like doing it in reverse. Yeah. Yeah. But it definitely feels like AI is their next sort of transformation. It was interesting just all three CEOs being on stage, like you were saying, and them trying to interact with each other. And they were talking about, you know, they've hits and misses and what they liked about each other, which Bill Gates was like,

I like the fact that Steve Balmer and Sartan Della are good with people, which is funny. And Steve Baumar was like just Satya doing a great job because he's like tripled my stock. That's real. Which is true. But they all

kind of talked about, especially Beck Gates, talked about AI. And he's made some pretty big statements about AI, you know, replacing jobs and stuff. Which I don't think many

technologists are kind of exactly agreeing on right now. Yeah, I've got the sense that AI is the net transformation and that's where they're putting it thing. They're putting $80 billion in, right? And they had like a town hall a few weeks ago where they talk to employees about it all, and employees were kind of like challenging them on, why are we investing so much money in this AI thing?

And they're like, well, we have 300 billion of contracts that are lined up for the next few years. And a lot of those involve cloud and AI. So we're going to get our return, essentially, is what they're saying. That's really interesting. Yeah, and I think if you're Microsoft, the question for me always with Microsoft is how desperately is it going to try to be consumer relevant? And we've talked about this a lot. There is this thing where it's like, I think if you think of Microsoft as like the leading B2B AI company,

that feels totally plausible to me, right? That like it's going to build the sort of enabling technology. It's going to have the cloud infrastructure. Like that's where all the money is going to be for the foreseeable future anyway. But if Microsoft is happy being like the Microsoft of AI, then you're fine. But Microsoft has never been able to turn off this thing where it is desperate to be like mainstream relevant

to regular people outside of work in their day-to-day. And I feel so much of that tension in co-pilot where Microsoft is like, we want you to use this at work and we know you will and we know how to do that because that is like Microsoft's core competency. But also, when you go home, we want it to be your best friend and we want you to hang out with your family, like in teams.

Like I just, people will not use teams in their day-to-day life. I just don't believe it. Absolutely not. I hope that I'm wrong, I guess. If you do it with your family, I'd love to hear from you. And that's fine if you're Microsoft. But like, it just can't help itself in some ways. And I'm so curious to see where it lands. Yeah, it's interesting you mention that because that's another part of the vibe that we didn't really touch on. That was kind of the vibe of the event. It was like a very influencer, you know, that sort of vibe. they invited a bunch of people that I've never seen at Microsoft the event before so

you know doing like selfies and it was very much that it did feel like that for the whole day it felt like a party influencer vibe and YouTubers

and there's some there's some folks there that have covered Microsoft a bunch like I Justine and Austin Evans and you know there's some of the big names but there was just a bunch of

influences and like lifestyle influences you know that's really interesting It was an interesting, it felt like everything I've been seeing kind of when Microsoft are going, where they want people to focus on copilot in an event. So it was definitely an interesting sort of sub vibe to the things. Yeah.

Do you feel it with copilot where you mentioned, like they want it at work and at home, the co-pilot at home is like so different to the work one. The work one is just doesn't have the same UI at all. So there's tension there and I don't know how they're going to resolve that. Yeah, and I feel like I get the work one, right? I can sort of see where that's going. It makes sense to me. And obviously, there is such a super high ceiling

if you can build the consumer one. But the path to get there and even what that looks like is just vastly less clear to me. But it is like the shiny object to everybody. Definitely. Even Open AI, which could just like happily sell subscriptions to developers forever

and make all of its money. It's like, how do we make ChatGipT yell at you so that it's more fun to use? Like, they said, I don't know what, I don't know what problem we're going to solve there, but everybody is desperately trying to They're all trying to do it. Yeah. And it's going to be interesting. All right. I'm going to let you go here. But tell me about the 50th anniversary surface, and then I'm going to let you go.

Oh, yeah. So they've done a 50th anniversary surface. It's not too crazy different. It's basically got a golden accent on the logo at the back. And then it's got the, you know, 1975 disco balls stuff on the, on the edge on the palm rest. So the old, like, retro logo. So that's cool. But they're not selling it. So you'll have to win one. Or I think they're probably going to sell them to employees as well. All right. Well, if you have one and want to sell it to us, I got 50 bucks with your name on it. So send us an email. And also, we think, are we, we're getting surfaces this year, hopefully, right? Are we, are we do from services?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Build is, what, in six weeks? Yes. I might be back out to Seattle again. I think you might be. We could be speaking like this again.

Yeah. All right. Well, for now, Tom, thank you as always. Good to see you. Go get some sleep. Thank you. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to get to a question

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They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge1. The email is Vergecast at the verge.com. Thank you, by the way, to everybody who reached out with thoughts about minimalist phones.

doing that exercise with Allison last week was so much fun, and you all had so many good, smart thoughts about it that I think I'm actually going to compile a bunch of them and throw them all at Allison again, and we're just going to have to rerun that whole thing in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that. For now, we have a question from our email from Katie. Let me read it to you.

Katie writes, I'm sure I won't be the only person asking this question. True, by the way, we got this question a bunch of times. This is very much a thing on people's minds. The tariffs are projected to hit the car and tech industries the hardest. In thinking about preparing for this, this, I'm wondering if I shouldn't invest in a new phone now, rather than waiting until mine reaches obsolescence, potentially in a time when phones become much more expensive.

To give you an idea of the consumer, I tend to be, I currently have a pixel 6, which is working just fine. I'm not a person who is looking for the highest end product or who upgrades unless my phone ceases to function. I'm very conscious of the environmental impacts of the industries associated with the materials and phones. I just don't want to find myself in a bind in a year or two if things keep going the way it looks like they're going. Thanks. this is this is the question right now and and i think i will say two things um the two things that i should say right at the very top are that a who knows if any of this is real right the the trump administration's tariff policy has been on and off and on and off and on and off that if you were to ask me to bet

whether these were going to stay in effect the way that they are forever i would say i absolutely have no idea i think what we've learned from the trump administration even just over the last several days is that they are very serious about these. Donald Trump loves tariffs as a as a weapon. He also loves them as a negotiating tactic. And if this is just a way to force all of these companies and all of these leaders and all of these politicians to come see him and, you know, bend the knee and make a deal so that there's no more tariffs, maybe that's where this lands. It'll be really messy in the interim, but maybe fast forward three months from now. And most of this is back to the way that it was with just a lot of chaos in between. There's, there's

a lot of precedent for that arc in the Trump administration, but that is one possible outcome. Trump has also continued to say that he believes in tariffs. Like, he has said it all along. He said it in his campaign. He has said it as president.

Like, he believes tariffs are good and that they work. And so I wouldn't rule out any possibility here. And so all we can do is, I think, operate with the facts on the ground right now. And the facts on the ground right now suggest that things are about to get a lot more expensive. And I think a bunch of folks on our team,

particularly Allison Johnson on our team who has been doing a lot of really great work reporting on phone tariffs in particular. The general consensus seems to be that the phones today are not likely to get vastly more expensive for a bunch of reasons, right? Like if you're Best Buy, you have a bunch of inventory.

It's also just really hard to raise the price on an existing device. What is much more likely in many of these cases is that the next round of these phones is going to be more expensive. So we have the iPhone 17 coming in the fall. We have the Pixel 10 coming probably in the fall. We have new Samsung stuff coming this summer.

There's just a round of new phones due in a few months. And I think there is a strong chance those phones will be substantially more expensive. So I think, frankly, if you're the person who is happy to be a few generations behind, it doesn't strike me as totally wrongheaded to buy this year's phone on the bet that next year's phone, even if it's better, is also likely to be significant. more expensive. That goes against my normal buying advice, which is like, buy the best device that you can and then keep it forever. If there is a chance that the next iPhone is going to be several hundred dollars more expensive, which again, I wouldn't bet on it, but I also wouldn't bet against it. I can see why. You might look at a 16 and be like, okay, price to value,

this might be the best phone we're going to get for a minute here. And that is a reason to do it. If you're on a pixel six, I think you're probably good for another year or two if you're happy with your phone now. There's also ways you can upgrade. You can replace the battery. You can replace the screen by itself. You can make devices last longer. And that's my other piece of advice. For anybody who's trying to think about how do I make sense of like my gadget options here, I would say, frankly, buy the stuff that you know you're going to need quickly because I think it's possible we're going to run into supply constraints as companies scramble to figure this stuff out. It's possible that the makeup of some of these devices is going to change as things like costs change and as supply chains change,

the gadget you want may not be the same gadget for forever. Prices might go up. So I think there is a real impetus to say, okay, if I have a thing that works, how do I make it work longer? Like I'll just give you an example. I have these Bose quiet comfort headphones and they're like, they're fine. But the ear cups on them are just starting to wear. Right? And so I've been sitting around being like, okay, do I just upgrade?

I think it's these, these are a bunch of years old now. They're still fine, but I would like a better pair of headphones. And so I'm like, okay, maybe these wearing out is a good excuse to just go out and upgrade anyway. Now my answer is I'm going to buy new ear cups and I'm just going to keep using these headphones for as long as I can. And that's just is what it's going to be. Headphones are expensive.

They are potentially going to get more expensive and I just, I'm going to choose not to worry about that and put off that purchase for as long as I can. So I think where I've landed, personally amidst all this chaos, all the advice I can give you is where I've landed is the things I know I'm going to need to do soon, I'm going to do now. And anything I can put off, I am going to try and take steps to put off as long as possible because it does feel like wherever we're headed is going to be messy. Right. Like I'm going to try and make as few 2025 purchases as I can and I'm going to try and make them all right now. I don't know if that's the perfect strategy.

I don't know if we're going to end up in like a, do you remember that early phase of the pandemic where people were like hoarding toilet paper. I don't know that a run on that kind of thing in the gadget world is the right thing. But I do know that it is a time of incredible uncertainty. And it does feel like things could go sideways. So I would look at it and say, okay, do I think I'm going to need a new phone in the next six months? And if the answer is yes, I think just buy it now. There's not a great reason not to. Anyway, the pixel nine's a great phone. There's a bunch good stuff out there. I think there's a strong chance that whatever comes next is going to be a lot more expensive. I just go for it. I bought my wife a pixel 8. She likes it a lot. Great price. No,

no, no. It's very happy to have solved that before we get out of here. Anyway, I would also love to know what you think about this, by the way. If you have thoughts or have made purchases or put off purchases or thinking about how to manage this stuff, I'd love to hear from you. Vergecast to theverge.com. 866, Verge11 is the hotline. This is like a complicated question. And it's a very much. it's a very vergey question. We like talking about what you should buy and when and for how much. And I think this is a wrinkle we have not dealt with many times in the course of being on the verge. How is global politics going to change the price of your phone? It always does, but it does much more directly now than I think most of us have realized in the past. All right, that's it with

the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. As ever, if you have questions, thoughts, feelings, games that you can play forever, or purchase that you want to talk about. If you want us to help you figure out what to buy and when, frankly, that's what we're here for. So hit us up. Vergecast at the verge.com is the email.

866 Verge11 is the hotline. We check them both. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Will Poor, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Naila and I will be back on Friday

to talk about, I don't even know what, Brendan Carr, gadgets, more AI chaos, probably more tariffs, let's be honest with each other and everything else. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.