The Vergecast - What is a monetization structure?

Episode Date: July 15, 2016

This week on Vergecast, Senior Editor Chris Plante comes to town to join Paul, Nilay, and video director Miriam Nielsen to discuss the overwhelming response to topics reported on our site; Pokémon GO and Nintendo's new NES. They also go deeper into augmented reality and how Nintendo is dealing with their properties. Paul once again brings us his weekly segment "Pokémon GO Tips and Tricks Review: Gadgets" 03:38 - Pokémon GO 16:59 - AR 33:40 - Nintendo 47:58- Paul's "Pokémon GO Tips and Tricks Review: Gadgets" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philip Glass. I think I got it. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. I'm Mila Hedel. I'm joined here by a cast of luminaries. Paul Miller is here. Hey. Chris Plant is here.

Hello. Miriam Nielsen is here. Hi. Make the noise. Who? Nobody knows how Miriam is making that noise. What they can't see is her entire realm. of instruments.

I just have a lot of kazze. Miriam is here only to make sound effects today. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast

the flagship podcast of theverge.com and we only have four so it's not a full armada but we're working on it every day. This show

sponsored by fake vodka that was actually sponsored last week which was amazing. Yeah? Cizzer. No.

Was there real vodka? No. It's like I don't want to give it to them for free. But if this company wants to come back and do it again.

Let's just say there was some can't miss advertising last week. Last week I think was the best advertising on the show. That's where we want to start every episode. Discussing last week's ads. Oh, boy. It was the best thing happened in the show I think in a long time. But anyway, Cizzer Falka got through the night.

Oh, yeah. The Novos, like, you know, and they just got some great shirts, you know? We're just throwing money around. Who advertises them? What's tech this week? I think Citibank. Oh, we got some city ads coming up on this Welcome to the Virchcast where we discuss podcast advertising on all of our other shows. City Bank also on control all delete this week, so they're all over the place. Oh, great.

How's your monetization? Look, here's what's happening right now. Our structure is choice. You'll enjoy it on this week's episode of What's Tech. What's your monetization structure? What is a monetization structure? Oh, thank you. All of this conversation, of course, just delay tactics before the title wave of Pokemon. watches over this show. Crushing everything in its wake. Like it has crushed the internet.

What's your favorite Pokemon? I don't know if the, the yellow one. There's a reason I brought all three of you on this show today. Okay, let's just start at the start. There's a bunch of stuff that happened this week. I got a whole list of news. But our site, the industry, the world has been dominated by this pocket genesis that was already available on Amazon.com. That's not true.

No. No. Pocket Ness. Yes. Not even Pocket Ness. This joke just went so zero. What are you talking? He's talking about this new Nintendo, the N-E-S.

Here are the two big stories. Here are the two massive stories of the week. For real. Pokemon Go. Okay. Dominate our entire site forever. Okay. I don't think that Pokemon Go explainer is going to leave our most popular stories forever.

Sure. It's just going to stay there for the rest of time. Yeah, it's still trending right now. It's just going to stay there forever. And then today, a huge kaboom story, Nintendo released a tiny little Nintendo entertainment system. It's called the NES classic edition.

With an HDMI output and two controller ports that are in the same place as the existing controller ports were, or the previous ones were, but look way uglier because they're a different kind of port. It's the Wii plug. Yeah. The plug that's at the bottom of a Wii mode. Which is like what you would plug like a classic controller engine.

Your hand motions right now are actually killing me. Anyway, so Nintendo dominated the week, right? I mean, there's a lot to unpack here, but we got to start with Pokemon. Sure. I'll just offer my one tiny Pokemon story. And then you guys are going to actually tell me what it is, what the hell's happening. Tell me if the world is doomed. My parents called me yesterday.

Out of the blue. Hey, how's it going? How are the various things in your life that we generally want to talk to you about? Great, great. Hey, what's Pokemon Go? They literally faked a call. They faked a check-in call because they were out with some friends in Racine, Wisconsin. They were by the lake, and they saw hundreds of nerds waving phones at the lake,

asked one of the nerds, what are you doing, and then rushed home to call me to make sure a drug. And they were like, oh, no. They're like, have drugs infected our city? Are we safe? So it's everywhere. It is an absolute phenomenon. What the hell's going on, Chris? So, to get ahead of ourselves,

there is a new episode of What's Tech, a fantastic podcast by the Burge.com, hosted by... Not as well monetized, I have to say. No, beautifully monetized. I know, I care. You have too many things to worry about in your day. No, no.

But there's an episode coming up on Tuesday that is, what is Pokemon Go? And that, everyone got that call this week. I truly believe everyone got that call. And this entire podcast is what you hand to your parents when you get those calls. So, like, don't hand them this episode. We've already lost it with the advertising talk. Hand them that.

But for anyone who's listening and it's like somewhere in between. Don't listen to this garbage advertising process. It's very helpful. But the long short of it is Pokemon 20-year-old role-playing game series. You go around a fictional world collecting pocket monsters. There's now like 700 of them. collect them, fight them, yada, yada, yada. There have been, like, plenty of spinoffs, TV shows.

But this is the first one that achieves, like, the clear fantasy of that video game, right? Which is, like, I don't want to walk around a fantasy world collecting fantasy animals. I want to walk around the real world taking people's dogs when they're cute, right? But you can't do that. So they made an augmented reality game, and they're like,

Oh. Wait, Miriam, let me just confirm or deny that your fantasy is to take cute dogs from people. Definitely. I want all the dogs. Yeah, and that is like... Don't you have that, like, one girlfriend who's, like, always talking about stealing babies? I have that one wife.

Yeah. Not babies, dogs. Okay. Definitely dogs. Every time we see a dog, she's like, I could have that dog. I'm like, you're a lawyer. You can't, you know the rule. So, pokey balls steal animals.

Yeah, that's the idea, is that you can walk around the world, and when you see cute things, you're like, mine. And then it's just yours. Which is like, I don't know if there are many more appealing fan of. than like instant animal husbandry. You know? That's the right word. Yeah, no, it's the right word. But doesn't husband, well, it's not.

No. Doesn't husband, it implies that you will then care for. Exactly, which you do in the Pokemon's. I thought Pokemon Go was less, more about collecting, less about leveling. So, no, there is. You got level. When you get into the really cruddy meta game that is like at the end of the game, yeah, there's a lot of leveling. I think this is the right debate to have on podcast because I feel like,

This is the question. Pokemon Go, clearly everybody is playing it, everybody in the world all the time, and everybody's getting a bunch of Pokemon. The app is terrible, crashes all the time. It's frustrating, but people play it anyways. The first thing you ever said to me was, oh, they built it in unity. Paul was real mad about that. It's still tragic.

And I think it's gotten even worse after this update. But people are all playing this. But after you collect a bunch of Pokemon, which is just an undeniably joyful experience, what do you do? And so does this app or game or whatever it is have any staying power? And the wild thing is they made a game that was for everybody, right? Well, they made two games. And the first one is a game for everybody where the way you collect these,

it looks exactly like taking a photo with your phone. So it's instantly familiar. And instead of like the little button that you hit to take a photo, that's where the pokey ball is and you swipe it and you catch a Pokemon. Oh, so we got to wait, wait, wait, wait, before you go on, we haven't said the most important thing is this is the first massive augmented reality experience that has ever hit. So when Chris is saying take a photo,

the interface, the default interface is you look around the world through your camera. And you see a little Pokemon in it. And you see Pokemon in it. That's why you can never stand. Annoyingly not to scale of the actual size of Pokemon. Because Pokemon, for the most case,

are not tiny adorable animals. They're giant adorable animals. They're massive. They're like scary big. Yeah. Except for like Pidgee's, which are pidgy sides. I want to be clear that we're talking about cartoon animals. Yes.

So are you getting that from the TVs here? No, from the stats in the game and from the stats that have been published. Because I feel like the experience, if you played on like the Game Boy, right, they're all kind of that same size because they're portraits. You don't even really even hardly see them in the actual world that you walk around in. But then, yeah, how you capture them is an RPG. You like knock down their health to their like weak and then you pick the correct item. In the video game. It is a lot more complicated.

It would have been less successful maybe. So they made a game that is like, I mean, they stripped. a game of like a very proven formula and made it as simple as possible, which is like, fine. That's how you get people in. But then after that, the logic would be like, okay, well then like kind of like nudge them into something like about as complicated as the Game Boy game. And instead they're like, so before this, we made the most complicated, nonsensical territory like simulation war game where people had to go on to websites and like mine data and collaborate through forums to figure out even what any of it meant. And they're like, you know what? Let's just. do that. But it only had two teams. Let's have three. Let's make it even more complicated. And then let's like tie it to a battle system that is the worst mini game that we could possibly design that has no real logic or skill to it. Oh, and it's connected to servers working regularly. So even though it's like a rhythm-based fighting game, you have to have like a good connection to a server, which is a thing that they just clear they're not going to have. So like the top level

game you go from like as like a game nerd somebody you can like you know figure these things out relatively quickly from playing too many games in my life the first one is like a zero out of 10 in terms of like skill and then you like skip to like a 12 it's just like oh cool I hope you like reading forums because that's the only way you're gonna figure this out so the game you're referencing is ingress yeah so 90c labs they made ingress at google which is only an android but still massively popular ingress had a big crowdsourcing element right So that's where sort of the map of locations for Pokemon Go came from. Kind of.

And then they spun out of Google and then they licensed the Pokemon IP from Nintendo. There's a clear relationship between the Ingris map and the Pokemon map. Yes. Right? Yeah. Which has led to a bunch of weird things happening like Pokemon at the Holocaust Museum. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, basically, yes. Which they actually, I believe Ingris got in hot water for that exact problem. Like I think these are like things that that game already kind of went through and then they just weren't taken care of for for Pokemon. Okay, so I have like very, mixed is not the right word, but kind of confused feelings about this weirdness of like, so the game has these things called pokey stops. And if you go to them, you can get like free items, right? So you're motivated to go out to these places. And also they can be like places where you can catch more Pokemon. So there's some in places that are tasteless, like the Holocaust Museum in D.C.

The actual, I think there actually is a pokey stop at Auschwitz. I think there's one at the 9-11 Memorial. People are like, oh, these things shouldn't be here. This is horrid. And I agree on the obvious level of, like, by virtue of being there, it's attracting players to, like, pull out their phone and play a video game in these places where maybe that's not right. it's attracting players who have no interest in the thing yeah yeah but well I think tourist

destinations already kind of do that like I have pretty mixed feelings on some of these places anyway where you go there and it's like clearly these people are not here to like learn they're here to take a selfie here and show that they were there but that's a whole that's a whole different debate yeah but the that's what's tech with Chris Pan of yeah the commercialization of horrible history of horror tragedy um no but I I at the same time like I do You think the entire purpose of a game like this in augmented reality games is to paste a very like simple veneer over reality, which is like hard. Like life is hard and complicated and we walk around the world and there's like, there are

a million complicated things around us and you pull out Pokemon Go and what's saying is like, that's a background to catching Pikachu. Like we're making your world magical and happy because that suddenly loses focus, and what comes into focus is, like, this thing. It's structure and rules. Yeah, yeah. And we're simplifying the world. So it's like entire purpose is to make the ugliness or difficulty of real life somehow feel magical.

And, like, again, I don't think that means it should be in these places. But I think, like, part of the intent of the game is to wash away that the world is actually a very complex place. and to put the like, yeah, structure, color, magic of video games into it. So the thing that struck me in, like, the reason that everyone is covering it in a variety of ways, is not only like people are drawn to it, they're addicted to it, they're walking around, right? There's like all this, there's at least four or five stories that I've seen across the internet that are like, Pokemon Go is great for exercise because it's making people walk again. So there's that mom who wrote about her artistic son.

Make America walk again. there's that mom who wrote about her autistic son who doesn't like to break routine, doesn't like to make eye contact or socialize with people, and just Pokemon Go just totally broke all his sort of rules for himself and was just pretty much a normal kid catching Pokemon. It was just an awesome story. That's great. Yeah, there's like people I are like bump into in my neighborhood now to talk to

about Pokemon. You know, I went to, I walked from like Washington Square Park up to Union Square. So Washington Square Park has a gym. Union Square doesn't... A Pokemon Gym. Not like a Bally's. Correct. Okay.

Union Square doesn't have a gym. But Washington Square was in just like an intense battle. So this thing, I know these battles are kind of inaccessible and not very fun, but there's a lot of people. There's a gym at my subway stop in Bushwick where there's like maybe 30 kids there, most evenings, fighting, like split into the three teams, yelling insults at each other, fighting over control of this gym. Yeah, and we had this, I mean, when we were kids, did you have, what is it, like, Digimon things?

There was one before Digimon. It was right after Tamagachi, there was, like, another Tomogachi that you clipped into each other, and they would fight. Oh, I think that was Digimon. Maybe that was, but it was horrible. But, like, it was, like, huge when I was a kid

because it didn't matter if it was good. Wait, did all three of you play Pokemon? I played some of the card game. everything all of it someone sent me into a history I wish I had it so you could credit them but they're like I'm in that weird zone in between gen X and millennials and they're like the way you know which side you identify with is Pokemon right was that Chris Solentrup I don't know Chris Solentrup who is still does some of the reviews at the New York Times pointed that out he was like Pokemon is is the line between Gen X and millennial and like where you

literally it had nothing to do with my life until Pokemon happened. It just wasn't around my cohort. Yeah. Of course I also lived in Wisconsin, so we were They didn't allow Pokemon there. No dancing and no pocket monsters. It was a weird rule that the ministered my town in post.

But we brought the dancing back. Kevin Bacon came through. It was one of like Pokemon Kevin Bacon never came by, but dancing Kevin Bacon was like. What are my first pieces of what you would maybe call tech journalism? I had my own like website when I was like 13 or no, maybe it was a little older, maybe like

15 or something like that. Really can't remember. But my friends were super into the Pokemon card game. I was just a little bit into it. I just had a starter set at a Squirtle based deck. And I chose Squirtle again for Pokemon Go.

But... This podcast is getting real deep. Because that is my tie to it. But my friends were going to do competitive Pokemon card playing at Toys R Us. And I went there and like, I was like, I'm the cool guy who's fly on the wall,

talking to the nerds and like getting into like, what are nerds into? And what's it like to? And I wrote up this piece probably like a thousand words of like how I was cool. But Pokemon's cool too. Yeah, it's not so bad. So we got to talk about the thing with Pokemon Go that particularly relates to us. And I think the reason it's a popular, which is the AR aspect, right?

I mean, that is there's so many arguments to be made about whether it's AR that's drawing people in and making it crazy. This is, to your point, Chris, like, everything you're saying about making the real world seem manageable, there is the fact that it kills your battery, so people are just turning it off, which is interesting. There's a fact that it might just be Pokemon's really popular, and this is a new Pokemon game. Tell me about the AIR aspect. Does that, like, does that grab you? Is that a thing that you care about? I turn off AR to catch more Pokemon.

Yeah, I haven't played with AR at all. It's easier to catch it off. I did once when I had to take pictures with Amelia today. What do you think the primary draw of this game is? The Pokemon character. Like, what if they just came out with a Pokemon, like, Nintendo's like, hey, we got a Pokemon game for iPhone? Yeah. Had none of this geolocation, anything.

Totally. That would still be huge, right? Yeah. Although I do think the, I like consuming the content of other people using the AR to do, like, tell creative storytelling, like the memes online. I think that is part of why it became so popular. Like, all the people who loved Pokemon were going to play it anyway, but then that brought it to a level where it reached so many more people than would have gotten in it. Is it AR good? I'm looking to you as our, like, resident VR nerd.

Is it? Is it good? No. It doesn't know depth, right? It's pretty much just layering cartoons on things, right? I think it has some ability to guess, kind of it can sort of see where surfaces are, but it doesn't feel like they're actually in the world.

Yeah, it's like it misses more than it hits. Yeah. But it doesn't seem to matter. No. Like, I think we are probably the first people to seriously complain about the AR and Pokemon Goh. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

To answer, I think, like you said, like, would the game be popular if it were, if it would just a known Pokemon game? I don't think it would. I think it wouldn't be this popular. And the reason is like, you have to know how to play a video game. Like, to play Pokemon, you have to know it like literally press start to get into the menu and create a save and read menus and navigate menus. And this is just like, there it is a Pokemon.

Hit throw the ball. No, there's that whole beginning with what, Professor Marshmello. What's his name? Willa. Those are super similar words. They have Ws. They check yourself. Wow.

No, I'm doing the act. I might know this stuff for real. Ask him, ask him, man. I'm doing the cranky old man act. Yeah, sure. You even downloaded it? I have it. Okay.

Well, here's what happened. We got to talk about it. Yeah, I caught a Pokemon. Which Pokemon? The chantrix. That's a stop smoking drug. A charbax? No, that's a guy I know.

Charmander? Charmander. That's the one. All right. All right. the right one. Just to rewind a second, though, for your point. I'm really sad that you said the name because I think he had at least another five minutes.

I'm sorry. Checks? Chad. I caught some honey nut. Chacks? Multiple levels of augmented reality here. There's augmented reality, like the surface level that you think of is like taking video from reality and overlaying like 3D graphics on it.

But there's also augmented reality in the sense that like if you walk past somebody on the street and you and your buddy have a phone and you're clearly playing Pokemon Go and they're clearly playing Pokemon Go they'll be like oh there's a Charmander around the corner and then I'd be really excited because Charmander even though it's one of the starter Pokemon

if you don't get it right at the start it's actually pretty rare so I would definitely go around the corner in the sense that there's a digital entity pinned to a geolocation but I have to physically travel to collect that's augmented reality as

well. Yeah, I think it would be almost as popular if you got rid of the camera part of it. Yeah. Because I think so many people play it without the camera anyway. But the having to, like, I can't play it in my apartment like any other game. I have to leave to play, which I think is you see everyone out playing it and that there's some kind of weird, like group mentality happening. Well, there's what Paul's talking.

There's like this layering over the digital world. So the reason I want to ask about AR, because there is in our industry at this moment, like the great ARVR debate, the hottest and worst take. Our friend Farhad Manchu, and I definitely tweeted right back at him. He was like, if only Google Glass had had Pokemon Go. And I just, that seems really wrong to me. Not only because Google Glass doesn't actually support the true AR where it layers over reality, it's just like an HD screen. Yeah.

But I think that you would not have bought Glass to play Pokemon. Yeah, I agree. I mean, so I have, I don't know if I've talked to you about this. My like ARVR cell phone versus home theater thing. No. So I have this theory about. about like if I were, if I had money, this crazy idea, but if I had like lots of money and I could invest in things, I would only invest in AR. I think VR is great. But I think like, if you

were told like, hey, you can invest in smartphones or home theater systems. Yeah. You would choose smartphones. And VR is, VR is a home theater. Like, you have to have a specific room for it. You have to like, when you are going to use it, you make time to use it. It is a luxury that most people don't have and when you do have it, like, you have to have a special content for it. You have to stay up to date. Like, if you want good movies, you're buying Blu-rays. You're constantly putting money into it, and there's, like, kind of a diminishing returns in quality, and it does a very specific thing. But AR is, to me, just a smartphone, right? The ultimate goal of AR is to, like, make your life easier, and in theory, you can have less and less friction.

It's to enhance reality. Yeah, to enhance reality, and to enhance your life. And it could, in theory, go anywhere. So a lot of people had this idea that meant like, oh, well, who friction, playing at your iPhone is so hard. You'll just wait on your face. And no, that, like, that misunderstands it, because that adds another thing that you have to buy, and it's closer to VR. It's adding, and it's going to create, like, this kind of weird have-and-have-nots. But, like, the phone, to me, is such a brilliant form of AR, and it's why I'm so excited about Pokemon going what comes from here, right? Because we already live with our phone in our hands. Like, The idea of using the phone as the magnifying glass to the world is just like our natural state almost.

I mean, think about how crazy of this is that nobody's been killed by a car playing this game. What that tells us is people are so trained to walk around looking at their phones that like nobody got seriously hurt. That's actually a crazy thing when you think about how many people are playing this game. Head down. head down looking at a phone and like and it was just instinctual right it's true it's like walking through like Washington Square Park and Union Square I'd say maybe just a slightly higher percentage of people are on their phones it's just that when you creep on them and look it over the shoulder they're not like on Facebook or Snapchat or reading Wikipedia they're playing Pokemon right yeah and they're cluster they're clustering in

weird ways yeah they stop like in the middle yeah there's erratic motions yeah you're like ah these this This group of people is clustering in a Twitter way. These people, these idiots are playing Pokemon, go. Well, so, I mean, the AR-V-R question to me is, it's the one. I really like Chris. Because there's a whole, well, there's a whole, we've already talked on this show and on the site a thousand times. Chris, you did fine.

You're fine. Gold star. No, we talked on this show a billion times about how VR could drive a phone upgrade cycle, right? You get higher resolution screens, you get better networks, fast presser, blah, blah, blah. but there's a whole camera cycle that you could drive with AR, right? I mean, if you are better able to read the scene and calculate depth and do all this other stuff, you can radically improve. I'm bringing this up as a bridge to, hey, maybe the next iPhone might have two cameras.

Or there's finally a reason for these phones. I thought they abandoned that. Yeah, a second camera could definitely make it a lot easier to do depth detection, although because each phone would probably end up needing like tweaked algorithm to, like, really make, good use of it. Well, each model of phone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that could help.

Yeah. I'm just, like, what are the, it's just, you watch the cycle. Like, what, if people want to use their phones this way, like, how will the phone change? I think the big thing that we're going to see happen with AR is, I think, I think we have to get away from this dumb voice bullshit. Like, there is a language that we have with technology since the dawn of man, and it is with our fingers. Like, that is how we engage with technology.

And suddenly it's like, we're going to just talk to robots because we talk to people and we're totally okay with that. But the way I can see AR being advantageous is if I'm already used to holding my phone up right in front of my face, right, and again, using it to look around the world, if I can hold up my phone and look at anything in my house through it and touch it, like look at my Amazon Echo and touch it. And then like alongside it in this AR thing is the sound

or the list of all the musics or recent things I played. And I can tap that and it takes two seconds of pulling out my phone. That is a thousand times easier to me than like, okay, for every single thing I own, I need to remember 140 commands about how I talk to this thing and what it can do. I'm probably wrong. I'm sure voice will be forced into the world by the powers that be. But AR feels like such a natural solution because everybody knows that language, right? Like everybody knows how to communicate with touch.

Everybody knows how to like read a basic menu. I don't know. I like basically bought an echo purely so I could yell at it to turn off my lights. Because getting into the app and doing all the slider things, it's so much easier to just tell it what to do. Maybe not so much in the outside world because I don't really like talking. But in my own home, I lose my phone all the time now because I don't need it for anything when I'm home because I can just text for my laptop if I have an open stuff like that. Interesting. I do all my like commands with my phone.

This is the device. Wait, what do you have an experience? What are you using the text from your laptop? I use a bunch of weird, like encrypted apps that Ariel may be starting to use. to text her. So Ariel's like, Ariel wants advice and now she's on the darknet. Like, that's what I'm hearing. Basically.

And like hangouts, all my fan family has Android. So it's helpful. Well, I want to ask you, the last time Miriam was on the show, we mostly argued about the word spherical video for an hour. That's true. But for a minute, it seemed like VR was really ascendant, right? The two big headsets came out. We made a bunch of stuff, thus cementing the place of VR in society and culture.

Congratulations. Yeah, I thought we did great. But it seems to have dropped off a little bit. I just watch, I just monitor Addie Robertson's mood. She covers the VR industry, like, thoroughly. And then this moment, at least all the hot takes about Pokemon that I've read have something, they're like, this is AR's transformational moment. Do you buy that or no?

I mean, I don't know that another game is going to have this kind of spread, because I feel like the fact that it got all of these in Pokemon, huge Pokemon fans to start playing and then everyone else was like, oh, this is really fun and normal's, quote, unquote, can play it too. I don't know that I would want to play a game like this where you, like, hold your phone up and look at the world and do things through it again. So I would play a game. I think that, like, you have to leave your house to play game. You need something like Pokemon that to, like, draw you along. Definitely.

I could imagine. But you're going to wave your phone around and see crazy shit in the world around you. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think it could be done. I think it just, I don't think any phones are there right now and it's going to be a while. I think that's the same reason the headsets in VR kind of failed is because like the tech. Well, I haven't failed. Not failed.

Like, well, most people don't have them. But in this moment of VR, that's not failure. True. They've succeeded about as much as they were able to succeed, I think. I don't know. I feel like they're not super happy where they're out. I can't imagine from what I've heard about Oculus's software sales numbers that they're thrilled. Yeah.

That would be. I don't know. What, you got a scoop over that, that plan? No. I've just, I've heard. I gave you a gold star. I can give you another one. I know how you offer.

No, I have just heard that sales numbers for certain big Oculus games were not especially thrilling. Right. So developers are going to be discouraged, which was always Oculus's... Because they're not the controllers. Oculus this whole time was like, we have to have the perfect launch. Can't do anything wrong at the launch because we only get this one chance or people are going to be gun-shy and then we'll have to wait a long time again for... VR to be ascending again. And then Oculus totally goes up the launch.

But I think they even maybe knew that because I don't know all the details about how these developers got their stuff worked out. But from what I understand, Oculus paid them quite a bit to like kind of be like, it doesn't matter what you make on this platform. The point is like to prove it.

And then you'll get paid, which is like not shocking. I think the issue with like Oculus on this stuff is they're just charging an insane amount. Like if you want to talk about why it didn't click, it's like, You're essentially making iPhone-level games and then charging traditional game prices on it. Yeah. Yeah, especially because what you want with Oculus survive right now is experiments.

Yeah, and people just playing as many things as they can. I want to try all the different ones and find out what kind of thing I like, and then I'll know. But it's not a better argument for something, Gear VR. It's like, just put this in your phone. It's what you like. Gear VR doesn't have good interaction. Right. So I think...

I mean, I'm saying like, if they put out the touch controller and pair it to the control, like you could do... You'd get a lot farther. I think the Sony... That was such a big sign when I said touch controller. Sony release is the last big try. If the Sony VR, PlayStation VR doesn't do well... I'm buying the hell out of PSVR.

I feel like a lot of people will, but if that doesn't do well, then... Yeah. I mean, it's a lot easier sell. Like, especially when everyone's switching to smaller computers and tablets, and whatnot getting a headset, like an Oculus or buying another thing. Well, switching to smaller computers maybe, but PC sales are up. It's a weird

little data point in this world. Is it because of headsets? For the first time in the years. But it's like Chromebooks. Yeah, it's not like $1,200 PC that you need to run. People are switching to like smaller and lighter and tablets and you have to buy a whole other thing for these headsets. One more thing. On Pokemon go, I do think there's one other

property that could do this, be this successful. What is it? be a world of Warcraft Ooh Interesting Oh that would be really interesting

It would be all blizzard I think I'd have to be like Kind of like What is it? Maybe. What's there? Storm Oh, here's of the storm

Yeah Well I don't know See I think that You could put something Something They'd have to figure out The battle mechanic But that would be a freaking

fun game You basically go point to point Of interest Like harvest I like this harvest like whatever like thing is there. Chromebooks. You get quests sometimes to like kill X number of things.

Things. I mean this just sounds like a lot of things. You could like mine ore and meetings. Yeah, you could mine ore and meetings. Oh, that was another Pokemon. Hot tape. If all the office buildings were all the crafting professions. Oh, that would be great.

And then you actually start crafting. So at work you're like skinning and. Oh, wow. Yeah. But then you go out and about and you kill. some, I don't know, whatever. And then you level up and you gear up. The teams and the guilds would be so much more fun.

Yeah, the guilds. Somewhere right now, some some attorney from Blizzard. That launch trailer for Pokemon Go, the original trailer shows everybody in Times Square battling, was it, Mew 2? Yeah. And that's like a raid boss in World of Warcraft.

You have like 30, 40 people, and you're all fighting the same thing at once. Like, can you imagine that sort of experience? It can. That would be great. PC shipments are up, by the way. One, I'm kidding. Well, hold on.

Let's take a break for this advertising from City. Monetize us, Neely. The Vergecast, as you know, is supported by City cards with Android Pay. How cool is it that we live in a world where you can use the same device to listen to the Vergecast and buy your morning coffee, groceries, and more? Did I mention that it's a super fast way to pay? Just use your City Card with Android Pay at the register. Get in, get it, and get going. Download the Android Pay app on Google Play or visit city.com slash Android Pay to get started.

Android Pay is available for eligible city, consumer credit, and debit cards. Okay, we're back. Here we are. Great monetization. I thought so. Love that ad. Yay. All right, I want to talk about Nintendo.

I want to shift gears. Because the other big news was this NES classic. And Paul's just shaking his head. Why are you shaking your head at the NES Clas? I'm just, I saw this and I was like, whatever. Yeah, it's kind of crappy. It feels pretty cheap. It looks cheap.

It looks like like a keychain item. Yeah, it looks like, it's like 40 bucks, right? But what I'm saying is that I'm bad at my job for not thinking that this was what everybody in the world wanted, apparently. I mean, this thing blew up in a way that few of our stories blow up. Like, you know, like an Apple Day will come and like everyone will read the new iPhone post. This one story was like, it had a trajectory like that. Like, everyone on Facebook was like, dude, I got to buy this. And I kind of don't understand it.

I mean, nostalgia. Is that it? Yeah. So we did another post. Paul, did you write the Genesis one? Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah, so there was this post that was like, hey, there's also a Sega Genesis version of this. It's already available.

It's on Amazon you can buy it right now for essentially the same price. It doesn't have the HTML, but like, whatever. It actually has a ton of technical problems with it. Yeah, yeah. Really? What are the technical problems? It has two wireless controllers, but they communicate over information. red.

Oh, come on. I'm done. I'm closing my laptop and why get the door. I know you'd love that. It comes with like 80 games, but like about half of them are like knock off like clones. Okay, so this thing's a mess.

It's made by this company called At Games. It runs Sega Genesis carches but not all of them. So the Nintendo one is like official Nintendo product. It's official. 30 games built in. Some weird ones in there, but mostly good stuff. Like Legend is Zelda 2.

Not a good game. Just put that there. Debatable. Anyway. Link to the past? Not a game. Now you're confused. Wait. What's the one?

Legend Zola 2. It's the adventure of Link. Adventure of Link, I am confused. That's the one where Link jumps a lot and you can't win. Right? Is that the one? Okay. So the reason I think this one is...

I'm right. Right? It's like Link in a bog and you're senselessly jumping up and down. Yeah, that's it. Bad things happen to you. Did you say dad things happen to you? Bad things happen to you. Like, Link starts grilling.

Oh, no. He starts making bonds. What happened to the foundation? We don't have the money? We just painted the house. Bring that car home on time. Oh, Melinda's gonna be so mad. Melinda?

That's his wife's name. Link's wife's name is Melinda. All right. He never married Zalda. That just fell apart. Oh, yeah, she was like, no. There's a reality to be my hero. He's like, you don't know how to do the downward stab thing because you can't get out of this bog.

You're stuck with Melinda. Let's never say any of these words ever again. I hated that game. Can I just put it out there? No, no. You know what? You did put it out there. Terrible game.

No, here's one. Really bad game. Oh my God. I feel like we've jumped from the millennial to the Gen X. Zelda, the original Zelda brought me, my sister and I together. We played it a lot. Zelda 2 came out. We put it in.

My sister was like, I hate this and left, and I never saw her again. I mean, how many young people could even name, like, more than five NES games? Do you think, like, a lot? I mean, how many people could, you know, like, a lot? name more than five Xbox games. Well, here, okay, hold on. Would you think one day they'll put out a tiny little Xbox? No, so here's why I think this is, this is why this is so important.

Right now, look at what Xbox is doing with Xbox One, right? Or even the previous one. They make, like, lots of versions of their hardware, and I don't think anybody really falls in love with hardware and video game consoles anymore. I think there's, like, you like it, and it does its job. It doesn't look too much like a DVD player, but, think the reason the NES thing clicks, even more than the Sega Genesis, is the NES thing is so iconic in its design and so unlike anything else and so weird, like putting it in and then

lowering it. And there's like, there's almost this like little religion around using the NES. Like make a guitar out of an NES or something like that. Yeah. And I just, I just, I just, I've always found it the ugliest box. Oh, it, no, it's, it's hideous in like a Ridley-Scott designing alien sort of way, right? Like, it's this hideous but like hyper-practical-looking thing. Like, it looks like it's built to last. I like, I like it too much. It's like, I see what you're saying in a very objective level, and then I'm, like, thinking

about it, I'm just getting the warm fuzzies. All I can think of is, like, exhaling as hard as possible into this thing to try to clean that. Please make Bo Jackson baseball work. Wasn't that a... That's, like, the worst thing you can do to it. Wasn't Bo Jackson Base? What was the company that ripped off the cartridges and they got sued and they put out

the black cartridges. I don't know. Bo Jackson Baseball was a license game. There was another company that like cracked the cartridge code and they put up black cartridges and Nintendo sued them. Oh, I don't know. That goes into like the whole Nintendo seal of approval thing. Yeah, these were not sealed.

Well, they were sealed with disapproval. Yes. Ah, what a good Mad magazine bit. Whatever, Melinda. Melinda. All right. So, wait, here's my question.

Nintendo. for ages, everyone's like, Nintendo, stop making consoles. You've lost the magic of your consoles. Just make mobile games. And their Nintendo has insisted that they not do that. They have said it over and over again. They're not going to do it. No, they've changed their mind on that.

But I'm saying they just changed their mind. Like a year ago, they said, we're going to enter these waters, basically. And then Pokemon is obviously a massive explosion. And then there's this nostalgia wave of everyone wants to buy a $50 tiny NES. Yeah. Shouldn't Nintendo just like get it? give up and just put Mario 1 on the iPhone for real? I mean, it's complicated.

A few things. One, the Pokemon thing isn't just Nintendo. Like, the Pokemon, is owned by the Pokemon company, which has a relationship with Nintendo. So it's not as clear cut as it might seem there. I do think Nintendo is unlike any other company in video games, because they actually made a profit off their hardware. Like, they built hardware to make money. While Microsoft and other companies have often built hardware at a loss, it's kind of changed recently because of other issues.

But there was for a long time the idea of, like, oh, you make hardware to, like, get the licensing fees. One Nintendo has always been like, no, we basically make a toy thing, and it makes us money, and then we sell additional toy things onto it. So I think they didn't want to lose that money, because for them, that was their business. That's, like, what made them rich. that the Game Boy will be the perfect example of that, right? Like, the reason the Game Boy, like, funded them,

and a lot of their handhelds have done so well for them is, like, that is the hardware. And by restricting the things to that, you can sell the Game Boy and make tons and tons and tons of dollars, and they always want to replicate the Game Boy. I mean, it was just such a huge success that, and there's nothing really like it that lasted that long, and it was, like, that cheap of technology.

I mean, when they sold it, it was wildly out of date the day it came out, and it made them a ton of money. So I get it on that, like, you don't want to give that up. And I think it is one of those things, like, once you start to give that up, it's kind of hard to, like, put the toothpaste back in the tube. That said... They have a new console. What's it, Neo?

Next? Nobody knows. People have ideas of what it is, but it's not announced yet. Right. In theory, it's coming out this year. We'll see. But I do think the comparison I was... I think I was talking to Dieter about this.

But, like, it kind of reminds me of Marvel, like, when they started really being serious about movies and like making good games and things like that where they had worried so much about the comic book business and like even though they were great at it like they were just they were never going to like bring back the comic book business and I think that is the point that Nintendo's shareholders are at where they're like I know it was great but it's not coming back like that's just not how the world works anymore you you have to find a different method, and it seems like there is no method, until you realize, like, oh, we have the greatest portfolio in the industry.

And that's what happened with Marvel. It was like, oh, what are we doing? This is so stupid. Our portfolio is so insane. And everybody wants it, so we can only partner with the best people in the world. Yeah. So that's such a crazy opportunity where you have this portfolio, and if I'm saying, okay, we're going to do these things, kind of like what they did with Pokemon Go, and say, we're

We're just going to work with the people who are the absolute best at this, who have the absolute most power who can guarantee us essentially success. And I think they'll follow that model. I'm hopeful they'll follow that model. And the results will be pretty staggering. If they said, if they walked up to Apple and said, look, we'll put Mario in the App Store, but you have to give it better placement, right? You have to promote this for us and it'll be exclusive. Happily tomorrow. Exactly.

If they went to Google and said, all right, we'll do it on Android. but every Android phone from now on, the Google logo will be placed with Mario's face. Google, yeah, that's probably fun. Also, on the developer end, I think you could definitely attract more talent to make something great because those are just things that people really love. Yeah, and I think what you'll see is Pokemon's actually a really great example for this. People have always been, I mean, from the beginning have been like,

why is Pokemon not on GameCube or Wii or Nintendo 64? Why is there not just like a Pokemon game? There was Pokemon's the app. But I mean like a Pokemon game where you like go into Pokemon. And what they figured out was like, no, lock the like what we know the IP to be into the hardware that it's in and then experiment off of that. So like I don't think we'll see a Pokemon game on iOS. It'll just be more marketing that will like introduce it to more people.

And then they will probably go and announce more hardware. and might actually have success as in the hardware space because we'll be like, oh, man, I really like that thing, but I'm craving that classic Mario experience. So they're just going to put out crappy, retro? I don't think it'll be crappy. I think it'll just be like, it'll be designed for the hardware. They're really smart in that way. Like, they do not get enough credit. A lot of people talk about how they're old-fashioned, and they have a lot of issues, especially with, like, how they use the Internet.

But I think more than- By ignoring it? Well, yes, yes. What? What is that? More than any other company, like, they know how to design to the hardware. When they put the Nintendo 64 out with that weird controller, they changed how people played shooters in games,

even if it was, like, goofy in a lot of examples. It still is, like, revolutionary every time they put out new hardware. Do you think they can do that again? I think Wii is, like, the one exception. I just don't think they can do that again. I mean, I think they just did it with Pokemon Go in that sense. Like, they knew to partner. You don't think so?

No, because your whole riff at the, beginning was they just stole a camera interface. Didn't steal it. No, that's just knowing how to use the platform. Sure, but what I'm saying is I don't think they can, I don't think you can sell people another piece of mobile hardware that is worse than

their phone. So you're just going to end up making something that is either an expensive or limited phone. You're thinking in sales of iPhones. Think about it in sales of like what the Nintendo 3DS sold and if they can have the iPhone things too and then also have that business where they just

like guaranteed millions and millions of hardware sales that you sell knowing that they don't have to be as good as the iPhone, that's a lot of money. I think just a straightforward 3DS successor could be great right now, and then the rumors make it sound like that will have some tie-in to the home console, which Nintendo's done so very little. They pretended like they were going to do that with the Game Boy Advance and the Game and the Wii. The Wii looked like it was going to be like, here's a tablet that you carry around.

Right. But then you found out that you actually did to keep it in your house. It's still the craziest thing. That was like the moment I was like, wow, this is pretty, oh, oh, no. Yeah, there's also a resistive touchscreen. Like, when you're like, they're really good at hardware. It's like, yeah, they made a tablet from 1995, right? And they're like, this is the cutting edge of game.

I just, the best hardware that you're going to get is going to be your phone. Yeah, but you have to like not think about it like that. Like, the PlayStation move is better hardware than the Wii mode, right? But, like, who owns PlayStation Move? I bought PlayStation. Yeah, okay. I remember when that came out of the Wii and Wii you. Here's what I'm going to say that.

I'm going to buy the hell on a PSVR. I'm holding off on Madden this year for the PSVR to come out. Because I'm Eli. Because I don't want to buy it for Xbox 1. I want to buy it for PS4. But PlayStation VR is not going to be the best hardware. It doesn't have all the specs. Yeah, where are my specs?

Of the Oculus. And the vibe. I hear you saying. If you want the best specs, you will buy. I'm not saying it's specs. I'm saying like, it's a fucking resistive touchscreen.

No, no, I agree. But it's also, the Wii is without question the big mistake. Right. And they have a history of not doing that.

I would say if there was one company that I would never count out in his Nintendo because it has this ability to be like, don't mind me, just stepping in my grave.

Don't mind me. Just put the dirt in my mouth. It's going to be dead now. And then like rising from the dead and like flying. And be like, gotcha. I'm the king again, baby. This vacuum cleaner is going to suck up these ghosts. It's great.

That was their great. Look at this GameCube controller. The game is sucking up ghosts in a mansion. It's like a, what is it, the Star Trek movies or like the odd ones or the good ones or something? It's time for the odd one. We've been on an even cycle. Let me introduce you our sponsor, Centrify, Quarkey. corporation.

Okay. The Central Fry identity platform is a next generation identity management solution that protects organizations against cyber threats. Check out the white paper or sign up for a 3.30-day trial at Centrofi.com slash identity. All right.

We got to talk about some other things. Well, we got to do my weekly segment. Yeah, what's it called? It's called Pokemon Go. Tips and tricks. Review. Gadgets. SEO keywords.

Five. Fun success. This is a tough one for me, but I figured you would probably, you know, I think about your family sometimes. Thank you. Someone asked you. Superbook. Oh, the super book. Superbook. Love this damn thing.

A $100 laptop with no computer inside it, you just plug your Android phone in. And now that Android phone is magically a computer through this cheap, with the Andromium OS. Come on. Which I don't know. I don't know why they didn't use... From OS. No, there's another one that's really popular. Remix.

Reimix OS is super popular. I don't know why they didn't use that. Andromium. Isn't this like already the Windows Mobile thing? Yeah, Windows Mobile 10. So Windows Continuum does this. And then there was the Motorola Atrix.

This has been tried a lot of times. A lot of people have tried this. This is the dream. Paul made the folio. Can I tell you this story? They never shipped the folio. Well, they made it. We did like a hands-on in

review the the palm folio this is before smartphones were a thing for real the palm folio was a laptop that connected to your palm pilot your trio so you can see your spreadsheets so you can see spreadsheets and do work but like ran the same operating system and it was like nine hundred dollars and it was such a stupid idea that n gadget killed it with a blog post peter ohas and ryan block and josh palski He read a blog post being entitled, Palm, it's time for an intervention. And one of the bullets was the folio was a stupid idea. And like a week later, Palm was like, we're killing the folly. Wow.

Yeah. It was that. Ice cold. Then Palm, you know, did the rest of the time. But that's right. Palm cursed the category. It's like when Baltimore didn't get the job of for being the defense against the Star Gardens. arts teacher, he cursed the position, and so everybody always leaves after a year.

That's what happened. Yeah. And then the Atrix came. I think the Atrix was the next big one. There's Redfly. Dieter on my whole list. The idea that you have a phone and it like turns into a computer is the fucking dream. Yeah.

Right? It's like, I got my phone. Is it? Now these are some pretty boring dreams. Why is that the dream? It just is the dream. I don't know. Why do you want that?

It sounds awesome. It sounds awesome. Now that I think about it. So the thing about this shell, right? Yeah. It is clearly larger or thicker than like the HP Specter or a MacBook, right? It's going to be a lot slower than either of those things. Because it's $100, you're not going to get a good screen or keyboard or track pads.

It's ruining my dreams. I'm making you play Zelda, too, when we go upstairs. I would much prefer to get like a $300 Chromebook than something like this. And even more, I would prefer to be affluent and just have a MacBook. Or an HP Specter. I'm buying this thing. All right. What are you going to use it for?

What are you going to plug it into your iPhone? You're going to plug it into your iPhone? No. Are you going to plug it into... Right, let's talk about that. That's your gadget at the week is a super book. That's a shout out to me. Look, I'm telling you the dream.

The dream is you have one centralized processor in your life that connects to one cloud account and it just powers screens of various sizes. That's a dream. So you don't have to like switch things and sync things and worry about things. You're just living your life. Sure. Never edit video. again.

Miriam, I have something very sad to tell me. Never play World Warcraft. All right, all right. Tell me about this dumb phone. Actually, I want you to hand it to Miriam. I want Miriam to tell me about this phone. Would you buy this phone? This is a Moto Z droid force.

Yeah, that's the force. Yeah. What is it? Wait, Miriam, hold it out like head height and then drop it on the ground. Am I allowed to do that? Yes. You can hold it higher than that.

It's going to be fun. Yeah. We can't hurt it. a phone. I dropped it from like chest height onto concrete today. Oh, so you can't really do that though? That's great. I break all things. Yeah, I know. Right. I'm not. I wasn't saying, yeah, I know you break

everything. I'm saying, I do that too. We got to talk about this. So this phone, it's the new droid, it's the Moto Z. Yeah. It's indestructible. Yeah. And what else? It doesn't have a headphone jack and the USBC headphone dongle is plugged into the bottom. Right now. So

Miriam was like, I love this phone. I break everything. I'd get it. And then Look at that. Look at that dongle. So the headphones that I currently use for my commute, they have two pieces anyway. Because they're meant to, it's like a... Pre-dongles your phone. No, it's like their sport ones, so they have a shorter version so you could like have it on your sleeve if you want.

Yeah. So I don't know how that's that much different if this just like was always attached to your headphones. Yeah. Remember the original Xbox had that breakaway cable? Yeah, it sucks. So when your siblings tripped on it? I mean, you're going to like awkwardly, it'll pull apart and then you'll drop your phone, but your phone will be fine when you, when it, when it, pulls apart, you know.

That's how you solve this problem. You make an indestructible phone. My biggest worry seeing something like this, like I would say that cable sticks out of that phone. We've also seen these like supposed like leaked. The renders of the new iPhone are super ugly. The new iPhone earbuds, but I don't believe those are the actual ones.

I think the cases that we're seeing are. But that, see that USBC cable sticks out almost, I would say maybe three quarters of an inch, right? Oh yeah. The USBC plug, you mean, not the cable. Sorry, yes, correct. Right long. Correct.

The cable, let me paint a picture for you. It's stuck in really tight, though. There's one plug. No, well, yet. There's one plug. It's USBC. The dongle is about five inches long, and it has the USBC plug, but the USBC plug, but the USBC plug has sort of audio components in it.

Yeah, it's a new USBC. And so it sticks out a little bit, and I feel like if that was in my pocket, it would sat down. Like when I sat down, it would be kind of an angle, and I'd feel like I'd bend the Nothing about this makes me feel like I'm wiggling. How much longer is it than a normal three and a half millimeter thing sticks out? The normal three and a half ones are either angled or and they spin. Yeah they spin and they're angled.

She's throwing the same. Screw you no headphone jack. Man that's the appeal. A little tail you can hold it. That's true. The dongle's nice for picking it up. There's got to be some jokes there. All right.

Well I'm just saying look the no headphone phones are They're coming. Here's the first one. Marion, would you get this phone? No, but that's just because I don't buy things. Imagine that you were buying.

Yeah. Is it one of the ones that are free with my carrier? Perfect. Maybe. I mean, how is it waterproof? I don't know. If it's waterproof,

they're going to throw it in a bucket of water. Throwing it everywhere else. There's a lot of laptops. Now, the appeal of this is like you could play Johann Sebastian joust with it. Do you play that game? It's water resistant.

That would be like that it's, you can't break it. So you could play. You can play jousting mobile games. It's water repellent, moderate exposure to water, such as accidental spills, splashes, or light rain, not designed to be submerged in water or exposed to pressurized water or other liquids. Don't power wash your phone. Waterproof.

That's weird. It's got advanced nanodeling technology. Okay. So we got to wrap up. It's the end of our show. It's time. We got to go play Pokemon Go. This was a muted show, mostly because.

of my burning hatred for Pokemon Go. Okay, got it. Hatred, wow. It's not hatred. It's more like a burning antithy. And do you think it's maybe that you just don't feel relevant anymore? I'm old, I'm dying. Are you old sometimes?

Here's what happens. It happens. It happens. It's a terrible feeling. In a form of cartoons that other people are chasing in a digital world all around you. At least you don't have to regularly talk to one of your coworkers about five seconds of summer. If you want to feel old, I can make that happen. What's up, Caitlin?

That's a shout out to you. How do you feel about the new sniper character for Overwatch? Anna. I like that she's a grandmother. There's a whole thing. See, I know what's up. Nice. Yeah.

Nice. Caught that one because I read an article somewhere else. Oh, I have a thing to say. An important thing to say. There's a show, a television show called Mr. Robot. This show is about evil hackers doing wonderful things in a world full of evil psychopathic corporate people. Imagine if someone could get into your phone. steal your Pokemon.

Just trying to make a relevant. That's pretty much what Mr. Robots' God. The app is too bad for that. It's about the world's most sophisticated

Pokemon hackers. Anyhow, Mr. Robes Back, the first episode was last night. It was great. I was on USA's after show. But every week for this season on Wednesdays,

this is a big announcement. I should have done on the top of the show. Every week, Wednesdays. Russell Brandem, Emily Ashita and I are hosting the official Mr. Robot after show,

which will be on the verge and on USANetwork. com. So watch Mr. Robot. And then basically, if you loved the video Vergecast, this is going to be kind of a lot like that, only focused on Mr. Roebuck for some time. I won't tell you how long. I'll give it a shot. It's going to good.

It's been crazy. We've got a lot of plans. But Wednesdays. Okay. Wednesdays. That's not good for me. But can I watch it on demand? That's the show.

Yes, of course you can watch it. See internet. I just want to make sure. We'll be torrenting that thing foreign wind. We're going to have an official IRC channel for like the lead hackers. It's a whole thing. But only for the show. the late hackers?

Yeah, the regular plebs get to use Twitter. Okay. You can use a hashtag on Twitter or you can figure out MIRC. Those are your choices to talk to me in the Mr. Robot after show. But it's been really fun. I want to read. There's also a bunch of other stuff to listen to. Chris, just want to plug your show?

Yeah, so there's a show called Once Time. Hosted by me. And this week's episode is about Pokemon. I think you should listen to it. He had me on one time. I thought he was a great interviewer. Thank you. There you go.

You were a great guest. Thank you. Gold stars all around. I thought Miriam did a good job today, guys. I think she really did. Stop complimenting each of them. Do you see her throw that phone? I host a show called Control, I Delete, with Walt Mossberg.

Lauren Good on the Recode side, host To Embarrass to Ask. Emily and Liz, do Verge ESP. Recode has other great shows. Recode decode, recode media. Just listen to box media stuff all day long in your headphones connected to your dumb dongle. All right, that's it. That's Vergecast. Thanks again to Centrify for all your cyber identity needs.

Centrify. You've been thanked. Rock and roll.