The Vergecast - Xbox Series X, Series S, and PS5 review / Apple announces 'One More Thing' event for November 10th

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Tom Warren discuss reviews of the new game consoles — Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S, and Sony's PS5. Oh yeah one more thing, there's an Apple event next week. Additional reading: Xbox Series X review Xbox Series S review Astro’s Playroom is the perfect showcase for the PS5’s wild DualSense controller The PS5’s new controller is amazing — here’s how it works Sony confirms the PS5 won’t support SSD storage expansion at launch Best Buy says next-gen Xbox and PS5 consoles will only be sold online for entire holiday season Sony strongly urges gamers not to line up at stores on PS5 release date Sony shows how much easier logging into the PS5 can be, among other tutorials The different strategies of Microsoft and Sony’s next-generation consoles Switch sales are so good that Nintendo is raising forecasts Apple announces 'One More Thing' event for November 10th … Apple to Launch MacBooks With Own Chips Next Week Making macOS run well on ARM processors isn’t the hard part Microsoft’s rougher ride in a similar transition could provide some lessons for Apple Fortnite will reportedly be playable on iOS again through Nvidia’s GeForce Now Sizing up the iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro Max DJI’s palm-sized Mini 2 drone flies further and shoots 4K for $449 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, we're doing two episodes. On this episode, Tom Warren joins us, talk about the next generation of consoles. That's PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S reviews of all of them. Then there's an Apple event next week. New Macs with arm processors. Got to talk about that. That's coming up now on the Vergecast.

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. Proms 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 Vergecast. 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. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the next generation.

It's like, it's good. It's like a hopeful. It's just a Star Trek podcast. We're just going to talk about John Luke Baccarre for the next two hours. You know, in many ways I think we are. I'm your friend, Eli. That's Deeter Bone. Hi, Dieter.

Hey, how's it going? Tom Warren is here. Hello, though. How are you? We're doing all right, Tom. So we brought in a Brit on this, the 45th day of the American election. Here's what we're going to do. The election is not over as we record this.

We're recording this on Thursday night. There is a lot of just dead ahead tech news to talk about. there we had Xbox reviews Tom did an Xbox review we have PS5 news coming Tom is written a explainer of how the controller works which is apparently amazing there's an Apple event next week we're expecting RMAX a lot of dead ahead gadget tech news to talk about and then there is a lot of election news particularly platform policy election news I was talking to Dieter earlier we could not figure out how to manage the transition between those two things in one episode of We just couldn't.

I was like, there was no segue available here. Yeah, what's the audio equivalent of just like a line break, just like an HR bar? You know, that's on the website. You're just like, oh, we'll just put a break. It'll be fine. Yeah, right, boop. We just couldn't. I mean, I think we've done a reasonably successful job of keeping it all together.

But this week is just too much. So we're going to do something, a little bit of an experiment. We're going to have two smaller sized episodes. We'll go over regardless. I'm not going to tell you how long we think they're going to be because we're going to go over. But we're going to do this episode, Xbox, Xbox, Apple event. There's some other stuff to talk about. That's this one. We're going to do another episode with Addy. Both going to be in the feed at the same time. With Addy, we're obviously

going to talk about the election platform policy, what Twitter, Facebook, YouTube have been doing around the massive amount of disinformation and chaos that has come about in this election process. So both episodes are in the feed. If you want to hear the policy talk, go check out our conversation with Adi. If you come for the gadgets, here we are. We're going to talk about gadgets. The other thing I'm not doing is I'm not going to update the COVID website. site count this week. It's 34 weeks, but hopefully we're done talking about it. So we'll get back to the pandemic is still the biggest story in the world. I just think this week, it has in some ways been eclipsed by what will happen with the future of American politics. So 34 weeks, we'll come back,

we'll check in on COVID. We'll do all that stuff next week. This is the Xbox PS5 Apple episode. If you want to go talk about election policy platform stuff, go check out the adie episode. Clear? Clear. Okay. Tom Warren. Hello. There's like three new consoles, right? The series X, the series S, the PS5. You reviewed the series X and the series S this week. How'd I go?

Yeah. I went to bed at 4 a.m. and got up at 7am today, so that's how it went. It's been, yeah, it's been a ride. Yeah, can we just really quickly, our listeners are savvy, and so they know that the job of reviewing a console isn't actually fun. it is work. Like you're playing games, but you're playing games

with an eye towards judging things. And that's a completely different experience than just playing a video game. Yeah, I thought it was going to be fun. I was like, yeah, I'll do two Xbox reviews. It's going to be fun. And I was like, no, no, that's not. Never a game.

I'll wait 10 years until I do this again. But yeah, so we took a look at the series X and the series S. And they're basically very similar sort of consoles, except they're very different. So one's fallen. 99. The other one's 299. And the 499 is the real

like, you know, PS5 compared to. And the 299 console is the sort of like, it's the budget one, I guess. It's the sort of snackable Xbox, the little tiny Xbox. And yeah, I feel like both of them, even though they're very different. They kind of do very similar things. And I feel like they're very similar to like a PC.

So like in different generations before or like the whole idea of like a next gen consoles, that it brings something new and it like pushes the, you know, different games forward and tech forward. I'm not seen that yet with any of these consoles, to be honest. Maybe the Pierce Fights controller. But I feel like we're at a point where games, it's, in the past, you've had like these big jumps, right, in generations.

And I don't think that jump is necessarily here yet. So the Xbox represents that in the best way possible because it just feels like you've upgraded your PC. The claims from both of these companies is the ray tracing for graphics is like the big graphical jump. Yeah. A higher frame rate at 4K and, I don't know, I guess load times, right? Like for the Xbox specifically in the series X specifically, that is supposed to be this generation's equivalent of, I don't know, the N64 jumping to 3D or, you know, whatever, you know, the big jump is for each console generation. but it seems like you can't just point to one of those things

be like, yep, this is better in that way for sure. It's just everything is a little bit nicer and faster in lots of different ways that, like your review said, felt like the equivalent of upgrading your PC. Yeah, and like, I know every generation of Yukon's comes out, it always takes a little while for the games to catch up anyway. Right. But I think with the exports this time,

instead of, like, they haven't got these new games. Like, that's one of the key missing parts. Like to me, so if I was on boxing an Xbox next Tuesday when they all come out, I think I would be super excited about the load time, super excited that, you know, everything runs a bit faster and stuff. But I think I would be missing that like that super excitement about something new. Right. There's always something exciting about something brand new, whether it's like a new iPhone that has like magnets on the back and you're like, you know? No, you know, I always say this. I've had the past two new iPhones have purchased.

I've been like, oh, it's still just iOS. Yeah. You have that moment where you're like, oh, and then like five minutes after you're done playing with it, you're like, oh, wait, this feels the same, nothing's changed. Yeah, this is iOS. And it feels like because they didn't change the dashboard, it's very much the same for the Series X, right? Pretty much, yeah. I think basically using the console is exactly the same. Like, there's no difference.

It's all a little bit faster obviously in the dashboard and stuff you'd expect. It's just where the games get optimized and updated. that's where it can be like, you know, transformative for certain games because they're running at like an old sluggish 30 frames per second, which does feel like if you're used to like someone like me, I'm used to playing at like 200 frames on a gaming PC and like it's, you know, super fast. And if I go back to 30 frames a second, I sometimes actually feel physically sick. Like that's not even exaggeration. Like it, it depends on the game, but like genuinely, sometimes it does throw you a little bit. And I think a bunch of people are used to 30 frames per second. But once they, once they feel 60 frames a second, and beyond. It's like going from like gigabit internet and going back to 56K modem, right? Like the step back is like so dramatic that you would want to keep at 60 frames forward. You know, one of the points in your review that I think is super interesting with regards to the Xbox anyway is that your ability to choose what you prioritize in the visual presentation of the game is approaching like the PC zone. So you're saying you would prioritize high frame rates

my instinct is like just I'm bad at video games it's not like my reaction times matter like I'm crashing the car anyway you know let's like be honest make it as beautiful as possible right like I would prefer to have more details better lights and like I'm just looking around in most games and then quickly quickly dying but that's the thing like for you that's there and for me who wants higher frame rates that's there so like we're getting to this point where you do have these modes and obviously on the PC you just have like sliders right You just crank all the satin's up or crank them down. So much granular detail. You obviously don't need so much of that on the console, but it's so simplified. It's just a flick of a switch, right? And it's just nice to have that. And I feel like if we can get even more modes in there, I feel like it's great. Choice is great, right?

Yeah, but it does show the limits of computing power right now, right? Like what we can make with a game has run ahead of what a reasonably priced consumer piece of hardware can do. What you would want in the new generation of a new console is, is to just everything's set to max, all sliders at max all the time, right? That's what you would expect from like the good one. But that's just not possible. Has that ever happened though? No, because like, so the hardware that's point inside these things,

like I have a $3,000 gaming PC, right? I can run watchdogs at max frames, max everything, max ray tracing. You just can't achieve that on a $500 sort of miniature PC essentially. everything's shrunk down and smaller. But isn't the story usually that it's at the end of the console life cycle that you get the most performance squeezed out of it? Yeah. So I think here what's particularly interesting is, you know, Tom's frame of this is more like a PC upgrade

than your standard generational leap is that the games are being updated, but that big optimization push that takes years isn't quite pulling all of the performance out of it, which I, that's just a little bit of a change in, I think, the curve of what we're we expect. To me, the one that always comes to mind is the launch of the 360, which is ages ago. Children on the Xbox 360 was a video game console.

It was a circle. It wasn't a circle. It should have been a circle. Anyway, that was the one that we moved to 16 by 9 aspect ratios. We moved to HD. Like, this was a big change. Yeah. It wasn't just, we're pushing more pixels. It was, we are re-architecting how game consoles work. It's online all the time.

And it just took a few years before everyone really understood what to do with it. So for me, for this generation, the big open question is, will we see that pattern repeat? Or are these things in their core architecture, their processors, their GPUs,

and the way that they access storage, so much closer to the way that a traditional gaming PC works, that those optimizations will come faster? The reason that games got so good towards the end of these other life cycles is there's, like, particular things that you can do, to squeeze out extra performance out of the specialized components that are inside a console. The components inside the Xbox Series X, they're not, they're really,

there's so much closer to what you've got in a PC in terms of, like, coding, I think, that we may not see, like, that spike at the end of the console's generation. Yeah, I feel like the problem with this generation is ray tracing, right? So that thing's pretty heavy. there's always something that they promised with these consoles, right? So for the Xbox 1 originally in the PS4, it was 1080P, that was the target, right?

And it never quite hit there at the beginning. And it took a while to get there. And then roughly got there. I mean, pretty much the PS4 did anyway. And then the Xbox 1X came along and it was like, we're doing 4K. And it didn't quite get there. And then it did.

And it took a while. And I think this time it's like, we're doing ray tracing. And like at the moment on PC that like, if I whack all the ray tracing settings on and stuff in some games, I don't even get 30 frames with like an expensive graphics card. So I think the reality of ray tracing is going to be pretty limited. And that's going to be like the point where we push up against and the optimizations will have to be found there.

They are doing like on the PC side, they do something that's called like super sampling. So it will basically, like invidians using like an AI system to like scan the game. and then upscale from a lower resolution image to a higher one. So it'd be super interesting to see if that comes to these consoles because that will sort of help with the hit from ray tracing. But there's always something they need to bump up against

and something that we'll only really see really highly ray trace games like in a couple of years, right? I think realistically. So can we talk about the games library? So, you know, everyone knows that there aren't like launch titles for this Xbox. Like the big one at the launch day, like, oh yeah, I'm going to get this game, it's going to look. could feel amazing, and it's the reason to go buy this console.

But there's, like, a bunch of games that are being optimized, not all of them, and it has repercussions for, I don't know how you store them and, like, where they go. So what is the, and then, of course, the other big thing is there's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, something, something. And so where do you see the state of, like, the games that are available to play for either of these consoles? Because to me, I am really, we're going to try and do, you know, one versus PlayStation later, but I'll just tell you that right now,

I'm really torn between the desire to have this simple ecosystem of Netflix for games that Microsoft offers and what to me seems like clearly superior hardware and exclusive games on the PS5. I'm genuine, I don't know which one I'm going to get, I might end up getting them both. Yeah, and I guess that sort of decision,

I think, is a lot of people. And I think that's why the series S exists, right? Like the cheaper consoles is like, oh, this is basically our exports game pass console, just at a lower resolution. But yeah, in terms of like, exclusives. They obviously don't, they have some exclusives at launch, but they're like, you know, indie games. And there's not the AAA Halo, Halo, you know. It was supposed to be Halo Infinite and they got

delayed because it didn't look that great when they showed. They got to fix that one model for that one brute or whatever it was. But yeah, like, it's missing that. It's definitely missing those games. And let's be honest, the exports one throughout his generation was missing games. Yeah. Obviously, Microsoft's done Xbox GamePaths, which has like helped sort of offset that. they've made a lot of promises. They've acquired Bethesda. They're, you know, acquiring sort of game studios all the time, to be honest. So there's a lot of promise there.

There's the promise that these games will eventually come. They're just not here at the moment. So I think they're relying on like, you know, Assassin's Creed, Hala, watchdogs, cyberpunk, those sort of things to be the draw for this particular console. But there's obviously available on the PS5. So it's really game pass and those sort of. around launch games, should we say. Not all of them are at launch.

I feel like if you're relying on Assassin's Creed, you're like, you're betting against exclusivity. You can play Assassin's Creed on a number of Samsung refrigerators at this point. Like, as you have obviously reviewed the console, but Gamecast seems like a markedly different way to think about owning, acquiring, playing video games. Did you feel that right away or it was just like, well, I'm paying for another subscription service now?

Yeah, I think like, so GamePass is incredible value. at the moment, right? Like you pay 10 bucks a month and you get more than 100 games. You can stream them and you can play them actually on consoles as well. So it's more like the streaming side of it. It's like an ad on. But it is shaping out to be sort of like a Netflix for games. But it does come with the fact that it's all digital. You don't own these games. They can disappear. If publishers just decide, you know, we don't want that game on there anymore, it's gone. If Microsoft decides to put the prices up, we see that frequently with Netflix, the price will go up. So there's, I think we are heading to an era in gaming, which is a little uncomfortable, perhaps.

Because if, if the same thing happens with like the Netflix side of things and we get a bunch of different streaming services and you have to have a subscription for the games you want to play, then you end up paying quite a lot of money when you could have just bought those games, right? Individually. So I feel like we're at a sort of tipping point to see how Microsoft does with this because they're the ones that are really kind of leading the way in the gaming side, to be honest. study is obviously doing their own thing and a bunch of other cloud streaming services Amazon as well but none of them none of them have the breadth and the content that Microsoft does at the moment so but if Sony starts spinning up if Nintendo starts spinning up it's going to be interesting times but I feel like Xbox game passes is is great value for now and I think it will be you know in the future it's just I do I do worry about the ownership side and you know the pricing and everything like that getting locked into that sort of subscription

You know how a bunch of websites, we used to do this too. They'll put what's coming to Netflix and what's leaving Netflix in the next 30 days. They're like, oh, this is leaving Netflix. I got to go watch everything now. The idea that you're going to need to keep an eye on what's going to leave Xbox GamePass and you're going to have to like, oh, my God, this game is going to disappear in a week. I need to try and finish it right now and crank 40 hours into a game or something. That's what I'm afraid of.

Yeah, I think at the moment, like Game Pass is so it's really good if you don't really know what you want to play or you just want to discover some games. there's so much on there it's great for that especially if you're new to an Xbox right like it's a great starting point to like it and they've got all the EA games coming to it and stuff

it's like there's a lot but yeah I just don't know where it's heading so the other thing that's really interesting to me is how much you seem to love the Xbox series S like is it just because it's so small and cute like I just like I don't know this is a Vergecast thing most people are like oh I want to get the good one

but there's something that's appealing about the series S is just like I'll get it as my game pass machine. Yeah, and I think that that's pretty much what it is. Like, to me, I keep describing it as a 1080p machine. So there's a lot of people who still play in 1080p TVs, whether it's in their living room or in the bedrooms. A lot of kids still play on 1080p TVs and monitors.

And it feels like it's designed for those sort of people. They don't care about 4K. They're perfectly fine with 1080P. They haven't experienced perhaps 4K and the benefits of it, and they don't really care about it. And yeah, it does feel like the perfect game pass machine. And it's just so small. And I think I come into my living room

and I see like the PS5 and I'm like whole Like every time I'm like holy This thing is so big And I see the Xbox on the side And I'm like Someone knocked over my Xbox Like these things are just like

Strangely designed This time around And I feel like the S is just like It's not the greatest design But like I way prefer that design And it slots in anywhere Like it's the smallest Xbox they've ever done So I think that just appeals

To my inner gadget person And it does everything the export series X does pretty much, just at a lower resolution. That's probably the easiest way to describe it. Well, a lower resolution, but also you're going to need to juggle storage way more often with it. Yeah, that's the worst part about it. That's the kind of, I feel like, so it's 512 gig SSD. It's actually usable is 364. So that's the only thing that actually matters.

And there's like, there's definitely 100 gig games. How big is Call of Duty? Call of Duty is like 105, thing. Destiny is like 100. Although it's going to get smaller. So if you're still one of those, you've got like another four or five games, maybe. Maybe even less than that. And then you're full, which is like, ouch.

And the storage expansion is super expensive. Yeah, it's like $220. So that puts the price up to nearly $520 if you go for that. And that's more than the series X. And all right, yeah, you are getting half a gig extra storage, but that's not the point. Yeah, I just, the storage situation is a problem. I feel like Microsoft could have brought out different sizes of those storage cars, and that would have helped. But ultimately, they're probably going to introduce a one terabyte series S at some point in the future, surely, which will address that.

But it doesn't help right now. So that's the big drawback I see at the moment. So one thing I want to ask about, we're going to talk about the PS5, and it's insane hardware in a minute. But, you know, I've talked to you about it. I've talked to Andrew about it. The controller of the PS5 is the thing, right? I mean, the haptics and controllers seem like it's stand out. Wow, this is a new experience.

Is there anything like that with the Xbox's? No. Like, no, not like the controller. I just see Dieter's shaking as. I just see Dieter shaking. There's one thing I think that is actually that the Xbox has at the PS5 likes. Oh, quick resume. Quick resume, yeah.

Yeah, but like the PS5 has like similar like techniques like to get there. It's not quite the same, but yeah. Quick resume like basically literally cycle between sort of, I say five. or six because that's the rough good estimate. It could be more, it could be less. But five or six games, they load in like, sometimes they load in like a few seconds, but usually within 10 seconds. So super good if you're playing, like my best example is if you're playing in the middle of playing like Ori, like a single player game and then your friend invites you to play Fortnite or something, and you're like, oh, no, I need to like finish this and get to a save point or you don't. You just

hit the invite and go into the other game. Like you don't, you start to forget about save points. So it's pretty good for that. That, yeah, that is the. That is the. Xbox's killer feature, for sure. But, I mean, that's the Xbox's killer feature, but it's... But it's software, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Whereas the PS5, the controller, like, it's genuinely... I don't want to say game-changing, but it is. So I just say that. I mean, in the one narrow sense, it is. It's so literally game-changing. Well, actually, let's take a break and come back and talk about the PS-5. Viren and Andrew actually reviewed that console, that reviews out. you wrote a description of how controller works.

There's just a lot to talk about. So let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO,

not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot com from day one. So whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises

to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash verge for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan.

That's Framer.com slash verge for 30% off. Framer.com slash verge. Rules and restrictions may apply. Okay, we're back. PS5. PS5. It's big.

It looks so ridiculous. It is amazing to me how the design of this console is, it's so wacky that I'm like, I should buy an Xbox. Is that? Yeah. That's weird, right? Like, that's not how you're supposed to think about consoles.

Yeah, like, as someone who, like, values what their living room looks like, and, and it's very, very intricate about it, like, the PS5 is just a big no-no to me. Like, I just can't, I can't put it in anywhere where it doesn't really, like, just shut out and scream like, hey, I'm here. Well, I mean, literally last week, Ashley on the show was, like, if I walked in my boyfriend's living room and saw a PS5, I'd be like, get that out of here. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a, that's an indictment of this thing.

But ideally, you know, this is your big moment. You're going to buy a new TV, maybe a new soundbar. You're going to tuck all the stuff away in a closet. This is my plan. Yeah, you're going to do like an AV rack closet. I live in an apartment. I'm just saying, get a better house. Am I going to run a 50-foot HDMI 2.1 cable?

Like, that's going to cost $3,000. Look, Dieter, we all make sacrifices. This is the time. This is the first console that really justifies home renovation because you don't want it out in public. But if you live in a mansion like that, you can have a PS5 in every room, right? Yeah, exactly. So design, well, actually, let's talk about it. You've got it there.

You were saying earlier, like it looks imposing. Talk about the actual design of the thing and how it, how using it just plays out. Is it, do you just get used to it? Yeah, like I don't feel like I've really got used to the design, to be honest. I think just because I've slotted it into my TV stand and it looks kind of goofy on its side I try to stand it up and I'm like I just have to put it on the floor

because it just doesn't really fit in with my living room right now so I haven't really gotten used to it but I will say like they're just boxes that you shove under your TV ultimately like you're going to have to figure out a better way to shove them under it but ultimately once it's under there and it's out of the way

and it's a few months down the line it's like stuff like the controller and all the new sort of game and the content selection that really matters, right? And that controller is like, yeah, like, that's the thing. Before we talk about good hardware, one of the things that Andrew pointed out in Veer noticed this too, and he actually showed it to me, the stand for the console, theoretically this is only a problem once.

But it's actually really weird and complicated and strange, and it's got like you do a twist thing, and there's a hidden chamber where the screw goes. It literally took me like 10 minutes to work out. Like this is the most confusing thing I think I've ever unboxed in like probably like 10 years. I never usually unboxed like a phone or laptop and don't know how to do something on it and have to go into the manual. It's usually like a sticker or something that just guides you. There's like nothing. And I didn't realize that you had to twist it.

Right. And it's just it took me a while to figure it out. But once you twist it, there's like a little screw inside. You take it out of its little compartment. You free? There's a secret compartment for a screw. I mean, come on. I think, was it Submit at Polygon who thought that was so clever, he wrote an entire post about it?

It's like, yeah, it's been a long time since there's been a new console generation. We need to write about one screw. You, like, pull the screw out and, like, you know, you get a PlayStation trophy on your screen. No, you don't. But, like, it's, the stand is pointless. I'm just going to say that. like I have it, whereas it's on the floor right now, but I have it on the floor without the stand. It stands fine without the stand.

I don't understand why there's a stand. But on its side, you kind of need it because it does a little bit of a weird wobbly balancing it otherwise. You know, it's funny, I bet there's going to be like cases for the PS5. Oh, there's already third-party wings that you can get. Then Sony had to like tamp it down because they were using the wrong branding or whatever. So there's going to be a whole lot of shady. plastic things that you can replace the wings with. Yeah, if you're, look, if you are a TikTok hustler with a 3D printer out there,

there is a market for you right now to square off the PSWife. Think about it. Okay, so that's, we can dunk on the design. We've been done in design for months, quite honestly. But you've got it. I mean, you've used it. Tell me more about this controller. Because that, that, it's the one that we've made, you know, we've written about it.

We've shown pictures. everyone who's come into contact with it has said it's amazing it feels like one of those things where people are going to have to go and experience it to really get it but it just seems like a step change, a game changer if you will

for how we think about video game controllers yeah like it is very different obviously a lot of controllers have had haptics and rumble features over the years you can go all the way back to like n64 days if you want but like it's not that right it the best way like so there's a packing game that comes built into the console um so it's

called astro's playroom and i think it's it's the one thing that everyone if you buy a PS5 you just just play that game before you do anything else um because it's such a good demonstration of the controller and like you the first thing you do is you're sat on like a tiny little fan and then you slide down and collect coins along the way and as you come off that fan everything about where you're walking feels different like it almost feels like you can feel the material belief, your feet changing. And you slide down. It feels like there's a hard slide beneath the palms of your hands. And then you get onto the sand as like a pitterpah underneath your feet. And you go onto like the wood and it all feels very different. And it really like you start to feel it. You know, it's like one of those delighters.

You're like, oh, this is nice. This is cool. And you think, oh, this is cool. And then you pull like a rope and the actual tension and the triggers adjust. So it's like it's fighting with you. the actual controller is physically fighting with you, to make you feel like you're pulling that rope and opening that door. And it's that, that's like the very different part. I think it's more the triggers.

The haptics are amazing. I think they're better than Nintendo Switch haptics. They're as good or better than the iPhone haptics. It's that subtlety you get, you know, like on an iPhone, you hold down the flashlight, and you get that, like, slight, that slight,

um, haptic feedback. It's like that, but just imagine feeling that across your palms and feeling like, And like in Spider-Man, like a rhino comes and just stomps and it like stumps across your hands. So it feels like you're getting the weight of him.

It's really, yeah, it's hard to like describe without feeling it really is one of those things. But the real turning point for me with the controller is when in Astros like a couple of minutes in, you turn into like a spring loaded gadget toy thing. And you literally feel the tension of the, you have to pull on the tension of the triggers to really get the spring to like release and you just feel them releasing it. It's just, I don't know, everything about it, just, the feedback was just great. Like, it really felt like you were controlling that spring. It's just crazy.

The big question for me, especially with the tension on the triggers, one, I really hope game designers think through these things and don't just, like, turn everything up to max just because it's there. Yeah. But two, I hope game designers actually code to it, right? Like, PSI is going to get some exclusives, but they're going to have a bunch of cross-platform games. Yeah, and I think that's the question over at the moment. it's like how much will this be used? And like in Spider-Man,

it doesn't feel as prevalent. Right. Like, Astros is definitely a showcase. It's showing off the new controller. But then I think Fortnite, they're adding in like some SMG effects. So you get to feel the guns will feel different when you shoot. And another game,

and I can't remember what it's called. But like the triggle lock up when your gun locks up, which is like crazy. Which is like a crazy different sort of element that we haven't had before. Yeah. And then like in, NBA, you'll be like running along and your character will get tired. So then it becomes increased, you know, the resistance is there. So you have to really push down to like get him to like start

moving again. Oh my gosh. I mean, I always blame the controller when I lose and now it'll be real. It'll be true. But that to me seems, you know, our conversation on the Xbox's was lots of graphical improvements, a new game distribution system. Are you going to buy the series S for your bedroom TV that 1080P, this is, this conversation is, there's a meaningfully different way to experience video games because of the controller. And that, regardless of how ridiculous the box looks, that to me, that's like the deciding factor. If you're thinking PS5 versus Xbox and you know Sony's going to come with a game library

because that's how Sony does it and Microsoft made all these acquisitions, they got to spin it up, like, why wouldn't? Because it looks so dumb in my living room and I'll get in trouble. But that's like all we got. That's the knock. It's like Sony was like, oh, it's too good. Make it look like Cybertron. That's the thing.

Like the best console would be, I think the one that had like the design of the Xbox. I mean, the design of the Xbox isn't great, but like the design of the series S with the controller of the PS5 and like a mixture of like game pass and Sony's exclusive. That would be like the dream console, right? It's the same as like if you mixed Android and iOS together. Yeah. There isn't a perfect one. But there's, I think like the Xbox does also feel different in games. for different reasons.

Like, games, games feel different because they're running smoothly. They don't feel different in your hand. And then the PS5 is obviously going to make games run like as smoothly as well. But that controller is definitely, is like the key thing to the PS5 to me. So the PS5 doesn't have the quick resume feature that lets you bounce between four different games, but the load time is still really good. And they have this, they redesigned their home screen, so it's got the same tiles at the top, but at least they put media off in the corner in a different tab.

But then when you hover over an icon, there's all these options to, like, jump to a different part of the game or, like, experience, like, do this thing here. So there's, like, a second row of tiles for doing stuff. Did you use that stuff? Was it cool? I haven't really used that much. But, yeah, like, you basically can jump into, like, say, say, like, Fortnite. We can't test Fortnite yet, but, like, the idea in Fortnite is that you just jump into the mode that you want to load up rather than have to, you know, worry about going for all the menus and selecting everything. So it's like, you know what it reminds me of?

Do you remember like the deep linking like Windows phone? Like from the tile where you'd pin a tile and then it would go deep into the app, that sort of thing. It reminds me of that. And I think that's great because like it's as long as all the devs support it and stuff, like that's a really good experience. Because it's just so much quicker to like, because half the time you're watching smash screens or like some part of the Yula that you don't care about.

You just, you just want to get like into the game, right? So it's an interesting way of handling it. So one of the things we should talk about is how these things are going to get to people. Right. I mean, so we're talking about these controllers are you got to feel them to really understand it. In any normal circumstance, I'd be like, go to Best Buy and try it out. But it's obviously there's a pandemic. You shouldn't do that even if you could.

And I don't think that you can. So Best Buy has announced that Xbox and PS5s are only going to be sold online for the entire holiday season. Sony is basically telling people not to line up at stores on the release. state, it just feels like this thing is going to be very different for people to get the units. We are expecting them to sell out, obviously. How is that part playing out for both of the consoles? Yes, that's kind of a bit of an unknown at the moment because so I don't think Microsoft's doing quite the same.

I feel like they're still going to be in stores as far as I'm aware. They haven't announced anything different. But I think the demand and like the supply is going to be interesting. I feel like these things are going to be pre. highly in demand, especially over the festive period. So I wouldn't be surprised if we don't really see the ability to get them in stores until, like, early next year, just generally across stores anyway. Yeah, I mean, online pre-orders were an absolute fiasco for both of these.

There's going to be launch day things available at some websites. And the chance, like, the people that couldn't get in on pre-orders are going to be even more eager to try and get in this time. The bots are going to go crazy on these websites. They're going to know what times to show up. You know the old Ticklema like people like rushing into the store and there was a frenzy to get one and they're beating each other up and whatever? We're going to have the online equivalent of that for the next three months. Just I'm just, I've just given up trying.

I want one or both of these and I just know it's going to be such a pain to do it that I've just in my heart accepted that me playing on either one of these consoles is a mid-2020 thing. Yeah, I mean, that's probably fair to goodness. I think like the series S will probably be, I feel like Microsoft's going to sort of push a lot of those out into the market. So I feel like that will probably be easier to get. But who, come on. I mean, the whole series, I mean, this is your framing and maybe it's not Microsoft's framing, but the series is the second one that you buy. Well, yeah, I mean, it's the budget one or like the one for your bedroom or your kids, you know, kids to play for now. Yeah, it's the one.

But that's what it's the, if you have a four. KTV, which many, many people do now, you want to get the most out of it. And so like my, it's just, when the Xbox one X was out and all of the stores were full of Xbox one S's, I was always like, well, I don't want that one. I want the, I want the, I want the, I want the, I want the good one. And I just, I feel like that's, we're going to see a lot of series S stock just like floating around because everyone, everyone upgrading to a new console generation is going to want the biggest and baddest one. And then you'll sort of fill your other rooms. Yeah, like the early adopters are going to want the latest and the greatest. They don't want, you know, something that's

not doing 4K. But yeah, like, if I don't know, I don't know what availability is going to be like, but it's the pre-orders are such a mess that you can just tell. Like, and the invidia graphics cars have been like even worse of a disaster. Like, they're just, there's just none of them. Like, and who knows how many consoles, Microsoft and Sony are making? Is Sony making more than Microsoft? We don't know. We should point out here, too, that demand for game consoles overall is through the roof. Nintendo had earnings this week. Switch sales are continuing to be so good that they've actually raised their forecast for the Switch.

So even in the face of massive next-gen console launches, switch sales are just clipping right along at high rate. So I do think this is going to be something to track. Although, just having had this conversation, I'm going to buy a PS5. I'm just saying it. I'm saying it out loud. I'll buy them both. We should talk about one last console thing before we break, and that is how exciting it's going to be to try and make sure that the next TV you buy successfully has all the features and lights that you watch for the console. No, so I have promised a one-hour HTML deep dive.

I've never had a one-off joke on the podcast result in so many people saying, actually, that would be great. Please give us the one-hour HTML deep dive. Here's my promise to you. When it's over, when this election chaos is over, which we are hoping as soon, we will provide the soothing relief that brings our nation together of having Tom and Chris Welch. We're just going to go deep into HTML into 120 hertz. We're going to see what Tom's running. Chris has been reviewing TVs. We're going to talk about monster cables.

It's going to be amazing. Shield it, unshielded, you got big decisions to be made. Cable balons? Oh, yeah. I was so disappointed when. I plugged the series X into my 1440P monitor, which is like it does 165 hertz through display port, but it only does 60 hertz through HTML because the manufacturer was like, I'm not putting the HDMI 2 in here because like no one uses it anyway. And it's like, so I can't

use the 120 hertz mode at all. We're going to get the, we're going to get the president of HDMI on the phone, whoever that is. Look, it's an industry organization is powerful enough to put its logo, like it's a weird logo on the back of the Xbox series X, not one, but twice. It's like if you look at it, it's like, what is the one organization that got its logo on there? Not once, but it's, it's HDMI. H-D-M-I. It's the killer. Is anybody confused about how the Xbox connects?

So I promise, it just is a form of self-care for me, we will deliver the one hour. It's like a treat that we're going to give ourselves. Let's take another break. We've got to come back. There's an Apple event next week. We should probably talk about that a little bit. We'll get back. Support for the show comes from Upwork.

The days of doing it all, all by yourself, are over. There's no romance in burning out while you're trying to scale. Instead, you can check out Upwork. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale without committing to full-time headcount. And finding the right talent is easy. You can browse profiles, review pass work, and get help scoping,

the role so you can get started quickly. Seriously, you could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours, especially when you sign up with Business Plus. Their AI-powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searcher required. You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWRK.

dot com. Upwork.com. Deeder. Yeah. I got to say Apple is like, it's just like, this is the one of the deadest weeks of like tech. You know, there's obviously like reviews of things coming out. Yeah. And those embargoes were long set. But in terms of people like making news, one of the deadest weeks in tech ever. I thought it was a perfect week for me to relaunch my tech, my tech news newsletter. My guess it's been great. It just Apple's like, oh yeah, it's Monday. nothing's happening tomorrow. Here's an event invite for next week.

And the event invite was one more thing. And it's like if there was ever a time when I didn't need one more thing, it was the day before the election. And it's on Xbox launch day, the event. And also on Xbox. It was just a lot. It's like, where does Apple live? Apple lives above geopolitical, like chaos.

It lives above other companies. So one more thing event on the last earnings. saw Apple had earnings, a weird quarter as you would expect for them. iPhone pushed into October. iPhone sales flat because there's not a new one. Mac sales way up. But on that earnings, but Apple did fine. They made a lot of money. Just their mix of products a little bit different. But on that call, Tim Cook said, we have some great things coming up for the year. We have been expecting. They announced that they would have arm max before the end of the year. Here's a big event. One more thing. Everyone's expecting it. Apple's not tamping down those expectations as they've done

the past with their events. Here we go. Yeah. So Mark German over Bloomberg says that currently they're ramping up production on new 13 and 16-inch MacBook Pros and a new 13-inch MacBook Air. And that at this event, what we are expecting to get are going to be the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that are going to look identical to the current versions but have Apple Silicon inside. That's like, if you were to say, like, what's the most default prediction you could make? That's just, what it's going to be? It's that.

One interesting thing about German's report, he said the process was based on the A14, which it makes sense in many ways. The current developer unit Mac that's running an A-series chip, I think has an A-12-Z bionic. Something like that, yeah. It's the one in the iPad Pro. So it makes sense they would just jump to the next one. But there have been a lot of conversations about what, if you do. don't have to manage heat on a mobile device.

What if you can add even more GPU cores to bring up to that where you would consider desktop class performance? So I think there's a lot of questions about what this chip will actually be. I don't think it's a dead ahead A14. Right. Well, so they can put in just more CPU cores. They can put in GPU cores. There's going to be, you know, ionic machine learning stuff.

Who knows what that's going to do in a Mac context? My hope is that they do something specific with the chip to hand. handle running apps that aren't designed for arm, right? That they specifically have some sort of really good subsystem that the chip powers to speed up apps that haven't specifically been designed for these new chips. I'm sorry, I misspoke. It's an 813 Z bionic in them. And I said 812.

You understand. I'm kind of surprised that they're doing a MacBook Pro with the arm. I honestly thought that they would bring back MacBook. So did I. That's what I wanted. Yeah, and go the arm route like that way. So I'm surprised that they're going the pro first. They must be very confident in like the performances that these will deliver.

And I think this is the test period for this. They've been on stage like a bunch over the last couple of years and touting their performance against, you know, basically like basic Windows laptops, even against Xbox consoles on the GPU side. And I think this is the real test, right, isn't it? Like this is the, it's coming to life. Like all the, everything's lining up. So I think it's really going to put the pressure on Qualcomm.

Yeah, I mean, putting the pro this week is a huge chest thump moment. I really hope that Apple finds a way to differentiate it from those previous chest thump moments you've talked about. They need to do more than just show a final cut render time, right? They need to do more than the sort of standard performance stuff that we know it's probably going to be fine at. They need to show us something where we don't think it's going to perform well or we're nervous about it performing well and it just kills. that's what I want to see out of them. Well, I mean, the first thing to show us is either calling it Rosetta again, but that's their on-the-fly translation layer between standard X-86 apps and arm.

That's the thing I want to see. I want to see them running Lightroom or Photoshop, the X-86 version going through Rosetta and working just fine, if not better, without destroying the battery life of this new thing. Like, I think that's a first test. you know, Apple's managed a processor transition before. I think they know they have to show that to people. And then I think their second test is what's, what can you do now in this form factor?

Is it everything the same as ever, but battery life has been doubled? Or is it, you know, sort of the Apple world is like, we've picked a number of hours of battery life that we, we think is reasonable. And that's what you get, right? I mean,

that's like basically how they, that's how they handle the phones, right? It's like, we think you can get a day. And so we'll manage the battery, instead of putting a huge battery in there, we'll get you a day and then the camera sensor will be bigger or something. Like, that's the balance I'm interested in, particularly with the air, which has medium-ish battery life right now. If they say, well, the performance is about the same, the battery life got way longer. Or if they're at, we're pretty happy with battery life, the performance is way off the charts.

Right. Yeah. That's going to be the interesting, the tricky balance, right? Or even if they go, the performance is worse. Do you think they'd do that? I can't imagine so, but like... There's no way they introduce a pro that's slower. Like, they don't put a pro MacBook out there unless it's way faster, full stop.

That's the thing that I was surprised to see that it was a MacBook Pro, I think, because I just figured that they would sort of, this would be, you know, a gradual thing. Do you think they'll have LTE? Ooh, I don't know. That's like, you know, that's the benefit of Arm, right? Yeah. On the windows on arm side is, that's the thing. I bet you the answer is no, and that it'll be once they fully integrated the Intel team that

they bought to make modems, that that'll be what brings 5G to these laptops. Oh, my God. I mean, I would say Apple has not been shy about shipping slow computers. Right. It's just, that's kind of the history of this Mac line. It's like, here's an Intel part that's two generations behind. We're going to throttle it a little bit, and sometimes you're going to hear the fan. And that's what using a Mac is like.

So if they can just like how fat, like these are the these are the Apple traits that are kind of interesting to reconsider in this context. They are comfortable with a performance level. They are comfortable with a battery life. They manage those things to form factors that they think people like as opposed to letting those things drive form factors, which many, many Windows laptop makers do. And now they've got a new part that could let them go in a lot. lot of different directions. And if they're just like what we're going to do because we don't want to blow people's minds right away with a big processor shift is basically keep things as they are to bake it out

and see where the problems are and say, well, the Intel ones are still there. Or if they're going to go, whole hog, say, we've made the product 5,000 times better, battery life is doubled, performance is doubled. It weighs a pound less. I don't know. Like if you're just like, you could get all there and we've canceled the Intel version. Like that's, I think that's like the boldest place for them to be. Yeah, I don't think they'll go that far.

The real interesting part is going to be like how sustained the performances. Because obviously on the Intel parts, they have like fans that the frotling can be controlled a lot better. And what we see with the performance on like the iPhones and the iPads is that they're very good. They're like short bursts of performance and like really optimized tasks. So I'd love to see like how how they'll build the software that way to like optimize the power of these chips in short bursts of power or how they've been able to just sustain that performance

and really push things forward. If we saw like a 4K export in Premiere Pro and it like blisteringly quick compared to whatever we see on Intel or anyone else, that could be a turning point. Like that sort of performance. I just want to know if Chrome cuts the battery life in half or in a third.

I'd answer a big question mark, right? Like, we'll see how fast the Chrome team moves their code base to Arm and makes an ARM version. I mean, I can tell you that the Chrome, the chromium stuff on Arm is just not, the only, the only people that are really doing it is Microsoft, right? Like, Google still doesn't contribute a whole bunch to that as far as I can see. And it's, like, strange that Chrome still isn't, like, fully optimized for Windows and Arm. Like, there's no builds, so. Yeah.

I mean, it's, but, like, regular heavy Chrome on a Mac is a battery life destroyer, a processor hog. put that through a translation layer onto an unproven chip in this application. It's like, will Chrome light the new MacBook Air on fire? That's like that. You know, if they did like post-game press conferences after these keynotes, I'd be like, excuse me, a quick question. Is it true that the MacBook Air will light on fire if you. One Chrome from order an hour.

So we'll see. That's happening. On the 10th, we'll obviously have complete coverage of that. By the time you're listening to this, Haim Gartenberg's hands-on of the iPhone mini and max size comparison little video will be up, I've got to say the max looks enormous. Yeah. And I say this is a big phone person with big hands. Like, that phone looks big.

Go check that out. I'm very eager to see how this plays out and whether that size is as big as it seems like in a nice video because it's real big gadget stuff. Big, big week of gadgets. New, new GGI, don't call it a MAPhic. Mini 2 drone. They still kept it at exactly the right weight to not have to deal with the FAA, which I love. Yeah, it's funny because I bought a Magic Mini 1 like two weeks ago. Really?

I feel so done. What are you doing? I could have told you. There's rumors. Well, I needed, we, I was going to drive the truck through a puddle and I wanted to fly the train over. Oh, yeah. Well, then you need one, of course. Yeah.

You need like that Macroom is buying guide. It's like everyone is like a bad time to buy at all times. because we're always being updated. It's fine. It's just a toy to screw around with. I don't need Ocysink or 4K. I'm going to buy the new one. Okay.

Yeah, you are. Absolutely buying the new one. Yeah, Tom, thanks for joining us. Check out PS5 review, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S reviews on the site. There are videos. Just commend everyone. Tom, it's obviously in London. Like, we made a video across the ocean.

That's pretty cool. Check it out. And then we got Apple Event. week. So big week of gadget news going into another big week of gadget news excited for it. If what you came here for some deep platform policy talk, we got a whole other mini episode of the Vergecast in the feed right now as well. Okay, you can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon. Tom, is it Tom Warren? And then next Tuesday, it's happening. We're launching my new podcast, Decoder. Yeah. It's going to be something. It's been very weird working on

launching a new podcast about building things in this exact moment. Let me tell you. But next Tuesday, it's coming. I'm excited about the guest. So look out for that. We'll be running some episodes in the virtual cast feed to promote it. That's it. Rock and roll.

Wear a mask.