Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Steam Machine is How Much?!

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Marques, Andrew, and David jump right into this week talking about the Slate truck and whether they think it's actually going to ship. Then they discuss the Steam Machine and whether or not gamers can actually afford it. After that, they wrap it all up with the new Meta Glasses and some trivia. Enjoy! Links: Auto Focus - Slate truck video Dave2D - Steam machine Linus Tech Tips - Building a Steam Machine Nothing 4b tweet 9to5Mac - iOS 27 RCS Beta Verge - Steam Machine released Verge - Steam Machine not subsidized Verge - Meta launches Meta Glasses This episode brought to you by: Framer: https://www.framer.com/wave Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/wave Follow us on socials: Marques: https://twitter.com/MKBHD Andrew: https://www.instagram.com/andrew_manganelli/ David: https://www.instagram.com/davidimel/ Adam: https://www.instagram.com/parmesanpapi17/ Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform: Twitter: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Visit BetM-G-M-G-M-G-Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2-600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. You know the vanilla is actually one of the more complex flavors? There's like 30-something flavor things that go into vanilla.

That sounds like something. Yeah. Vanilla would say. Big vanilla. Big vanilla wants you to believe. Yo, what's up? People of the Internet, welcome back to another episode of the Wayform podcast. We're your host.

I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. I'm David. This week, we've got a bunch. Everyone back. Oh yeah, everyone's back. Let's go! Everyone is actually officially here.

This is back to your regular, regularly scheduled programming. For real, for real. No cap on God. Actually, our last episode, in case you missed it, was a bonus episode where we explained tech, sorry, we explained the NBA in tech terms. I really schooled these guys. But also kind of for some people, explain tech in NBA terms if you're like, if you're up on ball and you wanted to know more about tech.

That's right. By the end of it, we were just talking ball. Yeah, mostly. There's a great comment that's like, by the end of it, of this video, I will either know about basketball or know nothing about technology. Yeah. It was great. I highly suggest to check it out if you haven't already. But now we're back to regular schedule programming, which means we can talk all the news. The steam machine got a launch and a price, and we got a lot to say about that. Also, meta launching cheaper

sunglasses without a rebranding. And we got our first look at the $25,000 slate truck, which I have many thoughts on. So I also got to drive it, by the way. And then nothing phone 4B. So, yeah, we'll talk about it all. But first, have you subscribed? See what I did there? Usually, you expect me to go into the, did you even test it? But I just want to make sure everyone's subscribed. If your subscribe button's red, right?

What's it start out as? You should test it and see what happens. It doesn't even red anymore. It changes color so much. On mobile, it might not even have a color anymore. It's like rainbow sometimes. I think it might be black now. We didn't test this intra, this CTA out very well.

By the way, I hate the new mobile app not showing light counts anymore. I just want to say I hate it. I got it now. It's on my phone. We had this conversation. It's hit my phone. I hate it. Anyway, make sure you subscribe to the Waveform podcast.

We appreciate that. Okay, now. Did they even test this? I've got this one. In fact, I am this one. Because last week I exclaimed from the rooftops. The Android 17 is the best tip day ever because it got rid of at a glance. It was gone already.

I really doubled down on this too You said believe me I would know Not just that I tested this for a week Next morning Or Friday morning Rufus goes

The pod was up for 20 minutes And Rufus goes There's a comment that says it was out in 16 I was like no it's not I didn't even turn around And then I saw another one And I was like Oh my God

Yeah I remember we talked about this a while ago In one of the 16 betas that they were testing it And I didn't download the beta, but I was like, it's going to come, and I guess I just never looked again. And when I was looking through things in 17, that little f***er was just sitting there looking at me, and I was like, can I get rid of you?

And I could. And I assumed it was 17. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I will live in shame. We didn't change the name of the episode. Yeah. You still can get rid of it.

Yeah. For sure. Yes. But yeah, I still like 17 so far, even though most of it is just getting rid of all the stuff they've screwed up in the past. Yeah. And making some of the colors a little nicer. But there's a gaming virtual touch screen.

And a bubble bar. And a bubble bar. It's pretty nice. The bubble bar. My Android 17 Top 5 features video will be live by the time this podcast goes up. So you'll see all of my thoughts. It is actually kind of confusing, researching, and going through the Android 17 features. Because some of it is Android 17 features.

Some of it is June pixel drop features that also make it to Android 16. So in the research, you have to be very careful about what stuff is new to the June pixel drop that's also going to 16 versus what's new specifically to 17. And there's also new stuff coming to 17 that's not here yet that they talked about at I.O. Yeah. Like Rambler and the Create My Widget with Natural Language and all that other stuff. Yeah. But anyway, 17 is out if you have a pixel and you want to download it now.

So go check it out. All right. Okay, where should we start? Slate truck feels like a good place to jump in. Let's start with that. It was $25,000 pixel truck. Less slate truck. We're going to talk about a lot of prices.

Lots of prices this episode. Yeah. Lots of prices. Actually, almost everything has to do with prices. Oof. So this one is weirdly actually also kind of polarizing. So I'll jump into what the slate truck is and then what's polarizing about it. So the slate truck, the idea of it is it's this ultra modular electric mini pickup truck type of thing, where it comes as an ultra strip down, super super basic, like no power windows, no speakers, just basic truck cabin.

and then you can add on the modules that you want to build it up to exactly how well equipped you want it to be. So the starting price of the blank slate, pun intended, is just south of $25,000 U.S. That'll get you rear-wheel drive, 65-kil-hour battery, 180-ish horsepower, and so it'll do zero-60 in like eight seconds or something, and then it'll get up to 90 miles an hour. It'll I think it'll haul about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds. It'll tow 2,000 pounds. and it has a five foot bed, five foot long anyway, but it's narrower because it's a small truck. Who can sleep in a five foot bed, damn?

Well, it's definitely not a bed bed. David, you once slept in a coffin. Yeah. True. No, it's a small, it's a five foot long truck bed. It's a two-seater at the front, and it has a lockable front trunk. It's slate gray, no paint.

You can wrap it with vinyl instead if you want to change the color. Steel wheels, 17-inch wheels, fixed suspension. I got to drive it. It was fairly firm, but overall, like, pretty compliant. We did some rougher roads, and it was going over bigger bumps, and it was fine. So, yeah, it was just, like, zippy little truck that is extremely minimally equipped, and then tons and tons and tons of optional accessories that I haven't seen the price of all of them yet, but I've started to see prices of some of these accessories to coming out.

So it's this really basic blank slate. One of the craziest things is you can actually attach this, like, roll cage to the back, and adds seats to the back to create a five-seater SUV. Like a Bronco. And you can do it like after you buy it, DIY. Like you can buy it as a pickup truck and then DIY bolt this thing in. I don't love the term DIY.

I love it's throwing in there for like my kids in the back seat. Yeah, it is definitely. It's there and ready. It's a concept. It's an interesting concept. I was thinking about Slate Truck this morning, and I'm sure someone's made this analogy already, but it kind of makes me think of the spirit airlines of EVs.

Because- Basic economy? You're just like, RIP. Whoa, this ticket is so cheap. I'm basically losing money if I don't take it. It's like, I want to bring one, I want to bring my backpack upcharge. I want to have a drink, upcharge.

I want a radio in my truck, upcharge. It's just like really seems so cheap off the riff. And then you're like, well, here's all the things I basically need to be comfortable on this flight. Yeah. It's not a bad thing. Sometimes that is the best way to go. Yeah, when you don't need the upcharge stuff. So that's what's been polarizing about this vehicle.

I'll just jump right into it. There's been a lot of commentary about it online. We published the autofocus video with all the stuff in it. People are saying both this is too expensive and this is too cheap. Too cheap. Like cheaper than expected and more expensive than expected. Both sides are coming out. Well, it doesn't have RAM in it, so it can't be that expensive.

So the side that's saying it's $25,000, it's too expensive. It should have been $20,000 are most of people looking at roughly equivalently priced gas trucks. Like if you go find the cheapest Ford Maverick, for example, starting somewhere under $30,000, it has a ton of these features included, like the lining of the truck bed and the power windows and the speakers and the screen and the radio, all this stuff that's included. Airbags. That is fair. You get, okay. To be clear, the slate truck. The blank slate is five-star safety rated estimated.

They're planning on actually finishing the testing, but they're saying it's going to be. Well, that's how this works before you get to produce. And this is a five-star podcast. So it is supposed to be a five-star rated safety truck. And it has all of the things required by law. Like, you actually have to have a backup camera required by law for new vehicles in the U.S. So it does have on that tiny little screen a reverse camera. That's cool.

So obviously, like, things like airbags and the center console, all that stuff. Having this is like the base, like we talk about cars base. This is like literally the base of it, which is funny. but in their little video they posted, I think it was this morning, it's showing everything that comes with it normal, and it's really funny watching them have to really pull for what's on here,

like locking frunk. You said that before. It's like, I hope it locks. There's one thing here, cup holders as like a feature in this. The thing about the locking front, half of the EVs that come out today

don't have a frunk at all. That's, yeah. It's not nothing. But it's most of it. No, I'm not saying it's not nothing. It's just funny that it locks. Also, cup holders is on here twice. Yeah.

Wait, you're right. Two USB C ports. Yep, charge your phone. Yeah. I don't, what's the latch system? The latch system is basically the rail system that lets you add things to the bed. I thought I just meant it had a latch on the back thing. Oh, no.

Plywood sized bed. Yeah. Well, the thing is, is generally a piece of plywood's four by eight. And the thing is, it would have to be open, which is fine. That happens for some people. Or stacked up. The confusing thing is the wheelbase between the bed is like 42 inches and a general piece of plywood is 48 inches wide.

So it would have, they made the top of the wheel well flat so it could sit on that, but then it's like teetering, I don't know, it's kind of weird. It kind of holds plywood. Yeah. So yeah, it's got the basic stuff and a lot of people are saying, well, I can get a Maverick and it'll have all that stuff plus all the basics like speakers, et cetera, for $28, $29,000. On the back row of seats.

And they are correct about that. Yeah. But on the other hand, there are people saying, wow, $25,000, that makes this the cheapest new truck in the U.S. And it's the electric one. That's kind of crazy. All the most expensive vehicles are electric because the battery is the most expensive part.

You'd expect the cheapest truck in the U.S. to be a gas truck. But they've stripped out all this extra stuff. And then you can add back exactly what you need to make it functional to you. So yes, if you're thinking I would get the Maverick because I need speakers, power windows, truck bedlining, all this other stuff, then you might actually be cross-shopping those. things. But a lot of people, you imagine like someone's first EV for their kid, like a fleet truck where they're just bringing around lawnmowers or random equipment and don't really need all the luxury electric features you see in a lot of bells and whistles, they might not

need to buy power windows and all this other stuff. So it is more economically viable to get the cheaper thing. So I see both sides of it. I'm very interested. I think it's going to be fascinating to see the prices for the modules and the vinyl and the customizations and how much it costs to build the slate truck that you want. This screams to me like fleet of local pool cleaners or local pest control people. Like things where like it probably would be beneficial to put a bunch of chemicals in a bed outside, potentially long things that have to hang out the back of the truck. Hoses. Yeah, but like as long as you have AC, they probably have like headphones or something. Like get a bunch of those and

like throw it in there and then get a little wrap on it that says yeah yeah exactly get the vinyl wrap yeah they're not the time is not being spent in the truck the truck is just going from location to location and every single morning you park it at the shop and plug it in and it starts

every morning with a full tank of gas yeah the 65 kilowatt hour battery getting 205 miles is actually almost 40 more miles than they originally were promising they're going to be somewhere like 160 miles of range or something so 200 plus But now they're not offering the 240. Right. So they're all now down to one drive train option.

There's talks of maybe an all-wheel drive version of the future. They wouldn't tell me that that's real. So it's just this one. Just real-wheel drive 200 miles of range. And it's actually pretty zippy. I'm not going to lie. Really? I mean, you don't think about like 0 to 60 and 8 point seconds as a, quote, fast vehicle.

But it's electric. It's all the torque all the time. And so you kind of zip around like a golf cart. It's fine. 205 miles seems kind of low. It is. It's also the cheapest truck in America. America. So it is like, okay, how much are you going to drive if you're doing the fleet thing?

Are you driving around a neighborhood? Do you put 200 miles on it in a day? Probably not. That makes sense for like my dad who's like a he's like a carpenter and because he only really does work like locally. Locally. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You're not road tripping with this. No. And like 200 miles in a day is a pretty solid amount. Yeah. I think most Europeans would be like, you guys are insane if you think you're driving 200. You drove across the country? Most of Europeans are like, what the hell is a mile? What's a truck? Yeah, 300 kilometers. Lots of questions for these people. I'm interested in the, so like everyone's like, they did it, they did $25,000.

Yeah. There's even a, and they're like responding to it. There's a comment in YouTube that said, massive respect for the team for the base price. They said it, we said it, we meant it. It's something I'm intrigued to see where it goes because they haven't fully built the factory out to produce these yet, right? Yeah. So we're a while away from seeing them. Correct.

This is what I was going to. Prices are fluctuating all the time. The Rivian has changed like before that came out. The price changed like three times. It changed and they had and they tried to make everyone with reservations pay the new price and they got a ton of backlash and had to do that. So like this has the interesting thought though of can they keep the base 25 even if prices change but then change the prices to all of the accessories in there and make up some margins on that? Because I'm still super intrigued. How many people are going to buy this at 25 base base and how many people are going to buy this at 30 to 40 with things they basically consider necessities?

To be fair, like building out a car that has all the necessities, but it gets to be specced exactly how you want it. It gets to look exactly how you want. Like it's the Lego of trucks. I think that's kind of cool. Yeah, project door. I do feel like a lot of people like David's dad are going to just order this base thing. Like, I know people that have small businesses, they're like, I don't care about if it has power windows or freaking...

My dad's truck still has can crank. Yeah. Like, they just drive around and they build a... Yeah. This is the cheapest truck in America right now. Even more so. They don't have to care. They don't have to care for their employees who are all driving it also.

It's like... That's true. Not my problem. I don't need AC. Play it, pulling the radio off your phone. It does get with AC. It does have AC. Which is good.

Yeah, I do think that's a really good point that they don't have a finished factory. These are not actively. being manufactured yet. So this is all technically TBD, which always makes me nervous with EVs. But they're saying they're going to ship it this year. So in a couple months, in quarter four, they want to ship this.

Yeah. They don't have a factory. Well, they have a factory that's almost, they have a factory that has built the trucks that I've seen and driven, but these are like finishing prototyping, like almost done. And when they start to roll them off in quarter four, that'll be like final.

We'll see. So they're tooling, they're finishing, building the factory. and they have the space, they just need to get over that hump and actually ship the thing. So that's the TBD, that's the big asterisk. There is a tweet here from Speed Sport Life,

someone who's in the maker of the slate truck, who has seen basically some of the prices of the modules. So the wraps, for example, they start at $500 for a full vinyl wrap of certain, like, base colors. They'll go up to more expensive, like $1,600, $1,600 for a wrap. But that is just materials. you do the installation yourself.

That's why. We were trying to figure out why it felt cheap. So then I go to the next page. There are the integrated speakers. So you can get the front left and front right for 150. And you can get the center channel for 250 more. So there are no speakers by default. So, you know, 200 bucks.

I mean, that's a big expensive Bluetooth speaker. I guess that's about in line. Does the wrap come with like a D-brand kind of thing that you put? put over the car and just instantly rip it off. Yeah, it is, obviously it'll be pre-cut. I imagine the hard part is actually installing it. Like just getting it off the paper and like sticking it on the truck is, I mean, you can give it to a professional or you can do it yourself.

Depends on how good of a job you want it to be. Yeah. It's a big task. If you have to bring it to a professional already, I would just bring it to a professional and get the wrap there and not deal with. Well, they're going to charge you for the materials that they buy and the labor. Yeah, but. So if you provide the materials, that's way less that you're paying.

I don't know the breakdown of what's materials versus labor, but I assumed a rap place most of that was labor? Probably most of it is labor, but you still do, they go out and acquire and source materials for you. And so they have to upcharge you for that as well. So yeah, it's at least cheaper to, but I imagine a lot of people will try to do it themselves here. There's also a page here for the truck lining. and you can get a more durable, versatile truck lining, $750 if you plan on... What is a lining?

It's like a bed liner. Yeah, bedliner. One bed boss structural bed floor with integrated tie downs, installs without drilling, five feet by five feet. Yeah. That's all right. I want my tie downs to be installed without drilling. I think the bed liner is installed without drilling,

and then you tie things down to the bedliner. That's installed without drilling? Yep. Yeah. That sounds scary. I know I'm just minimis. missing something, but that sounds sure. There are latches.

Can I ask a question about this truck that I'm confused about? Go to Europe for two weeks and now we hate trucks. Ellis has always hated trucks. I also want to say when I was in Wales, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life, shocking

amount of trucks. I had always heard that it was very hard to get. And none of them had like F-150 sized beds, but they had crew cabs and were sizable vehicles. And I was like, I was always told that these were not here, and there they were. Thank you, Wales. How do you wire this truck in a factory? That's what I'm really confused about. Like, for example, so there's like,

like, I understand the idea of power windows optional, right? Because those are motors that you have to put in and install. That's great. But is the wiring already going through the whole system? Or it's the same thing with the speakers. It's like, I understand in theory that you could put in and take out speakers, but does the, is there an amp? Are they active speakers? The amp is in the speakers and then you just run power to them. How does the audio signal get? Is it wireless? And it's like, yeah, part of it makes me wonder like if there are things in this car that are actually cheaper for them to put in because they have to already run the wiring all through the vehicle in the factory. Or there's obviously something I'm missing here. I was told, so I was told that there are pins and

there is wiring, preexisting wiring for power and data in certain places. So, for example, one of the speakers is, it's a small, like, JBL Bluetooth speaker. Right, I saw that. And all it needs is power. So you buy, it's already wired for power to the pins. And if you get that accessory, you pop it onto that pin, and then everything else for the speaker is in that speaker that you bought. Interesting.

I think some other accessories are requiring pins that are, again, in certain locations that have data and power running to them already. Interesting. There is no screen option. There's just, like the screen behind the steering wheel, which is your speed, your range, and your odometer, basic stuff, your reverse camera. And so they don't like have wiring for display or anything else of that sort. You just get a mount for either a phone or an iPad.

Pricing this thing from the business's perspective must have been such an interesting challenge because you don't want to make the blank slate too expensive. But at the same time, it does feel like at a certain point you may have to charge people for things that they won't use, i.e. the wire coming through the frame. And I don't know how expensive it is to run wiring through a car frame. That could be like a non-factor. I think in mass, the goal, I mean, they've preached about how many pre-orders they have and how much volume they want to do. I think the goal is likely just that the bigger your scale, the lower the cost of that incremental wiring.

And so you can still sell something cheaper if they don't use. Having one skew and making a zillion of them is always cheaper. Well, not always, but generally cheaper than having multiple skews and making multiple skews and making less of each of them. So shout out to the industrial engineers at Slate, because these are tricky, interesting, thinky problems that would make my brain hurt. And the final product...

God, it's so good to have you back. The final product, I think, is pretty cool. Do you guys think the aesthetics are... I like it. I think they're kind of nice. Yeah. There are definitely people who think it's ugly as well. I like the Bronco.

But I think it looks kind of Broncos. I think some of the, yeah, the top-off back seats, like old Bronco roll cage kind of thing is sick. I think this is also cool because there are lots of people who don't want a truck as their daily driver but want something with a bed. My brother-in-law has a 1992 F-150 that only half the gas tank fills up.

And that's because like once every month you need to like pick some crap up and like move it around. And like it just rots pretty much. So like having something that's really, really cheap as a base and who cares, like, that might be the thing I go pick up that crap on Facebook marketplace with or get the dryer from Home Depot and bring it home. It's obviously bigger than, like, a Japanese key truck, K-truck, how we enough it, but at least it's smaller than like a Rivian.

You know what I mean? Yeah. It's funny is the length of the bed is the same as the Rivian. So it's like a five-foot-long bed. But it is narrower. It is narrower. Because the truck is narrower. You know what's funny about this?

when they launched it, or not launched, because it hasn't launched it, when they announced it, I was super excited for it. And then the more time that went by, I was like, I don't know. Like, I don't know if they're going to be able to hit the price. I don't know. We still don't know. But now that it's like a thing, you went and you saw the car, I feel like they might do it. They had that price up there in like shiny numbers. They put lights on the price. They were like, it is definitely 25 grand. We've seen that before.

Yeah, I was going to say, I like trying not to be biased. I think it's really sick. I mean, I'm not going to go spend $25,000 on a secondary car. I ain't that kind of guy. You've already got an R2 on order, right? I think this is really cool. 40,000. I'm going to be extremely skeptical of this

because how many trucks have we seen that are coming out end of this year for the last five years? Yeah, I feel like there's stages of how close to release are you? And we've seen lots and lots and lots of cool ideas. Everyone from Faraday Future to the Telo truck, to the Aptera, to this,

have all gotten to the stage. of showing it to us and even letting us drive it. And that's it. They never actually ship one and saw one. So I am, my fingers are crossed. I like the idea. I'm rooting for it, just like I'm rooting for a lot of the others.

But it is true that we've seen many get this far and not make it. Having been through the 13 years of drama with my Streetly Manifesto album getting delayed. I didn't bring it up this time. These things are not out until they're out. So we'll see. Paperware until shipped.

Exactly. But didn't it come halfway out? Came halfway out yesterday. Halfway out. I thought it was only two songs. It's two more songs. They released three demos a year ago. They mixed the demos, finally, and then they released two more songs.

So now there are five songs out, but it's half of the album, and it's half. So it's not out unless it's out. It's not out to the whole album. So that's more out than, like, the Roadster. It's like, yeah, for sure. It's more out than not out. For sure. Yes.

But it's not full. And they're bangers, to be clear, only. Which gives you hope that the rest will be good. The rest is going to be a grace from God. Okay. I guarantee you. Wow. It's like playing, I don't know if there's a good analogy.

It's like if the roadster's seat came out. And you could buy it and sit in it. More than the seat. I would say, hmm. Didn't you say there's all four wheels? The car needs to work in order to drive it, whereas half of a Streetle-Mefesto album is still part of the street. It would be like if the Roadster came out. but it only had like a fraction of the battery.

Yes. And one of the motors worked. Isn't that house? Okay. That's a good analogy. And it could only turn right. Yes. That's how I feel right now.

It's still great. I'm still happy. Yeah. But it's not out until it's fully out. Because it's planning albums in tech terms. It's in car. It's been delayed for 13 years, Marquette. Is there a conspiracy that it's a wee child?

It's going to be on the GTA 6 radio. So it can't come out until GTA 6 comes out. Exactly. It won't be out to November. Yeah. Speaking of GTA. Speaking of GTA. We got a price.

Yeah. $80, which is less, there were, there have been a lot of bets, by the way, but whether or not GTA would be over $100 because they've been working on it for so long. It's a million dollar development. Yeah. I'm sorry. If you're a game where you cannot afford this, I'm sorry. Anyway, there's a deluxe edition that's $100.

Okay. Whether, well, I assume it just comes with. with extra digital assets or something. It delays it. It delays it. It pre-purchases microtransactions. I'm sure there will still be DLC on top of the deluxe edition because they got to juice it. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, they say that it is now coming out in November. If you buy the... GTA? Yeah, GTA. Wow. Yeah, they say. Apparently, according to this Reddit comments, so take it as you will. There's a bunch of in-game stores and vehicle mod shops that are locked unless you have the ultimate edition.

That is so dumb. It's GTA. The whole point is... I'm so tired. It's a Reddit comment, so I'm not sure. If it was real GTA, you could steal from GTA? Yeah. That's right.

Just hold the gun up to the DLC. This is not too different from the slate truck, is all I'm saying. No, the slate truck is, I think it's big difference. In the slate truck, you can add any accessory at... any time at any point after you buy it. Yeah. But it sounds like with GTA, there will be parts that are locked out

if you start at the wrong base gear. I almost guarantee you they'll allow you to upgrade to the ultimate. Oh yeah, I'm sure. For an extra $20 to $30 to charge you more. They might charge you even more just to make you want to buy the ultimate edition out front. Fair enough.

Yeah. So people are excited for that. I personally don't care at all because I've never played a GTA game, but I'm excited for all you people. It's funny is I also have never played GTA game, but I'm really looking forward to it. Are you looking for it? Are you going to play it?

Yeah, I'm going to play it. Oh, wow. It seems like a fun game. Only from trailers. Only from trailers. Wait, you do know you could play the other ones while you wait. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, don't do it.

Do you play on your freaking refrigerator. Yeah, DT.A.5 has been out for so long, but I... It's almost like backyard baseball where it's like I could either... If I start getting my fix now, I'm going to be waiting for GTA like even more like on a seat of my pants. So I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to not play GTA until 6 comes out and then have a good time. That's right. It'd be fun.

I'm excited for it because when the first one came out, my now brother-in-law played it for so long that his, he was in college and his car got stolen, but he didn't know it was stolen because he was playing the game for like three days straight. And then went out and was like, where's my car? He got Grand Theft Auto? So now I want to see if this is going to be a pattern. That's literally.

If somehow it will get stolen again. Your Grand Theft Auto, wall your grand theft auto there are many people trying to take like an entire week off work for this game so wow yeah I can confirm according to this article from Radio Times the Reddit comment was correct about what there will be certain

things that are locked away unless you get the ultimate edition like certain locations in game Locations Vehicle mod shops Classic car collections Certain vehicles I think they wanted to charge a hundred dollars But they were like we can make it Technically not a hundred dollars

This is freaking grand The Ant-Thept Fortnite over here. Like, what's this? My thing is, I don't care about stylists or like visual skins costing extra money when the game's free. Fortnite is free.

Yeah. Let them charge for things that are not competitive advantage. Dota, League of Legends, Valerent. Yeah. If you charge $80 and then you're like, you have to pay more money for skins.

Or locations. Like your friends go to a new location and you can't go because you bought the base version. Yeah, if you think we're making fun of Android people in the U.S. Wait until we make fun of the regular GTA. The $80 GTA people. Sorry, Stevie, you can hang out with us.

We're going to the deluxe edition. This game is $100. Like, nobody, I don't know. I don't think anyone's going to pay the $80. I think they just did it because they knew they'd get a lot of backlash if it was $100. Listen, Super Mario was like $80, wasn't it? GTA couldn't charge whatever they want. I think Donkey.

No. It was a Mario Kart Oh, that one. Mario Kart World was $80. Yeah, this is true. Worth it. $80, especially with this much anticipation, I think, is probably. I'm honestly shocked that it's not more.

Yeah. I'm unfortunately shocked that it's not more. It's fairly standard pricing. It's expensive as out. I can't believe it's. I think it could have been 100 and it was still. NBA 2K comes out like every year and it's always $80. Yeah.

Sometimes it's 100. Yeah. there's like premium versions that are 100 plus. Yeah. To make the graphics like 1% better. Not even 1% better. It used to be like a big difference. Like between 13, 14, and 15, it's like, oh, okay, I can see that the animations are smoother.

Now the difference between like the second to, well, the roster update is a software update over the air. So you don't even need the roster update. It's literally like a new game mode, better, like smoother animations and controls. And in the name of realism, that's like kind of cool, but it's stopped improving at such a rate that it would justify like. buying a $100 game every year. So I think the last one I bought was 22 maybe. Oh, wow.

Are you still playing that? Wow. You don't even know ball. Well, I have the new rosters. It just goes to the new game. Oh. So I just, yeah, whatever. I'm surprised they even like push it to the old game

and not just like forcing it about that. It's pretty important. I also haven't purchased the 2K on launch in a while. I always wait for it to go on sale now. Yeah. Yeah. And I always buy the base one. We need basketball to get really,

really popular in Europe so that the EU puts a stop to this match. They're the only ones that can stop the 2KP. Only EU can stop EA. It's actually, it's not actually EA. It's Take 2 is the publisher. Can we just pretend it's EA because that sounded funny?

Well, it's funnier because they also do GTA. So it's the same GTA. Nice. Speaking of pricing, we got another device announcement, another tech announcement. It's a new nothing phone. Nothing phone for

B. Oh, okay, interesting. So we had the nothing phone for A. What's the nothing phone for B, you may be wondering? Well, it's perfect because somebody who works for nothing on Twitter was able to explain very clearly what it is. He says, this is from Accus Evangelides. What does the B stand for?

Nothing. It's simply a continuation of our naming system. Numbers represent generations, while letters indicate different product. segments. No way. So the A series has been our best-selling smartphone line bringing the best of nothing's design and innovation while focusing on features that matter most. The B series builds

on the success of the A series by expanding into a new segment while maintaining a clear product hierarchy. The A series remains our most premium line below our flagship products which don't carry a letter designation. This avoids overusing suffixes and provides a clearer naming structure as a portfolio expands.

Hope this is clear. How to say nothing by saying a lot of words. I don't know what that means at all. It means it's cheaper. It's cheaper. This is marketing speak for I don't want to say the word cheaper, but I want to effectively communicate that this is just a different price tier in the same product line.

Yeah. Cheaper. This guy's never posted anything worthwhile on Twitter, but it's just like, it's marketing. It's just marketing. It's insane marketing because it's, it's, what's funny is he's right. This naming scheme makes perfect. Yeah, totally.

It's arguably the best naming scheme out of maybe anything because it's not confusing. Yeah. It makes sense, but like, oh my God, this is a convoluted tweet. Yeah, there's a lot of words to say very little. Yeah, so when I review the last phones from nothing, I made the point that they kind of can't make a flagship phone at this point because they don't have high enough volume. They don't sell enough phones to like. get the low enough part prices to actually make money on a flagship phone or even compete against the Samsung's of the world.

So they just don't do it. Yeah. This is maybe more proof of me being right because they add to their lineup in the opposite direction and make probably a compellingly priced phone. I haven't actually learned much else about the phone. We don't know anything about it yet. But yeah, I agree with my old take that they are not planning to make a flagship phone. Something we do know is that they're canceling the nothing phone three.

4A Pro 4A Pro they're canceling sorry not nothing phone the CMF phone yeah okay 3A Pro 3A pro okay they're canceling yeah and in this is just this is just my theory the theory that they're the reason they're making the nothing phone 3B 4B 4B mm good at this is that they said the reason they were canceling the CMF phone was because the RAM would have been half the price of the phone and they just cannot make it at that price. So now the nothing phones have always been more expensive than the CMF phones, right? So if you make a cheaper nothing phone, you're basically hitting the price tier where it's barely marginally able, you're able to make a phone at that price, whereas the

CMF phone could not do that. So my theory is that they're just making it under the nothing moniker because nothing kind of demands the higher price than CMF. Makes sense. Which we've been over this multiple times. Nothing was supposed to be the budget brand, and then CMF was the budget. budget brand and then nothing has the budget phones from nothing and now there's the budget budget budget budget because nothing had flagship so then they had the a series which is the budget of the budget but not too budget because that would be CMF so like the budget of the budget of the budget of the budget yes yeah exactly and now they've got the B series which is the budget of the budget is clearly for budget no no no but not CMF which is the budget no the A series is the most premium line below their

flagship that is the greatest line in history when you're not allowed to say cheaper That's what you end up saying. It's our best below our best. Are you getting it? Yeah. So we get it. That's me when I haven't taken my care of myself in a while. I'm the best I've ever been,

except for when I'm at my best. It's funny too because if you haven't had me at my best, you don't deserve me at my best. Nothing could use the word cheap better than any other company out there because nothing's fandom. appreciates a budget phone. Yeah. Which is so funny that just to say like,

this cheaper is a banger tweet. I'm guessing they have like a rulebook where they're not allowed to say cheap, budget, or even acknowledge less expensive. Because other people have a different definition of what that means. Yeah. And I think that even nothing making a cheaper nothing phone, a lot of people are going to still think it's too expensive. Very competitive markets.

So we'll see. I mean, no CMFO, and I guess we'll probably get one eventually once Open AI collapses as a company. You know? What makes you think that's going to happen? Maybe Sam Altman will carry all the RAM over to nothing at some point and be like, here you go. We're not a company anymore. I don't need this anymore. Yeah, I don't need this anymore.

He's going to put it on Facebook Marketplace. All right, I got one last quick little thing before take to break. Just very excited about RCS as usual, you know. very good rich communication services iOS 27 beta 2 just dropped yesterday or maybe two days ago I don't remember

two days ago it did fix a lot of the bugs that I had in iOS in the beta 1 which is good but one thing that they added which is very exciting is that they upgraded to RCS2.7

not fully yet they added a couple of features with it but part of the RCS2.7's standard is the ability to edit and unsend messages. So now, yeah, I know. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

I'm thinking the European Union is on my side today. I'm sticking with Android, baby. So yeah, now you'll be, when you're using RCS with Android phones, you'll be able to edit and unsend messages. Brings it a lot closer to the feature parody with iMessage that everyone wants. Obviously, you know, you're not going to have the IMessage integrations like Apple Cash and stuff like that. but we are very close to the color being the only major differentiating factor,

which I think will still matter to people. No, Apple Cash? How the hell am I supposed to split my receipt bills? I know. I know. As soon as I asked Siri to do stuff. Exactly. Yeah.

So yeah, that's exciting. RCS's getting better. I'm very excited about that. I'm looking forward to whatever the next thing is they bolt onto the side of IMessage that will not make it through RCS. Yeah. Because right now it's the color, obviously, but it's like the stickers, Apple Cash, whatever games people play in IMS.

Gen Moji. Gen Moji. They're in there. There's some games in there. There are some games in there. But yeah, I don't know if people use them, but there's... We're getting closer. Right now, RCS still only works for me, like, half the time.

It, like, randomly breaks and sends as SMS. You don't even want to... Twice so far. You've messaged me on WhatsApp. Like, are you getting my text? You don't even want to see Adam and I's messages. Half of them is just, like, not sent, not sent, not sent. It's depressing.

But one day we'll be in our protocol heaven. I literally can't communicate it right now, but one day it will all be better. That sounds like a him problem. You know, because you change phones every five seconds. That's true. It's actually, oh, wait, aren't you using a phone that doesn't have like half the bans of the U.S.? No, no, I didn't switch. I wanted to.

You don't any opo anymore? What do you want right now? Still my S-26 Ultra. I was trying the Apo, but then I was like five minutes from fully switching over the Google Fy sim and everything. And I was like, maybe this isn't a good weekend to do this. I had a very busy weekend. Yes, fair. I would advise not to do that if you have a lot of communication needs.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, after the break, we're going to talk about probably the most controversial thing we've ever talked about on this podcast. And I think no matter what we say, we're going to get canceled. So get excited. Buckle up. Buckle up. Oh, I forgot about that.

I forgot there was trivia on this show. All right, trivia. And I'm back with the six-pack. Real Ellis trivia. in the house. Marquez, I'm glad to hear that you said you are going to be sticking with Android because today's first question is for the Android sickos in the room. Okay? It's me. The Android Sicoe. Exactly. So we all know prior to Android 10, they were all desserts. They weren't just desserts. They were desserts in alphabetical order. After Android 10, they switched to numbers. However,

the internal code names for the dessert, for the operating systems, stayed as desserts. Now, keep going. Keep going. We're all on the same page here? We are. Yeah. I may have said this exact word in the video.

Go ahead, keep going. Keep going. Which Android version's number was the one where they reset the alphabet. I got you. I got you. Someone didn't listen to last week's episode. No, I was in Wales. I was listening to the beautiful buying of sheep next to my bed.

We had this question last week. Well, not quite. Very similar to the lead us to a conversation. It is possible to get this wrong. I probably still will get this wrong. Even though I just relistened to us all talking about it. You're saying which is the one where they... Which is the one where they reset the alphabet?

Oh, yeah. So as we know, they got to Android Q and then they kept going with the code names. Those code names at some point reset the alphabet. By the way. By the way. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. Alice does not know about this part.

Can I tell the story before? What were you going to say? Can I tell the story? Go ahead. Okay. This is partially my fault. How did you spell it? We were talking about the letters and David guessed the dessert was Tiramisu.

And I think it would have been out there, but then I said, David, how did you spell that? And correct me if I'm wrong, I believe it was T-I-E-R-R-I-S-I-E-U? I don't know. And then he said, and then I was like, How'd you spell that? He's like, Tiramisu's 100% French. And that was probably 20% of our comments last week. Does it not sound like a French word?

I'll give it to you. It kind of, yeah. It sounds French to me. I got a lot of people tweeting at me saying, it's Italian. It was so intense that I got people tweeting and commenting at me saying, you caught yourself Italian, but you didn't sell him that it's definitely Italian. So I got sure. Should I make the question harder?

No, no, no. I asked for what the dessert, the first dessert is when they reset it. Sure. We could have like bonus points or whatever. All right. All right. Two points. It's going to be so funny when we get it all wrong.

So which? Which one reset it? What number and what was that one's internal code name? What number? Yeah, sorry I was amongst the sheep. How dare you, but it's even better. Our viewers are yelling into their screens right now the answer because they already know it. But if they don't, we'll have the answers at the end like usual.

We'll be right back. Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples Preferred, get free delivery, no minimums. Staples Preferred unlocks up to 3% back, plus 10% savings on print and exclusive wireless offers. One less thing on your plate.

Actually, a lot less. Visit staples.ca.ca. Preferred. That was easy. I'm Seth Matlins. My new show, Creator Destroy, Reimagining Marketing, explores how every decision a company makes, not just the marketing ones, but the HR, IR, pricing, org design, and planning ones, the ones most don't consider marketing at all, contribute to either creating value or destroying it.

Each week I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people building, breaking, and reimagining how businesses grow or don't, for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. Creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing from the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdom is company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. All right, welcome back to a little section we like to call people who say they're gamers that aren't really gamers talking about games.

Nice. Just to get it out of the way. Okay. Gamerers can't afford. I disagree. I think David and I play quite a few games. According to the comments, we have no idea what we're talking about. I'll own it up.

I'll own up to it right now. I play games once or twice a month. Not a huge gamer. It's not bad. So you guys should tell me about the Steam Machine because all I really know, I've seen some videos and I've heard a lot of people saying, wow, you should do a video on the Steam Machine.

I haven't because I'm not super interested, but also I know what Steam is, and so I imagine that a Steam machine is a very specific thing. But you tell me. It runs on Steam. It runs Steam. This is like round. Oh, runs on Steam is crazy.

It's like round three. of them trying to release this thing. Is it basically just Valve decided to make some hardware because they make the Steam store already and they're like, oh, well, we should sell a gaming PC. There are so many things to this. The reason for it, I think, makes perfect sense. Steam is generally a PC gaming marketplace, right? It's usually PC games.

Steam deck changed that a bit. It let handheld gaming come onto the, you know, Steam marketplace. But really, the thing people have wanted for so long is I have this massive. of Steam library. The benefit of consoles is it just plugs into my living room TV. I get to sit on the couch and use a controller. Totally. It has a lot of, it's like very cohesive with all of that.

People like consoles because of that. But console wars means we have a lot of exclusivity. We have a lot of different things in that sense. Xbox only titles. Yeah, you're really locked in. Like, Steam is on your computer. You own your computer. You're not like renting.

Like, Steam is what people like for games. I can see where this is going. Also, for the last like 15 years. There's steam sales in the fall, there's steam sales in the summer, there's steam sales in the spring. The amount of Steam games I own that I have never once launched, Valve knows how to make you buy things that you will never use. I bet most Steam users have 50% of their library. They haven't opened yet. Yes, because there's bundles.

Everything's like you can buy GTA for four dollars. Like it's so cheap that they're like, why wouldn't I do it? You know what I mean? So there are people sitting out there with huge steam libraries, but maybe a little bit of a void in the living room where they could be playing it like a console. And everybody for years has found ways or tried to, but it's pretty hard to, like, build a computer that sits next to their TV, but we're talking small form factor. We're talking micro-a-tX. Yeah, but we're talking noise, compatibility issues. So, like, Steam went out to release something that is essentially the console that runs Steam.

Yeah. Okay. Right? Makes perfect sense. People want that. There are so many things on the Steam library that still run great on a controller. You don't have to play everything keyboard and mouse. there's lots of, especially indie games.

There's so many indie games on Steam that are really fun to play on TV and relaxing. Yeah. So they set out to launch this little box. I mean, it's, I don't know the exact dimensions, but it looks not that dissimilar from like an Xbox Series X, but a square instead of a tall rectangle. The original GameCube size seems similar. This feels very GameCubey.

Yeah, I'm proud of myself for knowing the size of the original GameCube. It's all pretty much PC parts, but it's all run. and compatibility-wise really great. I believe it's like, HDMI CEC, which lets you, which lets turning the controller on to turn the steam can also turn your TV on.

It lets all of those controls happen. Things that are kind of tough to do when you're building a PC yourself. Everyone's hoping for this thing when it gets talked about to be released at around $5 to $700. I think $800 is really like,

seven was like the general consensus. I think Linus said that he would eat an entire cake. on the WAN show if it was over $700. The portal cake. But he said this months ago. Yes. Before Open AI destroyed everything. Certain prices have gone up since then.

They have. And so we just got the release date and the release prices. And what is that? So the release date is June 29th, which will be Monday. Okay. The starting price is $1,049 for the 512 gigabyte model that does not include a controller. Wow. Yeah.

1128 for the bundle with the controller at 512, then it can go as high as a 2-terobite model for 1428. That's the bundle with the controller. Yeah. So $1,400, a little over $1,400. But basically starting at $1,100 with a controller. Yes. Wow.

Yeah. You get two PS5s. She pricey. No, PS5 is now $700. Yeah. I thought it was $6.50. They, I don't know. I think original PS5 is $650 and PS5 pro is like $900.

now with the price increases. Some of the issues with this, I mean, I'll go over some of the things it comes with, but the two tarbite model also comes with two swappable faceplates. Remember, this has a magnetic faceplate that lets you do a bunch of cool customization. It has some cool LED bar on there. It's a well-thought-out machine in terms of compatibility. It's got all these separate antennas. So like when your Bluetooth controllers connected to it, but maybe you're downloading something off the Wi-Fi.

It's a separate Wi-Fi antenna. So you're not getting all this interference with that. There's a lot of stuff they put into this. That's really impressive. Yeah. The issue is this price, because if you think about it, even with the price increases, it's running fairly similar performance-wise to a PS5, which is a six-year-old console that is $650. That's six years old?

Right, 2000. It can't be that old. Did it really? It came out around COVID, right? Oh, yeah. Am I old? Yeah, it's not five years old. It's going to turn six in a couple months.

Yeah. So performance-wise isn't that far off from a PS5. Some people, some games for even saying worse than a PS5, but even a PS5 pros $900. So still $200 less than this comes with the controller also. And the like price to performance ratio is turning into a stinger, pretty much. And one thing that people were thinking was, and us included, how much of this will be subsidized because,

Steam also owns the marketplace, therefore X amount of money from all the Steam games that gets purchased. And they had straight up a response to why they are not subsidizing this console. I'll read it super quick. But while this might seem like an easy solution, it doesn't align with our beliefs of how healthy ecosystems are built. If there's anything we're religious about at Valve, it's our belief that open systems are better in the long run for ourselves and customers. The openness of the PC ecosystem in particular has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation. Because anyone with an idea for a way to do something better was always able to take a shot at it. When companies sell their hardware under

costs for competitive advantage or buy exclusive content for it, they're doing that to build a more closed system, one where you don't get to choose what software you use. We don't want that for PC hardware. We don't think you should want it either. We feel like you should have to buy Valve hardware. You should be able to view it as... Shouldn't have to buy Valve. You shouldn't, yeah. You should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices playing games and select the one that makes sense for you. This means you get to decide which device fits your personal tradeoffs, things like Price performance, form factor peripheral support and everything else you care about.

That's the strength of our PC platform. Subsidizing hardware runs counter to that. Yeah. Okay. So I think, yeah. So there are a competitor in the market of, I don't know if this is the most price sensitive market. But when you ask people about PCs, like 90% of the people who are like, I could just build a PC that gets more performance for less money. That's the whole idea of building a PC.

So I can immediately see people going, oh, I could build a PC. just like this or cheaper, and it would be a better buy than buying the Steam thing. Is there anything that you literally can't get from building your own PC? I don't think you can get a motherboard with that HDMI thing that can turn it on the TV. It's almost impossible to say there's no way to get it because building a PC is like infinitely customizable to build this piece of software running what it's running in the form factor with the compatibility of everything with all the different. You mean hardware?

Sorry. If you build this piece of hardware. If you build, yeah, sorry. It's very hard. There's lots of people comparing it to this and that, but like maybe it's a little bigger. Maybe it's not as compatible with your TV and systems. Like they definitely made the efficiency of this whole thing. Pretty impressive.

This is like the Surface laptop. Because there are lots of laptops you can buy. And they're not necessarily, like the Surface laptop is a premium option. And it is maybe it's to serve as. like a Halo product even so that others will build premium options like it, but it will never be the best bang for the buck. Can I give you my equivalent? Sure.

This is a MacBook before the M-chip came out because it was a premium hardware that had features that only the Mac could have because it could work with other stuff. It had an OS that was like sort of custom built for it and like, you know, runs things on it. It was more expensive than things at its performance ratio. But because you could only get certain things for it, it. It worked better with certain things. It did things that other computers couldn't do. People still bought it.

Yeah. That's my analogy. I like it except for that like Apple is known for being like pretty close system stuff. And this is trying to stay open. But I do know what you're saying. It's like you're paying a premium here for like how intuitive it is to be able to play steam machines on your couch. It just works kind of thing. Whereas like, yeah.

Valve says that the worst part about PC gaming is Windows. right and so like they want to just but all the games are written for windows yeah and they thought that they would be able like they made steam machines in 2015 and when they did that they didn't themselves really make a bunch of steam machines they went to partners like asus and acer and like all these other companies and they were like we're building the steam OS you should build these steam machines that are better they can like run steam on your TV etc but what they didn't they expected that all these companies would want to like run linner and like run SteamOS and do this kind of stuff.

These companies, they couldn't really force to do that. Okay. And so they made this layer called Proton, which is a, it's a translation layer similar to Rosetta 2 that will translate Windows games to Linux to allow you to run pretty much every Windows game. So on the Steam machine, you're using Proton. You can run all the Windows games, but it's not actually running Linux. It's running like wine underneath, which is like a Linux distribution. So yeah, I don't know.

I just, I feel that the price to performance ratio is like you're paying the premium for something that just makes the experience so much more seamless. And it's also a computer. It's also a Linux computer, which you can do work on it, too. You don't only have to play games on it if you want. You can put windows on it if you want. It's this weird thing where like it's, it's. If you haven't been on the Valve subreddit in the last couple days, it is the wild west. It's wild.

It is like you can't, every single comment has somebody fighting them on it. Like everyone who thinks it's overpriced, somebody's telling them they're wrong. Everyone thinks it's good for what it is. You're a total Valve fanboy. It's fascinating to read. I can see this having a similar YouTube ecosystem where like there are people split. I haven't even looked yet. There are people split.

people who are like, wow, this is overpriced. Here, I'm going to build a PC that's more powerful for less money. Nobody thinks it's underpriced. I can tell you that. There are people who think we are paying for the parts, essentially. Like, we are just paying the price that it is because that's how much stuff costs now, because stuff is really expensive, especially in the PC world. I think people want, but at the same time, it's really easy to compare this to the consoles

that are arguably running better performance than it that are hundreds of dollars cheaper. Which is tough because those consoles came out in a time. when we were not in Ramageddon. But at the same time, it's also a six-year-old console that is performing better than the thing coming out now at $400 more expensive. The old consoles can't play your

Steam library. That's true. It is so niche. Okay. Sorry, it's not late. You should finish. I was just going to say, I think the people who see this niche are excited for it. I kind of think this is sick, and I kind of want one. Knowing I will be

paying a price that's probably quote, too expensive, or at least I'm paying for a convenience. In my opinion, this console proves that people cannot see, cannot look out into the future and be like, I'm paying more up front now, but the games will be cheaper for the entire time I own this because PC games are always way cheaper. And the reason why Sony can subsidize the PS5 is because it's its closed ecosystem. You have to buy their $80 games. They don't go on sale that often.

Do you know what else you have to pay for? annually to play online. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like the amount of... This is the thing. This has always been a thing.

And you pick, is it cheaper up front, but in order to use the product and the service over the years you're paying over the years more and more money? Or do you just pay more up front? But it's basically free

for the time that you use it. The games are cheaper. You own the games in your Steam Library. Yeah. You own the games. Yeah. That might also be a reason why they can't really...

Like, this is something we all said they own the marketplace but we also talked about how everyone has a million steam games. There's probably a solid chance a ton of people buy this machine and don't buy a game for years because now I finally get to sit. Any of any indie games you have? Yeah. That I can play on my couch now where it's like, oh, I bought all these because these look fun.

But like it sounds crazy calling it a chore to sit at your desk and play games. But like it's so much chiller to sit at your couch and play games. And I'm sure the people who have bought the $3 side-scrolling indie game that like has a Colt fan base. Now you can go play it because I just have a controller and I'm relaxing in a chair. And it also sort of does the opposite where it like unlocks a new, maybe a new market for them where most people who are buying Steam games were buying like the experience of sitting at your desktop leaning forward.

But if they weren't buying lean back controller games as much, this is a new opportunity for people to go, yeah, you know what, I should get some more casual games and they're going to go back and buy more Steam games because they have a Steam machine. Totally. Can I ask a dumb question? we might have an answer. Can you upgrade this machine? Because you can't upgrade a PlayStation.

It's a good question. No, and there's not a ton. I think you can upgrade RAM and storage. That's it. Yeah. You can't do that. Oh, so you shook your head. You can upgrade the thing that's like really fucking expensive.

Honestly, yeah. I mean, I guess like in the future like GPU stuff, is that going to become a bottleneck for Steam games? Probably. Probably. To a point. So one of the things, and this is something Linus really, really put it. So I watched Linus and Dave's reviews. If you want the super

TLDRs, you should go watch them first of all. But the real TLDRs are like, the pros of this are the form factor is great. It's really quiet, which I don't think people are appreciating. Like having a quiet system in your living room is great. And like the cohesion and support to be set up as a living room console is really good and something that's really hard to build into a custom PC. Small game. The cons are performance wise. The price of performance ratio is not great. And one thing they kept saying was playing 4K games at 60, where a lot of that seems to be what they meant was that it's like low settings, 4K upscaling, 60 FPS is like a lot of what they seem to have been talking about is like your 4K gaming at 60 frames a second. Because Linus did a ton

of tests and not a lot of, we'll call the modern like big title games we're running at. That is so interesting. Yeah, I, and again, I'll watch their videos, but I kind of wonder if they are looking at it more through a lens of PC gaming, which has a much bigger focus on fidelity, where I think if you're 15 feet away and your TV is across the room, I mean, I want the frame rate, but I'm maybe not thinking quite the same way about the fidelity. I mean, it's got to perform well, obviously, but I'm not thinking exactly the same way as I would about, like, the game I'm going to play in 4K on my monitor right in front of me. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. No, I agree, and it's tough.

I agree, but at the same price when the PS5 is outperforming. And again, it's, like, really hard to come back to that. Games are so expensive and there's way less games on. Yeah, yes, my question, when you say outperforming, when the PS5 is outperforming the Steam Machine, what exactly does that mean? Higher frame rates, more resolution or details, better settings. Okay, yeah, that's a big deal. Wow.

It's close to PS5. PS5 for pros seems like it was clearing it pretty easy. I agree that that's the thing that's tough here, right? it's really hard to compare to consoles. It's really hard to compare to PC gaming because when you have this sick tower that's running a 59 year or whatever, like it's crushing.

Like people who like PC games like to have the insane frame rights that they can play old school Roonscape without utilizing any of it, but they still want it. Like we've all been there. We've all done that. It's, yeah, I don't know. That's why I think it's so interesting.

One thing to note is someone on Linus's team was talking with Valve about a original price because remember this got announced before RAM blew up and um they couldn't quite say it but they said if you look at the steam deck price increase which by the way similarly we might have mentioned before but the steam deck the 512 gig model went from $549 to $789 so that was a $220 price in trees and the one terabyte model went from $649 to $9.49 which is a $300 price increase. that's like almost 50%. So not $2 to $300 off of steam machine

and we're kind of exactly what we all thought. It should have been like 700, which is what everyone thought it would be. And it's 700, this thing would be awesome. Yeah. But the slate truck, that'll stay the same. Yeah. There's no ram in that thing? What do you mean?

There's no ram in a slay truck. Yeah. So my question, my question is can you even build an equivalently powered PC at this price point? I'm no expert. I have. Has anyone done that? Linus is in the process of making that video.

I think I saw The Verge doing, and it seemed fairly comparable. That's something that is almost an impossible question to answer because between sales and individual parts and finding the best deal here or the rebate there or how it all connects together. Then what do you consider the same thing? Does it have H-T-M-I-C-E-C? Does it have the same form factor? Is it as loud? Performance. Performance?

I'm sure you can build performance. I think arguably better. Yeah, I think that's specifically, if it's just storage and everything. Yeah, I think if their focus is just priced to performance, purely performance, then the answer is probably yes, you can build it. But if you try to get some of the smaller intangibles, like the small form factor or the quietness or the HDMI,

that might make it tricky. Yeah, that's basically impossible. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're going to look at, if your success to clear the bar is, I just want the same specs or to be able to play at the same settings, but not to spend $1,100, then you probably can do that. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know what? Maybe that's fine. Maybe just releasing something that's the option of if you don't want to build any of it, if you want this compatibility, if you want to play your Steam games on the couch, this is this price. And if you're okay with paying that, pay it. If you're not okay with paying that, you can build it by yourself and maybe that's its own.

This is a console that's also a computer, whereas most computers are also consoles. You know what I mean? And so you kind of have to look at it at that angle. If you're cool with having a PC in your living room. Yeah. Because the console is designed to slip under the TV in the little console thing or whatever. And like the PS5 is the slim box and the Xbox is a slim box. And now the steam machine is a pretty small box.

I mean, this is way smaller than both of those boxes. Yeah. So that is another thing. Small computers are expensive. Yeah, they are expensive. You start losing the availability of. Yeah. I'm going to stop saying anything because so many people.

No, it's fine. I mean, it's fine. I mean, we're going to get yelled on no matter. I think it's fine. I kind of want one. Not going to love one. This launch I tried going through PC parts picker and like trying to make the same thing that was smaller. You tried this?

Yeah, I tried it. But this was again, many moons ago when it was first announced. And it was still difficult. Like it was tough. And I don't think I got exact specs or what like to what it's going to launch with or anything like that. So it's hard. I saw a funny tweet where someone was trying to like build the equivalent powered PC for about like try to try to get a good price on it. and they put the parts into ChatJBTJPT

and they said, is this a good build for this price? And ChatJPD said, yeah, this looks like a really good computer. I want to point out one thing. The RAM that you bought, it says that it's $400, but that must be like an error because this kind of RAM should only be about $80. And if it was 400, I'd call the police, frankly. And it was like,

your model's only trained to a certain date, isn't it? Damn. Yeah. It's funny watching Linus and Dave talk about this because it's one of those things where they're like, this is awesome. This is awesome. I remember the price. This is a little tougher.

Oh, the performances. I think, like, I think both of them kind of wound up at like, I still think this is really sweet. Yeah. It's just like, it's a really sweet thing that's really hard to recommend. Like, the people who want this or the people who are going to find out they want it by themselves and be willing to pray. Yeah.

Yeah. They also clearly did not make a lot of these things because in order to buy one, you have to like, there's a really, really weird system you have to go through. You have to like email them or something and then they put you in a lottery. You sign up for a waitlist. You sign up to get put into a lottery which puts your place in line for when it comes out. And then if you sign up after the whatever date, then you just get added to the wait list at the end of that. They're going to be, these things are going to be sold out for like the next two years. There is one thing that I thought. was interesting to go all the way back to, I knocked David's mic somehow. Something people were saying, a reason they might not be subsidizing this is because it can just be run as a Linux or Windows system is like people could just buy a bunch of these at the cheap, the subsidized price and use it as compute power and data farm with it. So like, maybe that's something they took into it. I'm sure there's lots of things to take into account.

There's so many variables out here with slop. and it's annoying and gamers suffer the most. I know people are probably going to say I'm Valve glazing, but generally I feel like Steam and Valve do things that they just don't want to do because they're a private company. They don't have to think about their stock going up. And that's why people still love them. That's why the Steam is still a good marketplace.

Wow. How much do they pay you to see that? Please, no one post any of our conversation to the Valve subreddit. I cannot handle it. Oh, they will. Oh, they will. I will go into hiding. They will.

I will make a clip specifically for it. Yeah. I don't know, man. I private companies are the best. I love private companies, so. Let's do trivia. Let's do trivia. Trivia, dude.

Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Founders of Valve started the company in 1996. Dang, Valve. What company did they both work for before that? I know the answer. That's unfair. Like, because I know the answer. That's how that game works.

She's cheating. Trivia really sucks what everyone knows. It's literally what trivia is, knowing the answer. Don't. Now supposed to know it. Nope. Dang it. All right.

Well, I'll tell you guys the answer to that. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Have you ever wanted a pair of Raybans except they're not by Rayban? They're by the company that steals all of your data. And they're also still kind of by Rayban. And they're also still kind of by Rayban? Yeah.

We got a story for you. That's a lot of smart. Meta has launched the product just for you, Marquez, because Meta has just launched three new models of smart glasses. Now they are just called Metaglasses, which is really ironic because everyone already called the Meta Raybans meta glasses. Ironic. See what you did there. Oh, with your eyeballs? Pretty good.

They're $80 cheaper, and so basically it just seems like Meta wanted to not license the Rayban branding. And they're also made by Luxottica. They're still made by Luxottica, yeah. Which makes the Rayban glasses. So they are launching three different models. There's, okay, these are stupid-ass names, dude. The Fury model. Oh, boy.

Okay. They kind of look like Rayband Wayfares a little bit. They're a little bit thicker. They have seven color options. That's the one thing about these glasses that are pretty different from the Raybans. They come in, like, a lot of different colors. Well, I specifically put color options there because there are seven options.

There's not, it's kind of confusing. So some of them are color plus lens options. Right. So there's probably like four colors. Right. There's compost. That's a good clarification. The adventure model, which are definitely pretty similar, but they have thinner frames.

They also have different color combinations, about eight of them. And if you couldn't get enough of Kylie Jenner for some reason. Because, you know, you're just a huge Kardashian fan, even though that's not her last name. They also have the Metaglases Kylie Edition, which, you know, they've got the, this retro oval kind of look to the frame, and they're a collab with Kylie Jenner. They have three color options, and she voices an AI model that talks to.

I missed that part. She does. Oh, man. They're also not $80 cheaper. They are $3.99. $400. I was going to say, instead of paying the licensing money to Ray Ben,

you just pay it to Kylie Jenner, directly to Kylie Jenner. Cool. So, you know, I don't know. I think we've been seeing all these different glasses from, like, these smart glasses from Samsung and, like, a bunch of different companies. and I guess meta eventually just wanted to take all of the money and not have to like pay directly to RayBan anymore.

But it's confusing because they still have Luxottica branding on them on the inside. It's still made by like I saw a lot of takes like, oh, this is cool. Let's make it cheaper for people, which it is. I'm not going to complain that it's cheaper. It's $2.99 now starting price. But like without the Ray brand licensing, but it's not meta building these from the ground up. It's Luxottica who still built the frames. Who was anyway before?

Yeah, who is they own Raybans. Is it really a good thing if more people have these glasses? No. Okay. Okay. That definitely. For us? For meta, yeah. That's the whole point.

Meta was essentially, they had PR statements ready for stuff like this. Because not just in the sense of all the privacy concerns that we talked about, there have been, I don't know if you've seen, but a lot of people have been finding ways to, like, drill out the camera light. Yeah. And there's like tutorials online and people who are doing this in some states where like you can essentially stop the light, which I already think is not a good enough light to prove that you're recording, but to just full blown drill it out and still have the camera work. So people don't know your recording, which is the creepiest thing I could ever think of. And also we're starting to see establishments banning these types of glasses from places because of recording, which is a huge issue because if these are just your glasses that you're supposed to wear every. every day and you go to one of those places that is banned. Now you either are not going to that place or you're going to that place without the ability

to see because you can't wear your glasses inside of it. And they've noticed this. Something they said at the event is we know there's tampering today and there's handful of ways people are doing it. Nothing that meta has seen or noting meta has seen an increasing number of bad actors misusing its products as they become more popular. If people aren't comfortable with you wearing the glasses, not only do we personally think that's bad, but we wouldn't have a business.

this anymore. You should see some updates from us really soon while we're looking to address it directly. They need to find a way to stop these glasses from working if you drill out the lights. They also need to make the recording sign red. Yeah. They had put some precautions in where if you like covered the light with tape, it would know and it wouldn't work. But Joanna Stern actually did a video about this where she found a bunch of people that were willing to like selling the service of drilling the light out without the glasses knowing. Yeah. Because the white. Firing was still there, so it was still receiving a circuit, so it didn't trip anything, but they took the light out physically. Yeah, they need to make this a lot better, but meta does not care about this.

Meta only cares if they get in trouble for it. Meta will start caring if stuff like this happens where these start getting banned everywhere, and it's going to turn into smart glasses are just not a viable option for things. It's just so hard to ban these when they look more and more like regular glasses, and the cameras in these are actually smaller than they were in the original metal. Yeah, they are a little bit smaller. I was like, where was I just, I was just somewhere where these glasses were banned. I was trying to remember what it was. Ferrari.

Ferrari. Ferrari. Yeah. Where you, we walk into the Formula One paddock and they had to like outlaw like no recording, no cameras, don't take any pictures, obviously. Yeah. And people would be going in with the glasses on all the time and just recording anyway. So they had to put a sign on the door that says no smart glasses in the paddock.

It's funny that's because they don't want like trade secrets of their cars going in where most of these establishments because they don't want creeps coming in or people to feel uncomfortable. That's the thing is like you could not be a creep, but lots of people are going to feel uncomfortable. Yeah. Because you're in a private place of business with potentially getting recorded whenever. Yeah. It's one of those things where every time I talk to someone who I can tell is wearing the

meta glasses, I just immediately assume that they're recording. I feel on edge when I'm talking. Like remember we were at South by Southwest and that person came up to us. and this might not even be online, I don't even know, so I'll keep it anonymous. But somebody ran up to us basically and just like started recording with the glasses. I don't even think she asked.

Oh, can I record? She did say, can I record you with my meta? Yeah, can I record you? And then just started recording and then just started interviewing us basically, like using her glasses as a camera. And just sort of didn't listen for us to say yes or no and just started going.

The most south-by-s Southwest thing you could imagine. And when that happens to you, you realize like anyone wearing glasses could be recording at any point, and I feel like the people who are wearing the glasses probably intend to record something at some point, so I just kind of assume that if I'm talking to someone and I notice that they have the glasses on, I'm just going to talk, live, and act as if this is being recorded right now. Which also, I get people, like, if you are in a public place, you are allowed to be recorded

because you're public. The thing that gets weird about this are, if I'm being recorded at a public place with a phone or a camera, I can tell I'm being recorded. When you're starting to drill this stuff out, I don't, people don't know what's going on. Starts getting really weird on who's recording what, when it comes with children, or like, that's all really strange.

And then when you start getting into private places of business that don't allow recording and that you expect some sort of privacy and you're potentially recording stuff like that, it's just getting really strange. In Japan, they have a law where every smartphone has to come with a loud camera shutter sound every time you take a photo of something on any smartphone,

it's at its, like, max, volume and you will always hear it go off. I think I noticed that too. Is that true about China phones too? I don't know. I feel like... In Japan, it's a law. Okay.

That might be true about some other places too, but I feel like that was a default that I noticed was the shutter sound was always on out the box and extremely loud. And every time I took a picture, it was like, ch-ch-ch-ch-and-oh, wow. And then they got clever with it and they made it sound like a DSLR and other stuff. Yeah. It's just hard to know if someone's just wearing glasses walking around. Like, you never really know if they're recording or not. It just becomes... Your glasses right now could be...

The meta-glasses. They're not. They're not. They kind of look like them. That's the whole point is also, because they're raybans, the idea is to make them look kind of like regular glasses. Yeah. And with the rayban name on them, they kind of feel like regular glasses. So, yeah.

And the more styles they introduce, the more they're just going to blend in and look like more regular. Because even now people have started assuming that pretty much all raybans are smart glasses. You know, they associate the smart glass trend with raybans. But now they're releasing all these different models that come with these. different styles and it's just going to become impossible at some point. I will say like the, so the furies definitely look like smart glasses. They're super thick on the... Yeah, super thick on my sides.

I don't even know what you call that. It's pretty obvious. The arms. The arms. Thank you. I'm an idiot. The Kylie ones, which I'm kind of confused by because all the pictures says meta starfire Kylie edition, but everyone keeps calling the meta-glasses Kylie edition.

So I don't know if there's a name change. Those are a little harder to see the glasses because the frames are so black. and thick. But then the adventurers, they look pretty normal. They look super normal. They're really thin. The glasses just look like they could be like a screw hole or like a just a piece of flare essentially on the glasses. And I can't imagine a little white circle around that is really tipping many people off to your recording. Yeah. So these glasses also come with Mehta's first Super Intelligence Labs model, which is called Muse Spark for some reason. Everything is Spark recently, by the way. And I think this is a reference to Sparks of AGI. Gemini Spark. Gemini Spark. There's a lot of

spark stuff going on. Yeah, and I think it's the whole Sparks of AGI thing. Either way, it should be a little smarter, so you should be able to have more natural conversations with it. It should know more things, things like that. In Kylie's voice. And Kylie's voice. Sick. Which is great. I didn't, I don't know how I missed that. Yeah. That's really funny. Yeah. We never got an update to the SVG that's Swedish Um house mafia yes we never got an update of Swedish

we never got Swedish house investigation yeah yeah I know meta ended their contract with the data annotation company in Kenya but we never found out how real such a big tech company thing to do be like it was their fault I know just blame them completely and

find another place that will do probably exact same thing and that story didn't really make the rounds among US consumers and I found myself over and over again like meeting people who are wearing the meta glasses and wanting to be like, hey, there's this potential that they're just recording all the time. And I never know how to have that conversation with people. So I just don't. I think here's my potential silver lining of, I think most people who buy those glasses aren't using the AI features of it, which is generally when it was recording without them knowing. So I do think

most people are just like, these are glasses that can play some music and I can record first person view every once in a while. I hope so. I hope they weren't just recording. I think the average people buying that are probably not really asking the meta AI what's going on. Yeah. But in other news meta's starting a prediction market. Yeah. Yeah. What?

Oh yeah. You didn't hear about this? Yeah. They're starting a standalone app called Arena that's supposed to compete with Polymarketing. Have they ever had an original idea? Yeah. Anyway. This is every time we're talking about meta idea. I know. I know. I know. What's something nice we can say, guys?

Have to street the manifest. At least they look better than the snap glasses. I don't agree with that. I like the snap glasses. That might be one of the hotter takes. I'm back with them. Anyway, should we do some fun questions? We should do trivia.

Hey. Scoop up, feed up. Back for its second week in a row, apparently. Guys. I'm still getting this wrong enough. What was the first version of Android, where they reset the dessert alphabet in the code name and I'm looking for the number

and the dessert. One point each would be cool. Which version of each? Yeah, it's going to be one point each. Hell, yeah. Oh. Version number. When you say reset, you mean it's the last one before it reset or the first one that did reset?

The first one that did reset. That's a great, great clarification to get out there. Flip them and read. Who wants to go first? I'll start I believe it is Android 16 which is correct

which is Baklava and that is double correct Thank you Marquez is the Android sicko Thank you They Yeah Yeah

So they didn't start with A No Nope I Well they didn't start with A with regular Android either That is correct You're also a sicko

That's right Well that's B That's cupcake C, that's B. Yeah, C, 17 is C. My deduction was solid because I knew 17 was C

so I went to 15 assuming normal people restart the alphabet at A. Lane restarts the alphabet at A. Totally valid guess. I think that's, and then I just guessed Apple turnover. Yes, unfortunately that is incorrect.

David, you also put 15. Yeah. And what dessert did you write down? Cremblee. I almost wrote to your Amazon. Solid. Wait, hold on. Can I?

I'm just kidding. I just wanted to rage pay people. It feels like, oh, Cremblele was just a guess, or did you think of a C? Because you made the deduction to go back to 15 based on current being C. You would think that, but then he did see again. You would think that, Andrew, but I just went for it, baby. Oh, hell yeah. I didn't have enough time to actually think that hard.

You're too busy AR trying on the Kylie sunglasses. That I was. And they look amazing. I put it in memes. You can check it out. Oh, my gosh. The mouth slightly open. The trivia music started and David still haven't given me my whiteboard because you're just trying them on.

I was like, I got to think. Virtually trying on. For those curious, Virgin 13 was Tiramisu, as we learned last week. Wait, I got this. 14 was. Upside down cake. What a banger. Waterbanger.

Waterburger. V. Number 15 was. Half of that backwards is really hard. was V which is Volumptuous cake No V V is the last one before they reset

What is V Hold on V V Vieramasu That's the French version The last one before they Updated What was it?

Vanilla ice cream Oh yeah That was boring as one of all time Very vanilla Very vanilla It's a rare bean from Madagascar You know that Vidal is actually one of the more complex flavors. There's like 30-something flavor things that go into

vanilla. That sounds like something, yeah, vanilla would say. Big vanilla. Big vanilla wants you to believe. That's like this base slate trip being like, it locks. Anyway, after that correct answer, Marquez with 30. Damn. Andrew with 26 and David with 30. Oh no. That's not that far ahead? Oh no. I thought David was clearing all of us by like that. Because Mariah destroyed me when I was out. She didn't do it for me.

She got points for you. No, she didn't. She got zero points. Damn. Damn. Okay, well, what company did both the founders

of Valve work at before starting Valve? Just as we thought we were catching up. Yeah. I can make a guess. You should guess. You get one point for founder.

That was a joke. They came from the same company. Or did they find her? Welcome back Ellis This is I have no idea I hope Flip him and read what do we got

Yes Just because No way You guys guessed this correct? I think it's the only plausible I don't know One two three Microsoft

Microsoft Oh, that's fucking off. God damn it. You thought he was about to get a free point? It's not free? Nope. I used my big brain. Thought you're about to take the lead by even more than you were already in the lead.

I'm only in the lead by one, Marquez. We made educated guesses, and you are still only in the lead by one. Oh, God. Wow, that felt great. I'm trailing by a billion. I'm glad. I'm glad we were able to pull that one off. Well, it's been a fun.

What is the freaking extravaganza? She, 31 points? Actually, next month. We've been cooking. That's a nice little teaser. Hey, if you made it this far on the episode, now you know when the trivia X-Gryanza is. That's true.

Which is very exciting, exclusive information. Well, that's been more for your regularly scheduled programming. Be sure to tune back in next week. Of course, if you're subscribed, you already know it's going to hit your feed. But we'll catch you again soon. Thanks for watching. Catch you the next one. Pace.

Wait, for it was produced by Adam Alina and Ellis-Ruburn. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and Entourage music was created by Vane Still. The whole world is talking about the slate. And I'm talking about Strelay Manifesto.