Switch 2: the good news and bad news

The Verge

Last week, The Verge's Ash Parrish got to play with the new Nintendo Switch 2. We got over our outrageous jealousy long enough to ask her all about it: what it's like to hold, how the screen looks, whether the mouse-control is any good, and much more. Ash gives us the good news, and the bad news, on everything we now know about the Switch 2.

Transcript

00:00:00Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Clippy. I'm your friend David Pierce and I just

00:00:04need to briefly, very quickly tell you about this new gaming obsession that I have. So there's this

00:00:10company called New Star Games. They make games like Retro Bowl and Retro Goal, which are these

00:00:14like old school looking kind of Nintendo level graphics sports games. Bowl is football, goal is

00:00:21soccer. There are a couple of other ones too, but those are the best ones. I love these games. You

00:00:25can play them on mobile. They're also on the Switch and I think maybe on other consoles, but I mostly

00:00:30play them on my phone, sometimes with a controller, sometimes just on my phone. And there's a new one

00:00:34called New Star GP. It's a racing game. GP stands for Grand Prix. That is like my favorite game in

00:00:40a very long time. It is this exact right balance of there's a lot to do and you have to kind of,

00:00:45you have to know the tires, you have to know the conditions, you have to follow the racing line to

00:00:48win, like all this stuff. But the game is still very simple to play. And with racing games in

00:00:52particular, that is a really, really, really hard balance to strike. GP has sort of ascended to this

00:00:58rare plane of like games I can play for as long as I have to play them. I don't hit a natural stopping

00:01:03point or like finish a thing and I'm like, well, that was delightful and now I shall go do something

00:01:08else. I just sit down and I start playing it and then I'm like, oh, it's been several hours. It's

00:01:13alarming, but it is also like the true sign of a great game, at least for me. I also want to know what

00:01:18those games are for you. I sort of immediately regret asking this because if I have like two

00:01:23more of these in my life, I'm just never going to get anything done again. But I want to know what

00:01:27are the games that for you, you can like, you sit down at two o'clock and you're like, I'm going to

00:01:32play a little bit of this game. And then suddenly it's seven and you're like, how am I still playing

00:01:35this game? I didn't, how has it been five hours? Those are the games I want to know about. Email us

00:01:40vergecasttotheverge.com. Call us 866-VERGE-11. I want to hear everything. Tell me everything.

00:01:45Anyway, that's not what we're here to do on this show today. We are going to do two things. First,

00:01:50we're going to talk to Ash Parrish about the Nintendo Switch 2. She was there. She was in

00:01:55New York last week. She's seen the Switch 2. She's played the Switch 2. She did the weird mousy thing.

00:01:59She has a lot of thoughts. And I caught her like immediately after the event because I wanted her

00:02:04sort of first immediate reactions to using the Switch 2. And she had some good ones. So we're going to

00:02:08talk about that. Also, we're going to talk to Tom Warren, who was there for Microsoft's 50th

00:02:13anniversary celebration last week, which was interesting. There were protesters. Steve Ballmer

00:02:20was weird. There's a lot going on. So we're going to talk to Tom about that. And also just kind of

00:02:24take stock of Microsoft as it enters its sixth decade as a company. Also, we have a hotline

00:02:28question about tariffs that I'm very excited about. This is a question we've heard a lot of. And I

00:02:33think the answer is both really simple and really complicated. So we're going to get into that.

00:02:36All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I have to go play GP again. I just can't

00:02:42I have to play one more game. I'm gonna do one more race. I promise just one. And then we're

00:02:46going to podcast. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Ash Parish is

00:02:51here. Hi, Ash. Hi, you have had a wild last couple of days. We're recording this early. So it's it's

00:02:59Thursday, April 3. Right now we're recording this well ahead because I wanted to get you to talk about

00:03:03Switch stuff while it's still fresh in your mind. But it seems like you're now like 30 hours into

00:03:10too deep into the Switch world. Is that fair? That's very fair. Yeah. I did sleep a little

00:03:17bit, but not that much. Yeah, that sounds right. So OK, so what I want to do is I want to kind of

00:03:23go through the good and the bad of what we know about the Switch 2. Right. We talked when we first

00:03:27got some information and there was still a lot we didn't know. We know a lot more now. We got a lot

00:03:32of games. We got a lot of spec announcements. We got a lot of like weird new ideas about things

00:03:36from Nintendo that I want to talk about. So what I asked you to do is basically like give

00:03:41me some good news and give me some bad news. Let's start with the let's start with the good

00:03:44news. What what is some of the stuff from the announcement that you are like particularly

00:03:47excited about? The good news is, is that upgrading your Switch 1 to a Switch 2 makes sense. I just

00:03:56remember I got to the chance to play Breath of the Wild on the Switch 2 and I had the thought

00:04:02like, oh, this is what this game should have looked like eight years ago. Yeah, the Switch

00:04:072 is fulfilled. It feels like it's fulfilling the promise of the Switch 1. Like we all tricked

00:04:11ourselves into believing like, oh, this game looks great on the Switch 1. No, it actually

00:04:16looks like what it's supposed to on the Switch 2. And it's like, yeah, I'm not a person who

00:04:21early adopts consoles at all. Like I just don't care about them all that much. But this is

00:04:26this seeing Breath of the Wild specifically and even Mario Kart World on the Switch 2 made

00:04:32me like, yeah, this is a day one purchase for me. Wow. Was it just like bigger, better

00:04:37screen just does the job? It's the whole package. It's the bigger, better screen. It's the frame

00:04:42rate improvements. It's the HDR. It's the 1080p. It's all of that bundled together. Like we know

00:04:50that Nintendo doesn't, is not like the spec hound. Like they, it's not a big deal if they

00:04:56have like teraflops of whatever, like because people still buy and play their games. And,

00:05:01but now like seeing this, it's like, there's a reason why Xbox and PlayStation are so focused

00:05:07on letting us know that you're going to get the crispiest graphics and textures. And now

00:05:11that Nintendo has finally like gotten to, you know, the base level of that, it's like, okay,

00:05:16yeah, this, this feels like something that's supposed to compete at least with a PS4 and

00:05:22an Xbox one, if not, you know, the new consoles out right now.

00:05:26I was, I just feel like both things can be true at the same time, right? Like Nintendo always says,

00:05:30you know, people don't love our games because they are the highest graphical fidelity and they do the

00:05:34best ray tracing that there are more important things about building great games than just that.

00:05:38And like, of course that's true. Unquestionably, I agree with that. And yet,

00:05:42wouldn't it be better if it looked better? Both things can be true.

00:05:46Not only look better, but like play better too. Like I remember at the, you know, now that we're at

00:05:51the end of the Switch's life cycle, that some of these games that are coming out for the original

00:05:57Switch, like it shows the age of the console, like with the 30 FPS and you can see it chugging and you

00:06:02can see like the little tears on the edge of models and things like that. But seeing like a buttery smooth

00:06:0860 up to 120 FPS on the Switch too, it's like, oh, okay. I get it now.

00:06:14Yeah, that is, that is very exciting. And I think one of the things I've been wondering,

00:06:19like I have not touched the thing yet and you have is it's, it is a much larger piece of equipment,

00:06:26right? But it's, it seems like it's worth it. My worry has been like, I actually think the size of

00:06:30the Switch is, is if not exactly right, like pretty close. It's comfortable to hold in one hand or in

00:06:36two hands for a long time. It's like, it fits in most places. It feels good. And so I was like, oh no,

00:06:41if they made this thing like a lot bigger, maybe it kills one of the things that I really like about

00:06:45it. But it sounds like maybe the trade-off's worth it even if it does do that. Yeah. It was really

00:06:49hard to get like a good feel for like what the console actually will feel like, you know, out in

00:06:54the wild because Nintendo had them like weighed down with those anti-theft anchors that make everything

00:06:59super heavy. So I couldn't like... Like being in an Apple store trying to... Yeah, exactly. So I couldn't get a

00:07:03good idea of like what this feels like, but I don't mind the bigger Switch. Like it's not big

00:07:09enough to where it like registers like, oh, this is a much bigger machine. Like it just feels the

00:07:13same to me. And same with the controllers and the Joy-Cons. They just feel the same. They didn't

00:07:18do anything ergonomically different there. Okay. That all feels like what I would have hoped

00:07:23for. I've been saying all along, and I think you've said this too, that like, give me better Switch.

00:07:28Don't give me wild new ideas about the future of gaming and I'll be very happy.

00:07:31And that's exactly what they did. Yeah, I'm glad. All right. What else? What other good news came

00:07:36out of this for you? I want to talk about games too. Okay. I was going to say like the games are

00:07:40also a good news. So a lot of the games that you saw in the direct were at the presentation. You get

00:07:48a hands-on there. So you had like Hades 2 was there and Street Fighter 6. And we got to try some

00:07:55GameCube games for Nintendo Switch Online. So Wind Waker was there. We also got some of the new

00:08:02Nintendo Switch exclusive games like the Super Mario Party Jamboree TV expansion, Donkey Kong Bonanza,

00:08:09Metroid Prime 4, the 3v3 basketball game Dragon Drive was also there to demo. So there was a healthy

00:08:17mix of games that we got to try. And playing the games myself and talking to all my journalist

00:08:22friends that were there, I'm pretty sure like the best in show was Donkey Kong Bonanza,

00:08:27which is exciting because, you know, we would have thought that Mario Kart World would have

00:08:32been everyone's number one. And to be clear, it's up there. It's definitely number two. But

00:08:38everyone that I spoke to when I asked them, what was your favorite game? It was Donkey Kong Bonanza.

00:08:42And it is, it's this cute game that feels like it will fill the hole that Mario leaves behind because

00:08:50we've got this new Nintendo console coming out, but no game, like no game dedicated to like Nintendo's

00:08:57big dude. Like there's no new 3D Mario and we haven't had one since Super Mario Odyssey. I mean,

00:09:02we can quibble about Bowser's Fury or whatever if you want, but I'm not going to do that right now.

00:09:06So like I was thinking, like I had on my personal bingo sheet, like, okay, they're going to

00:09:10announce the 3D Mario here and they didn't. And I'm like, well, that's odd. I mean, it's not out

00:09:14of character for Nintendo, but I'm thinking it's odd because it has been so long since we've gotten

00:09:19a brand new, not DLC of a 3D Mario game. And still we don't, but Donkey Kong Bonanza kind of

00:09:26like fills that hole. Like I played this and I'm thinking, oh, this is Donkey Kong Odyssey. Like that's

00:09:32what this feels like. And, but not like, you know, Mario Odyssey with a Donkey Kong colored

00:09:38can of paint. It's different enough, but still feels like that quintessential Mario platforming

00:09:44experience. And I'm like, this, this is pretty gas.

00:09:47I'm really excited about it. This, this statement is going to age me in a very specific way,

00:09:52but Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo is probably still to this day in my top three

00:09:57most played video games of all time.

00:09:59It's a great game.

00:10:00It's so good. I like, I love that game to, I could probably still play most of that game

00:10:05with my eyes closed. And, uh, the idea that it is still kind of on the level of like the

00:10:13most important Nintendo characters, just that fact alone, like the, the fact that it was the

00:10:17last thing in the announcement and like the, the signal that that sends about how much Nintendo

00:10:22cares about this game and this character and how much it matters to the ecosystem, that alone

00:10:26made me so happy. It's like Donkey Kong is like so back in, in the best way.

00:10:30Yeah. We are so back and he's got like a brand new character design that's really fun and

00:10:35expressive. And I am, I'm looking forward to playing more of that game. It was a lot

00:10:39of fun.

00:10:39That's awesome. I'm also really excited just to hear that you could play that many games.

00:10:43I feel like we've, we've been burned a lot recently by coming soon games and in the coming

00:10:49months games and, you know, in development games and everybody who like announces and then

00:10:54announces and then announces and then announces games. Uh, so the fact that these are like done

00:10:58games or at least done enough games that you could play them, I feel like speaks very well

00:11:03to what the next few months are going to look like here.

00:11:05My, my cynical thought before I got into the event yesterday was that we were just going

00:11:09to get a bunch of switch one games on the switch too. Like I didn't think they would

00:11:12have the breadth of games that they did have there. I was quite surprised.

00:11:17Yeah. I'm, I'm psyched about that.

00:11:19Oh, do you, do you want to know a fun little insider secret that I thought was really funny?

00:11:22Yeah. So one of the games that they announced, uh, at the direct was a switch port of Hogwarts

00:11:27legacy. And that went over like a lead balloon. Like nobody came to crap when we were watching

00:11:32it all together in the presentation room.

00:11:33I didn't even notice that.

00:11:35Yeah, exactly. And then when we got onto like the demo floor, like there were some stations

00:11:39set up to demo Hogwarts legacy and nobody touched it. And I thought it was the funniest

00:11:43thing throughout the time I was there, it was empty.

00:11:48I love that. Just giant crowds around everything except two stations.

00:11:53Yes, exactly.

00:11:54That's, that's very good. Um, what else? Other, other good news, other surprising excitement

00:11:59coming out of the, the announcement?

00:12:01So one of the things, um, that I thought on the game side, that was like really interesting

00:12:05that I, when I first saw it, I had like kind of like a lukewarm response to it. But then

00:12:09when I saw it in action, I'm like, actually this works is the Nintendo switch to welcome

00:12:13tour, which is the game that you, I guess Nintendo made to like introduce you to the

00:12:20switch too. So it tells you like how it works and all these different new features with a

00:12:25bunch of mini games is very much Nintendo's Astro's playroom and getting my hands on it.

00:12:30It's actually really cool and informative. Like we don't get to see very much how the sausage

00:12:35gets made. We have like Mark Cerny talking about PS5 teraflops and things like that. And

00:12:40your eyes cross and you're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. None of these

00:12:43words are in the Bible, but seeing Nintendo really break that down with how their joy

00:12:47cons work or, you know, what explaining frame rates. Like there was a, there was a tutorial

00:12:53or a little quiz or little info thing that explained like, here's the difference between

00:12:5830 FPS and 60 FPS and 120 FPS. And it's something like, you know, intellectually, and you can see

00:13:04the difference, but actually having a technical explanation for why 30 FPS looks different than 60

00:13:10FPS was like really informative. And I really appreciated that. So that was one of those like

00:13:15little weird standards. Like, Oh, okay. This is actually better than I gave it credit for. So kudos to

00:13:20Nintendo on that.

00:13:21Yeah, that's cool. And I was actually going to ask you about that because there was some

00:13:24surprise maybe at the fact that this is a paid game that it's like, you're going to make me pay

00:13:30to like play the manual for the console. But even just describing it as like Nintendo's version of

00:13:35Astro's Playroom kind of makes that make a lot more sense. Yeah. I still think it should maybe

00:13:40be free, but that's neither here nor there. The way that we, you know, set this up, you told me

00:13:44like, give me three good things and three bad things. Nintendo Switch Welcome Tour is on my good

00:13:48and my bad side. All right. Fair enough. The bad part is because it is not a pack-in game like

00:13:53Astro, Astro's Playroom was, is something that you have to pay for. And that just doesn't make sense

00:13:58to me. Yeah, that's, that's very fair. Um, all right. So let's switch to, let's switch to some

00:14:02bad news. Uh, I, I have, I have a couple that I want to ask you about specifically, but give me,

00:14:08give me your list first. So the Astro's Playroom. Yeah. The Nintendo Switch Tour is, is the bad

00:14:13news because there's no rhyme or reason that that is a paid game and just not included. Uh, the other

00:14:18bad news, which I have a feeling is going to be on the top of yours and everyone's list is the price.

00:14:23Like, what are we doing here, folks? Like, I know what we're doing here and I think we have a good

00:14:29idea why we're doing what we're doing here, but holy crap. You're going to ask people to pay an

00:14:34additional 150 bucks for this thing. And then the thing with that is, is you're actually going to

00:14:40ask people to pay $500 for this because you're going to want the bundle that bundles Mario Kart

00:14:46World and the Nintendo Switch too, because that game all by itself will be 80 of God's own dollars.

00:14:52And that is ridiculous. You get a $30 like price cut if you buy it bundled and it just

00:14:58doesn't make economical sense to do it other than that. And then they're making a limited

00:15:02amount of it. When it's done, it's done. They're not going to do that anymore. According to Nintendo,

00:15:06they might, it would make sense for them too, but they said once those, the, they run out,

00:15:11like, we're not going to restock this. So you got to get your pre-orders in. God,

00:15:14I just probably started a rush on Nintendo Switch to pre-orders. I'm sorry.

00:15:18I may or may not have already filled out the form that promised to alert me when pre-orders are

00:15:22available. Uh, okay. I'm, I confess I'm slightly torn on the price because on the one hand it is

00:15:29much more expensive. Um, I think I expected it to be a little more expensive, but I would have

00:15:33probably pegged the price at like, I don't know, $379 instead of $450. Uh, but you know,

00:15:42whatever inflation tariffs, the world is chaos. Some of this is probably Nintendo's doing. Some of it is

00:15:47probably not consoles in general have gotten more expensive over time. So like, I, I sort of

00:15:53understand. I do think the combination of substantially more expensive console and

00:15:57substantially more expensive games is the normalizing 70 and $80 games, I think is a real,

00:16:03real, real bummer.

00:16:05It's turbo bad. Like it's, it's the one, two punch is, is really hard. And a lot of families,

00:16:11especially now with everything that's going on with these brand new tariffs that hit just today,

00:16:15it's going to make a lot of families, like people are already choosing between, you know,

00:16:21buying their groceries and doing other things. And overwhelmingly people are going to buy their

00:16:25groceries. This is going to do nothing but hurt those families that buy these consoles. It's,

00:16:30it's just, that's a tough, tough ask from Nintendo right now, but everybody's asking more

00:16:36money from all of us everywhere. So I understand it.

00:16:39Well, I think what's, what's weird is it puts Nintendo into the kind of like direct competition

00:16:45with Sony and Microsoft that it has always kind of enjoyed not doing right. Like Nintendo has just

00:16:51all like, we make fun of Nintendo because like the gaming businesses over here and Nintendo is just

00:16:55like all the way over there doing whatever Nintendo is doing. And they're like inching closer

00:16:59to this other sort of messy loot boxy, take all of your money, no matter what world in a way that I,

00:17:07I don't love. The funny thing is, is they completely leaped over the competition because

00:17:11they're advertising $80 games. Like we just blew past 70 all the way to 80. And I'm hearing some

00:17:18places like overseas are going to charge $90, $90 for the physical edition of Mario Kart World.

00:17:25And my eyes kind of like bugged out of my head. Like, yeah, back in, you know, 1999,

00:17:29we were paying 120 bucks for Nintendo 64 cartridges, but holy crap. Like we've had the $60 has been

00:17:36normalized for a good long time, but, and to see a $30 price jump all at once, it's just going to

00:17:42create a sticker shock for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. This goes from being like a thing,

00:17:46you can buy a console and a couple of games for like a good Christmas present down to like,

00:17:53you're, you're going to run this thing into like a thousand dollars without trying very hard.

00:17:56Yeah. And the, the other thing attached to the games, not necessarily, you know,

00:18:02their price that makes this suck even more is that some of these physical games won't even have the

00:18:08game data on them, but they will be required to, required to be inserted into the switch to run the

00:18:14games. I'm seeing, um, things called game keys where you actually, you put the cartridge in,

00:18:20you still have to download the game online, but you still need the, the cartridge to run it.

00:18:25And I'm like, what are we doing here? Like, this sucks. Like I'm already planning to go fully

00:18:29physical for the switch too, because I am seeing the shenanigans that these console companies are

00:18:35getting up to with like revoking digital game access and things like that. Like I have been

00:18:39completed, completely physical media peeled, but now you're making it so that the physical cartridges

00:18:45don't even have the games on them anymore. You're just selling us plastic with just a little bit of

00:18:50thing that we still need. Like, this is terrible for game preservation, first of all,

00:18:54and it's anti-consumer. It doesn't make any sense. I hate it.

00:18:56Yeah. So that, the, the game key thing was actually one of the ones I was going to ask you

00:18:59about, because I think I just don't understand what Nintendo is trying to do here because it is,

00:19:05it is one thing to like, you know, have, have digital games that are DRM'd in some way, like

00:19:12sure, whatever. Uh, and I think we're all sort of becoming increasingly physical media peeled as a

00:19:16result, like watching all of the stuff that happens to emulators and the way that games go away and

00:19:20the way that, that all of this stuff is just being lost to time over time. Like you, you should

00:19:25buy cartridges. I am fully pro cartridges. Uh, I kind of don't get the point of the game key

00:19:30thing. Like I don't either. I can't see it. Except if Nintendo is trying to just be more in control of

00:19:38everything. The idea is like, we we've seen Nintendo crack down on emulators. We've seen Nintendo like

00:19:44really start to push to stop people playing its games. It doesn't want to play its games.

00:19:49And maybe this is just yet another way to do that, but I don't know. It feels like there has to be

00:19:53something I'm missing here or this just sucks. So my boss, Andrew Webster is probably sitting right

00:19:59now in a meeting with Doug Bowser. And that is definitely one of the questions on his list. So

00:20:03hopefully Doug will give us a not mealy-mouthed answer for that. I don't, I don't have a ton of

00:20:09hope on that, but if they do, if we do get a real answer, uh, we'll, we'll come back and talk about

00:20:14it. Uh, what else is on your bad news list? Uh, the last thing on my bad news list is actually

00:20:19the mouse controls. So the big new gimmicky thing that Nintendo is bundling with this console is the

00:20:24fact that you can turn your Joy-Con into a mouse and I hate it. Um, I hate it right now. I didn't

00:20:32see anything that there that made me think, oh, this, this game is why this future makes sense.

00:20:39So they had drag and drive, which is the 3v3 basketball thing. And it's kind of cute to put

00:20:43the Joy-Cons like on a table and do like this motion, like you're pushing a wheelchair, but it

00:20:50is so awkward to hold in your hand like this. It's just the switch. You basically like you,

00:20:54you pull the Joy-Cons out, sort of turn them sideways and stick them down on the, okay.

00:20:58And this is not a natural position to hold a Joy-Con in because there's a reason why we design mice

00:21:04to be flat. So your hand can kind of like rest in this neutral position as you move it around.

00:21:09And the Joy-Cons as mice don't fit that natural neutral position profile. So I don't have any

00:21:16issues with like carpal tunnels or like joint pain in my shoulders or whatever, but just doing this

00:21:20for a little bit, like I could feel like pain and tension start to like aggravate my arm. And I'm

00:21:25like, if you have any kind of like wrist issues, like this is going to play hell on your joints.

00:21:30It's painful. I didn't like it at all. And I just, I don't, I don't see it. Like there's nothing

00:21:35that made me go, oh, this is good. And I tried it again for a Metroid Prime 4. And one of the

00:21:41things that annoyed me about that was that they have, you know, the two different control schemes.

00:21:47You could either play it like with gyro controls with the split Joy-Cons, one in each hand,

00:21:51or you could split it where one is a mouse and one Joy-Con is like free in your hand and nothing

00:21:56with like a traditional controller setup. Like I didn't have that option, or at least at the station I

00:22:01was at, I didn't have that option. And I wish I did because I think I would have enjoyed the demo

00:22:05a lot more. And it's just, you've got lock on still, but like I was just having a hard time

00:22:10trying to like figure this out and aim and move. And it seems like at least with mouse

00:22:15controls and Metroid Prime 4, that there's going to be a steep learning curve to get that right

00:22:19in order to play the game effectively. But then I realized like y'all played the first three

00:22:24Metroid Primes on the damn Wii using waggle phases. So it's like, oh shit, we're just doing that

00:22:30shit again. Well, so that's kind of what I wonder is, I look at the mouse controls and

00:22:34I can't decide if that's just a thing Nintendo occasionally does. And all really all these

00:22:39gaming platforms do, which is they just sort of invent a weird thing that you can build into

00:22:43your game if you want to. And no one really does. And eventually they phase it out. It's

00:22:47like the move controllers or the Kinect or whatever, like everybody has tried to come up

00:22:51with some new gimmick and they're like, maybe this will be fun for your game. And there are

00:22:55a few games that like really make use of it, but for the most part, they're just not part

00:22:59of the system at all. Or if this is a thing Nintendo is going to try to make like an actual

00:23:03sort of first class part of how people play Nintendo games. And as somebody who mostly

00:23:09sits here at my computer with my Switch plugged in into the dock with a full on controller,

00:23:16that would be a real bummer for me.

00:23:18Yeah, I have a feeling that Nintendo is going to make this like their flagship like feature

00:23:26of this console in addition to like the chat and the the video chat thing that was also

00:23:31announced. But whatever they have right now is not there to really demonstrate this is

00:23:38the vision that we have for this. Like you've got drag and drive, which is essentially, you

00:23:42know, a paid tech demo for this for this function. But that didn't really wow me or sell me on

00:23:48it. But I just not a faith, but I have this inkling because Nintendo at the end of the

00:23:53day, they kind of really sometimes they really do know what they're doing in terms of like

00:23:57hardware and gimmicking and stuff like that. Because, you know, the Wiimote was, you know,

00:24:01we all complained about wacko physics. But at the end of the day, that was kind of fun.

00:24:04Not implemented all the time in the best ways, but it was still fun and unique and innovative.

00:24:08And I have a feeling this will be too. We just need to give them time to cook and figure

00:24:12out something that really makes it pop.

00:24:14I do worry about just the ergonomics of it on that front.

00:24:17It's not good.

00:24:18Right. Because I think you're right that when Nintendo is like, when they're all in on

00:24:22something, they're right a lot. Right. Like it's usually when it's kind of weird is when

00:24:26Nintendo is just like, here's a thing kind of off to the side, do what you want with

00:24:29it. But when Nintendo is like, this is how we play games now, it's usually right. Right.

00:24:34Like the DS universe is like that. That's one version of that where they're like, this is

00:24:38how you do it. And it was it was pretty right. But just the sheer like what it feels

00:24:43like to even just looking at like pictures of people's hands trying to hold the Joy-Cons

00:24:47on it, it just doesn't look right.

00:24:48It's not. It's awkward. Your hand isn't meant to do that. The Joy-Con is too small. So your

00:24:56fingers kind of curl around the back and then you get like this claw hand situation versus

00:25:01something where you can just lay your hands out like completely flat like this on a mouse.

00:25:05It just it just does not feel good. So the idea is either they will figure out something

00:25:11that will make this work or Nintendo is about to pump out a bunch of accessories that you

00:25:16can buy that actually makes the mouse make sense.

00:25:18Fair. Yeah, there's definitely a there's like a holster you could make for that thing

00:25:21that would make it a lot more.

00:25:23Yeah, like we're about to get those little remember those little plastic diapers we used

00:25:27to wrap the Wiimotes in or whatever. We're about to get something like that for those

00:25:31Joy-Cons.

00:25:31100%. Okay, I have two more things that I want to know if they're good news or bad news and

00:25:35then I'm gonna let you go. First thing is the Switch 2 is kind of obsessed with

00:25:39the GameCube. There's a GameCube controller for the Switch 2. There's a bunch of GameCube

00:25:43games coming. It's like this is a real GameCube essence happening with this console. Is that

00:25:50is that good news or bad news?

00:25:51It's a little bit of both. The GameCube is has not been adequately represented on the

00:25:57Nintendo Switch Online offerings. So that's good news. I mean, I know a lot of people are

00:26:03really excited about having Soul Calibur 2 with Link in it available to play again. And but

00:26:08I personally, my pet, you know, tinfoil hat theory is that Nintendo got really tired of a

00:26:13bunch of people being like, where's the Wind Waker remastered? And I'm like, best I can do is just

00:26:19give you Wind Waker again, and you're gonna pay $80 for it.

00:26:23That's fair. Yeah. And I think the GameCube is always very funny to me because like in my own

00:26:28gaming experience, I really jumped straight from the N64 to the Wii. So the GameCube was just never

00:26:33quite in my world. But I sort of feel like everybody loves the GameCube in retrospect

00:26:38more than they actually like loved it when they owned it. Yes. But it is also like the true old

00:26:45head gamers are the ones who seem to love the GameCube the most.

00:26:48Which is weird because that, well, it is old, but it's not old head, right? Like, oh, that's just

00:26:54so weird to say. Like I was, I think I was a teenager when the N64 came out. And you're right,

00:26:59like my mind completely glosses over the GameCube. And I went right from Nintendo 64 to the Wii.

00:27:06But some of those games are really fun. Like we've got a new Kirby Air Ride game. Like wasn't

00:27:13that a GameCube game? So yeah, we're, I guess that's where they are as, you know, they're going

00:27:19back in their history. And now it's time for the GameCube to come back because they've already done

00:27:23the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo. They've got some Wii stuff. And now it's like, okay, yeah,

00:27:28we've got to go back and get the GameCube and bring that up to speed too.

00:27:31Yeah, that's fair. I have heard a bunch of people who are very excited just to have

00:27:34F-Zero GX back. Which like, sure, kudos. I'm happy for all of you. Okay, last one.

00:27:42This console is really into video chat, like game chat in particular, but specifically video chat.

00:27:49Good news or bad news?

00:27:50Good news.

00:27:51Yeah?

00:27:51Yeah. This is one of the things. So, you know, that comic where it's like, you know,

00:27:55it's a hot guy knocking on a lady's like cubicle and she's like, hey there. And the lady's like,

00:28:01oh, aren't you cute? And then it's like a less attractive guy who's like, hey there. And she's

00:28:05like, human resources? This is, the Nintendo doing that is like the same thing between the

00:28:10Kinect and the video chat. So like the Kinect is like, human resources? Hello, what? But now that

00:28:15Nintendo's doing it, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, this is cool. I get it. They're so many years late,

00:28:19but they are executing on this so much better. It's just like, they can't keep getting away with

00:28:26it. And yet they are like, it does these really cool things like where you can put your body in

00:28:32a game, like in the Super Mario Party Jamboree TV expansion. Like it takes a picture of you and it

00:28:38puts you in the game and you can like do all kinds of weird, cool things that look cool that families

00:28:42are just going to love. Like I can look at that and see like, yep, families with young kids are going

00:28:47to have a blast with this. And, you know, one of the things that we were talking about here at

00:28:51The Verge was like, oh, we can do meetings on this now. Like let's, let's hold like our weekly

00:28:56standup meeting and then switch to video chat. Like, and that's something that you could do.

00:29:01And honestly, it's a really cool idea. And I want to do that. Like, I think that would be great to,

00:29:06you know, I'm playing Zelda, whatever. And, you know, it's time to have a meeting with my boss and I

00:29:12can just hit the button and be like, hey, you know, working on this review right now and you can see me

00:29:16playing in the background. I just think that's cool. It's just cool when Nintendo does it,

00:29:22when everybody else does it, it's like, but when Nintendo does it, it's cool. I'm sorry. It's

00:29:26just the double standard. That's fair. And I'm, I'm, I'm with you on it, except I think the only

00:29:30part of it that makes me nervous is I think Nintendo is one of the last companies doing a

00:29:37really great job of building games to play by yourself. I feel like everyone else has gone to

00:29:42like, everything is a giant world. Everything is open. You're supposed to, everything is multiplayer

00:29:46all the time, no matter what. And then Nintendo is just like, do you want to play Mario tennis by

00:29:50yourself for six hours? Like, here you go. Let's do that. And I worry, like, I think I'm, I'm probably

00:29:55overshooting my fear that video chat leads to the death of one player games, but that is the thing

00:30:01I worry about. I disagree because I think if anything, this kind of shows Nintendo understands

00:30:08that the thing people do a lot nowadays is play with their friends, but some people don't want to

00:30:14do that, but they still want the experience of, you know, communing. And this is a way to play

00:30:20separately together. So, you know, your friend, one friend is playing Breath of the Wild. Another

00:30:26friend is playing some other game. You guys can play your two separate games, but still like talk to

00:30:32each other in this interface. And I think that's what Nintendo is doing. And I think that's really smart.

00:30:36Yeah, I agree. And I like the idea that it is sort of social first and not just game first,

00:30:43which is not how anybody else does it, which I agree is, is pretty cool. It almost like it sort

00:30:47of learned a lesson both from multiplayer games and from discord all at the same time in a way

00:30:52that I kind of think is, is neat. I'm with you. I also want that camera. I just like for the, I'm

00:30:57with you in the sense that like I've put other cameras in my living room and they all creep me out

00:31:00and I don't want any of them. And then I see Nintendo's little camera on a stick and I'm like,

00:31:04well, that's adorable. I would put that next to my television. Did you see that they are having

00:31:07third party cameras and one of them looks like a piranha plant? What? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It's

00:31:13really cool. It's a third party one. It's in our, it's in our Slack, but it looks really cool. And

00:31:18I'm like, I want that. That's such a good idea. I love that already. I want one that's Yoshi,

00:31:24but it's like Yoshi with his mouth open and the camera's just coming out, but it's like an egg.

00:31:27That would be cute. That'd be good. Uh, all right. So are you, you're going to buy one of

00:31:31these, right? Like, would you, you're going to get one for professional reasons, but like as,

00:31:35as a gamer, is this it? Is this, we're there? Yeah. As a gamer, I was already sold. I'm like,

00:31:41yeah, like Mario Kart world is really cool. Like I've never had the desire to play a Mario Kart game.

00:31:48Like they're fun to play with friends, but that's like a party game. Like, you know,

00:31:51you're going to a party with a bunch of friends and you want to play video games. Like Mario Kart is one

00:31:54of those games, but playing Mario Kart world make me like, I actually want this. I want this for

00:32:00myself. I want to play this for myself. And then seeing all of these switch two versions of switch

00:32:04one games. I'm like, I want that too. Like, I want to experience these games the way that they

00:32:09should have experienced them when they were launched. So the, the calculus has already been

00:32:13decided for me. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was the same way that like, I was going to end up buying this

00:32:18thing no matter what. But I think the thing that's really exciting for me is I want this thing on day

00:32:23one way more than I wanted the switch on day one, because this thing is going to feel huge on day

00:32:29one, which I think is like very much to Nintendo's credit. There was not that much to do on the switch

00:32:33on day one. Yeah. That, that, that's how they get you. That's how they justify their 450 and $500

00:32:39price is because they know we're going to be there no matter what, because it's Nintendo and damn,

00:32:45if they don't know how to sell a console with these new bells and whistles, it just works.

00:32:50It's a real problem. It's like watching the thing. I'm like, okay, you showed Mario Kart,

00:32:54you showed a 007 trailer that showed nothing, but is a 007 game. And then you ended with Donkey Kong.

00:33:00I'm like, name your price. Like I don't, I'm, I am powerless at this moment. I have nothing left.

00:33:06They're really good at that. All right. We got to take a break. Ash. Thank you so much.

00:33:10Thank you for having me.

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00:34:18All right, we're back. Tom Warren's here. Hi, Tom. Hello there. You just made it home like very

00:34:28recently. Literally this morning. Yeah. So you I feel like this is a real like I cannot be held

00:34:32accountable for any of my words. Yeah, this is this is a jet-liked podcast. So if I say something

00:34:37wrong, that's why I'm excited about it. So you were there for the the occasion of Microsoft's 50th

00:34:44anniversary. And I have some like big heady Microsoft stuff I want to talk about. But first,

00:34:49just tell me about the event. This was like a I would say a weirder, wilder anniversary party than

00:34:53anybody expected it to be. What was it like to be there? Yeah, I wasn't really sure what it was

00:34:57going to be like when I like agreed to go and stuff. I was like, they didn't really tell me much about

00:35:02it. And then I was like, hmm. So on the day, I was thinking, oh, it's just gonna be like a party

00:35:07atmosphere and all that sort of stuff. So it kind of kicked off with like, Microsoft AI CEO,

00:35:13Mustafa Suleiman. So he started talking about co-pilot and all the new features, all the stuff

00:35:20that we've covered. And Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO came on stage as well to sort of talk about

00:35:24the future and co-pilot and stuff. As that was going on, sort of, I'd say about 15 minutes

00:35:30in, we had our first protester. Which kind of like threw the whole vibe of the event off

00:35:43slightly. Because obviously, it was a Microsoft employee that was protesting, which is super

00:35:49unusual, right? Like usually you go to a tech event, and there might be a protester about

00:35:53the company's policies or have their technologies used, etc. But it's not usually, you know, the

00:35:58company's employee that's doing it. So that was super strange. So yeah, that happened. And then

00:36:04we quickly moved on to, like, it was like a party atmosphere, really. And they brought out

00:36:13Brenda Song. She was like hosting it. And it was all, this part of it wasn't streamed live. So this

00:36:19was employee only, essentially, and the rest of the world's press that was in the audience.

00:36:23So yeah, she sort of hosted it. She brought up, like, Bill Gates individually, Steve Ballmer

00:36:30individually, and then obviously Satya. And then they all came on together, all three. So

00:36:35they were kind of getting questioned individually and then all together about the history of Microsoft

00:36:39and all that. And Steve Ballmer obviously came on and did his usual, you know, developers,

00:36:45developers, developers.

00:36:46Did he actually, he actually did the developers?

00:36:48Yeah, yeah. He actually screamed it out. Yeah.

00:36:54It's like, he like looked at his wife and the audience was like, I'm going to get in

00:36:57trouble with my wife. And then he just immediately did it.

00:37:01I kind of love Steve Ballmer for doing it. Like I have to say, that was such a, like, silly

00:37:05moment in the history of Microsoft that I kind of love him for just being like, this is my

00:37:10legacy now. I'll do it. I'm here for it.

00:37:12He also made up a new chant, which he was screaming, which was 50 more, 50 more.

00:37:18Oh, that's good. Which is, it was just crazy. Yeah. And he was, I think he was kind of like

00:37:25the highlight, if I'm honest, of the sort of party atmosphere. So Brenda sort of interviewed

00:37:32them all individually. And then Cleo Abram came on from the Explained series and used to

00:37:38work at Vox. Right. So, um, so she appeared to interview all three of them together. Um,

00:37:44and then they were probably, probably about halfway through, I guess that then another

00:37:49protester, another employee protester appeared on stage, not on stage and to the side of the

00:37:54stage. So was your, was your sense of this whole thing that it was kind of a, like, you

00:38:08know, congratulations to us. We're so fantastic thing or like, uh, you know, onward charge

00:38:13forward because it's a, it's a weird thing to celebrate 50 years as a company. Cause on

00:38:17one hand, you're like, well, we did it. We're old and we're, we're, we're on the downslope

00:38:23now. But on the other hand, it's like, Microsoft is like bigger and more powerful maybe than

00:38:27it has ever been. Uh, and in the middle of lots of change on lots of fronts. So I'm like,

00:38:34what was, what's your sense of like the vibe they were going for in that sense?

00:38:37Yeah. The vibe was definitely, definitely party celebration vibe rather than like, you

00:38:41know, like the future stuff came into it quite a lot. Cause co-pilot, you know, they kind

00:38:46of tied the co-pilot news to this event. So it was kind of always like, like linked.

00:38:52Um, but yeah, no, there was a lot of like looking back at the old stuff and Bill Gates,

00:38:56when he first appeared, he came on and was like nerding out, like full on nerding out,

00:39:00um, recounting pie, you know, like it was, it was that sort of nerding out. Yeah. And talk

00:39:05about qubits. Um, so it was, yeah, it was kind of, it was kind of funny. Um, but yeah.

00:39:10And then they had like a, they had like a, um, a game show thing where they had a few

00:39:13Microsoft employees come up and stuff. And, and, and one of one Microsoft employee won

00:39:18us a slot on the, on the front row of the party. They had to come over from some other

00:39:24building. So yeah. So it was very game show vibe. Um, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I kind

00:39:30of get that like 50 is a big thing. And it also, it helps that Microsoft remains Microsoft.

00:39:35And it's like, if you're, if you're like, I don't know, not to pick on IBM, but like

00:39:39this party would be a lot more embarrassing if it was IBM, do you know what I mean?

00:39:41Yeah. Yeah. It's still, there's still somewhat relevant Microsoft in many markets, but whereas

00:39:47yeah, IBM have gone full enterprise, but I think if they hadn't have done this sort

00:39:51of party vibe, then it would have been a bit weird. I don't know what they would have

00:39:53done otherwise, because it would have been like, you know, awkward Bill Gates coming

00:39:58on stage, Steve Ballmer, like making all the noise and then Satya who's quite like, you

00:40:01know, it's quite reserved. So, um, so I don't know how they would have treated that

00:40:05dynamic without there being like a big host, you know, the big party. So I think

00:40:08that they kind of had to go this way either way. So yeah.

00:40:11Yeah. So I do, you mentioned the co-pilot thing and I think it was really interesting

00:40:16to me that they tied these two things together, that they were like, yeah, Microsoft

00:40:20is turning 50. It's a huge moment. And also we have some pretty big AI news. What

00:40:26do you make of that connection? Like, is this, should I take this as like a statement

00:40:29of values at Microsoft right now that like, this is, this is the push to the next 50 is

00:40:34about AI and co-pilot or am I just kind of overstating two things that happened to happen

00:40:38on the same day?

00:40:39No, I absolutely think so. They, they tied those together for a reason. Right. Um,

00:40:42and it was very much apparent that that was every time that Satya talked, it was, you

00:40:47know, AI and, and Bill Gates joked that, you know, Microsoft had three CEOs and then the

00:40:52next CEO might be co-pilot, you know, like, so there was, there was jokes and like ties to

00:40:57it all day. Um, regardless of that sort of first 30 minutes or so, um, focusing right on

00:41:02it, but it very much felt like, yeah, co-pilot is our future or AI is our future. Um, yeah,

00:41:09like that's our next 50 years for, for sure. That was definitely what they were getting at.

00:41:12That's really interesting. I mean, that's a, that's a big thing to say. I guess I shouldn't

00:41:16be surprised that Microsoft is that all in on AI at this point, but like, that's a pretty

00:41:20meaningful statement of purpose to make at an event like this where you don't have to,

00:41:24right? Like you can make it about windows 95, but they like, they, they, it seems like they

00:41:29went out of their way to be like, no, we, we are an AI company and that is where we are

00:41:33going.

00:41:34Yeah, definitely. And, and they even treated it like, you know, like when you go to a

00:41:38product launch, like an Apple launch or even Microsoft stuff where they have a new surface

00:41:42and you see it on stage and then you go hands on. So they had that co-pilot, they had all

00:41:46these like pods set up with experiences with the new features that had just gone live.

00:41:50Um, like they had the Muse AI model, which generates gameplay and stuff. So you could

00:41:55check that out. Co-pilot vision. Co-pilot vision actually was an interesting one because that

00:42:00one is obviously, um, open AI has done it. Apple's doing it, visual intelligence, um, all

00:42:05that sort of stuff. But it's interesting how Microsoft's doing it because, um, it's like

00:42:09constantly rolling. So it knows you don't have to like constantly hit a button, um, or like

00:42:15really focus it at something very obvious for it to pick up. Like I had one example where

00:42:20I had a game, there was a Game Boy in front of me and I was like, um, tell me how to power

00:42:25the Game Boy on. And it was like, Oh, pop, you know, the batteries in the back and then

00:42:29you flick the switch at the top. So I flicked the switch at the top and it was like, Oh,

00:42:33you've turned it on. Cause it realized that the LED had lit up or it just assumed that I

00:42:38was doing that. Um, and just, you know, I'm guessed, but yeah, it was, it was, that was

00:42:43an interesting one. I was like, okay, this is, this is kind of an, it really does feel

00:42:47like it's watching what you're watching. Um, yeah, it was interesting to see, uh, the,

00:42:53the co-pilot stuff is kind of just like a grab bag of all of everybody else's ideas

00:42:57about AI. And I don't mean that as like a denigration of any of this, like everybody

00:43:02has the same ideas, right? So I think it's fine, but it was like, they did the shopping

00:43:05stuff. They're, they're doing some agentic stuff. They had the, the sort of multimodal

00:43:10vision stuff. It's just like Microsoft keeps doing this thing that like slightly drives me

00:43:15crazy where they're like, actually co-pilot is a million things. And then they're like,

00:43:19nevermind co-pilot is one thing. And then they're like, nevermind, it's a million things.

00:43:22And this felt like another sort of bring all the co-pilots back together. And they're like,

00:43:26this is, we want to make sort of one holistic thing out of all of these many features inside

00:43:31of co-pilot. Yeah. It was feels like they're like almost one step behind because they take

00:43:36the open AI models. So open AI does their streams and, you know, wows everyone with the new

00:43:41features. And then Microsoft sort of rolls them out like a couple of months later or something.

00:43:45So this was very much that, although it's always interesting how they roll them out

00:43:48because it does feel like they do them in a slightly better way and a better user experience,

00:43:54which is not usually what Microsoft does. So yeah, so they, they are doing pretty good

00:43:58with, with how they're rolling out. But yeah, you're right. It's, it's like taking the top

00:44:03features of what everyone else has got and polishing them essentially.

00:44:07Which is not, I mean, that is, to be fair, that's like, that's also Google strategy

00:44:10and Apple strategy. And it's just like, take the good ideas and roll them into your bigger

00:44:16products. It does kind of work. So you've spent a bunch of time over the last few weeks

00:44:20sort of reckoning with Microsoft at 50. And this is a company you've been covering for

00:44:24a really long time. And I'm curious, like how, where sort of Microsoft is in, in your head

00:44:30right now? Like, do you have sort of a grand theory of five decades of Microsoft coming out

00:44:35of all of this retrospective and research? Yeah, I think I wrote about like the reflection

00:44:40of the last 50 years and like what Microsoft's kind of stood for and where they are now. And I

00:44:45think it is a matter of, they were obviously born as micro hyphen soft, which is like, you know,

00:44:51microcomputers and software. And I think we're still sort of in that era, but it's, it's just,

00:44:57they're very focused on software now. They do have, you know, surface and stuff, but they seem

00:45:02to be kind of playing it safe with that stuff. And then you've got Xbox, which obviously was

00:45:06a big, one of their hardware hits. And that's kind of going in the software direction as

00:45:10well. And it's obviously going, going towards AI as well. And then you've obviously got the

00:45:15AI push as well, which is driven partly by, by hardware advances and a lot by software

00:45:20at the moment as well. So I think it's keeping true to that software stuff where Microsoft

00:45:25is going to go. I spoke to one of their, he described himself as this mad scientist,

00:45:31Stevie B is what we call him. Um, and he, he basically broke it down in the, in, in the

00:45:38sense of like Microsoft would traditionally write code once, right? So, so say they shipped

00:45:44word and they'd write that piece of code and then someone would install it and maybe customize

00:45:49it however they want. Now they have to write a piece of code for every person on the planet

00:45:54to use their software with AI. So they're kind of like, that's the way they're looking at

00:45:58in this like agent push so that you'll have your own personal agent, um, in, in, that knows you,

00:46:05um, and that's built for you. Um, so that's obviously a different, a very much a different

00:46:10challenge to how they've built software before. Um, so I think during the early phases of that,

00:46:16and even Stevie had like admitted, there's a bunch of AI concepts out there, even Microsoft's doing

00:46:22them. Um, but no one's really kind of put them all together. And I think that's really where

00:46:26Microsoft's going to go for the next sort of 10 years is figuring out all those distant, um,

00:46:32concepts, bringing them together and then putting them in something that is a lot more coherent.

00:46:37Yeah. Well, I think there's an interesting sort of parallel between that. And I actually think

00:46:42that's, that's about as sort of clean, a straight line as I've heard someone draw through Microsoft

00:46:47that it is like, fundamentally, this is like a, it is a software company that actually sort of

00:46:51thinks about people in a very coherent way across time. But then like, I look at, you know,

00:46:57we did the, the 50 best things Microsoft has ever made. And you ran down a bunch of kind of the,

00:47:01the weird ideas that it's had over time. And also this is a company that is just like fundamentally

00:47:06all over the place all the time. And they have tried so many things. Some of them have worked in

00:47:12huge ways. Some of them have not. And I think it was really interesting to read because I don't

00:47:16think about Microsoft as a sort of wacky experimental company in the way that like

00:47:22when Amazon launches a hundred things running Alexa, nobody thinks that's weird, right? That

00:47:27sort of culturally makes sense inside of Amazon. And when Google is like, here's 17 new messaging

00:47:32apps, you're like, Oh Google. But I don't think Microsoft has quite that same, uh, reputation.

00:47:38And yet it has tried and failed at maybe more big things than almost anybody. And I think one of

00:47:45the things that you argued is that, uh, Microsoft sort of core competency is that it actually like

00:47:50moves in pivots really fast. Uh, and so it's just been, it was so interesting to just see those two

00:47:54things against each other. It's like Microsoft kind of had one idea 50 years ago that it was even more

00:47:59right about than it realized. And it has carried it all the way through. And then around the edges,

00:48:03it's just like pure chaos. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's tried to respond sometimes successfully.

00:48:09Like I'd say when they moved to the cloud, that was, that was obviously very successful and it's

00:48:12kind of set them up for where they are now. And then sometimes like spectacularly unsuccessfully,

00:48:16like missing the mobile, um, the mobile era, which probably cost them, I think, cause the

00:48:21estimate is like 600 billion or something. So quite a lot of money. Um, yeah. Okay. So yeah,

00:48:28but they've navigated throughout those like sort of eras. I, I, I break them down really by CEOs,

00:48:34to be honest, cause you had the Bill Gates era, which was the PC on every desk and Steve Ballmer,

00:48:37which was kind of like the cloud and launching experts and all that sort of stuff. Um, and

00:48:42then you had Sati Nadella, which was very, which is very much the AI era now and sort of reset in

00:48:47their culture as well. Um, but yeah, they, they've navigated interestingly throughout that. Cause

00:48:51there's so many things they've done, like connect, like the Zune, like Barney toys. Um, there's just so

00:48:58much that they've kind of experimented with, but I think my point when I wrote about some of that stuff

00:49:03is that even though some of those things are like blatant failures, um, like connect, um, like the

00:49:08HoloLens, um, is that they take parts of that technology and then they use it elsewhere. So

00:49:13it's like they are learning from those mistakes and then they'll be like, well, all the silicon work

00:49:18we've done on HoloLens is now our quantum work. Um, the, the connect stuff, you know, like some of that

00:49:23early connect work went into windows. Hello, where you look at your laptop and it signs you in now. So

00:49:29there's all the, there's all these sort of like through lines, um, and even Cortana, like, um,

00:49:33helped them do the surface pro X and some of the windows alarm stuff with windows phone. So there's,

00:49:38yeah, there's, there's always failures, but then there's successes through those failures,

00:49:42which is also, I don't think it's very obvious when you look at the product, you think that was a

00:49:46massive flop and it's like, yes, it was, but it also, you know, went on summit like Skype helped

00:49:52power Microsoft teams like this. There's so many instances of it. You could, you could make up another 50 less.

00:49:57Yeah. Well, and I think that's, that actually speaks really well of Microsoft's culture. Uh,

00:50:02and I think Microsoft, Microsoft's culture has, uh, been, I would say fairly correctly

00:50:09raked over the coals several times over the years, but that, that fact, because this is the thing we

00:50:13see a lot at other companies, something goes wrong, everybody leaves or gets fired and all the work

00:50:18that they did just sort of gets mothballed. They're like, well, this is a mistake moving on. We're

00:50:22going to, we're going to go over this way now. And they sort of over correct in the wrong direction

00:50:26and something and try something else. Uh, and so that ability of Microsoft to actually like

00:50:31say like, okay, this thing didn't work, but what did we do that might work somewhere else

00:50:36is actually a, it's a hard thing to do. And it's, it's impressive that Microsoft

00:50:39has done that so well, so many times over the years.

00:50:42Yeah, it is. And when I spoke to Stevie B for that, for that story, it was, it was funny just

00:50:47going through the years of like, cause he, he's been instrumental to a lot of the stuff,

00:50:51like the touch computing, like even, you know, do you remember the first surface table that they did?

00:50:55Oh yeah.

00:50:55They had it at like CES and it was like,

00:50:57Like pool table looking thing. Yeah.

00:50:59Yeah. Yeah. And then they eventually had it in like a bunch of Vegas, um, uh,

00:51:03restaurants and stuff. It was, yeah, it was wild, but he, he was instrumental to all that sort of

00:51:07stuff and, and helping with connect and everything. But when I spoke to him, it was interesting because

00:51:12he, he went through all the sort of successes and the failures and how they experiment with hardware

00:51:16and software and then, and then I was like, what was your favorite like paint? And he's sitting

00:51:20in his office and he's like, uh, and he just reaches down and like clears like a path to the

00:51:26bottom of his shelf. And there's all the paint and cubes are sitting there and he's like pulling them

00:51:30up going, I like this one. And this one led to whatever. It was just like, yeah, it was just

00:51:36interesting seeing the sort of like, cause he's been there for so long. Um, it was just interesting

00:51:39seeing the, the various stuff that they have patented and how they've, you know, they've learned from

00:51:45those, those failures. Yeah. Well, it's also going back through that list of 50 things is like,

00:51:51it keeps occurring to me that maybe no company in tech is better at missing by a little bit

00:51:58than Microsoft. Like Microsoft has been almost right. So many times as looking at it's like,

00:52:04like Clippy is just what we're doing now, right? Like Microsoft has been trying to do this thing

00:52:10in various iterations for forever. And it was in the right place at totally the wrong

00:52:15time. And like, here's, here's something that Stevie said, he said, everyone is right.

00:52:19If you wait long enough. And I was like, yeah, I mean, and there's like, and there's a million

00:52:25of those, like, what was the, what was the smartwatch that Microsoft is working on?

00:52:28Yeah. Right idea, wrong time. And the tablets and the HoloLens and Cortana. It's like, Microsoft is,

00:52:35is always just 10 degrees off. And if it's every time, and then it occasionally hits it right,

00:52:41like with the Xbox and you, you see what happens and it hit it right with Azure and you see what

00:52:44happens. And, uh, it's just, it's track record of almost hitting and just missing is like epic

00:52:52over its history. But this, I guess it's the same for anything though, isn't it? Right place at the

00:52:56right time is just so such a, like a common thing. Um, yeah, they, they've definitely had the right

00:53:02ideas, but yeah, the timing is, has definitely been not quite right. So, but look at like HoloLens,

00:53:08that was like, that was like genuinely like wow moment when I tried that on, I was like,

00:53:12I couldn't believe it. Um, and then 10 years later and Meta still trying to make that, that

00:53:17sort of experience of reality. Right. So it's not, it's not easy.

00:53:20No. And it's, it's, there's so many of like, did you ever watch that general magic documentary?

00:53:25Uh, it's very good. I recommend it. Uh, I'll put the link in the show notes, but it was basically this

00:53:30group of people in like the early nineties who built a cell phone and it had, it had all of the

00:53:37the ideas that smartphones would later have. They were just trying to build an iPhone,

00:53:40but they were trying to ship the thing 13 years before the iPhone and the world wasn't ready.

00:53:45The technology wasn't ready. And it was like, oh, everyone, everyone saw it. And it's just a

00:53:50matter of like being the one who makes the right thing at the right time. That is actually what hits.

00:53:55And it's not like some magical thing just happened. And I feel like there's so much

00:53:58of this in Microsoft's history that is like somebody sitting in the building was right. And they just,

00:54:04they just didn't, they were, they were too early or they were like, they missed one piece of the

00:54:09thing that wasn't quite right. Uh, they just, they just were one turn away from having it right.

00:54:15And there's like, there's a fascinating, like Apple, like hardware story that almost happened

00:54:19inside of Microsoft. Like almost.

00:54:21Yeah. It's like the ebb and flow of software and harder, isn't it? You get those

00:54:25hardware advances and that software that you were trying to build, you know, a decade ago,

00:54:30then becomes suddenly very relevant. Um, like, like Cortana and Clippy and stuff like that's

00:54:36that now is where you could do a personal system. It would actually make sense.

00:54:40Um, which funny enough, that's what exactly what they're doing again. Um, which they kind

00:54:44of teased on stage at this 50th, um, anniversary. They, they're like, yeah, they're bringing like

00:54:50characters to co-pilot. So you have your individual and it visually will look different.

00:54:54So I feel like they can't get away with bringing Clippy back. I just think it would be, that's

00:55:00like a funny joke, but I don't think you can do that seriously, but I think they could bring

00:55:03Bob back, right? You could, you could do Bob again.

00:55:05Yeah. Well, they did show Clippy at the end of the montage of characters.

00:55:09And I don't know if that means the paperclip is back or, uh, I don't know.

00:55:15That would be the true ultimate sign of confidence in AI is like, we were doing Clippy again,

00:55:22but we're, we're doing it well this time. Like it's, that's, I feel like they do it just

00:55:27to get people to download co-pilot. Cause that's going to like, everyone will write the headline

00:55:32about that. Right. So I mean, I would use it. I would, I would spend one whole day with, with

00:55:36new Clippy for sure. I get it.

00:55:38You can now talk to Clippy.

00:55:41I'd be down. I'm ready for it. Uh, so I'm really fascinated by this moment of like seeing

00:55:46the three different eras and the three different CEOs sort of sitting next to each other on stage.

00:55:50And like you described, there are three very different people who ran the company three

00:55:53very different ways, but it still kind of keeps being Microsoft. And obviously there's no indication

00:55:59that Satya Nadella is going anywhere anytime soon. He's, he's relatively young. He's doing very well.

00:56:04Company's going fine. Like, I feel like that is that dude's job for a long time. Uh, but what,

00:56:09what is your sense of kind of the next turn for Microsoft? Is there, is there some big shift

00:56:14coming or are we in the middle of it already because it's the AI story?

00:56:18Yeah, I think, I think we're in the middle of it. Um, if I'm honest, it's just the way they

00:56:21talk about it and the investments that they're making is clear that that's their next big bet.

00:56:27Um, and, and they do these big bets occasionally. Um, they got kind of go all in because,

00:56:33and I think we saw it with the augmented reality stuff and then HoloLens and stuff. They really went

00:56:37for that. Um, because they, they genuinely thought, you know, computing was going to go in that direction.

00:56:42Do you think, was that at the same level as this though? I was trying to think like what,

00:56:45what in their history feels as big a swing as AI does right now. And like I,

00:56:51cloud definitely was one, the whole Azure thing. Uh, and I was, I was debating this with HoloLens and

00:56:57AR cause they certainly made a lot of noise about it, but there wasn't, it didn't feel like

00:57:01the future of Microsoft was inside of HoloLens in the way that it does with AI to me, but I don't know,

00:57:06maybe, maybe you feel differently. No. Yeah. And they did like a big swing with Windows eight.

00:57:10Um, but they, they really tried to, to make it so that apps would go across phone and

00:57:15exports and that, that, that, that fell spectacularly, um, especially the design.

00:57:20But another one, I, I, this is, this is the hottest take I will say on this entire podcast.

00:57:24I think history will be kind to Windows eight. I think Windows eight had some good ideas.

00:57:28It did. Yeah. It did have good ideas. It was just, it was just too much for the, you know,

00:57:33the traditional power. Yeah. I think if they had done like Windows 11 and then 10 and then eight,

00:57:37it might've worked a lot better. So instead of, instead of like launching, they're just like

00:57:42doing it in reverse. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but it, it definitely feels like AI is the next, next

00:57:48sort of transformation. It was interesting. Just all three CEOs being on stage, like you're saying,

00:57:54um, and then trying to interact with each other and you could, they were talking about, you know,

00:57:58the hits and misses and what they liked about each other. Um, which Bill Gates was like,

00:58:05um, I liked the fact that, um, Steve Ballmer and Satya and Della are good with people,

00:58:11which is funny. And Steve Ballmer was like, just Satya doing a great job because he's like, you know,

00:58:18tripled my stock. So, which is, which is true. Um, but they, they all, they all kind of talked to,

00:58:25especially Beck Gates talks about AI and he's made some pretty big statements about AI, you know,

00:58:30replacing jobs and stuff. Um, which I don't think many technologists are kind of exactly agreeing on

00:58:37right now. Um, but yeah, it, it, I definitely got the sense that AI is the next transformation and

00:58:43that's, that's where they're putting everything like they're putting 80 billion dollars in. Right.

00:58:46And they had like a town hall a few weeks ago where they, where they talked to employees about it all.

00:58:50And employees were kind of like challenging them on, why are we investing so

00:58:55much money in this AI thing? Um, and they were like, well, we have 300 billion of contracts that

00:59:01are lined up for the next few years. So, and a lot of those involve cloud and AI. So we're going to

00:59:07get our return essentially is what they're saying. So that's really interesting. Yeah. And I think

00:59:11if you're Microsoft, the question for me always with Microsoft is how desperately is it going to try

00:59:16to be consumer relevant? Cause I think, and we've talked about this a lot. There is this thing where

00:59:21it's like, I think if you think of Microsoft as like the leading B2B AI company, that feels totally

00:59:28plausible to me. Right. That like, it's, it's gonna, it's gonna build the sort of enabling

00:59:32technology. It's going to have the cloud infrastructure. Like that's where all the

00:59:34money is going to be for the foreseeable future anyway. But if, if Microsoft is happy being

00:59:40like the Microsoft of AI, then, then you're fine. But Microsoft has never been able to turn off this

00:59:47thing where it is desperate to be like mainstream relevant to regular people outside of work in

00:59:51their day to day. And I feel so much of that tension in co-pilot where Microsoft is like,

00:59:56we want you to use this at work and we know you will. And we know how to do that. Cause that is

01:00:00like Microsoft's core competency. But also when you go home, we want it to be your best friend.

01:00:05And we want you to hang out with your family, like in teams. Like I just, people will not use

01:00:09teams in their day to day life. I just don't believe it. I hope that I'm wrong. I guess if you do

01:00:15it with your family, I'd love to hear from you, but like, and that's fine if you're Microsoft,

01:00:18but like it, it just can't help itself in some ways. And I'm so curious to see where it lands.

01:00:22Yeah. It's interesting. You mentioned that because that's another part of the vibe that

01:00:26we didn't really touch on. That was kind of the vibe of the event was there was like a very

01:00:31influencer, you know, that sort of vibe, they invited a bunch of people that

01:00:36I've never seen Microsoft event before. So, you know, doing like selfies, um, of everything.

01:00:40Um, and it was very much that it did feel like that for the whole day.

01:00:44It felt like a party influencer vibe, um, and YouTubers and there's some, there's some folks

01:00:50there that, that have covered Microsoft a bunch like iJustine, um, and Austin Evans. And yeah,

01:00:54there's some of the big names, but there was just a bunch of, um, influences and like the lifestyle

01:00:59influences, you know, it felt like everything I've been seeing kind of where Microsoft are going,

01:01:05where they want people, you know, people to focus on Copilot, um, in, in an event. So it was

01:01:10definitely an interesting sort of sub vibe to the things. Yeah. That's super interesting.

01:01:14You can fit it with Copilot where you mentioned that you, they want it at work and at home.

01:01:19The Copilot at home is, is like so different to the work one. Like the work one is just doesn't

01:01:23have the same UI at all. So there's, there's, there's tension there and I don't know how they're

01:01:26going to resolve that. So yeah. And I feel like I get the work one, right? Like I can sort of see

01:01:32where that's going. It makes sense to me. And like, obviously there is such a super high ceiling,

01:01:37if you can build the consumer one, but the path to get there and even what that looks like

01:01:42is just vastly less clear to me, but it is, it is like the shiny object to everybody,

01:01:47even open AI, which could just like happily sell subscriptions to developers forever and make all

01:01:52of its money. It's like, how do we make it more? How do we make chat GPT yell at you so that it's

01:01:56more fun to use? Like they said, I don't know what, I don't know what problem we're going to solve

01:02:00there, but everybody is desperately trying to figure it out. They were trying to do it. Yeah.

01:02:04Yeah. All right. I'm gonna let you go here, but tell me about the 50th anniversary surface

01:02:07and then I'm gonna let you go. Oh yeah. So they've done a 50th anniversary surface.

01:02:11It's not too crazy different. It's basically got a golden accent on the, on the logo at the back.

01:02:16And then it's got the, you know, 1975 disco balls, um, uh, stuff on the, on the edge,

01:02:23on the palm rest. Um, so the old like retro logo, so that's cool, but they're not selling it.

01:02:28So you'd have to win one or I think they're probably going to sell them to employees as well.

01:02:32All right. Well, if you have one and want to sell it to us, I have, I got 50 bucks with your name on

01:02:36it. So send us an email. And also we, we think, are we, we're getting surfaces this year, hopefully,

01:02:42right? Are we, are we doing surfaces? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Build is what in six weeks?

01:02:49Yes. I might be back out to Seattle again. We could be speaking like this again.

01:02:53Yeah. All right. Well for now we got to take a break, but Tom, thank you as always. Good to see you.

01:02:58Thank you. Go get some sleep. Yeah. All right. We got to take one more break and then we're

01:03:02going to get to a question from the Virgcast hotline. Be right back.

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01:04:15All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Virgcast hotline. As always, the number is

01:04:19is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. Thank you, by the way, to everybody

01:04:24who reached out with thoughts about minimalist phones. Doing that exercise with Allison last week

01:04:28was so much fun. And you all had so many good, smart thoughts about it that I think I'm actually

01:04:33going to compile a bunch of them and throw them all at Allison again. And we're just going to have

01:04:36to rerun that whole thing in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that. For now, we have a question

01:04:41from our email from Katie. Let me read it to you. I'm sure I won't be the only person asking this

01:04:45question. True, by the way, we got this question a bunch of times. This is very much a thing on

01:04:49people's minds. The tariffs are projected to hit the car and tech industries the hardest.

01:04:53In thinking about preparing for this, I'm wondering if I should invest in a new phone now,

01:04:57rather than waiting till mine reaches obsolescence, potentially in a time when phones become much

01:05:01more expensive. To give you an idea of the consumer I tend to be, I currently have a Pixel 6,

01:05:05which is working just fine. I'm not a person who is looking for the highest end product or who upgrades

01:05:10unless my phone ceases to function. I'm very conscious of the environmental impacts of the industries

01:05:14associated with the materials and phones. I just don't want to find myself in a bind in a year or

01:05:19two if things keep going the way it looks like they're going. Thanks. This is this is the question

01:05:24right now. And I think I will say two things. The two things that I should say right at the very top

01:05:28are that a who knows if any of this is real, right? The Trump administration's tariff policy has been

01:05:35on and off and on and off and on and off. That if you were to ask me to bet whether these were going to

01:05:41stay in effect the way that they are forever, I would say I absolutely have no idea. I think

01:05:46what we've learned from the Trump administration even just over the last several days is that they

01:05:51are they're very serious about these. Donald Trump loves tariffs as a weapon. He also loves them as

01:05:56a negotiating tactic. And if this is just a way to force all of these companies and all of these

01:06:01leaders and all of these politicians to come see him and, you know, bend the knee and make a deal

01:06:07so that there's no more tariffs, maybe that's where this lands. It'll be really messy in the

01:06:11interim. But maybe fast forward three months from now, and most of this is back to the way that it

01:06:16was with just a lot of chaos in between. There's there's a lot of precedent for that arc in the

01:06:21Trump administration. But that is one possible outcome. Trump has also continued to say that he

01:06:26believes in tariffs, like he has said it all along. He said in his campaign, he has said it as president,

01:06:31like he believes tariffs are good and that they work. And so I wouldn't rule out any possibility

01:06:38here. And so all we can do is, I think, operate with the facts on the ground right now. And the

01:06:43facts on the ground right now suggest that things are about to get a lot more expensive. And I think

01:06:48a bunch of folks on our team, particularly Allison Johnson on our team, who has been doing a lot of

01:06:53really great work reporting on phone tariffs in particular, the general consensus seems to be that

01:06:58the phones today are not likely to get vastly more expensive for a bunch of reasons, right?

01:07:04Like if you're if you're Best Buy, you have a bunch of inventory. It's also just really hard to like

01:07:09raise the price on an existing device. What is much more likely in many of these cases is that the next

01:07:16round of these phones is going to be more expensive. So we have the iPhone 17 coming in the fall,

01:07:21we have the Pixel 10 coming probably in the fall, we have new Samsung stuff coming this summer.

01:07:26There's just a round of new phones due in a few months. And I think there is a strong chance

01:07:32those phones will be substantially more expensive. So I think, frankly, if you're the

01:07:36person who is like happy to be a few generations behind, it doesn't strike me as totally wrongheaded

01:07:42to buy this year's phone on the bet that next year's phone, even if it's better, is also likely

01:07:48to be significantly more expensive. That goes against my normal buying advice, which is like,

01:07:52buy the best device that you can and then keep it forever. If there is a chance that the next iPhone

01:07:57is going to be several hundred dollars more expensive, which again, I wouldn't bet on it,

01:08:01but I also wouldn't bet against it. I can see why you might look at a 16 and be like, okay,

01:08:06price to value, this might be the best phone we're going to get for a minute here. And that is a reason

01:08:12to do it. If you're on a pixel six, I think you're probably good for another year or two.

01:08:17If you're happy with your phone now, there's also ways you can upgrade, you can replace the battery,

01:08:21you can replace the screen by itself, like you can make devices last longer. And that's my other piece

01:08:27of advice for anybody who's trying to think about how do I make sense of like my gadget options here?

01:08:33I would say, frankly, buy the stuff that you know you're going to need quickly, because I think

01:08:39it's possible we're going to run into supply constraints as companies scramble to figure

01:08:44this stuff out. It's possible that the makeup of some of these devices is going to change as

01:08:48things like costs change and as supply chains change. The gadget you want may not be the same

01:08:55gadget for forever. Prices might go up. So I think there is a real impetus to say, okay,

01:09:00if I have a thing that works, how do I make it work longer? Like, I'll just give you an example.

01:09:04I have these Bose QuietComfort headphones, and they're like, they're fine. But the ear cups on

01:09:11them are just starting to wear, right? And so I've been sitting around being like, okay,

01:09:15do I just upgrade? I think it's these, these are a bunch of years old now, they're still fine.

01:09:20But I would like a better pair of headphones. And so I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe these wearing out

01:09:25is a good excuse to just go out and upgrade anyway. Now my answer is, I'm going to buy new ear cups,

01:09:30and I'm just going to keep using these headphones for as long as I can. And I'm that's just is what

01:09:35it's going to be. Headphones are expensive, they are potentially going to get more expensive. And I

01:09:40just I'm going to choose not to worry about that and put off that purchase for as long as I can.

01:09:45So I think where I've landed personally, amidst all this chaos, all the advice I can give you is

01:09:49where I've landed is the things I know I'm going to need to do soon, I'm going to do now. And

01:09:55anything I can put off, I'm going to try and take steps to put off as long as possible,

01:09:58because it does feel like wherever we're headed, is going to be messy, right? Like,

01:10:03I'm going to try and make as few 2025 purchases as I can. And I'm going to try and make them all

01:10:09right now. I don't know if that's the perfect strategy. I don't know if we're going to end up

01:10:14in like a, do you remember that early phase of the pandemic where people were like hoarding toilet

01:10:18paper? I don't know that a run on that kind of thing in the gadget world is the right thing.

01:10:24But I do know that it is a time of incredible uncertainty. And it does feel like things could

01:10:30go sideways. So I would look at it and say, okay, do I think I'm going to need a new phone in the

01:10:34next six months? And if the answer is yes, I think just buy it now. There's not a great reason not to

01:10:38anyway, the Pixel 9 is a great phone. There's a bunch of good stuff out there. I think there's a

01:10:43strong chance that whatever comes next is going to be a lot more expensive. I just go for it.

01:10:47I bought my wife a Pixel 8. She likes it a lot. Great price. No notes. Very happy to have solved

01:10:53that before we get out of here. Anyway, I would also love to know what you think about this,

01:10:58by the way. If you have thoughts or have made purchases or put off purchases or thinking about

01:11:03how to manage this stuff, I'd love to hear from you. Vergecast to theverge.com. 866-VERGE-11

01:11:08is the hotline. This is like a complicated question. And it's a very Verge-y question. We like

01:11:13talking about what you should buy and when and for how much. And I think this is a wrinkle we

01:11:18have not dealt with many times in the course of being on the Verge. How is global politics going

01:11:25to change the price of your phone? It always does, but it does much more directly now than I think

01:11:29most of us have realized in the past. All right, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to

01:11:33everybody who came on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. As ever, if you have questions,

01:11:37thoughts, feelings, games that you can play forever, or purchases that you want to talk about,

01:11:42if you want us to help you figure out what to buy and when, frankly, that's what we're here for.

01:11:46So hit us up. Vergecast at theverge.com is the email. 866-VERGE-11 is the hotline. We check on

01:11:51both. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez, and Brandon

01:11:55Kiefer. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neely and I will be

01:12:00back on Friday to talk about, I don't even know what, trending car, gadgets, more AI chaos, probably more

01:12:05tariffs, let's be honest with each other, and everything else. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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