The WAN Show - The end of gaming as we know it.. - WAN Show Mar 22, 2019

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

Madrinas: Head over to https://www.madrinascoffee.com/linus and use offer code LINUS to get 50% off Madrinas Coffee products! The first 50 people who use code LINUS will also get a FREE bag of micro-roast! 50% off code valid until 3/25/19 at 11:59 pm CST. Savage Jerky: Buy 3 bags of Savage Mojo Jerky and get 1 FREE at https://lmg.gg/savagemojo Squarespace: Visit https://www.squarespace.com/WAN and use offer code WAN for 10% off LTX Tickets: Get LTX 2019 Featuring DreamHack tickets NOW at https://dh.je/ltx19 Forum Wan Document: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1047262-march-22-2019-the-wan-show-document/ Timestamps (Courtesy of pol bol) 0:00 - Topics 0:27 - James wakes up 1:01 - INTRO 2:32 - Google Stadia 22:53 - Google controller 30:05 - Poll: controller thumbsticks location 34:33 - SPONSOR: Savage Jerky 36:19 - SPONSOR: Madrinas Coffee 38:52 - SPONSOR: Squarespace 39:29 - LTT Merch 41:55 - Epic Games Store vs Steam 51:20 - Super chats 51:35 - Luke's blurays 52:45 - LTX 54:14 - How Luke played Runescape 54:44 - More super chats 56:50 - Show's over (no outro) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does it take so long these days? Not even live yet. There we go. Takes forever. We should probably restart this computer sometime this month or century or I don't know. But sometime around there. Welcome to the WAN Show everyone. Linus is not here this week as you guys know because he's away on a vacation where he's cleaning his house the whole week. So that's super exciting. We have some really interesting news.

Google Stadia. We will probably talk about that for... Oh. Oh, hi. I'm going to go the opposite and be super up right now. Ha! Google Stadia, the future of gaming. Let's talk about that.

Yeah. Let's talk about that. What else? We've got Samsung Galaxy Fold creases. Yeah. That's kind of brutal. What else? We've got Samsung Galaxy Fold creases. Yeah. That's kind of brutal. Increasingly obvious. Oh!

Oh! And the Epic Game Store is such a big deal that Steam is redesigning their interface to not look like dinosaur bones. Wow. Wild. It's looked the same since I was born, so. Roll the intro!

Yeah! Gah! I almost thought I was gonna fall. I was just gonna say the intro yeah my legs caught me I clenched hard enough and it feels good to do a nosh oh a nosh it's been a while. When was the last time you were on? Ages. Ages ago. Savage Jerky. Savage Jerky. And Madrina. And Squirtle. Squirtle. How many sponsors?

So many. Whoa, there we go. Ha, yeah man. Hold on, does this work? Someone screwed with the scenes a little bit. That does work though. Yeah, I haven't been on the land show since like When you were working at your house more than here. Yeah

Because you were you wouldn't be in oh, I know I don't know I still do on Fridays. It's been a while So float plane starts at like 8 a.m. Which is insane for me, but I'm trying to make it work so then Jaden the only guy who's currently local, likes starting at 8 a.m. because then he's done work relatively early in the day. Sounds good to me. So on Fridays when I have to do WAN show,

I usually want to start a little later because I'm going to have to do WAN show anyways. So then he just stays at home, so I just stay at home. But then I still have to start early because we have weekly meetings on Fridays. And people are in different time zones? Yeah. So, whatever.

It works out. It's fine. But anyways, should we just jump right into Stadia? Yeah. Because I think this might, like, take a bit. There's elements to this. There's, yeah. Have you heard of Google Stadia, guys?

It was announced this week at the Game Developers Conference. It's a streaming, it's a game streaming platform by Google. It doesn't suck as much as the ones of the past. Give it a chance. Hear us out.

It might actually be awesome. Although I have heard, I don't know enough about this. Okay. And I think you're going to be notably more informed than I am. I hope not. And I think you're going to be notably more informed than I am. I hope not. But I have heard that there's huge input lag compared to traditional gaming.

Not compared to other cloud services, but compared to traditional games. Well, I read the hands-on experience that they had at Digital Foundry. They played with a beta one a few months ago, and then they played with the new one this week. And they said, well they give you some numbers actually, it's source three in the document. There's a table halfway down and it looks like it's comparable to console gaming. Okay. Yeah. And they were playing, what they were playing was an Assassin's Creed game, and they were playing at 1080p 30 frames a second. So had it been 60 frames a second, 60 FPS,

then it could have actually had lower latency than when you're playing on the Xbox. But there's a bunch of little caveats in the article. You know, like they're using a Wi-Fi connection that's probably bonkers. They can't account for the... Why are they using a Wi-Fi connection? They didn't have control over where they got to play it. Oh, okay. Okay.

Yeah. It was at Google's own thing, I think. So it looks like latency including display lag for Google Stadia... Well, Google Stadia latency seems to be 166 regardless. Google Stadia on 15 megabit per second seems to be 188 milliseconds regardless. That's supposed to be like a worst case scenario one, I think, according to Google. It did say there's asterisks on the latency not including display lag for both of Google's. The first asterisk says the Stadia tests were carried out on a Google connection

versus our stream tests in the wild on a 200 megabit per second connection. However, the Stadia tests included display latency on a pixel book, which we cannot measure, and were carried out via Wi-Fi networking. It's a really weird setup. But I guess it's part of their point of, like, you can do it anywhere on any device.

Yeah, but it's just hard because they only have one data point right now. They only got to play one game in this one setup. Well, I guess they have two data points. They got to play an earlier version of the game before, but it wasn't on the final kind of ecosystem of hardware stack. Were you saying this testing was done by Digital Foundries? Yeah. OK, yeah, because it's on Eurogamer,

so I just wasn't sure. But Digital Foundries, if they only have one data point. They're not going to be happy with that So I'm sure we'll see more coverage from them eventually It does look as one would probably suspect the input lag on PC especially above 30 FPS is is much lower But this is this is how it's gonna start off exactly it's like I'll get better It's a disruptive technology in the formal sense,

in like the actual definition of the word, where gamers today are... Like, what's possible with good gaming hardware is way over-serving what's necessary for a lot of gamers. And all Stadia needs to do is compete with that point. It only needs to be good enough for a lot of gamers. And all Stadia needs to do is compete with that point. It only needs to be good enough for a lot of people. It doesn't have to be better than the top of the top. And eventually, once people start using it

and the technology matures, it'll edge closer and closer until there's just no practical reason to game the way that we game today. DAN GALPIN- One really interesting thing to me is Google Stadia's with display lag and without display lag is the same as Xbox One X with display lag included. Which is like you have to include display lag so whatever. But that's gonna depend on what display and it looks like that display had a notable amount of lag. But still, you're getting extremely close, if not tied, to an Xbox One X.

Yeah, what they said in their article is that the person reviewing it was very familiar with the Xbox version of this Assassin's Creed title, and they didn't have any, like, based on muscle memory, feeling of like, oh, this sucks. It seemed really similar for them. So what did you read where the latency was awful? Well, I read 166. I'm a snob who games at high refresh rates.

Yeah, okay. To me, on PC with a ridiculous computer and a ridiculous monitor, I'm like, that is far too slow for me. Right. But looking at these numbers, especially if you're coming from console, that actually sounds pretty damn good. There's so many aspects of this that are so different and cool that I'm excited about. I think it's pretty wild because I have always hated the idea of powerful GPUs and laptops.

I've basically always hated that as something that I would purchase on my own. Why? Because you think it just totally negates the whole reason to have a laptop? Pretty much. You're just like, wow, why don't I just carry around this 25 pound fricking brick with two external power bricks. Two external power supplies. It's a million pounds. They're usually way too thick.

They get wicked hot. They're just kind of ridiculous. They're loud. And then the external docks came out and I was like, that's a really cool solution. I like that, but it's still a little clunky and it never... Well, it's not really portable then. Yeah.

You're talking about a GPU enclosure? Yeah. That's good for... I don't know. It's good for having a desktop where you come in, hey, now I'm at home. It's nice that you could at least reduce some devices and still have a gaming machine and whatever else. It was kind of a cool option, but it didn't solve all the problems.

And they're really expensive. They're really expensive. It doesn't solve the portability problem. There's still some other issues. With this, you could game on your phone. You have a Pixelbook, like they said. Android devices. It enables a lot of different options,

which is super cool. I have, like, my own opinion problem things with this. From a technical standpoint, I think it's freaking fantastic. Super cool. I'm really interested to see where it goes from that aspect. I don't even like the idea of purely digital games

with our current setup. Oh man, there's so many angles to cover here. So like the idea of removing that much more from you is a little crazy. You mean from like an ownership perspective? Yes, yeah. Because like I've always hated the idea of... Like Origin has a thing now, I don't remember what it's called,

but you pay for like a year at a time, and you get access to basically all games on Origin. All of EA's games on Origin. Until you don't re-up, and then they just turn the tap off. And you lose all of them. And that just seems completely insane to me. I don't know. I hate that. It's subscribing versus buying.

It's renting. You're leasing it. Origin access. Yeah, yeah. Do you think this is a generational opinion? Do you think kids who grow up in this subscription model world, they don't care? You've got like an old school opinion? I think they might be more used to it because of, we're going to get real deep right here

real quick. Tell me about your mother. How did your mom and dad meet? No, our generation and below is having an extremely hard time owning anything, whether there's things in place stopping us from owning things. Are you talking about real estate now? Real estate, cars, almost anything. It has become way more difficult for our generation to own things.

And things have come in to help us deal with not owning things. Yeah. And if you just have to pay for a subscription, that one time per year cost is probably going to be a lot easier to digest. It's really interesting how all these different dimensions converge. You've got the economic realities of being a millennial or Gen Z. You've got the new business models that totally enable. You've got the consumer culture, the sense of entitlement,

the convenience culture of wanting things right now. And they all kind of just work together to make this perfect storm of where we're headed to. It gets way freaking deeper, yeah. But that's, but that's like, it's like, it's not just Google Stadia that's the problem. It's like, now we're talking about like the, the human condition of now. And I'm just like, kind of nuts. Okay, let's start talking about the positives of gaming stream, like, there...

It's really cool that it enables you to do stuff, like, I love the idea that I could play Civ on my phone. Yeah. And that's wicked. And you can play Civ on a Switch, but it's not the full game. So being able to play Civ on my phone is pretty sick. This might legitimately enable a wider range of devices.

Do you know how many games, that's going to be up to the developers to decide or, you know, allow you to play it all these different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So is it true that there could be a game on Stadia where I can only play this on my laptop or TV, I can't pick this up on my phone?

Or is it going to be a requirement that they have to be on all of them? I have no clue personally. I wouldn't be surprised if developers were able to restrict you to some degree because they don't want people to have outwardly negative experiences. Yeah. Because you try to play a highly complicated game that requires a huge amount of variable inputs and can't be done on console because you need a keyboard.

And why would Google want that? Play it on your phone! Why would Google want to be like, your game doesn't fit our mold so you can't be on our store? They want to build up their library. Especially since, isn't it like a Linux kernel? Games have to be kind of built or ported

specially to it, right? Yeah, but I'm sure people are going to want to be on Google Stadia and will make their things work. What do you think about the fact that it's 10.7 teraflops or something like that? Their hardware stack, which is powered by AMD, is as powerful as

a PS4 Pro and an Xbox one X combined Does that mean much and it when your game streaming? Well, yeah because you're not gonna want It does mean a lot because even on consoles right now you have dips Which like why can't remember the name of them right now? have dips which like, why can't I remember the name of them right now? They're the people who ran the tests for this. Digital Foundry? Digital Foundry. Digital Foundry has done tons of different

tests on like graphical dips in different console games and PC games and whatever. Just hitching when a new region loads or something like that. It's actually super interesting. Digital Foundry channel is fantastic. You should check them out on YouTube. We've been saying them a lot so we might as well give them a shout out. I didn't know they had a YouTube channel.

Yeah. I only read their print stuff. This dude, he hosts it. Let's see. One second. So, because I would think that the bottleneck really is going to be your internet connection. Because, you know, it's capable of 4K 60. But then if you only have, I think, 25 megabits a second,

then you're going to be down to 1080 probably. And if you only have like 15 megabits a second, then you're going to get scaled down further to 720 at like 30 FPS. There you go. Digital Foundry YouTube channel. There they are. They do some really, see, unsurprising. Google Stadia specs, analysis, and exclusive performance testing. I haven't watched this yet.

I should. I will. Sounds good. Yeah, and exclusive performance testing. I haven't watched this yet. I should. I will. Sounds good. Yeah, that'll be cool. But yeah, they do tons of really cool stuff, different dives into performance of different consoles, different games, et cetera, et cetera. Plus, that's a cool name.

Digital Foundry? Yeah. It's pretty cool. I like it. But they... I think it's going to be important so that people can't criticize it as much. Because it's a new, very different

emergent technology type of thing. So a lot of people are going to come out of the woodwork like me and try it and try to look for any possible thing that they can go after to tear it down. Because it sounds fantabular right now. So they're trying to find any negative thing that they can go after to tear it down because it sounds fantabular right now so you're trying to find any negative thing about it so if they can just crush the performance and make it so you're

getting whatever frames they decide you're getting for that game at this latency all the time and it's gonna be good all the time and even crazy things happening the game isn't going to worsen your experience. I think the communication around it will be really good. I don't, in some ways, the optics and the negativity around it from existing gamers doesn't matter a whole lot because again, it's generational where there's probably, I don't know the numbers, but I would guess that there's probably more people watching games

than playing games. There's probably more people watching Twitch streams around the world than gaming in general. And I would think that this technology is going to create a whole new wave of gamers. Gaming will be bigger than ever. If you are... Like I could imagine walking into my living room if I have Google Stadia and my wife's playing video games. It's like, it's just so much more accessible.

And I don't need all this hardware. It'll be so much cheaper. Well, okay, here's another weird angle at it, talking about different generations and stuff like that. If we move out of North America, there's the whole PewDiePie versus T-Series thing. India is coming online at an incredibly faster rate than before. If the devices that they have are a phone or a fairly low-end computer or something like that because they're just coming online for like

the first time this if they can afford it and maybe a lot of different pricing per region or something i don't know it's probably a way easier way to get into gaming for sure buying a gaming rig or buying a console and for at least three reasons at least three reasons simplicity You don't have to buy all that stuff. You don't have to know about what you need to buy, especially in PC. No one knows what do I need to buy? How much do I need to spend to play this game? Consoles make that a lot easier, but it's still an upfront investment, which is reason number two. You need to have $500 at a time. With this, you could, I don't, they haven't done any pricing announcements at all, but I assume it's going to be something similar to either like a Netflix model where you're just a subscription,

or they could do it like they do with the Google movies where I'm going to pay $7 this month, or I'm going to pay $7 to rent this game for two days or something. And just with that little amount of money, you can play. And you don't even need to use their controller. And then the next reason, there's another one. It'll come back to me. Getting older here. While you're thinking about that, I do think some people are in chat are bringing this up,

saying like more people play this game at one time than are all of on Twitch. I think he's saying there are more people that have watched games. I don't know. Basically, there's just a whole ton of people that watch games and don't necessarily game. It's not an insignificant amount of people.

And there's a lot of people, even that I know, that watch a significant amount of games and play a small amount of games. That doesn't mean there isn't a huge base of people that just play games all the time. Even forgetting that comparison, what I'm saying is I think that there are a lot more people in the world who could be gaming that aren't. Yeah.

And this will get them in. Oh yeah, the next reason was accessibility. They have integrated this with YouTube. So, when you're playing, whenever you're playing, a stream that's 4K60 gets created. You can hit this button on the dedicated controller if you happen to use it, but you don't have to. Yeah, you can use any current controller, keyboard, mouse, whatever setup you want. Unless you're playing on the Chromecast, in which case you need to have their controller. Oh, okay.

Anyway, it's got a capture button on it, so you can start a stream. You can start streaming. And when you're on YouTube and you're watching someone stream, there would be, or even if you're just watching a trailer for a game on YouTube,

there's gonna be a button that says play. You can tap that button on your Android device or whatever. And apparently within as little as five seconds, you can be playing the game. Damn. That is crazy. If you're just on your computer, you're on your MacBook, you've never played a game in your life.

And you're like, hey, what's this button do? And then suddenly you're just gaming on a Mac. That's crazy. You're watching this trailer and you're like hey, what's this button do and then suddenly you're just gaming on a Mac That's crazy. You're watching this trailer. You're like this looks amazing you press play and you're like it looks like junk Yeah Log in sign in yeah, yeah all that crap, but it's a pretty cool premise another thing you can do is this What's the actual name of this feature? They've got? Crowd share I think Yeah actual name of this feature they've got um crowd share i think yeah something like that they have something where you can crowd play so you can be watching a creator or a gamer streaming and you can actually say oh i want to join their game and join and join the queue if there's a queue or if

you're watching a nobody you can just jump in and game with them that's oof hey i'm one of those nobodies do you stream no okay but i have a youtube channel that has no anythings okay on my first stream if anyone happens to watch goes oh i want to play with james they can nice that's so cool nice they have another thing called uh i think most people that have been streaming for a while would not want that feature they have all sorts of tools yeah People would probably turn it off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have another thing called State Share, which is, yeah, you can just save your state in the game.

Like, I'm right here with these items. You can send a link. And so someone just click that link, and then the game loads up, and they're like, right where you are, and you can be like, try to beat my time. Or, can you beat this? Can you pass this puzzle? That's's super cool that is actually pretty cool a lot

of people are bringing up as well that like oh internet's gonna be a big problem i think in a lot of areas it will be in a lot of areas it won't be um the internet it's a big problem thing i would assume is going to mostly come from people who reside in the United States of America because y'all have horrible internet. I've had a better time getting internet in Canada, which is bigger and has way less people than a lot of people that I know in the States. Really? It's wild.

There are places in the States that it's fantastic. Where it's good, it's better. Yeah, yeah. Where it's good, it's better than here. There's amazing places in the States that it's fantastic. Where it's good, it's better. Yeah, yeah. There's amazing places in the States for internet. There's also tons and tons and tons of terrible places in the States. Australia is horrible. There are places that are really bad, but there's also places that are absolutely fantastic. Hopefully, things like data caps will eventually disappear because they're just exploitive as far as I can tell that's

pretty much it and hopefully internet connections in general will get better if you want to look at how ridiculous internet is in the States I don't remember all the details and I don't know what it's called but at one point in time the US government gave a whole whack ton of money to ISPs to set up a fiber backbone and then they just didn't. Pretty wonderful. Kind of funny how that worked out. But yeah, in some places it's great.

In some places it's terrible. Stadia will probably be a little bit better in the places that it is good. But if I remember correctly, it's 25 megabit per second, right? For minimum? Yeah. I think you can go lower than that.

I think you can go to 15 and have 720. 15 to 25 megabit per second though, I think quite a bit of people can get that. I'm starting to think about just small businesses and emerging markets. Like, if you go to Philippines or something like that, or Thailand, there's internet cafes. PC Bang. Exactly. There's internet cafes with desktop computers. Well, with this, they either won't

have to provide any machines or they'll just provide basic Chromebooks. And as long as they have good internet, you've got a PC bomb. It makes the cost of hosting that place a lot lower. You just need a bunch of Ethernet cables sticking out. That's kind of cool. Let's see. Let's go to Shaw. What is Shaw's, like, basic plan? I don't know. I'd like to know, actually.

Lately, I've been thinking I should get Gigabit, maybe. I don't think they have Gigabit. Oh, you've got to go to, like, Novaris or something, is that what they're called? No, I just want to see. I'm going for, like, if your mom and dad don't care about the internet. Yeah. And you want to play Stadia. Is that called light speed?

I don't even know. Really? Internet 75. 75 is like as low as you can go on Shaw. Wow. I kind of think most people are going to be okay. It's still 50 bucks, 65 bucks a month. Kind of nuts. Man, I remember it are gonna be okay. It's still 50 bucks, 65 bucks a month. Kind of nuts.

Man, I remember it used to be 30. Now it's like 120 for the good stuff. Wow. Hey, what about the controller? Have you seen the controller? I have. You interested in it? I hate it. What do you think?

Absolutely hate it. The look you mean? I will hate using it. How do you know? So I hate PlayStation controllers. I wish they would have put the thumb stick up by the keypad. Why? That is my only problem.

I agree. Stop! I don't know why they did that. Maybe it would look too much like an Xbox controller. I have fairly large hands, and I have no idea how people with fairly large hands place their hands on PlayStation controllers properly. Because with an Xbox controller, I can offset both hands a little bit and it works. Okay.

I don't like controllers in general. I liked the Duke controller. Really? Which everyone hates because it's way too big. Everyone in my family, my dad, my brother and me all love the Duke. Really? But the buttons are pretty close together on the Duke. Like they're not spaced like those ones.

That's fair. But I liked how you grip it and where the thumbsticks are. This is good information for me because I think we're gonna do a video on the Duke. Nice. Yeah. I don't have one anymore.

They made a new one though, you can get it. We'll find one, really? Yeah, there's a new Duke controller. New. That would've been awesome. I think they made it as like a semi-joke, semi like you can buy it to-past kind of thing. Okay.

I don't think it was a huge profit. Yeah, because we made that video, like, was Windows Vista really that bad? And we're thinking about doing other things like that. Was the Duke controller really that bad? I don't think – I think the Duke controller was a bad idea because I think they were – what they ended up aiming for, whether they meant to or not, was a very small group of people. So, like, bad show. The new Xbox – like, Xbox 360 controllers are great. They're the best. What they ended up aiming for whether they meant to or not was a very small group of people so like Bad show the new expert like s. What's 360 controllers are great the best

I love Xbox 360 okay this looks kind of Mickey Mouse especially the look of the d-pad It looks kind of mushy it does but in this in this article. He said it felt very xboxy Says it feels good Google makes okay hardware you You're using it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that worried about how... Okay, I'm a little bit worried

because controllers are actually relatively hard. But knowing Google, I'm going to assume their material stuff will be pretty good. And I'm assuming their thumbsticks and their buttons and their D-pad and whatnot will all be pretty good. I don't suspect they're gonna be the best.

I don't think they're gonna be terrible though. If people have been watching the channel for a long time, they've seen me pitch a controller to Linus while he hits it with a bat. We've had some pretty negative experiences with controllers. I don't expect we'll have that here. The one thing I'm going to hate is those damn thumbsticks. Yeah, me too.

I've always been into the staggered thumbsticks. To me, it seems objectively more ergonomic. Like, your hand wants to be like this, it doesn't want to be like that. I have seen people where it looks like it worked really well for them. For me, I just look like a crazy alien trying to hold the damn place in control. What do you think about this other special button we haven't talked about, the Google Assistant button? Apparently, when you're stuck at a part in a game,

you can hold it down and be like, I need help. And we don't know what it does, but it does something. This is like the Nintendo Insider program, whatever that was called, where you could call in and get help. We're going back to the late 80s. If I have to guess, I think it looks at some sort of metadata timestamp of where you are in the game

and will bring up other people's streams where they're at the same spot. And then so you can just watch them. And they can, they would be able to tell because their progression data would go forward. So they would know that they beat that section. Yeah, yeah. And it's just, it's integrated with YouTube again and the assistants. Interesting. They'd have to find. Interesting. and the assistants. Interesting. They'd have to find...

Interesting. It would be so funny if the most viewed clip at that part of the game was some kind of troll, hilarious viral clip. Well, this is what I'm talking about. Like a Leroy Jenkins kind of clip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you ask for help and you get Leroy Jenkins.

God damn it. That's hilarious. Or like, how do you censor... Ugh. Because there's the game that you could be playing, which might be M-rated or something. Okay. So you have to be whatever age already. But what if you, like,

are playing that game, but you really don't like swear words? Or you really don't like conversations about a specific topic, and that streamer happens to be saying something at that time, and it brings you to that stream. So what, they're gonna have to find, like, non-firmature audience streamers? Maybe they'll just use the

thumbs up and down or you can report that and they won't use anything that got flagged. Yeah. I just with what YouTube's algorithm has been doing for the last while in terms of flagging people and stuff I don't know how much I trust that. But that's interesting

though. I think that's kind of it would be even cooler if they tracked how many times you used it in the game why just so that you have that like you get a i could but oh like a completionist angle am i kind of a loser if i oh you definitely are right it's like but it's sitting right there. You've been stuck on this boss for 45 minutes. You could just press a button.

And it's just like, gah! I think it would, yeah, I don't know. I think it would be kind of cool. Like you get an achievement unlocked for beating it without no assistant? You didn't use this tech that we made. Good job. I don't expect they'd do it, but I think that would be cool. You just hold it down and just order pizza while you're playing.

Send a text. I assume it has the power of the assistant, like, full on, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's Stadia home button, I'm assuming, in the middle. Yeah, because there is a UI that you can use rather than using voice. So maybe that's what does that. It probably turns on the controller as well. And I'm assuming that brings you to like game

selection and whatever else. Well, what are these other two buttons on the top then? So I'm thinking Stadia Home, screenshot. That's the capture button. Yeah, capture, screenshot, whatever. Or start streaming. Yeah, OK. Multimedia of some thing.

Oh wait, is it just streaming for sure? That's kind of funky to have a start stream button on your controller. I would assume that it's a option, either a screenshot or a stream. Then Google help, I'm assuming settings and like stuff. Dot, dot, dot, and then the hamburger menu thing. Yeah.

Which I'm assuming are just developer programmable buttons, essentially. Start and select to some degree. Yeah, I guess so. And then how many shoulder buttons do you think it has? There are other images. You can Google image it. I know I've seen other angles, so we

might be able to see if it has just two bumpers or if it's got triggers too. I just want to control what images come up. I think it'll be fine, but you never know. Side. Oh, what about that one? It looks like two. Yeah, you can tell on that.

Yeah, sweet. It looks more, the paddles look more Xboxy from that angle. There's a big flick on the bottom of the trigger. You see that? Oh, like underneath your hand to hold? Yeah, under your finger. This is the controller, this is my finger.

Yeah. And it's got Wi-Fi built in, hey? So when you're doing it with Chromecast, the controller itself is what's connecting to the Google servers. So I guess that's the lowest latency way to do it. I want to poll the audience here really quick.

Cause I, that, the non offset thumbsticks drive me absolutely bonkers. You wanna see who's on your team? But I'm wondering if they made the right decision. Maybe for most people it's better. Get in here, assemble. What would you call the PlayStation style style or should i just do xbox style versus playstation style awesome but i don't want to be fanboys aligned okay

planar i felt like putting kb mod in there but I don't want to screw the pole too much. Hmm. I wonder though, because even on the Switch Pro controller, the buttons kind of suck. To your point about controllers being hard. Controllers are hard. They're hard to make. Controllers are really hard.

They're hard. Controllers are hard. They're hard to make. Controllers are really hard. Like the lab at Microsoft, I don't remember exactly what it's called, where they bring in tons of people, take 360 degree photos of them, take exact scans of their hands, have them try controllers, do extensive ergonomic testing on controllers and stuff. Microsoft is crazy about this stuff. That tour you did when you saw like their hardware. Yeah the surface

Yeah stuff, it's wild they have a whole fairly sizable and very well funded team as far as I can tell team dedicated to just the ergonomics of different things that they make and they Still make mistakes sometimes Wow and like those those guys are crazy as far as I can tell What sorry YouTube? I don't have you guys open on on this screen, so I can tell. What? Sorry, YouTube. I don't have you guys open on this screen, so I can't share the straw poll thing to you. Hopefully, someone watching will go over and post it on YouTube.

Yeah, imagine it just comes out 50-50. We need those YouTube votes. We do. It's strawpoll.me slash 17660701. There you go. Wow. 17660701. There you go. Wow. Let's see what the current results are. I'm gonna press the results button with the stream.

What do you think they're gonna price that controller at? Results? Wow, it is pretty close. But Offset is winning! Yes! 55. I wonder if that's a PC thing It's very close though It's legitimately

And votes are pouring in but it's mostly staying at where it's at Well they just stopped They were pouring in Do I need to refresh? Wow I mean you want to make it not a fanboy thing But I'm pretty sure it's a fanboy thing Probably

Like the erased Playstation That's what you're going to like. Like if you're a raised PlayStation, that's what you're gonna like. Although, mind you, I had a PS1, including the DualShock with those thumbsticks, a few years, then I had Xbox from then on. So I did experience both, but I loved the Xbox design. As soon as they came out with the controller S.

Yeah. The Duke, no. When I got my Xbox, the S was already out. Okay, yeah. It was that Christmas. Yeah, so I Almost all my experiences was Nintendo except my cousin's had a PlayStation So all my like adult console playing not that I think Nintendo isn't but I think you know what I mean Was on a PlayStation and then we got our own Xbox and I was immediately like holy crap. This controller is way better It was it was an immediate thing. It wasn't like oh I'm more used to this one now. It was like I I knew the whole time was my station

I didn't like that controller and when I pick up a PlayStation one now, I'm like yeah, yes exactly Yeah, but maybe the PlayStation people feel like that when they pick up a offset. Maybe yeah, it is quite close I am surprised this is this is 60 40 now this is kind of it's still pretty close all right this is kind of what i expected was offset was going to win but not by a ton um and i i wonder like did google even bother trying to check this out or maybe they got different results from us. Maybe it's a problem because we are a more PC-focused community. Why did they come? Or maybe it's a problem because we're probably a more Western community

right now, especially due to the time slot of the WAN show. Maybe this will change after the VOD goes up and people in different time zones see it. It's like when Japan comes online, right? The poll will probably change a little bit. But why did they come to that conclusion, though? It's just so weird. I don't know. We should probably do some spots here.

Right, that makes sense. We have to talk about something that isn't Stadia for some amount of time on the show. Savage Jerky Moho. Their jerky is made with the best ingredients, without nitrates or preservatives, with the goal to create a snack that is full of flavor and spice that isn't bad for you, and it's handmade.

Pretty cool. One of their flavors that they're trying to promote right now is Moho Premium Jerky. It is my second favorite flavor. What does Moho mean? Garlic, lime, and cilantro? Yeah. Pretty much.

Mo-hell-yeah. Oh! That was a scratch. It's. Well, hell yeah. Oh! That was a scratch. It's a very, like, kind of fresh, citrusy kind of, I don't know. Are you a cilantro guy? Yes.

A little biased. Are you? You're not? No, I am. I am. But we should acknowledge there's a certain percentage of the population.

Absolutely. And I wonder if they would object to this. Do a poll! You get cilantro. My actual favorite flavor is very heavily related.'s mojo jalapeno. Is that just hot version of this or is it kind of a different flavor profile? I actually don't know the exact ingredients involved but I think it's pretty similar plus jalapenos. But yeah if you're not into that they have

tons of other great flavors as well. Oh, and also cumin, apparently, in that one. Oh, in here? Yeah. Right now, if you buy any three bags of mojo jerky, I think there's a few different kinds, they'll throw in another bag of mojo for free. Check it out at lmg.com slash savage mojo. What? Which is not the lower third we have right now at all.

Savage moho. But ignore this down here and go to lmg.com slash savage moho. Moho is spelled M-O-J-O. Buy three, get one, bohto. Next up we got Madrinas. Wait, it's not bohto, it's B-T, okay. Madrinas. Mad, it's not Boto, it's BT... okay. Madrinas!

Madrinas coffee. Oh, these are cold this week. Would you like to steal one, sir? Oh no thanks, I'm alright. He's good, he doesn't want to steal one. He wants one, I'll sell him one. He was just shy, he didn't want to be on camera. Oh, do I want one?

Madrinas! You could. I have braces now. Oh! I don't want to derail this, but I would have to take them out, too. That makes sense. Madrina's Coffee is coffee for fuel. Organic, cold-brew coffee in convenient 15-ounce cans with a flavor for everyone.

Madrina's Coffee offers sweet and creamy flavors like mocha or caramel or bold flavors like their cold-brew black. We have a permanent item on their e-store, the Lambo Roast right here. Cold-brew black. Check it out. It's Linus Tech Tips inspired coffee. There's also, if you don't love us as much, which is like, I'm heavily offended now,

but they have other influencer related ones as well. I think they have like an insane one that's for Shroud. Oh yeah, that's cool. And I think they've got some other ones too. But you should get the Lambo roast. I thought you were going to talk about the roast. Oh, that's cool. And I think they've got some other ones too. But you should get the Lambo. I thought you were going to talk about the roast. Oh, that's also coming. If you hate us, watch the roast of Linus

where we all make fun of each other very savagely. You know, I'll say this before the thing. There's a lot of really, really, really easy things to make fun of Linus for. There's not a ton of more complicated ones. And most of the really easy things are like kind of lowbrow. Well, that gets to the question of how

savage you want to be. That's fair. You know, you want to talk about like business acumen or like how you raise your kids. Like, yeah. If you make fun of his sandals, everyone can walk away happy. Yeah, yeah.

But that's boring. These little handles are pretty funny. It is actually pretty great. It makes it really easy to pick up. Anyways, head over to madrinascoffee.com slash Linus to receive 50% off your entire order. Holy crap. With offer code Linus.

For only up to 72 hours and the first 50 people to use the code, we'll also get a free bag of micro-roasts. Madrinas' codes and offers are always ridiculous. If you have any questions about the various flavors of cold brew coffee or micro-roast, Shlomo from Madrina's Coffee Head Team is in the chat.

I'm ready to answer any questions through direct messages. Hit him up. He's always here. Hey Shlomo, how's your arenas? Is it mad? Oh. Good one. Ten out of ten. Squarespace.

Squarespace. 24-7 live chat, support, and email. Only $12 a month, and you get a free domain if you buy Squarespace for a year. They have responsive design so that your website looks great on any device at any time. They have commerce modules so you can sell some stuff through their store if you'd like. They have a cover page feature so if you want to have like a one page resume that's all nice and scrollable you can use that.

It makes it... that's from a different point. Not all that information is there. Start a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure you use offer code WAN and you get 10% off your first purchase. It really is the easiest one. My cousin just started business. I was like, just use Squarespace. Just do that thing. We're not even on the sponsor spot anymore.

One of my favorite things about having Squarespace as a sponsor has been almost any time one of my random acquaintances is like, Hey, can you make a website for me? I'm like, no. You can use this thing, though. It's actually totally cool. Nice. Speaking of totally cool. I stopped doing that when I was like 18.

Our merch. Our merch. Boom. Our merch store is starting to pop off. There's new designs coming all the time. Yeah. This is semi-new. There's some really new stuff that's so new we couldn't show it right now.

Yeah. But keep looking at that merch store. And, oh, the TechLink shirts. Yes. TechLink shirts, sweet. I like it. They actually look really cool. Nice and refined.

I'm into just a smaller little logo there and a nice shirt, and that's exactly what they are. Nice and soft. It's just how stated you want it. This is really awesome, but quite stated. And a little logo in the corner is a little bit more subtle. You know what, yeah, and that's what's coming soon, it's just like, LTT logo.

Heck yeah. It's pretty sweet. There you go. You know what stands out about these? I never, never saw any, like, let me put it this way. I came home and my wife was wearing this to bed. I was like, what are you doing? They're soft! Yes. yes get out of here yeah she's pregnant she's stretching it out take that off but it says a lot it says a lot that she wants she's wearing the stuff now take it off it doesn't

even matter what's on it it's just a good shirt on its own merits that's one of the reasons why so the store is kind of our own store and and there's been a huge amount of well linus media group's own store and there's been a huge amount of effort within the team to make sure the shirts are good to make sure the prints on the shirts are actually good quality i got a shirt from a company that i'm not gonna name uh because i like them but i got it at a show and after one wash the whole thing looked like it was actually dying like the whole logo was disintegrating oh no that sucks that won't happen to these which is great that's too. And our shipping to Europe very recently got way cheaper. Yeah. We actually saw a spike, I think when it happened. That's cool. So just a heads

up on that one, because it is a new kind of operation that the guys are working on shipping to certain areas has been a little rough, but over time, as we're shipping more and more stuff, getting better deals, way better deals. And Europe went from like pretty brutal to actually quite cheap. Oh, nice. Hopefully that continues to happen. Exactly.

Sweet action. Yeah. What do you want now? Five minutes on this one? Sure, let's do it. So it turns out competition is good and Steam is like, oh crap, Epic Game Store exists. So it turns out Competition is good And Steam is like Oh crap Epic Game Store exists

So Epic Game Store Has an exclusive Called Metro Exodus Yeah It sold two and a half times More copies On the Epic Game Store Than a comparable game

Metro Last Light Sold in the same amount of time On Steam Two and a half times more And what this proves According to one of the Epic guys, he said, it's really about your game, not so much about the store you sell it on. And I think that's true.

Like, are people loyal to Steam? Or do they just go wherever the game is? I don't think there's a lot of fan loyalty. I'm gonna actually counter this a little bit. Somewhat to play devil's advocate to just drive the conversation forward somewhat because i think that is a super bs statement to a certain degree i think a lot of it is definitely about your game look at apex legends there was no marketing around that before it came out and it blew up immediately it can be definitely

about your game but a lot of the driving around that is there was no traditional marketing for Apex Legends. What there was was huge million-dollar deals to get streamers to play it on day of launch. Okay. Ninja got a million dollars for one stream, as far as I know. Shroud and a whole bunch of other streamers were also paid to play it on launch. There was a lot of new-age marketing for Apex. There was actually a ton of marketing. It was just right away on launch instead of crappy trailers from way before launch.

And it was a good game. And it was a really good game. So when they played it, they were like, this is sick. So marketing and the game matters. Both of those things matters. I think a huge amount of marketing for Metro Exodus, like way more than probably any version of Metro has ever had in the past, was everyone

Complaining about the fact that it was on the Epic Games Store The fact that Metro Exodus was an exclusive on the Epic Games Store going. Hey everyone There's this cool game that we're showing you in this article that's on the Epic Games Store buy it here was probably a big freaking help It's it was on the top of reddit as far as I know. It was all over the place. Oh my goodness, Metro Exodus is going to be an Epic Games Store exclusive. Let me ask you this. If you bought the collector's edition, there's a sticker on the back that covers the Steam logo

and puts the Epic Games Store logo. That tops Reddit again. Like, there was huge talk about it. Sorry, keep going. Let me ask you this. Aside from this particular example, do you personally feel like you have loyalty to any game store or distribution platform?

Or is content is king? I prefer content is king for me, for sure. It's about the game. It's a sliding scale probably, right? Yes, but I would prefer to buy something on Steam because I find notable annoyances in the other platforms. Like there's a number of notable annoyances with Origin, design things that I don't like about the platform, and I mean EA as well. Sure.

So I will grant that if a game is available on all platforms, it's not usually the case, but if it is, then you're gonna have your favorite right and maybe it's usability or where your friend list is or something like that that's probably a big part of it but more and more people are using discord and other like agnostic things yeah but um my biggest thing is the game for sure to give an example to tie in with what you were just talking about is hades a game from supergiant games i'm a massive supergiant games fanboy bastion's one of my favorite games ever. Hades came out on the Epic Game Store only.

I bought it immediately and had to download and install the Epic Game Store to play it. I just did it because I was like, they're one of my favorite game developers. I'm sure I'll love this game. I did love the game. There's not a lot of friction there. No.

Here's another thing that might sway where you get your game from. On the Epic Game Store, the developers only have to pay out 12%. That's how much the Epic Games Store is going to take. They're going to take 12% of your revenue. On Steam, they're taking 30%. For the first $10 million in sales, after that, Valve's going to take 25%, then further down to just 20% after 50 million in sales. 20% is still a lot more than 12%

and $50 million in sales is a lot. So, you know, the developer's getting more. So if you care about that, you might go to Epic Game Store. There's also some other stuff like this, which I definitely don't know enough about, but is Epic Game Store user data accessible by the Chinese government oh if I remember correctly I could be super off here because I didn't

know we were gonna go this angle on the stream so don't believe what I'm saying and look into it on your own I think Tencent has a pretty big ownership of epic games oh yeah well that's a problem. Is that right, or is that super off? I'm really not sure. Or maybe, well, they definitely own Fortnite. While you're looking that up, here's another thing that's kind of cool. While Metro Exodus runs the developer's own 4A engine,

were that game powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 4, the engine licensing fees would have come out of Epic's 12% cut, instead of being added on top of Steam's 30% cut. So that is a huge incentive for developers to go on that platform and use it. That's just a dual incentive. I think that's so cool.

Use our platform for distribution and use our engine, and then you're gonna save, you going to get so much more revenue. Yeah. That's cool. That's a really good angle for them. The Tencent thing that I just called out was true. Apparently Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games. What does that mean for the law, though?

It's, well, it... You know? That law that I'm talking about? Where, like, Chinese corporations corporations have to be amenable to the government and their... That stuff? So, like, do they have to be a 51% owner in order for that law to apply? I don't know. I don't know.

I have no idea. It's a very... But it muddies the water for a lot of people. Yeah. It's a very, it's, but it muddies the water for a lot of people. Anytime big China is involved, things get a little bit murky. Interesting. Depending on how people are going to want to deal with things. But then you're probably talking to your friends on Discord anyway, so. So, okay.

Anyway, part of this article is that the Steam store is being redesigned to look more modern. What do you think about that? Often people don't like redesigns. The one thing that threw me off a little bit is in the doc, at least, it says specifically Steam library redesign. The Steam store, I couldn't give a care if the Steam store changes. I don't necessarily want huge changes to the Steam library, just because right now it's

extremely efficient. There's the search bars right there. You search, why did I just get signed? A lot of really fancy interfaces are not easy to use. They become less efficient. More clicks are involved. Or just like there's no clear hierarchy of things. There's just big flashy tiles and you're like, like I was playing Project Cars 2 and it's just like settings is here and quick plays and they're all just like, and it looks super slick but you're lost. Whereas the traditional like file system look is nice.

And Steam uses that for your library. The default view is just like tiny text names for each game with no fancy indicators at all. I think it's young people. Cause the Epic Game Store is gonna have a lot of its users coming there because of Fortnite. Fortnite I would assume is a pretty young user base. If this is the next generation of gamers and if they if there is any kind of loyalty to the platform then these are you know get them while they're young on the Epic Games Store. If Steam or Valve wants to attract those users to their platform they're gonna have to have a

platform that isn't icky when you first log in. That is like, whoa, this is too information dense, too inaccessible. I'm out of here. I'm going back to Epic. Yeah, yeah. I think that would be. So 53% of Fortnite gamers are 10 to 20. 10 to 25.

Yeah. Half of them. Is there a younger? What else we got? Yeah, younger than 10. No one's... 4% of them are in strollers. Okay. So yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's an interesting kind of idea, but I could definitely see that being a thing. I just, my only thing is, But I could definitely see that being a thing. My only thing is when they redesigned chat, I don't really think it got much better. I think chat went from like, what would I even say here? Like a 2002 design to like...

2000 and late? 2000 and... Yeah, exactly. Like it didn't even get into the 10s necessarily. They went from 2002 to 2009. But it's 2019 now. So you redesigned your chat and it doesn't look new. So are they going to redesign their library

and it's just going to potentially be less efficient, potentially, and still not look that fancy and new? Time will tell. Yeah, we'll see. just esteem is I don't Personally have a lot of confidence in steam Redesigning things graphically Because it's never been an attractive platform in my opinion Should we look at some super chats? Yeah?

Maybe that changes Maybe that all changes. Maybe that changes. Maybe they do a great job. I don't know. I think we probably could know right now. I think there's details even in the WAN doc here. But I ain't reading that. I'm reading Super Chats. Luke, do you also dislike services like Netflix? I don't have a Netflix subscription. So is that because you dislike it? I own Blu-rays. I'm a weird person you're old hat i am very old but i think one of my things one of my reasons for doing that is like one of the things i'm a super fan boy of is star wars specifically within the star wars universe i am

a super fan boy of the clone wars animated series i bought the clone wars animated series on blu-ray and then disney was like hey we're gonna have our own streaming platform and we're ripping all of our stuff off of your platforms so now my netflix subscription is not gonna have star wars on it anymore but i still have it so that's that's my thing is like i don't very good i don't even watch shows that often that's another thing so like the ones i care about i have and now i don't have to worry about some new deal or something coming in with different streaming platforms and oh, they're raising their rates or whatever.

I'm like, I don't care. I already own the things. And that happens every month. Every month there's content that leaves the Canadian Netflix and comes back on. And I don't have to worry about it anymore. All right, hit me with another one. It's just GeForce Now, but Google's version.

Yeah, kind of. LTX BYOC update, is there one? Sold out? Oh, yeah, I think they're sold out. I just mentioned LTX update in general. The LTX blog has 10 years of gaming PCs booth posted today. 10 years of gaming PC's booth.

Does that have anything to do with the BYOC though? Wow, this drawing that Linus did is straight up 10 out of 10. Did Linus actually do that? I guess. It was him? It wasn't Colton? I don't know. That is paint. That is straight up MS paint. What the heck?

Look at those arrows. The line from the arrow doesn't even intersect at the point. Oh my goodness. This computer is just falling off the edge. Standing desk. Don't want people sitting there all day. Make them move along. No loitering. Employee with cattle prod.

Bat, bat, bat. That's, bap, bap. Holy cow. Oh, that's pretty cool. Ooh. Starcraft 2. So a physically lined up ten different games one year each. So you can kind of float in between them and see how graphics and stuff are developed. With a conveyor belt to just

shift you along. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No loitering. You gotta move. Move it or lose it, sister. What else we got? Luke Black Home, I know it looks funky today, right? Yeah. Have you ever played RuneScape?

Yes, I have. I played RuneScape when my internet was so slow that I would launch it in my browser, go downstairs, make a sandwich, and make some peach juice, bring my sandwich and my peach juice upstairs. The detail tells me the story is real and it is and mostly eat it before the game would launch i played it back then um and i have it on my phone now but i played for like four minutes and i was like wow it's an online game i didn't know that yeah yeah i remember like seeing it

around but i never knew anyone who played it never played it yeah i was pretty into it when I was like a real little here in Montana we have a government company that or wait we had a company take two billion dollars in government funding for internet infrastructure and embezzled it nice Wow cool that is a Dual shock is dual doodoo. Heck yeah guys move to your left you're off-center. Yeah, I think we're off-center most of the stream Oh well You've seen the info about the epic store reading steam user info files. Yeah, I heard something about that too Like the epic store is kind of creepy which which throws me off a bit Like the epic store is kind of creepy which which throws me off a bit

And it's sprinting or something is going to something very important PC gaming has a huge boom in population since 2013 when Metro last light came out. I don't think that's why that happened. Oh I see what you're saying. Okay Exodus has also been absolutely everywhere in piece of gaming news sales numbers shouldn't be a surprise. Yeah, that's actually a pretty good point. Since 2013, especially because of streaming, PC gaming has exploded. There's way more people in PC gaming now than there was before. Intel has seen the first increase

in gaming PC CPU sales for desktop in a long time, fairly recently. Pretty crazy. Also, Metro Exodus is one of the most talked about games this year. And yeah, the whole ecosystem has changed so much since 2013 with streaming and esports. Every aspect of it is so different now. So Epic being like, oh yeah, it's just about the game is a little ridiculous, especially

because at least I know with Hades, I don't know if this happened with Metro Exodus, but I feel like it did. I just don't have any facts for this. I do know with Hades, the Epic store was promoting Hades. Elsewhere. And Epic bought out that exclusivity. So they're just trying to promote

a game that they... I will certainly concede that that statistic is two and a half times better than that. That is pretty misleading. I still think that the overall point of people... Content is king and they're not too loyal to the stores. I still think that the overall point of people, like content is king, and they're not too loyal to the stores, I still think that stands.

I do agree with that, yeah. But with that, the show is over. I'll see you next week. Boom. Later folks. That's it, I almost just tried to turn OBS off on the laptop, but that's not how that works. Woo!