 Yes. We're now going to bring Mark on a little bit and talk about the news of E3. Good. Alright. Okay. Here we go. Starting today. Wee! You need a rocking chair. Yes, exactly. And we kind of got a breakdown of it, but Mark has actually seen a little bit more of it. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what's happening there. We were expecting some big Xbox announcements. You guys know him. I don't really have to introduce Mark, do I? You have to. He likes it. Mark Risen Hopkins is the greatest man on earth. There you go. Outside of Thumper over here. Dave's not happy with that. Yeah, Dave behind the camera over here is not happy. I just can't keep you happy. Okay. So what happened? So we've got the latest news that came down the pike while right after I sent you the show notes. Oh, okay. Is that Xbox is kind of remaking itself. They released a stat last week in one of the depressed releases that came out. 30% of the time spent by most Xbox users is not actually playing a game. It's doing stuff. Doing other stuff like watching Hulu or chatting with friends. On Xbox. On Xbox. On the actual Xbox gaming center. Obviously their goal is to make Xbox your entire life. They want you doing everything on it. They even want you searching the web and now looking at being, you know. Right. Well, I mean, and that's something I predicted and kind of wished for after E3 last year. I was like, you know, this is going to be a good year for Microsoft. I'm calling it now. And a lot of people were skeptical before they saw Kinect and they were kind of like, I don't know. This is Microsoft after all. Wait, you thought people were skeptical about Kinect? Before it actually arrived, a lot of the pundits were skeptical about it because they didn't, they thought, okay, this is a controlled environment at these demos. Oh, that's true. That's true. Yeah. I want to see it actually in practice. Yeah. So when the kids break it. Yeah. The adults. Right. All the adults, totally. Of the Kinect? Yeah. That's a good question, but it's certainly a family device. I don't think it's just kids. I think actually just from generally speaking to people, I would say more adults are using Kinect itself than kids. Most of the games, and I think I own almost every Xbox game there is, most of the games do seem to be geared towards adults. Yeah. A lot of dancing games, a lot of exercise games. Life plays, plays, I guess. It's a... Dancers too? Well, it's an exercise. Okay. It's pure exercise. It's not even dancing. Oh, okay. It's not even like exercising to the guys of anything else. Fun to work out? Yeah, essentially. And you can download different packs for it where you can exercise and do yoga and all those other things. Yeah. But there are about five or six, maybe seven total kids-centric games or family-centric games. Right. So 30% of people are actually using it for other things than the games themselves. Exactly, yeah. And they kind of picked up on that, and that's what they're reshaping the Xbox experience to be. They've added being support, which you mentioned. They've added YouTube support, and these are announcements. These aren't actual. They're not in the system yet. Okay. Well, that never happens at a conference, right? Right. Especially E3. E3 they announced things once a head of time. Yes. But being is going to be part of the experience. It's going to be YouTube as well, a lot of TV integration, a lot of TV. I mean, they're making a pledge to this is going to be a TV and user experience-centric device. What do you mean? Like pulling in the signals? Details are scarce. Okay. That's certainly a possibility. Given the architecture of the device itself, it doesn't have a coax jack. Right. So my guess is it's going to be pulling stuff across the net, much the same way they do now with ESPN3 and with Hulu and Netflix. Interesting. Everybody's integrating YouTube. That's nothing. They're the last console to do it, I think. Well, maybe we hasn't done it yet. No, we hasn't done it. We has to get from where they were. I mean, they were kind of the leader in all of this activity gaming. Right. And now they look so bad. I don't mean bad, but like their graphics, you know, that need major improvement and all of that. But so anyway, along with the graphics, they need to integrate YouTube and all of those. The other thing, and speaking of Nintendo, they did join the Sony Club this weekend. They did get hacked. That's right. That's the Sony Club now. Nintendo's like, yes, we're finally being recognized. We're getting hacked now. I'm sure they didn't enjoy it. But here's the thing with the Xbox being that I thought was significant. And with relationship to the search market, 10 million users will now be presented with a being experience. And how you launch being on the Xbox, I didn't get it at all last night. Remember last night I was saying being on the Xbox? Yeah. You launch being on the Xbox by saying Xbox being. That's how you initiate any search experience. You say it. Do you have to say, do you have to say a command or is the Xbox your command? Xbox is what you would do to call into the connects. So any command starts with Xbox. So Xbox play discs, Xbox movies. Are you going to be able to, can you do this currently on Xbox? With connects? I mean you can't do being, but you could do all these other commands. Right, okay. And so it's building essentially for the 10 million users of connect and Xbox live muscle memory. That is now associated with search. It's no longer Googling. You're going to be being. Because you have to actually say it. Because you have to say it. That's true. That's true. It's true. Yeah. Or are they going to be saying Xbox being? Who knows. That's the muscle memory. Is it a verb yet? Being is not a verb yet. It's really not. Maybe after next year. Maybe after next year. That's what we need to find out. It's possible. I'm sure that's their goal. Make that call. That makes a lot of sense in terms of where they want being to go. I mean like that totally blindsided me. When I thought about it in that context, I mean they're like, wow. Okay, now that is clever. I would never thought to put being in the Xbox. I mean I'm not going to say it wrong, but if you're going to have anybody search and the way to do it is they have to say it out loud, you're the name of your product, that's you can't get better branding than that. Yeah. And then can you search for, you know, your actual, if you're going to search for Oysters, you say, Xbox being Oysters? I would assume so. I haven't watched the demo. I'm only going off of my my writer's write ups on this. Okay. So maybe I'll watch them get back to you on the next video. Yeah. But I think that's how it works. The big surprise, of course, from the Microsoft announcement was they did not announce Skype integration. It may be early for that, but I would assume that they would, they like to announce and then build. If they're gonna announce and build, do you ever think they would do it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that to me, that should have already been built into it, to be honest. I mean, Skype is so huge and obviously they weren't going to do it maybe before they bought it, but now that they've bought it, and maybe they're just trying to get past all of the buzz about them actually buying it before they announce it. Eight billion dollars buys a lot of buzz, so. It sure does. And it's still going on. Everybody's still talking about it. But it's not all positive buzz, so. No, it's not all positive buzz. Although. Yeah, John and Dave. My guess is all positive buzz is positive, so. Right. Yeah. So John and Dave and I hit on this topic quite a bit in the last three weeks of the summer tour, and so the panel split. Oh, well, unless you count my vote, and we're all for it, but Dave is skeptical. Why wouldn't we count your vote? Because I'm not always on. Oh, your vote counts. Didn't I say you were the greatest man on earth? There we go. So, no, John thinks it's a good move for Microsoft in general, the Skype acquisition, because it shows they've got their Mojo back. You know, the DOJ shackles are off and they're back in acquisition mode. They don't care about antitrust. Darn the DOJ. Dave is skeptical. He thinks it's too high of a price tag. It's pretty darn high price tag, but I mean, I think it's a good thing. They have, they had to make that move. In my view, they had to go that route. They didn't really have a choice. They have to get into that video market, you know, but that's a pretty hard price tag because they're not even, you know, out of debt yet. We have, there's three things to consider, and one that John brought up that I was not creamy to before. And he has some kind of some nice insight into internal Microsoft workings, just because of what's in his Rolodex. And the way he explained it is there was something going on with their financials where they had to like use it or lose it, you know, get taxed on it, lose the money, or just use it on an acquisition. So basically, the accounting trick was that. So once it was an accounting finance. Yeah. So we're gonna use that $8 billion to buy something instead of, you know. Instead of losing it. Instead of wasting it. Yeah. I can see that. So, and then here's the other thing. If I had $8 billion to just use or lose, I'd be happy. Yeah, I'd buy Skype. Maybe. After buying like a couple of jet planes, then I buy Skype. Right, exactly. So, and then the other thing was that Skype, in terms of a communications protocol has to be hands down the most popular on the planet. I mean, we talked about last year, this was when Skype was starting to disclose their numbers. They were close to a billion users in 2010. Mm, yeah. One in six. One in six people on the planet have Skype. And now those are owned by Microsoft. Right. And it's interesting because Google with Google Voice and their video stuff, a lot of people use Google for chat. I am. And Google Voice, so I use Google Voice. Yeah, I use Google Voice. But I also use Skype a lot for the international stuff. And, you know, I think this is gonna cause Google to have to step up their game. Yeah. Because there's been service issues. Right. There's performance issues and stuff. It has been with Skype too. Right. I was in like this morning. Right, yeah, you couldn't get on Skype for hours. A couple hours, yeah. And you weren't the only one, apparently it was down for a while. I just didn't blame it on Microsoft acquisition. Right. Right. Too soon, not yet. Yeah. We'll wait a week or two on that. Until things actually get rolling, right? Yeah. So, you know, that's all the big news from Microsoft. Now, the other news that I thought was interesting was the Sony stuff. Did you have a chance to look through those? No, I haven't had a chance to look through it. But real quick before we move on from the Xbox, you said also something about push notifications. Yeah, so I haven't looked into this very deeply. Okay. So what it has to do with the, I think it's paving the way for Skype personally. This is like a hint to the future. Because they're going, I think that Skype is going to actually replace the live communication architecture. On Microsoft Live? Yeah, I mean live is the connecting thread between all Microsoft products. Right. On the communications end. Sure, sure. And Skype is that. And so upgrading the infrastructure here is kind of a hint of things to come, I believe. But this specifically has to do with push notifications between phone and Xbox on the Windows Phone 7 platform so that you can get updates from, as you would like an activity feed. So if someone's watching Netflix and you want to check your friend's list on your phone for your Windows 7 phone, you go, okay, they're watching Conan the Barbarian on their phone or they're playing Assassin's Creed. You can see that on the Xbox console or whatever. I just don't have enough visibility into what my friends are up to. Right. The whole seeing what your friends are watching and doing, for me personally, I don't want that. I don't find that appealing, but a lot of people do. There are still privacy settings that prevent that. Right, of course. That whole concept, because there are a lot of services out there that are going that route and offering you to be able to share what you're watching and doing and... You weren't a fan of Friend Feed then, huh? No, I wasn't. I was on the other side. I was an advocate for Friend Feed, so. I know you were. Yeah. No, I see why it is appealing to people, but I just don't personally find it that appealing. I just, it's kind of like, we were talking about really swimming in data. I mean, some people get overwhelmed and some people don't care and then some people just live for it. Right. And increasingly, and this is what a couple of our bloggers call the court, you know, here are the term court cutters, right? People that cut the court. The court never is the next generation. People that never had a court. And this is the generation that loves to swim in that data. Of course. Because that's how they get their, I mean, that's their TV guide. Right. Is these push notifications, these status updates. Yeah. Maybe, I think it's because I have too many friends online. Yeah. You are an edge case. I think it's, I'm thinking, like I've been negatively impacted by that. Right. Just, because I can see how it's appealing. I just don't ever go there. But anyway. So you're about to talk about Sony. Yeah. And so, I mean, there's not a lot of updates. I'm not a Sony fanboy other than I like reading about this. I'm just obsessed with the Sony hacking side. Are you having fun at Sony's expense? Well, in a journalistic way. Okay. I mean, I'm just obsessed with finding out all the details on that. But I've never been like a Sony player. So I'm not like in their corner or anything. But I'm not against them either. I just think based on their performance at E3, they did come off as tone death because there was no great acknowledgments of like this. The ship is on fire, you know? They really should have. I find it very frustrating when companies don't talk about that, you know? They have to at least acknowledge it because we live in such a world of transparency these days. And at least that's what we want as consumers, as users. We want to know at least that they're saying yes, there's something wrong. And if they don't, it just feels too fake, I think. Right, right. So that's sad. And it's, I mean, they're doing this at the expense. I mean, without acknowledging the hacking stuff that's been going on with Sony, you can't work to fix the problem. I mean, this is the biggest platform they're gonna have throughout the year to talk about this. My brother-in-law, who is a Sony fanboy, recently got access after 44 days of downtime to his games. His friends listed it as a ghost town. Everyone's moved on over to Xbox. Yeah. And they're offering all kinds of free games. They're offering, they actually have this, you free enrollment in some sort of identity protection program and all this stuff. Oh, wow. Although don't know that I wanna enroll in Sony's identity protection program right now. Right, ever? Yeah. But. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm just, I'm not, I'm saying any products or gaming announcements that they could make this week is not going to make, I mean, they would have to be, it would have to scratch my back and give me massages or something for me to want to go back to that platform if I'm a Sony user. Now, they did have one thing that was interesting and noteworthy that they did announce. Okay. Called, it's their next gen PSP and they gave it a name, I don't have it handy. Okay. But the details of it are actually interesting. It's the, it's structured like the iPad. Yeah. So there's a Wi-Fi and a AT&T tethered version that they're going to be selling. They're treating it like a mobile device. Different versions or have both interfaces? No, same interface, two different versions. So like the iPad's got the, you know, the Wi-Fi only AT&T version. Okay, okay. So I remember correctly from the rumors, it was, it's still in the shape of a handheld console. Oh, it's still a handheld device. Yeah. Or, yeah, sorry. Play gaming, handheld console, whatever you call it. So that's interesting. So it's like a tablet and it'll be connected. Will you be able to, or have they said, will you be able to access, you know, the web and be able to do everything? Well, I don't know about everything, but you'll probably be able to do- Hopefully not everything. That would just be too much. Well, I mean, considering it's geared towards children, you know, I mean, it's a kid's toy, in essence, and you want your, you know, your pre-teens not to get into too much trouble with it. So, you know, I mean, and they can get into trouble on anything if you give them enough rope, but they, you know, they do try to limit or put limits on what you can do. I don't think it's gonna be straight web browsing and probably PSP or Sony-only content you can get to and maybe like Netflix and that sort of thing. Apps, basically. So, you have kids who are gamers. Right. What are, are your kids gamers as well, Mark? Yes. Okay, so from a parent parental standpoint, you know, is that something that you want locked down on your behalf? It's, you know, it's interesting because it actually creates debates in the family over how, you know, because there are, just as there is in the broader world, there is within families, just like, how much lockdown do you want? How much freedom do you want? Is that, I got kids, at least one that likes to tear things apart, see how things work, build things again. And you allow that, right? And I have another one who likes, yeah, and I allow that. Okay, good. Absolutely, because I, you know, that's what Michael Dell did, so why shouldn't he? And then I've got another one who likes to take game programs and take the source code and modify it. So, I mean, I was, I don't know. I didn't even know I was driving him to school the other day and he was, right, he was programming some stuff. And I said, what are you doing? Well, I'm writing something for Sam because for the embed in this program. Oh, that's awesome. Yes. That's what you want to hear. It is, actually. So, you know, I'm not a big fan of a lot of lockdown. I'm a big fan of communication, personal communication with the kids about what you're doing. Yeah. You know, because you can't monitor, you think you can monitor your kids all the time that you can. No, no matter how much you do. Because they're going to go to, if you want them to have friends, they're going to go to a friend's house and they're going to have a different standard. And unless you get embedded chips, you're not going to be able to lock down, you know, that interact with all the game programs. You're not going to be able to lock things down. The other thing that I was really interested in is what's Xbox 360 doing in terms of integrating communication? Because when I watch my kids play multiplayer games online, they are playing the games and they are talking and or they're Skyping at the same time. Right. So it's not just that they're with strangers, right? In some game room. Yeah. It's that they're with friends that they know, but they may be separated by 40 miles because they're not next door neighbors. Right. Yeah. Both my kids are in schools outside of my town. And so their friends may be an hour's drive away, you know? And so- So they rely on that communication? So they rely on that for communication? Absolutely. So I think from that perspective, what Xbox is doing makes a lot of sense. It's a very interesting dynamic. I mean- You need it. I think if there's an interesting parallel that you can draw to like IT's governance capacity, like how do you treat employees to how you treat your kids and your personal family's IT policy? Right. So I mean- It is hard. You know, if you're a bank, you've got one level of lockdown, you know? But I remember I was talking to somebody, I don't know, three or four years ago, IT department. And we were talking about using cloud to, for expansion, if you need to do some development work or something like that. So I've been waiting for central IT to give me nine gigabytes of storage for the last three months. And they haven't provisioned it for me yet. But, you know, I went to the cloud and I had it and I've done, and I've already gotten rid of it. Now, who's there to do the cleanup to make sure that the data was actually deleted? And you know, that's where the compliance and security folks get hanky. But if you're just trying to get things done, then you just want to get your job done. Sure. The parallel that I kind of see is that it means we're living in a new world. We're living in a new world with our families and we're living in a new world with IT. And the consumer's Asian IT, everyone's bringing their own device. Kids will come up with ways to circumvent what it is that you're trying to prevent them from doing. Always, no matter what. And after a few weeks to figure out how to break net nanny. That's what I was done with it. For good. And it was a pain. It was a pain as a parent to manage net nanny. Okay. Well, I'm going to kick you boys off, actually. I've enjoyed this conversation, but we have some women coming in and we're going to be having a women's corner over here. Enjoy your lunch, boy. We're going to go get our man first. Thank you, Mark.