 Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to all of you, including Ali Senjabi, A.B. Puppy, Dale Mulcahy, and brand new patrons. Welcome them in. Betty and Leonard. Yeah. On this episode of DTNS Spotify gets into online courses. Xbox drops all the hints about a handheld. Why is everybody so mad about microtransactions in games? Pay 99 cents to find out. Now, we'll tell you. We won't tell you. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, March 25th, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang, and joining us TV host and streamer, Trisha Harzberger. Welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here today and chat tech with y'all. It's going to be a good time. Fantastic. We have we have some really interesting things, especially, you know, Monday can be weird in the world of technology. Everybody likes to wait a little bit into the week to announce stuff, but we have some interesting stuff. Let's start with the quick hits. We'll start with a bust. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control identified two Chinese nationals who worked as contractors for a Chinese company called Wuhan XRZ as leading attacks against the U.S. military and intelligence targets. The U.S. has named those two as well as five others in indictments for conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud. The U.S. also introduced sanctions against Wuhan XRZ itself, and the United Kingdom has issued sanctions against the two named contractors and Wuhan XRZ specifically for breaches in the U.K. electoral commission systems. It's just the naming names, I guess I don't think anybody's surprised about this, but the naming names is what's interesting. People seem to be very excited that Apple may build in the ability to have blank spaces and rows on the home screen in iOS 18, letting you put an app anywhere rather than having to put it between other apps. You can achieve these effects already if you use apps like Shortcuts and Widget Smith, but the excitement appears to be over having it built into the operating system itself right into the settings. That will be more convenient. Feature was reported by Mac rumor sources. Bloomberg reported on a more customizable home screen as well, including unnamed additional options. Apple will update developers on iOS 18 at WWDC in June. Trisha, you can do this on Android? Yeah. Yeah, okay. How'd you guess? Yeah, well, because I have a pixel. The European Commission is opening five investigations into possible non-compliance with the Digital Markets Act from three companies, Apple, Google, and Meta. Two of the investigations are into Google and Apple's practices of restricting what app makers can say about payments outside of their individual app stores. Google will also be investigated to see if it has sufficiently stopped preferring its own services in search. The EC will investigate how Apple implemented its browser choice screen, and the EC will investigate Meta's plan to charge users who choose not to be tracked for advertising if they want to use Facebook or Instagram. Basically, they're giving you either be tracked, pay, or don't use it as your options. We're going to see if that qualifies under the DMA. In addition, the commission is also considering investigations. They haven't started these, but they're looking into whether they should start formal investigations into Apple's fee structure for distributing apps outside the Apple App Store. That's something they're doing under the Digital Services Act. And whether Amazon has sufficiently stopped giving preference to its own items in the Amazon Store. The EC also gave Meta six additional months to implement inter-operation for Messenger. Guidelines introduced in China on December 26th have gone into force requiring Chinese government agencies to buy computers with quote, safe and reliable processors. Guess what? Those aren't ones made by U.S. companies. Agencies can buy any computer from an approved vendor like Huawei's High Silicon, or Longson, or Xiaoxin, or Fidium. Government groups can buy gear from unapproved vendors like Intel and AMD if they explain the need for the purchase and make them in limited numbers. And then Trish, do you remember at CES, everybody getting all excited about Rabbit's AR1 handheld? I do. I remember you and I had a good chat about it. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's finally starting to ship. If you don't remember, the Rabbit AR1 uses a smart assistant to handle tests that apps usually do. So things like taking photos, listening to music, et cetera. The first 10,000 of the devices will begin shipping on Sunday, March 31st to customers in the U.S. and Canada. Second round to begin in April or May. And a third round, expected in June. Customers in the U.K. and the E.U. can expect their first round of shipping to start by late April. And you won't get them in those rounds of shipping, but if you want, you can still order. They're still taking orders for the Rabbit AR1. It's $199. So, you know, not even that expensive. Spotify is testing a fourth category of content alongside music podcasts and books, online courses. This is being tested in the U.K. only. So if you're in the U.K., you'll be able to see video courses in four categories. Make music, get creative, learn business, and healthy living. The lessons are provided by BBC Maestro, Skillshare, ThinkEffic, and Play Virtuoso. Paying subscribers get at least two lessons per course for free, and then you have to pay for the remainder of the course. So it's kind of a freemium model. Courses include videos and supplementary material, so you get some PDFs too. Payments for courses must be outside the app at courses.spotify.com slash home, thanks to the anti-steering rules from Apple and Google that prevent companies from telling you about ways to pay that don't give Apple or Google a cut. So Trisha, I don't know if you use Spotify. Do you use Spotify for anything? I do. So we use Spotify in my house as the way to listen to music. That is our preferred music app when driving in the car, mostly. Do you use it for anything like the audiobooks or the podcasts or anything? No, I use Audible for my audiobooks. Spotify is really just for music for me. So like, would I tune in to the spotlight for? Yeah, what about taking a course? What if you wanted to get creative? And I'm assuming there might be like a video editing course or something in there. I don't know. I mean, I'm familiar with Skillshare, so I feel like I would just go to Skillshare if I wanted that, or I would do what everybody else does in YouTube it. There's a million complementary how-to videos out there. I mean, more than a million, a million plus I'm sure at this point, how-to videos out there on YouTube that are totally free. So that would be my destination because for me, I think of Spotify as audio only. And if I'm going to be learning a skill, I'm a visual learner. So I want a nice video. And even though it says it comes with supplementary materials like PDFs, I don't know that that would be the optimal way to learn for me. Now that being said, if you're someone who maybe has a really long commute, so you're looking specifically for an audio course, maybe this would be a nice destination for you. I don't know, Tom, how do you feel about this? Do you think this is something you would go to? I was thinking along the same line. So I was surprised that these are video lessons that Spotify is providing, but you're right, most people aren't going to treat them that way. And they even said like, you won't even have to look at them. You can just listen to them in the background because I think they kind of know that that's how people use Spotify. It's a little bit of a change in approach for someone to think of Spotify as a thing to sit down and watch. I don't think they've had a lot of video stuff, but maybe this is tiptoeing in. And I think that's why they're testing it in the UK, is they're going to see, does this work? Does the fact that you don't have to go to Skillshare, right? This is maybe for someone who's not you or I who know about Skillshare already, but somebody who's like, oh, I've been wanting to learn that. I can do it in Spotify. Great, I'll do it. I think they're going to see how many of those people exist versus how many of us exist where we're like, yeah, I'm not going to do that in Spotify. Yeah, I mean, that is true. Like we're pretty online savvy people. We would know about that. And I would imagine a lot of listeners into this podcast or probably in the same boat, but it remains to be seen for people that are Spotify daily users if this would be something that they're interested in. I mean, in general, I'm all for getting as much education in the hands of people as we possibly can, like empowering people to further their careers. I like the idea that you get the first two lessons for freeze. You can find out if you like the course itself, if you like the instructor, et cetera, before paying into it. I kind of wish that if you're already paying for Spotify, this was like an added bonus, not a pay on top of paying. But I mean, we'll just have to see how in demand it is. I applaud Spotify for trying something new. My cynical hesitation is that every app wants to be everything to everybody right now. And as someone who feels the need to be ever present on social media in all the places, it's just exhausting. I don't want to consume content everywhere. I don't want to make content for everywhere. So that's the cynical knee-jerk reaction, part of this for me. But honestly, I do love empowering people with education. I think that's a good thing. And if Spotify wants to move in that direction, that could be really nice. I think what is smart about this is Spotify said around half of its paying subscribers have engaged with education or self-help themed podcasts. So they're trying to look at what are people already doing on our platform? What does our own data tell us? Can we provide them with more of that versus them just picking something that they decided that people would want? I like that idea anyway, if that stat is right. And then testing it very, very limited to see if they're right about that. That all makes sense. But I'm with you. I think people are starting to get weary of everything trying to be everything. And I know that Spotify said we didn't want to create a separate app for this because we want it to be convenient, but I almost think it might be better to create a separate app because then it at least feels like, okay, Spotify has an online courses app, great. That's a separate thing that I can try with my subscription, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. And then there's those rumors kicking around that Spotify might even want to have an extra more expensive tier out there. So maybe this becomes part of that where you don't even have to pay for the courses. We'll see. In an interview with Polygon at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft head of gaming Phil Spencer said he had tried all the new PC gaming handhelds. When does he have time and still run the Xbox department? Anyway, he said, I've tried them all. He specifically named the ASUS ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and of course, Steam Deck. Spencer says he wants them to feel more like an Xbox, which, you know, he runs Xbox, so you would expect him to maybe say that. But he also said, I'm on the airplane and I have this list of everything that makes it feel, not feel like an Xbox. So he's taken notes. He said a lot of other things in this podcast that intimates that they are considering handhelds in developing Xbox products, both hardware and software. He said, I want to be able to boot into the Xbox app in a full screen on these handhelds. I want it to feel like the dash of my Xbox when I turn on the television. He said that Roseanne Sones, who runs the Xbox hardware team, is working on a different hardware form factor of some sort. They're looking at different ones to decide if they work. He said that will allow people to play at times when they couldn't play in the past, which would imply handhelds. But he also talked about improving the software experience and wanting that to be available for all handhelds. You know, saying we don't want people to feel like they have to choose one handheld in order to play Xbox games. It sounds to me Tish, like Xbox wants to make a handheld and also wants to make Xbox software work better on handhelds. What are you taking from this? This was really interesting to me because as someone who loves my Asus ROG Ally, I use it every time I fly. I don't want it to be an Xbox. So when he's like, I have a list of all the things that make it feel not like an Xbox. I'm thinking good. It is a handheld gaming PC, not a handheld Xbox. These are different things in my book. What I'm looking at these devices are is my gaming PC I can take with me on the go, which is revolutionary. We've not been able to do that before. We've seen tons of console handhelds over the years. Like that to me is not nearly as exciting. Now that being said, if Xbox did want to make a handheld, that would be interesting. I don't know that I'd be the target market for it. Also, when they're like play Xbox in ways you haven't played it in the past. I mean, Game Pass Ultimate has allowed cloud gaming of many, many Xbox games on your mobile phone now for years. And it's not a terrible experience. And on things like the Asus ROG Ally for sure, and I would imagine on the other hand held as well, you can just open the Xbox app the same way you would on a Windows computer. You just open the Xbox app if you want the Xbox experience. Now, to his point of, could the software be a bit more intuitive? I have heard, I don't own a Steam Deck, but I have heard from friends that have tested it out that it's a bit of a more intuitive experience where it launches up in a more console-like launcher. Whereas the ROG Ally, one thing I can knock about it if I had to, if I had to pick on it a little bit is that it feels like you're using a Windows PC for better or worse. If you're very familiar with gaming PCs, it might not be weird to you to have to install Battle.net to play your Blizzard games and to have to install EA Origins if you want to go that route or to have to install the Game Pass app or the Xbox app if you want to access your Game Pass games. I do game on PCs, so I'm very familiar with that. And while setup is a little bit of a bear to go through all that, and might it be nicer to have like one launcher that gets it all for you? Sure, but I also think that's a different thing. So Phil Spencer wants to make a handheld Xbox. That's cool, but it's just funny to me that he was like, who needs this handheld gaming PC? Let's make it an Xbox. Like, ooh, I still want that handheld gaming PC. Thank you. He said a lot of things in the course of this interview. And in what has become Phil Spencer's style, none of them were very solid. They were all like vague hints at like, I don't know, maybe this, maybe I'm half revealing something, maybe I'm not, maybe I'll never turn into anything. Which I think he... Yeah, I think he does that to see what your reaction is, right? He wants to hear these kinds of conversations like we're having right now. Because on the one hand, he talks specifically about like, yeah, it's not ideal to have the Windows desktop experience be your gaming interface on a handheld. And I want to fix that, right? And that directly addresses what you're talking about with the ROG Ally. So I feel like, yes, that's good. But then he also talked about bringing the Xbox experience to the handheld. And it's like, well, maybe that's also not the best experience. If what he's really talking about is, we would like to make an interface, we might call it Xbox, but an interface specifically for handhelds that would work on any handheld, which he said, he's like, I want to go play my console games on the go. I don't want to be able to buy, have to buy one brand of handheld. Then, yeah, maybe they can. And that is how they do things with laptops and tablets these days, right? They make the surface line to show, okay, we've learned how to make an interface with Windows for this. And then they still work with their other partners to sell laptops and tablets from other people. Maybe that's what he's talking about, is we could make an Xbox handheld that gets the interface right for that form factor, and then other handhelds could use it. Maybe, I would love to see them get the interface right for other form factors. I honestly, I think the Game Pass interface for mobile is really solid, but the Xbox app, even with the update they've had over the years is still not my favorite. I think still has some work to do when you fire it up on a PC. And so if they could make that feel a little bit more intuitive both on a PC and on a gaming handheld, two thumbs up from this lady for that one. I think that would be stellar. Yeah, all the thumbs, Phil. Yeah, I will try to remember to follow up when Microsoft or if and when Microsoft does anything in this space to say, okay, let's compare it to what Phil was saying back then, because I don't think there's any direction here other than like, hey, we're paying attention to this space. Wink, wink, what do y'all want, right? And we'll see what they come back with. Apple is another company that makes technology products and we've got a whole show devoted to people talking about how they use Apple products. There's a lot of shows out there talking about Apple news, but Sarah Lane and Eileen Rivera on Apple Vision Show talk about whether Apple's vision matches with their vision for what they want from their electronic devices. So get subscribed right now at applevisionshow.com. Capcom just released Dragon's Dogma 2. It came out to critical praise for the gameplay. It also came out with a lot of criticism. The game has attracted criticism partly for poor performance, partly for DeNouveau's anti-cheat software being included, but mostly for microtransactions. This is a single-player game. This is not an MMO, but instead of spending large amounts of time finding 21 rare in-game items, you can instead choose to pay 99 cents to three bucks for 21 of those in-game items. Those are things like port crystals, which makes traveling easier. Reviving a character in the middle of combat. Tricia, these aren't things that are gonna give you an edge over another player because you're not playing against anybody but yourself. Why are people so incensed by Dragon's Dogma 2's microtransactions? Great question. So on one hand of this discussion, we have the let people play how they wanna play. If someone wants to play, pay full price for a game and then pay to not have to play the full game, that's up to them. Like you can choose that. It's an option that you can choose or not. As someone that loves to play single-player games, I am used to paying full ticket price for a game, whether that's 60 or $70 nowadays. And then that's it. I've played the game and I don't wanna feel like I'm nickel and dime to the rest of my experience. Also kind of on the other hand of this conversation that goes with the not wanting to be nickel and dined, there are a lot of people and a lot of games to give the example of, even when you give the argument of, oh, but it's only cosmetics, oh, but it's only optional, are there things designed in the game to be a lesser experience? Like Dragon's Dogma 2, for example, I'm not all the way through it, so I can't comment on this, but if they're charging you for fast travel is getting from one point to another really grindy and not fun. Then it would encourage you to want to buy these fast travel port crystals or are port crystals incredibly hard to find in the game? So you feel the need that you need to pay for them extra. I mean, there's a lot of conversation about when are microtransactions okay? When are they not okay? And I feel like a lot of different people who play video games have different feelings on that based on the types of game you play. If you're a multiplayer gamer, you might be more used to the games as a service. If you're a mobile gamer primarily, you might be more used to microtransactions, but I think for an entire generation of console and PC gamer that is used to single player narrative experiences, we want to buy a game and then not have to think about being nickel and dimed after that. In fact, Larian games when they made Baldur's Gate 3 came out and said intentionally, they were giving you a complete experience with the purchase of the game and gamers everywhere were joiced. Now that being said, Tom, I think we've had this conversation on Daily Tech News Show before. Many video game publishers and developers are making a whole lot of money using microtransactions and that games as a service model. And so when we talk about the shareholder and stock prices being the God that everyone's praying to as opposed to making great games or trying to ride that line, is it just inevitable that these microtransaction-y types of monetization models are going to be what is the future of gaming, whether or not the consumer wants that? Do you have a take on that? Yeah, it was interesting in that CNBC article about microtransactions and the industry depending on them that they noted that electronic arts and take-to both make the majority of their money buy a lot from live service games, subscriptions and in-game purchases. So in other words, not from the initial price but from ongoing charges of various kinds and that's out of their recent earnings reports. Ideally, what people pay for is what they enjoy doing, right? And I think that lack of trust and expectation because people have abused that in the past, especially on mobile, is what's causing a lot of the ire here. Again, theoretically, I'm not making a statement about Dragon's Dogma but theoretically, Dragon's Dogma 2 could create a game that is perfect as it is and you can play it through and be satisfied just like Baldur's Gate and he won't feel like you're missing anything but still allow you to pay a little extra to speed things up, right? To give you a revive you wouldn't get. To give a port crystal, which by all accounts, doesn't really give you fast travel so much as like just make it easier to move between areas because it's restricted. And if that's true and if you trust that, you shouldn't quote unquote be upset, right? You're getting a perfectly satisfactory game and you don't have to pay extra but you can if you just kind of want to like, I don't want to have to grind out one of those port crystals I just want one now so I'll pay three bucks for it, whatever. I don't even know how much they're charging but 99 cents to three bucks for it. That shouldn't be a problem. I think what got people upset is they are thinking, well, if you are charging for these as other people have done in the past, it's because you need them, right? Otherwise you're not gonna make enough money to make it worthwhile. So you must have designed the game in a way that will push me to want to buy them and then I feel like I have to buy them and then I feel like I'm not getting the full game. Yes, very, very well said. There have been developers and games in the past that we've all probably played that have abused it and I think also the big issue with Dragon's Dogma too is that when a lot of the critics who reviewed the game very well reviewed it, it was prior to the game's launch and the microtransaction ecosystem hadn't been finalized yet. So a lot of reviewers were reviewing it without that aspect of the game which is why none of them mentioned it. And then when consumers get their hands on they're like, wait a second, I wasn't told. This would have microtransactions. I feel lied to, like I feel misled. And so that's a lot of the pushback there as well. As far as overall microtransactions in games, again, it depends what kind of games you typically play. If it's framed as a battle pass, does that give it more value? And is that something people are more willing to sign up for seasonally or something like that for an ongoing games as a service model? Or for mobile games, even if it's not a great game and most consumers are like, I feel like I'm being forced to spend money. All it takes is one or two that are like, yeah, I'm gonna drop a few thousand dollars on this game to negate everyone else complaining about it. Like that's all it takes. Yeah, exactly. And I think Dragon's Dogma 2 was trying to create a satisfactory game that you don't have to pay extra for while taking advantage of those one or two people that might wanna add some extra fun things. Get some cosmetic improvements without having to grind them out because they've got a little bit of disposable income, which maybe led to the decision to not put microtransactions in the review copy because then they can say, right, it backfired on them, but the thinking could have been, well, if we get a good review without them, then we can say, see, it's a good game. You don't need the microtransactions, but instead it looked like they were springing something on people. It's difficult because as soon as you bring up microtransactions, people's back goes up because they're like, okay, so you're trying to extract money from me. Yep, and I am one of those people, honestly, because I predominantly play single player experience games. Anytime I see microtransactions in something, I'm immediately turned off, immediately turned off. And it's like they have to earn back my trust at that point. And I wouldn't even say nine times out of 10, 19 times out of 20, they don't earn back my trust after that. So I'm one that's like, ooh, microtransactions, now I'm good to hard pass. Yeah, I've tempted to say they just need to rebrand them for trustworthiness, but it's a vocabulary that we use, right? Like we have substituted microtransactions or in-game purchases or DLC or whatever as this is something trying to fool me, right? And so whatever you call them, it's gonna make people skeptical. And whether it's fair or not, it's gonna be hard for a company to convince you that a microtransaction isn't exploitative. Yep, that's well said. Although DLC, you mentioned DLC. DLC is the one thing that I'm like, oh no, that's like a separate game. That's like a- Because you're getting more content, right? Right. Okay, that's a good point, yeah. That's a little different. Yeah, and that's the key is like, you have to make people feel like you're paying for substance and then they don't mind as long as they have a choice. As long as they feel like, oh, that's a thing I don't have to pay for, but if I do, I'm getting something cool. Yes, or in my opinion, free to play games and every gamer has a different line, but if it's free to play and I've been enjoying the game for 20 plus hours at least, I feel like I should pay the devs some money. So then I don't really mind spending money in their game. But a full-price single-player game tops out. Yeah. Well, folks, let us know where you fall in this line. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We got a message from Chris Christensen, the amateur traveler. If you find switching your Bluetooth headphones to an external audio horse kind of a pain, well, Chris might have the gadget you need. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another tech in travel minute. Something that I picked up in the goodie bag from the Travel Goods Association show that I was at in Las Vegas is the Hypergear Intellicast Flight. As someone who has Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones that I use on flights, that works great to use them wirelessly until I want to use them with the in-seat entertainment system, in which case I have to find the cables and plug those in and use it that way instead. But the Intellicast Flight is something you can use as a transmitter. You plug it in where you would plug in headphones and it will broadcast out to your Bluetooth headphones, whether that be in the gym or the airplane or in a local TV. And then it also has a receiver mode so that it can receive Bluetooth audio and allow that to go into a non-Bluetooth device as well. The device, again, is the Hypergear Intellicast Flight and this is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. I have a different brand of the same kind of thing and I've ended up only using it once because I just always end up on a plane where they have the double prong outlet instead of the single mini-jack. Dog darn, I have reviewed many similar devices to that. And I will say, I think they're interesting. In addition to On a Flight, they could maybe work great on an elliptical machine or something like that. There's a lot of different ways that you could use a device like that. But I often end up on planes where they just want you to use your own device rather than having a screen built into the seat in front of you and then I have no problem because my buds work but not just mine. But it is handy and a good thing to know about. Thank you, Chris Christensen and thank you, Trish Hershberger. You've got a lot going on these days. Where can folks keep up with all of it? I'm probably most active on Twitch, twitch.tv slash Trish or Hershberger as well as Instagram at that girl Trish. But I try to post content in all the places. So I'm honestly, I'm that girl Trish with no eye in the girl, just that GRL Trish on Instagram, TikTok, all the places except for YouTube and Twitch where I'm just my name, Trish or Hershberger. Fan. Hi sometime. Yes, do, go say hi. Patrons, you can get more information from Trish and myself if you stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. The Financial Times has a chat bot trained on only its own stuff. Maybe this is the future of LLMs, restricting them, not making them bigger. You can catch the show live Monday through Friday 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more about that at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow discussing the implications of generative AI on video making with Andrew Maine. Talk to you then. The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.