 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast. Wait, I thought I was talking to that. It's already started great. Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast on CES day. This is officially day one. This is day one. What? This is the first day the floor is open. Yesterday was day zero. Yesterday was day zero. Right. CES day one. This is the first day of the show? We're here live from beautiful downtown Las Vegas on the, in the parking lot adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center. Under the monorail. Under the monorail, the scenic monorail, wherein the Las Vegas Convention Center, wherein the consumer electronics show is in fact occurring during business hours, which end at some point. Anyhow, I'm Josh Dabolsky. I'm Paul Miller. And we have a very special guest. Nilay Patel. Nilay Patel here with us, who is, you know, I'll be honest, he looks a little different after a few days of CES. I don't feel so good. I'll be honest with you. I think. I think there's something wrong with Nilay. And I am, I'm concerned, but I also feel like he looks a little better too. Certainly slightly lighter. I could, either way I could learn to love this Nilay. This Nilay is, is lovable. Do you want me to talk to you guys about patent law? Please. Yes. Just give us a quick rundown. It's all messed up right now. And things are getting real bad out there. Keep going. I think the government needs to take some responsibility. Yes. Go on. I like, I get behind that. We need to stop capitulating to the corporate interests. Basically, this is basically the old Nilay is back as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. I'm back. I needed your shot. Back and better than ever. This is actually Chris Grant. This is Chris Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon.com, our sister site. Our sister, our little baby sister. Everyone knows that, you know, I'm here along with Mick McQuirter because CES is the biggest gaming trade show of the year. Actually the biggest, most interesting stuff at this show has been gaming. Happens to be gaming. Has been gaming related. I will say that this time last week, I tried hanging myself knowing that CES was coming and then I got interrupted. And I tried drinking and taking a lot of pills and that didn't work. Yeah. It was, that was a cry for help. Yeah. You didn't really want to die. You just wanted someone to know how much you were hurting about CES. And how much I didn't want to be a CES right now. And now I'm here. And I will say quite honestly, this is the most exciting CES I've ever been to. I actually, really, I'm going to say, I'm going to say this is one of, this is number six or seven. This is one of the most exciting I've been to. I don't know why. There have just been interesting. I don't, I can't explain it. I am having more fun this year. I think there's a couple of reasons and then we'll get into it. First off, I think there have been a couple of really interesting developments. 4k. No, but, but there, but yeah. But it's, but there, I think there's no, it's high resolution. I saw, I watched, I looked at 4k today by the way. I'm not impressed. I'm not that impressed. You're impressed. I'm a little impressed. It's just a higher resolution. I'm used to higher resolution displays. You know, an iPad three right in front of you is basically like a kind of a, it's like two and a half K TV. Right. Whatever. I have an iPad. I have a 4k TV. Huh? Yeah. Anyhow, but let's, let's talk about the iPad. Okay. I want to talk about CS. Why do you like CS? I think it's been cool stuff. I also think, um, you know, we had last night we talked about this Qualcomm keynote, which was just absolutely terrible, but I feel like we made lemonade out of the lemons of it by kind of poking fun at it, which was really enjoyable. And I think people enjoy it. And what I will say is, uh, we were poking fun at that, but that, what I realized truly today is that doesn't, that really doesn't represent this show. That stuff doesn't represent what's going on at the show. I think it's, I think at one point it used to. No, I think maybe before Qualcomm did what they did last night, it used to. But I know Microsoft was so, Microsoft was so tone deaf usually, but it was not as tone deaf. Microsoft was so very tone deaf that it made me realize that what happens on the floor. And then I went out on the floor today to do this, this Sony interview, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But I was like, this is, CS has got some weird, interesting stuff going on out there that has nothing to do with the garbage that we saw. I saw the Qualcomm thing. You know what I didn't think it was weird? I didn't even bat an eye, which is sad. I feel like I'm like a rug. I don't know how to feel anymore. Um, I've seen that. I've seen a Konami E3 press conference. I'm told you've seen a Konami E3 press conference where they play their own game, fail at it, and get up and leave the stage and then stop their press conference. And you're like, wait, what just happened? When you see that, well then you haven't lived, brother. Chris and I, Chris and I, for the announcement of like the pre-announcement of the Kinect, I forget what it even was. We went, is it E3 one year, went to a Coliseum and stood in ponchos. That was for Kinect, yeah. We stood in white ponchos. We stood in white ponchos. They gave them to you? Milling around, waiting. It was like, if Cirque du Soleil and, um, what was that band that had like, uh. Fall Out Boy. Close. Oh, oh, oh. They did the album, The Black Parade. My Chemical Romance. No, no, it was a thousand people wearing like all white and they did like choir songs. It was, oh, oh, oh, the Polyphonic Spree. The Polyphonic Spree. Yeah, we were, and Cirque du Soleil had a fave viewer. And it was literally, didn't Microsoft do this? Microsoft, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that. That was two years ago. It was literally Cirque du Soleil. It was bizarre. It was for like, what was it for? It was for Kinect. Oh yeah, Kinect. Right, right, Project Nintal. And it was just a whole experience and it had really nothing to do with the actual press event. Movement. On the show floor, there is serious product. It's weird. There is Android tablet. No, it's so much. You know what is at this show? I actually for a second thought there was a cool Polaroid product. First it's one second, then I was like, oh, this is the worst garbage ever. Every permutation of an Android tablet and then the same thing being on your TV and then you're controlling with a game pad and a keyboard and a tablet and a phone. That's the exciting stuff. Every permutation of that stuff is out there. I have to say, like I wrote this thing, I keep referencing it, but today I saw it in action, this we have no idea what we're doing with all this technology yet and we're just starting to figure it out. They're just starting to go, whoa, we could do, the phone could do this on the TV. That's so awesome though. What the, what is happening? Here's why it's exciting for me. I keep feeling, I'm seeing all these products. I saw the Arcos TV today, the Arcos TV Kinect. It's a tablet, it's an Android tablet on your TV. How do you control an Android tablet on your TV? It's so simple on a tablet and all of a sudden it's like, well that's really hard, but the idea is cool, right? The idea of putting stuff. Arcos is not known for like blockbuster. Well the Arcos gamepad, did you play with the gamepad though? You're playing really excited about this. I wanted us to cover the gamepad so we could just do the headline that we did. What is the headline? Which was, watch out, Project Shield, here comes the Arcos gamepad. Here's the thing about it. It looks really bad. Do you think about, even the Arcos gamepad or the, it's almost the same exact thing as the TV. Right. It remaps inputs to buttons. Right. Like it's very close. No, it's a simple idea. Here's the thing, like. The company that's gonna. But. I'm not an Arcos fan. I'm not a crack nut nut. I think Arcos is a good example of like, this is how much technology you've got in just a dinky little crappy product that's like $160. Yep. Bingo. Yeah. It has like a PSP style gamepad. You can map buttons to any touch screen game so they don't have to redevelop the games to connect to the gamepad. Right. So you can map the buttons. But it's like $160 something dollars. It plays these games. You know, NVIDIA. $169. Oh, I'm sorry. $169. NVIDIA is, you know, the project shield, which I don't actually know much about at all because I haven't seen it. But I'm sure it's gonna be way better graphics stuff, but all that stuff's gonna be locked up in the Tegra zone. Right, right. I'm very dubious on all these products. Here's the thing. I think this is the most exciting CES because of all these products. But I am. No, no, no. I would put money on saying that they're all gonna fail. No, I would say that we are seeing a lot of things that are not necessarily. Experiments. Slam dunks. They are experiments. Or they're, let's throw it out there and see if somebody likes it or let's just try this out. I play some emulated PlayStation games. You're gonna say that right here on the... You know, that sounds awesome. I would be into it. You of course own the physical copies. I own the physical copies. Of course. Of course. I own numerous physical copies of numerous original PlayStation games. Here's the thing about it though. The way I've been looking at it is at first I saw it as Android, but now with all this Steam box stuff, now Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid 2. But now that you've got... Snakes Revenge. Is that what it's called? Sons of Liberty. Metal Gear Solid 2. Oh yeah, that's right. Metal Gear Solid 2. So for a second I thought it was kiddie and then I went, no, wait a second. That's real. That's an actual Metal Gear Solid. But not canonical. See, who am I looking at? Not canonical. Anyway. You know why? No cannons in it. Snake never gets revenge. So let's go into the history of it. It was actually developed by Konami instead of... Not because of the cannons. Not canonical. Oh. Yeah. All right. Judges say yes. You didn't pipe and smoke it. Using people at home... You are putting it in your pipe and smoke it. There's a guy on his couch and I was like, is that what I'm smoking? Put that in your cannon and fire it. Put that in your apple and smoke it. This is fresh. So the point thing is, the interesting thing is that there's this... At CES here, Consumer Electronics. It's normally terrible for games because games for years have operated outside of the sort of... I shouldn't say operated. They've been defined outside of the realm of Consumer Electronics. Nintendo is the perfect example. It's been pushed by console makers, which I don't think of as Consumer Electronics makers. They make platforms. They maintain them. So even when Microsoft was here, they would talk about some Xbox stuff, which usually never happened, IPTV or whatever. Sony is here to talk about how PlayStation has great Blu-ray. Great content. Great content. But they don't talk about games. They control ecosystems and content. But now all of a sudden, when you have software platforms that are open and you can have companies plug into those just by making hardware that works with it. So Android, not the best gaming platform, but the fact that it's open means you can have Ouya or Game Stick or Green Fowl's Gaming or Project Shield or Arcos TV or I'm probably forgetting some. There's a ton of things here that are just plugging into Android. I don't know if any of them are going to work, but the fact that they're making them... I think it's possible. It's really exciting. And I think it's also true that it's possible that they can work. And Ouya, I don't know, but I think it's possible it could be something special. And it could be an alternative or just a completely different experience to what we have now. Speaking of, can I segue into... Can I get a segue? There's one outside I'd like to ride it into. I do want to say, almost all of these sound like I don't think I want to buy into that because I've got to buy in and go all the way, but I really could actually see myself getting that Arcos. I've never thought of... I want to see you get that Arcos. Hey guys, what are you doing? I will give you the money to buy the Arcos. And by the way, the way CS works, you folks at home may not know this, but Josh gives you all sorts of money all the time. If you're at CS, I'll give you enough money to buy whatever you want. Just kidding. Did I need to say just kidding? I don't know anymore. Just kidding. Just kidding. Sometimes people can't... Sometimes people say, they say, Josh, you're so earnest. You speak so earnestly. You're always sharing truth. And you're always sharing truth and being laying down truthiness that... Dropping knowledge. I don't know when you're being sarcastic. Josh has a little card that he holds up. Sometimes it says JK. So he'll just hold it up. I'm just... When I'm talking. So you won't say it, it'll just say JK. But... What was I going to say? I was going to buy you the art. You were going to buy me the art. No, I was going to say, if you guys don't know this at home, that at the end of the show sometimes some of the manufacturers here, usually the ones in the... The international. The international wing pavilion where they come back with a bunch of stuff, they'll sell you... Because it's... What's happening? You just go over there. They will sell you stuff. Because it's so expensive. You're like, are you going to take that, the keyboard with the purple keys? You're not taking that back, are you? I'll give you $15 for that. Hold on a second, that's a mouse pad, but it's also a foot massager? Can I bring that home? How much? Do you have a second one? Do I need one for each foot or is that... But in dollars, not yen. I don't know what the yen is. I'm sorry. Yeah. But... But there are things here that I actually do... Have you seen this? I do want to buy. Let me look this up while you're doing this. If you get the CES app, did you guys get the app? It had such bad reviews that I didn't download it. If you go through the list of exhibitors... He can't get the app. Come on, man. Yeah, no, he can't. You get the list of exhibitors. You can't see it at home. Watch what happens when I get to S and I get to Shenzhen. Those are all companies that begin with the name Shenzhen. Did you see that? Yeah. There's like 200 companies that begin with Shenzhen. That's the International Hall. It's incredible. Anyhow... There's even some Shenzhen's in the Central Hall. Yes, they sneak out. Some Shenzhen's have... There's a Shenzhen, right? You can run for freedom to them. There's a Shenzhen right next to the other one. To the Central Hall. They've gotten there. If anyone's been to E3 for a long time, there was Kensha Hall, which is where you saw all the weird stuff. They shut it down eventually. What if... It's the new Kensha Hall. What if the International Hall... But it's been there for a while. It's always been there. What if the International Hall was just one big plane of people from China and it lands and it unfolds and then... Like the sides of it crack open and it just goes like that. It's like a GI joke thing. It's a wandering exhibit. And then it folds back up and they fly back to China. I do want to talk about something that is here that I do want to spend money on and will spend money on, copious amounts, Oculus Rift. I thought we were going to talk about Steam Box. We were talking about continent. Okay, I'm going to hold on Oculus Rift. Let's talk about Steam Box. But coming up next, Oculus Rift. I just want to say this. So the Verge had a rumor a couple of years, like six years ago or something like that. It was a long time ago. That was the Steam Box. And it said Valve is working on a console. We got a lot of ass talked on us about that. A lot of people were like, yeah, likely. Even today, PC Gamer wrote a report like, there's no Steam Box. So I'm going to give credit here. As frustrating as it is, I'm going to tell you the story. It was not my intention to hurt you. I know you. It hurts. We both like games. There is a certain area of gaming that we obviously are interested in. What is that? Do you ever get the same color shirt? It's the same color shirt. Oh, it's a polygon. It's exact. Did you coordinate that? Maybe. By the way, by the way, I've asked. Did you design the shirt? I've based it on the colors of a shirt you already own. Yes. By the way, I've asked, cannot get a polygon shirt. No one will give me one. Limited edition. Yeah, so limited that your good buddy over here, your co-editor-in-chief. Guys, I want to talk to the people, the American people. Talk to you guys at home. Talk to that camera if you want to talk right to them. Right there. So we saw the Xi3 yesterday. We talked to them, talked to Valve, talked to everybody else. It's a prototype development stage unit, one of Valve's multiple hardware partners making a Steam box. I went to Valve's booth first thing this morning, literally tracked it down like a bloodhound, sniffed it out. It's not even labeled or anything. Got there, talked to them, and if you've ever worked with Valve, you probably recognize this. They're like, you know, we're not really looking to talk. It's like, look, just give me five minutes. I just want to talk to you guys. I said, no, not so much. I was like, I can see Gabe, right when I got there, Gabe was going into a meeting in their closed room. So I was like, well, Gabe's here. Maybe you can make a couple minutes. And they're like, yeah. So I get to talk to Greg Coomer for about 10 minutes. We talk about some stuff. He was the original champion and architect of Steam big picture mode, which kind of became this whole effort. Either way, I had to take what you get because Valve is tricky to deal with and leave. I get back to the trailer maybe 10 minutes later. I find out that the Verge guys saw Gabe go into the bathroom. And basically, don't give away all of our trade secrets. Look, everybody in the games press knows the only way to get an interview with Gabe is that you have to find him. He's like in a video game where you like uncover something. It's like a secret level. You use the right warp tube and you get to Gabe. If you go to Gabe's place, he's never there, but you have to find him. So they found Gabe and they're just like, hey, can we talk to you about all this stuff? And he's like, sure. We found him in an uncompromising position. No, he wasn't compromised. They literally bolted the bathroom door shut. Can't get out. Here's what happened. We have a huge scary guy that we bring with us. We find out when people we want to talk to are- We have an intern in each bathroom. When people are going to the bathroom and then we have this gentleman stand in front of the door and we say something along the lines of, I'm not going to quote exactly, but something like, you'll never walk again if you don't tell us what we want. Your family- There's no soap in the soap dispensers, but we brought hand sanitizer. We'll list the names of their loved ones and not say anything that we're going to do to them. Not say anything we're going to do to them, but intimate that something bad could happen. And you also put an out of order. Then I held up my JK card. So they see it. No, but- So what happened? I don't know what happened. I literally know what happened. Go ahead. Finish your story. Either way, so the point being is we were trying to get the follow up work on the Steam Box story and the version of getting a killer, massive breakdown. And Gabe's dropping details. He's just like, oh, this is how it's going to work. This thing that they haven't confirmed before. Maybe he's a head fake. He could have just been lying. This thing that at the same time they publish theirs, there's other outlets that are publishing that none of this stuff is true. And Gabe's like, oh, it's not. But here's basically the details. Like specifically. What are the details? What's happening with Steam Box? Oh, other outlets. There's some cool stuff. Here's like one of the great- So number one, he confirmed that they're- So the idea of the Steam Box, it's a press chosen moniker. They've never used that term before. So even as a Steam Box, the idea could be that- Where did that come from? Steam Box? I think that came from a- Wasn't from, was it from us? I think it was from you. Might have been. I think that that was part of the original piece of information. Data. Here's the thing. So they'd never talked about the specificity of Steam Box and they had talked as early as last night or this morning about multiple kind of Steam Boxes, multiple hardware partners making devices that would be compatible or optimized for Steam Big Picture. But today Gabe was like, yeah, we're going to make our own and ship it ourselves. So crazy. No equivocation. Just straight up, we're making our own device. He's just getting tired of- He's supposed to be so tired of saying no. We're making one. This is not my deal. I make games. It's in run Linux. It's going to be Linux. If they want Windows, they can put Windows on it. He said we won't make it hard. If you want Windows, have Windows. But it'll run Linux and it'll have Steam on Linux and then what games are there? There's a handful of Valve games that work on Steam on Linux now. But that's it. I mean, I think a big part of this would be if they put their device out on Linux, it's going to be an incentive for developers to start supporting Linux. Let's be honest. This is what has to happen. Exclusive Half-Life 3 only on the Steam. Only on- That would be cruel of them though. Their own audience would literally destroy them. They would actually go, they would get on a bus, they would go to their building and they would literally murder them. Not a plane because as everyone knows, Valve fans are afraid of flying. Buses or maybe trains. No, they'd have to take multiple buses. Multiple buses. And that motley crew, that mob would descend on Bellevue, Washington. Rip them. Rip them. Literally rip them piece by piece apart. Gabe's parts strewn all over the- Gabe parts? Gabe parts. What makes the Steam box so special then? Because Valve is making it? Here's what Greg Coomer told me. Greg Coomer was really early OG at Valve and was responsible for sort of identifying, he does user experience, UI. And he said it was actually their users that basically told them that we like to play games on our TV, we own games on Steam, why can't? These things should work better together. And so they sort of, the way he thought about it was that Steam was broken and that it wasn't a good TV experience. Like this is not just like we need to make this better, but it's actually broken. This is what users expect. We know our users like games on television and in the living room, that's what's been happening in our industry for a decade. So they need to fix it. So the big picture was not a new feature, it was a fix on something that they considered broken. They said at the time that they started talking about this, it was about two years ago, they were quote unquote surprised that the PC manufacturers hadn't done more work to sort of meet them there. That they thought that PC manufacturers were going to be making PCs that were quiet, that looked good in the living room. Wasn't there a rumor that somebody was making... We talked about this. Alienware made the X-50. It was the Alienware box that you were basically like yeah that's the chassis in essence. But what's funny is coming back to that point you were making about the Android stuff and the... Michael, do we have a refill of beer for this guy or is that possible? I mean anybody here could get to Tyler's here. He could do it. Michael, you don't have to go. Let Tyler go. Let Tyler. I went to college. You wanted the screen time. You know we have to pay him extra. Now we have to pay him a couple hundred bucks. He's also now in the screen actor's cut. But it's funny to come around to what you were just saying about all these things with Android and the idea that you could build a TV and oh yeah you have this gaming built into the TV. I was just thinking yeah how come nobody ever made a really high powered PC with a TV on it? And it was like we have a mode you can go into and play games and you can watch whatever. The interesting thing is they're looking at it from a different system. You could go into a... What's the Apple mode called when you go into the... You don't want a PC... Why am I doing this? You don't want a PC type... So here's the thing. We're seeing all these devices that are shipping video up to TV from any other device. Why wouldn't you just ship video from your PC? But no I'm saying when you talk about that it's like oh yeah PCs just abandoned the living room altogether. They said we don't want... That's not where we go. There's a couple big reasons why. And I think it's not... You don't have to look far. The most predominant operating system on the market is Windows. What was Microsoft's play 11 years ago? Windows Media said. Xbox. That was their living room play. They literally made a device that didn't run on Windows as complicated as that was to sell internally in the Microsoft bureaucracy in 2001. It was even harder in 2005 or before when they shipped Xbox 360. They tasty. I hope it's not Blue Moon again, Michael. What? No, it's different. I'll be disappointed. You can see it's not Blue Moon. What kind of beer expert are you? But I know that's not Blue Moon. Is this Corona? It's all that was left. I'm sorry in advance. It's Corona. Wow. You were complaining about Blue Moon. Savages drink all the fat tires. Oh man. Okay. Anyway. Microsoft made this play for Xbox. Windows, they never had an interest. They had Media Center. Media Center did some things but didn't really do a lot of things well. The idea though was that there was these three components. One was the hardware. One was the operating system. The other was an actual game-centric platform on that device. Steam said we can take care of the game-centric platform. We can do that. That's on us. The hardware, we're really surprised that hardware manufacturers haven't looked at the success of PlayStation and Xbox and thought, we should do that. Well, I get that. They have to build all that stuff around it because every hardware manufacturer doesn't have what Steam has, which is a vibrant, thriving ecosystem- Yeah, 50 million users buying those games.... with people who love to play games online in their homes. They needed the hardware. That's where the Steam partnerships came from, where they're talking to all these hardware manufacturers saying, we need you guys to build TV, living room-friendly devices so that we can put Steam Big Picture on it and get this in the living room. The other component that they don't have control over is, that's the monorail here, is the operating system. Right. Ultimately- They basically made an Android. Android PC. Even with Big Picture, when you leave Big Picture on your TV, it's like you're back to the desktop and you've got your gamepad in your hand. It's like, now what? Yeah, right. The Cougars had a couple of choices. Their choices were to reformat almost the operating system, maybe even under the Steam umbrella to work. You still have full operating system, file system access, all that stuff- Just like for a TV.... but it's friendly for a TV, or get rid of all of it. You just boot right into Steam. You're saying that the Linux titles, if you're not going to get first run games, you're not going to get the best of Steam. Valve will be making all of its titles first run for Linux on day one going forward. Which aren't wildly popular. If it only played Valve games, you wouldn't be doing that. I would be pretty psyched about it, personally. That's not a bad place to start from. You can put Windows on if you want. I think that there will be other Steam boxes. I think this is Valve's idea, though, is that if you don't like that- They want to make the reference. If you don't like that, we're going to make our reference. If you don't like it, get this one, which has Windows on it. Here's what I want to know. Will the Valve fans, who are very loyal, dedicated, and wild, will they buy this thing? You said yeah? I love the idea. Are people going to play Half-Life 3 on a Steam box with joysticks or a mouse and keyboard? I asked Kumer about a mouse and keyboard. Mouse and keyboard is really tricky because there is yet to be a good couch version of that. Portal is great with joysticks. I actually think you're not thinking big enough. We know that Valve has been experimenting with tons of modular controllers and all kinds of haptic stuff. Gabe mentioned gaze tracking. This really dovetails nicely into where I'm going. This really does right to where I'm headed. If you look at the Wii U and you look at Kinect and you look at what Sony has done with some motion gaming stuff, they haven't really pushed it. Sony's technology is incredible. It's really good. It's amazing. If I could get- Their applications are not- They deliver the software. They didn't play Half-Life 3 with the Move controller on my Steam box? I'm saying if you start to think about- You had it. The Oculus Rift, which we're going to talk about in a second, you start to think about all of these with that tracking. You didn't use it. Oh, you did. Okay. Right. Okay. The game was being streamed from the internet. No, it wasn't. It's okay. You're still safe. I think you start to see a really interesting picture of what- I mean, they have. We have. This is part of our- When we first ran the Steam box rumor, the story was that the modular- It all starts to make sense when you think about what they're doing. Big picture mode and the controller stuff and their desire to at least create some sort of reference design or work with partners on building this standalone- It's exciting. That makes a Steam box- I actually think- By the way, if you've got Ouya or the Steam box- I want both. Well, you can have both. The Ouya is only 99 bucks. It's 100 bucks. Just go get it. I already got mine. I'm just waiting for it to be delivered. It's 100 bucks. You didn't know that? No. It's $100 with one controller. I've been told that the game pad was made of steel. Here's what's exciting about this. What's exciting about this is we're seeing AAA gaming struggle with its entire business model. It's literally struggling. We're seeing independent gaming take off. If only we had more markets, more devices where they could actually monetize those games. We have iOS and iPad. Those are great. They're making independent development a real future, but for certain kinds of games. You know what I want? Just think- Hold on. Can I just say something? This has not happened yet, but it just occurred to me. If you've got a system like Ouya or Steam box, Steam box less so here, but Ouya raises- Steam box will be pricey. It will be pricey, but let's say Ouya, for instance, or if you had decent, I'd say good home gaming experiences and it was built on the Android platform. I think there are some really interesting ideas, some off-screen gaming experiences. Imagine you were playing a role-playing game and there was something you had a, I don't know, let's say you could get a farm or something. Can you do farming in Fable? Yeah. You have a house. You build your house. Right. You build your house. You can do things just to do certain times. If you're not gaming at a certain time of day, you get an alert on your Android device and you open, but not necessarily the game, but an app that is talking to that game and you're doing- Could be the game though. It could be the game itself and you're tending to some part of the game specifically to do something or to respond to something that's happening for a timed interval. Then when you go back that has- You can Google- That persistent. No, but I just think that there's a huge, that's just one little weird, errant thought that I had. I just think the idea of this suddenly- The developer is Josh Topolsky. It's copyright. Copyright 2013. Don't use that. You're going to get farming in your RPG. Microsoft has been talking about for like seven years. I mean that idea has been around forever. Dreamcast VMU, right? Take your game on the go. Yeah, but they've all sucked. Yeah, no, they've all sucked. And the truth is the dead space on my Android device does not suck. It's actually pretty good. Here's the thing. With the idea that Android would be on your TV and Android could be on your phone, it's the same thing. The only difference is interface. Right. And so now it's like the difference between taking your, sorry Microsoft, your Fable on Ouya to your Fable on your Android phone, it's the same game, maybe it's the same cloud save, but they know it's a different interface. So maybe on this system it's more action oriented. Right. But then when you're on the go, it's more sort of like a fable. Maybe it's more like a puzzle. Or it's more like management oriented, right? You're buying parts of the kingdom, you're buying things. I think the whole idea is really exciting. To me, these are real opportunities. They're technological opportunities. They're cultural opportunities that we're seeing for gaming right now that are outside of the sort of grip. Oh, there is a portable, I just realized there's a portable Steam box now. Which is, yeah, the Shield. Sort of, it runs Android. But that's not called Steam. It streams. It streams. From Steam. And if you have, in big picture mode, if you have the certain graphics card, I'm just saying in a way, I'm just saying in a way, well, come on. It's amazing. But I'm saying you could make the argument that you could take Steam on the road and have it in your living room. I feel like a lot of this stuff again, I just sounded like, I've heard too many keynotes because I sounded just like, like I was about to, introducing Generation Mobile on the go. Gen M. My favorite thing at the Samsung press conference is these testimonials that are totally scripted in their video testimonials. I'm generation, I'm born mobile. Was it really possible to have a refrigerator, a refrigerator, a refrigerator? A refrigirator? Was it really possible to have a refrigerator that brings a family closer together? Yeah, right. Is it? I don't know. Here's the note. I don't want to ever find out. Do you know what I'm gonna say? Let's go here. Talk to your grandparents. Every refrigerator ever since then has brought a family closer together. That's right. By definition. They gotta get in there to eat. And you make dinner with each other. You're like, grandma, can you pass me the mayonnaise? I need it, I'm making a sandwich. Boom. No, hold on. Hold on, Josh. I have to go get the ice box out back because we don't have a refrigerator. Hold on. I, we're actually living in a cave and we don't have a refrigerator. I'm going to salt these meats because we don't have a refrigerator. Hold on. I have to go to this stream where we've kept our food cold and fish it out from our secret hiding place. This is before time and space exist. It's cold and hot. Excuse me, I can't do that because I have no limbs because I'm a single cell amoeba floating in the ocean. Also, I live in a vacuum because the universe hasn't been created. So whatever. So you know what? Think about it. You know what, Samsung? Guys, look. Yes, a refrigerator can bring a family together. They, long enough timeline, Sam. Just think about it. Can we talk about the Oculus Rift? Okay. Yes. Oculus Rift. Oculus. Rift. When I say Oculus, I mean Oculus. When I say Oculus, you say Rift. Oculus. Rift. Oculus. Rift. So how about this? Think about it. Who here has seen Strange Days? Oculus. Rift. Oculus. Rift. If you guys are at home watching, if you've seen Strange Days, raise your hand. We'll give you a minute. I've seen Strange Days. Oh wait, I'm not watching at home. But I've seen it. It's not bad. Kathryn Bigelow. Kathryn Bigelow, yeah. I wrote my college thesis on VR movies. Acclaimed. Acclaimed. Well, not yet. What? Existence. VR movies. Movies that have virtual reality. Existence. Movies that have virtual reality. I'm talking about video games that were made. I watched half of that. It might also be Kronenberg's best movie. One of them. One of them. I actually like it. It's a surprise to that movie. I like it. Jude Law. I love Jude Law. So, it's great. Do I need to try to watch that again? Yes, you should watch it again. Absolutely. It's just not good for me. Well, you're wrong. So, here's the thing though. Strange Days. It's Oculus. Rift. I foresee a future. Dystopian. Utopian. You tell me. I'm not going to prescribe this. Flip of the coin. No one knows. I'm going to get my slobs hooked up to catheters. Or they've invented a pill that makes us skinny and healthy. Basically, it's a drug. And we take it as a drug. Can we talk about this for a second? Can we talk about our experience? Are you talking about taking entertainment as a drug? No, no, no. They're talking the movie Strange Days. The drug is... He's talking about Strange Days. The drug is the entertainment. We're talking about Oculus Rift, which is a device. It's the same thing. Guys. The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality, a fully immersive... You know this. You don't know. You know this too. It's a heads up display. It's not a heads up display. It's a virtual reality headset. VR goggles. It's VR goggles. And it is the exact actual promise of VR that I grew up on hoping and praying and wishing would happen. It is...I put them on tonight and I had the most incredible, inspiring, exciting...By the way, I'm not joking in any way. He's not serious. It blew me away on almost every level that I could be blown away on. Actually, when I took them off, I felt...When I took them off, I felt like I had had an experience... It's disorienting. I had almost like a drug experience that I came out of. It's a little...No, I think it's disorienting. Not just because you're in this other place. Josh, I think you and I have to get real on this though. Yeah. Paul, I don't want to out you in front of Liz. Have you ever done acid? No. Josh. Are we...Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Josh and I have at times in the past partaken in hallucinogenic substances. Yeah. And I will...I'm just going to straight up on you here. No, it was... You take it off and it's a little bit like when you come down from an acid high and you're like... That's exactly...I will say this and I wanted to say it to everybody in the trailer, but I thought this seems inappropriate to say to my coworkers. So now just say it to the internet. I'll just say it to everybody. No, it was...It's like acid. It is like the experience of being out of your head in a way. Right. In some other world. It's like the feeling of like the goggles and my reality is out kind of here at least. I don't want you to feel somehow left out. I think that the experience is the equivalent. I just think that we have something other...some other thing to compare it to. I have a reference. We have a shorthand. You can also say...I mean there are probably a bunch of... Mescaline. You can also say mescaline. Yeah, sure. I mean a mixture of...a 60-40 mixture of ketamine and crystal meth. Very similar. Real play. Real play. If you crush weed and turn it into a paste and then just paint the paste onto a crack rock. Similar experience. The Oculus Rift, it's like video goggles. There's like lenses that work as like...When you have the goggles on, the screen seems to wrap around your face. Yeah. Oh, it doesn't seem to. Your whole vision. No, it does. It's like peripheral vision. Yeah, they...There's like lenses that make it all wrap around you. The effect is that it is...You can see maybe a little bit...there's a little bit here, but once you get the effect of...I mean there's very little break in your view. Once you get the effect...And then what they...the first thing they did was when you put them...I don't know if they did this to you, but when I put them on, they said, turn around, look behind you. And you go...You do this. And they're like, look all the way behind you. You go all the way behind you when you turn...And the room...You're looking in a room all the way behind you. I mean...How about this, though? How about this? All I want to do is get back to the Oculus Rift right now. I do miss being in that reality. No, this is like...And the demo they were doing is like a Unity graphics. It was pretty bad graphics. You didn't see that. It was rough, but that's a fish. Josh, go on a mind voyage with me. What if when they...What if when they told you to turn all the way around, you're turning around slowly, you're like, this is cool. They're like, no, all the way around. So you're like, okay, this is cool. What if when you go all the way around, there's a monster there? Think about it. No, no. I thought they were...I actually thought... How fucked up would you get? I was scared. They were like...They said something while I was walking. They're like, go walk down the hallway. I mean, it's so weird, but you start going down this hallway and they're like, look at the sparks over here. And there's this kind of wire with sparks coming off it. And you go and you walk because it's like... Holy shit, a demon. Yeah. No, but I thought something was going to jump out at me. And it was so...Because it's so real. It feels so real. It's intense, man. When you're in it. You know what I thought? You know what I was thinking about when I was playing it? How excited. Look how excited Tyler is. Look at this. You know what I was thinking? I was like, no, that game has eight polygons in it. And it's like terrifying. Shudan's all like brrrr. And you're like... To clarify, if someone hasn't used this, you put goggles on. Everyone hasn't used this. You put goggles on. You are in this universe. And these are crappy graphics. The sparks are like one little sprite that are making sparks. It's like your brain stitches together in a way. It's very basic. 16 frames a second is all we need. When your head moves around, it pans around the camera. And when you put it on, it's exactly what you expected. I was not surprised at all. It's like, oh, this is what we've been waiting for. And I put it on and it worked exactly right. And the sensing was so latency free. And I just want to say, this device... By the way, dev kits are going on sale for $300. In March. And then they're going to double the resolution. They're going to double it to 1080. I mean, here's the $300. Get in line. By the way, I'm not paid to endorse this product. I've just never been more excited. I can't remember the last time. I think the last time I was this excited at CES was Fallout 3. Can you imagine Fallout 3 in the Oculus Rift? I mean, that to me is it. My life, just give me some feeding tube or something. Give me the Oculus Rift and Fallout 3 and I'm done. So think about this, though. One of the most interesting things about the story, and this gets back to why CES is exciting right now. I want to talk about this. Oh yeah, it's not even here, but that sets some sort of tone for a lot of this stuff. Oculus Rift is like, Josh Dupalsky goes on TV and talks about technology for a living. He's pumped about a Kickstarter project for virtual reality goggles. This dude made it and he was going to sell it on Kickstarter as a kit that you can make at home. And it wasn't until John Carmack, who's experimented with, and I will also say this, Virg had the story on this originally with Carmack and everything months back. Carmack heard about it and he's been interested in VR for a long time. It's just never worked. And he saw this guy's stuff and he thought, this needs to be a real product. We will support this. And what was crazy about that to me was that this guy whose name was Brian, the creator of it, his passion was VR. He said he has a massive collection of VR headsets. The only difference was that every other company that wanted VR gave up years ago. The technology was there. And now mobile technology. I grew up on the dream of this. And we're going to have these virtual reality headsets. And we're going to be living in these. Second Life was, I thought that was going to be, Summoner is going to come up with this and we're going to be living in Second Life. It's going to be what they promised because we're going to have VR headsets and gloves. We're going to be that power glove. Yes, power glove. Think about how much, to Chris' point, think about how much money Samsung has invested in its new 4K TVs and the special upscaling algorithms for taking 1080p to 4K and how awesome that is. And it's like, and then one guy builds video. What's crazy is that Samsung wants to talk to me about, and Sony, 4K. I don't, guys, I could, literally the amount I care, you can't even measure it. You know what, and this is exactly when I wrote this thing and when we came here, we talked about the first night. I said, I think, I feel like this is a place where, I feel like, see, yes, you can be down on it. You can be bitter about it. You can, you know. Because it's normally terrible. No, it can be very bad. Qualcomm showed it can be the worst. But there are, I said this, I was talking to Dieter outside. I think that there are weeds that grow through the cracks here. And I think if all you see is the concrete, you're missing what's exciting about technology and what's exciting about our culture. And I think that this is, Dieter and I had a lengthy conversation about this earlier. This is, shows so much how this culture, our modern culture and our modern life is evolving. This show is, yes, it's a corporate show. Yes, there are corporations here trying to sell you stuff. Yes, much of what is here is garbage. You know what? Sins of private holdings. Much of what is out there in life is garbage. But there are- Get real, folks. It's real talk. But there are transcendent, there are things that transcend the garbage. There are things that are- But the fact that those things are things that made by dudes. They rift, I don't think you'd go over there. They create a rift within the sidewalk of garbage and allow- Through which an Oculus weed- A weed grows through and blossoms into a beautiful flower. And that is happening, it's actually happening right this second here at the show. I don't need to promote CS. I'm having an awesome time here. Today I thought we had an amazing time with these amazing scoops and stories. I hated it. I hated it so much. I'm so definitely- And I'm really enjoying this show. Right. I have to say, it's weird. It's almost like this is the best CS ever. What is wrong with us? I don't know. But I'm loving it. You know what? What really turned around CS for me is that I lost my glasses on the first day. Oh, cool. And I just found them today. Oh. Yeah. I lost my glasses today and it's way easier for me to write when I'm writing and I can also read what I'm writing. Yeah. Where did you find your glasses? They were in between the bed and the nightstand. Oh, geez. That doesn't count. I thought you meant- We only have a little bit of time. But I actually just want to say, I'm so excited right now. I mean, we may not find any other amazing things, but the fact that there was even- This was cool. The fact that there's even one here and that I'm this excited about it, I think is a sign. We still are so on the, we're so on the just early, in the earliest stages of all of this stuff. You know, what the Oculus Rift will be in two years or five years, my mind, I can't even imagine- And when that thing wirelessly hooked up to my iPhone and I'm playing- And it's just a pair of glasses instead of this huge headset because that's where that's headed. You're going to put on a pair of eyeglasses and it's going to- I wonder if he's got a patent. I hope he has a patent. I hope he has a patent too. Because he deserves- Because that is like disapointing. He deserves every patent you could possibly give to anything ever. Have you ever tried Sony's 1080p 3D? No. But it's not very good. No, it's not. It's not. This is a whole different- This is an immersive- But I just think that- And I will say, my first encounter with the Oculus Rift is everybody's in this room laughing and having a great time. Josh is yelling about how much fun he's having. I totally lost it. And it's hard to get into the room because it's so crowded. This is here in our trailer. I open up and Josh is in there and he's got these goggles. I keep on thinking that you're looking at me because if you point, if you look up and the goggles are pointing at me, it looks like you're looking at me. And I had to keep on remembering, no, Josh is totally gone. Yeah, Josh is totally set. And I was. And I felt myself- This is going to be horrible for our relationship. And I felt myself at that moment. You need a refrigerator to bring your family back together. If your relationships are being damaged by Oculus Rift, if it's causing a rift in your family's relationship, the balance will be restored if you have the Samsung refrigerator. I didn't know what the rift meant. I didn't understand the rift. It's causing a rift in your relationship. Because you can't love anymore. I only used it for about three minutes when I came out. Everything else was garbage. Everything else in the world was shit. I don't want this anymore. It was like an inception. I had an inception planted in my head. I had been incepted into thinking the world wasn't real anymore. I did have that same thought. I thought to myself, when I came out, I thought, I need to get back to their air. Is what I'm seeing now, is that the real thing? And have I been looking at a fake thing this whole time? Actually, it's kind of like in Star Trek Generations. I just watched that when I was sick the other week. So you know the plot, right? I love it. Do you know the plot of Star Trek? It's the one where Picard and Kirk meet. The Nexus, yeah. Okay, I'll just give you the broad outline because Paul doesn't know. If you haven't seen it. Can I have some water, please? Long story short, there's a thing that's going to destroy the universe. But that thing is called the Nexus, right? The ribbon. And what it is is- That was just spoken through a parable. When you get caught in this planet destroying ribbon, you are taken to essentially heaven. It's heaven. It's a ribbon of heaven moving throughout the galaxy that is killing everything in its path. But is it certain people or just things that can get into it? It doesn't put everybody into it. We don't know all the details. The point is that it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. In essence, what's happening is, let's just say this, it's a force of the galaxy that is destroying planets and solar systems. But if you get caught in it somehow, there's certain circumstances, you sort of go into this the most perfect place in perpetuity until the end of time. And Picard gets sucked into it. I see where this is going. He finds Kirk, who should have died, who had been reported dead because of an encounter with the ribbon, the Nexus. And Malcolm McDowell is a mad scientist who is unlearned of the properties and was once in there with Whoopi Goldberg's character, who is- what is her name? Guinan. Right, Guinan. And Guinan, who was a character on the show forever on The Next Generation, and you suddenly get this huge backstory about how her and Picard actually know each other. This is a big thing that they'd been in the Nexus before together. Or she'd been in the Nexus. It's her backstory. Anyhow, I don't know why I'm saying this. The point is, if you go into the Nexus, it drove Malcolm McDowell insane because once he got spit out, all he wanted- It was like heroin. He just wanted to go back to it. For Captain Kirk, the perfect world was splitting wood, making breakfast for his wife who had died and he was in this beautiful house. For Josh, the perfect environment for him is an abandoned space station with some sparks. Well, little sprightly sparks. And there's some steam that comes out of somewhere. And you can turn your head all the way around. And a palpable sense of dread that a demon is going to attack you. That there's somewhere in that world a monster closet. If you don't get attacked by a demon, you've done something wrong. I heard the guy mention paranormal, or was it? No. No, what's that game called? Dead Space. It's Asylum. I heard that guy- That's not a game I know. What is Asylum? No. No, what's the scary- Silent Hill? Resident Evil. No, the scary PC game. Amnesia. Amnesia. What is Amnesia? Should I play it? Yes, you have to play it. Amnesia is going to freak you out. Is it out? Oh yeah. No, wait to get your Oculus Rift. Is it compatible with it? I don't know. Dude, is it compatible with it? That's what you were talking about. You would die. You would literally die. Don't do it. You're saying no. Is it going to play Amnesia? If you play it on the computer- You die and then you go to that- Dude, I need to play it. How do I not know about Amnesia? I don't know, man. Maybe I knew about it and I have it. I don't know. A lot of people think of it as like the scariest game. Sequel's coming out soon. I got to play it. We're putting it on a- I got to play it. We got to wrap up. We got to wrap up. We can't get to the sequel. iPhone, Ficebook. Oh yeah, apparently this is a new iPhone or something. iPhone, Ficebook. Okay. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. All I want to do is continue to talk about the Oculus Rift. We can't keep going. What's happening? Top shelf. That's not right. Time for top shelf. I guess let's do top shelf, guys. What's the deal? What's the deal? What's the deal? What's the deal? What's the deal? What's the deal? Let's do top shelf, guys. What are our topics? It's been a crazy day. Uh oh, bed. All right, we're wrapping up. We got a plan for tomorrow. I have to go find out where Neely is. I have to go find out where Neely is. I have to go find out where Neely is. I have to go find out where Neely is. Where is Neely? Neely's probably- He probably got caught in the Nexus. He's chopping wood in Colorado. You know what Neely's perfect heaven is? He's debating- Patent, patent law. Some kind of patent issue. Full circle. He's debating patent law between the Clash and the Rolling Stones. He's in an argument. The Rolling Stones have infringed on the Clash's patent in some way. And Neely must represent both sides in the argument. And the patent was for TVs that bring your family together. Yes! Wrapped it up. Closing it out. Good job. I took the patent before something like an IR blaster. Which is one of Neely's patents. Or a Firewire. A patent on Firewire that the Rolling Stones held. IR over Firewire. These guys know what we mean. Alright, that's the Verge cast. See you guys day one. Thank you to Chris Grant for joining us. I mean, I have to say, you really should do more Verge casting. Oh yeah? Yeah. You're damn good at it. Maybe I'll buy you a drink later. I can tell you just how good you are. I can leave. No, stay. Stay. I think we both prefer you stay. And anyhow, if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at Vergecast at the Verge.com. You can leave a comment when this insane hell ride goes up. Or you can find us on Twitter. I'm Joshua Topolsky. Paul's future Paul. I mean, it's like throwing money down into a well or something. And Chris is Chris Grant. You got it. Right? That's it. I always think it's going to be your Xbox name. I used to be future Paul on Twitter and I was hanging out with Chris Grant and he was trying to tweet at me. We were bowling. We were bowling in Philadelphia. Yeah. And he was like, I can never remember your Twitter handle. And I was like, fine. Wait, you're not future Paul? I wasn't future Paul. He was. I was Josiah Miller. Josiah Miller. Awful. The worst. And I was like, let me tweet at you. What's your, wait, what? Josiah? Change it. I changed it. It's all thanks to this guy. Are there any Zabodias in your family? No. There's a Zachary. Not good. Not as good. All right. That's it. We'll be back tomorrow, but we'll be back painfully for me at least. I'll be back at eight in the morning on eight in the morning Pacific 11 East Coast for first. We've got first. We've got top shelf 90 on 90 tomorrow and then a ton more news. Believe me, things are not done. So thanks for watching and I'm sure you and your family will enjoy their time around the refrigerator all wearing Oculus Rift. Do we say rock and roll? Rock and roll. I say Oculus. You say Rift. Oculus. Rift. Oculus. Alright.