 Hey, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology culture. And can I just say that before we went on... So we were talking, you know, if you say Seacrest out, that's what Seacrest, Ryan Seacrest says. But he never says Seacrest in. He never says Seacrest in. He never closes the loop. But anyhow, we were talking about Seacrest, his various modes. And but we have a monitor here, which is what we use to see things on. And right before John in the control room gave me a signal that we were going to start, and right before we started, the computer that was on the display kernel panicked. It was supposed to? It's part of the intro. Oh, it's part of the intro? Oh, now I feel silly. I was like, oh, no. Like it starts happening. Wait, that's part of the intro? Can they hear you? They can't hear you? Okay. Here, just go ahead. Go ahead. No, talk into the mic. Oh, what? I'm loving this. Is that a new addition to the intro animation? Yeah. Who's a band that we should talk about more often? Who? New edition. Really? Okay. So we have a lot to talk about this week. Neelai is out. He is. He is in Chicago. No, he's in Chicago. Yeah, why not? Neelai out. Neelai out. Let me tell you, Neelai out. Miller in. And there's a lot of interesting things to talk about. I don't know how you want to lead. I thought you were on a... What is going on here with this thing? Oh, no. That's better. Nice. Okay. Nice. You want to talk about what's coming up next week? Do you want to start with that? Or do you want to talk about news of the week? Do you want to talk about asteroids? Let's start with news of the week. The rocks from the sky all over the place. The shot looks a little weird on you guys. It's a little high. It's a little high and a little bit wide, if you ask me. What's that black thing over there? Oh, yeah. That move. Has anybody ever actually done that move? Yes, but it never works. Wait. Are you saying you have? I mean, option C. You said yes, but it never works. It never works. That sounds like I don't know where you're getting that data. I mean, I'm talking personal. I'm sorry. I'm getting real talk here. So start us off, Ross. Okay, let's start. Rocks falling from the sky. We had two incidents of space today. I feel like you're really downplaying when you say rocks falling from the sky. It sounds very, you know, oh, okay. I don't want to downplay it because one is actually very serious. Let's talk about that one first. There was this giant meteor. It was about 10 tons. It's small in terms of meteors, but it's giant in terms of like humans. In terms of things. Yeah, in terms of things. It fell from the sky over Russia, the region of Ural Mountains. I don't think I'm saying that right. But anyway, last count, 1200 people have been injured by this. What kind of injuries are they? Like I got hit? So like hit a town? Mostly shattered glass. Like there's been no reported deaths yet. I think what happened is it hit, it didn't hit a thing, did it? I don't know where it landed exactly. Is it maybe the reverberations? Here's a video of it, which is scary by the way. This is from a Russian dash cam. You were driving and this thing just came across. I was kind of like, well, they probably see stuff like this in Russia all the time. So yeah, I was talking to a producer, John, before this. And like you know, when you watch all these videos, which by the way are insane. I mean, this looks like, this seriously looks like a scene from. Right. Oh, this one's crazy. So this is actually, wow. Look at the shadow. Holy crap. And notice none of the cars are really stopping. Like it does not phase them at all. Well, I mean, they don't, what are they going to do? Stop. But this is. Okay. If a giant like a flashing. I'm saying maybe in Russia this is not that uncommon. You know, like we don't know for sure. This is the 10 a.m. meteorite. All right. I mean, there's people walking very casually. I don't seem to have any, but, but this looks like something from war of the worlds. It does. The new one. Right. With Tom Cruise. Yeah. Are those car alarms? Yeah. So it sent off a ton of car alarms and broke, shattered a lot of glass. There's this one picture. Wow. This is just so crazy. This is totally frightening and insane. When did this happen? This happened last night. This morning. Yeah. This morning last night. I mean, it depends on what part in part, what clearly it happened during the day in Russia, but it was nighttime in America. And so anyhow, it's, it's pretty scary. Do we, do we have any reason to suspect, is there any evidence that this is a planned, you know, first strike from an alien intelligence? That depends on how you classify a meteor da 14. Is it an actual entity? It's a little odd if you ask me that it just happened to hit planet earth. Like a scout ship. I'm just saying what's where, what's at the end of the meteor trail? Do we know yet? A pot of gold? I mean, I don't think I'm thinking more like a critter, a space critter, space critter, just chucking, chucking meteors or like a gremlin that, well it was after midnight. Something clearly got fed. It's always after midnight somewhere. That's true. Isn't there another big like, um, meteor headed, like the other one, that's like 17,000 miles or something. Yeah. 17,200 miles. That is I think happening right now or just happened starting around like two o'clock. Yeah. If this ends, if this ends, we're all dead. And I also mean you who's watching. So is this, is this thing, um, the one that's passing now, and by the way, I don't, and I don't claim to be an expert on, uh, space objects. Hmm. Okay. Is it, is it big enough if it hit us? Would it, would it destroy the world? As far as, like, I'm not an expert either, but it sounds scary enough that it will. But I mean, you tell me you've read the reports. Are we, are we, we're not at risk anytime soon. I know we're not at risk, but I'm saying if it were to somehow go off course, um, if it somehow went off course, then yes, we'd be proper. Now that shot looks too low to me. Hold on. Let me slow it. It's a little bit better. It's a little bit better. I mean, I don't want to go into the detail, tell him the table. Do you, I actually sat up this would be in a lot of trouble. Yeah, please don't. All right. Michael's going to fix it. My shots also off center. Am I crazy? No, you're just, your whole body is disproportionate. Your whole body is disproportionate. According to Michael, Michael said my whole body is disproportionate, which I think the word is disproportionate. I mean, maybe disproportionate is also, I think, no, things, things are disproportionate to each other. It's times like this. I really feel for the listener. I really think, why did you turn this on? Why are you listening to this? What sort of self destructive behavior are you engaging in by constantly listening to the verge cast? So it's not, it's not like self hurting. It is actually self destruction. It's a meteor. It's a meteor landing in your soul. It's proportional self destruction. It is 10 tons of pain that is impacting into your soul and your brain. Yeah. Yes. Okay. And there's, there can be no recovery. So we're clear. So we're clear. I can't find, I distinctly recall this, the internet's actually just really bad right now. I distinctly recall Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeting today that it will, this asteroid will hit us eventually. Yeah. Not yet. Not anytime soon. It's coming back around. It's coming back around again. It's the bull's on parade. What goes around comes around. And it probably will destroy all life when it hits. I didn't see this for a life thing, but it's going to hit us. You know, like huge rock. Real, real good science is convinced that the fix, like we are going to have to develop the Armageddon solution of a Bruce Willis planting a nuke inside of an asteroid before too long. Can I be honest? And I'm not going to spoil anything, but I did see Die Hard last night. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not going to say anything. Wait, the new Die Hard? The new Die Hard. Really? That was my Valentine's. Yippee ki yay, Mother Russia. Yippee ki yay, Mother Russia. That's what I've never said in the movie. I should have done that. I will spoil that. It is terrible. I mean, it is a real, it made me. How bad is the movie? The people I went with said basically said it made Die Hard for a much better movie. Oh, wow. You know what? I love that trailer. I really enjoyed the trailer. Are you kidding me? Cause it's got that song, that Christmas song. I think it's a terrible trailer. I have to say now I'm a bit of a trailer buff. I know. Just a little bit. Have I talked about this a lot? Yes. No, you had that site that you were going to review trailers. Film trailer reviews. You reviewed like three of them. I was like, I can't wait for the next Joshua Topolsky hippie. Well, it's like how many jobs can a man do? I gotta just narrow it down. But anyways. I thought the Die Hard trailer was not very good. My point is, I wouldn't count on Bruce Willis anymore. But it's emotional. Ever. You don't like him? Bruce Willis is fine. He's not playing the right role. How about Looper? He's not an action hero anymore. He needs to find some new... He was good in Looper. Yeah. He was good in Looper. It was a little less of him being an action hero. He was kind of a villain. I don't want to ruin it for anybody. And in Sin City, he was like the deadbeat cop. He wasn't an action star. No, he was great. He was great in Sin City. That's the kind of guy he needs to be playing. My problem with Bruce Willis is that I saw a ton of his different roles before I saw Die Hard. And I just realized... Because all of his roles were either like, oh, isn't it funny that he's this hit man, but he's funny? Yeah. He's a nine-yard. Yeah. Or he's a hit man. Yeah. But all he was doing was just playing off of that Die Hard persona. Yeah. Well, I think it's tough to argue that Bruce Willis's finest... Maybe his finest performance ever is Pulp Fiction. I mean, it's pretty hard to see that and not think this is the best thing that Bruce Willis has ever done and maybe will ever do. Yeah. I don't know. I feel the same way about Travolta. I love Pulp Fiction. I don't think it's Bruce Willis's best movie though. I would say Die Hard won. Die Hard is a great movie. But it's not Bruce Willis's best movie. He's a great action hero in that movie and he's very funny and very charismatic and it's exciting. But I think in terms of showing his range and his depth as an actor, I think that he's just amazing. See, that's where we never... I don't want to see Bruce Willis's range. I want to see him hold a gun and shoot people. See, that's so boring. That's like some old stuff. That's like Schwarzenegger. What's Schwarzenegger's best movie? He's got a lot of good movies, but I think he's amazing in Twins. I don't think it's his best movie, but I think that as an actor, he really shows some of his range in Twins. Which one's Twins? The one where he's Twins with Danny DeVito. Didn't they also do Junior together? The one where he's having a baby? Yeah, that's what I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I've seen that one. But Schwarzenegger is... Look, he's incredible in Commando. He's astounding in all of the Terminator films. By the way, the third is my favorite, as I'm sure many of you know. He is dynamic in Predator. And Lest We Forget, Jingle All The Way. One of the best Christmas movies of all time. But I think that the funny thing about Schwarzenegger is when you see him do comedy, you get a sense of his range, which is... You didn't expect that guy to be funny. You just like seeing people somewhat out of their element, like Jim Carrey doing drama. And I love people when they slip on toys. I love any situation where Sinbad sets up a toy booby trap for you, and you're on the floor and you're like, Sinbad, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, I did. Did you go on a date? I bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two, and I watched it. By yourself? On a Blu-ray by myself. Pretty awesome, though. But I also had a glass of wine with some friends at my local... Haunt? Yeah, my local sandwich. Was that like a...What do you call it? Lonely Hearts Club? A little bit. Yeah? Like everybody who was single met up to have a drink? Well, no. Is everybody whose girlfriend or boyfriend was currently occupied but they'd hang out with later that night? Oh, right. That was that sort of... And Ross? Yeah, so it was a pretty low-key night. My girlfriend and I, we ordered a bunch of burgers from Schnipper's, like four or five burgers and just... That seems like an excessive amount of hamburgers. It was a very delicious meal. Is that the thing? It was like, you know what we're gonna do for Valentine's Day? We're gonna get super-duper sick on hamburgers. Yes, hamburgers, wine, and then we're gonna go see Die Hard. Oh, hamburgers and wine? Hamburgers, wine, and Die Hard. That to me is like, we're gonna have two hamburgers each and some red wine and then projectile vomit on the audience at Die Hard 4 or 5. Had that happened, it would have been much better. It is Die Hard 5, isn't it? Yes, it's 5. Wow. I feel a little nauseous just thinking about it. I will say, as bad as the movie was, having burgers and wine beforehand made it a much more satisfying experience. Really? Oh, yeah. I can see that. Schnippers is great. Here's the thing. After you've had burgers and wine, do you still get snacks at the movie theater? All right, we should talk about, I hate to cut you off, but we should talk about what happened in the news. We talked about asteroids. We didn't really cover them in a great way. So we went from asteroids to Bruce Willis. Though speaking of old actors, probably past their prime. It's a segue. Yes, the rumor has it Harrison Ford is coming back for Star Wars. So we wrote about this. This isn't surprising. We were talking about this before. JJ Abrams brought back Leonard Nimoy for, I hope, spoiler alert, brought back Leonard Nimoy for, he's in the first scene though, so you shouldn't be that surprised, of the last Star Trek movie, the last first new Star Trek movie. So it doesn't surprise me that he'd be bringing back some of the old Star Wars crew. And what else does Harrison Ford have to do? But what is, besides all of the other stuff that he's doing, like tending to his farm or hanging out with Callista Flaught-Card? He has a farm. He's been an awesome old dude with an earring, like any of those things. He has an earring? Yeah, you didn't know that? Harrison Ford has a totally awesome earring. Since when? Since like five years ago. Really? Yeah, he's had it for a while. This is a random, he's like, I'm going to get an earring because I'm an old guy. I never see stories about Harrison Ford. I just assume he was- Can we get a photo of Harrison Ford with his earring, please? Just look, Harrison Ford earring. Yeah, yeah, it's not going to be hard to find because everybody was talking about it when he got it, except for Paul Miller. But here's the question. So what is the next, do we know anything about the next Star Wars movie? About what the plot is, what the setting is, who the characters are? Well, we know potentially now, well, we don't know, but it's rumored Han Solo is going to be in some capacity. He could appear as a ghost, like we don't know. He could be the ghost. He could be looking- They haven't written a script, right? No, but they're based on, there's a canon of books that- No, so that's one thing. We know what it's not going to be about. And they've already said they don't care about this extended universe canon. They'll throw the books away. So you're telling me that they're going to say like, we don't care about all the books that have been written. We don't care about- We don't care about the Clone Wars. Fans. No, they care about film canon. They don't care about the book canon. But that Clone Wars stuff, isn't that based on some of the stuff that happens in the book? There it is right there. I don't know how scratch that is, but not the best picture, but you get a clearer photo of that. Oh, wow. But maybe I should get an earring. Yeah. Well, a lot of the Clone Wars canon is also- Mayhem, Faris, and Ford's doing it. That's true. A lot of the Clone Wars stuff is like in the prequels. Like that's the canon for it. Timothy Zahn's stuff was like what happened after the census. The prequels were made after the books were written. Are we really talking about like Star Wars, like living up to this like discrete- I'm going to say, okay, so we don't know anything about what Abrams is going to do. I have never read a Star Trek book. Look at that. That's crazy. A Star Wars book. Look at that earring. I can't look at it. I'll look at it in a couple months. You looked at the Russian stuff. Right. Yeah, but that was already sourced. What do you mean? This is from, I guess what you're saying. Because it was on like a video camera? It was kind of like part of our- Let's be honest. You're getting close to the end of your- Yeah, you know. I'm a dirty lying cheater. You're like two months in. Maybe I just don't want to look at Harrison Ford wearing earring. Two months. Yeah, you don't want your dream of Harrison Ford to be destroyed. Let's be honest. You're two months away from the end of your thing. And if a little internet sneaks in, you know, you're not going to- You know, it's our little secret. All right. So I've never read a Star Wars book and I probably never will. But I like the thought of a canonical, same with like I've never read The Simmerillion and I probably never will. But I like the thought that there's an expanded universe out there that exists and I thought was blessed and- It was blessed. Right, I agree. It was blessed, it was official. I think what they were saying is they didn't want to feel burdened by this decades old canon. I'm sorry, but like- We don't want to feel burdened by all of the things that we've created in the Star Wars universe. We're not like lined up for all three of the prequels, even though they sucked. You know, we don't want to feel burdened by those people that really, really care about Star Wars. I mean, I don't get abandoning- I mean, well, I'll say this though. Well, okay, they had the option of abandoning it. I will say this. I mean, you got to at least hand it to Abrams that he went out of his way to protect the legacy of the previous Star Trek stuff. Yeah, he did a good job with that. He took the Star Trek franchise, or he says he did, because he wasn't as big of a fan. He didn't feel like as, you know- And yet, there's definitely a huge, I mean, the whole point of the first Star Trek movie is to say like, hey, everything that happened in the Star Trek universe is basically still there. Right. We're just going to tell like some weird offshoot. Here's some room for some new stories. It's like basically like we want to tell some new stories. Yeah, what I would love with Star Wars is, you know, we've got light side Jedis and dark side. Are those called Jedis or those Sith lords? Sith. Sith and Jedi. They're not Sith Jedis. No, they're Sith lords. Okay. I don't know if they're all Sith lords. No, but I mean- I think it's the Sith. This is Sith. Sith is the Sith, apparently. And Jedi. Okay. So you got good guys- I could be wrong though, by the way. But like, there is a lot more. And like, you know, you've got stormtroopers. Like, I don't know. A lot of these things- Those things are all going to be in the book. In the movies, I mean. Yeah, I don't know. They're going to have bad guys, good guys, and droids. I just don't want to like- I can make a promise to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There will be definitely be bad guys. Right. There will definitely be good guys. And there will definitely be things called droids. And lightsabers. I just don't want a movie- And lightsaber. I don't want a movie that's like, here's your Luke Skywalker replacement. Yeah. And here's your Darth Maul replacement. And here's your C-3PO. Well, it wouldn't be Darth Maul. It would be Darth Vader, wouldn't it? Well- Darth Maul is played. He's like from the first movies. The first movies. The first, fourth movies. Absolutely. He's from the fourth movie. And the point is, you know, that's probably what they're going to do. Right. I think there's a bigger challenge here because Star Trek- They're just going to make young Star Wars. Yeah, probably. Star Trek was always going to say that it's a reboot. It's not a direct sequel. By and large, being episode 789- Well, it's not a reboot. Star Trek was a reboot. Star Trek was a reboot. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. This is not a reboot. Yeah, because by and large, being episode 7, it has to be a direct sequel. Here's the thing. I mean, because what they could do, I don't know what the stories are following the death of Darth Vader. Okay. I think there's probably like the ultimate battle for balance in the galaxy that is, and I am assuming that the, I know that like Luke Skywalker has kids and all sorts of stuff like that. Anyhow, my guess is that the balance is finally restored. Peace comes to the galaxy. It's a very, very boring movie. No, no, no. I'm saying this is what I assume happens. If we were to think of what could happen after Darth Vader dies, spoiler alert, Darth Vader dies in Return of the Jedi. I'm sorry. And his helmet turns into a crystal skull. That does not- Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hold on a second. Okay, go ahead. I mean, if there's any people listening who don't know that, like I'm really sorry, but it's like 50 years old now, so that's your bad. It's not that old. It's 30, 25, 30. 30. It's old. The point is, so I assume that's what happens. At some point in the books they talk about... So let's think, what could happen in a sequel to that movie? It's a long time ago, far, far away. But not as long as the other ones. Oh, that's what they could do. They come to Earth. No, forget about that. No, they come to Earth. They colonize Earth. They could go further back. We don't know how long or far. You could go back and have a really interesting story about the predecessors to the Skywalkers. A prequel sequel. That could be a thousand years in the past. But episode seven, it's a time travel. What about when they're like... This is definitely seven. It's not a prequel. A prequel to the prequel would be interesting. What about when they're first discovering the Force and learning its ways? That's an offshoot. That's like a TV series. It's sort of unleashed and it's hard to control and nobody's learned how to channel it effectively. Wouldn't that have just naturally developed through millennia? Wouldn't the Force have just kind of risen up? And based on the ridiculous, horrible description that Lucas has for what the Force is, this highly scientific biological... Electrochlorons. Midichlorians. Sorry, guys. I'm dropping that knowledge now. I'm just saying, I feel like it wouldn't be one day the Force arrives. They're like, what are we... Whoa, quit blowing things up. Quit strangling people. It's like a technological discovery. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But so to that point, there are two... They need to discover Earth. By the way, right now there are people listening to this that are hardcore Star Wars fans and they are so flummoxed that they... Because we're getting so much wrong and they're like, no, give me the numbers so I can call it correct you. If you thought J.J. Abrams was gonna disgrace Star Wars, I think we just wouldn't have done that. So let's be honest, what could happen in number seven? All right, well, first off, I wanna be clear. We talk revisionist history. Midichlorians didn't happen until the prequels. Yeah, but they're in the past of the old movie. I mean, they're now... And they're canonical now. Some of those canonical novels were like, we don't know where the force comes from. And Lucas is like, it's midichlorians. It's midichlorians, obviously. Of course. But hold on, my point is, what happens after Darth Vader dies? What could happen? Because that's what this movie is, right? It's post his death. Well, okay, so what? Does the rebel alliance just build governments everywhere? I mean, the Galactic Empire was like a democracy... Or not democracy, it was a government that was controlled. Palpatine is devastated. We've all seen what happens in... Do we know for a fact that Palpatine dies? We see him fall. We see him fall. But we don't see ghost form. We don't see an actual body or anything. Right. Here's my theory. And I hope... Oh, no. What? What? Why are you making that face? So, Darth Vader dies... Oh, shit, Michael Shane is... No, no, no, no, no. Is losing it here. You don't know that Palpatine actually dies. You don't see the body. The point is, there's a whole lot of Galactic Empire left full of bad guys. Okay. Michael's arguing... Oh, that's right. Michael's saying there's a whole bunch of bad guys out in the... Out in the galaxy. Yeah. But here's what... Yeah, but once you cut off the head of the beast... Here's what's... Now, you're saying they're like terrorist cells, is what you're saying. They've been fighting... Who? Grand Admiral Thrawn. Who's Grand Admiral Thrawn? He's from... You read the book, don't you? Oh, shut up. Have you read the book? Get out. We're not talking about the book. No books. There's no Thrawn. That's the worst name. Thrawn is a made up character that JJ Abrams doesn't care about. Here's the thing. I'm tired of fighting the Empire. You have a rebellion, right? The rebellion is in... Rebellion within the rebellion. You start to have in fighting. What sort of government do we want? We wanna be... Yeah, do we wanna be like libertarians? Should we be like Democrats? Muslim? Should we be like... That's not... Those aren't... I'm just saying the parallels to Arab Spring... I mean, I guess you could say, should we use religious rules? Should it be Jedi rules? Should it be rule by whatever law? Some other kind? This is stupid. I hate this whole idea. But let's just be clear. You know who else would hate that? We don't know that Palpatine... Han Solo's like, I've had enough with this. He's like, I'm out of here. He flies off and Leia has to go find him. I can't be your hero unless I begrudgingly accept it under no other circumstances. That's right. He goes, he's like in hiding. They're like, nobody can find him. We need him to bring order to the Council. He's got the deciding vote. Here's my... Look, and then we're gonna move on because nobody wants to hear this conversation anymore, including us. I do think... I just hope that Emperor Palpatine, who is my favorite Star Wars character, by the way, I hope that he's alive and I hope that he wreaks utter destructive havoc on all members of the Skywalker family. I know no matter what, it's gonna be a fun movie to watch. That's right. No matter what, there's gonna be exciting action packed sequences. There's gonna be romance. There'll be lightsabers. There's gonna be sabers. You know, J.J. Abrams is gonna come up with some crazy five part lightsaber. Like nunchuck lightsaber or something. Because they kind of upped the ante with Darth Maul's two-sided lightsaber. So now it's gonna be a lightsaber with five blades on it. It's like a lightsaber umbrella. It's the Mach 3 of lightsabers. Wow. One last factor with Star Wars and we gotta move on. There will be side movies that are not in the trilogy. Oh, come on. That are about Han Solo. They're not even that... Look, these Star Wars movies aren't even that good. No. That's it. I'm dead. I'm dead when I get home, someone's gonna shoot me. I will say, as I'm getting out of the cab, I'm gonna be shot by a rabid fan. Injected with midi-quants. I don't know. The Star Wars movies are okay. Even the original trilogy was just not. It was okay. It was amazing. Watch it again. It's not that great. You know it's a great movie, the Total Recall remake. Just kidding. The one where they forget Mars. You wanna see a great movie about space? Watch Starship Troopers. That will blow your mind. Yes. No, no joke. That is a great movie. I'm not joking. Who's joking? All right, good. Just making sure it's established. Watch Pitch Black. What was that? Chronicles of Riddick. Pitch Black. That's a sequel to Pitch Black. Pitch Black. I've never seen either of those. Pitch Black is pretty fun. Is it? Yeah. They're both fun for different reasons. Pitch Black is like one of those kill them one by one like an alien movie. Chronicles of Riddick is ridiculous. I don't have a big appetite for those at all. It's got Vin Diesel in it. All right, what else is in the news? Tesla is big in the news. Oh, Tesla. Big story. You wanna talk about this? Yeah, let's talk about Tesla. I'm gonna try to condense this because it's a lot to talk about. Tesla gave cars, they offered cars to journalists to do test drives. The $101,000 Model S. Tesla's, it's a sedan. It's basically like if you're in the market for a BMW or a Mercedes, which are about that much if you buy a nice one, this is something you might consider if you're rich. I mean, you're basically pretty wealthy and you want an awesome car. And Motor Trend and a bunch of other magazines have said this is the car of the year. This is the best. This is a serious contender. All electric, completely new, American company, American industry here at its finest. Anyhow, it's an electric car though. Its maximum range on a charge is, I think maximum is 300 miles or something. Something like that. 280 or something. But your mileage may vary based on different factors. How fast you go, if you're running air conditioning. How heavy you are. If it's cold outside, if it's hot outside, if you're super fat or super skinny. Because there is nothing in between that. And so anyhow, so we took it out for a drive, we just saw a little bit of the video here. And we actually had a little bit of a scare. I was supposed to go on this ride, by the way, and I'm very upset that I could not. But we had a little bit of a scare where the car said, you've got this far to go, you've got this many miles, and you've got this far to go and you'll be fine. And then they started on the drive and it was like, oh, the car is now telling you you have way less than you thought you did. And there was a period where, I talked to Chris Ziegler about this, that they didn't think they were going to make it. Right. And as you see in the video, and this is not like artificial hyper-thing. We just happened to have the situation arose, we're like, you said one mile left. So yeah, we did this video which involved this huge amount of range anxiety, where we had a real experience that we thought we couldn't get it to where it needed to go, given the time that we had. And then we published this a couple of days after the New York Times published their review of the car. And their review basically said, hey, the car said I had this much, and the guy who wrote it said the car had this much and I didn't, and I broke down, it stopped running, I had to be picked up on a tow truck. And so the Tesla's kind of bunk. He basically was like, the Tesla's bunk because you can't drive it far enough, you can't drive it as far as you, it says you can. So Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. The inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark. It's worth noting here. Sure, why not? A little bit of an eccentric billionaire. He replied, yeah, SpaceX, he replied publicly and said, basically said, we have logs of the car that show that what the reporter said, the New York Times reporter said, does not jibe with what we have, what the car actually did. Basically he's lying. Wow. And the reporter, I believe his name is John Broder, is that right? It's Broder at least. Broder, did I get his first name wrong? Why would I do that? It's Broder. I've been calling him Broder because, Broder, what is it? I'm looking. Can't believe you can't just, it is John, it is John. That's what I thought. Why would you correct me? You don't even know. I said at least Broder. Who do you, from a position. I have corrected. From a complete position of ignorance on his name, you corrected my name. I didn't have the logs on the first name. It's fine, Ross, I hate you. John Broder. John Broder. From the New York Times wrote a response saying, look, here's what happened. I talked to Tesla representatives, they said it's cool to take it off on this charge. The interesting thing is he basically refutes most of what Elon Musk says. There are some interesting parts. He says that he drove around for 10 minutes in a rest area looking for a service center or whatever, looking for a charging station. The charging station seemed to be relatively obvious from what I've seen. So I don't know. I was at night and it was hard to see, don't know. He also says, the most interesting thing to me that he says that pokes some holes in what he said. I don't think this is malicious, but he said I was cruising at 45 miles per hour this whole time or something and the logs show that he's going between 54 and 60 or something. Or high as 85 I think. Yeah, it spikes at 85 at one point. He wrote as a response, because they have the logs saying what the speed is, he's like, well I recall going this speed. Clearly the logs show differently, so I guess I was going a different speed, but I don't recall that. To me that's like, I think what this really boils down to is it's kind of, so the long and short is that Elon Musk is saying the New York Times lied. The New York Times is saying, the guy's saying I didn't lie. I might've missed some things. I think there was a little bit of sloppy reporting on his part. If he went a certain speed and he said it was a different speed, everybody makes mistakes, but in this case it's like it could really injure the Tesla brand. It affected the stock. What happened to Chris though? We made it, but we really were scared that we weren't going to make it. If you watch the video, you can't watch it, but there's basically a point, we start out the video with them in the car at night going, I don't know if we're going to make this, because the computer was telling them that they had really hardly any mileage left. And they managed to make it. They were within a few miles of where they needed to go to charge it, but it was a pretty close call. It was a purposeful thing. We weren't like- It sounds like both of these could be the car misreporting its range. No, this wasn't misreporting. We expected it to do this. The goal was we have a range we were told we have pretty close to that range, but enough to go, we're going to go. There is obviously danger involved. We were aware of it. We were aware of the possibility, but I think here's the thing. Now the common wisdom is, the conventional wisdom about Teslas today, right now, because the New York Times thing is don't get one. You can't trust them. They're not good for long trips. But I really feel like it's unfair to Tesla. I think Tesla made a mistake in handing these cars to people and saying, go do a review, especially people on the East Coast where there are hardly any chargers. I think that it should be clear this is not a gas powered vehicle. This is not a car you can pull over. This is not a go on a trip car. This is a commuter car. You can do it. I mean, CNN ran something today where they went from DC to New York. They did the same trip that the New York Times did. Oh, they did. Okay. That's what they were trying to prove. Okay. So you can do it. You're going to have range anxiety because there's no chargers everywhere. If there was a supercharger every 50 miles, this would not be an issue. Your trips might take longer, but you're not going to break unless you're a real jerk. You may have to charge for it. Sure. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. Talking about those chargers, that's saying like, here's a 4G phone. There are five 4G towers in the general New York area. You have a 4G phone. It's like, I don't really have a 4G phone. I think that's not the right use for it. I think the thing is right. It's about building the infrastructure for these cars, for any of these electric vehicles has to be built out. I think that we're in a, my opinion on it is what Tesla's doing is incredible. I mean, it's incredible to me. I think that they're on the precipice of a whole new American industry, of building these cars. Pretty much what you could not say on the verge. I was going to say on the verge and then I decided to change it up. But I think that it's incredible what he's done, what Elon Musk has done. I think he sounds a little bit like a kook here and that's not good for him. He could have just said, look, here's the data. It's different than what they're telling us. I think his first misstep is like, look, we've got all this data on what they were actually doing. That just sounds creepy. Even, you know, it's a review. I mean, I can, no, obviously they should be tracking that during a review, but they should have said we're going to track admitting that they are saying it out loud. Just sounds creepy. But I think they could have said, listen, we collected data, raw data from all of these review trips. We're going to give it to you guys. It's different than what the, within what the reporter says and you can make your decisions. That should have been it. And we believe these cars can do X, Y, and Z. And this is, you know, I think, but I think at the end, at the end of the day, it does kind of, I think there was this initial reaction from a lot of people. It's like, well, why would this guy make this stuff up? And I don't think he did. I think he made some mistakes in reporting. I think most of it is, is, is Elon Musk probably overreacting to a real concern, which is like, you're going to run out of steam on this thing, electricity, and you may not be near a charger right now. And like, well, yeah, straight shot would be fine, but like sometimes detours do happen or sometimes there's malfunctions. Like it's just not as easy as a diesel car or as a gas powered car. Yeah. I mean, but I do think, I think it's sad now that the conventional wisdom is saying, Oh, Tesla's are, they don't do what they say they're going to do. It's kind of like the Instagram thing with the terms of service where now you talk to anybody about Instagram, they're like, Oh yeah, they sell your photos, right? That's just what they say. Right. Talk to any regular person who knows what Instagram is, ask them what they think of it and they'll tell you like, they're not there. They like it, but they're not into that whole thing where they sell your photos or they don't think they have a right to sell your photos no matter whether or not they sell it, you know, they're actually selling them or not. And now it's like the same thing with Tesla. It's like, I mean, I remember the consumer reports thing with the iPhone four, right? Where it's like they had a problem with the antenna and now it's like, it's a don't buy and it completely ignores the fact that this is an incredible phone, but there's a lot of things that also that problem was, was happening with a small percentage of users were actually complaining about it. Exactly. I mean, it's, it's, it's disqualify a product entirely. And at the same time, we saw Apple go very hard on the offensive about that. Of course they have to, and that's what Elon Musk is doing. And I think, but I do think there is something to this, like the FUD mentality, the mob mentality of, you know, shoot first and ask questions later, right? Where, where you, you're nobody's taking the time to say like, well, what are the, what really happened here? The infrastructure is not there. The car might've gone a little bit less than he wanted, but like the fact that the car is doing any of this stuff at all is kind of incredible that I can go, if I'm going to, you know, if I only drive 50 miles a day from my house to work and run some errands and come back, like this car would be awesome. If I want a second car, if I'm a guy who has a, an SUV or a van for my family and I want like, you know, I'm rich enough to have a second car that I tool around. Well, of course, if you're a Joshua Topolsky type, but here's the thing. This car to me is representative of an amazing, it's the start of an amazing future. If enough people want these cars, enough people buy them. More people are going to make cars like this, prices are going to come down. The infrastructure is going to happen and we will have a car that you can drive across the country that is electric, that doesn't rely on fuel, fossil fuels. I, I, I agree with you, but also like Elon Musk has gotten so much of that coverage and that glowing, this guy is amazing and he's doing amazing things. And I've read a million interviews with them and you know, this has to be a good product. And like there's no matter how astounding it is, it, it, you know, there are no excuses. I think your 4G, your LTE, I mean, I don't know if that's what you're saying, but I think the LTE thing is kind of a good. No, the iPhone four, not the iPhone. Oh no, no, but you were saying before, there's only so many towers. I mean, if you bought an LTE phone on Verizon two years ago, right? You know, there were only a few places you could get LTE and then you were on 3G everywhere. Yeah, I think the mistake is to market this car as a car that goes 240 miles or 300 miles. I agree. I think that, I think it's like, well, it's not a short range. You know, you can go longer, right? It's not just a commuter, right? But this is not a commuter plus. It's not yet commuter plus. It's good. This is not a road trip. You don't want to take it. You're not going to drive it across the country cause you don't know where you're going to be able to charge it. And it's going to be very, you're going to have to stick to very specific roads. But if every gas station had a supercharger at it, right? Right. Different story. And that will only happen after you get a lot of these commuter plus electric cars out and about and you get consumer interest up and they start saying to Ford, like, are you going to give us a reliable, decent car that can go as long as the Tesla or Mercedes is starting to do it. Right. And so that to me is the thing that, you know, I feel like the story is, you know what? The car didn't live up to all of my expectations, but it's still in a kind of an amazing achievement and not saying give it a pass, but it's like, yeah, don't take it along. Don't take it on super long trips unless you're absolutely sure you're going to be able to get there and you know what you're doing. But I guess he's kind of saying like, I was sure and I knew what I was doing and I still didn't get there. But then you've got this thing where he's saying like, well, I thought I drove it this fast, but I actually drove it this fast. And you go, okay, so was it just, you were just being a little sloppy. So maybe you kind of didn't have it. You didn't know what you were going to be able to do with it. I think there's two sides to the story. I don't think that there was anything malicious on the part of the writer. I think that we've all been in a situation. I mean, most of my Microsoft product reviews where I just say, you know, I'm just not going to review this. Well, I hate it anyhow. I hate it anyhow. So I'm just going to like, I'm just going to throw it in the drawer. I will write my review without even using it. And I'll just put that up and that's going to be that. Let me go back here because people will take this. Now that will be used. They're going to take that audio and they're going to post it to the Microsoft forum on our site and they're going to be like, the truth is out. I was joking. That was sarcasm. Okay. I reviewed all the Microsoft products that I've reviewed and I just, you know, some of them I didn't think were that great. I will say for myself that I have run out of gasoline in my gas car a lot of times back when I owned one. You know, Laura claimed that she did this. I've never run out of gas in a car. I probably did it five times in a few years. This is a type of a personality type will run out of gas. That's what I've discovered. Yeah. Right. Usually like a Microsoft fan. Yeah, absolutely. I just think like, what's wrong? What is wrong with me? I don't know. Can someone tell me? But it's just like, I know they're already mad. So I've got it. But you know, six months from now they're going to start data logging all your review products. Uh, yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It did not work. They don't all work. They don't all work. Anyway. But so. I think the Tesla story is interesting. You should watch art seriously, if you haven't seen the video, it's thrilling. It's a really good. I, when I saw the first time I was like, man, this is like, I would watch this even if I was not associated with The Verge. Right. No, I mean, it's very gorgeous. Quite endorsement, right? Very gorgeous. We had three people out there, Steven Greenwood, Sam Thunders, Jordan Oppelinger, just amazing shooter editors, directors. Those names are like, you might as well just say a bunch of foreign names. Well, you should know. If you do not know those names, you should know those names now. No, those are some members of our video team, and I thought they killed it on this one. Really great stuff. But it's also, you know, it's true the car causes range anxiety, and until we overcome that, it's going to be an issue for electric cars. But what do you do? You can't make a regenerative. There's no solar panel that will deliver enough juice to keep your car going. Right. Not yet. There's no perpetual motion machine. What's the thing to do? Third rail. Nuclear. Third rail all along the highway. That's interesting. Oh, like F-Zero. I mean, to me, it's- What? Like F-Zero, Super Nintendo game, or 64 game. There's a third rail on that? Oh, it's a rail that you can recharge your shields. You just drive through it. Oh. That's pretty cool. The answer is batteries. The answer is a better battery. A nuclear battery? No, I mean a battery that its capacity- You know, the Boeing's got a bunch of extra batteries, I hear. I'm just saying that if the battery held a thousand mile charge, this would not be an issue because who's driving- Except for me and Laura. Yeah, except for you guys. You're like, just somehow- I don't know. I had, today, I had 500 miles left. Yeah. And then, last thing you know, I'm on the side of the road. 499 miles later. I do think, though, that's the answer here. You need a better battery. Yeah. Agreed. But the car needs to be way, way higher with a super thick battery, and it needs to weigh like seven tons. Okay. All right. You want to just move on now? Yeah. I think after that- We're going to talk about Sony. We can talk about PlayStation 4? Yeah, let's just talk about what's happening next week. Next week, we have three big things happening. I'm just calling it PlayStation 4. All right. We have the HTC event. Okay. Yeah, we can talk about HTC. All right, all right. Everybody's seen the leaks, and we've heard about it now. Let's go. I'm going to use the phone, and it's cool, but whatever. Yeah, let's Sony. Okay. Sony has an event next Wednesday. The future of PlayStation. The 20th. Come see the future of PlayStation or something like that. We saw a couple of photos of what appears to be a leaked new PlayStation controller. The belief is, I think it's pretty un... It's impossible to assume that there's anything happening but a PlayStation 4 announcement. Or a next- What if it's a software update for the Vita? Yeah. The Vita 2. Electric Boogaloo. Listen, it's not even funny. I like it. So, we think it's going to... Can we get the controller on screen? There it is. Yeah. So, it's kind of like a... It's kind of hard to see in this, whoa, crazy surface ad. Quit mousing over that ad. Can we zoom in on the image a little bit so we can just get a little more of the detail? I want to go back to the boomerang. Remember that PS3? So, it has a touch screen on it of some type? Actually, John, can we go look at the original picture? Yeah, we don't want to... It's the first link on there. Another photo. This is the first one. It's actually a lot clearer. So, the thing is, let's just say that we can all safely assume that there's going to be a new PlayStation. Yes. Right? I feel pretty confident saying that. They've been hinting enough about it. So, why does a consumer... Why am I getting excited about the new PlayStation? There's the controller. What is that above it? That's not anything, is it? Okay, so here's our theory. So, first off, we've been hearing from Bloomberg and Japanese dailies and all that, that it's going to be kind of like a DualShock with a touchpad. That's the thing in the middle. Yeah. That thing on top looks very much like a move sensor. So, I mean, they could just be bringing that up. What thing on the top? That little blue light. That's not a blue light. It's a bluish light. I don't think it's a light, man. I think it's a move sensor. Okay, fine. So, it's a motion controller as well as a regular controller. Right. Fine. Great. Cool. Yeah. Is that the thing? That's where you need to be able to do this with it? I think that's the thing that you're able to do with it. I'm guessing they're going to show a little bit of motion control stuff. Right. But, and hopefully, here's some fun new UI paradigms like they did with the Vita. Like, look, you can touch on the back of it and make- Oh, I hope it doesn't have back touch. Make Drake- I hate- Like, climb up vines and stuff. I seriously hate back touching. But what they're going to show, I bet, is a tech- I tried not to laugh. Is tech demos maybe like an Uncharted or something like that? I just got a new game informer in the mail today and I saw the Witcher 3 screenshots. You know, like- That looks really good. These next gen games- Have you seen the screenshots for, what's the game? Remember Me? Remember Me? Oh, that's the same, Naughty Dog, the one we saw? Yeah. Yeah, but that's- No, no, no, no, that's Last of Us. There's this other game. You mean- Capcom is doing. Oh, okay. That's like Paris. Oh, that's awesome. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. And it's like rainy and- I know, there's a girl. You play a girl in it? No. Okay. There's a trailer for it that I think we might have covered. Okay. Well, I- Anyhow, but Last of Us- So Last of Us is one of those, it's a game that I'd like to see like- Right. But that's not next gen. Well, but maybe they have a next gen version of it. I doubt it. Why not? I really doubt it. Please. But they're going to release that. If it does well, then there's going to be a next gen sequel. Oh, really? Yeah, until June. Ooh. So maybe- No, I know. Maybe they're like, oh, we're delaying it because boom, bundle. You know, there were a lot of bundle. There were a lot of great- What if they were like, here's the PlayStation 4, it'll be available- Stop dreaming. It'll be available in a month. Stop it. That would be crazy and very unlikely. Would that be insane? I don't think they'll lose their minds. So they have to announce it now. Yeah. And then they get, so that they can tell more game developers about it, so game developers can show off demos at E3. Of course, no question. Right. Well, the other thing is too, and this is more industry baseball, there's an event in between this, a game developers conference. Well, all the developers who aren't in on it will finally learn all the code and all the bits and pieces so they can make this stuff a launch. So the question is, are you saying that the big hook is that the controllers are also available? No, I don't think it's the big hook at all. No, I would say the big hook is going to be, Sony will be the first to show next gen graphics on a console and the trailers are just going to look so bad ass and people are going to be stoked. So that's my, so my, what I, this is the thing. I like video games as they are now. Like I play the Xbox 360 and I'm like, it's old, but it's still, some stuff still is pretty good on here. I mean, I've been playing, I've been playing dead space three and man, some of that stuff looks really, really good. Right. And that's old as hell. So whatever the next gen is, if it's like that, just like super duper awesome looking, if it looks real, that's enough. That's enough. It's great to hear that it's basically dual shock three because I love that controller and I'm stoked to play games that just look so beautiful. Right. That's what I'm saying. But like my concern is maybe it's just like not being creative enough. Like it's, it's iterative. It's evolution, not revolution. Like it's going to be a similar controller. It's going to be much better specs. The wild cards may be cloud gaming. They just got Gaikai. That's fine. But cloud gaming is, is, is not the main course of the PlayStation four. I think where we're at now, like, you know, obviously we love like the, the Oculus Rift and there are some hints at what could be the next generation of gaming, but what happened with move and connect is that they moved a lot of units, but nobody ever came out with a game for it. And maybe, maybe for, for more casual gamers, there's a lot of stuff that people really love. And I, and then, so I, to be honest, I think those UI paradigms, the move and the connect have yet to be fully explored. So now once they launch consoles with them and so that every single console will have move and will have connect or the next gen version, now game developers can actually start making games for those technologies. So I don't think we really, I don't know how you can make a, I don't know how you can do that. You know, people can't all put these in the middle of their, underneath their TV. Well they did with the Wii. No, they had a bar. Yeah. So you're saying they'll have a bar. Yeah, that's a lot more than a bar. It's a little bit bigger, but I'm sure they'll get it downsized. I get that. I'm just saying it's, it's just right now. You're still, you're still, it's still an accessory basically. Yeah. But if it comes with the console, that's the, that's the key. And that's the thing is, is like, there'll be games that won't require it, but then every once while there'll be a game that uses it and like, Oh, I guess we got to plug it in, but people will plug it in. I just wonder if that, if that's really where the demand is coming is that it's about like, you know, make something that's, you know, I do something weird in my living room. I mean, is that what people want in games? Is that what they're asking for? Well, I think it's, I think it's still the future of games, but the present of games is Call of Duty and next gen graphics means you can make just a way, way more beautiful Call of Duty using a basically same controller. And then the, these, these next gen interfaces will slowly follow now that they're going to be in every living room. I, I, I mean, I would, I'll tell you what I'd really like to see is Sony just, just blows everybody away with some crazy VR headset. That's like part of the play. You know, they're like, it's like, it's like high res. They have a head mounted display. It's just, it's all 4k. No, but it would be, it would be high res, not 4k, but 1080 super awesome sensors like Oculus Rift or better. It would, you would assume Sony could, you know, with all their money could do it better. The sensors are not, you know, they're not inventing the sensors. They're off the shelf essentially. Right. I mean, to me that would be like, you know, and it's like, there are like glasses or they're small. That would be like a, whoa, the game has changed moment. Well I am. Cause seriously, if you're jacking in and they're like photo realistic graphics and you're in your like 1080 360 immersive super sensitive headset. Yeah. That's like next damn level of the game. I've been on a big. But that's probably not going to happen. I've been on a big Harry Potter kick lately and Sony partners with, you know, Pottermore JK Rowling. Yeah, did you get that Pottermore? And they made that horrible book game I played at E3 and it was just so bad. Yeah. But you know, I think there's still a lot of opportunities for next gen experiences. Like I mean, Harry Potter experiences. I would like to see it's even on like mobile, like augmented reality stuff where, you know, you're like looking through your phone and you look at a lock and you say, Alohomora and you unlock your actual lock and go through the door. And I think there's a lot of, a lot of options. You mean like it actually operates the lock on your door? Well it doesn't actually. That would be cool. That would be cool. Huh? Like you had to have that. Sony gets into home automation. Yeah. You've got your, you can do the street darkener and you can turn off your lights. Oh my God. They're going to say that it's going to be 4k, right? Probably cause they had the 4k televisions coming out later that year. So they'll say it's capable of 4k gaming. Which would mean that at 1080 the graphics processing power must be pretty intense because if you're able to, whatever they're able to produce at 4k, right? If they can do the same level of graphics. I'm guessing it's going to be the similar where we saw with the current generation where it was like all the actual games are actually 720p, but the consoles are capable of 1080p. Right. It'll be. Every once in a while you get some racing game that's in 1080p. And now it'll be all 1080. Right. It'll be all 1080. And capable of 4k. And crazy games will have 4k. I just want to know, I mean, are we about to hit, you know, there are some amazing looking games out there now. PC games have obviously taken it even further because they can. Are we about to hit the, you know, this is, we're getting indistinguishable from, are we going to hit photorealism? You're talking about Uncanny Valley to the point. I mean, yeah, Uncanny Valley. Like can we get there? Is this going to be the, because if I think if they get there, that's a big deal. I think if they can get there, that is a, that could be a game changer. So you've got, you've got this generation where it's going to look really, really, really good. I just don't see, you can't do it in film. I mean, you still can't do. It's going to be uncanny. Well, have you seen like, like, you know, Benjamin Button and stuff like that? Yeah. I mean like, like to like make something that actually doesn't look creepy as a human face, you have to actually simulate the multiple layers of skin and how light goes through those and reflects through those and you know, not just all the pores and all the detail, but actually the way that light moves is like really hard for rendering. And so we're definitely another hardware generation or more away from that. I mean, Golem, maybe, maybe Golem level feel like a feel that that's cause that's like, and that's the thing. Golem and Pixar level is way easier. Yeah. Well, cause they're already cartoonish. Right. Yeah. They don't have to look perfectly like humans. Yeah. I would definitely like it to get to a point where I don't see things that I, that are, that tell me that it's a game, like where horizons don't, you know, things on the horizon don't come into existence where there's not like where I don't see pixels where I'm, when I look at a leaf, you know, that's blowing in the, in the, again, I was looking at these Witcher three screenshots and they're awesome. And it's like the clouds aren't like, you know, in the, in the background, they're just 3d clouds that are there. Right. You know, I play the Witcher, the second Witcher. I haven't played any of the Witcher games. I just bought it and started playing it and it was immediately like insanely complex. And I like put it down and I was done. It was supposed to be really hard. It was like, here's how you, yeah, it's like, here's how you make spells. And it was insane. I think they're working on that for the new one. I mean, it was insane. So difficult. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do, which is management of stuff. What I will say is in the new dead space game, they, you can construct weapons from different parts and I, I really enjoy it. You could make weird weapons, like stuff that doesn't make any sense. Like one part is a line gun and one part is a shotgun. Like it's very bizarre. Anyhow, you have to know what a line gun is, I guess. So yeah, so I don't have any big predictions here. Like I have to say, I don't have any idea what Sony is going to do for their next games. I'm just so happy. I'm happy too, but I'm also scared because as we know, I mean the last gaming product Sony released, big gaming product was the Vita, which was a, you know, a step above what they'd done in portables, but not a huge. It was like, it's way better. It's a really awesome portable gaming system, but portable gaming is kind of like going out and it's not so much better than the PSP that you're like, wow, this is a game changer. And I mean, in the circumstances of that, of that announcement was actually pretty similar. I remember we found like, I think a week prior and then Paul, you and I, we just flew to Japan like immediately. So jealous. I really want to go back to Japan. I'm really, really about badly want to go. But so here's the thing. If they announced like a system with better graphics and cloud gaming and a touchscreen controller, you know, what is that going to be enough for them to sell units? Like is that just all they need? Or I mean, I think so. We sell these all the time. These are two year lifespans. This is like guaranteed eight years of like, this is the next platform. You got it. You got to have a phone. You have to have a great phone. It's also about the content. Like what, like it or not, all the new games are going to come out on this platform. So if you want to keep playing these new games, no matter what they do to it, otherwise there's going to be a new call of duty. So I think what'll really come down to is when Sony ships and when Microsoft ships, how much they cost, because as far as like the primary titles, they're going to get, you know, basically the, you know, the same big ones. I think there are a lot more when Xbox 360 and the PlayStation three launched, I felt like there was a lot more of this allegiance of the studios. Like Ubisoft is like, we're going to make it for this console, the assassin's creed for this console and the other, you know, like there's a lot of more allegiances. And I feel like a lot of that's gone now just because of like these games are so expensive to make. You wouldn't want to make it unless it's, you're an in-house studio, which is like whatever the people studio five, one or whoever makes the halo now, right. Or your naughty dog, unless you're an in-house studio, you're making cross cross-platform games. And that's, you know, the, um, Xbox still has a huge advantage because of Xbox live. Yeah. Uh, yeah. It's functionality. Yeah. And my friends are on Xbox live and stuff. I just, yeah. I mean, the one thing that's really going to be a lot of people waiting for, you know, they're going to feel like if Sony is going this year, Microsoft has got to do something. We've heard a lot of, we've written stories about it, that this thing is coming Durango. All signs point to like announcement either at E3 or like just before. Yeah. I mean, I think both of these companies have a lot to gain by announcing before E3 and then showing off games at E3. Like that's the platform. Whoever ships first has a huge advantage. I mean, but what do they, but we don't know, we don't know who's shipping first. Yes, no, we have no idea. Xbox shipped a year before, uh, Wii and a PlayStation three. And that was fine. And the Wii U just, uh, they just announced figure for sales in January. It's one of the lowest points ever. 57,000. That's right. Well, but, but, but the Wii U isn't next gen. Well, it's their next gen. The Wii U is current gen with it, with a different control. And that's why I think this next gen graphics is what people are actually looking for. I do think, I do think there has to be, I think, you know, unless you have a novelty as amazing as the Wii when it was first out, because nobody had ever done anything like that. Right. And it was really, and it really worked and it really changed the way you play games. The Wii U does not do that. It changes the way you play a bit, but now we all have touchscreens. We know what they're like. You know, we use them on our phones. We're used to doing all kinds of weird things with touchscreens. So it's not the most novel idea. It's just adding it to your experience. And that's kind of novel, but it's not that big of a deal. You know, I do think there's something to be said. I think if it had come out and it was like, we were blowing away the graphics of the Xbox and the PS3. This is next gen graphics. Like you've never seen anything like this. And it's got that stuff. One of my favorite things, like I bought the Wii U and on the back, on the box, it said, one of the bullet points is Nintendo's first HD console. Yeah. Oh, good job guys. Good job. But I mean, you know, and, and the games they do what exactly what I'm talking about. I'm really excited for Wii Fit and for a Mario Kart. Really? Those are going to be awesome. I have no excitement about either of those. If more so than like the Fit just came on the Kinect, like is like judging you like badly judging you. No, you don't know because Wii Fit's got a frigging bobsledding and this game where you're a waiter and you're carrying things around. That sounds like fun. I did with the controller. Yeah, that's pretty cool. But I mean, still, it's also very silly. I mean, it's like, it's a big deal. I want to play a game where I don't know if the person is real or not. And I'm in an environment that's like, I'm looking at a film. Right. And I'm scared to death because there's a zombie on my ass. Yeah. So, so our wishlist is like crazy interaction. Just like you said, Paul, like our wishlist crazy interaction. No, no, no, no. New ways of interfacing. Well, no, no, no, no. I don't think anybody's saying that. That's what I'm saying. We already have the ways of. Do you play it? Yeah. All the time. Really? What do you play? Mostly voice. Well, I play Netflix. Oh, okay. So you use your, I am a Netflix audio user. For voice. Here's the thing. Who has room in their apartment for. I rest my case. Who, that's a New York question. Everybody has a big house everywhere else. Okay. So you're asking for New York. That doesn't count. We're not even a part of America. I can't even move around on my floor in my living room because my super gets mad. It might be time to look for a new place. Connect is like what I use. I use audio voice. I use Connect for fitness games. It's like how bad I do at yoga, which is terrible, by the way. I'd like to see this on video, please. Really? Yes. Well, Microsoft is probably tracking that. They're sure they are. They have the data logs on all my yoga. Elon Balmer. Yes. Oh, really? Now you get it? Now you're into it? I thought it was because of the callback. It's a good callback. That's right. Exactly. That's exactly right. But here you are. You're saying, oh, yeah, cool, innovative, new ways of playing. And you're like, oh, yeah, I don't use it. I just want natural interface. And I think we're getting closer. This control they showed is not quite there. I'm saying Sony and Microsoft already have methods for natural user interface. Just nobody built any games for them yet. And by making it a much bigger deal, we're going to start seeing that. And then they'll start experimenting even more. Yeah, just by shipping it with every console, we'll start to see it. Here's the two things I want. Incredibly realistic graphics. Yes. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. And if they do that, it's like game on in every way. Game over and game on. Game over, game changer, and game on. Seacrest in. And on that callback. Yeah, are we done? I think we're done. All right, let's wrap it up. Is there anything else we need to talk about? We can talk about Paul's Photoshop feature. That could go. Oh, that was great. That was really good. Yeah. And you definitely should check that out. Good job. Good job on Paul with the Photoshop feature and great design, which I believe Photoshop was used to help make the design. I think so. Little metal, little metal, metal factoid for you. Wow. Yeah. Any other stuff? That's about it for the week. We're over an hour. We're over an hour at this point. Next week is going to be a big week. I'll say this. You're going to have to tune into The Verge on your television. Tune into The Verge next week. We have a ton of stuff. There's this PlayStation event. That's Wednesday. HTC event. Tuesday. Oh, we didn't talk about that, but they're going to unveil their new flagship phone, which is called- All signs point to that. It's called the M7. It's been rumored to be called the M7. It's also been rumored like the one something. Who is HP? HTC One. HTC? HTC. I said HP. HP is not introducing a phone next week, I hope. And we have some really cool reports and features going up that I think you guys will want to check out. And if you just jam on one on your TV remote, just keep on hitting the one button. You'll eventually get to The Verge. You'll be on The Verge. You'll be on The Verge. Just keep on hitting. Working on it. I don't know what he's talking about, actually. You might want to play us off. We're not stopping. Yeah. Well, that's the show for this week. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at theverge.com. You can leave a comment in the post when it goes up. You could post something in our forums, which we love. Or you can find us on Twitter. The Verge is at verge. I'm Joshua Topolsky. Ross is onorosco, no E on the end. And Paul is future Paul. Keep those warm wishes coming in. He's going to be back on the internet very soon. Only about when? How? Two months? Two and a half months. Two and a half months. Seems like it was only yesterday that you were going off the internet. Oh, you know, and speaking of Valentine's, I realize I haven't mentioned this. You weren't speaking of Valentine's. I realize I haven't mentioned this, but somebody mailed me. Oh boy. All four seasons of home movies, the TV show. That's awesome. People used to tell me that I looked like a character in home movies. I'm not sure who. I think the character with the pointy nose and the spiky hair. I think the main guy. Brendan? Or maybe they said that I had a personality like him. Okay. It was a girl. It was many years ago. Nobody called you coach McGurk, did they? No way. Oh no. But they also said I kind of looked like the guy from the Dr. Katz show. I'd say like his son cross. Oh yeah. Which is also McGurk's voice. I think it's H. John Benjamin. Isn't it? Really? I think so. Maybe. Can't believe we're still doing it. Can we wrap this up? That's the show. I just want to say thank you to whoever sent that to me. That is the best present I have received. That's pretty cool. I hope they weren't burned off of the internet. Burned? Think about it. Burned onto a CD from the internet. From an internet file that was downloaded. No. Okay. That's our show. We'll be back next week. And as always, I wish you and yours the very best for a happy and healthy weekend where nothing horrible will happen to you or your family, I'm sure.