AMD Proving to be Linux Chads AGAIN - WAN Show May 8, 2026

Alrighty, go for it. What is up everybody and welcome to the WAN show. I am coming at you live from a Microsoft Teams AI replace background. Just kidding, Luke. It's real. I can prove it. Oh yeah, look at that. Look at the effects. Look at the amazing effects. I am in beautiful Connecticut today where I've been attending a secret event that actually like has a live website. Uh it was really cool. I got to meet some incredible creators. I met the one and only Alec from Technology Connections. I also met Michael Reeves for the first time. That was awesome. Got to catch up with Tom Scott. It's been an amazing amazing couple days. So I'll be talking about that a little bit. And I will also be talking about oh I don't know maybe the fact that sorry GameStop has offered $56 billion for eBay even though GameStop does not have 56 billion. So I definitely have some thoughts on that. What else have we got this week sir? Well I I mean I offer 57 billion. So okay now it's a bidding war. Thank you. That's helpful. Yes, it's just it's just as legitimate of as an of an offer. Uh, did you mention the Valve thing? I don't think so. Valve imported 50 tons of something just being called game consoles for now. We'll have to speculate on what that might be because there's at least a couple things. Um, and Toyota built a $10 billion private utopia tech city. What is what does that even mean? And I got to throw one more in here because our headline topic wasn't actually in our uh our four. AMD is prepping full HDMI 2.1 implementation for Linux. This is super exciting for anyone who's a big gamer on Linux who or who just loves high resolution and high refresh rate displays over HDMI. AMD just keeps being chatted and I absolutely love it. Roll that intro. The show is brought to you today by Tel, Zoho, MSI, and Squarespace along with our rap partner Dbrand, our chair partner Razer, and our laptop partner Razer. But I got to say, I am really missing my Razor chair right now. There is negative lumbar support on the like couch that I'm sitting in right now and it is it is extremely uncomfortable. Uh can't can't wait to get back to it. But why don't we jump right into our first topic for today, which has got to be the big news that AMD is prepping full HDMI 2.1 implementation for Linux. They submitted patches to add HDMI fixed rate link or FRL support to their open-source Linux GPU drivers, which is a huge step toward full HDMI 2.1 support on Linux. FRL is part of the HDMI 2.1 standard and enables the higher bandwidth that's needed for higher resolution and refresh rates. This is all notable because in 2024, the HDMI forum rejected AMD's earlier attempt to bring HDMI 2.1 to its open source drivers over, you guessed it, concerns about exposing proprietary details of the standard, which ain't that the always way? Anytime someone tries to do something really cool and just do the work for somebody on Linux, some standards body or some company is like, "M, yeah, no. Uh, yeah, just no. No." An AMD driver engineer confirmed on the Feronx forums that a full implementation is on the way, pending compliance testing, and that display stream compression support will follow in a later patch. and this change and the timing of it are, let's just say, convenient and very interesting in light of one of our other headline topics, which is, of course, the uh supposed what what was it? 50 tons. Are these metric tons? Are these imperial tons? um the 50 tons of game consoles that uh Valve has apparently just imported because it was a a major topic of discussion during the announcement of the Steam Machine that um hey it's got kind of a modern GPU in it. Couldn't help noticing it doesn't support HDMI 2.1. What's up with that? Well, if AMD's implementation lands and passes compliance and the timing of all of this works out, it could be that Steam OS devices could get HDMI 2.1 either at or closely near launch. We don't know if Valve's been involved in these patches at all, but just given how chatted they've been about all of this, nothing would really surprise me. Luke, do you want to jump right into the speculation around the um very very soon upcoming Steam Machine launch? Yeah, between April 30th and May 1st, Bra Lynch, who was uh correct about the Steam Controller import documents a couple weeks ago, posted that the United States received a total of 50 tons of game consoles from Valve. It is unclear if this is the new Steam machine, which is would be the console, or the Steam Frame, which is Valve's new VR headset, or possibly even just a bunch of Steam Decks, though unlikely. Uh, but they were also game consoles when imported before. So, it wouldn't it wouldn't be too weird. Uh, it's worth noting 50 tons is not maybe actually as much as you might think. The steam machine was confirmed to weigh around 6 lb, which would be about 20,000 units, which is probably not enough even if you think it's not hyper compelling because if we look at like the the Steam controller, which basically every review that I saw was like it's a little expensive for what it is, and then it's just instantly sold out. Like it's Steam hardware, it's just going to fly. Um, so yeah, I I I mean I if this is the entirety of the initial wave of the Steam machines, I think they're just going to fly out immediately. Um, yeah, I um Is it our discussion question on this one or is it our discussion question on a different one? Uh, yeah, I don't remember, but I'm going to move our discussion question. One second. Sorry. Elijah included that the math to figure out that it was 20,000 units is accounting for shipping weight and CC can weight and things like that. Yeah. Okay. Um I guess my my question here is ah yes, this is actually our discussion question for the Steam controller selling out in 30 minutes. Um, and it was, you know, given Valve's history with, you know, the Steam Deck, was the day one sellout just unavoidable, or should a company of Valve scale have been better prepared? And I guess I have the same question when we come to the Steam Machine. If, and this is a big if because we don't know for sure, but if this is just 20,000 units of Steam machines for the US market, is Valve being kind of irresponsible in launching it with such limited inventory, or is it possible that this is just, you know, the the first shipment and, you know, the next five CC cans coming in are going to mean that we're actually going to have a reasonable amount of of launch inventory. Like if they launch this with just 20,000 units, is that just kind of asking for trouble from scalpers? Because Steam controllers going for like hundreds of dollars. If this is the Steam machine, basically everyone on the internet has been saying, "Ah, I'm not that interested for a long time." So like if you're if you're choosing Yes, I still think it's low personally, but if you're choosing the stock for this, I can understand being a little bit concerned compared to the Steam Deck. Even compared to the Steam controller, people were very interested in the Steam Controller. They just said it was expensive and Steam hardware seemed just be like whatever, people are gonna pay for it anyways. Uh but the Steam machine, like most the press I saw on it was saying it's not super compelling. Um which I mean I still think it's cool. Like if you're Valve, don't you have kind of a don't you have kind of a responsibility to to make your products available when you say they're available and stop acting like a small company? I think the Steam Deck, if I remember correctly, sold out pretty much immediately, but then had fairly rapid waves of restocks, did it not? Sorry. Uh oh, yeah. Um, yes. Yes, it it was restocked pretty rapidly, so it was clear that they were kind of they kind of had staged shipments that were sort of in various stages of being transported across the ocean at the time. Um, it's also possible, though I'm just speculating on this, but it is a pretty common strategy that they would have if they had like one shipment in their warehouse and like one at the dock and one at the midpoint of the ocean and one that was just wrapping production. Sometimes what'll happen is if things go way better than expected, they'll actually take that one that is just wrapping production, throw it on a plane, and it'll actually beat any of those other ones to the warehouse. So you can kind of you can kind of massage the availability of things that way. Like we've we've had to do that with some of the cables. We've had to air freight them rather than seaf freight them just because the demand is so ridiculous. Um but I just I don't know man. I seeing what they did with the controller is not really giving me a ton of faith that Valve is adequately stocking this thing. And at a certain point, I've actually had a Valve employee say to me like unironically, you know, something something something, but like, you know, we're a small company, so blah blah blah. And I go, listen, revenue and profit-wise, you're not a small company at all. As as a hardware company, they don't ship that much hardware. Um, and I I think that side of their business is is relatively small, but still they they they could not be as you're saying. Um, I think as well it's it's it's like scalper bait. Um, there's there's tons of these controllers on like eBay and elsewhere. Uh, I it's it's tough because I I I wish that they did more to fight against that, but I don't necessarily know what they do. That doesn't make it One of the things they could have done was they could have just not called it the exact same name as the original Steam Controller, which is causing a lot of OG Steam controllers to be sold at scalper prices by, you know, to confused relatives or giftgivers right now. That's um That's true. That's a really frustrating situation that was completely avoidable that I raised with Valve when they did the unveiling and I was like, "Hey, this is a really bad idea." I raised it again in the review and then I just I don't know. I was feeling kind of sassy and I sent them and I told you so as well. I was like I basically linked them like a bunch of scalper eBay listings and I was like hey so just a you know third time this was super avoidable and you guys didn't have to do this. You could have just named it in a way that wasn't confusing. Yeah. People are now calling it the Valve Steam Controller 2026 model. And if Valve had called it that, I wouldn't have even been that mad. Would have been a little bit better. But they just called it Steam Controller. Like guys, so avoidable. And so I guess I'm just I guess I'm just kind of This is just kind of a run of avoidable issues from them. And I and I hope that like a I hope we give Nintendo enough appreciation for what they did with the Switch 2 launch. They took the time. They delayed the launch. They built up inventory to make sure that if you wanted to switch to pretty much at launch, you could go and get one. And that's that's something that is not necessarily good for their cash flow. And to your point, can be a risky thing to do, but it's good for your customers. And I I I want Valve to stop behaving like a scrappy startup and act like a real company when it comes to their product launches. And I realize this is kind of rich coming from the guy who can't keep his cables in stock for more than flipping 20 minutes, right? I get that. But come on, man. I definitely operate with constraints that Valve does not have. Just doesn't have. Yeah. Um, with all of that said, hey, where are you at for Steam Machine? Like I I feel like in the initial launch window, people were super excited. The uh excitement kind of waned as we made our way into the RAM apocalypse and and a lot of the pricing estimates for the Steam machine started to go up. Um Valve clearly has gotten their hands on enough RAM to manufacture the thing cuz they haven't actually delayed the launch outside of Q2, which means it's coming in the next 7 to 8 weeks. Where's your bullishness right now? I still think it's super cool. I I uh I don't think the lack of interest due to ramp apocalypse has anything to do with Steam Machine. I think a very very significant amount of people are just not interested in computers right now because they are in a lot of ways kind of boring. Like the most interesting news in computer land right now is people running away from Windows. It's not it's not hardware. And then hardware is super super super expensive. Uh it's it's just a terrible time to be into computers unfortunately. So I think that is what reduced the interest in the Steam Machine. Nothing to do with the actual Steam Machine itself. Um really I I think so. When when you look at handhelds, people prefer the Steam Deck mostly over pretty much all the alternatives, even though the Steam Deck is pretty old and underperformant compared to alternatives at this point. Um, and I I think there will be a market of people that will really like a Steam machine. People like Steam hardware. It's another push forward for for Linux, for Steam OS. I think both of these things are good. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Steam Machine is at least part of the kick in the pants that that pushed AMD to try again to push for the HDMI 2.1 thing. Um, I I think it it just keeps progressing this same thing that we've been trying to push for for a while now, which is which is Linux for more people. Um, and that's great. I think people will buy it. I suspect if it's 20,000 units, it's going to disappear immediately. Um, I I don't suspect it's going to be like, oh my god, this like incredible value option that a bunch of people seem to think that it was going to be. Um, does it need to be? I don't think so. I wish it was too, but does it need to be in the grand scheme of things if what the Steam Machine can accomplish is it can is it can make PC gaming a more consolelike experience, something that's easier to to get into, even if it even if the money barrier is still there, something that requires less sort of technical knowhow. If it takes people out of their comfort zone and puts them into Linux, if it creates an install base for Linux that incentivizes developers to target this hardware platform, like can we then can we then forgive Valve if the Steam machine ultimately is not that affordable? I like there there's some people in Flowplane chat. Uh Mick Bane said that the Steam Machine will need to be cheap. Um Deox said the deck hit a value proposition. I hear what you guys are saying. That's very true. The controller sure as heck didn't. Sold out in 30 minutes. Um, I I don't think the machine is as compelling as the controller. I don't think the machine is as compelling as the deck. I think Valve knows both of these things. I think for the people who kind of want a home theater machine and it would be pretty cool to have a Steam OS powered home theater machine. Yeah. paired with the knowledge that is kind of weird and a little bit uncomfortable for me, but the knowledge that an incredible amount of people just buy pre-builds. This is a cool Steam powered pre-build that is trendy because it's Linux and Steam OS and it can play all your freaking Steam games and it's on your TV and your cool new Steam controller works with it and your Steam Deck and your Steam Machine are kind of in the same ecosystem. Neat. I still think it has all of those things. I don't think it's going to be super price competitive. I think for a lot of people, it's going to price them out because any computer right now is basically going to price out a massive amount of people. It just is a fact at the moment. Um, but especially if they're bringing in low volume, I think it's going to do well for them. And I welcome anything that uh is honestly going to keep spicing up the competition in the operating system space right now because even if Microsoft is waking up a little bit, I need them to wake up a lot. Um yeah, I um this is going to sound crazy. Okay, bear with me for a second here. So far, I like the new leadership at Xbox. Yeah, one of the first things she did was slash the price of Game Pass. Um, yes, removed day one access to COD, which is, you know, a a big boatload of suck for people who bought Xbox, bought Game Pass just for COD, but in my opinion, actually a boon for everyone who enjoys the variety of Game Pass and appreciates that aspect of it more and wants the subscription to be more affordable. So, I I can actually I can I can get on board with that move, especially as someone who doesn't play COD. So, so take that take that for what it is. Um I already like what they're doing with changes to the branding, changes to the messaging, whole that that whole this is an Xbox campaign where like a TV's an Xbox, an iPad's an Xbox, everything's an I understood where they were. I understood what that meant, right? I didn't know anyone, but like you know how long was Microsoft going to beat that drum that the Xbox is not a game console? I mean after the disastrous launch of the Xbox One with the connect module and then eventually unbundling the connect module and going, "Oh, okay. So it's not the center of your digital life or home media hub or, you know, whatever." What it feels like to like how long are they going to keep trying that? And it seems like she's saying not anymore. She's also saying, this isn't in the doc, but I wanted to bring this up anyways. I'm going to share my screen. I don't think we can see it, but I'll I'll I'll speak to it. Uh, Microsoft gives up on Xbox co-pilot AI. New Xbox CEO Asha Chararma continues to make her mark. Windows is winding down. Here's where I'm going with this. Here's where I'm going with this. So far, I like her. And I think both you and I were really skeptical. Yeah, because we were just like, "Okay, so what?" She comes from like the AI side of the business. What her gaming street credit is functionally other than other than reducing the price of Game Pass, a lot of it right now is words. So, I like I like the words, but they're good words. They're good words, but I'm still kind of holding powerful words. Tears streaming down their face. Uh I like these words. They said, "These are the finest words that any man or woman alive has ever has ever said. I don't know if I'll ever taste words like this again." So, so I like her. And I'm going to make a bold prediction right now. With Sony being unwilling to just shoulder the cost of selling consoles at a loss, they in an unprecedented move, they raised the price of the PS5. Sony has never raised the price of a console before. You and you can make the argument that when they when they did the uh the slim for the PS5, they effectively raised the price. And in some ways they like kind of did depending on what configuration you were buying, but they also like didn't. Um Sony raised the price of a current generation PlayStation 5. Never been done before. Uh Nintendo, this is in the dock for this week. Nintendo is raising the price of the Switch, too. That one I don't know if it's never been done before, but it certainly is not common. Valve has moved away. They they or at least it looks like they have signaled a strong intent to move away from what they did with the Steam Deck. With the Steam Deck, they got really aggressive. And from what I've heard, they weren't selling it at a loss. That's not my understanding. But what they did do was they made a huge commitment to AMD. They did that custom silicon and that enabled them, that was a big part of what enabled them to hit a hyperaggressive price point and really build an install base for this machine so that developers would have a reason to care about it. So, so far everyone except Microsoft is kind of on defense right now. Do you kind of are you kind of picking up what I'm throwing down right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Microsoft doesn't have much to defend right now. What if Microsoft is the one who comes in with Project Helix, which is the code name for the nextG Xbox, and does the like 299 and walks off stage. And to be clear, it's not going to be 299. Don't Don't live in a diluted la land where you think you're going to get a console for You said it. No, I know. I don't mean literally $299, but honestly, you know, against the backdrop of of rising technology prices, I think if they walked on stage and even said $4.99 at this point, that would be a mic drop moment. Um, I I I'm not I'm not sure how much hope I should have because Microsoft has actually also said prior to Asha Sharma's leadership that the nextG Xbox will be very expensive. But like Microsoft has also done a two-tiered strategy already twice. So just because the the X skew is really expensive, that doesn't mean that there won't be a really compelling value option. We don't know that. So do you have Luke, can you find Check your pinky. Can you just look at check your pinky? Can you find even like a single tiny bone in your body? like a pinky sized bone that contains any hope for Xbox to be the savior of the next generation of consoles. Can you find that hope? He's trying. He's trying, folks. He's Oh my god, the the brow furrow. Oh, I'm watching I'm watching in real time as you're as you're trying so hard. Oh man, my my gut says no. But you are saying one singular bone and I have I have a lot of bones. Um yeah, can you bone this? Uh I don't know. I can I can hope. I seriously doubt though. If you look at Microsoft's path with Xbox for so long now, the answer from them is for sure no. Um, but you know, she's also clearly down to try to change the path and change the strategy. so maybe they figure out I think it really depends on like what are the goals that have been given to her? Is she supposed to make it so that Xbox isn't the laughingtock of consoles anymore in regards to like when you're saying like, "Oh, the other people are raising their prices." And I'm sitting here being like, "Yeah, and Xbox is raising their price on what?" Like They don't have to raise their price. No one's buying their consoles. It doesn't matter. Um like the what what is that? What was that random thing that outsold Xboxes for Christmas? Oh, the uh Next Cube. Not the Ouya. The Yeah, next Cube or whatever it's called. Is that Is that what it's called? I Oh, man. What What is it called? Is it called Next Cube? Definitely not the Ouya. Next cube. I'm not. Uh what am I thinking? So, we don't even know the name of it, dude. And it outsold Xbox. That's That's my point. So, like is is from Next Playground. NEX, not NEX. So, you were you were close. They they Xbox connected better than Microsoft was ever able to Xbox Connect and managed to outsell the Xbox with a console that effectively requires a subscription. It's freaking wild that that thing is has found that market that it has and absolutely killed it the way that they have. Kudos to them. Yeah. And it's stomped. So like is is the goal from higher than her that was given to her like her KPI for for her not even Microsoft but for her was her KPI, hey we want to be taken seriously in the console space again. We want to sell some freaking consoles and get our name out there and be a big player again cuz we're honestly not right now. or was it just revenue line go up? Cuz if it was just revenue line go or profit line go up maybe cuz if it was just that she might be incentivized to focus on what she's technically been focusing on so far at least publicly which is game pass and and and pushing Game Pass even harder and getting game pass and not including COD in Game Pass because that cost them a whole bunch of revenue. Yeah. Um, so like is it is it those things or is it make Xbox a console that people actually buy again? Because if it if it's this one, if it's, hey, we're going to try to invest in the future. We're going to try to get our market share back in the in the console space. We're going to do these things. We're we're going to um double down on consoles continuing to exist. cuz it felt like in the era of like metaverse, VR, all that kind of stuff, Microsoft was just going like, "No one's even going to have consoles anymore. Let's ditch them." Um, but that seems to be going away. Yeah. What's up? Okay. Okay. Okay. Here's what I want to know. This I'm actually like hyper interested in your perspective on because I think that you almost have like two competing fragments of your soul in your body that are almost uh that have goals that are almost in in perfect conflict with each other because on the one side you were an Xbox kid and when you see a green Xbox logo that makes a little lizard part of your brain light up and go, "Yeah, Xbox." Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. Okay. Okay. Other side other side of your other fragment of your soul is PC gamer. Why would I game on anything that I didn't build with my own two hands or or Lionus' children built me built it for me or you know whatever you know some some variant of why would I play on a computer that wasn't it didn't have child labor involved? What are we talking about? Good news, Luke. You don't have to. Um, none of us do if we're being very honest. Dang. Oh. Uh, okay. Let's move on from that really really fast. and and and and rooting for the customizability and the DIY spirit of of PC gaming. And I think that part of you has really embraced the way that Microsoft is has is making the PC more Xbox like and buying a single license of an Xbox game gives you the right to play on PC and and I I I suspect you're also pretty down for like the Xbox full screen experience and how it, you know, makes your PC run slightly more efficiently and less like a Windows machine and more like a gaming machine. How do those two pieces of you reconcile with each other when we know when we know in our heart of hearts that the thing that makes a console generation successful more than any other more than any other rule in the playbook exclusives is exclusive. Yeah. See, you knew exactly where I was going with it. That's what sells consoles. So, how can Xbox be come back to its former glory without like Dead Rising and without Halo exclusives and without without all these things that made the 360 era the peak of Xbox? What What would it look like for you? Yeah, it's tough. I The exclusives one is interesting because Sony and Xbox both started pushing games to Steam. Um, you can there's a there's a chart that I saw recently that was super interesting which was like PlayStation exclusives and how they performed on Steam and like Hell Divers was way up there and but a lot of other things did pretty well but you know Hell Divers killed it. Um, but a lot of people like that that's a lot of PlayStation games on PC. People are still buying tons of PlayStations. So, like I I kind of feel like uh you know them them putting Microsoft exclusives on PlayStation might be the the too far move in terms of exclusives, but I don't know 100%. I also don't know if this is just my brain trying to convince me this is true or if I actually believe it's true. But I don't know that putting games on PC ruins your console attractiveness. Now, I would also have to dive deeper into the time. dive first or can I counterpoint that first? It's up to you. I was going to add really quick thing basically that I don't know how PlayStation has done it. I don't know if there's like an exclusive window at the beginning and then they released it or or not. That's exactly what I was going to bring up is that the PlayStation 5 generation has been one of shifting strategies for Sony. At the beginning of the generation, there's never going to come to another platform or at the very least there was literally no given timeline. Then Sony kind of started to do this thing where it turned out they were actually selling like, you know, a lot of PlayStation games on Steam and they started to talk about, you know, when the window is going to open and when you'll be able to buy these PlayStation games on other platforms. Now, I don't think this has actually been confirmed formally. Um, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong. Hit me up in the chat, guys. But from my understanding, Sony has now sort of started to look at these numbers in the gear up to PlayStation 6 and gone, "Okay, well, hold on a second. Maybe we need to dial back this exclusives on PC, on Steam strategy because are we selling enough PlayStation fives right now?" Um, I would say we're not. That's that's my understanding of kind of where it where it's at right now. so could you see a future where there's a window where where Xbox exclusives exist on Xbox exclusively for some period of time, a year, year and a half, two years even, and then they kind of open up the floodgates and go, "Okay, let's grab some more extra revenue now that this has moved as many consoles as it as it will." I honestly think even 6 months is would be completely fine. The world moves so fast. Now, one thing that I want to throw out there is this chart from uh the Alina Insight newsletter. Uh Alina analytics substack. Um copy sold. Top PlayStation Studios games by copy sold. You see Hell Divers 2 is way way way up here. This is sold on Steam. I don't have the stats for on PlayStation. And as far as my understanding goes, this game sold gang busters on PlayStation 2. Uh, well, PlayStation as well. Um, thank you. It was released simultaneously on PC and PlayStation 5. It did release on Xbox, but it was way delayed on Xbox. Um, okay. Oh, but closer to the window I was talking about. Not a year or two years. It looks like it was released on PlayStation and PC in February, and it was released on Xbox in August. Same year. No, not same year. Next year. So, it was a pretty big window. Okay. So, like 18 months almost. That's huge. I mean, we're in pretty uncharted territory right now. Uh, pun kind of intended here. Um, where this whole thing with exclusive, but like not exclusive, but maybe timed, but maybe sometimes not timed. Um, you know, I think it's I think it's pretty pretty obvious that Nintendo has has drawn a clear line in the sand. They allow their IPs in other, you know, forms of media now, like you you know, there's that um there's that mobile Mario Kart game. Um, and and you know what, actually, I mean, their IPs have actually I remember um what's what was it? Mario is Missing was like a PC a PC Nintendo IP game back from when like I was a kid. Um, so they they allow their IPs on other platforms, but Nintendo seems pretty clear that if you want to play a Nintendo game, you will play it on a Switch console or they will come after you. Um, yeah. Is this Did I imagine this? Maybe it was something else. No, it I mean it shows Super NES as the as the image, but it says platforms MS DOSs, Macintosh, Windows, NES, and Snoop Super Ness. I remember seeing it for sale at London Drugs. I've never heard of this before. Anyway, I I never actually played it. I just remember seeing it. Did not like it so much. Oh, well, okay. Maybe maybe maybe that was the one. Maybe that was what chased them off the PC in the first place. Maybe. but okay. So, you've laid out your ideal strategy, which is that Microsoft doubles down on the Xbox hardware being affordable, right? I where I don't know if you actually said that, but it was kind of I asked question. If they want consoles to if they want their console to continue to exist in a meaningful way, they need to make a splashback cuz they're going to have to win everyone that went to PlayStation 5 back, which is going to be tough. So, they're going to need to come in swinging with something big. They It would be real good for him if they had a Halo like game, which What What's the last like Microsoft Studio game? Forza, I guess would be the last one standing. Forza Horizon 6 is coming. It'll be it'll be too early for the console launch. Um, but in terms of like blockbuster first party Microsoft game or even exclusive game like I I'm having a hard time even even thinking of any. Yeah, Lightning XCE in chats like I don't know Halo 2 remake again. Yeah. Like yikes, man. So, I don't I don't know what they have to like really bring people in. And and Halo has diminished pretty hard. Uh yeah, I don't I honestly don't know if they're capable of bringing it back. Starfield was kind of um I'm not confident in Bethesda being able to release a good game. Don't worry, Activision Blizzard will do it. Uh yeah. Okay. Uh, sure. Uh, I don't know. They sure spent a lot of money buying some stuff. Okay. Noi put together a comprehensive list for us. Here we go. Cool. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Gears of War Reloaded. I can You look like You look like I I know it didn't happen because I'm not in the room with you, but you look like someone farted. And that's what you look like. I know it didn't happen cuz I'm not in the room with you. Is hilarious. He farts on wros so much and you guys have no idea. Age of Empires 2 definitive edition. Is that helping? Uh new fable. You know what? A killer, dude. The new fable that doesn't have uh uh character physical changes based on karma status. What? Really? Yeah. Did you hear about that? How's it even Fable, right? Like, what are you doing? Uh, new Fable won't have we made a different game and slapped the name on it. This is one of those things that I just kind of I look at and I go, look, I understand from a game developer standpoint and even from like a fan and community standpoint, you know, the sequel shouldn't just be like slap a coat of paint on it, Force Awakens it, and just make the same thing again, you know, but how can you not Yeah. How can you how can you take something that was like like a core standout differentiating feature of the original and just go eh dude when when people would tell me about Fable when Fable was first coming out that was the thing that they would tell you. That was it. It's an RPG and the actions that you do physically change your character based on karma status. It's like oh wow interesting. Uh, Boom pointed out it's like Civ 7 forcing you to switch civs all the time. Amazing example of just like what are you doing? Like I I honestly have no interest in ever launching Civ 7 again. That that game is just cooked in my mind. Like I don't even care about cosmetics. Like you know this. I've never spent a dollar on cosmetics in my life. And just just out of silent protest towards horse armor and everything that followed it. I mean, you know this too. I played a bunch of Halo Infinite. I earned a bunch of helmets and armor and like what skins. And I stubbornly played with the stock skin no matter what my rank was. I actually even did the same thing in Clare Obscure where they're not even they're they're not even purchasable. I just I played with the stock outfits the whole game because I'm just like I don't know whether I'm old school or whether I just like can't stand the idea of microtransactions and cosmetics in my game. I just I don't I don't want to even allow myself to assign a value to my character looking a little bit different and I'm probably yeah I'm probably I've gone too far and that that's that's like that's totally fine. But even for someone like me who goes out of my way to proudly publicly not care about cosmetics in Fable, there would have been times when I was like, "This quest would be easier or this situation would be easier if I just murdered the crap out of everyone and I didn't because I didn't want to like senator Palpatine myself." Yeah. And I and I wanted to so so tying the moral choice to your physical appearance in that way really impacted gameplay for me in a way that I think would actually be even more impactful in the era of in-game cosmetics and in-game outfits and and to to not do that is like actual insanity. People are saying crazy to me, by the way, that apparently Foraxis has announced that they are going to maybe be walking the the force changing of civs back or something. I don't know the details. No one linked an article, but multiple people said this um look like I don't know. People are saying it might be a different mode now. Um yeah, they did with the time of update something test of time. I I don't know, but some something may have changed or be changing or something like that. But honestly, like I I played one match of Civ 7 and every single Civ game that I remember playing since I think Civ 4, you play it on launch and it's like it's a little rough, but I see the bones. This will be cool. We'll come back in some updates. They release some expansions and it becomes really, really good. And then you wait and the next game comes out and the same thing happens. Civ 7 was the first time that I played it and was like, "The bones are rotten." This Oh, here it is. pcgamer.com. Civ 7 players can once again play as a single civilization in a massive overhaul update that is tentatively coming in spring. So, it's not here yet. These these updates are similar in scope to an expansion. So, there's hope, Luke. Maybe I I won't completely give up. But I will say like I I specifically remember playing Civ 6 and being like, "Oo, I don't like a lot of these systems. I don't like how this works." But, you know, they do this every time. I'll just wait and then it'll get good. And then I like Civ 6 now. I didn't have that reaction playing Civ 7. And you know, if they can pull it out, they don't have Luigi anymore, so that'll be rough. If they can pull Jeez, that'll be rough. they can pull it off. I think it would be considered a win though. They lost their ace in a hole. They lost their their I don't want to talk about I don't want to talk about Xbox forever. Uh that was that was crazy what you just said and I'm glad I was talking over it. Um, I want to play a fun game before we before we finally move on from like talking about Xbox, but Amir in float plane chat kind of inspired a little short conversation that I want to have with chat here and said, "If Microsoft bought Project Red and made the Cyberpunk sequel an exclusive to Xbox, I would definitely go back. I think that's literally the only title I can think of that would bring me back to Xbox." And I actually want chat I want you guys to kind of give me your line. Give me your bribe that it would take for Microsoft to to to win you back. An interesting question. Yeah. Force you back to Xbox. Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2087 or something. Both coming to the new Xbox console would be pretty that would be a pretty big pull. One of GTA 6. It's not happening. It's not relevant. I shouldn't say it's not relevant. It's very relevant. It's not relevant to this conversation. Yeah. Give me something a little more realistic. I I think something that's kind of funny about that argument to me is the thing that would bring you back to Xbox is them buying another game studio. And seeing how they've handled the ones that they have like I I would prefer that just doesn't happen. I think, you know, okay, they have new leadership. I need to I need to try to remember that and have some hope cuz she's been doing, you know, she's been saying good things and has done a good thing so far. Um, but yeah, Peter, just one more hit, bro. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, man. Oh, man. Uh, Elijah says Elder School 6 being exclusive might. Katos is like Portal 3. Okay, we all know that's never happening. Uh, people got me, man. Titanfall 3. Titanfall 3. If they actually made a genuinely good successor to Titanfall 2, let's go. That That would be my hook 100%. I would be done. I'd be cooked immediately cuz that's the in my opinion, Titanfall 2 is I I don't know how nobody freaking played it cuz EA is dumb and never marketed it. But you look at reviews on Steam, overwhelmingly positive. Everyone loved it. The community is super strong. That's the like Halo. That's their halo. If they market Titanfall 3 properly and they get the IP somehow and they get some of the the spirit that actually made Titanfall 2 and they make a genuinely good successor to it, that game would combat is so fun. It's so fun. That game is just and and it's it's one of those things where it's like um like you know how you know how wine connoisseurs will talk about the body and the aroma and the whatever you know I we can be the same about games, right? where we start to kind of pick them apart and we talk about the innovative mechanics and the stunning visuals and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, does any of it matter unless it's fun? Titanfall 2, I could say a lot of really sort of pretentious things that are really good about it, but at the end of the day, it's fun. Sometimes you're in a mech and it's never not fun. the weight and the like the momentum of this mech. You can like feel it. I was never even like a mech warrior kid, but it was like neither satisfying and it was great. And and and those combat sequences made sense. You had big weapons and you fought big stuff. And then you kind of it's kind of like like power '90s Power Rangers, man, where then that didn't mean that you could just solve every problem with your big mech. Sometimes you had to fight on the ground and like cool like mirror's edge like uh parkour and like running and sliding and like really satisfying gun combat too. It's just such a fun game. Okay. Okay. I think I think we're starting to lay a groundwork here, Luke. So, they need to actually somehow turn around Bethesda and make a good Elder Scrolls game. That would be massive as well. They need to they need to do Titanfall 2. Um, you know, COD is going to be COD, right? So, you know, but I don't I don't think I don't think at this point you can make COD Xbox exclusive. I don't think there's any putting closing that Pandora's box again. Yeah, I don't think they should, to be honest. Just keep saying like if I'm trying to think if I'm trying to fully put my Microsoft hat on, I don't think they should do that with COD. I don't think so either. Yeah, take taking COD off PC would be crazy work at this point. Obsidianbased New Vegas sequel. I don't think they can do I don't think they even should do a New Vegas sequel, to be honest. I think just doing an Obsidian-based Fallout though could be pretty sick if if they if they get Bethesda to just really actually make a good game again and they focus on on uh Elder Scrolls 6 and just leave them there. Yeah. and take get Obsidian to wake up and make things and make Fallout. That'd be awesome. If they somehow get the IP and actually do right by it with Titanfall, that would be amazing cuz honestly, I don't think they can make Halo. I feel like Halo's like aged out. I don't know how you fix it. I think may maybe if you get off of Spartans or something like if you if you focus on what is even Halo without Spartans though like come on. Yeah. If if you somehow focus on like without planets too you know like what are we even what are we even talking about? Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah. People said ODST. There's ODST. We should move on. Uh Madscribe says, "Hey, Steam Controller has a reservation queue now. So if you want one, uh that's probably the way to do it if you don't want to get scalped on that." And uh man, don't pay $300 for a Steam controller. It's a good controller. At $100, it was kind of hard for me to wholeheartedly recommend. At $300, it is impossible for me to recommend. go go sign up for the queue. Give Valve your money. Not predatory scalpers. I don't know why I have to say this. If we all just got together and never paid a scalper for anything, they wouldn't exist anymore and it would be a better world. Um, don't do that. Uh, but let's uh let's let's let's move on. Uh, we should probably get some sponsors done. Hey, Dan, I can't see your your thing. Or why don't I jump into the CW announcements first. We actually have a a pretty loaded up week for CW. Some of you have noticed this already, but to celebrate our new website, Dbrand, uh, Luke, do you want to share your screen? Uh, yeah. Let me get there. Dbrand products. Select Dbrand products are now available on ltstore.com with exclusive colorways, ghost and green circuit that look absolutely flipping amazing. And the best part is that unlike if you order these products from Dbrand's website, you will actually get both the ghost circuit skin and the green circuit skin for the product that you select. So, we've got skins for uh Switch 2 as well as for um Steam Deck for key modern phones. Uh I've actually gotten a ton of comments. Uh where is it? Where's my phone? There it is. I've gotten a ton of comments on my green circuit skin here. It's got just like very OG classic circuit board vibes. And then we've got the uh the white one. The ghost circuit has like a super cool kind of prismatic. Uh you'll have to find maybe another shot to Dan has some shots on his computer that show how it kind of catches the light. Uh Dan, do you want to just uh do you want to show those and just go back to uh Yeah, you can kind of see it on the on kind of the bottom there. What else you got? Hit me. Yeah, you can see it kind of at the bottom of the phone there. Yeah, super cool. Dude was up in float plane chat says, "I knew you were using a skin that wasn't a thing before. You ignored me for a reason. I understand. I'm not mad at you anymore. I'm glad we're good. I'm glad we're good." Dude was up. Anyway, freaking excited about this partnership. Uh so now if you wanted to get a a Dbrand case for uh for your device, then you can also pick up some awesome stuff from ltstore.com at the same time. And I've got a couple of things that you can uh that you can pick up that are new. For this week, we're launching our LT precision multi-bit standard kit. So, a little while ago, we rebranded the Precision Kit Pro, and that was in preparation for this because we now have two tiers of our precision multi-bit screwdrivers. This one is designed for everyday repairs, upgrades, and tinkering. It covers the most useful precision bits in one compact package. Has the same premium LT build quality with an anodized aluminum handle, magnetic bit retention, a stainless steel internal shaft, and an end cap that spins suspiciously well for something meant to be a screwdriver. It builds on the bestselling Precision Pro, and it packs the most useful bits, a removable crossbar for stubborn screws, that's new, and a magnetic organizer case into one compact everyday kit. So, the main difference here, guys, is that it um it hold on, I'm actually trying to think. Uh how many how many bits are bit changes? So, this one has 31 and the big one has 61. And then Luke, if you zoom in, you can actually see there's a hole through the driver now that you can use that torque bar on. Um, and so it doesn't have the internal bit storage in the driver anymore. But some people actually prefer this style anyway. So, uh, we've got that launching this week. And then finally, we're adding new colors to the blank t-shirt lineup. Uh, we're getting a seasonal refresh with grape, jade gray, and cafe. Oh, excuse me. Coffee. Same lightweight fabric, refined fit, and all the overthinking that went into making a genuinely good blank tea. And also available in tall because finding basics that actually fit shouldn't feel like a side quest. Love that. Love that tagline. So guys, you can check out the new blank tease. I think that's it for creator warehouse stuff. Oh, okay. This is interesting. We have a new mailing list. We're offering a singleuse 10% off LTT store coupon for people who sign up to be notified on all future drops. We have 85 plus more products still launching this year and you can be among the first to know. The coupon is valid for the next 7 days and you can sign up at ltdstore.com/pages/welcome. Uh oh, I guess we should jump into uh a few comms. Uh, we believe that when you throw money at your screen, when you're watching your favorite creators or podcasts or whatever else it is, that you should get more than just the self-satisfaction of supporting a show that you like, you should get quality products in the mail. So, we did away with super chats and Twitch bits and all that other stuff. And we consolidated all the contributions to the show into checkout messages. All you got to do to send a checkout message is what Luke's doing. He's presumably adding something to his cart. There he goes. He's adding something to his cart and he's going to show you guys the interface. Once you're in the checkout, you will see the box to type up a little checkout message. There it is. You can choose your color. You can make your name show up if you wanted to um if I don't know if you want your name to show up on screen, you can make it anonymous. And then when you guys are done typing up your message while we're live, it'll go to producer Dan. There he is. who will respond to it or curate it for me and Luke to respond to and we'll show you guys how that works. You want Do we Do you have a couple uh check out messages for us, Dan? I do. Yes, I got a few here. Hello, LLD live leaks and damage control. How many times have you blamed a company for a product not working when it's because of you and you will not admit it? Uh, I've definitely blamed companies for things not working. um because and and it turned out to be user error. Um I I can't I I am open to a time that I have done that and not followed up. can you think of can you think of the most maybe interesting one when it was it wasn't Jimmy Fallon show? That one just actually didn't work. Um, can you can you think of maybe the most interesting one where it was user error and you ended up figuring out later? Uh, let me think. I'd say that happens a lot more like live on WHow where I'll be like, "Oh, I can't get my, you know, my iPhone to do this because I'm I'm not facteing everything for Wow, yeah, yeah, that's true. I don't fact fact check everything in my life anyway." Um, oh yeah, of course, of course chat's going to go there. Billet Labs, question mark. I mean, my my issue with Billet Labs was not that the temperatures weren't good, though. Um, the reason that I was dismissive of the product is for all the reasons that it failed anyway, which is that it was expensive. It didn't fit in any case that existed or would ever exist. Based on your technical thing, you were saying that you didn't because you guys did use it wrong, right? You used it on the wrong card or something. We used it on the So, so they told us it might work on this GPU, but it's designed for this other one. And I put it on the GPU that it didn't work on, and the temperature sucked. But by that time, I had already had to modify my motherboard to get it to fit. I had already determined that it was not actually like good to put in any case anywhere ever. Um, I had already be from my experience as a water cooling product product manager, I had already determined that there was never going to be a follow-up to this thing cuz that that I don't think people even like remember this video at this point. They're just like mad, right? Um, so part of the pitch for it was like, hey, if your GPU changes, but you keep your CPU, you don't have to throw away the whole thing. You could like you could like have like a GPU replacement. They never made that because that was never All I was trying to bring up was that I think we did talk on W show about how you technically didn't use the the fully appropriate card. So it wasn't it wasn't that you didn't address that. Oh yeah. No, we Oh, we totally addressed that. It just wasn't the problem with the product. The problem with the product was that it was a bad product and it didn't matter how how it performed because there's a you can only you can only get water cooling to ambient temperature, right? And water cooling CPUs and GPUs has been mostly an optimization problem for like many years at this point. We saw this when we did water cooling through the ages. So no amount of of narrowing of of reducing that sort of that narrow performance band was going to make this totally senseless product make any sense. So and I've been completely validated on that. They did one production run and then never made it again. uh in spite of all of the attention that it got like millions upon millions upon millions of impressions for this product. I mean, I still don't think it was handled properly, but No, no, it wasn't. No question. No question, but it was doomed from the start. And I just I don't think I need to go over it all again. how about another one? What else we got? Anyone got anything? There was, wasn't there some time you said something about a drive on like the PlayStation or something and uh Oh, yeah. But we did a whole video. No, I'm not. No, no, no. I'm I The core question because we got way off track here. The core question was what do you think was the most interesting time that something went wrong because of user error and then, you know, we we addressed it or whatever cuz it's going to happen many many times. We've been making content for way too many years. So, what do you think is the most interesting one? I I don't need you to like defend something. It's just what what do you think was the most interesting one? I mean, I don't think the uh the PlayStation one might not be a good example. I was just trying to throw options out there. When I'm when I'm thinking interesting, I'm thinking like it was, you know, the reason why the user error happened might have been because they did something in a in an interesting but non-standard way. So, it kind of like was intriguing when you figured out that it it was it was user error and it ended up making the product like cooler potentially, not temperature- wise, like interest. I mean, it wasn't user error, but I think my favorite product that I was ever completely wrong about was probably the Logitech G-Cloud. I just completely underestimated what a great experience that product would be for the right for the right user. And it's still not something that I find myself using. Like there's one in our warehouse. I I don't use it. But um when I did take it home and use it for a while, I was like, "Oh, I get it now." Cuz it was like so light and um the battery life was so great. And I had been so so dismissive of that. Um, I think that's probably I think that's probably the the the coolest product that I've ever been like totally totally wrong about. Can you think of any like are there are there any that you were just like, "Yeah, this this thing is useless and stupid." But like I mean we've disagreed on on things many a time over the years, but that makes sense. I I I can't really think of like again that isn't really at the core of the the question. So I think I think we just move on to the next one. Sure. Yeah. And you know what? Realistically there's probably something that I've gotten wrong um that I just don't even know yet. like if if anyone that's why I kind of wanted to go to chat because if there was something that you guys saw that uh that that we kind of that we got that we got wrong that I have not acknowledged yet then I'm I'm happy to I'd like to bring back Kickarted. Kickstarter is not like the same anymore. It still exists but it's it's a totally different world. It's honestly I'm assuming more like a marketing probably better now. Yeah. It it used to be like the freaking wild west and now there's there's a lot of companies that like are Kickstarter companies kind of like they they almost exclus like they they barely even have their own websites. They basically just function through Kickstarter. Um Kickstarter is where they launch every product product that they make. Um like these are these are totally a thing. Um which is which is cool. It just makes it less interesting in a kick farted stance. For people that don't know what we're talking about, we used to have a series called Kickarted and I don't think there was a I think there's maybe like three of them. We did like two episodes or three or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But it was we would we would back a Kickstarter and the idea was that we'd actually hope that it did ship which was another flaw with the plan because sometimes they just wouldn't end up shipping at all. U but we would back a Kickstarter, hope that it would ship and then you know our bet basically was that it was going to be junk. Yeah. Yeah, if it's good, then it's a review of a cool product. And then if it's bad, then it's kickarted. Kickfarted. But it turns out the the the overlap between ideas that were good enough to eventually get manufactured, but so bad that they were completely dead on arrival and just worth crashing basically. Is Yeah. It's like really really really small. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was fun to make those. I had a they were they were fun to shoot. They were fun to write for. Uh it was actually kind of fun testing those types of products. Um but yeah, it's just the like limited inventory of what types of things you can actually do that with just sort of kind of ran out. I'm sure there's been examples since then, but we haven't paid enough attention that you would have to to be able to do that over time. And I don't think really anyone has like Kickstarter was had this like super super powerful moment uh of of relevance and I I think it's kind of in the past now. Yeah. I mean there are still things that just go freaking gang busters on Kickstarter. No, dude. I mean I'm holding one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good example. Um, like Kickstarter is still a really big deal. It's just not um, you know, it's not in the news like every freaking week like it was before. Like, yeah, this the Slay the Spire Downfall board game uh, campaign. It's it's a it's a board game that raised $7.6 million. Wow. But then I mean that's like that's an established IP too. That's what I'm saying. A lot of Kickstarter now. Yeah. Just using it as using it as marketing slash as a as a cash flow exercise. like we've got a product coming. It's the one that I was alluding to that in order for us to manufacture enough of them um probably the best way to raise that money outside of like you know taking private equity or venture capital or whatever out outside of taking outside capital would probably be to essentially you crowdfund the the costs of the first production run um by announcing it early and and like doing a Kickstarter campaign. I don't think that we would bother to use the Kickstarter platform if it was us. Like I got to imagine there's like a Shopify plugin for that, right? But just pre-orders basically. I mean, essentially, but part of the fun of Kickstarter is that it's at like different tiers. So, if you get in really really early, it's at like a crazy good price. Or it comes with extra it comes with a hat that's like, "Yeah, I backed it first." like building these kind of these bundles. We have the ability to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I think we could do that. Remember the wave system that we had for the backpack? Yeah, I wave system. Pretty sure you could just use that to to like change it as it goes. Master of Nun says, "Aren't there strict rules regarding the use of crowdfunding capital? I don't believe you're allowed to spend that money." No, no, no. But we would be spending the money to make the product, so that would be fine. So that that's what I mean when by like raising money to do the first production run. It would be to to make the product that people are are buying. Uh you're just you're selling it at a discount so that you can um so that you can scale it up faster. Uh so that you can get the money in ahead of time so that you can produce it all all in one go rather than doing a small production run and then selling that and then using that cash to buy twice as many and then selling that and then using that cash to buy twice as many which is like a many monthsl long process. Yeah, like I'm going through the technology section on Kickstarter right now. I'm Yeah, bring it up. Let's see. I don't I can see your screen share. Oh, really? Cool. There's like a calima. What's a calima? It's a musical. You You push down the like metal prong. It goes. Yeah. Um Okay. So, okay. There's a 3D printing modular arm system. Neat. I mean, I'm assuming you're just I want to see the kale limba actually cuz it looks like an electronic calimbo. It is sick. Okay. That raised half a million USD. But are like is Lionus Tech Tips going to make a video about an electronic Calima? Probably not. Heck no. So that's not it's not really like topic relevant for for us. Um if it makes Dan happy, it's relevant for us. Luke, come on. Is that a granular delay? What what is all this cool audio crap on on It seems like there's a decent amount of interesting uh audio stuff. Floor washing robot. Um I don't know, man. Wow. A table RC tank. Like a lot of this isn't stuff that I would see and be like, "Oh, yeah. Kick farted. Cool. May maybe some AI glasses." This all looks like relatively competent, but then there's so many AI glasses coming out that I feel like we'd be better off just making videos about AI glasses in general. Yeah. Like it it doesn't really scream that it needs a kick farted. There's a keyboard. Look at this lens. That is comical sticking off of that phone. Lens. Yeah. So, it's just like ah I don't know, man. I don't see Kickfarter making sense here. Mick Bane says, "Uh, LMG doesn't need Kickstarter, just use pre-orders." So, pre-orders have always been kind of an uncomfortable thing for me. And isn't it kind of the same deal? Oh, it's totally the same deal, but we've we've always shied away from it. Like, if you recall, like even the screwdriver in the backpack where we made major bets, we we basically were like, "You should never pre-order." Um, you know, I don't know for sure that you'll like it. you should wait for third party, you know, uh, evaluations. Um, at this point, I am I am starting to recognize that at the scale that we're operating at and at the experience that our team has, um, I'm a lot more confident taking people's money ahead of time for something that is on track, that is is hitting all of its milestones. Um, and the project, which is no, is not the battery bank. It's actually a different one. The project is coming along really, really well to the point where if I know that this thing is going to absolutely be super super exciting for people and they're going to absolutely freaking love it. And if there's some something else that we could do uh or even nothing else that we could do. I was thinking like we could do like a satisfaction guaranteed uh policy or something like that. But I I don't think for sanitary reasons this would be a good product for us to take a bunch of returns for anyway. Uh so that could get complicated. I don't know. I'll have to think about it some more. Interesting question from McBain. Why not enable pre-orders for the cables? You've already shipped a ton. Okay. All right. Yeah. And you know what? I could do that. I could I could take realistically I could probably have like millions of dollars sitting in the LMG coffers right now who want to wait for a cable. But riddle me this right right now. McBain, you're probably a little irritated that you'd like to buy this cable and you can't get it. But what if it takes 6 months? What if I had your money then? and how irritated are you? And that's always that's always been the challenge for me. Like we're our manufact is is completely beyond the expectations that we had and that they had. Um and so I don't know I like we're we're in uncharted territory here. I don't know how long it's going to take us to to be able to meet the demand that is there for these these freaking cables. And so I um I don't know how to I don't know man. Yeah. So, so it comes back to me saying the same taking the same principled stance I had before, which is I really don't want to have your money and be in a position where, you know, there could be a mismatch between what I'm promising and what you're expecting both in terms of timeline and in terms of of product quality, right? So, I uh Yeah. And and someone had a good suggestion. Uh I I missed whose uh I missed the username for it, but it was uh you know, you could just take like a little bit of pre-order. What about a little bit of pre-order? So, we actually did that. Uh remember when there was like a second wave that like went up for sale? That was someone else in the company making a decision that we were going to take pre-orders on the cables we were going to make out of the extra cable stock that we had that was like sitting staged ready to go. people still lost their minds waiting for those and it causes a whole bunch of tickets to customer service who otherwise just wouldn't have to deal with that. And and what I said when I was kind of lecturing not one person but like the team that made that decision on like why I had decided we weren't going to do that was guys why did we make this decision? Did it lead to a better experience for our customer? Yes or no? Is it just a communications problem? Um, yeah. Well, that's part of it, but communication's hard. You can put as much communication on a web page as you want. People won't read it. It doesn't matter. So, so did this make did this make the experience better for our customer? Yes or no? It no or neutral basically was the response. I'm like, okay, did this make us more money? Right? Like that motivates businesses, right? Businesses make decisions to make more money. And the answer again is no because we were going to sell those cables the second that they reached our dock regardless of whether we took people's money ahead of time or whether we take people's money when they arrive. So again, the answer is no. So all we're doing is we're putting a little bit of cash in our bank account from our customers today and we're holding it. So why don't we let them keep it? is it a communication thing because the backpacks I I don't I don't remember if people were upset or not, but it as the waves went on. We would just tell people the estimated shipping time. Uh, from from my interpretation of the story that you just told is we didn't tell people that there would be a different shipping time. Um, um, we did, but maybe we could have done it like even more in your face. Um, but even then, you know, you still get even with the wave system, we still had people who were upset about that like and who just felt it was really ridiculous. I get that. I get that. Um, and so I've just I've always had uh, you know, sitting next to shout out Corbin from NCIX. All right. I I I worked in customer service sometimes in the early days, not because it was necessarily in my job description, but because when we had like holiday rushes and and big sale events or big launches and stuff like that, uh customer service would get overwhelmed and they would just kind of call on random people who knew our system well enough and were technical enough and I happened to be one of them. So, you know, sometimes I would work in customer service and I would I I would sit there. I'd sit in the bullpen and, you know, I'd hear the exasperated voice of Mr. Corbin uh explaining to someone for the for the for the 13th time on this call that, hey, when you ordered this, it said ships in 7 8 to 11 days, or you know, whatever. It says special order ships in 8 to 11 days. uh we shipped it on the 10th day. Shipping's not magic. It's still going to be a little while. That doesn't mean delivered in that number of days. And the site was so clear. It said ships in or like like whatever whatever the word was. Um but people they they don't they don't read and now that's customer services problem and it causes it causes stress and frustration. And what if we just avoided all of that? I I don't want to out the company, but I had a I I bought a thing. I was going to say recently. It's not even recently anymore. Uh, a while ago and I was emailing them monthly asking for updates because they weren't giving me any updates and their their website didn't say anything about delays or anything. I think it might have said I I ended up looking at their website and I couldn't find it, but I think at the time that I ordered it, it might have said that it might take a month. Uh, and we we passed the 3month point of again, they never sent any form of update. I kept reaching out to them. Um, and they they emailed back I think it was like yesterday or something and we're like, "Yeah, really?" Oh, this is like right now. Yeah. They're like, "Yeah, we're shipping we're shipping it Monday." I'm like, "Cool. Thanks." It's been it's by the time it gets here, it will have been like three and a half months for one thing. That didn't warn me of that at all. It's very annoying at this point. It's a It's I think it's the longest I've waited for something that I've ordered that didn't have like a very specific, you know, this product is not ready yet. It will release at whatever time. Cuz there are there are definitely things that um I'm trying to think. Um you know, like a shirt that was made for some event that it's a Trump phone, right? But Oh my goodness. No, it's not a Trump phone. Um it's f equipment. I just don't want to call out the brand because like equipment, whatever. Uh, what are we supposed to be doing right now? Oh my gosh, was that one comm. Okay, hit me with another Dan. Sure. Um, I am looking this year to upgrade my TV from a 77in OLED to something in the 98 to 100 in range. Currently looking at the TCL X11L or wait for what Sony True RGB brings. Uh, will I regret going away from OLED? Okay, so you're clearly a mad baller because you're upgrading a 77 in OLED. So, honestly, the biggest thing that that's piqued my interest on that is you have the throw distance for this to make any sense. Yeah. First up, congratulations. Um, TV. You have you have achieved much and uh and my and hats off to you. Um, second of all, right now is kind of we're I hate to be that guy, right? Because I think that for for a long time I have beat the drum of if you wait if you're always waiting for the next thing, then you will never just get to enjoy anything because you'll always be waiting for the one that's right around the corner that's better, right? Um, however, the time is now May, which is exactly when the new models are starting to trickle into stores that were like first unveiled at CES this year. Um, and as we head into back to school and especially Black Friday, there will be deals. Now, as someone who's upgrading a 77in OLED, you sound like you might be the sort of person who doesn't care about getting a deal. If that's the case, I haven't actually tried the X11L series yet. What I have done is I have used TCL's like last last generation kind of similar class of TV in the form of the that 115 in that is still in my theater room in spite of everything else that exists. And TCL at their very high end makes a very fine TV. I haven't seen the X11L yet. I I'm hoping to soon. The other thing that I'll say, and this is probably going to complicate your decision more than help it, is that I have seen Sony's RGB back lit LED um LCDs, and they are absolute fire. They are so cool. Um, it was in a pretty controlled environment and I didn't actually get a chance to look side by side with an OLED. Oh, actually uh Oh, yeah. No, I didn't get a chance to look side by side with an OLED. But if I was a betting man and I didn't have a budget, which you might not, uh, I would say that True RGB is going to be pretty killer. And take this all for what it is, right? like Sony sponsored our trip to go check it out. So, full disclosure, everything. Um, and you know, we saw it within the confines of of their controlled environment. So, take that all for what it is. Uh, but it looks really good. It looks really, really good. Okay, moving on to some more topics. All right, Luke, do you want to pick one or two? Sure. Let's see what we got here. Oh, yeah. Let's go over this charade. Um, yeah. Oh, I knew it. I knew it. I was hoping you were going to pick that. Nice. Yeah. GameStop offers 56 billion in value for eBay, but struggles to explain how it'll gather up all that value. Uh, on May 4th, GameStop, because they try to use the force to make this happen, I I don't know. Whatever. Uh GameStop made an entirely unsolicited $56 billion offer to buy eBay at $125 a share. The offer letter stipulated that the amount would be paid half in cash, half in GameStop stock. GameStop's operational/ strategic plan was that its roughly 1,600 US retail stores would become eBay drop off intake, fulfillment, and live commerce hubs, which actually sounds kind of smart. uh with CEO Ryan Cohen promising $2 billion a year in cost cuts, including $1.2 billion from eBay's marketing budget alone. The bid seemed weird because the market valuation of GameStop is around 11 billion, while eBay is roughly worth $48 billion. Is this is this like me um you know, offering to uh I've got my uh I've got my float plane shirt on here. Okay. Is this like me offering to buy YouTube? You know, uh, like this isn't even a merger. The scale isn't even close to be honest. This, but you get what I mean, right? Like they're a lot closer, but they're the smaller company and they're not even offering a merger of peers. They're like, "We're going to acquire." What are you even talking about? Anyway, sorry. Flow plane trying to buy YouTube's toe. Um, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of funny stuff with this. I I think it's literally just a stunt, but we'll we'll we'll get into that. Uh about Why do you Why Why can't Why are you feel so compelled to spoil the punchlines for things, Luke? I can't help. But there's so many good reasons why, and people got to absorb it as we go through. About 9 billion of the Which has me interested in if GameStop's valuation includes their cash. But anyways, about 9 billion of the cash for the offer would come from GameStop's War Chest with the rest being raised through a debt instrument from TD Securities. Uh, a subsidiary of TD Bank provided a highly confident letter indicating a potential commitment to provide approximately 20 billion of the cash. Um, half of the offer in debt financing. What? Okay, I'm a little bit lost here. But anyways, um yeah, it's it feels like Sam Alman being like, "Yeah, I'll buy all the RAM." It's like that level of like I don't I don't think they actually technically have to do it, but they've said that they probably will. Um, Cohen went on CNBC's Squawkbox where the hosts flagged that the value of all of GameStop's stock is just over 11 billion and half of the stock um half of the stock, half of the acquisition offer about 28 billion stock. Yeah, basically there isn't enough equity or enough cash to make this make sense. And half stock half cash also doesn't really make any sense. And if we go check out uh GameStop stock and we look at the last five days, I mean, it even went down. So, it's worth less today than it was uh when a month it's it's up. Yeah, it's down 4% because because people saw this and were like, yikes. Uh which is kind of funny. yeah, the the the the CEO apparently just kept on saying when asked like, "How does this make any sense?" like where are you getting all that value from? He just kept saying uh half cash, half stock. Uh and then saying it's on the website. Go check it out there. It it it gets explained on the website. Um yeah, amazing. I missed this part. He eventually told the host, I don't understand your question. It's like, dude, okay, sorry, carry on. He was framing the I don't understand your question as if there was enough stock and cash available. Therefore, the question didn't make any sense, but clearly there isn't. Um, fantastic. Morgan Stanley analyst then piled on with a research note calling GameStop and eBay fundamentally different businesses with no real overlap and noted that if the deal somehow closed, it would be the largest leveraged buyout in history. Then on May 6, Cohen created a new eBay. This is my favorite part. He created a Cohen, the CEO of GameStop, created a new eBay account under the username Ryan5050. You know, 50 cash, 50 stock. Um, presumably a nod Oh, yep, there it is. Presumably a nod to the halfcash, half stock split. And they started listing personal items in his words to help fund the eBay acquisition. uh including if I remember correctly some socks and and other things. Um Frank Sedali Safali, I don't know. um of the Video Game History Foundation, then flagged on Blue Sky, that several of Cohen's listings appeared to come from the the Game Informer vault, which housed decades of rare gaming memorabilia that GameStop kept after shutting the Game Informer magazine down. Okay. Yikes. Uh then late that same night, eBay suspended Cohen's account, citing concerns that his activity um was was putting the eBay community at risk. As far as my understanding goes, they have reinstated his account. I don't think that's in here. Um, analysts have pointed out that the whole thing likely comes down to Ryan Cohen trying to trigger a performance gate in his compensation package, which would unlock 35 billion in potential stock options if he increases the company's market value to hundred billion and achieves 10 billion in cumulative ebida. You know what's funny is that is so much better analysis, I guess, of what he's doing. See, I thought this was as simple as GameStop hasn't been in headlines enough lately. I need GameStop in the headlines so that people like pump it as a meme stock again. I like I was thinking like 3D chess. That's like that's like 4 D chess. So if I need to reach a revenue target, I just go out and I borrow enough money to buy a company that already has that much revenue. It's brilliant. I don't think I think if anything leaking that like that was the goal might have been part of the 3D chess because I don't think this was ever going to happen. Um, well, no, it was it was never going to happen. But like maybe he is del I mean we have no idea how much ketamine the average CEO is on, right? So like maybe in his mind this is serious. You should just you should cold call Taran and ask him. Oh, hey Lionus. You need a plug or what? We're we're concerned that you're not taking enough ketamine. Um, all right. I'll ask him. We're We're looking at We're looking at LMG's trajectory and we're thinking you might need to take more ketamine. I I forgot where I worked and that he would actually do that. Oh, I I I knew he was going…

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