Making New Consoles is Hard - Just Ask VR | Design Club

[Music] Good time zone, internet. Welcome to Design Club, the only show on the internet where my voice cracks imperceptibly in a way that makes me feel self-conscious as I do our intro. I'm your humble host, Will, joined as always by my pal, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. How's it going?
You didn't say the line.
No, I didn't. I wanted to see what would happen if I didn't say the line. and what I was hoping for did in fact happen.
But I am doing well. Thanks, Will. I am Jeffrey Zed and I'm the studio director of Extra Credit Studios, which is Extra Credits, Extra History actually, and more joined by my buddy Will over on this. I'm pointing the correct direction because I'm mirrored.
Yeah.
Who is our humble, humble, humble Twitch overlord.
That's right. I'm so humbled that I when asked to make my own job title, I made the job title Twitch Overlord. It's

great. I love it. It's fantastic.
As one does. And we are here today because on our pre-talk, which we do a couple days before of what should we talk about in a couple days because we like to do a tiny bit of planning,
I mentioned a thing I'd seen.
Yeah.
And that led to a whole other discussion. Yeah.
So rather than Will and I spending an hour on that discussion, we're just like, let's do it on stream because it's to me interesting. Yeah.
And hopefully to all of you.
So Jeff, let's start with let's start with your story. So you were at San Diego Comic-Con.
Yep. So I went So hey, I live in San Diego.
Yep.
I go to San Diego Comic- Con because it's in San Diego right there.
And why would you not? And also having been a professional in the industry for a while, um the game video game industry, one of the things you can apply for at Comic-Con is called a Pro Pass. And they basically are like, "Here, have a free all access pass." And these are fairly coveted items. And I've

been getting one for over two decades now. And so every single year I head down to Comic-Con and I I cool hunt. I look around. I'm like, "What's new? What's interesting? What are their 40 booths advertising this year?" you know what do I see the same merch like there there's a whole bunch of stuff just like it's a fun place to scout
right and I think that it's also important to note that that the San Diego Comic- Con if you're not familiar is not merely comics it has expanded to be nerd culture I would say as a fair
nerd and pop culture um San Diego Comic- Con has a couple of interesting idiosyncrasies that actually make we'll give this some more context a it's been going on for a long time like 30 or 40 plus year. No, wait. They celebrated their 50th anniversary recently, I think.
Yeah.
Like it is one of the oldest continuous running comic cons. And San Diego has a massive convention center. And by massive, I mean lengthwise, if you take

over the whole thing, which they do, it's got to be like at least seven or eight football fields long, maybe longer, and at least a football field and a half, maybe two wide. like the square footage of this con and they have these big partitions that they can like slide across so they can divide it to run like four or five conventions at the same time if they want to,
right?
Or in this case one massive one.
Yep.
And San Diego being close to Los Angeles, all of Hollywood basically this is the con that they cross over with. Yep. So, it's comic books, movies, TV shows, books, and basically all the things that kind of mesh between comics and movies, which means it's hit books and TV and streaming and there's enough video game studios in San Diego and around that some video game studio there was there used to be more, now there's some. and merch. Like it's basically all of the

merch surrounding comics, books, TV shows, movies, graphic no like all of that. And it's massive. It
It feels like the kind of place where one if you if you wanted to, you could just get a one day pass
and just go shopping and not see anything else because it is
it is very street market like in its aesthetic and appeal, right? Like
it's the closest most Americans will get to a
to a street market like you'd see in Europe or Asia. We don't do those here as much because here streets are for cars which is weird but like conventions
it is and it is overwhelmingly populated.
Mhm.
Like I go on preview night which is if you buy a 4-day pass or a pro, you can go the night before it officially kicks off. They open it for 3 hours and I just walk the showroom four for three hours. And in three hours, I actually can't see everything on the showroom floor. And this is just the people selling things.

There's whole other levels for like talks and all the other goodness. And Hall H is the infamous place where you will camp out. There are people who camp out a day or two ahead to get to a specific panel. It's the one that holds thousands of people. And it's where if you're if you're announcing the next Avengers movie, all of the Avengers cast shows up on stage to answer questions. or the next Harry Potter movie or whatever the big big movie is.
Y
like that's the place. So it has a long history of being a place you go to see and buy things
and it's a place that um exhibitors and people in the industry go to announce cool big things and to get eyes on them. And that is the other big part of this, right, that that we're going to kind of focus on is you saw something there that was like
an interesting idea and they're trying to get eyes on it, right? Both because they want people to get excited about it and because they want people to invest in it.

Yes. And so I didn't actually see it on at ComicCon because one of the other big things about cons and I can say this for the game developers conference and E3 and PAX and a whole bunch of other cons is one of the advantages of conventions is everybody goes to a convention. So if you're doing say a business or if you're a games dev studio looking for work or other things you might show up just to talk to the people like forget the you know things you can buy or the panels everybody else is there so you're there too to do the networking or whatever it is and so there are a lot of things that are Comic-Con adjacent that actually aren't part of the con if you are lucky enough to own a restaurant or a movie theater or something within say one square mile of the San Diego Convention Center you can just rent it out for egregious amounts of money to hold private parties or showings or other things. And we got an invitation actually through the extra credits email to if we wanted to come see a sneak peek of a new console launch. And I was like,

"Oo, sure. Let's go see the sneak peek of the new console launch," not knowing at all what it was going to be.
Right.
And I was completely surprised at what it was going to be because it was not something that was at all on my radar.
Right. So, uh, I think it would be fair. Jeff showed me the promo material that's all public. None of this is like weird or insider.
Can we look at it for a second to contextualize?
Yeah. Vamp. And then Yes.
Okay. Um and so um on Friday of Comic Con, which ran Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, there I went with a select group of people, which turned out to be a lot smaller than I thought, to basically a movie theater they'd rented out to get a media look and then a hands-on of a new console that a group is putting out. And the branding is what surprised me the most on it, which it is Rubik's branded, like the Rubik's Cube. So Rubik's does have a his Rubik is a

fairly ubiquitous pop culture thing. Like if you show up to somebody at Rubik's Cube, almost everybody knows what it is. It has what they call kind of deep market penetration or brand awareness. And Rubik's has put out a whole bunch of other things since the Rubik's Cube, most of which have been puzzlebased, usually square, but occasionally circular things that you can twist.
Yep.
And this is a digital thing that kind of looks like a Rubik's cube, but is set up to be a lot more. Oh, wow. It had a cartoon at one point. I see from Spanish. I did not know about the Rubik's Cube cartoon.
Yeah. So, so this is it. This is
It's called the Wow Cube. We were I was I believe they said we were the first group of people to get a public viewing of it, though they've done a couple of like
gamedev jams and they've like shown other people to like get testimonials, but this was their first let's put it in

front of people in a press conference style thing and see what happens. And I believe they kept it small because they wanted to make sure it didn't blow up.
Yeah. So, let's So, so this kind of thing first first what what are your first impressions chat of a handheld cubic
console right this is weird and your first impressions right I want you to hold on to those as we talk because that's actually going to be um huge
uh yeah it's a huge part of this there's like two broad hemispheres to the thing that we're going to talk about which is how does something like this happen right cuz it's cool and weird and different, right? And part of it is what you think about it. So hold in your mind what your first impression when we tell you that this is a console for playing games and for entertainment that is a rotatable digital Rubik's cube.
So it's notice it is a 2x two versus a

3x3 structure.
Yeah.
But um will can you scroll down? Is there a picture of somebody holding it just so we see size? I can scroll down. Yeah. So there it's got it's it's about this big. We have we have some
So it's basically Rubik's cube size. And you can see it glows. And so at a 2 x two versus a 3x3, what it means is there are 24 small basically iPhone surfaces.
Mhm.
On this. And that is a weird. This is their promo material. I'm just showing the promo material as it happens. And then
let's see there. That's And you can kind of Oh, let's see. Let's see. Sleeping one right there. And you see things on all the sides. It is completely rotatable. You can rotate and twist just like you could a Rubik's cube. And the internal guts, which they showed us, basically allow it to it feels good when you rotate it. It like it is a nice

weight to hold. It rotates well and it keeps track of where every other facing is because it's important if you're rotating playing a game, which we can get to in a moment, that it knows which of the 24 screens is facing in which direction and is connected to which other part, right?
Because if you scroll down a little bit, you can see somebody playing with it, kind of like a Rubik's cube, where the one above is in kind of sleep mode as a fish tank where the fish are like swimming around all the way around it and you can look at it from any position. Yeah. So, okay. So,
so I was intrigued like I saw what it was and I'm like
this is interesting,
right?
But it also opens up and we'll get to in a moment how hard the road is for this thing to have any chance of success,
right? like there is a lot there is actually so much and having been part of the early VR development in like kind of the bleeding edge area and for those who don't know part of my past is I ran a studio called experiment 7 or co-ran it

with a buddy and we were in some of the early VR in mostly in the Oculus but also in the PlayStation and the Steam ecosystems and we devear the go the Rift the Rift 2 the Rift three, the Quest, kind of that whole line, as well as place the PlayStation VR and basically the Steam SDK, which let you play it on any number of Steam compatible VR devices.
We released three games. Uh the last of which was a actually second of which was a licensed version of Dungeons and Dragons for like an animated battle chess. The third of which was Katon in VR. So we had the official license. I got to work with the sons of the guy who made the game and Katon Studio and Hazmmet Studio. It was really cool. And we'd gone in basically saying we're going to work with licenses on this specifically. This is because as a new platform, we wanted people to immediately see something they recognized and go, "Oh, I should buy that."
Yeah.

Because familiarity is a big thing on a new product. And um so anyway, we had best-selling games on there and eventually ended up shutting our studio down because for when we were doing VR, even as the best seller, we weren't making enough money. And part of this, and this is going to be very important, is called the hardware install base problem. And the easy way to think of it is if you weren't making Angry Birds, Will.
Yep.
And I said, "So we're making Angry Birds. If there were a hundred iPhones, we could sell a hundred copies of Angry Birds. If there was a million iPhones, we could sell a million copies of Angry Birds. If you're deving on new hardware, you're what you're always worried about is the install base. Will they sell enough of these that the game you make, if it's really good, can sell enough copies to pay back
your investment and hopefully make you some more money.
Yep.
And that's a really hard thing for new platforms. And it's really risky for new developers to do that.

Yeah. Like as I said, we were venture funded for this. That means we had venture capital money, three games, bestselling, and we just looked at it and said, "They haven't sold enough hardware yet. It we're going to responsibly like shut down the studio or put it on mothball, keep the games going, like six month leeway for all of our people to find them new jobs because we didn't want to be a company that's like, "Hey guys, it's Friday. Sorry, no more studio."
Yeah.
But install base is huge. Yeah.
And that is one of the many, many problems you have to do when you're making something new. And I saw this and it immediately gave me flashbacks of VR.
And I started telling Will about all of the trouble
that poor even just talking about Oculus, who's now meta, all of the stuff they had to do to have any chance of success. And that's everything this group is also going to have to do,
correct?
To have any chance of success.
Yeah. I want to I want to tackle a couple of questions uh from chat because I think they're really good. Sorry, I was I was I was monologuing.
No, that was that was a good preamble

monologue that we needed to get out of the way establishing both why we're talking about this and how this relates to VR because you maybe look at the title and you're like this doesn't seem like VR. Um and the answer is uh
we'll explain VR but it has the same problems of getting adoption.
Yeah. Okay. So, uh someone asked uh why 2 by two and not standard 3x3. I'm going to I I I have a really easy answer for this
and then I can give the official one too,
which is do you know how many additional connections you need to make to do a 3x3? And also a 3x3 is structurally very different than a 2x two. Um the the internal workings of a 3x3 are very different. You also have fixed cubes in the middle of each side which can cause weirdness, right? But like
there's a structural choice between those two that may not have anything to do with uh product familiarity. And what's the official answer, Jeff?
Um the official answer is they actually

prototyped it
and they can actually replicate it somehow on the 2 by two cubes.
Uhhuh.
Um so they're like oh we could do it and we may in the future. But I also read behind what they were saying of So remember part of the user interface on this is twisting it
Yeah.
in different directions. Two by two is very easy to know what you're twisting and you don't get lost on which part you're twisting. A 3x3 twisting gets a lot harder
and twisting the thing you want to and aligning it gets a lot harder. And so I think really honestly for their user interface paradigm or excuse me user interaction paradigm of how do you interact with it 3x3 was just too complicated.
I also think that makes sense. Um,
and so I think it was for a variety of reasons. Actually, gonna call one out right here. Yeah, VR isn't a platform. It's a technology,
but also Meta or Oculus, which was the biggest like in the Oculus ecosystem, they were

making consoles using VR technology. And so I'm kind of just compressing them together,
right? It's it's like how we talk about iOS and Android. And even though Android is a infinitely fragmented ecosystem of
tens of thousands of little itty bitty offshoot versions,
Android the Android ecosystem is a mess. We talk about Android as a platform, as a console, as a launch vector, right? When we talk about it and in the same way, I think VR applies.
Um, and then, uh,
Digiflower, we'll get to this question. I guarantee you, don't worry. Uh and then so so let's let's start out with a simple question which is a great segue and thank you to Spin Dash for this.
What does success mean for something like this?
Do we have a metric for success for this or is it just we'll know it when we see it?
I think it really depends on the goal. So like VR wanted to basically become a a I keep using the word ubiquitous, but

a ubiquitous well-adopted technology.
Yep. And therefore the groups like Meta who bought Oculus would have a hu they'd basically be the frontr runners in a whole new form factor of consumer hardware. Like I think that was their goal. That was why they got acquired. Like some people like VR is cool. Meta buying Oculus was like we think this is going to be big. We also think the metaverse is coming. This is a step along the way. Let's own the biggest group and get there,
right?
So, my guess for Wow Cube is success is actually based on their multi-year plan they laid out at the press conference, which is all public at this point, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it. They want to be interesting this year. Um, be I think it's like toy of the year next year and the year after that be basically a standard thing everybody has.
Okay. which I think is a little

ambitious, but it's good to like it's good to have ambitious goals.
Yeah, absolutely. And like aiming for toy of the year for something like this is a sensible launch goal, right? Like it it it is lofty. Yes. But no one launches a new toy that requires this much engineering and this much behind the scenes and goes, I guess it's just going to be a fine launch. Like you are aiming for as high as you can cuz it's al toy of the year is also like a bunch of free press and stuff. So, um, okay. So,
so for success depends on the thing, but I think that's what they're looking for,
right? Okay. So, we're talking about consoles and uh console accessories um that are new. What do we mean by new? We should probably establish this, right? Because
so new is hard. Yes. And one of the hardest things for new, and this this gets back to why people aren't buying VR games. One of the hardest things for new

is convincing people they need it. Because if it's new, they don't. And it's been a long time since we've had, I'll call it, new consumer entertainment technology,
right?
And let me tell you what I mean by that. If you're like, "Hey, Jeff, I bought a new phone recently." Well, phones aren't new. Like you're we've had smartphones for a while and smartphones came from dumb phones and dumb phones came from the phones that were in your house. Like phones as a concept to people are more than a hundred-year-old technology and just because they get smaller faster or do more stuff. You don't have to sell people on the idea of phone. They know what a phone does. It's not a new tech. If you're like Jeff, I have a tablet. Well, tablets came from laptops and laptops came from desktops. And that's been 50 years roughly, 40 years since we've had like people selling Apple 2E and other things. Um,

and before
35 since the Macintosh, like computers aren't a new concept. And therefore, computer to laptop, laptop to tablet, again, it's not a new tech. People like, oh, it's just a computer I can carry around. Oh, it's now a flat computer I can like use my hand. Like, you're not selling them a new concept of hardware. And I'm actually I'm actually going to go one further. I'm going to say that um there's an additional level which is the way that people interact with the technology because a computer is just a fancy typewriter,
right?
Or it was initially for many people sold as that.
Correct. But that the way that people interact with it through a keyboard, right, goes back to the OG typewriter. And so my my list of like truly novel inventions that change the way that people like
Okay, hold that one sec. Okay, so phone, computer, TVs have been around a century plus. Again, I'm just saying consumer

entertainment that people interact with. Consoles were an offshot of offshot offshoot of computers. People like, hey, I can play games on a computer. It's like, oh, here's a dedicated computer that hooks up to my TV.
VCRs, you know, 50 plus years. If you kind of think about how you interact, like listening to music was a radio. It got smaller to a Walkman band, you know, it got smaller to your phone. You were already putting headphones on to listen to those. So earbuds and things coming in like if you really think about it, new new technology that's a whole new paradigm that you have to tell people this is why it's useful is exceedingly rare. We refine things a lot, but it's really hard to find a new thing. And so that's part of the trouble of new stuff. So Will, you were going to say a couple things you thought were new new.
Yeah. So this is to the best of my knowledge the the best that we're going to get for like new new like this is this is my category typewriter computer

mouse
Wii/motion controls I'm going to say motion controls as exemplified by the Wii cuz the Wii was really the only place like remember there were other places that did it and very like you would have to struggle to remember where you put your connect or whatever the PlayStation thing with the multicolored ones. Anyway, um
and actually so and it's mostly like and you notice the so the Wii got it in because they bundled it as a console.
Yes.
That happened to have a new interface paradigm kind of like the mouse.
Yes.
Or peripheral paradigm.
Yeah.
And chat, I see you like we are lumping some stuff together, but you kind of see where we're going on this. Like if you're telling somebody
something is new. So for example, VR had the problem and still does. It is a completely new technology. Y
like putting on a thing over your face to see a whole new world is not something we have experience. We've seen

you know examples in movies. But for somebody saying, "Oh, I know why I need a computer. I know why I need a TV. I know why I need a phone. I know why I need a VR headset." People aren't sure. And that's one of the hardest parts of new hardware is convincing people that there is something that they need that they can't live without on it. Kind of the killer app or the killer experience. And to date, VR has had some amazing games and experiences, but it hasn't crossed into the threshold of it has the thing that is so good that everybody has to pick it up. There are two borderline borderline killer app unique VR experiences and the one of the big problems with VR is that one of them you can do on desktop and those two are VR Chat and BeatSaber and VR Chat has a desktop client that you don't need VR for
and that's in my opinion and experience with VR and I've owned two different headsets and I actually like I use my PSVR2 on the

regular. Man, I can't tell you how many headsets I've owned doing VR development. Like
Yeah. Right. But like that's that's about it, right? So it's um so these these are like
Mhm.
for a And the other thing that we should mention is that we're only mentioning the things which got big enough to make a dent in the industry a size that we can notice them and reference them to talk about. Right? There have been so many things that just right like they just came
they knew hot and people you know and like two years later people like eh
right
because it didn't get enough market penetration and so VR
remember when I was saying the market like the hardware and the install base we need enough hardware sold that people like running dev studios can go make the cool stuff that makes people want to move over to it
y
and this is the reason that you see so few people equivalently hopping on the bandwagon to go make VR games or other

things like that on the new new bleeding edge technology is they're not sure if there's going to be enough of an audience there to make the thing.
Yeah. Let let me let me address another one real quick because we do need to we've been talking about VR. We're going to crank it down because um this is a really great point. Uh Darkwolf mentions that Disney has several VR experiences. Mhm.
We are not talking about installations in entertainment facilities. We're not talking
consumer hardware.
Correct. We're not talking about a VR arcade. We're not talking about a 4D thing. We're not talking about stuff at Disney. We're talking about at home consumer install based stuff because the clientele is very different, right? That's a very
the hardware, the development. Like Disney saying, "We're going to make some tech that we can put into Disney park to be part of the experience
is a whole different proposition than Oculus saying, we'd like to make sure there's three or four million VR headsets out there that people are buying at Costco."

Right. Cuz you're you're totally correct that there were places that like did this kind of technology before, right? I remember the one of the older ones that was around when I was a kid was there was a helicopter game that was like a firsterson kind of shooter that you pulled the thing down over your eyes kind of like a VR headset and it used um a fixed mo it was a tethered and it could tell the angle based on the tether right so it was like it had like a fixed actuation point so it could rotate 360 and pitch pretty significantly so you could turn around
yeah but like Again, that's an arcade thing, not my PSVR2 that I can play in my room. Right. And so, again, different. But you're totally correct, though. So, we do need to crank that down.
So, anyway, looking at the Wow Cube.
Yeah.
And at their ambition reminded me of how hard a time Oculus had had getting market penetration and becoming big enough that they could get good devs. And I started listing some of

these off to Will, all the trouble that this group was going to face. And we realized it was an episode.
Yeah. Because not a lot of people think about how hard hard hard it is to make a new console.
Yep.
And I'm not even going to say general consumer entertainment thing. Just a new console,
right?
And Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo put out a new console a little less than once a decade.
Yep.
And they have it hard, too, but it's significantly easier. And as we walk through this list of here's everything you actually have to do that you're not thinking about, I can kind of point out new group trouble versus existing group trouble. Actually, is that interesting, Will?
I I I think it is.
I think like it it helps to put it in perspective, right? Cuz so so we can use this first one as example, right? The first thing that you got to do
in order to do any of this any of this is you need funding.
Yeah. Well,
you need money because this is all going

to get expensive when you listen to everything we're going to do,
right? But
and this isn't like a couple hundred thousand or a couple million funding. This is probably eight more realistically nine figures worth of funding,
right? And so, and when we talk about that, right, we're not even talking like you need funding to begin,
right? You need funding to put time and effort into people living while they start thinking of like the full idea. PS, by the way, brief aside from a producer standpoint, there is a currently a major thunderstorm. If we go off the air, I do apologize. It's
there's a major thunderstorm rolling through right now and it's it's quite loud. Uh my mic's gated in, but there's a possibility I'll lose power. So, if we do, I'm sorry. Um the uh so so like
so funding straight up and like so if you look at Sony or Microsoft or you look at the PlayStation the Xbox or the Switch or um they have funding they've

been selling hardware for the previous you know eight or nine years and games to take all the revenue that they or bring back all the revenue they'd spent on doing development of the previous ones. Plus they're all part of big corporations and so have kind of synergistic things in there being part of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo respectively.
So one of the biggest issues which is where do we get the money for this for the existing consoles has already been solved which is they have a big steady ongoing revenue stream that brings them in money to pay for development of their next thing.
And so you it it's kind of a catch22, right? Because
I actually heard the thunder there.
Yeah, it's it's pretty significant. Normally, it's not a big deal, but uh I've heard my battery backups click over a couple of times. Um the uh for a new group, right, we get into this catch 22, which is you need time and effort to go find funding, but you need funding to get the time and effort to go find funding, right? So, you've already got

this huge gridlock problem that you have to solve. You need to essentially have money fall out of somewhere or be able to pitch to someone who is just going to give you money versus the big three who are just like, "Yeah, we've got war chests for days, right?" And and that that I think typif
Mhm.
were the Xbox where Microsoft said, "We think we should be a big thing in gaming on other than just PC."
Yeah. we have the funds to go develop a thing,
right?
And Steam with the Steam Deck coming in, they're like, "Hey, we have unlimited money. Maybe we should make another place that people can
play our Steam games. How about a a, you know, a handheld console?"
Yep.
And so again, the last two groups to actually make something big in this vertical came in with equivalently unlimited money to spend on it.
Correct. Or and when we say unlimited,

we mean their money is in a diff is several orders of magnitude removed from the highest possible cost to achieve success in this vector,
right? Um, okay. So, let's let's say magically that we've gotten funding all figured out. Funding is funding is solved.
Now, I actually have to go and make the thing.
How do I design the hardware?
Okay,
let's start with the hardware, not make the thing. Because making the thing is a whole bunch of steps.
Well, right. What what I mean is like there's there's get the money and then make the thing. So, let's begin the million steps to make the thing.
Yeah. And so, yeah. And like one of the first things for a console is you have to figure out what is different about this console than every other one. And what are you actually making? And so, there's a lot of technology solutions that come in there. And for the last couple things we've seen attempted mostly in VR and here with the Wow cube, one of the big things that they're also saying is we're introducing a whole new control paradigm. With VR or and display

paradigm like with VR it's, hey, you're going to put a thing on your head and be seeing stuff around. Wait, that probably means you can't use a keyboard because you can't see. Like all early generations of VR didn't have pass through. And so, you know, for that reason, we got for VR a lot of things that ended up looking like this.
Yeah. Yours doesn't have the the tracking.
Now, this is a typical OC or Meta
style. I I always forget that the Meta is missing the ring.
Oh, yeah. That's right. The Sony one has And again, there's different styles on different things, but they work mostly with a
Right. But but they are they are weird and new even compared to I I guess the closest console comparisons to a Wii remote but even then they need to serve slightly different functions than a Wii remote right so
um
and the same so with the Metacube they're having a new control scheme of twisting and turning and tapping

because again no keyboard and you get all sorts of things in there like for them it's how do you twist the cubes you and keep them connected. They have a series of some really cool, they were showing us patented like little magnet balls on the middle that for each one. So, as you put the eight cubes together and they twist around, they pass information back and forth. They can tell which screen is which, they have the 24 small LED screens on it. They need processing per cube in there, but can link together. So, kind of a distributed style of processing. You need a battery per one and a charging per one. You have to think about battery life, how it's all I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff around designing the hardware in addition to all of the things you'd normally think of like processors and GPUs and hard drives and
right a and it's also worth noting you're designing on a treadmill or you're designing in motion because as you design the thing, the market and

technology are moving,
right? looking you're like if this is going to come to market in 5 years
right
you're starting to design saying well this is where batteries are at now what if I say 3 years more in advance for batteries what do we think they're going to be or for processing or for you know display or because you're going to iterate you're going to make the thing you think works look at it play around with it and then you'll make your V2 and your V3 and your V4 getting yourself to the point of commercial hardware
and if you're one of the bigger companies that has an existing relationship with a supplier or manufacturer of those components, you probably have a head start on what exactly that's going to look like. But if you're breaking or you going to build it yourself, Sony's going to be like, "Hey, let's partner with who was it this time? It wasn't Nvidia. Who would they partner with for their chip?" Like they designed custom circuits.
Yeah.
Specifically like
same with like
if you're really big, you can just go in to a large group and say, "We're going to be selling tens of millions of these. It's worth building our own custom

chipset and everything else."
Right? And so,
um, there's
that's a luxury you don't have necessarily if you're smaller.
Yeah. If you're breaking in, right, in addition to being under funding constraints, meaning that you need to get this right in as futurized as possible,
preferably one,
um, you don't have access to all the information, right, that other existing members of this community have, right? You have to break in.
Oh, you may or you may not. like yeah
the CEO it was interesting who not the founder we we met both the founder and the CEO there the founder who's their CTO chief technical officer definitely looked like it and yeah
he was very passionate about it the CEO his name was Napoleon what was it something he directed the last two ninja turtle movies and I believe before that he was the head I think it was of Nokia in America or
I might be he it was some big tech thing
so like one of the reasons you bring in a CEO like that is they might have the

connections.
Yes.
From what they used to do to be able to say to people this will be big. We should be partnering with us on these like you hire for connections in that point. So maybe who knows like maybe they will have it but that's still like all of the and this is still also not just the components you're sourcing but again the technological solutions you have to fix in this case the eight interlocking things that all seamlessly move and transition between each other while passing information and letting them know where they exist while maintaining touchscreen and tap and rotation capability with all of the hardware distributed within and a good battery life, etc.
So, cool. That's a lot of hardware to work on.
Yeah.
Straight up.
Versus
Oh, go ahead. Versus an existing console, right?
Where you can come in and you're like, we've solved,
you know, if they 10 years, if this is successful in eight years from now, they're like, "Let's make the Wow Cube

2." They're going to be starting from the basis of we know what made a successful Wow Cube 1 and all the tech there.
Right? Think about this. the PlayStation goes to make the next PlayStation, they're iterating on all of the stuff from before and maybe they're adding a new thing or two or removing a thing like, hey, we don't need, you know, physical media anymore. You know, you like sometimes it's reductive. No physical media because we now have much better internet capability and a significantly larger hard drive. Y
like but and that isn't saying there isn't a lot of amazing design work that goes into there. there is, but they're not having to solve every hardware problem. They're choosing which problems to solve to make the next thing better.
The switch 2 is a fantastic example of this, right? They they came in with a set of deficiencies in the switch one
and fixed exactly those and found some interesting ways to do it, right? A dock with a fan in it. That's a good one. That's a really good, really weird, excellent solution to the problem they

were having of it overheating, right? And all of that's only possible because they're working on a decade of switch one data, right? Because the data from the first one's important to you.
Okay. So,
so cool hardware. But then, of course, one of the things that nobody thinks about is you have to write an OS or an operating system for your new custom hardware. You're not just designing the hardware. You're designing the software that it runs on. Equivalently, the Windows or the iOS or the Android operating system. And again, you can start, at least here, you're not starting from scratch. There are other examples of how to do these, but this has to be the system that runs all of your hardware, optimizes for it, and still lets people bring in and run other software on top of it or apps on top of it.
But some of these, particularly um particularly VR and uh particularly the Wow Cube, right? the one of their assets is also one of the downsides of getting the OS fully debugged and working

correctly, which is you don't use a keyboard. So, if I'm writing it like uh an Xbox is fundamental, the OG Xbox is fundamentally a Windows PC that's just got a very specific version of Windows running on it, right?
Um the so then now at this point, the PlayStation is too. Nintendo's got their own whole thing, but Nintendo has a lot of practice with debugging systems that don't use
Nintendo being Nintendo.
Yeah. And it's just Nintendo being Nintendo. But here,
no keyboard. No keyboard for the Wow Cube. No keyboard for your VR headset. What do you do? Right. And those
actually no game controller either.
Mhm. Yeah. You can't do like you can't have a debugging menu, right? So if it doesn't if it doesn't work, it's harder to troubleshoot. It's harder to test if it works, right? There is an additional layer of complexity here. Anytime you're breaking the mold on how you interact with the OS, right? You're writing OS for a thing that doesn't exist and has

never existed is different than writing OS for a standard touchcreen, a standard console, etc., etc., etc.
And again, here existing consoles already, they know what they're running on. They have dedicated systems. They've been improving it incrementally along the way. And so again, the hardware and the OS on top of it. So like when Meta or Oculus was developing, you know, their first the Gear and the Go later the Go and the first Rifts and everything, they were both working on the hardware, but all of the software that made that hardware run and displayed the 3D stuff that you could look at and they had to be doing both at the same time. This is interesting. And actually, let me tell you, as an early developer, working with a group that is continuing to update their hardware and their operating system while you're trying to build a game is an extra tricky challenge because they want to keep doing updates because they're trying to make their stuff better. They do them a

lot. And what they aren't necessarily thinking, oh, how does this impact the developers that have been deving for early games for us? Because at the end of the day they're like, "Do we want our thing to be better or do while we sabotage all the work they've been doing?" Well, they want their thing to be better.
Yeah.
So, extra complexity.
So, anyway, hardware design, operating system, and with both V with Wow Cube and from VR, you need a whole user input and user interface new paradigm like completely. That's how VR ended up with things like these and later with like looking at some where your hands are, where your eye tracking, how do you interact with this game hardware and operating system and display that they've put together and you have to figure that out. Like one of the biggest things like doing early VR development was figuring out, you know, where do you put your interface? Because on a

computer monitor, you can like dock it up against the edge of the screen and people are used to that,
right?
There is no edge of screen in VR,
right?
Like even basic things that you're like, "Oh, well, of course we do that." They're like, "Oh, wait, that doesn't exist. Oh, and look, if you know, is it static? If so, when I look that way, suddenly there's a there's basic questions and people figure it out, but all of the basics that you took for granted on these other things don't exist. The Wow Cube is going to have exactly the same. Where do they put the part? You know, the interface that you're looking at. How do you interact with it? Well, I can twist it. I can tap it. Like I was looking one of the things like exit was like three tap thumb like and like but if so I don't maybe I'm misremembering but like there has to be a way in some cases to like say yes say no, you know, kind of the input style stuff. Well, what that also means is you're then setting up the paradigm, every game or system that interacts with this, if this is the standard paradigm,

then also has to use that for how they operate, which may or may not hamper the thing that they actually want to make.
And one of the things that like VR came up with eventually was like that uh what I'm going to call like the the UI belt, right? the idea that like down in front of you, somewhere like at the edge of your peripheral vision in front of you, that's where your UI lives. That's where if you if you've played a lot of VR, you know that that's where it lives for a lot of games. I'm thinking pistol whip. Um, Beat Saber doesn't Beat Saber does it in the distance, which is cool.
Alex, yes, it does. Sorry. Keep going. Well,
um, uh, the main menu, right? And, and again, that it's sort of a chicken egg thing, right? You need you need to establish what it is, but it also needs to work in all the apps that are going to be in the system, right? So, there needs to be some amount of conversation on that.
And it also has to be like how you want to use it. Do you want people in VR constantly looking like
Yeah.
And again, it's part of just how you end

up building the thing. Yep. And so again, existing consoles for their UI and input, they have controllers, they have edges of screens, like they know how this works where new groups coming in, that's another set of problems to solve and possibly whole new bits of hardware to build on top of it. Yes.
So when Meta Oculus was building their VR stuff, they also had to be building and prototyping all of their controllers to work with it. It'd be the equivalent of saying, "Hey, we're making computers. We're also figuring out mouse and keyboard,
right?
And then
so extra thing to solve.
Yeah. And for small groups, right? So we've got well, let's say we we've solved all these hardware problems. We've got something that looks like an OS. We've got a first version of our UI and our input device. And now we need to test it because and and there's sort of two parts to this, right? One, big companies already have testers for all of the things that they do. Nintendo has testers, Sony has testers, Microsoft has

testers,
and uh the other one is everyone knows how a PlayStation controller works or their target user base does, right? And it's relatively straightforward, right? Ditto the Switch controller, Ditto the Xbox controller, not they need to actually get a version of the Wow Cube and just put it in someone's hands and see what the person does,
right? that like user and user experience testing is a huge thing for new paradigms. I am 100% confident without knowing anything that there is years of footage of people wearing goofy prototype VR headsets falling on their butts. 100% confident because you have to
accidentally throwing their controllers through TV screens or like stepping into tables and fall. Yeah. Like all of the stuff or even just trying to figure out how to make it work.

And so user and usability testing are something that isn't also a one-time thing.
It's a we've made a thing. Let's see what people actually who aren't us and don't know how it's supposed to work use it. Oh well that didn't work or that part did. And it's an ongoing process.
And this is again one of those things that's just it's expensive.
It this isn't like $100 million expensive, but it is taking time to actually go test the stuff you want to test with groups of people that don't know how to use it.
Right. And and importantly, and this is a weird one, we've talked about this a bit with testing before, you need to continually find a supply of people who have never interacted with your product before because you only get to run people through first time user experience testing for a product once,
right? Because after that, they've learned something about your product and they're not going to be as useful for, hey, we need like this person knows nothing level testing. They're very useful for other things, right? Look,

experienced testers are good, but you do need a ready supply of people who have no idea what you're making, and that is tough.
Um,
yeah.
Yeah.
And so, if you've solved all of these, you then start getting into manufacturing,
all the logistics around here's all the pieces I need, how do I get them all and get them all made um at a price point that we can afford for each one for each hardware generation.
Mh. Because, for example, when we were doing early VR dev, I think I ended up receiving over a two-year period three or four different prototype hardware sets. Um, it's like, here's the early Rift, here's the midrift. Okay, this is the one we think is going to be actually the consumer launch version of the like it kind of keeps going like that because the early hardware that you're like playing around with isn't going to be the same hardware that you're going to go to mass market or to market or mass market with. And because you need

developers making things before your game comes out if you want them to have stuff to release when your game or when your console comes out, you have to be getting them hardware that's good enough. So you end up going through generations of hardware even before launch. And all of these are things that you're probably not good at building. Like unless your, you know, dev team making the console also happens to be a manufacturing team, you know, maybe you hand make the first couple, but that's not ideally what like or that is not a long-term solution.
And as we've discussed a couple of times, as we've discussed our Kickstarter, which is running now, you can go find it. Well, we'll do a Kickstarter check in after
at the end. Yes. Um, uh, the number of units of a thing that you are ordering often dramatically changes the price per unit,
right? And so if you are a small company, small funding, small thing, you are going to pay more per unit even if

the materials value is roughly equivalent to a larger company ordering more units. Right? So again, this is another place where the bigger existing names have a lot of uh advantage here because they can say, "All right, great. We've got the PlayStation X all lined up and locked in. We're going to pull the trigger for 10 million units." And a small company might be like, "I'd like a 100,000 of these, please."
And the price per unit is radically different for 10 million versus a 100,000, right? And actually a big studio or big group like Microsoft might even have enough leverage to be like, "Hey,
we want you to make all of our test and dev kits at this price because we're going to make up for it by then ordering, you know, 10 million of the final hardware." It's it's probably actually a partnership
where like they just get stuff along the way
for that one set of mega orders coming up at the end.
Yeah. Yeah. Um
actually to give you an interesting

thing, Will, I don't know if I ever told you this. When we got quoted on uh postcards this year, um I think it was postcards, it might have been something else, but let's just say postcards for the moment.
It ended up being cheaper to order, I think it was 1,500 of them than a,000. We hit this price point where it cost us less to order 1,500 of them than it did to order a,000 of them.
Yeah. Like I was just it blew my mind that we were paying less money total to get 1500 sets of postcards than a thousand sets of postcards.
Yeah.
Because once they set up the like the machines to run, but like there are certain things on like physical manufacturing that are just you don't think about. But anyway, I don't want to get too deep into that, but let's just say the logistics around getting the hardware made that you've designed for the operating system and you know, all of this other stuff
y
is its own whole set along the way. Again, existing consoles have these relationships. Um, new groups coming in

have to find the group that they can work with to actually do this,
right? And and uh I guess this kind of goes here and it kind of goes into promotion. I guess I want to talk about it here real quick. One of the problems with that price break point too is that um and we'll talk about this a lot more later just hold in your mind when I am convincing you to buy something that you don't have any experience with the cheaper I can make that thing the more likely you are to be convinced to buy it.
Right. It's why
the better the value proposition and price is always a measure in there.
Exactly. And so that's another big obstacle facing them is that in addition to it just costing more to make them, they have to set their price higher or eat a loss somewhere which is difficult because see funding problems.
So uh okay so we've got we're we're making it uh you know manufacturer it's been tested we've got an operating system and input and all of that and now what?
Here's a fun one people also don't think

about. Okay, Will. So, we've talked about you've got to be good hardware designers. You've got to be good operating system designers. You need to be able to manufacture and source and make all your UI and paradigms. There are whole companies that just do specific kinds of things like that. Here's a whole another here's another thing you need to build, but some companies it's all they do. You need to build a storefront. So, at the end, and this doesn't sound particularly exciting, but like Steam is a storefront. That's what Steam does. Like Valve, they're part of, does other things, but Steam is a storefront. Every console at this point needs its own storefront. If you're the PlayStation, the Xbox, the Switch, if you're selling or, you know, if you're I if you're an iPhone, any other group, you got to be able to sell your stuff. So, this means setting up an entire storefront. This means putting in the be able to populate. This means being able to do regional operations. storefronts have different or digital

storefronts have different requirements usually on a perc country basis. selling things in the United States versus the UK versus Brazil, you're going to be able to set up different pricing, the ability to operate with different regions and their age ratings and their restrictions and getting things localized, having possible government approval if you're in China or other like just standing up a storefront can be a massive operation. Like League of Legends, my guess is the storefront team is over a hundred people.
Yeah. just to be able to have their game and sell things across the world and run all like this is it doesn't sound like it's not a sexy thing but oh my goodness if you can't sell stuff sell games for your console you're probably not going to do well
right and then in order to sell games one must first get this have games
right which means you most likely as the

group making it the first party need to go make an initial set of games and applications for that. You're hoping other people will do it later, but you need to have enough things that you can show off on it and to have done enough of this development yourself to be like, "Oh, we obviously should have put these couple things in our operating system because as we're making games, we realized we left them out,
right? No one is going to make games for your system if you can't prove that games can be made for your system, right? It's both pro it's proof of concept. It's working out all of the bugs. It's also making it so that you have there's a perception, right? And I we've talked about this in the past. It's not fair, right? But Nintendo is probably the easiest example of this. Nintendo first party titles are given a much grander fanfare and a I would say in my experience less scrutiny than some of the third-party titles, right, that are sort of the also rans of of Nintendo

consoles, right? So you need you need flagship firstparty titles. You need the thing that is the reason that someone will do the thing,
right?
Actually, it doesn't have to be like Nintendo's a good example. And actually Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all own multiple development studios just to be able to put out badass first party titles and show it off. And this is again one of the reasons that I think Oculus had such trouble is Oculus couldn't they came up with good here's a couple of experiences like things to show off
VR but they had experiences. It wasn't a thing you're like I'm going to go do this for 20 hours. It was stand on top of this cool skyscraper and look down and see how it is.
Yeah. And
uh Steam's version of that is excellent. There's a Steam VR version. I don't know if you've played it, but it is essentially a series of experiences in Valve properties. And each of the experiences left me wishing that I had more time and more experience in those

experiences. Like there's a thing where you do robot repair with Atlas and Wheatly from Portal 2. And it's great cuz it's all Portal 2 humor. There's like a whole bit where you like accidentally open a drawer full of people and they recognize you as their god. Like it's ridiculous, right? And but it's not a game,
right? In fact, it makes other games feel you also have to be careful because it makes other games feel worse in comparison because you're comparing them to the mini experience demo that got put out and you're like, why Valve did the
why why can't you?
Valve made what was a fiveminute polished demo,
right?
You know, probably with the budget of a small game.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, yeah. And so making things because if you want to get your third party, which we'll talk about in a sec, excited about it, you have to be able to show them they can make cool stuff.
In addition to telling them that, hey, it's going to work and the hardware is going to sell a lot so you can do all of these things, too.
You also need to cover all of the boring

application necessities,
right? Like no third party is going to design the super boring like utility stuff that's kind of the next level up from the OS,
the stuff you can't sell. So, like if you look at the Wow Cube, they had that cool little aquarium like screen savery thing or just like you can play with.
Like nobody's going to go design a free aquarium app or Wow Cube for them that you can't sell. That's the thing. They need a couple things like that that are just on there that you'll like, oh, that's neat. I wouldn't pay money for it, but I'm glad it's on the thing I bought.
Yeah. And so if nobody's going to go build it for you, you got to build it yourself. And you need to and you know, probably some basic things. They probably want a clock app and a calendar app or at least things that integrate with your iPhone to like bring that data over or your Android phone and display those on there for you. And like Meta, the Wow Cube looks like it's going to allow you to have a app on your phone

that you can basically use to install software um on your Wow Cube. the same as Meta does for in I can use my phone to install software on my VR headset. Like it's just it's the control I use for that
and just use my computer.
Can do. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, you can do both. So, mine plugs into my PC rather than being a freestanding, but that's okay.
But yeah, so like all of that boring stuff you have to build yourself as well.
Mhm. because you want in addition to the stuff you build, you want a whole bunch of other people to come in. Actually, no, Richard, it is a console. They're using iPhone as a controller in the same way that I can load a games onto my Xbox with my phone. I can load games onto my PlayStation with my phone. That just interf Yeah. Like nowadays, every console actually allows you to use your phone to access the console storefront andor

things you've bought and remotely install them on.
Yep. Uh
and it's weird because it makes them all feel less independent. You're right. It makes it feel like it's not its own thing, but that's just it's a thing nowadays.
Yeah. Uh okay. So, we've got first party stuff handled. We've got all the boring applications. We've got a suite of sweet first party games. Now we need to get more games. Get more applications. Get more cool shiny stuff.
How does that work?
Well, that's So, you basically do a you start doing outreach. You start telling people, "Hey, we got this amazing new thing coming out and you could have one of the early games on it." And maybe because you're one of the early games on it, you know, you're going to become the next Halo. you're going to be the thing that people remember about that particular console or you're going to be the BeatSaber, the one that people like, this is the thing and I get to sell lots of copies for it. And you promise them that you're going to sell lots and lots

of hardware because again that if you have a 100 iPhones, you could sell a 100 copies of Angry Birds. If you have a million iPhones, you could sell a million copies of Angry Birds. You you have to sell them the there's going to be a lot of these. So therefore, if you make a good thing, you could make a lot of money because developers know that it's risky. And so you have to do the outreach. And usually this is so risky that most groups end up funding some pe some early developers to come make software for them. They say, "We will derisk this for you. you know, we'll end up paying X amount of dead dev budget if you come make a thing exclusively for us or if you take an existing thing and you port it over so that it can run on our stuff.
And this is also expensive. Like Oculus was actually a little bit famous for not doing a lot of third-party funding for games. They they funded people to make experiences, but because I think they could do it for

less. Yeah, I I do want to point out too that um that is another disadvantage, right? You can't port FIFA, Call of Duty, Halo, uh Spyro, Mario. You can't port any of that to a new paradigm easily, right? There are
because it's a new paradigm,
right? Because it's new paradigm. There are some games that have VR mode stapled onto them, some better, some worse. Um which is a bit of an exception. But I will say that for something like the Wow Cube or a truly new paradigm, it's a totally it's a totally different proposition because you lose out on the ability to go to existing developers with existing products and say, "Hey, I want to you can't play slay the spire or now I can't I would say you can't play Bellatro, but I feel like that would be challenging local funk to make this thing run Batro, and I don't feel like losing that bet today, but I'm going to say it's probably unlikely you can play Bellatro on the WoW cube. at least in its in its current state

without
modification. Like they actually had a pretty cool demo of Cut the Rope on there or not Cut the Rope um the pipe one that was um
Yeah.
Um one of the ones there was a I think they have it on their landing page or something.
Yeah.
But instead of like their paradigm is you shift the cubes around to connect the pipes to get the water flowing
down to the thing.
Yeah. Instead of being colors, it's a continuously iterating Rubik's cube where you need to
create new solutions based on the levels. That's cool. I like that.
They actually had a pretty cool like little driving one where this car is just going down the road and you have to keep getting rode in front of it by like twisting and getting ro from different segments so the car can keep driving and not crash into the edge.
Sure.
Yeah.
Like that's cool, too. But again, that's that's making use of the new paradigm,
right,
to show it. So funding outreach or outreach funding and then you honestly you need to set up a whole group of liaison that internally know what's

going on with your stuff to then talk to all the developers to be like hey we're actually not launching in 3 months it's now 6 months or hey if you want to be featured in our launch stuff here's when you need things in by or just to go between you know oh it's like you guys keep having this bug that does seem like a hardware bug or an operating system bug let's talk to the dev team and see if we can get that like you need to hire a whole group of people to interface with your third party developers during the development phase um while they're doing all of this and then possibly some sort of certification program to make sure that the stuff they're handing you is actually good and not buggy because the last thing you want is all of your third party or all of your cool new software that people are going to try being stuff that doesn't make your platform look good.
Y
like that be bad.
Yeah. And then you need to handle all of this while you are doing OS software, marketplace software, and all of your other software updates, and hardware

updates because you're still doing development. Like when Sony says, "Hey, we're making the next PlayStation, you know, and they're trying to get a group to start deving a game two years before the new PlayStation comes out so it can be a launch title." they've already done a lot of hardware work at that point and they you know they have basically dev kits of what they think it's going to be but even then like having worked for some of the on some of these things deving for a system hardware that isn't out yet just takes longer and it's harder because I guarant no matter how much they've thought it through some of the things are going to change and that makes you change your game to update around it
and so you also have to get developers that are willing to work with you while you keep changing ing the architecture they're building on.
Yeah. I also think that there's a there's a thing we may have glossed over too, which is as you're doing all of these third party things and as you're updating stuff, you also need to be thinking about um when we're thinking

about storefront, how you're going to get updates and data to all of the people around the world. Are you doing one data center? Are you doing multiple data centers? How does that work? How you know? So I didn't cover that under regionalization but yeah like you need
some sort of base of operations in a per territory basis
and and again that's another big leg up that the existing publish the existing uh console manufacturers have cuz they've already got all those right they've already got all that stuff worked out. They've already done all of the they have a such a firm foundation on so many of these things that they don't have to solve these problems, but they are they are problems. They're just pre-solved for them, right? A new console tries to break in,
no luck, right?
It's another thing you have to build.
Yep.
And so you've got all of this going.
The next thing you have to, and again, each of these can be things that entire companies and big ones do. The next thing you have to do is promote it. You have to start letting people know this

thing that didn't exist before exists and this is why you should get it, right? You're having to sell them on a whole new thing that they never knew they needed because before this they didn't need it. And you have to convince them they did and that it's good enough they should spend their hard-earned dollar bucks buying this thing that beforehand they existed perfectly well without needing.
And one of the whole points about entertainment technology is it's usually never needed.
Mhm. You don't need a new Xbox. You don't need a new TV. Like, it's they're nice, right? You can usually continue existing on either not having one or using the one you already had.
I'm going to say I'm going to go on a limb. I'm going to say this is the hardest part of the whole thing,
right?
And this is where VR actually had its failure is like they solved all the others to a greater or lesser degree, but they just couldn't convince people that they needed VR hardware.
Right. And and this is where, dear audience, I ask you to hearken back in your mind's eye to your first impression

of the Wow Cube, right? This is going to be their big struggle.
Can you show it again on screen?
Uh yeah, I can give me give me a second. I I saved enough.
While you show it in, keep going with that line. Be right back.
Do that thing. Um the uh right, lots of people's first impression of this device was why in the world do I need this? Right, we've talked about they've got all their hardware stuff covered, right? They've they've come up with solutions to a lot of these problems. There are prototypes that exist. They're working on this last part, but the big hurdle that they are going to have to overcome is this is weird. Why should I spend money on it? Right? And it that's a valid question that consumers should be asking and it's a big um it's a big uh hurdle that needs to be overcome again which is compounded by the lack of uh market presence right Nintendo's got it real easy right we are Nintendo this is the Switch 2 and

everyone goes it costs too much and then it has the best launch for a console ever right Sony goes goes, "It's the new PlayStation." And everyone goes, "Oh my gosh, it's a new PlayStation. It can do more polygons in the place of the thing and everything will look better." Right? But this is not a new version of a thing, you know, and lots of people are correctly skeptical about its place in their life, right? That's why this is so hard, right? It's not just replacing a thing that you already have or filling a need that you're aware of, right? It's convincing you that there is a need and that this thing fills it, right? The the best they can do is convince people that like there you need a fidget toy, right? And I'm certainly as guilty of that as anyone. Most of you have noticed that I shuffle magic cards during some of these shows when I need to keep my hands busy, right? But do I need a digital fidget toy? Ooh, that's a different question. That becomes a difficult proposition, right? again,

which is harder. Like that can be solved with advertising dollars, but they don't have advertising dollars because see the previous problems with getting funding and how it's more expensive to make the console and how it's more expensive to do all this stuff.
Maybe it can be solved with advertising dollars. Like Oculus spent a lot of money, a lot of advertising dollars, and still had trouble convincing people that it was a a needed thing enough to like spin up critical mass, right? Nintendo for the Wii spent a staggering amount of money on their PR campaign. Um what was it? The um
We would like to play
with you or something like that where they had these two um like Nintendo Japanese Nintendo representatives like going out to all these different places and it was bowling alleys and kids parties and retirement homes and other things and basically setting up a Switch and then you'd see lots of pictures of people playing with it. Yeah, it it's it's the we would like to play campaign.

Yeah.
Oh, yeah. And it was it was a brilliant campaign. Like they they put it in they put it everywhere,
right?
And a lot of people were like, "Oh, that looks like fun." Like they made their case on it. I also think in the Wii's case in particular,
the key thing that helped the Wii with its promotion
and uh that is one of the things that led to it being such a stellar success was bundling Wii Sports with the console.
Oh yeah.
Because it
that was their killer app. It was their killer app and it was the number one thing that people could do with someone else who didn't understand the Wii in order to show them the need that the Wii was filling.
Come play tennis with me,
right? And and so that is very difficult to do because it's very hard to do that for VR, right? Because uh it's hard to help someone with VR because you're not

seeing what they're seeing. And a significant portion of the population, at least for launch VR, got VR sickness. And a significant portion still does. It's just better now than it was then.
Right. But here,
and in this place, I would say the Wow Cube is going to have an easier time than VR,
at least on the like showing your friend the thing. Yeah,
because it can sit one actually one of the most brilliant parts of that that little fish tank thing. The fact that it sits on basically a little charging platform and can do that all night long. So you can put it out somewhere and they're really pretty. Like it's a it'd be a cool display piece just to leave you in like the background or on a dresser or a shelf or something kind of charging and having the little fish go around or you hook it up to like your calendar and try like you can leave it out in a nice place and people be like, "Oh, that looks good." Like that's kind of cool. What is that? VR definitely had a problem on that. But

and this is going back to other consoles. the fact that they're made to be the hub of your living room. Like all of them have specifically gone out of their way to be like, "Oh, you want to watch Netflix on this? You know, you want to do this, you want to do this, you want to watch your Disney, you know, through it. Let's hook it into the TV." Means that it's on and getting used for a lot of people. And the fact that other people watch you play it just it makes it easier to show off. Mhm.
And again, the big thing here is those consoles have the 50 plus year history of people playing games on it that just looks natural. That this is a whole new thing in a whole new place that they don't know if they need.
And I think it's also fighting the Rubik's Cube reputation of being a nerd toy.
Rubik's cubes frustrated people, right? And still frustrate some incredibly intelligent people who don't have the spatial reasoning, right? I saw someone mention that their password was right inverted down inverted right down

and like that was a great joke and most of chat probably missed it right that like people don't know Rubik's cube notation or don't like ED is like a thing that doesn't have market saturation and that is potentially hurting
yeah that
actually oh yeah
um well what I'd meant was VR for most people the headset gets shoved in a corner or something it where this the Wow cube is at least pretty enough and sits on a tiny little charging platform that you can leave it somewhere that people could see it. Sorry, that's all I meant by it is that
yeah,
this has a pretty kind of
non-active use version with like fish tank or other thing or as a clock or something that you you don't feel bad about leaving it out where most people don't want a pile of VR gear like sitting in the middle of their living room.
Yeah. Okay. And then so you've all so so let's

go through this. So, you've developed a console. You've got killer apps for it. You've decided um how you're going to convince people that they need it. And now it is time to put this thing precarious on out into the world so it can take its first teetering steps. And now we have another huge problem.
Okay,
you have to launch this thing. And that seems like an obvious statement,
but god is it easy to screw up a launch. Like if you do if you launch it at the wrong time in the wrong section of the news cycle, it gets stepped on by another console. It gets stepped on by a different toy. It gets right. Imagine that. Not exactly right, cuz it won't be a tickle memo, but imagine that the WoW cube comes out and a different digital fidget toy comes out like a week before and they couldn't move the launch and there's nothing they can do about it.
That just sucks, right? because now they they're having uh additional competition

in a market space that they were already experiencing hardships in, right? Because they've already got all of these disadvantages we've talked about. So how does launch strategy
Yeah. And again this is a thing like for that usually you partner with an agency like both for your early you know you have to go for promotion you have to go out and you get your early advocates like if you look on their website you'll see that they found like Nolan Bushnell who was um founder of the Atari and Chunk Cheese and a couple of other ones that like there's pictures of like them getting shown one being like oh that looks neat
right or Steve Waznjak or Right. any number of nerds, right? Yeah.
Right. You know, get your early advocates with your shots or people talking about it like um show it off at this day and age to influencers and other people and just you get your early advocates start talking about it in your launch strategy, which usually involves spending a um heck ton of money on traditional and new style of marketing,

right?
You have to let people know it exists and that they need it,
right? And and and again, there's an increased need for spend in that marketing, right? Because they're an unknown
with less access to money to spend versus Nintendo who just goes, but they could have said they that whole direct where they announce the Switch 2, I swear, this is how I feel about it. It could have been one dude in a hoodie who comes out and holds up a piece of cardboard that says new Switch out June whatever pre-orders April 15th
and then walked away and that would have been fine. They went above and beyond because it's Nintendo, right? like their need, the need that they have to convey complex information is lower because everyone knows what a Switch is and they get the Switch, too. And they have all the money to spend as much as they want on it on, you know, a direct and a treehouse for every game and influencers

and actors and an ad campaign and uh standes to send to every uh place that was going to sell them to put out front advertising things and on and on and on and on and on.
Yeah. And yeah, like getting talking to your Targets and your Walmarts and your GameStops and Costos and everywhere else to like get them in all at the same time waiting to be released on the same day and convincing those groups that they all want to buy in that amount of hardware
and that you're going to get the right amount in. So you because if you have too much, they're going to want to do returns or they're going to want to discount it. There's all sorts of things about getting, you know, all the going all the way back to the, you know, manufacturing logistics and to get it to all the distribution places, the store, you know, the physical storefronts in addition or are you selling them all online like it is it is a thing. And again, that's another one. You just it costs money. It costs a lot of money both to get it set up and

to get the expert groups to just go help you run it.
Yep. Like that's where I came into the picture. Like I am part of their launch strategy along with all the other people they were talking to of hey look at this thing. Isn't this interesting?
Right.
Like and starting to build up the hype around from when you can actually go buy one which is I think Q4 this year.
Like they're they want it to be selling by the end of the year. And so that's like there's a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. And so like we've spent more than an hour talking about it's like if you want to make a new console, you need the funding. You need to renew all the hardware design with everything there. All of the operating system, all the new UI and input, all the userability and user testing, all the manufacturing and everything that goes with that. You need to make a new storefront. You need to make firstparty games and apps. You need to get third parties interested in developing for you and the leaison and the funding and everything around that. and all of the promotion setup around

it. And a lot of people when they're thinking new hardware, they're like, "Oh, cool. It's the it's the tech part. What are they putting together?" And that's part of it, but it's just this whole thing. And you have to get all of those right.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like if you look back at Oculus, Oculus got most of those right, but they, you know, they couldn't make the promotional you need this for sure thing, which probably came back to part of what they were making and the third party apps they funded and just the cost from the manufacturing like other things in there ended up leading to it,
right?
It's hard.
Yeah. And again, looking at this just reminded me of watching Oculus in motion trying to do all of that at the exact same time.
Yeah.
And being like, "Wow, this is really like there's a reason Lucky sold to Meta." Like Lucky, who was one of the guys who helped found the Oculus like and made the first generation of stuff, he got a lot of funding and a lot of

stuff. They had a lot of money. But to pull all of this off and make it scale requires building a lot more than just the hardware.
Yep. Absolutely. I I I think there's a stellar example, Jeff, a name which I will say and which some people will have flashbacks to and some people will go, "What?" And that's exactly the point. And that example
is the Ouya,
spelled O U A. It was a miniature Android console that was supposed to be a $100 console that launched in 2012. And
I remember going to your promotional events and stuff. Yeah.
Exactly. Right. And it didn't have all of these problems cuz it was it was already on it just needed to run Android stuff. It needed to run Android stuff that already existed. So it didn't have a bunch of these problems and it still tanked, right? like and and it's kind of funny. I I looked I looked up Ouya just

to make sure I was spelling it correctly and I got the people also search for the Virtual Boy, the Wii U, the Dreamcast, and the Atari Jaguar, right? Even successful companies have had maybe not the best history with some of these and the the new people starting out are are even further behind. Um I do I do
actually Let's see. And that actually reminds me of two more uh Guy Kai and I think it was on live
which were
on live. Oh yeah.
Basically, hey play everything, stream to your
Yeah.
PC, phone, etc. We'll host it in the cloud and run it.
Yep.
Guy got acquired by Sony and I think on live folded,
but like those had huge amounts of money basically trying to make virtual consoles.
Yep. uh on live shutdown six uh in 2017.
Okay.
Yeah.
But yeah, like this is hard. And all of

those things were backed by large amounts of money.
Yeah.
Like this at least isn't like here's another console to run your games on that basically replicates the thing you already have,
right?
This at least for better or for worse is offering you something novel on the experience,
right? And it's also targeting a lot of STEM style things like they're trying to put this in because of the Rubik's brand. Hey parents, this is a thing you can buy that we can load up with educational challenges and experiences and interactive stuff for your kid. And they've also talked about a lot of like medical and therapeutic uses.
Yeah.
And for physically handling an object and spatial and puzzle and even fidget kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, people are going to look at it and say it's a console. It is a piece of hardware that runs games, STEM games or not.
Yep. Absolutely. So, well, I think that has

been a very interesting uh little little trip down all of these these obstacles, trials, and tribulations. Um, Chad, I'm going to give you
so many flashbacks.
So many flashbacks. Uh, two quick things before we go. Uh, first, your comment challenge chat. What is your most beloved failed console? What is the thing that you wish had just had one more game, one more killer app? Was it VR? Was it the Ouya? Was it uh you know, I saw people talking in chat about Stadia? What was the thing that you wanted so badly to succeed and it just couldn't get there? Um let let us know in the comments below. And the second one very importantly is that we are running a Kickstarter for our history for our history every day uh happens every day 2026 calendar. It has 21 days to go and as of time of recording it has raised $41,265 from and and that's a great number. Please don't get me wrong. The part that

continues to boggle my mind is from $836 different people. That is wild to me that like almost a thousand people were like, "Hey, these goofballs on the internet made some cool art. I want to hang it on my wall every day for a year." That part,
to be fair, we did a calendar last year. Actually, hold on. And it was beautiful. So, I think people are down for a repeat, but
this was last year's one. It has We do basically our art style, characters from episodes of history we've covered, and we redraw famous paintings. So this is instead of um the creation of Adam, this is the inspiration of Joan. Yep. Since we did Joan of Arc, join her inspiration, you know, divinely inspired or Sulleon and Roxalana's the kiss for February
or I don't know, instead of dogs playing poker, our worst moms and dads in history playing poker
and cheating with Zoe. It's great.
Oh yeah.
Uh so please uh go look that up. You can find the the Kickstarter links all over our socials and everywhere else uh if

you're interested. Uh,
it is running for another 21 days and this will be we will sell them in our store after, but this is the cheapest you'll ever get them and it helps fund us to do more cool projects. But hey, everybody needs a wall calendar. This is a really pretty one with a history happen history fact every day and links to videos we've done. So, um, two thumbs up. Would recommend.
Of course.
I am biased, but it's a good bias.
That's fair. Uh, okay. I think that's going to do it for for our talk today. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh, one last programming note. There will be no breakfast on Monday. Matt is away at Gen Con doing Gen Con things. If you're going to Gen Con and you're watching this somehow, go say hi to Matt. Otherwise, you missed Matt at Gen Con and I'm sorry.
Cyberpunk um
the Cyberpunk Legends card game booth.
Thank you, Legend. Cyberpunk Legends card game booth. Yep.
Um hanging out.
Yeah. Uh, and but we will be back next week with another design club. So stay tuned for that. Uh, until then, say bye

to the people, Jeff.
Bye to the people, Jeff. Thanks everybody.
Oh, wait, hold on. I got to do a thing. Wait, I did. Wait, no. I got to I got to do the Oh god. [Music]