WILD Xbox Accessories!

So you're among one of the first people to see this new Xbox. You walk in. What do you think? Well, when Phil pulls it out of the box, I am amazed because I didn't think we're supposed to talk about the Series Z yet. It blew my mind. Welcome to Xbox Ready, the YouTube channel that covers all things Xbox. I thought I'd switch it up today, do something a little bit different. It's a little different. First of all, I'm in a completely different location and I'm joined by a very special guest. I got Austin Evans over here to my right. He was very kind enough to meet up and we're going to talk a little bit about Xbox, the past, the future. He was kind enough to let me raid his closet. We're surrounded by Xbox. You can't see on camera. There are Xboxes everywhere right now. There's Xboxes everywhere from every era. Some cool looking stuff. Interesting looking controllers and accessories I didn't even know exist. So let's dive right into it. Let's go this guy first. Let's go with the OG. But this guy is not really an OG, right? Because I can see that the controller is a little bit different. I'm sorry, I don't have a box to duke around. But yeah, so this is the original Xbox. I think we opened it. It's completely boxed, but we opened it up once for a video. Did you actually play the original Xbox? So I had a PlayStation 2 when the Xbox first came out, but my older brother had an Xbox and he made that thing look so dang cool. It was like the cooler, more mature console at the time. He was playing games like Halo. He was playing games like Max Payne, Fable. I was like, dude, that they were almost forbidden because I wasn't allowed to play rated M games. I would sneak into his room and he would let me play. So I have lots of fond memories with this. You know what I miss? I miss this stuff on the back right here. The games that you could potentially play when advertised right on the box. Nowadays, you don't really see that. This had the little dongle as well as the remote to play DVDs, as well as I had a couple of pack-in games. We did pack it up. It's not quite all original packaging. We don't have some of like the bags and whatnot, but a little blast from the past. Check that out. Yeah, that was like it kind of looks more in line with these third party controllers that we're starting to see now that are like have that feel of the old school Xbox controller. When they designed the Duke, they realized it was a complete ergonomic disaster. So I believe it was when the Xbox started rolling on Japan. They're like, this is clearly not going to work. So they redesigned it with the the S controller, which is an actual usable controller for human hands. Absolutely. And then, of course, you got the memory cartridges in there. It just brings me back. No bumpers. It's like it was such a simple time, man. You didn't need bumpers. You just needed these triggers. And then what was on the front plate? Like, I think to me, Xbox really became a thing with the Xbox 360. But this was like a bunch of PC components, stuff's all boxed. They lost a pile of money on every time they sold one. A little rough. Yeah. But for a first time, not so bad. Some pretty iconic moments coming out of that, I would say. You've been in the game for a long time and you have been talking. That tech obviously includes Xbox. You have a very interesting history with the brand, including being among the first people to see the Xbox outside of the team. And then it's been over three years ago at this point where you did the video hands on with the Series X. You know, Microsoft flies you out and you see this new Xbox. What are your thoughts? What are you thinking? And we have to keep in mind we're coming off the Xbox one generation, which was kind of, you know, down years for Xbox. So we have some very good friends over at Microsoft and there's some discussions about, you know, they wanted to do some kind of hands on. They want to try to show off the console. Because there was no actual like footage of the hardware as far as I remember. So we start talking with them like, you know, like, you know, do you want to take a look at it? And it was actually a several month process to kind of go through it. And we actually flew up well before the video went live. So there's a period of time in which we had this very exclusive footage that we had to like keep like this. Like, no one look. What are you doing in your laptop? Don't worry about it. Like it was like it was obviously I mean, it was a tremendous amount of trust that they put in us. So we went with digital foundry. So the two of us were the first people outside of Microsoft to see this. Going from being a fan to being one of the first people on earth to be able to do this was and will probably remain forever like the highlight of my career. Can you explain to me what the heck this thing is? So this is a device and this was made by Activision for the Xbox 360 Kinect. So this is actually a Kinect. This was in a video. Actually, this was meant to be in a video and unfortunately had to be cut out of the video because for time length purposes and also because we didn't have the right game for it. But theoretically, what this did is that in a couple of Activision games, essentially, you have the two LEDs on the stock as well as on the barrel. And essentially, it would be able to track it. So between the three of those, you can see kind of like position whatnot with the Kinect camera. When you pull the trigger, it changes the color. So the game knows that you've pulled the trigger. Weird quirk of a device that was actually this was, I believe, toward the end of the 360 life cycle. So this was like maybe like 10, 12 years old. I was confused at first because it was in the Xbox section of your storage. Looked like a Nerf gun. And I was like, uh, what is this? Activision controller for Xbox 360 Kinect controller. So, I mean, it's that's what it was for. Man, I miss the Kinect, man. This video is brought to you by Aura. Aura is your number one defense against brokers who are trying to sell your information for a quick buck. If you're like me and you're tired of getting spam calls every day from all around the country, Aura is here for you. Aura can identify when brokers are exposing your information and can submit an opt out request on your behalf. They don't make it easy. So let Aura handle it for you. You can try Aura free for two weeks using this link or go into Aura.com slash Xbox ready. They also have a really awesome app that's packed with a ton of features. You can monitor your finances in real time, see if anything crazy is going on with your credit score. And if it does address it immediately. They also offer VPN services, password management and antivirus protection. On top of all that, they also throw in home title management. And like I mentioned earlier, that data broker removal, if you were to seek out all of those services separately, it would come out to way more than what Aura is offering you today. If all this sounds good to you, try Aura free for two weeks by using this link or going down to Aura.com slash Xbox ready to secure all of your online info. Thanks again to Aura for sponsoring this video. So this is an Xbox 360. This is the original 360. This is the one that I purchased from DK Oldies. Are you familiar with? Remember those guys? I am familiar, but only after when everyone started dogpiling on them and started saying these guys are whack. So this is the fully deconstructed Xbox 360. So this is not the actual launch launch model. I believe this is the Xenon. So this was like the red ring fixed version, which is why it still vaguely works. This is, I think, an interesting console for a few reasons. Not only because this is really, I think, where Xbox hit their stride, but also this was the console that almost bankrupted Xbox because they lost billions of dollars replacing all the run rings. It was shocking when they came out with the actual hard numbers. Years later, I was like, holy. Did you see the doc that they did talking about? Yeah, for the 20th anniversary. Yeah, I was surprised that they went, they were so candid about it and they were so honest. You would think that they try to blow over it, kind of breeze over it. But no, they got in kind of deep with everything. It shows how good the 360 was that you think about as it's the second console that Microsoft have made. They do not have this massively established foothold as opposed to something like Sony. The only reason why the PS3 even was able to match it at the end was because Sony were selling it for like 200 bucks at the end and everyone was just buying them because they want to play like Last of Us or whatever. Like the 360, in my opinion, kind of won the generation. It was certainly the most influential console because it came out a full year ahead. Absolutely. So we got, we got this guy right here. The freaking grease proof 1.0. Tell me about this thing, because this thing is hilarious. And then on the back, you got about PUBG. So this was for the Xbox One. So this was a special controller made by Xbox Australia to promote PUBG. And it was the grease proof controller. This is, mind you, five or six years ago. This is a long time ago. We were able to get our hands on one of these. And this is one of the early episodes of Mystery Tech. We put it in a bucket of chicken. And I'll tell you, I think that is still to this day the most popular episode of Mystery Tech ever, because the thumbnail is a controller and a bucket of chicken. And who didn't want to click on that? Did it hold up? Was there no grease on the thing? You can take a look. The entire controller is coated in like a slightly like, I don't want to say slippery, but like kind of like a glossy kind of texture. Yeah, I'm assuming it's some like oleophobic coating or something. It does work, though. You can get that thing like it was like literally like all up in that chicken and then it still works. Do you remember this? I don't. So we saw this and I was like, I remember attaching some crazy things to my 360. You know, the Wi-Fi adapter. This was an HD DVD player for the 360. As you can see, it was styled pretty much exactly the same as the original 360. So before Blu-ray obviously completely won the war, Microsoft threw their hat in the ring for HD DVD, which was basically the same thing. And there was no real reason for both of them to exist. So you plug it in on the bottom. You have two USB ports, which actually did function as a hub. And it was a mini USB port. And while HD DVD actually was around for a few years, as soon as Sony brought out the PS3, which had Blu-ray support built in, it was a complete wrap. And then we got this guy right here. The father, I guess, of the Series S, the Xbox One S. All digital. All digital. The SAD edition. The SAD edition. It was like Blasphemous at the time, almost that. What do you mean I can't put a disc into my Xbox and play it right off the disc? What is going on? This was a beta. Now, they did sell this. You could buy it. Now, I believe technically the MSRP was $250 instead of $300. The problem was that it was almost always on sale. Like the actual difference between the One S and this was like a little bit more minimal. And it didn't make sense. Now, mind you, this was launched around the same time of Game Pass. Right. This was kind of like, hey, the Game Pass machine, I guess. Yeah. And this is also when they started doing the all access where you could actually do this on a subscription. So you could buy this. It would be bundled with the Game Pass and everything, which is something they still do today. But I believe this is around the time they actually launched that program. I don't want to say it was lazy, but they literally took a One S, they sealed up the disc drive, and then they just didn't put one on the inside. So it's just empty. If you open this up, it's just empty on the inside. They forgot to put anything in there. So you're going to have to walk me through a little bit about what is going on with this guy right here. This is one of our projects that time has not been kind to. So this is a project that we did with the Xbox Game Pass team. Oh, this was probably three years ago, two, three years ago, something like that, where we were doing a video to go along with Grounded, which was coming out on Game Pass, specifically for PC. So what we did was we built a PC in the theme of Grounded. Now, unfortunately, if we turn it around, you'll see that the actual PC components are all gone. But there was in the past a graphics card, motherboard and everything that fit back here. And then this Etch-A-Sketch, which you see up front here, this actually has a display in it. So it's still actually, it actually does still work if you plug it in via HDMI, is that basically we took an Etch-A-Sketch, we cut it out and we put it in one of these little displays. It's more for like picture frames, like digital picture frames. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But essentially you could play the game on this. And then we spent a ton of time to kind of develop the the aesthetic of it. So it's got like the mud, which is all like glue. It was one of those things where the idea with Grounded is that it's a game where you're shrunk. Yeah. So we wanted to basically build the PC for Grounded. It was a fun project, but unfortunately it was designed to be great on camera for the video, and then over time has just slowly crumbled. And we've taken all the parts out. This Grounded PC, very cool. Obsidian's done some really cool stuff over the years. Let's move on to a less sad console, as you would call it. The Gears console. This is looking clean. I'm not going to lie. You got this for Gears 5, is that right? Yeah. So this was the special edition of the Xbox One X. Well, there haven't really been a lot of special editions of the Series S or Series X. That's what I'm saying. And so I see this and I'm like, this was available for, you can actually buy it. Yes. Is that correct? Yes. Because my big beef with Xbox right now, not a big beef, my big beef is that you can't like, there hasn't really been, like you said, any special editions to actually buy since the Halo Infinite special edition they did for the 20th anniversary. And we see all these special consoles like being given away as sweepstakes. So I see this and I'm like, this looks awesome. It actually has. So it's kind of hard to see. But there's actually like a level of plastic underneath. So basically that the icon underneath, actually, you can see has a little bit of depth to it. So it really looks like it's underneath the ice. Super, super cool. I mean, this is obviously on the Xbox One X. So this is toward the end of the One X's life cycle. So it probably was not massively successful just because people were getting ready to buy themselves a Series X or whatever. What are you excited for in the future of Xbox? And what would you like to see from them as a company in the future? So I think we've seen a lot of the excitement for now. So my kind of core gut feeling is that we're probably in tune for a little bit of a quieter period for the next year or two, because obviously nowhere near a next generation of consoles. I don't think the streaming thing is going to be a thing. I think for Microsoft, it's time to consolidate. It's time to kind of let things settle down and really focus on getting some of these big games out the door. I'm very excited for Forza. I'm going to 100% be playing that the second I get a code. But I think that there's been so much this massive energy. And obviously, with the way that the economic situation is, probably Microsoft right now, that gaming has been the major priority. And now it looks like it's maybe starting to shift a little bit more toward things like AI, where they're obviously investing really heavily in. So my kind of gut, and I'm sorry, this might hurt some of the videos you got to do, is probably be a huge, huge, huge amount of Xbox news over the next couple of years. I think it'll probably be more so that if Microsoft and Xbox are kind of prepping things right now, they're probably figuring out, OK, what's our 2024, what's our 2025 look like? But I don't think we're probably in store for a lot of major new stuff over the next year, year and a half, maybe two years. I think it's more so what that next wave is, whether it's a Series Z, whether it's a cheaper handheld device, whether it is the cloud streaming device, or whether it's Game Pass, Triple X Ultimate Edition, who knows? But they're working on it. It's probably, I think it's going to take a little bit to find out. Anyways, guys, that's all the crazy Austin Evans Xbox stuff that I have to go over. Very glad that you got to join us today and talk Xbox in the past, Xbox in the future. It was awesome, man. Thanks for joining us, dude. It was an awkward handshake, awkward nod, we'll do a fist bump. We'll stare at the camera. We'll just be like, subscribe and don't forget to ring the link. Ayyyy.