Handheld gaming looks like the future — so why isn't it more popular? The Verge's Sean Hollister joins the show to talk about some new data about the handheld console market, what it says about the Steam Deck's dominance, whether the Switch 2 might change everything all over again, and why Sony and Microsoft don't appear to be in the game at all. After that, David reports on his trip to Florida to see TGL, the golf league aiming to bring the sport to new places and new fans, with the help of a truly enormous amount of technology. Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline about iPads — and more specifically, one particularly good reason to upgrade to the Air or the Pro.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Verge cast, the flagship podcast of the handheld gaming wars.
00:00:07I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here messing around with a new phone.
00:00:10It's the Nothing Phone 3A Pro.
00:00:13I think this phone's actually sort of interesting.
00:00:16Nothing in general has big, cool ideas about smartphones, but I've talked a bunch already
00:00:21on this show about how I suspect this is going to be a relatively uninteresting year in smartphones.
00:00:28But phones and foldable phones aren't quite ready to go fully mainstream.
00:00:32And I think the iPhones and Galaxies and Pixels of the world just aren't going to be that
00:00:37interesting.
00:00:38So one of the challenges for myself this year has been to find new, interesting ideas about
00:00:42smartphones.
00:00:43And I think the thing in this phone, it's called the Essential Key, and it's basically
00:00:48a button on the side that is designed to be an AI input.
00:00:53It's not like visual intelligence in the way that, you know, Apple is trying to do stuff
00:00:57or all the complicated multimodal systems.
00:00:59This is just, right now, frankly, it's a glorified voice recorder.
00:01:02But the idea is that it can also do things like take screenshots and just ingest information
00:01:08from you as you use your phone, and then store it, organize it, make sense of it.
00:01:12That's actually a thing AI is set up to do relatively well, and strikes me as a pretty
00:01:17good idea.
00:01:18It's super, super limited on this phone.
00:01:20It, like, barely can do any of the things that I thought it might be able to do.
00:01:23But cool idea, and seems like the sort of thing that if AI is going to come into smartphones,
00:01:28this is what it should look like.
00:01:29Anyway, we are not here to talk about, really, AI or smartphones today.
00:01:33We are going to do two things on the show.
00:01:35First, I'm going to talk to Sean Hollister about some data that he got about how the
00:01:39Steam Deck is doing compared to all of the other gaming handhelds out there, and what
00:01:44it says about where the Steam Deck and the Switch 2 and all the other handheld consoles
00:01:50might go next.
00:01:51After that, I'm going to tell you a story about a golf tournament that I went to.
00:01:55I went to West Palm Beach, Florida, to see a thing that is, if not the future of golf,
00:02:01a future of golf, or at least it desperately wants to be.
00:02:03And I think what that looks like, and what that means, and how you even do that is really
00:02:09interesting.
00:02:10So I'm going to tell you a little bit about it.
00:02:11Then we have a question from the Vergecast Hotline.
00:02:13Lots of fun stuff coming in this episode.
00:02:14I'm very excited about it, and I hope you enjoy it.
00:02:17All that is coming up in just a second.
00:02:19But first, this thing lights up all the time, and it beeps at me, and nothing has a lot
00:02:24of weird interface ideas that I need to go turn off.
00:02:28So I'm going to go do that.
00:02:29This is the Vergecast.
00:02:31Today at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor.
00:02:36What up, everybody?
00:02:37It's your boy, Big Snoop, D.O.U.B.L.E.G.
00:02:39Snoop, where can people go to find great deals?
00:02:41Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us, plus four lines
00:02:47for $25.
00:02:48That's quite a deal, Snoop.
00:02:49And when you switch to T-Mobile, you can save versus the other big guys, comparable plans
00:02:54plus streaming.
00:02:55Respect.
00:02:56Only up out of here.
00:02:57See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com
00:03:00slash switch.
00:03:01Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.
00:03:05Welcome back.
00:03:06All right, let's talk about video games.
00:03:09I'm not the world's most qualified person to talk about the bleeding edge of video games.
00:03:15I should just be honest about that.
00:03:16I have a PS4 right here and I have an original Nintendo switch.
00:03:21That's where I do most of my gaming.
00:03:23I've been waiting to upgrade to a PS5.
00:03:27I don't know what for, for something.
00:03:29It's just that all of the games I wanted for so long were on the PS4.
00:03:32And then I mostly became a switch person and I play some PC games, too.
00:03:36But like I am not the person, the absolute cutting edge of PC graphics for everything,
00:03:43which I think might be the reason I'm so interested in handheld gaming, which seem
00:03:47like they have the possibility to give me what I want, which is something easy and portable
00:03:52and uncomplicated, but also give me access to this new generation of games.
00:03:58We've talked about handheld gaming a lot on this show, from the switch to the Steam Deck
00:04:02to all this stuff from Ioneo and other companies that are flooding the Internet.
00:04:08But it turns out that the market is a little bit different than I expected in some ways
00:04:12that I was a little bit surprised by.
00:04:14Sean Hollister on our team got some data.
00:04:16He's been testing all of these things, and he understands where we are in this space
00:04:21and where it's headed.
00:04:22So I figured this is a good time to get into it.
00:04:24Let's check it out.
00:04:25Sean Hollister, welcome to the show.
00:04:27I'm back.
00:04:28I get to do this a couple of times with you recently.
00:04:30This is very exciting for me.
00:04:31It's so good to be here.
00:04:32We were talking just before we started recording about why we are both so interested in gaming
00:04:37handhelds.
00:04:38The reason for you is because you use a lot of them and care about them and are interested
00:04:43in them and have them.
00:04:44I have no rational reason for my interest in this category.
00:04:48I think I think gaming handhelds are like the most interesting hardware category on
00:04:51Earth.
00:04:52And yet the only thing I play video games on is my like first gen Nintendo switch.
00:04:59That sucks.
00:05:00Just like this is the thing I care about.
00:05:02You say it sucks.
00:05:03But a moment ago before we started recording, you told me that you were happy with it.
00:05:07I am happy with it.
00:05:08So the thing that I learned is we talked about this last fall and you guys, I would say,
00:05:14did a heroic job of trying to sell me on a steam deck, which I did not buy.
00:05:19Potentially should have.
00:05:21And we should come back to that.
00:05:22But I did not buy it.
00:05:23And what I did instead was just resolve to never unplug my switch ever again.
00:05:27And now it is it is a it is a console that sits here on my desk plugged in and it works
00:05:32just fine.
00:05:33And it it that's it.
00:05:35I thought the Nintendo switch was a revelation when it came out.
00:05:39It really felt like that as soon as they got over the hump of it just being only a Zelda
00:05:43machine.
00:05:44It was like, this is amazing.
00:05:45You have games that are the same games when you're docked and the same games on the go.
00:05:50They are the full games.
00:05:51You can play through full games now wherever you are at any given moment on the toilet,
00:05:55of course, and everywhere else you might go in your daily life, not just.
00:06:01Not just there in front of your big 4K TV.
00:06:03And so that was a revelation for me.
00:06:05And then the Steam Deck, when it came along, was and now those games can be this giant
00:06:10library of games that you've owned on PC for a decade, and it can be the new PC games that
00:06:15are coming out.
00:06:16And it's not just restricted to, again, Zelda and Mario.
00:06:20And I'm like, OK, revelation on top of revelation, I am so sold.
00:06:24You just need to figure out all these bugs, Valve.
00:06:27And they did over the course of like three to nine months.
00:06:31And then they started selling more of them.
00:06:33And apparently, though, the market isn't as big as anybody hoped or expected, who talks
00:06:37about this as lovingly as you and I do.
00:06:39Yeah, so let's actually start there.
00:06:41I think there are a few pieces of what you just said that I want to poke at.
00:06:44But you wrote a story recently where you got some new data about how well the Steam Deck
00:06:52is doing, but also how well the Steam Deck is doing compared to its competition.
00:06:56Can you just walk me through a little bit of what you learned?
00:06:59Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:07:00So I'll walk through it my way first, and then I want to walk through it like the way
00:07:03everybody else has reacted to it, because they're two very different ways.
00:07:07I wrote a story, and I'm just going to read you the headline really quick.
00:07:10Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming, was my headline, which
00:07:17I put out on the third birthday of the system launching.
00:07:20So I was like, OK, let's do this as a curtain raiser.
00:07:22Why not?
00:07:23I didn't actually grab this data thinking it was going to be for the third birthday.
00:07:26It just happened to be a nice coincidence that when I started writing it, I was like,
00:07:30if I hold on to this two more days, I can publish it on the birthday.
00:07:34Why not?
00:07:35But so I went out and I asked.
00:07:38I actually got tipped off during CES.
00:07:40Somebody was like – I asked them, how big is the total addressable market for gaming
00:07:45handhelds anyway?
00:07:46And they're like, well, according to the latest IDC numbers, it's probably – IDC
00:07:49numbers?
00:07:50Well, let me talk to the guy at the IDC who compiles numbers.
00:07:53Yes.
00:07:54And I was so happy that guy at the IDC who compiles numbers, whose name is Louis Ward,
00:07:58by the way, was willing to share some of this with me.
00:08:01What I thought this was going to be about was we know the Steam Deck has sold millions,
00:08:07multiple millions, but how big a deal is it compared to the Windows handhelds?
00:08:12Because there have been ASUS ROG Ally, ROG Ally, for those of you who are nitpicky about
00:08:18that.
00:08:19It's ROG.
00:08:20I don't want to hear it.
00:08:21It's ROG.
00:08:22Listen, I understand this acronym.
00:08:23I say ROG.
00:08:24It's ROG.
00:08:25I say ROG.
00:08:26I get made fun of every time.
00:08:27It's great.
00:08:28It's the MSO, the MSI Claw, and so on.
00:08:30At least two of those have had a big presence at retail.
00:08:34Best Buy, you go there, you can buy two different kinds of ASUS ROG Ally, and you can buy your
00:08:40Lenovo Legion.
00:08:41I was like, well, the things that everybody can just go buy.
00:08:43They probably have a big chunk of the market right now, right?
00:08:47And so what Louis told me, what he showed me was that not so much.
00:08:53The Steam Deck is at probably around 4 million, and the Windows handhelds are probably at
00:08:58around 2 million.
00:08:59Total.
00:09:00Total.
00:09:01This is cumulative.
00:09:02Not per year.
00:09:03Okay.
00:09:04But you're getting into the way everybody else is reading this.
00:09:08Since 2022, when the Steam Deck came out.
00:09:09And of course, the Steam Deck had the entire first year, 2022, to itself.
00:09:14So yeah, big head start, building a new category.
00:09:17What a lot of other people took away from my story is handheld PC gaming is going nowhere
00:09:24fast.
00:09:25It's tiny.
00:09:26It is tiny compared to PCs.
00:09:27It's tiny compared to probably desktop graphics cards, probably tiny compared to gaming laptops.
00:09:33It's very tiny compared to Switch, of course, which sells more in a quarter than all of
00:09:39these have sold in three years.
00:09:41Even now that everybody knows what Switch 2 is coming.
00:09:43There are somewhere in the range of like six-ish million handheld game consoles out
00:09:49there that are not the Switch.
00:09:51Yeah.
00:09:52With the exception of China.
00:09:53China is like currently, and they're working on this, it's currently a hole in the IDC's
00:09:57estimates.
00:09:58By the way, these are estimated shipments, not actual consoles and not sold.
00:10:05So shipments.
00:10:06So theoretically, shipments does include things like handhelds that are currently at retail
00:10:13and haven't been sold through yet or handhelds that are being stockpiled.
00:10:16It also may include, because IDC is basing these estimates off of supply chain things
00:10:20like big batch orders of components going from somewhere here in Taiwan or somewhere
00:10:24in China to the United States or to Europe, it is worldwide.
00:10:28But it may also include they bought a whole bunch of components for a handheld that hasn't
00:10:34been shipped or even maybe announced yet.
00:10:36We don't know for sure that these are actual handhelds, but given what some of the other
00:10:41estimates out there, given what Valve has said about the multiple millions, these numbers
00:10:45seem right.
00:10:47The one hole is China.
00:10:48IDC has not necessarily gone, one, to look at what is being sold in China, because again,
00:10:54it's tracking supply chain components that are being shipped out of China.
00:10:59So maybe there's a decent size handheld gaming market in China.
00:11:03IDC is also not tracking the few, and I've always called them boutique sellers of handheld
00:11:08gaming PCs, like GPD, Ioneo, One X Player.
00:11:13There's other ones like this that might also sell a bunch of Windows handheld gaming PCs.
00:11:19But when we look at their Kickstarters, we're talking about thousands of units, not millions
00:11:25of units.
00:11:26So we don't think they're making a big dent yet.
00:11:28We just don't know.
00:11:29So even in the very best case scenario, we're dealing with a very small thing here.
00:11:35Yeah, yeah, it's small.
00:11:37And is small, is that good at three years?
00:11:43That's the question.
00:11:44And AMD's Frank Ezor will be like, we're inventing a new category.
00:11:49Three years, this is great.
00:11:51You look over at smart glasses, you look over at Meta's Ray-Bans.
00:11:54Meta's Ray-Bans are at what, two million?
00:11:58And so, you know, they're talking about ramping up quickly to 10 million per year at some
00:12:04point.
00:12:05Just Essilor Luxottica, the glasses maker working with Meta on smart glasses, just one
00:12:10firm, pretty big firm, just one firm, from 2 million cumulative to like 10 million annually.
00:12:17Maybe there's room for Windows, or for handhelds that play Windows games, let's put it that
00:12:25way, to go that direction.
00:12:27But I don't know, it's not growing fast, and it did grow a bit, and then it shrunk in 2023,
00:12:36the year that it was no longer just Valve with the Steam Deck, it was also the ROG Ally,
00:12:43it was also Blender, Nepo, Legion, Go.
00:12:48Shipments, estimated shipments nearly doubled, but then they halved again going into 2024.
00:12:56So maybe a bit of trough of disillusionment, maybe a lot of people bought those ROG Allies
00:13:02and Legion Go, or even Steam Decks and decided to return them, or decided that they hadn't
00:13:07as many as they wanted in the market and nobody needed to buy another one right now.
00:13:12Maybe it's a wait and see thing, maybe some of those people are like, well, why would
00:13:15I buy a Steam Deck when I'm sure a Steam Deck 2 is coming, and better things on the
00:13:21way.
00:13:22I have different theories, let me throw two theories at you, and I want to see what you
00:13:26think about either of these.
00:13:27I think there is one theory that holds that actually the people who play PC games and
00:13:35the people who want a, relatively speaking, low-powered machine for playing games on the
00:13:41go, those Venn diagrams do not overlap at all.
00:13:46If I'm the person who is building a gaming tower to play games on my giant screen with
00:13:52my integrated GPU, I don't want a Windows handheld because it won't play the games the
00:13:56way that I want.
00:13:58That's one theory.
00:13:59I'm not positive how much I buy that theory, but that's one theory.
00:14:02The other theory is just that these devices aren't very good, which is why I want to talk
00:14:08about the Steam Deck, because I think the question of how good is the Steam Deck really
00:14:12is actually the most interesting question in this category right now, because all the
00:14:17other ones seem to suck in one form or another.
00:14:21You just reviewed the Lenovo Legion Go S, which was supposed to be the one, and Super
00:14:25Duper isn't the one.
00:14:28It just seems to me that maybe what is happening is this is a discerning group of people who
00:14:33would want something like this right now, and they're looking at all of these devices
00:14:38and saying, oh, these are bad.
00:14:40I'm not going to buy any of them.
00:14:42Is it just that simple?
00:14:44I want to accept but also reject this idea that these things aren't very good.
00:14:50It's such a discerning audience.
00:14:52What I see anecdotally but all the time are reports of people in Reddit and social media,
00:15:01in my comments, etc., saying, my gosh, I didn't know I could do this kind of gaming
00:15:10on the go, or I'm a lapsed game PC gamer or console gamer who never got into the PC space
00:15:16to begin with, and wow, there's just all these riches at my fingertips now.
00:15:22All these riches literally in the palm of my hands, I'm taking with me everywhere.
00:15:28I don't see a hundred of these every time I walk into an airport.
00:15:32These days, I'm seeing two or three when I walk into an airport, I'm like, okay, that's
00:15:34great.
00:15:35It's great to see that many of them.
00:15:36If I were to put my finger on one thing, I think it's awareness that a good one of these
00:15:42exists, that the Steam Deck is very good, or that one of the Windows handhelds with
00:15:49a Steam Deck-like OS on it is very good.
00:15:53That's like a nerdy niche, where most people are not going to go that journey, they're
00:15:56not going to go install BazZite on their thing.
00:15:59If they're coming from the I'm a lapsed PC gamer, they're probably not going all the
00:16:03way to BazZite right away.
00:16:04I think that that message could well be getting washed out by a bunch of other things that
00:16:11seem to suck, because if I'm getting into this market, and I'm like, handhelds are super
00:16:16cool, and then I go to a store and I look for a handheld, and that handheld is the original
00:16:25or the original Legion Go, and I'm like, oh, I heard about this Steam Deck thing, but Windows,
00:16:32Windows are where my games are, and that Windows thing looks great, and it looks like it's
00:16:37not too much money either, those things are on sale.
00:16:40I might well go buy that Asus ROG Ally or Lenovo Legion Go, and then be like, what is
00:16:46this bullshit?
00:16:48The battery dies after an hour.
00:16:51These controls feel a little bit weird in my hands.
00:16:55I have to touch the screen constantly to make things go where I want and to launch this
00:17:01program.
00:17:05When you open the box of one of these things, you plug it in, you turn on your Asus or your
00:17:09Lenovo, and then you spend 45 minutes installing mandatory updates and adding away dark pattern
00:17:16prompts for various pieces of Microsoft software that you don't want, subscriptions that you
00:17:21would never pay for, before you even get to the Windows desktop to begin installing
00:17:26your games through game launchers that may not be there yet, and then you have to go
00:17:29and touch screen your way through a web browser to go download them first.
00:17:33What is this bullshit?
00:17:35If that is your first experience getting into handheld gaming, handheld PC gaming, you're
00:17:40going to think that the whole category is bullshit too, and I don't know why Microsoft
00:17:46has not addressed this meaningfully.
00:17:48If you instead trust a company that's mostly known for games, not for hardware, and has
00:17:56had some weird failings in hardware in the past, to ship you a console that uses Linux,
00:18:04an operating system that you're likely wholly unfamiliar with, and do not know whether it
00:18:10will play your games, and in some cases, people will rightfully say it will not play certain
00:18:14games.
00:18:15It did not play your FIFA.
00:18:16It's not going to play your Call of Duty, which, please do not try to play Call of Duty
00:18:23on a seven-inch screen, regardless of whether it's Windows or Linux.
00:18:28If you jump through the mental hoops of, there seems to be a lot of mental friction here,
00:18:34and then you turn that thing on, you will be confronted with a wonderful experience
00:18:39that is designed for handheld gaming, and plays lots of games you can get very cheaply.
00:18:46Games often will come out on PC before they come out on consoles, if they are, especially
00:18:50from the indie variety, like if you wanted to play Bellatro, which is now an amazing
00:18:55addiction on phones, it was an incredible addiction on handhelds like the Steam Deck
00:19:00first.
00:19:01Totally.
00:19:02So, that's a really interesting way of thinking about it, because I think there is a piece
00:19:06of that that is just like, these devices make you ask a lot of questions and ensure
00:19:12a lot of things that buying a PlayStation doesn't, right?
00:19:16You buy a PlayStation, and you are going to plug it in, and it is going to play all of
00:19:19your games the way it is supposed to play your games.
00:19:22And the whole handheld space, even the things that do that passively well, it's not as straightforward
00:19:30and simple and obvious, and you have to just cross-check compatibility and quality and
00:19:37do a lot more work.
00:19:38So what we need then, this is where I come around to, like, where on earth are Sony and
00:19:43Microsoft in doing this, because what we need is the thing that is just the simple one.
00:19:49And my next question for you is going to be, why hasn't the Switch sort of turned everybody
00:19:55on to the idea that this is a thing that's possible, because it's been so successful,
00:19:58it's been out for a long time, it is truly mainstream, the idea that, like, I can hold
00:20:02this device in my hands and play video games.
00:20:04But I think it's also true that Nintendo just sort of permanently exists off to the side
00:20:08of the rest of the gaming world.
00:20:10So what we need is something that is as straightforward and simple and mainstream as the Switch, but
00:20:16for these other kinds of games.
00:20:18And that is the thing I feel like the Steam Deck has not yet accomplished.
00:20:22And it seems like you agree with that.
00:20:23The Steam Deck has not accomplished it in the market yet, but it has accomplished becoming
00:20:30the wake-up call for those companies you just named, for Microsoft and for Sony.
00:20:37Microsoft and Sony for a very long time have known the wisdom in the industry is that you
00:20:43cannot compete with Nintendo on a handheld.
00:20:48Every handheld that has faced off against Nintendo from the earliest Game Boy days has
00:20:53utterly failed beyond a very specific pair of niches.
00:21:00The PS Vita had a wonderful niche of indie games, and both the PS Vita and PSP had a
00:21:09great niche in Japan very specifically, and some other countries that rely heavily on
00:21:18wonderful transit, public transit.
00:21:20When you have a public transit country where handheld gaming is valuable and you might
00:21:27have several other people on that train with you to do local networked things together,
00:21:33the DS Lite did a great job of that from Nintendo, but also the PSP and Vita did some good jobs
00:21:38of that for Sony.
00:21:40But for the most part, for the entire history of handheld gaming, the collective wisdom
00:21:45has been don't mess with Nintendo.
00:21:50If you are going to make a handheld, it's the place that you shovel things that aren't
00:21:55going to maybe do as well on your big console.
00:22:00You'll make some games for that thing, but they have to be small ports of things that
00:22:06you think might work there.
00:22:09Anytime you spend one of your game ideas there, like Gravity Rush on the Vita, or Uncharted
00:22:16on the Vita as well, those games are going to be watered-down versions because you don't
00:22:20want to put your A-teams on that.
00:22:21You don't want to take too much ammunition away from your primary console to do that.
00:22:26Well, first with Nintendo, and now with the Steam Deck, the realization is that maybe
00:22:33handheld gaming is the future.
00:22:36Maybe this is an existential crisis for them if they don't have some irons in that fire.
00:22:44Maybe they miss out on what gaming is all becoming.
00:22:48Because the Switch and the Steam Deck again prove that it doesn't have to be the port
00:22:52of the game.
00:22:53It doesn't have to be your B-team putting a game on there.
00:22:56It can be any game that runs on your main system, any game that doesn't require the
00:23:04horsepower of a constant AC plug into the wall, that can be portable now.
00:23:13Portable also doesn't have to mean outside of the house.
00:23:16It can mean your couch.
00:23:17For many people, it means your couch.
00:23:19So Sony got started with the PlayStation Portal for those couch folks.
00:23:24And the Portal, for all we know, may have sold better than all these PC gaming handouts
00:23:28so far.
00:23:29But right now, it just plays your game streamed from your PlayStation box.
00:23:34You're on the couch with somebody else.
00:23:36Maybe they're watching TV.
00:23:37It's a controller with a screen much more than it is an actual console.
00:23:43But it lets you be with somebody else who's watching TV on the main screen.
00:23:46And then you can do the thing next, which is also what I do with the Steam Deck.
00:23:49And I also stream my PlayStation from the Steam Deck because, by the way, the Steam
00:23:52Deck doubles as a PlayStation Portal if you install the right app.
00:23:55Chiaki, go look it up.
00:23:56It's amazing.
00:23:57Now, they also know they need to make real handouts.
00:24:07And both Microsoft and Sony, one, praised the Steam Deck as it came out and was like,
00:24:14this is great.
00:24:15We're going to put some of our games on there because they want that money from the games
00:24:18right now.
00:24:19Both Sony and Microsoft have realized that putting games on PC is basically existing
00:24:25games on PC.
00:24:26They're existing PlayStation games.
00:24:27They're existing Xbox games.
00:24:28If they put them on PC, it's like printing free money for the most part.
00:24:31There's a little bit of work involved in getting it ported properly.
00:24:36But pretty much printing free money.
00:24:38And both of their strategies have shifted over the years from, we have to sell a box
00:24:43and the box will have an attach rate of games for sure that justify making the box, to,
00:24:49we want to be in the business of selling games.
00:24:52The Xbox is every screen you own.
00:24:55That's what Microsoft says, not just internally, but in its advertising now.
00:25:00Sony's been moving that direction too.
00:25:03And so both of them praised it.
00:25:05They started putting their games on it.
00:25:07They started not only putting their games on, but making sure the games ran well on
00:25:11a handheld form factor, making them Steam Deck verified.
00:25:17And they've dropped hints that they will have bigger handhelds later.
00:25:23The reports, which I should cite both of them to Bloomberg, by the way, are that Sony and
00:25:28Microsoft will have something in the next few years.
00:25:31Not right away.
00:25:32It's not a reason to not buy something existing right now, but in the next few years, they're
00:25:36both looking into this.
00:25:38They're both building around this.
00:25:39What is the holdup here?
00:25:41Like the Steam Deck has been out long enough that people are demanding a new one because
00:25:47it seems to be at the end of a cycle before there should be a new one.
00:25:51And yet we're still at a few years for Sony and Microsoft.
00:25:54And I think the reason I'm particularly interested in this is from Microsoft's perspective,
00:25:59because like you said, Microsoft is on this whole game pass, all your games everywhere.
00:26:05Every screen is an Xbox thing.
00:26:07And it strikes me as the most obvious thing in the world for Microsoft to just build a
00:26:12handheld console and say, well, you're streaming most of your games anyway.
00:26:15You don't even need a ton of power.
00:26:17Here is what amounts to a controller with a screen.
00:26:20Let's go nuts.
00:26:21And yet we're still at a few years out.
00:26:23Like that just does not make sense to me.
00:26:25My gut is that it's infighting.
00:26:27I think not every team at these companies is convinced.
00:26:31There have been some major restructurings at Sony recently in terms of like which people
00:26:38have the power and which departments.
00:26:42It's Sony Interactive Entertainment, I should say, the games arm, PlayStation, we call it.
00:26:47And then on the Xbox side of things, there's always been infighting forever in that company.
00:26:53Yeah.
00:26:54Microsoft, not famously the chillest company in the world.
00:26:57And the key thing there has always been Windows versus Xbox and more recently Windows versus
00:27:05services versus Xbox.
00:27:08And so there's been the question of, do you make an Xbox handheld or do you make a Windows
00:27:16handheld?
00:27:17Do you make both and have them cannibalize each other and dilute your marketing message?
00:27:23Do you let the handheld cannibalize the Xbox?
00:27:27All of these kinds of conversations have probably been percolating for years now.
00:27:31There are some canceled devices in the past, too.
00:27:34We reported on an Xbox tablet years ago, we reported on an Xbox streaming stick.
00:27:39They've thought about ways to branch us out.
00:27:42And at the end of the day, they've canceled the ones we've heard about, rumored coming
00:27:47out at some point in the future.
00:27:50There have always been questions about whether they can just go straight to streaming instead
00:27:55of local performance hardware, which is also very key.
00:27:59If you're building a handheld, because you think in three years the world is going to
00:28:04be streaming all its games over the internet, you're building a very different handheld
00:28:08than if you're assuming that people are going to have to run that game on the actual hardware
00:28:12with all of that performance that's required for it.
00:28:15Historically, cloud gaming has gotten better over time in terms of the image quality.
00:28:21But at the end of the day, there's so many friction questions in people's minds of what's
00:28:26going to work?
00:28:27Will I own my games?
00:28:29Is your house close enough to the servers?
00:28:32What happens if other people in your house suddenly use the internet?
00:28:35People's home routers and Wi-Fi points aren't really designed to be like, I'm going to make
00:28:41sure that this one device's connection is rock solid, unless you are an IT admin setting
00:28:47that up at your own home with that proper quality of service.
00:28:50NVIDIA and Microsoft have worked on baking some of that into the routers, but you can't
00:28:56expect the average person to buy one of those things and just have it work yet.
00:29:01We don't know when that's going to change.
00:29:03I don't know how far Microsoft is down that road.
00:29:08So at CES, we caught up with Jason Ronald, whose title is VP of Next Generation at Xbox.
00:29:15Unbelievable title, by the way.
00:29:18Amazing title.
00:29:19Wow.
00:29:20He's got the same beard.
00:29:21Ooh, okay.
00:29:22The face hair on this guy.
00:29:23I like this guy already.
00:29:24It's phenomenal.
00:29:25I'm jealous.
00:29:26All right.
00:29:27And he says that the idea is going to be bringing the best of Xbox to Windows.
00:29:32Okay.
00:29:33So boiling that down, they still want to do the big platform play where they help a lot
00:29:42of Windows handhelds happen, which is great for them because they sell Windows licenses
00:29:47on those handhelds and then they sell Windows subscription services and apps and they can
00:29:51say it's also a PC and all these kinds of things.
00:29:55But the big problem with Windows right now is you turn it on and it's Windows and they
00:30:00would like what you see to be Xbox.
00:30:03They would like what you see and I would like what you see to be, here are your games, instead
00:30:08of here is 45 minutes of installation and prompts.
00:30:11Right.
00:30:12It's like set-top boxes.
00:30:13When I turn on the thing, you should show me the things that I am here for and nothing
00:30:18else.
00:30:19It's pretty simple.
00:30:20There are so many things on top of that that you could theoretically do and the Steam Deck
00:30:24does that I don't think a Windows handheld that is Xbox tomorrow would necessarily do.
00:30:31The Steam Deck has touchpads, two of them, that let you play decades of PC games more
00:30:38easily because many of them expect you to have a mouse cursor to do things.
00:30:43Steam Valve has worked tirelessly to make sure that the controls are the most customizable,
00:30:49not just of any handheld, but of any gaming device ever made so that you can map any of
00:30:55them to do any number of things and not just map one-to-one, but also create cords, multi-key
00:31:01cords that do various things, or fine-tune exactly how far your character or camera turn
00:31:08when you move it this much based on the gyroscope.
00:31:11I have a setup in a first-person shooter game, which, by the way, you can play first-person
00:31:15shooter games on a Steam Deck because of gyro, because of wonderful gyro.
00:31:19I can set it up so that when I do a quick movement or press a certain button, it will
00:31:22rotate me exactly 180 degrees in the game, or exactly 90 degrees to the left or right,
00:31:27snap turns and things like that.
00:31:30There are layers upon layers of customizability that you can do there.
00:31:36They've set up a community profile system where if you don't want to spend any time
00:31:42mapping controls, you can just load a set that somebody else has made and upload it
00:31:47to the internet and be like, I wonder what this does.
00:31:49Here is the mapping.
00:31:50It shows you a picture of the Steam Deck.
00:31:53Here's how all these things work.
00:31:54You're like, oh, that sounds great.
00:31:56I'll download that and try that.
00:31:57Wow, that one didn't work for me.
00:31:58I might download another one and try that.
00:32:01Now I have controls that feel native to this system for a 10, 15-year-old PC game if you
00:32:06want.
00:32:07The other thing that I think will be difficult for Microsoft to do if they just attack this
00:32:14as here is a new layer we're adding on top of Windows is that many games don't run as
00:32:20well on Windows.
00:32:22Let me back up.
00:32:24Many Windows games do not run as well on Windows as they currently do on Linux on a Steam Deck.
00:32:32Seems bad, Sean.
00:32:35Seems bad.
00:32:36It's not great.
00:32:37It's not great.
00:32:38Recently, I had somebody from Microsoft reach out to me on my Lenovo Legion Go benchmarks
00:32:43and ask me, are you sure you turned off this setting and benched it that way because we've
00:32:47noticed some errant behavior?
00:32:49I'm like, yep, noticed that behavior.
00:32:50That's why I turn it off every time.
00:32:52It's rough.
00:32:53This makes me think that the Steam Deck and Valve in general is maybe like one very big
00:33:01marketing budget away from being able to make this thing happen because I think in a very
00:33:06real way, there is Xbox, there is PlayStation, and then there's a huge, big, giant monster
00:33:13gap all the way down to everything else in terms of the way that people think about gaming
00:33:17brands.
00:33:18And if you're Valve, your options are don't try to compete with that or basically spend
00:33:25billions of dollars trying to compete with that.
00:33:28And at least from what I've understood of Valve over the years, it's not interested
00:33:31in like having Super Bowl commercials every year where it tells you about Steam Decks.
00:33:37But it also seems like based on sort of your experience, and again, what we've seen in
00:33:41these IDC numbers, it's like to the extent that this market exists, the Steam Deck is
00:33:47winning it.
00:33:48And if I'm Valve, what I should be doing is saying, we have a pretty commanding lead
00:33:52here.
00:33:53What we need to do is grow this market as fast as possible because everybody thinks
00:33:55it's going to be the next thing.
00:33:57And somehow, no one else is doing a good job.
00:34:01So it's like, where is Valve pouring gasoline on this fire to make it a bigger thing all
00:34:07of a sudden?
00:34:08Yeah.
00:34:09I mean, to some degree, I really think that if there were, you know, demo stations in
00:34:15every Best Buy around the country, and if there were, you know, mall pop-up stores and
00:34:21things like that, that yeah, they could sell a lot more of these.
00:34:25The other hand, I don't know how much they care about pouring gasoline on fires.
00:34:30They're a very small company.
00:34:33I don't want to say they're very focused because one of the tenets of Valve is that you can
00:34:39physically or virtually roll your desk around to different jobs there if you want.
00:34:44They put it out in a handbook they released, I want to say in 2012.
00:34:47I guess they wanted to attract some new employees at that point, and they're like, oh yeah,
00:34:50if it ever snows, you don't come into work.
00:34:52This was before remote work was really a thing, you just work from home.
00:34:57If you want to join a new project, the way we do new projects around here is somebody
00:35:00will say, I've got a new project, and people roll their desk over there, and the projects
00:35:04that have the most desks are the ones that we're working on because all the desks have
00:35:08wheels, and they decided to do it that way.
00:35:10Little different now, they're a little more distributed, but I hear the rolling desks
00:35:12are still a thing as of the last time I was there in 2023.
00:35:18I don't want to say that they're focused, but I do want to say that something like that
00:35:22would require a lot of concerted effort from the kinds of people that maybe Valve doesn't
00:35:29spend all its time hiring, it doesn't spend on marketing so much, or retail, it's not
00:35:37its thing, it wants to build, it wants to build games.
00:35:42Only somebody could step in and say, hey, Best Buy could say, oh, we'll do it for you.
00:35:46But Valve also wants to have a pretty strong degree of control, they want to make sure
00:35:51the message is right, they want to make sure they're seen as this benevolent entity, which
00:35:56many PC gamers are happy to hold them up as because, hey, this Steam Deck wouldn't exist
00:36:02without them, and look at the way they handle themselves with this game and that game, and
00:36:09they must have poured a ton of money into this that they're not recouping to make the
00:36:12Steam Deck happen to begin with.
00:36:14Then other people are saying, well, yeah, but they take 30% off of all of these games
00:36:18in Steam, and they make ridiculous amounts of money, and I don't know.
00:36:23What I'll say there, though, is I don't know if they would just say yes to anybody else
00:36:28wanting to do it for them because they like that amount of control.
00:36:32That's fair.
00:36:33But it does seem like we're due for a race.
00:36:35If you believe this market is going to get much, much bigger in the coming years, and
00:36:39I think you and I both do, and I think if we're wrong, it's because people are stupid,
00:36:44not because this isn't a good idea, so I'm going to plant that flag now.
00:36:47Handheld gaming is the future we should have, I fervently believe that.
00:36:52But anyway, if that is the case, if the $6 million you talk about is going to turn into
00:36:58$60 or $100 in the next however many years, it seems to me that the race essentially can
00:37:05Valve convince the world that the Steam Deck is good before somebody else can build a really
00:37:13good Windows or Xbox handheld.
00:37:17Is that the race?
00:37:19Is that where we are right now?
00:37:21I think that Valve would be fine if they didn't win that race.
00:37:30I don't know why that frustrates me, but that frustrates me.
00:37:32It frustrates me, too.
00:37:33It frustrates me, too.
00:37:34I want everyone to experience the glory of PC gaming and the glory of handheld gaming.
00:37:39I want those two things for everybody, and I want them to be intertwined, but I feel
00:37:49like they think about a lot of these projects as we want to uplift our people, our PC gamers.
00:38:00Here is another thing that we want for ourselves, that we want our PC gamers to enjoy, and now
00:38:07that they have that, yes, Valve has said there's going to be a Steam Deck 2 someday and a Steam
00:38:13Deck 3 someday and so on.
00:38:15They're planning this as a generational thing with maybe up to four of them, that they were
00:38:19willing to be like, yeah, we think we're going to do that.
00:38:23But I don't know if they feel like they need to go much further.
00:38:27As long as somebody is letting people do this.
00:38:32And so, yeah, I think they will keep doing it, but I think they might be fine if the
00:38:37sales are just enough to recoup what they put into it when they combine the handheld
00:38:43and the game.
00:38:44But yes, as a watcher, somebody who wants this stuff to happen, yes, please find the
00:38:50chip and the screen that'll make it happen.
00:38:52I wrote another story.
00:38:54What handheld PC makers should do to fight the Switch 2.
00:38:58And I wrote it because there was a lot of interest in the Nintendo Switch at that moment,
00:39:02but I do believe that there was this moment for me where I was buying all my indie games
00:39:09on Nintendo Switch.
00:39:11I was like, I want my Mario, my Zelda, obviously, but I also want to take all these other beautiful
00:39:17games I would otherwise not have the time to play with me on the go, to the bed, to
00:39:22the couch, et cetera, where I can find the time to play them.
00:39:28And I was doing that for Switch, and as soon as Steam Deck came out, I was like, I can
00:39:31do them there.
00:39:33Better, cheaper, longer, without typing my password into Nintendo Store every time and
00:39:40dealing with the Nintendo things around that.
00:39:44And now I was buying all my indie games on Steam Deck.
00:39:49Maybe there's this moment now where the Switch 2 could be that next platform where people
00:39:55do that.
00:39:56If Nintendo decides it wants to be the place where all these indie games live, and if it
00:40:02just massively overhauls its store, it has attracted the same kinds of games as the Steam
00:40:10Deck, and it has Nintendo behind it, and it's going to have so, so very many more sales
00:40:16than any of the handheld gaming PCs for a very long time to come.
00:40:21If previous Switch sales are any indication, if they don't screw it up royally and make
00:40:26it a flop like the Wii U, which by the way, the Wii U is also sold more than all these
00:40:30handheld gaming PCs, it's neither here nor there, but people love to bring that up when
00:40:34they're talking about my earlier story.
00:40:36So I give this advice.
00:40:39If you want to build the system that's going to beat the Steam Deck and that's going to
00:40:44meaningfully compete against the Switch 2, it's got to have a true handheld operating
00:40:50system, not just a fresh coat of paint on Windows, but it's got to have a great screen.
00:40:56It's got to have a screen that doesn't suck up too much battery life, that doesn't suck
00:40:59up too much processing power, but it also has to have a chip.
00:41:03It has to have a chip that is more efficient than anything else that we've seen on the
00:41:09market save the Steam Deck, and it needs to be more powerful than the Steam Deck chip
00:41:13to get us anywhere further.
00:41:15And that's what Valve keeps saying it's waiting for.
00:41:19Because that chip doesn't exist yet, or if it exists, nobody's been able to talk about
00:41:23it publicly yet.
00:41:25The chip makers, they build chips for the big slice of the market.
00:41:31They build them for the laptops.
00:41:33They build a few of them for the tablets like the Surface Pro.
00:41:36They don't build chips that are designed to go in anything much smaller than a laptop
00:41:42unless they get some custom or semi-custom orders for that.
00:41:47And so when Sony's building a new PlayStation, when Microsoft's building a new Xbox, they
00:41:53order semi-custom chips.
00:41:54They say, I want this chunk of AMD graphics and I want that chunk of AMD CPU, pair those
00:41:59things together, give me some custom interconnect, give me some custom logic, bake this as small
00:42:06as you can in terms of nanometers on a wafer so that we can get good yields out of that.
00:42:11And that's what I'm going to order for my future console.
00:42:13Right.
00:42:14And give me 30 million of them.
00:42:15Exactly.
00:42:16Give me a lot of them.
00:42:18Valve did the same for the Steam Deck.
00:42:22Although I have heard a story that maybe it was a canceled Microsoft tablet chip or Microsoft
00:42:27handheld chip or something like that.
00:42:28So if you know anything about that, Sean at TheVerge.com is my email address.
00:42:32I'm Sean Hollister, 01 on Signal.
00:42:36Please come find me and tell me the story.
00:42:41Valve did this for the Steam Deck, unless it was Microsoft who did it for the Steam
00:42:43Deck.
00:42:45But none of these other handheld gaming PCs have that style of custom or semi-custom chip.
00:42:51They've got a laptop chip, which AMD did some extra work to change the power profile, make
00:42:58it a little bit more efficient because they know we're not going to be throwing as many
00:43:01watts at it in a handheld conform factor.
00:43:04But fundamentally, they do not have the efficiency that you need to build something that scales
00:43:11down to low wattage, long battery life, like the Steam Deck.
00:43:16Instead, Windows manufacturers have to brute force it by putting in twice the size of battery,
00:43:21like ASUS did with the ROG Halide X.
00:43:24Great system because they did that, but imagine if it had more efficient chip.
00:43:28Valve keeps coming out and saying, one of their developers in particular, one of the
00:43:33Steam Deck designers, Pierre-Lou Griffay, I hope I got his name right, sorry if I butchered
00:43:38it just now.
00:43:40He keeps having to shoot down every new rumor, oh, Valve's going to use this new chip in
00:43:45their new thing.
00:43:46He came out and said, we're not putting the Z2 in a Steam Deck.
00:43:50And until I reviewed the Lenovo Legion Go S, which has the Z2 in it, I did not know
00:43:55why.
00:43:56And then I reviewed it, I'm like, the Steam Deck is beating this new AMD chip.
00:44:02How is that possible?
00:44:03Oh.
00:44:04That's a tough comparison, yeah.
00:44:06So maybe what we're actually waiting for, rather than a bunch of belief in this new
00:44:10industry, is just somebody to build the chip and floodgates will open when suddenly this
00:44:16thing is possible.
00:44:17Because that trade-off you're describing is what everybody wants, right?
00:44:20That is the thing that unlocks this.
00:44:22And maybe that is the thing that we're waiting for, more than anything else.
00:44:26Who pays for the chip is the question.
00:44:29Is it Qualcomm that wants to get into the gaming space, started toying with it with
00:44:35the Copilot Plus PC chips, but it didn't really get there.
00:44:38And then suddenly Qualcomm, who's a giant player in modems and is beginning to be a
00:44:43small player in laptops, becomes the handheld PC gaming chip.
00:44:47And this stuff has to move to ARM, because Qualcomm makes ARM chips.
00:44:51And all of a sudden you're running Steam on ARM and running Windows games on ARM, which
00:44:56people have experimentally done and it kind of works.
00:44:59And there was even some code in the Valve codebase suggesting that Valve has maybe experimented
00:45:03with this too.
00:45:05Or is it Microsoft building something special?
00:45:10Is NVIDIA – by the way, NVIDIA is the one that builds the chip in the Nintendo Switch.
00:45:17That's NVIDIA graphics in there, that's NVIDIA, even CPU, I believe, NVIDIA.
00:45:23Does NVIDIA say, well, we've already got this chunk of the handheld gaming market,
00:45:26why don't we have all the handheld gaming market?
00:45:29And again, things move to ARM and we're running Windows games on ARM and so on and so forth.
00:45:36Is it a bunch of these PC makers banding forces and saying, AMD, instead of giving us a laptop
00:45:46chip this year, how about we all foot the bill for something better for handheld gaming
00:45:51PCs?
00:45:52And then we're all on the same footing as one another, but we were there anyway.
00:45:56And now we think we can sell a lot more of them.
00:45:57Well, if you look at two million cumulative sales for Windows-based handheld gaming PCs
00:46:04over the past two years, maybe they can't afford to do that quite yet.
00:46:10Maybe it'll be longer before that happens.
00:46:13Somebody's either going to have to go all-in or something is going to have to happen externally
00:46:19that winds back, it seems like.
00:46:21I have to say, this is all really validating my theory that I made the right call by just
00:46:25buying into the Switch and never unplugging it.
00:46:27And it's going to be fine for a while.
00:46:28This is all making me feel better about this decision.
00:46:30All right, Sean, we got to take a break, but thank you for coming on as always.
00:46:35Good to see you.
00:46:36Thanks.
00:46:37All right.
00:46:38We got to take a break, but then we're going to come back and we are going to talk about
00:46:40the future of sports and why the future of sports is really humongous, truly gigantic
00:46:47displays.
00:46:48Because of course it is.
00:46:50Today at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor.
00:46:56What up, everybody?
00:46:57It's your boy, Big Snoop, DL Double G. Snoop, where can people go to find great deals?
00:47:01Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us, plus four lines
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00:47:08That's quite a deal, Snoop.
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00:47:17See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com
00:47:20slash switch.
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00:47:25Welcome back.
00:47:26I want to tell you a story about golf, but I promise if you don't care about golf, it's
00:47:30not really a story about golf.
00:47:32It's a story about huge screens and arrays of nine projectors and digital sensors everywhere
00:47:40and a big existential question about the nature of reality.
00:47:45And I guess, sure, a little about golf.
00:47:47So a few weeks ago, I got on a plane down to West Palm Beach, Florida, to go see a match
00:47:52in a new league called TGL Golf.
00:47:54The golf I went to see wasn't on this big, beautiful outdoor course, though there are
00:47:59lots of those in West Palm Beach.
00:48:01I was indoors.
00:48:02I was in this small arena called the SoFi Arena that had only been open for a few weeks.
00:48:07I'll explain how the game works in a minute.
00:48:09But first, let me just walk you through the arena outside.
00:48:13It's just a big white box with a giant SoFi logo on it.
00:48:16It honestly looks more like a data center than a sports arena when you kind of get there.
00:48:21You walk in the door and there's a TV set for filming pregame shows.
00:48:24There's a merch store and there's really not that much else.
00:48:27This whole thing, honestly, to stand there feels barely finished.
00:48:31It has a bunch of high top tables and a few bar carts that all just kind of appeared on
00:48:36the polished concrete.
00:48:37And that's it.
00:48:39There's a walkway that goes all the way around the edge of the building and it's all kind
00:48:42of like this.
00:48:44But there's another structure inside of the building and this is where all of the good
00:48:47stuff happens.
00:48:49It's like a mix of a movie set and a sports arena.
00:48:52So just picture this with me.
00:48:53If I'm standing in the middle of the arena, I'm on a flat patch of turf in the middle
00:48:58of a space that feels maybe a little larger than a football field.
00:49:03On one side of me, there's a round area which has a couple of sand filled bunkers and a
00:49:07small hill and a bunch of different golf holes around it.
00:49:11That's the green.
00:49:12That's the spot where every single TGL hole ends.
00:49:16It's 41 yards across and the whole thing sits on a turntable so it can rotate up to 180
00:49:21degrees.
00:49:22There are hundreds of tiny actuators underneath the green that can change its shape and its
00:49:27slope in just a few seconds too.
00:49:29It's one green, but it can be almost anything.
00:49:32That is where all TGL golf holes end.
00:49:35They begin on my other side where players stand on a patch of grass that's actually
00:49:39grown in a field outside of the arena and they hit balls into a giant screen.
00:49:45And when I say a giant screen, I mean a giant screen.
00:49:49It's 53 feet high and 64 feet across.
00:49:52And however big you think a 3,392 square foot screen looks in person, I promise you it's
00:49:59way bigger than that.
00:50:01In between the screen and the green, there's just tech everywhere you look.
00:50:05So as I'm standing here, there's a robotic camera wheeling around like a go-kart capturing
00:50:09video from these super low angles.
00:50:12There's a Skycam overhead on wires like the ones you see at an NFL game filming everything
00:50:16from above.
00:50:18There are sensors I can see, there are sensors I can't see.
00:50:21There's a huge lighting grid up above.
00:50:24This is what I mean by it feeling like a movie set.
00:50:27There's no sense here that the technology is separate from the field.
00:50:31There's a huge sensor array just a few feet behind every golfer as they swing.
00:50:35And that robot camera I mentioned does this cool swoopy motion thing in front of them
00:50:40before just about every shot.
00:50:43It all adds up to something that feels like a cross between a movie and a video game and
00:50:49a sporting event.
00:50:50It's a little bit Wii golf and a little bit professional golf.
00:50:54And I have to be honest with you, I kind of love it.
00:50:57Okay, this is probably the point where I should explain how TGL works and why it works the
00:51:02way that it does.
00:51:03The how is both weird and fairly straightforward, at least for our purposes.
00:51:08Here is how Ricky Fowler, who's a pro golfer, explains it in a YouTube overview that TGL
00:51:12made a while ago.
00:51:13There are two sessions.
00:51:14The first, triples.
00:51:15A nine hole, three versus three alternate shot.
00:51:20The second, singles.
00:51:22Six holes of players going head to head.
00:51:25Each hole is worth one point.
00:51:27Golf tied at the end and overtime determines the winner.
00:51:29TGL is also bringing to golf a shot clock, a ref, a timeout to ice the golfer, a hammer
00:51:34to raise the stakes, and the players are all mic'd up to get you in on the action.
00:51:39There are more rules than that and some quirks to the system, but it's ultimately not terribly
00:51:43complicated.
00:51:44It's just golf as a team sport.
00:51:45It's really fun.
00:51:46I had a good time at the match I went to, which was really competitive and went into
00:51:50overtime, which was a chip off, sort of like penalty kicks in soccer, but they were just
00:51:54chipping to get close to the hole.
00:51:55Super fun.
00:51:56The vibe of the whole thing is more goofy exhibition match than like high level golf
00:52:02tournament, but it's a fun thing.
00:52:05And actually, the thing that surprised me the most was that most of that tech, including
00:52:09that giant turntable green, works pretty seamlessly.
00:52:12You don't even really notice it as it's happening.
00:52:14TGL is, above all, a TV show.
00:52:17No one who makes it is unclear about that fact.
00:52:20It's 15 holes long instead of 18 so that a whole match can be played in two hours of
00:52:24primetime television.
00:52:26Matches are early in the week so that they don't conflict with the golfer's more important
00:52:29tournaments and they're in the early evenings to fit with the rest of ESPN's schedule.
00:52:34Hell, the whole thing is in Palm Beach because that's where a lot of the golfers live and
00:52:38so most of them can just drive to the matches.
00:52:41One of them, I won't name who because it wasn't their fault, almost hit me with their
00:52:44car in the parking lot, but that's not important.
00:52:47The reason the TGL Arena looks like a movie set is because more than anything, it is a
00:52:51movie set.
00:52:53This thing is a product made to be watched on ESPN.
00:52:56The TGL folks actually borrowed from lots of other sports in making this TV show work.
00:53:01All the players come in with these wrestling-style entrances that were lit by the same person
00:53:06who did some of the wrestling entrances.
00:53:23During the match, the players are mic'd up so you get lots of the banter you might hear
00:53:28from players in a football or a basketball game.
00:53:30And honestly, hearing golf pros trash talk is pretty fun.
00:53:33I played with him all day Saturday at Pebble, he didn't hit one shot like that.
00:53:37The overhead Skycam is also borrowed from the NFL and it adds some really cool stuff
00:53:41to golf.
00:53:42In a normal tournament, you'd never get to see a shot from directly overhead.
00:53:47And I've been seeing golf lovers all over really geek out over getting new views of
00:53:51pros form and swing because it's right over top of their head.
00:53:55The reality is all of this adds up to something way more interesting on television than in
00:53:59person.
00:54:00When I went, it was late January and it was the fourth ever match in the history of TGL.
00:54:05The match I went to was actually a big one.
00:54:06It was Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who are two of golf's biggest names and two of the
00:54:11best players of this century, and two of the investors who actually made TGL happen.
00:54:16And they were facing off against each other, or at least their teams were.
00:54:19Noah Kahn and Niall Horan were hanging out in the team box right across from my seat.
00:54:23They seemed like they were friends.
00:54:24I don't know.
00:54:25The baseball players, David Ortiz and Mike Trout, were in the house.
00:54:28It was a whole thing.
00:54:29You know, it was a big celebrity evening in West Palm Beach.
00:54:33The TGL folks are pretty much all either golf people or TV people or both.
00:54:37And they're still clearly learning how to make great arena sports.
00:54:42They had only just hired folks to come and like fire t-shirts into the crowd to get people
00:54:47psyched.
00:54:48But there were still a bunch of commercial breaks where all of us in the audience just
00:54:51kind of sat and waited for things to start up again.
00:54:54You never notice how long a commercial break is until you're just sitting there quietly
00:54:58waiting for sports to start.
00:55:00At one point, the in-arena announcer alerted us that we were coming back, like we were
00:55:05like a sitcom crowd supposed to cheer as we came back from commercial.
00:55:08There wasn't a big applaud now sign, but it honestly felt like that might be coming.
00:55:13I knew all of that would be the case, though.
00:55:15They're pretty straightforward, once again, that this is a TV product, first and foremost.
00:55:20Even Tiger Woods would tell you that.
00:55:22I really went to West Palm Beach to find out one thing and one thing only, which is the
00:55:26big question that I and a lot of other people have been wondering since we first heard about
00:55:31TGL.
00:55:32Is this golf?
00:55:34Can you replace a golf course with a screen and a turntable and still call it the same
00:55:39sport?
00:55:40We actually started getting answers to this question pretty quickly.
00:55:44In one of the very first matches of the season, Tiger Woods, maybe the greatest golfer of
00:55:48all time, stepped up and hit a shot from about a hundred yards out and just absolutely drilled
00:55:54it into the water.
00:55:55He hit it way, way, way too long.
00:55:59I think that up box goes too far.
00:56:11He hits the ball into the screen and the screen shows the ball bouncing off of the green and
00:56:15into the water.
00:56:16And the water, by the way, is kind of shoddily rendered because I don't think anyone thought
00:56:20we'd need to look at the water very much.
00:56:22And Tiger just sort of stares down like he's confused that this just happened.
00:56:28Players this good can usually tell how a shot went the second they're finished swinging.
00:56:33And you could tell this ball didn't do what he expected.
00:56:36A little while later, Tiger hit another short shot like this one and hit it way left.
00:56:41He didn't like that shot very much either.
00:56:43He threw something, I think a tee, at the tracking sensor behind him as he walked away.
00:56:48And since he had his mic on, it was pretty clear how he felt.
00:56:54And then, not long after that, Tiger hit it into the water again.
00:56:58And this time, all he did was look at the screen and laugh.
00:57:06Tiger's team, which is called the Jupiter Lynx Golf Club, got absolutely demolished
00:57:10in that match.
00:57:11Tiger talked the whole thing up to him just not playing well.
00:57:14But a lot of people started asking, is the technology here actually working?
00:57:19We've all seen what Tiger Woods can do with a golf club.
00:57:21So when it goes wrong, are we going to blame him?
00:57:25Or are we going to blame the technology?
00:57:28There's this saying in sports that ball don't lie.
00:57:31The idea is that whenever something happens that feels wrong, the game itself kind of
00:57:36autocorrects.
00:57:37It's karma, basically, but for sports.
00:57:39There was this NBA player, his name was Rasheed Wallace, who would famously yell, ball don't
00:57:43lie, when he'd get called for a foul.
00:57:46But then the player who he didn't think he fouled would miss the free throw.
00:57:50I think Rasheed Wallace might have invented the saying, I'm honestly not sure.
00:57:53But the message is simple.
00:57:55The game tells the truth, and the ball keeps the score.
00:57:59On a real golf course, we'd know what happened if Tiger Woods' shot went into the water.
00:58:03It would mean that Tiger hit a bad shot.
00:58:05Ball don't lie.
00:58:06But in this case, we didn't see where Tiger's shot went.
00:58:10We saw the beginning of the shot, and then it hit a huge giant screen, and then a half
00:58:14second later, we saw an animated ball fly through the air, bounce off the green, and
00:58:18hit the water.
00:58:21There is an awful lot that happens in that half second that is designed to make sure
00:58:25that the virtual ball still don't lie.
00:58:28So there's this pole here that's got two cameras.
00:58:32You go further up, little green light from the back, people are there, and then the same
00:58:36on the opposite side.
00:58:38That is Andrew McCauley.
00:58:39He's the CTO at a company called Tomorrow Sports, and the technical mastermind behind
00:58:43all of TGL.
00:58:44From the turntable, to the screen, to the sensors, to the cabling that puts it all together,
00:58:49that's all Andrew.
00:58:50And right now, as he and I are talking, he's standing on the middle of the TGL arena turf,
00:58:55right behind the tee box, pointing to a bunch of different stuff and explaining to me how
00:58:59it all works.
00:59:00Each of those poles with two cameras that he mentioned is a full system from a company
00:59:04called Top Tracer, which tracks a golf ball through the air.
00:59:08Top Tracer is everywhere in golf.
00:59:10If you go to a driving range, there's a decent chance you're using Top Tracer tech just to
00:59:13see how far your shots go.
00:59:15This is the same idea, just way more complicated.
00:59:18There's a redundancy and an accuracy play to this.
00:59:21From the redundancy standpoint, we could lose three systems.
00:59:25We could be down to just one pair left, still get an accurate trace.
00:59:31With all four running, they do, this is where it differs a little bit from the range, they
00:59:38stitch together the results from as many as it gets, so a whole full, and chooses.
00:59:45Does it improve linearly that way?
00:59:48Is having four things pointing at it going to give you better data than having one or
00:59:51two or three?
00:59:52It won't be linear because there's a point where it's not going to matter.
00:59:58But it helps.
00:59:59More than one helps.
01:00:00But it helps.
01:00:01In addition to the Top Tracer cameras, which are capturing the flight of the ball in stereoscopic
01:00:06There's another sensor array right behind the tee box, lower down on the ground.
01:00:11This is called a launch monitor, and it's made by a company called Fullswing.
01:00:14One thing that Top Tracer doesn't do is give us anything from nominative impact.
01:00:18It's just looking at the ball.
01:00:19If you go fly from the rough, the ball behaves that way and it models it that way.
01:00:24If you don't, it doesn't.
01:00:27But we added Fullswing's obviously the big simulator game software, customized.
01:00:34And we added an array of their launch monitors so that we could also get nominative impact
01:00:42information.
01:00:43That gives us stuff that Top Tracer doesn't, like club speed and things like that.
01:00:47The only thing it does is a club.
01:00:49It gives us a second spin number as well.
01:00:52I called up Andrew later after this conversation and asked him to explain to me again how all
01:00:57of this stuff gets combined to figure out what happens to the ball.
01:01:00Basically what he said is it starts as soon as a player walks up to the box to hit their
01:01:04shot.
01:01:05The screen switches to show that their spot on the course, pointing at the hole, and everything
01:01:09resets.
01:01:10Yeah, so we've activated the system to be watching, right?
01:01:13And then as soon as the ball is hit and starts flying, the first thing that happens is the
01:01:19Top Tracer tracking system observes that ball flying and it's 35 yards to the screen.
01:01:27And it starts to calculate or extrapolate where that ball would have continued to fly,
01:01:35what trajectory, speed, angles, et cetera, would that ball have continued to fly on if
01:01:40that screen hadn't happened to be there to stop it flying.
01:01:45In parallel with that, the full swing radars that are behind the tee box give us moment
01:01:51of impact information.
01:01:53So that's where we get the club head speed from.
01:01:56We get some spin information from that.
01:01:58Top Tracer also gives us spin with their calculations of the trajectory.
01:02:04So I think, as I mentioned when you were here, this is customized versions of all these people's
01:02:10technology and they're layered together to make this kind of a one-of-one tech stack
01:02:17for tracking golf balls accurately in an indoor short field environment, if you want to call
01:02:23it that.
01:02:24So it's taking one set of data is the impact.
01:02:29And that's basically what you get from a normal simulator, right?
01:02:35It's all about that immediate impact.
01:02:37Yeah, certainly launch monitors, simulators that are based on just a launch monitor sitting
01:02:43down by the ball and capturing that moment of impact, and then they extrapolate what
01:02:47would have happened from a relatively small amount of data.
01:02:51Because we're capturing using Top Tracer data, we're watching the actual ball fly a
01:02:56long period of time and then extrapolating the rest of the flight.
01:02:59So that's much more like a, well, Top Tracer is a range, it's the number one technology
01:03:05in ranges out there tracking balls, right?
01:03:07So it's the best in the business in terms of that.
01:03:10So we're actually tracking the flight of the ball and then extending it versus taking moment
01:03:16of impact information and extrapolating it from that, if that makes sense.
01:03:20Why 35 yards?
01:03:21I feel like, obviously, if you were just going to do the entire length of a golf course,
01:03:25that sort of defeats the purpose.
01:03:26But like, would it be better if it were 50 or 75 or 100 yards of data that you could
01:03:32get?
01:03:34The 35 yards was absolutely based on the testing and the algorithms and the logic that says,
01:03:44that's with some room in there, that's more than enough to get all the data you need to
01:03:49be accurate for the rest of the shot.
01:03:52And then we literally, size of the building, size of the field of play, how much real green
01:03:57do we want, as much as we can get.
01:04:00This is all designed for, like Andrew said, accuracy and redundancy.
01:04:04And after those messy Tiger Woods shots at the very beginning, a lot of people had a
01:04:08lot of feelings, but TGL seemed to still be really confident that its technology worked.
01:04:14But lots of fans weren't.
01:04:16There were theories floating around that TGL chose to not use better technology because
01:04:21Tiger Woods is involved with full swing, or that something in the physics engine of the
01:04:26TGL system was just fundamentally broken.
01:04:28The thing is, and I think this is the problem, there's really no way to know for sure.
01:04:33And for an organization like TGL that wants to be seen as a real honest to God sport,
01:04:39that is a hard problem to solve.
01:04:41This is easy in the real world, right?
01:04:43The ball goes where the ball goes.
01:04:45And even in a video game, at least everyone's playing by the same rules in a game that is
01:04:50typically consistent.
01:04:52But when we combine the real world and the virtual one, and the virtual world's job
01:04:57is to figure out what's going on in the real world and then make guesses about it,
01:05:01the translation gets really tricky.
01:05:03There have been a couple of other issues along these lines over the course of the season.
01:05:07A few weeks after that Tiger Woods night, Tommy Fleetwood, another very good professional
01:05:11golfer, stepped up and hit a really confusing shot.
01:05:23Fleetwood got up, swung the club normally, hit it really well, and according to the screen,
01:05:27hit it about 40 yards instead of the 167 that he needed.
01:05:32That's like a shot that I would hit on a bad day on the golf course.
01:05:36Pros don't hit those shots, and Fleetwood hadn't either.
01:05:39This time it turns out there was actually a pretty simple explanation.
01:05:42What actually happened was that the top trace system that I talked about sitting there waiting
01:05:47for a golf ball to start flying through and track, it tracked the golf ball and Tommy
01:05:52Fleetwood hit a beautiful divot with that shot that flew in a beautiful arc.
01:05:59And unfortunately we tracked that as well as the golf ball and the system decided that
01:06:05was the shot that got hit.
01:06:07What that means is that Fleetwood hit the ball and at the same time chopped up a bunch
01:06:11of grass with his golf club when he did.
01:06:13That's what a divot is.
01:06:14The tracker, instead of picking up the ball, picked up the divot and tracked it like the
01:06:18shot.
01:06:19So it was what we call an invalid reading in the rules.
01:06:23It was fairly obvious very quickly to us what had happened.
01:06:26So we were able to huddle with the rules official, inform them, and they told the referee, hey,
01:06:31that this is an invalid reading.
01:06:33Our rules say that a re-hit is allowed for no penalty.
01:06:37Please do that.
01:06:38And within a few seconds, that's what happened and Tommy hit the shot again and there was
01:06:43no issues with the second one.
01:06:45Like Andrew said, that's in the rules.
01:06:47It went fine.
01:06:48It was a tough look for TGL, but everyone got past it pretty fast, but it's also just
01:06:53in a way, fundamentally wrong.
01:06:55You know, I saw the ball fly.
01:06:57I saw him hit it and it didn't do what the screen said it did.
01:07:01That will never stop feeling strange.
01:07:02And every time it happens, it gets a little harder to undo.
01:07:07Andrew says that TGL can fix problems like that.
01:07:09And that in fact, they've made changes to the tech even since that match and that Tommy
01:07:13Fleetwood shot, but he does know there will be more edge cases.
01:07:17And there's another challenge that the team is trying to sort out, which is that no matter
01:07:20how big the screen is, it's still just a huge two dimensional thing.
01:07:25When the TGL team was starting out, they looked into 3D screens, bigger screens, smaller screens,
01:07:30more screens, screen arrays.
01:07:32And Andrew did say he'd love to have as much screen as he could possibly have.
01:07:35He at one point pointed up to the gap between the screen and the ceiling and was basically
01:07:39like, what if there was more screen?
01:07:41But this one is humongous and you still can't see it the way that you see the real world,
01:07:47which I think created one of the most fascinating moments of the whole year in TGL, which again
01:07:52happened to Tiger Woods.
01:07:54So it's his turn to hit, he steps up and he leans over to somebody and asks how far away
01:07:58he is.
01:07:59How far?
01:08:0099.
01:08:0199.
01:08:02Again, this is Tiger Woods we're talking about.
01:08:05So he knows what to do to hit the ball 99 yards.
01:08:08And it would be different if it were 101 yards or 96 yards.
01:08:11That's how dialed in these guys are.
01:08:13These tiny differences matter.
01:08:15But the thing is, Tiger misheard.
01:08:17He wasn't 99 yards away.
01:08:19He was 199 yards away.
01:08:22And so this happened.
01:08:23No, I heard you say 99.
01:08:24Not 199.
01:08:25I'm going to have to do some investigative journalism.
01:08:31What the hell just happened?
01:08:32No, I heard 99 yards.
01:08:33So I grabbed my 56 and I hit 100 yards.
01:08:38This just wouldn't happen in real life golf.
01:08:41I mean, I guarantee you and I would both know the difference between being 99 yards away
01:08:45from something and 199 yards away from something.
01:08:48You know what I mean?
01:08:50But in Tiger's case, in this moment, he's 35 yards away from the screen.
01:08:54He's always 35 yards away from the screen.
01:08:56He has to rely on the technology to tell him the rest.
01:09:00The TGL players have actually been saying all season that this has been one of the biggest
01:09:04challenges.
01:09:05They play by sight and by feel, and you just can't get that hitting the ball into a screen,
01:09:11even when it's a really big screen.
01:09:12The same is true on the green, by the way.
01:09:14One thing I heard Tiger say is that the fact that the TGL green is the same green, but
01:09:20also a different green every single time because they're able to change its rotation
01:09:24and its shape really tripped him out.
01:09:27It's the same hole over and over, but it's never, ever the same hole.
01:09:30And wrapping your head around that turns out to be really complicated.
01:09:33Ultimately, this is why I think the TGL question is fundamentally a technology one.
01:09:39Can this be golf or is it just something else?
01:09:43Take out all of the issues that there have been.
01:09:45The truth is, TGL doesn't even need to play by the rules of golf or even of physics or
01:09:50course design.
01:09:52There are already a few holes in the TGL world that are played around lava or on almost impossible
01:09:58terrain.
01:09:59So, like, why not play TGL on the moon or in some wild Tron-looking universe?
01:10:05The TGL folks say that they're trying to strike a balance there, but it's a tricky one.
01:10:10They want it to feel real.
01:10:11They want people who care about golf to care about this.
01:10:14But they also need to embrace what's possible here.
01:10:18And at least from where I sit, the more TGL tries to feel like outdoor golf, the more
01:10:22obvious it becomes that the tech just can't get there.
01:10:26That balance is tough for the golfers, but I think it's even harder for viewers.
01:10:30How are you supposed to trust the technology, especially after seeing all the ways it can
01:10:34fail?
01:10:35There's something pure and honest about sports.
01:10:38You watch the game and one team wins and that's it.
01:10:40Shoot.
01:10:41Sure.
01:10:42Fine.
01:10:43Complain about the refs and stuff.
01:10:44And everything's always unfair when your team loses.
01:10:45But fundamentally, the game tells the story.
01:10:48Ball don't lie.
01:10:49But here, I look at the YouTube comments on every TGL video and they're all just like,
01:10:53how am I supposed to trust the physics engine here?
01:10:56TGL wants you to bet on these matches.
01:10:58That's actually a big part of the plan.
01:11:01Are you going to bet on golf or are you going to bet on computers working like they're supposed
01:11:05to?
01:11:06And are those the same thing?
01:11:07Wouldn't it be easy to tweak the computers to make people miss those shots?
01:11:11There's just something unknowable here.
01:11:13Something removed from real life that feels hard to overcome in a way that even playing
01:11:18a video game doesn't feel so hard to overcome.
01:11:21The morning after the match I went to, the TGL folks were doing a tour for a bunch of
01:11:25golf creators, showing them how the tech works and letting them hit into the huge screen
01:11:29to get a sense for themselves.
01:11:30I just sort of sneakily jumped the line in jeans and sneakers, grabbed a club and stepped
01:11:35out in front of the thing.
01:11:36All right.
01:11:37I got to hit one good shot here.
01:11:39I feel like I'm nervous.
01:11:42I don't even have anybody watching.
01:11:46The TGL team told me that the whole setup, this whole arena is designed for there to
01:11:50be one sweet spot where all the on-screen depth and viewing angles and everything aligns
01:11:55exactly right.
01:11:56And that spot is right here in the center on the tiny patch of grass where the player
01:12:00hits from.
01:12:01It's kind of true.
01:12:03Being there in the center as the grass slopes away down from me and toward the screen 35
01:12:07yards away, it does feel more like I'm hitting a ball on a golf hole.
01:12:13But it also feels like I'm hitting into a really big screen.
01:12:16I hit five shots, some of which went okay, and some of which went, well, not okay.
01:12:22Oh, that's not going anywhere.
01:12:26Yeah, just seeing if it works.
01:12:30This was, frankly, very embarrassing to do in front of a bunch of golf professionals,
01:12:33all of whom seem to have gorgeous swings, even though they're in marketing or IT.
01:12:37But, you know, I'm here for journalism, right?
01:12:40Got to see what happens when you suck.
01:12:42And they did promise me that I'm not the worst they've ever seen.
01:12:45But they did also make me promise not to reveal which celebrity hit a shot so bad it broke
01:12:50part of the screen on the side where it shows the scoreboard and stats, which is why there's
01:12:54now a net that covers that screen.
01:12:56I really enjoyed my TGL experience.
01:12:58I've enjoyed it all year.
01:12:59And TGL has been a hit this year.
01:13:01It's only year one, and basically everybody who works there tells me they have lots of
01:13:06ideas about how to make it better for next season.
01:13:09That has to do with both the technology and with the way that the game itself is actually
01:13:14played.
01:13:15They all understand that even the rules of this are not fixed yet.
01:13:18There are also still a lot of golf purists and fans who think the whole thing is weird
01:13:23and bad and just kind of hokey.
01:13:25But the ratings have been solid.
01:13:27People are talking about the league.
01:13:28Tiger and Rory and the others seem to be having fun, honestly, and that might be the most
01:13:32important part.
01:13:34The playoffs start this week, and I'll definitely be watching.
01:13:36I've been watching more of this season than I actually expected.
01:13:39But the question is still right there, and someone is going to need to answer it.
01:13:43Is this golf or is this video games?
01:13:46Does the distinction even necessarily matter?
01:13:49And when one of the world's best golfers steps in and whacks the ball into the screen, what
01:13:53is supposed to happen?
01:13:55In the real world, ball don't lie.
01:13:58But on the screen, it can actually do pretty much whatever you want it to.
01:14:02But you at some point have to decide what that is.
01:14:05All right, that's enough golf talk for now.
01:14:08We need to take a break, and then we're going to come back and take a question for the Vertcast
01:14:11Hotline.
01:14:13Today at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor.
01:14:20What up, everybody?
01:14:21It's your boy, Big Snoop, D.O.U.B.L.E.G.
01:14:22Snoop, where can people go to find great deals?
01:14:25Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us, plus four
01:14:30lines for 25 bucks.
01:14:31That's quite a deal, Snoop.
01:14:33And when you switch to T-Mobile, you can save versus the other big guys, comparable plans
01:14:37plus streaming.
01:14:38Respect.
01:14:39When we up out of here.
01:14:40See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com
01:14:43slash switch.
01:14:44Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.
01:14:47All right, we're back.
01:14:51Let's get to the Vertcast Hotline.
01:14:53As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11.
01:14:55The email is Vertcast at the Verge.com.
01:14:58We love all of your questions.
01:15:00Lately, we've been getting a lot of questions about gadgets and which ones you should buy
01:15:04this year, which is very good timing because there's a lot of new gadgets coming.
01:15:08So I think we're going to get into trying to make sense of this giant run of new stuff,
01:15:14especially in the smart home world, a lot over the next few weeks.
01:15:18More to come on all of that.
01:15:20For now, we have a question about iPads.
01:15:22We've talked a lot about iPads on this show, and I promise we're going to stop, but I confess
01:15:26I find iPads fascinating.
01:15:28So this is kind of a question, kind of a comment.
01:15:32Here it is.
01:15:33Hi, David.
01:15:34My name is Ben.
01:15:35I'm a senior in college.
01:15:36I'll be graduating here in a couple of weeks.
01:15:38I wanted to talk about the iPad.
01:15:40I know you recommend that everyone stick with the base iPad, and that's probably a good
01:15:45recommendation for most people, but I wanted to advocate for the iPad Air just a little
01:15:50bit for one group of people in particular, which is college students.
01:15:56I like many of my friends in college use an iPad for note-taking and use an app like Notability
01:16:02or GoodNotes, and I don't know if you've used either of these apps, but they're a lot better
01:16:08for the type of note-taking that college students do than Apple's inbuilt Notes app, and they
01:16:15also tend to be pretty intense on iPads, like my 2021 iPad Pro can get pretty warm
01:16:24while I'm working with a big document in Notability.
01:16:27So, you know, the other thing I wanted to say is a lot of college students come out
01:16:32of high school with some gift money or some more money to spend, so $5.50 for the extra
01:16:39headroom with the M3 processor now, I believe it is, for an iPad Air is pretty reasonable
01:16:46because I just had to replace my laptop halfway through college because my XPS 15 crapped
01:16:53out on me, and I don't think that spending the additional money up front to get that
01:17:00more headroom, especially for someone who's using the iPad for something that's not just
01:17:04Netflix, is probably worth it, in my opinion.
01:17:09I think that's what a lot of people are doing in school, and I think that's where the biggest
01:17:15chunk of iPad Air users come from, especially when it's $5.50 with an education discount.
01:17:22So, that's just my thoughts.
01:17:24I picked this one to play this week because this reflects feedback we've heard a lot over
01:17:29the last several weeks, in a few ways, actually.
01:17:32One is just that it turns out that people who want to take notes with a mix of a keyboard
01:17:40and a pencil are much more popular than I expected.
01:17:44That sounds sort of silly to say now, that is like the whole purpose of the iPad, but
01:17:49I've always thought of that as kind of a cool feature, but one of those things that you
01:17:54think you're going to want to do a lot more than you actually want to do, and that most
01:17:56people gravitate towards one or the other.
01:17:59But I think in certain parts of the world and in certain kinds of jobs, and certainly
01:18:04for students, which is a thing I heard a lot about the last few weeks, that is really powerful.
01:18:10That mix of, I can set this down on a desk and use it like a laptop with really long
01:18:14battery life, but I can also just flip it flat on the table and use it with a pencil,
01:18:19super powerful.
01:18:21And I think that, as we said in the hotline here, is one of the best cases, both for the
01:18:27iPad in general, but also for upgrading from the base iPad to something like the Air or
01:18:32even the Pro.
01:18:34You get the better accessories, you get that versatility, you get just the sheer everythingness
01:18:40of the iPad.
01:18:41And if you're going to buy an iPad, the point is to get something that can do things your
01:18:45laptop can't.
01:18:46Right?
01:18:47Like I really think if you are thinking about, should I use this as my main computer?
01:18:51The question is not, will it be better on an iPad or will it be more seamless on an
01:18:55iPad?
01:18:56Or can I do more stuff on the iPad?
01:18:57Because the answer is usually no.
01:19:00The iPad is a pretty locked down system compared to the Mac or Windows, but there are things
01:19:05you can do on it like physically that you can't with a Mac.
01:19:09And so if you start from, I need something I can write on with a pencil sometimes, of
01:19:14course you should buy an iPad and you should buy something that gives you access to the
01:19:18best accessories.
01:19:19So that right there might be the best case I've ever heard for an easy upgrade from the
01:19:24base iPad to the Air or the Pro.
01:19:27Thing number two, there are apps like Notability and GoodNotes, both of which are fabulous
01:19:33apps by the way.
01:19:34Notability in particular is one of the apps that Apple will often show in its demos to
01:19:39show you how good some of the new features are.
01:19:42It requires a ton of processing power.
01:19:44It does really interesting stuff with handwriting.
01:19:47It's built in some of the AI features.
01:19:49Notability in particular, I think is like one of the best and most iPad-y apps anywhere.
01:19:55It's excellent.
01:19:56And it is, as we were just talking about, the kind of thing you can't do in the same
01:20:01way on any other device.
01:20:02And those things do want a lot of extra performance.
01:20:05So again, if you want to do something like that, I think I may have slightly overrated
01:20:10how powerful some of these powerful apps need to be, right?
01:20:14I think a lot about things like Photoshop and Lightroom and Logic and Final Cut.
01:20:19These like heavy graphics intensive editing processes that some people do and some people
01:20:25like to do on an iPad.
01:20:27But there is a level below that, that is like, I just need to have lots of images in my notes
01:20:32and I need to be able to write quickly and I need to be able to flip between a thousand
01:20:36pages and do the character recognition and search and that stuff requires real performance.
01:20:41And you can do it on a base iPad, but again, you will notice the difference.
01:20:45So I think that's meaningful.
01:20:46Thing number three.
01:20:47And this is another one I've been thinking a lot about the last few weeks.
01:20:50The price of an iPad is not a simple thing to understand.
01:20:54I think this is true of phones too, in a way that with laptops, it really isn't.
01:20:58Laptops kind of cost what they cost.
01:20:59Sometimes they're on sale, but the price there is reasonably assumed to be the price most
01:21:06people are going to pay.
01:21:07Not true with iPads.
01:21:08iPads have huge corporate discounts.
01:21:10iPads have huge education discounts.
01:21:12You can often get last year's model on a pretty big discount.
01:21:15You can find them on like holiday discounts in a way that a lot of Apple products in particular
01:21:20don't get discounted.
01:21:21So the idea of I can upgrade a little and either get last year's model much cheaper
01:21:28or this year's model with some discount that I have access to.
01:21:31And thus, instead of spending, you know, 300 more dollars on an iPad, I'm spending like
01:21:35150 more dollars on an iPad.
01:21:38Then the upgrade becomes very compelling.
01:21:40So I think this is a path that I maybe have underrated in thinking about the iPad.
01:21:45I still think that if you are a person who wants to like hold an iPad in your hand and
01:21:49watch movies on a plane or give it to your kids so they can play games, or I don't know,
01:21:54do the New York Times spelling bee every morning.
01:21:56That's like perfect iPad activities.
01:21:59And they are so well served by every iPad in the line, including the base one.
01:22:03But there is a kind of base productivity device that the iPad can be that isn't quite
01:22:10laptop replacement.
01:22:11In fact, part of the point is that it's a not a laptop replacement, but it is almost
01:22:16that kind of thing.
01:22:18It can do things your laptop can't.
01:22:20It can do things your laptop can, but it gives you that same kind of all in one machine.
01:22:25You do want the performance upgrade there, especially if you're going to use it even
01:22:29through all four years of college.
01:22:31Right.
01:22:32Like that's that's a long time in device cycles.
01:22:34And I think buying something with more power based on the idea that I might want to do
01:22:38more with it.
01:22:39And also, it's just going to get harder to do these things over time.
01:22:43That's great reason to upgrade an iPad.
01:22:45So I just wanted to share this because this and all the feedback I've gotten like this
01:22:50has really changed how I think about the upgrade path of an iPad.
01:22:53And I think Apple really would like to lead you all the way up to the pro.
01:22:58And I think that's harder.
01:22:59Right.
01:23:00Like I think the leap from I need all this stuff, so I should get an air all the way
01:23:03up to like, oh, look at that screen.
01:23:05And it's so thin.
01:23:06And now I'll get a pro for several hundred more dollars.
01:23:09That's a bigger leap.
01:23:10But the one from the base iPad to the iPad air that says, I just need to, like, use this
01:23:15device instead of just look at it, I think is real.
01:23:18So that's how I've been thinking about it and just wanted to share.
01:23:21Also, I'm hopefully going to get a base iPad in front of me here very soon.
01:23:27And we will be able to compare these things for real.
01:23:29Because right now I have four iPads stacked on my desk.
01:23:32And as soon as it's five, I will have all the answers and I'm very much looking forward
01:23:36to it.
01:23:37All right.
01:23:38That is it for the VergeCast today.
01:23:39Thank you to everybody who came on the show.
01:23:40And thank you, as always, for listening.
01:23:42As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other iPad use cases you'd like
01:23:46to tell me about, you can always call the hotline 866-VERGE11 or send us an email VergeCast
01:23:52at theverge.com.
01:23:53We absolutely love hearing from you.
01:23:54And we are so grateful always to everybody who reaches out.
01:23:58This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poore.
01:24:02VergeCast is Verge Production, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:24:05Neal and I will be back on Friday to talk about everything going on at Doge, everything
01:24:09going on in tech, more AI news, more gadget news, because that just keeps happening.
01:24:14There's lots going on.
01:24:15We will be on top of all of it.
01:24:17We will see you then.
01:24:18Rock and roll.
01:24:21Today at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor.
01:24:24What up, everybody?
01:24:25It's your boy, Big Snoop, D.O. Double G.
01:24:28Snoop, where can people go to find great deals?
01:24:30Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us, plus four lines
01:24:35for $25.
01:24:36That's quite a deal, Snoop.
01:24:37And when you switch to T-Mobile, you can save versus the other big guys, comparable plans
01:24:42plus streaming.
01:24:43Respect.
01:24:44When we up out of here.
01:24:45See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com
01:24:48slash switch.
01:24:49Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.