Tech News Weekly 381 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Abrar Al-Heeti is here. We talk about Amazon maybe thinking about buying TikTok then what the new A-L-E-X-A Plus can and can't do. Kyle Orland of Ars Technica joins us. He got some hands-on time with the Nintendo Switch 2 and tells us his thoughts before we round things out with OpenAI and Anthropic both taking on the education market. Stay tuned for this episode of Tech News Weekly.

This is Tech News Weekly, episode 381, with Abrar Al-Heeti and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, April 3rd 2025: Nintendo Switch 2's Higher Price. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and I am joined today on this, the first Thursday of April, by the wonderful, the amazing, the ever so sharp Abrar Al-Heeti. Hello, Abrar.

0:01:15 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Hello, how are you?

0:01:18 - Mikah Sargent
I am doing peachy keen. How is your home?

0:01:22 - Abrar Al-Heeti
state treating you. Yes, I'm an Illinois visiting family. It's good to be back. It's been the weather's been awful, but the people are good, so that's why we're here. We'll take it.

0:01:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, absolutely. I remember now us talking about I couldn't. I have. There's one person I talk to regularly who lived in Illinois for a time but was from a different state and I sometimes get those confused, but I remember now us talking about being Midwesterners at heart and what that means.

0:01:51 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It builds character. I think it's why we have personalities, yeah.

0:01:56 - Mikah Sargent
Just like the many seasons of the Midwest, we have a full range of personality.

0:02:02 - Abrar Al-Heeti
That's what it stems from. Yep A hundred percent range of personality.

0:02:04 - Mikah Sargent
That's what it stems from Yep 100%. So for people who are tuning into the show for the first time, sadly this is not a show where we talk about weather, but instead is a show where we talk about tech stories, and Abraar is going to kick things off with her story of the week.

0:02:20 - Abrar Al-Heeti
I am here to talk about TikTok. What else is there to talk about? We're always talking about TikTok, sales and deadlines and all the good stuff that comes with that. So you may recall back in January that TikTok was supposed to be banned. The ban is supposed to go into effect on January 19th, and then guess what happened? On January 20th, donald Trump took office and said we're going to push this back. So it's been pushed back now to April 5th, which is this coming Saturday, if I've got my dates correctly. Yes, and so the TikTok ban is once again a possibility. If the sale doesn't go through Now, what ByteDance needs to do?

Which ByteDance is based in China? It needs to sell TikTok to a US-based buyer instead if TikTok wants to continue to operate in the US. There have been some interesting people who have thrown their hat in the ring. We've heard about billionaire Frank McCourt express interest. We know Oracle. Oracle's always kind of involved in these potential sales. I mean, they're already hosting TikTok's US user data and providing cloud infrastructure, so that's not a surprise there. But lots of names here and there. We also heard about the OnlyFans founder also making a last minute bid as part of his startup Zoop, which I had not heard of before.

0:03:36 - Mikah Sargent
Zoop How's that spelled? Z-o-o-p oh how I would think. Who knew?

0:03:41 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yes, very fanatic. So that would be part of a consortium that includes a cryptocurrency foundation. Lots of people are interested in TikTok because why wouldn't you be right? But I think the most interesting company that has said, hey, we're interested at the 11th hour is Amazon. So Amazon has reportedly said that it is interested in buying TikTok. At first I was like, well, that's an interesting choice, but then I was like, no, it makes sense Because Amazon already has a lot.

You think about what the most important thing to TikTok is, and it's user data. Guess what? Amazon has a lot of user data, right? We're all shopping on there. We're all letting it know what we're interested in and what we're not interested in what we're buying. Think about how valuable that kind of data is, especially if you want to own TikTok. Apparently, sources in the White House say that they're not actually interested in this deal, which is interesting. We know Jeff Bezos has kind of been cozying up to and I know he's no longer the CEO, but still has been cozying up to Trump, and so it has been interesting to see this development in light of that. And then Amazon Web Services is used for part of TikTok's cloud infrastructure. So, again, not too much of a stretch there.

But then the other interesting thing is that Amazon has tried to make its own TikTok-style shopping feed. This was called Inspire. It launched in December 2022. This was within the Amazon shopping app, so it wasn't like a separate app or anything, but what it showed was short form videos and photos and basically shoppers could browse through and buy products that were featured by other content creators and brands that shut down earlier this year. So that did not work, but clearly Amazon still has some sort of interest, because why wouldn't they?

And the other piece of this is there are a lot of creators on TikTok who not only point to things in TikTok shop, but who point to things on their Amazon storefront or an Amazon product that they really enjoy that they will then get a cut of as you buy that product. So imagine if Amazon then has control of TikTok and how much more of an incentive there is then for creators to push products on Amazon and then for Amazon to benefit from that as well. So I'm really fascinated by the fact that the White House seemingly is not interested in this. I mean, I think the big thing that stood out to me is Amazon is huge. I think Amazon taking over TikTok would be like, wow, that is a lot of power in one company. But I mean and that's just the norm these days, I guess, but I don't know but what are your thoughts of this? Do you think that's something that could? Because you also have to think about, like, how does it affect users? And that's still so up in the air.

0:06:17 - Mikah Sargent
But yeah, I don't know what your first impressions are there. Yeah, I mean. So I guess Amazon in some ways makes more sense to me than the early rumors of Microsoft looking at a TikTok acquisition. This, of course, that was way before there was even concern about it being banned, right, Well, maybe not, but it was in the very, very, very early days of oh, suddenly we're worried about this, and everybody that I listened to and talked to and heard oh, we're like Microsoft, what?

0:06:51 - Leo Laporte
Microsoft.

0:06:53 - Mikah Sargent
Amazon. I hear it and I don't immediately go. Huh, I more go. Okay, I guess I could see that from the perspective of, like you know, value and business alignment. It makes sense From the perspective of like you know, value and business alignment. It makes sense from the perspective of what you're talking about, of this, this knowledge base and this algorithmic. I mean that is where it's like you know where, uh, that that suddenly gets concerning.

Someone on the network was just talking to me the other day about how they had deleted Instagram from their device, not because of any sort of desire to not have anything to do with meta or anything like that, but because they were tired of getting tricked. They felt into buying things on Instagram and then finding that the product that they got was not as good as it seemed to be advertised. So it was a mixture of like Instagram is very good at advertising to me, yeah, and the stuff that they're advertising to me ends up being junk and I can't resist it. So I'm getting rid of Instagram. I think about Amazon having this level of algorithm that we've seen do such a good job at.

Truly, it's like you feel like people don't see you right. You want to be perceived you want to be. You find the people who get you, and Netflix tries to figure out your taste and doesn't do a superb job of it, doesn't? Ok, like all of these sites try to. But it feels like TikTok and maybe Spotify maybe, have figured out, like, all of the aspects of a person's personality, and that's powerful stuff. Yeah, so yeah, seeing Amazon have that, I think, makes sense again from the business side of things, but from our side of things the customers on the other end that is a little concerning. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm also a little weirded out, I guess, by thoughts that the government's not on board, except that I know Trump and team have been talking about wanting, like America, to buy TikTok, and so I guess if Amazon buys it, then that's not the same. Maybe, I don't know.

0:09:33 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, no, that's so true. It's been so murky in terms of and you know, what Trump has said is that they're they have full faith that they'll meet that April 5th deadline, but has not shared, like, exactly who they're thinking as their top contenders. It's all just kind of come through reports and so it'll be interesting to see what services there. But you mentioned the algorithm and that's a really key thing here, because there's two pieces to this. The one thing is it'll be really hard for any company to replicate TikTok's algorithm. That is something that Trina has said it's not going to let go of, and so any company is going to face that challenge of how do you mimic that, because no one else has been able to really do it.

And then the other piece of it is if Amazon takes over that algorithm I'm already dreading how much, because I'm already sick of TikTok shop every three videos. Oh my God, imagine how much worse the product ads will be if every two videos, you're getting an ad for an Amazon product that you should be buying instead. So I also wonder what that user experience will be like if it's owned by something like Amazon, where their goal is to sell you products and it's not just about you know, gleaning your data, but it's also about getting your money through those product purchases in the same way that TikTok does too. But you know, tiktok product purchases in the same way that TikTok does too. But TikTok shop is one thing, amazon is another beast. So I'm really curious how that'll shape up. But yeah, I think there's been something interesting too, where there've been reports that TikTok's algorithm would be leased from ByteDance and so this new US entity would be created and led by Oracle, and I don't know how that would work out, because ByteDance would still retain that minority stake.

at which point I'm wondering what have we achieved according to what?

0:11:12 - Leo Laporte
they're trying to accomplish.

0:11:14 - Abrar Al-Heeti
It just seems like a lot of mess, a lot of work for something that I don't know if it will really lead to that foundational change that the White House seems to be chasing after.

0:11:24 - Mikah Sargent
So it seems to be like this agreement is just the federal government trying to follow the letter of the law, right, just saying, well, we said it needed to be owned by a US company, right? But the fact that the algorithm itself is still owned by an outside entity and we're just leasing it doesn't really get at the heart of the issue.

0:11:47 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, exactly, and it seems like there's just a lot of pressure considering. You know, we've obviously heard about TikTok bans in the past, but this is the first time that this was, you know, signed into law, unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. There's only, I think, so much that can be done in terms of delays, of an outright ban. And I wonder what companies like Apple and Google will do if April 5th rolls around and there isn't a sale. Will they again be scared of fines and penalties removed from the app store again? What is that all going to look like? Is the sale really going to go through? So is it a matter of just getting those boxes ticked and saying, okay, it's done, everyone relax, or, you know, will there actually be that fundamental change? But it seems like something has to happen because apparently, legally, this is what's happening.

0:12:36 - Mikah Sargent
And it's coming up Saturday of all days.

0:12:39 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, exactly.

0:12:41 - Mikah Sargent
All right, we are going to take a quick break. Before we come back with my story of the week.

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All right back from the break and now it is time for my story of the week. It's actually also about Amazon. So recently, Caroline O'Donovan at the Washington Post earlier this week put out a piece about the current state of Amazon's AI assistant. I always spell it A-L-E-X-A, then no one gets mad that I'm triggering their devices. So this voice assistant, of course, recently got a whole new AI overhaul announced that would include the ability to sort of, in theory, better interact with your device and have it kind of do more assistant-style tasks for you. One example that they gave was you could talk to it about some cravings that you had and the device would respond with maybe a place to order takeout and then even go as far as to order that takeout for you. Being able to keep you up to date with what's going on in your home by connecting with Amazon's line of Ring appliances, so you would be able to have knowledge of who was coming and going from your home without necessarily needing to open the Ring app and check back to footage to see you know what has taken place.

Well, as it stands, there was kind of an early rollout of the new ALE XA Plus features, and these new features are kind of limited in comparison to what the company eventually plans to announce, according to internal documents, that O'Donovan had access to. The features aren't up to kind of what Amazon would want for public release, what Amazon would want for public release, and so one of those features is actually the ability to order takeout and for it to visually identify family members. So one of the examples that they showed was like at the very end of the video a gentleman sits down in a chair and sort of starts to relax and then sort of pops up and it's like has anyone walked the dog today or no, has anyone taken the dog out today? And alexa was able to respond and say yes, the dog went out earlier or whatever that is not out yet. Now that also includes a cool feature that I thought.

A cool feature that I thought had some kind of interest, which was the ability for the device to generate a little story. So if you can imagine having a bedtime story and you have a silly story where you ask your kid, hey, what are some things that you'd want in this story? And then the device kind of puts it together and reads the story to you think that's cute and fun, not ready yet? Um, now, that said, it will be able to give advice on what to cook, uh. For the people who got this early rollout, it will give uh or give.

Give users the ability to order an Uber, and it also does have some of the kind of more basic communication features that are more conversational than what else is, you know, what you would otherwise expect, so that is kind of a handy thing if you are attempting to show off, like this is what the new can do. That said, it doesn't come to every device, so you are able to do that on the Echo Show device and despite that, it's not coming to yet the Fire TV, the Echo Spot alarm clock and a couple of other devices. They also announced ALEXAcom at this event, which was basically kind of Amazon's own online chatbot. That is also not available yet and we aren't sure when it will come. When it will come, I wanted to kind of talk to you about your initial reaction to the ALAX A Plus stuff when it came out and kind of if any of this is of interest to you and if you're surprised to learn that many of the features announced have not yet made their way to people's devices.

0:18:50 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, I think it's high time smart assistants became smarter. I like to tell the story of how one time I asked my Google assistant what's the weather, and it gave me a definition of the weather.

0:19:02 - Mikah Sargent
That was a low point.

0:19:03 - Abrar Al-Heeti
That was wild. I wish I had caught that on camera, but it makes sense that it's time for I'll follow your example, a-l-e-x-a to get a little bit smarter too, and I think the conversational angle is a really big thing too, if you're able to have the back and forth, if you don't have to restate your question. That kind of little stuff is what these digital assistants are meant to be, and it's definitely time for that to happen. The thing that, when I saw this piece, that occurred to me is there's an interesting pattern here where it's not just Amazon, but think of companies like Apple where they have these big showy events and they say look at all these new AI features that are coming, and then they roll out very, very slowly and gradually, like we still don't have the fully baked Siri. I'm sorry, I just triggered something. I did my best and then I triggered your guys' devices.

So that's not fully available yet either, and that's a very slow and gradual rollout too, something that we might not see until 2026, right? So it's really fascinating to see how much of this is okay. We need to talk about this development because everyone else is pushing ahead with ai, and we need to also show that we're pushing ahead with ai, but then also like we're not really ready yet, and so it'll come when it comes, and we're gonna, but we're not really going to talk about the fact that this is going to be a, you know, a gradual rollout. Um, that said, it is. It is smart to be careful with this kind of stuff, because AI makes mistakes and you don't want to just roll out something for the sake of rolling it out. But there's still this disconnect between oh hey, let's talk about all these new features and they're not actually ready yet, and we're going to say that in really tiny font somewhere. So, yeah, that's just kind of follows that mold font somewhere.

0:20:53 - Mikah Sargent
So, yeah, that's just kind of follows that mold and it feels like that's a return to something that hasn't been around for a while.

I feel like we got to a place where companies were not, for the most part, showing off a bunch of stuff that was not at least three quarters baked right, because Apple had introduced I think live photos was an example a long time ago and some other things.

Then that said, you know, coming later this fall, and then it always did come later that fall, and it was not to the extent that we've seen. With all of this, where you are, this feels like it's performing to the, performing for the shareholders and not for the consumers, and that's so frustrating because you then don't have trust that the you know that the things that are announced are actually going to happen, yes, that the things that are announced are actually going to happen. Yes, but at the same time, like you've said, you don't want those features out there until they are as fully baked as they can be. Yeah, I imagine this would still be a cookie with a soft gooey center, even though it is fully baked. But yeah, I think that when it comes to this stuff all these companies are trying to put forth the idea that they're further along. These features are shipping in very small, small, small increments and are so often so incredibly underwhelming.

0:22:35 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yes, exactly Exactly. And you know, for people who are buying a device thinking that they are going to have a certain software feature and then they don't get it. I think about people who bought, you know, just to bring it back to Apple real quick. People bought an iPhone 16 thinking that they would have all these features baked in and they're not. And then the counter argument is always okay, well, we want to make sure that it's good, and companies like Apple and Amazon, I'm sure, want to make sure that when they roll this out, it has to be great. Right, it can only make very minimal mistakes, but, like you mentioned, I mean centering shareholders versus consumers. I wonder what long-term impact and damage that will have, because, yes, it will become very boy who cried wolf and people will say, okay, but will that future really roll out with this device? Will this software future really roll out in this month, like you say? So that user trust is, I think, going to face some damage.

0:23:27 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely yeah, and I don't think being able to have a conversation with my virtual assistant about my frustration at the lack of features that have been promised to me is going to make much of a difference at all.

0:23:41 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Sadly not, but that would be fun if you could vent with it. I think that would be unprecedented Talk about sentient AI. That is yeah that would be.

0:23:48 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you know what? Our own budget therapist.

0:23:52 - Abrar Al-Heeti
That's right.

0:23:53 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, dear Abrar, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us on Tech News Weekly this week. If folks would like to follow along with the work that you're doing, where are the places they should go to do that?

0:24:06 - Abrar Al-Heeti
You can find me on X, I'm at LHT underscore three and also on Instagram and TikTok at Apar LHT no spaces, and you can find all my work on CNETcom and on CNET's YouTube. And thank you again for having me this week. I appreciate it.

0:24:19 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Apar. All righty folks, let us take a quick break before we come back with the interview this week. I'm looking forward to it. It's sort of the elephant in the room, right.

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0:26:35 - Kyle Orland
Thanks, glad to be here.

0:26:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so great to have you here. So yes, Nintendo has officially unveiled the Switch 2. We've heard a lot about it. We've seen some real animations, some fake animations and everything in between, set to launch in june. Can you start by kind of walking us through the biggest hardware upgrades in comparison to the switch we know and love?

0:26:59 - Kyle Orland
yeah. So as far as the unit itself, you notice as soon as you pick it up it's slightly bigger than the original switch, which will be very welcome, I think, to anyone with adult-sized hands. Uh, used to clawing them around the tiny Joy-Cons, they're quite a bit more comfortable in your hands now. Also, the expanded screen size 7.9 inches that you can get with that expanded space, it's really a revelation to see in person. If you're used to the old Switch or even the Steam Deck, this is a nice big screen and it doesn't come with all the old Switch or even the Steam Deck. This is a nice big screen and it doesn't come with all the bulk of something like the Steam Deck. It's still heavier than the Switch but still lighter than something like the Steam Deck and also a lot thinner, so it's not quite as heavy to lug around.

As far as the hardware power itself, you've heard all the stats, I'm sure 1080p at 120 frames a second, or 4K on the docked mode. It's got HDR colors now and it's just more powerful in general. The Switch near the end you were seeing a lot of games, like Tears of the Kingdom especially start to stutter and really show, uh, the problems with handling modern games. And now the switch to. You know I'd say it's not gonna compete with, you know, the ps5 or anything, but you're getting close to like ps4 pro levels of performance. Uh, based on what I saw there, nice.

0:28:24 - Mikah Sargent
Now, one of the the standout new features, and one that I saw especially right before the event, was the inclusion of a C button. This is the new game chat system that has voice and screen sharing. Can you talk about how this does seem like a shift in terms of Nintendo's approach to online communication?

0:28:46 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, I kind of think what Nintendo realized is that a lot of kids they're used to gaming on their iPad or, you know, just having an iPhone, and what people kids especially will do is they'll just set up a voice chat and put it in a picture-in-picture or put it on a second device and just chat with their friends while they're gaming. And Nintendo said, ok, we can do that too. Let's add a microphone, let's add an optional camera and let's let people share their game screens really easily with their friends through the switch. Hopefully, this will be a lot easier to set up. It's just you hit the C button, you hit a few settings and any of your friends that also have a switch too, they can see what you're playing, they can see you, they can talk to you very easily. It does require a paid subscription, but it's not an especially expensive subscription as far as these things go, and also they didn't have that on hand to actually try out at the hands-on event yesterday, so we'll have to see how well it works in practice, I guess.

0:29:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely. Nintendo seems to to some level avoid the concerns that come with online chat and communication. Has there been any conversation about that, any acknowledgement about that, or is it all very much like look at this cool thing you can do. We're not going to really worry about the toxicity.

0:30:10 - Kyle Orland
Well, it's kind of weird. They're kind of catching up to where the entire industry has been. You know, if you had an Xbox 360, you were doing this kind of stuff, you know, 20 years ago. But, yeah, Nintendo has been a little shy about this, in part because of, you know, stranger danger out there online. They don't want you to. You know, uh, meet with some predator on an online gaming site, especially since they're so family and kid focused. Uh, what they said is that these game chat features will only work with approved friends. Uh, you cannot just join a voice in video chat with any strangers.

You have to both confirm each other, probably through the you know, the friend system, like they had on the switch so I I think, with that and with the parental control systems in place, I don't think, I think Nintendo has put in enough protections that they feel comfortable with that now.

0:31:00 - Mikah Sargent
Understood the inclusion of mouse mode controls using the Joy-Con. That's kind of been an interesting addition. What kind of gameplay experiences does this open up on the Switch 2, especially in comparison with what you can do right now on the Switch?

0:31:18 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, there were a few different games that use the mouse mode. Most interesting, I think, was Metroid Prime 4, where one hand you hold a joystick and the other hand is a mouse, and if you've ever played a first-person shooter on PC it felt a lot like that. You move, you're aiming and moving with the mouse. You can do just, you know, small flicks to really get precise and quick movement. That you know, compared to a joystick or the gyroscope controls you might use, it really feels a lot simpler and you know it takes less time to get that precise aim.

Um, the only problem really with it is you need a nice flat surface, uh, to use it with. You know, if you're sitting in your living room on your couch I don't know if you're going to get a lap desk or if you're going to crouch over a coffee table, um, Nintendo actually said you can use the top of your thigh and put it on top of your pants and move it around like that. But if you've ever tried to use a mouse on the top of your thigh I don't know why you would. But if you do try that you'll realize it's not really an ideal mouse pad. It's very narrow, it's kind of rounded. So you know, I don't know how much use this is really going to get for the average gamer's usual living room setup, but I guess if you're setting up in tabletop mode or if you have the Switch connected on your desk to your monitor or something for people who really like that mode of control they could take the trouble to get some use out of it.

0:32:48 - Mikah Sargent
I guess Absolutely. Now, interestingly, Nintendo is also enhancing some classic titles with the Switch 2 editions. What improvements should players expect when it comes to these re-releases, and is it kind of about showing off the capabilities of this new console?

0:33:09 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, I mentioned earlier how Tears of the Kingdom really seemed like it was pushing the Switch to its limits and really suffered from some frame rate and menu loading things. And they showed a version of the Switch 2 Enhanced Edition at the hands-on event and it really feels like the version of the game that, how it's meant to be played. You know it's a silky smooth frame rate. I don't know if it was 60 frames or 120 frames at all times, but it was definitely much smoother than you'd expect on the Switch. You know menus load quickly. There's HDR colors on that nice bright screen. It doesn't feel like a completely new game. You know the gameplay is still exactly the same, but it's much more enjoyable when you don't have to suffer through that stuttering, especially that really takes you out of the moment and just reminds you that this is an artificial world. This is not Looking at it on the Switch 2, it really feels more consistent and it's easier to get lost in, I'd say.

0:34:05 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so with the Switch 2 offering up to 4K resolution docked and also that 120 frames per second, the 1080p HDR display you talked a little bit about this how does it stack up against the current-gen consoles in terms of performance? Is it still kind of further on down the line or are we starting to get where oh, we've got a comparable console here?

0:34:33 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, you're not.

Like I said, you're not going to get PS5 levels of performance, which you know it's not that surprising If you've seen the PS5, it's, you know, this huge beast that doesn't even have a display built in. Squeezing that into something the size of the Switch 2, even a few years after the PS5 came out, that just wouldn't be possible. So they're making some compromises to get things into that portable form factor. That said, if you compare it to other portables, like the Steam Deck, I would say any game that you could play on the Steam Deck you should probably expect a port would be able to run on the Switch 2 pretty readily.

I would say that you know, and they've announced games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077. You know these are games that people do love to play on their Steam Deck and now the Switch 2 is at that level of support. Now if it's, you know, a more modern game, a PC game like Starfield, indiana Jones, maybe that really pushes PCs to their limit you might struggle to get a good performing version on the Switch 2. But I think for the vast majority of releases I think the Switch 2 will be able to handle it, just like the Switch managed to get all the best games from other consoles a few years later for quite a while during its run.

0:35:58 - Mikah Sargent
Now there is a priority purchasing system. Can you tell us about that and who qualifies for it? How it works?

0:36:07 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, I mean I don't have the whole list in front of me, but I think you had to be an online member for a year, you have to have played 50 hours or so, you have to have opted into some sort of data sharing program. It's basically all ways of confirming that you are an actual human and an actual fan of existing fan of Nintendo systems. Because they are extremely worried about scalpers, and you know I can see why. You know, if you look at, you know, the Pokemon card market, for instance, it's just overrun. Anytime a product comes out that the scalpers buy it up and then the only versions you can find are the ones that are being resold at. You know, twice the price, three times the price.

You see this with the video game consoles too, and it's pretty obvious that the first few million consoles Nintendo puts out, that demand is going to overwhelm any supply that Nintendo is able to make. It's going to take them a while for their production to catch up. So, as an effort to make sure that these get directly into the hands of humans rather than people that are going to mark up the price, I think it's a. It's a valiant effort. We'll see how well it works in practice, but I can't blame Nintendo for trying.

0:37:21 - Mikah Sargent
Right, it felt like there were quite a few titles, game titles, announced at this. This event uh, and seems to suggest a nice, I mean, which is kind of the case with Nintendo, and a nice, uh, you know, offering of first party content. Do you think, if you had to predict, based on Nintendo's uh, past behavior and and where it is now, are we looking, do you think, at a steady drumbeat of first-party content, or is it kind of like let's get all the first-party content out there now and have everybody, you know, kind of go from there where occasionally we'll release things? Yeah, I just felt like there was a lot, but then does that save room for later.

0:38:10 - Kyle Orland
Well, a lot of the stuff in there was third lot, but then does that save room for later? Well, a lot of the stuff in there was third-party games, I feel in the direct, and a lot of those were ports of older games. We kind of got spoiled in the Switch generation, where a marquee Legend of Zelda game, a generation-defining game, came out at launch really a system seller. And then a few months later you get Superio odyssey uh, another great game. And they were able to dip into mario kart 8 deluxe from the wii u, so that first, you know, six months to a year was really stacked with, uh, just you know, generation defining games. This time around they seem to really be counting on mario kart world to be that system seller. And you know, mar, mario Kart is a huge franchise. It's sold 40 million on the switch, I think, or maybe more, and it is a game that people will come for. Especially it's got all sorts of new features. It's got this 24 player races. It's going to be a big draw for sure.

After that, things are starting to look a little thinner. Donkey Kong Bonanza is a lot of fun. It's very cathartic to just bash through all the things and collect a lot of gold. Not sure it's going to be as big a hit as a true Mario game would be. Necessarily, metroid Prime is there for the hardcore shooter fans, but that's also going to be available on the original Switch, so it might not be a reason to upgrade right away if you're not willing to spend $450.

And after that it's going to take a little bit more to see anything more. There's Kirby's Air Riders, I suppose, which we saw only a little bit of, so I don't know how far along that will be and I think they're kind of keeping their powder dry. They know that they're going to probably sell anything they make through 2025, I guess the pent-up demand for a more powerful Switch and just Mario Kart alone will probably carry them through their first holiday season and then in 2026, we'll really see. You know what else they've been working on and they're probably playing it close to the vest and we might see, you know, games that get announced and then released just a month or two later. Nintendo doesn't necessarily do these long windups for their games anymore, so just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean Nintendo isn't working on a lot more behind the scenes.

0:40:23 - Mikah Sargent
And, to round things out, pricing for the console itself and also for the games. It certainly seems to be that the games are reaching the territory of what you'd expect for PlayStation and Xbox, and that has people a little bit shocked surprised, tell us about that.

0:40:45 - Kyle Orland
Yeah, some of them, especially the $80 price for Mario Kart World, really stood out to me. Now, like again, mario Kart is this franchise. I feel like there's enough demand for it that people will pay that price. I also feel like you know they're bundling it in a bundle with the console itself where you essentially pay $50 for the game. So maybe that's the $80 price makes the bundle seem like a little better deal. So maybe that's the $80 price makes the bundle seem like a little better deal. So for Mario Kart World, I kind of understand it.

When you look at some of these other games where it's a remaster of a Switch One game, but with better graphics and maybe slightly more content. When you talk about that and charging $70, $80 for a game like that, that's where I start to balk at things. If it's not a marquee title in a major franchise that they know is going to sell. If it's, if it's just a re-release of a switch one game with slight improvements, that doesn't feel like a game that you can charge a pre that much of a premium price on. That said, you know Nintendo's experimenting with it. I feel like if those things don't sell, we will see them respond to that this is not them saying we are going to charge $80, $90 for every game and you're going to, you know, like it or not. They will respond to the signals from the market. If people, even with Mario Kart, if it's not selling well at $80, they can say okay, you know, we're sorry, it's now $70. And it probably, you know, give some sort of apology for that.

You know a lot of people don't remember when the 3DS came out. It didn't sell as well as Nintendo thought and a lot of people attributed that to the higher than expected price. And within a year Nintendo completely reversed course. They lowered the price by $90, I think, which was a huge percentage, and they offered people who bought it early selection of downloadable games to say you know, we're sorry, this was not, this did not work, wow. So you know, if the $450 Switch is not the success that Nintendo thinks it is, or if eventually it starts slowing down in sales, you know they can and will lower the price. They didn't have to for the Switch because it sold, you know, 150 million units at $300 without any price drops for eight years. But history shows that these companies are willing to drop prices and make the hardware or the software more affordable if that will get them more sales.

0:43:18 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely Wow. Kyle, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I know you've been very busy, so we appreciate it. Of course folks can head over to arstechnicacom to check out your work Is there anywhere else? They should go to follow along with what you're doing.

0:43:34 - Kyle Orland
I'm kyleorland on Blue Sky, which is possibly my favorite domain name that I've ever purchased, and yeah, you can find my musings about all sorts of things there.

0:43:45 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thanks, all righty folks. Real quick break here so I can tell you about Club Twit at twit.tv/clubtwit. That is where you go to become a member of the club. It's just $7 a month, with a two-week free trial to kick things off. When you join the club, you gain access to every single one of our shows ad-free. It's just the content, none of the ads. You also gain access to every single one of our shows ad-free it's just the content, none of the ads. You also gain access to the Twit+ bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special Club Twit events get published there and access to the members-only Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. It is a really good time. We've got special events that take place. Leo and I are talking about something coming up that we're going to be doing together, which I'm really excited about, and it's going to be available only to club members. So, as we have some more details there, you'll learn about it and know that the only way to get it is by joining the club twit.tv/clubtwit just $7 a month, and we look forward to seeing you there. All right back to the show.

I am rounding things out with a little story that came from the Verge. That was kind of an umbrella of understanding of the current state of two of the big players in the AI space OpenAI and Anthropic. Of course, openai has ChatGPT, anthropic has Claude, and each of these companies have released a version of their tools and offerings for the education market Claude for Education and OpenAI for Education, also known as ChatGPT-EDU. The idea here is that when a student is using one of these tools to write their story, to write their essays and to do their homework and this and that and the other, obviously there have been concerns about that right. There have been ongoing distraught checks every step of the way to see if a student is actually doing their work or if it's being done for them Understandable. What they're hoping to do and by they I mean these companies, openai and Anthropic is to provide a tailored version of these tools that make it so that they kind of play in the education space. Here's what, opening I had to say chat GPT-EDU includes access to GPT-4.0, which, of course, works very well when it comes to coding, mathematics and text interpretation. Also, the ability to build custom GPTs that can be used by the university itself, being able to have higher message limits than the free version of the program. Improved language capabilities so that means 50 languages supported. And then also data privacy and security controls. Controls and the knowledge that for sure conversations and data are not used to train open AI models. So the idea is that an enterprise or an EDU, which is essentially an enterprise, would be able to kind of roll out chat GPT EDU for a campus and give students access to it with these tools and data analysis.

Cloud for Education is a little bit different in its sort of more feature-focused approach. So with Cloud for Education they talk about learning mode. It's an experience that guides students' reasoning process rather than providing answers. So it kind of will say you know what led you to that thinking? Have you cited your sources? What do you need to find to be able to prove the point that you're trying to prove? Or, you know, support the point that you're trying to support? Of course, then it does include the same thing of that university-wide availability, so these universities can give access to students across the board. Different partnerships, so Internet2 and Instructure, so that AI is embedded into teaching and learning, meaning that it becomes part of the process, and then special student programs, so there will be Claude Campus ambassadors that provide API credits for student projects.

Again, the idea here is that, rather than just giving the exact answer or response, this version of the program, which would be made available to the students as part of their university membership, is going to not just provide those answers and give the students exactly what generative AI programs, where at one point, we had these universities quickly scrambling to find any software, any service that would help them to detect if a student was using AI to complete their work. Let's have these companies work with the universities instead to hopefully lead a student to using what's available to them for free and the more powerful version of these programs without instead relying on their own personal. You know memberships or purchases of these credits, so I think it's a great idea. You know it's there and students are going to use it, so let's figure out a way that they can use it and still develop those critical thinking skills. And you know proper research techniques, et cetera, et cetera, claude, excuse me, anthropic and OpenAI have both released press releases kind of detailing the specific education programs that they have. But most importantly, check out that link in the show notes from Kylie Robison over at the Verge, who looks at it from kind of the business perspective of these two companies facing off at the hopes of being able to kind of woo the education market and be the AI on campus. That's a big, big market and if students who are learning the skills that they'll have for their careers lock into ChatGPT or Claude and have that at the basis of what they're doing, that's important. You want to be in that spot. And then also there are some lucrative deals when it comes to the money that is involved. So I am not surprised to see Anthropic and OpenAI setting their sights on the higher education market. But it'll be interesting to see which of these two companies win or if they end up kind of being offerings both at these different higher education locations. So again, check that out over on the Verge for kind of the full rundown of where things stand for these two big AI companies. That brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly.

The show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. That is where you can go to subscribe to the show in its audio and video formats. I mentioned Club Twit during the show, so just a brief twit.tv/clubtwit, $7 a month. We'd love to have you in the club and look forward to seeing you there. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at active online. Be sure to check out my other shows iOS Today, hands on Mac, hands on Tech which are published mostly today, so you'll see many of those today. And for those of you who like to tune into Hands on Tech recordings, we are going to be recording our next set of episodes this Sunday, so tune in for that as well. Thanks so much for taking the time to be here with us this week and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye-bye.

0:53:08 - Leo Laporte
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