Microsoft launches its latest surface products, Xbox Series X

Microsoft has announced a number of new products amid the coronavirus outbreak including the the Xbox Series X, Surface Book 3, Surface Go 2 and the Surface earbuds. Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins The Final Round to discuss the details of Microsoft’s latest products.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: All right, let's turn now to the video game world. Dan Howley joins us now for, I guess, a way that Microsoft is going to try to roll out new stuff, new products, perhaps. And then I guess this is all leading towards the end of the year, when we're going to get a new Xbox, and that's going to be exciting.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, Microsoft announced a couple of new products today. This is something that they were going to do in person, but obviously, they're doing everything virtually, just like the rest of the world right now. One of them is the Surface Book 3. That's a powerhouse machine. Basically, what you do is, I'm going to use my MacBook here, you can lift off the screen and leave the base and use the screen as its own tablet.

The base holds a graphics processor that's really meant for things like doing CAD, 3D design, video rendering, and yes, video games, if you get the right setup. And it's really something Microsoft is leaning into more and more. They announced that they're going to have a new reveal of some of their upcoming games that are coming to the Xbox Series X, which will be available later this year.

Then they announced when they had their recent earnings, that their Game Pass service, which is basically an ala carte where you can get any kind of game you want that's provided through the service, it's incredibly, it's like $60 a year. It's just super cheap. I, obviously, enjoy it and like it a lot. But they're leading all of this into the Series X launch, at the end of the year, and eventually perhaps, cloud gaming announcement around their Xbox X Cloud service.

MYLES UDLAND: I guess, Howley, the other thing is, as companies have to pivot to offline in-person events, and it makes me think about Apple and WWDC coming up and all that, like spacing these announcements out is a way to maybe make it more exciting. Like they're not going to do a big two-day event anymore. They're going to do this over a series of weeks or months to try to I guess whet, I guess, your appetite.

You're really the target audience as a tech reporter. To keep you interested in the story beyond just kind of a one-day event where there's too many panels and you can't get to all of them on. Would it be, I guess they would use Skype. Or is there a team's video feature? They wouldn't use Zoom, I know that.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, yeah. It's going to be interesting. especially with something like Apple's WWDC. They're going to be having live streams with developers around the world. And a lot of those are workshops where developers are supposed to be able to communicate back and forth with people. The actual event is going to be June 22, and it's going to have a large student contingent. It's something that Apple really pushes every year, and has been pushing. This time it'll be around obviously, their Swift programming language.

They have a kind of Swift version for kids that they try to teach them really to put more kids in, so that people continue to develop for Apple going forward. But it will be interesting to see how these continue to roll out going forward. And for Microsoft and Sony, they're rolling out two huge products. The Xbox Series X and then the Playstation 5. And to not be able to do that in person will be a big deal. So we'll have to see how people can get their hands on them, what impressions will be like. It's all going to be kind of up in the air until it actually happens later this year.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, Dan Howley. One day maybe we'll get a Rocket League game going. No promises, but we'll see. I got conned in--

DAN HOWLEY: [INAUDIBLE]

MYLES UDLAND: I got conned into the Game Pass, because you're right, it is so cheap. But you know.

DAN HOWLEY: It's amazing.

MYLES UDLAND: Everything you ever wanted. All right, Dan Howley, good to talk to you.