Back in January, wxpnews reported that due in part to the push by some for "network neutrality," ISPs were likely to head back to the bad old days of charging for Internet access according to per-hour or per-megabyte/gigabyte usage. George Ou was warning us (wxpnews) about this unintended consequence of the net neutrality movement, and that warning has proven prophetic.
First Time Warner began "testing" the new pricing model in Beaumont, Texas. Time Warner reportedly has several tiers of plans, with the most expensive one ($50something per month) capping your usage at 40 GB. Go over that, and you pay a dollar per gig. Some pundits predicted that they would never get away with extending that to other markets, and it would die a quick death. Instead, this week AT&T announced that they, too, are considering a similar type of pricing...
...The big problem here is that what's considered "high bandwidth usage" today may well be just normal Internet usage tomorrow. The wave of the future is HDTV over IP - but will you be able to afford to download high quality movies and television programs with usage caps of 40 GB per month and less? One hour of HDTV equals about 7 GB of data, so if you downloaded four average movies (two hours) per month, you've already exceeded that 40 GB limit with another 16 GB in overage charges - and that doesn't count any of your web surfing, email, and other Internet applications. And it also doesn't count your spam - which, of course, counts against your bandwidth usage even though you don't want it
While on stage with Dina Bass at The Bloomberg Technology Summit the President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, was asked about the Xbox studio closures of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios
Of course she did. She's part of the problem and will just tow the company line.
I always wondered why xbox had multiple leaders with similar titles like Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, and Sarah Bond, like, how many heads do you actually need?
Seems to me it would be more cost efficient to cut 2 of them instead of all those studios.
While many gaming layoffs are cruel, Tango Gameworks being culled after Hi-Fi Rush doesn't even make sense.
Good read. I think the point is important. Cuz the message it sends is, make a bad game? Well shut you down. Make a good game? We still might shut you down. How the fuck are you supposed to feel any sense of job security under those conditions. The level of core incompetence at play in the upper levels of this industry is staggering. This is common sense shit. You can’t chase trends on a 2 year cycle when games take fucking 6-8 years to make. Just let artists fucking art for gods sake. They don’t understand the basic principle that they’re all haggling for the same slice of fucking pie and the market will not bear it. Find a different fucking pie.
"The sudden closure of several video-game studios at Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox division was the result of a widespread cost-cutting initiative that still isn’t finished.
This week, Xbox began offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax, which it purchased in 2020 for $7.5 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Others across the Xbox organization have been told that more cuts are on the way.
Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said.
Game Pass has not seen the massive growth that Xbox boss Phil Spencer may have been hoping for."
"Speaking about the closures more broadly, Booty said that the company’s studios had been spread too thin — like “peanut butter on bread” — and that leaders across the division had felt understaffed. They decided to close these studios to free up resources elsewhere, he said"
So what you're saying is...you bought all these studios and you guys can't run them.
Jesus.
Reports are suggesting that Game Pass will be getting a price hike soon and that Call of Duty may not be added to the day one offering. I honestly have a hard time believing this but it does beg the question why exactly did GP fail? I think the answer is that it just didn't get the growth that it anticipated. Jim was right but I wish he wasn't because at the end of the day, its gamers, devs and other front-line workers who have to absorb the blow for Spencer and team's miscalculations.
For all the armchair executives who were calling for Sony to release its big-budget AAA games on PS+, the same exact thing would have happened at PlayStation. Game Pass has killed Xbox. Congrats.
as long as they want people to stop using the internet.