News

Microsoft has announced that they will be closing the doors on their Xbox Entertainment Studio. This move is part of the recent job cuts that new CEO Satya Nadella announced. Nadella is slimming things down as part of a mobile first, cloud first initiative, but also with the intention of re-focusing Microsoft on things that area important to the product in question. If you remember gamers were not that happy with the “more than a gaming console” spin that Microsoft put on the Xbox One.

It seems that Microsoft is not getting the love from former Halo developer Bungie. Bungie is working on a new game that is aimed at next generation consoles, but instead of partnering up with their old buddies Microsoft they decided to focus on Sony instead. Bungie even went so far as to start a beta program for PS3 owners early (today 7-17-2014).

We have talked about how the MPAA, RIAA and others use fantasy math to come up with the figures about how much Piracy hurts them. Usually they use these fantasy number when asking lawmakers for harsher punishments and also to show how malignant file sharers are. These numbers allege that every single download is a lost sale which leads to more revenue lost in concessions and many other non-related areas.

This morning some news flitted across my desk that made me thing of an old TV commercial. In this ad an older man in a suit ask the question: “How do we measure success?” His response is: “One client at a time.” All of this is done in black and white for an even better impression. Now that I have gone off on a tangent I should probably explain what I am talking about. The news in question was a bit of information stating that Xbox One sales had nearly doubled. The reason, Microsoft removed the Kinect from the bundle and cut the price.