Hdcase

If you’re a developer working for Xbox, what can you do to secure your job?

The platform holder has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.

Xbox is offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax as part of a broader cost-cutting initiative

Microsoft has released its latest financial results, showing significant growth in gaming revenues — thanks in no small part to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard....

This is a fascinating deep dive into the development of the game, with many people involved giving interviews. Instead of being in a long development hell, Lionhead knocked out the game in a stunning 18 months - which made Microsoft happy, but resulted in the cutting of a ton of content.

Crucially, the creator allows players to make modifications that aren’t always possible in other RPGs, letting them modify a characters genitals (choosing between preset options), identity (male, female, non-binary/other), and voice. [Lead character artist Alena] Dubrovina says including those options was about giving players...

“What’s more frustrating for those working on SCP, and the wider Starfield modding community, is how difficult it is to work with Starfield’s code without official modding tools and support. This isn’t helped by the delayed mod tools from Bethesda, which the company says are coming at some point next year.”

The effort to squash unlicensed controllers hurts plenty of paying customers, and might not even achieve its goals

2.5m copies shifted on first day

“Assuming Arkane will continue development, clearly there are many areas for technical improvement, with some annoying visual glitches, oversights and outright bugs remaining in the updated code. I’m not sure that any amount of patching will make Redfall a truly good game, but Arkane has at least delivered the performance...

There are some great stories from legendary program Giles Goddard (Star Fox, 1080 Snowboarding) in this piece....

While Elon’s then-partner Grimes was recording her part in the game as cyborg popstar Lizzy Wizzy, the erratic tech billionaire turned up with an antique firearm to “insist” on being included in the game. “The studio guys were like sweating,” Grimes is quoted as saying. Musk adds “I told them that I was armed but not...

Starbreeze insists it is “working hard” to keep servers online after Payday 3 players endured a second consecutive evening of disruption....

I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted....

IATSE’s 2023 Gameworkers.org Rates and Conditions survey showed that most respondents said they worked an average of 40 hours a week, but a quarter of people who answered said they worked for 41 hours or more....

If you thought this was too good a deal to be true, I guess Microsoft agreed. A short excerpt:...

Is anyone else having this issue? If I have it enabled during the day, it sets itself to dark mode.

I thought this was an interesting read. Fahey points out some of the potential risks and rewards of Xbox’s current strategy of competition through acquisition. A small excerpt:...

“The urge to play a violent video game in the midst of the most brutal land war in Europe since World War II may seem baffling. But it’s a way to cope.”

"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn’t share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage...

“PlayStation 5 has now sold 40 million consoles worldwide, Sony has announced.”