Destructoid writes: "Recently, Penn Jillet (a comedic genius who does illusionist trickery with his silent partner Teller) illuminated the motivation behind the infamous Desert Bus minigame in the unreleased – but bootlegged – Sega CD title Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. The purpose of Desert Bus was to recreate the drive from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas Nevada. The point being that it took a hell of a long time and nothing interesting happens along the way. In short, it was a joke, like all of the minigames in the ill-fated title.
In this video, promoting a charity event that utilized the videogame to raise money, Penn says that Desert Bus was created to hit back at Janet Reno, who not only demonized fantasy violence in games, but also said that games should teach people real life skills. Thus, the epic drive from Tuscon to Las Vegas was born and in Penn's words a "game that was very real life" was created.
After 8 or so hours, if a player managed to keep his hands on the controller long enough, he would reach Las Vegas and score one point. Then the player would be asked to turn around and drive back. The minigame infinitely loops, which is why the Desert Bus charity event was able to carry on for a little over five days."
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series , will debut never-before-seen games & content updates across more than 100 titles on May 25th.