Mark Videon

Mark Videon

@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

Digital products, factories, markets and more. Don't miss a thing. https://blog.markvideon.dev

60 followers100 following165 posts

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Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

How many franchises have had as many development team resets as Halo?

GamesIndustry.biz@gibiz.bsky.social

Xbox transfers Rare and Halo franchise to Activision, proposes closure of Ninja Theory and confirms another 268 roles cut amid studio restructure https://bit.ly/4xIp5Cy

Mark Videon reposted

Brandon DeRosier
@bdero.bsky.social

Flutter Scene 0.23 is out. Realtime 3D on Flutter's native graphics stack, Flutter GPU and Impeller. No forks. No platform views. Just vanilla Flutter. Global illumination, reflections, compressed glTF/KTX2, and six bundled agent skills that make vibe coding with Scene fun.

Mark Videon reposted

Alanah Pearce
@alanahpearce.bsky.social

points at sign: THE GAMES INDUSTRY’S CUSTOMER IS THE STOCK MARKET, NOT THE GAMER Live service games are seen as ‘worth the risk’ because when one blows up (Roblox, Fortnite, GTA Online) it makes so much money that it covers all previous failures and more. What gamers say is irrelevant to this.

Zack Skellington@zman990.bsky.social

@alanahpearce.bsky.social As someone who knows more about the gaming industry, do the higher ups just don’t listen anymore or do they just have selective hearing? Do we need to throw physical money at them and tell them “we want just a single player game, no multiplayer.”

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

So the big news: 1. I have purchased my first home 2. The home is in Melbourne Lots of things falling apart notwithstanding, there has never been a more exciting time to be me, new lease on life

Mark Videon@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

I heard my best friend during my senior years in high school passed away in the last couple of days. To be honest we were estranged but it is nevertheless surreal. We had some great times and I'm sure that he knew that. We brought Game Boys into math class to play Pokémon,

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

we played Super Smash Bros Brawl when we should have been studying chemistry, we won a Gears of War 2 LAN tournament where if I'm not mistaken he threw a smoke grenade that knocked our opponents over and created the opportunity for us to break a tie-game, we bought Modern Warfare (2009) at midnight

Mark Videon reposted

headfallsoff
@headfallsoff.com

Good Evening, “video games” was a 45 year sociological study conducted by hardware development industries. We are now complete with our study. Thank you for your time.

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

(stone cold Steve Austin voice) I’m talkin capybaras (what) kangaroos (what) wombats (what) platypuses (what) echidnas (what) cane toads (what) Got to be an alternate universe where Australia is an industrial hub for 3D platformers with an animal protagonist

Mark Videon@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

more games with capybaras

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

Phil Spencer was tasked with achieving enterprise software grade returns in a games market where Microsoft is decidedly third of three places. Truly remarkable misunderstanding of the games industry from one of the world's largest companies

Jason Schreier@jasonschreier.bsky.social

BREAKING: Xbox is planning major layoffs next month, Bloomberg has learned, as new CEO Asha Sharma confronts a bleak picture and plans what she calls a "reset" of the business www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

bloomberg.comXbox Plans Significant Layoffs as It Transforms Under New CEOAsha Sharma’s first major cuts will arrive in July
Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

We have machinery for producing capable labour, but the people assessing capability don't necessarily know what good looks like, and conceptualisations of good might adjust with time. So what are we doing here?

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, blog.markvideon.dev/the-one-abou...

blog.markvideon.devThe One About AII have previously made some allusions to the saturation of LLMs in the current moment by comparing it with what happened during the last major hype cycle. Today as a developer it seems every conferenc...
Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

The story goes beyond that - it takes place in a broader world with other forces that shapes what gets made and who gets to experience it. Projects, intellectual property, businesses, markets, platform gatekeepers and more.

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

I've used the term digital factory a lot and it's probably past due to look at some examples from the real world to ground the concept. Donkey Kong Country (1994), Microsoft Office (2010) and Netflix (2026) blog.markvideon.dev/yeah-but-lik...

blog.markvideon.devYeah But Like, What Actually Is The Factory ThoughLate last year I presented at a conference, and a while later I received some feedback. There were a couple of things that came up that I was sympathetic to: One was that following the (abstract) conc...
Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

'Microsoft in games' continues to live in my head rent-free. I think their big problem is managing certain kinds of IP that has a life outside of digital products. The strengths and weaknesses of IP like Forza and Flight Simulator are pretty well aligned with the strengths and weaknesses of MS imo

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Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

If you zoom in to some of the decisions around Gears and Halo in particular it's really crazy, wild west stuff relative to how the other major platforms manage their first-party IP

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

They have friends - you can see some of the same behaviour exhibited by Apple and Valve. It's "rational" and "scalable" and also in opposition to what makes people engage with games

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

'Microsoft in games' continues to live in my head rent-free. I think their big problem is managing certain kinds of IP that has a life outside of digital products. The strengths and weaknesses of IP like Forza and Flight Simulator are pretty well aligned with the strengths and weaknesses of MS imo

View full thread
Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

Halo probably would have been a bigger cultural phenomenon over the last 20 years if it had a different home. Theme parks, movies, toys, etc. I don't necessarily think an IP based around future US marines has the mass appeal of superheroes, but it probably could have been more

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

Gears of War 5's "the choice" cliffhanger at the end where the player chooses which one of two major characters will meet their end. Instead of producing a conclusion to this, a prequel to the first game was greenlit. If there is a sequel, we have reason to believe it's years away.

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

'Microsoft in games' continues to live in my head rent-free. I think their big problem is managing certain kinds of IP that has a life outside of digital products. The strengths and weaknesses of IP like Forza and Flight Simulator are pretty well aligned with the strengths and weaknesses of MS imo

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

i.e. No one expects these IP to be especially narratively rich. People know what they're getting and it's fine. As far as games go, this is as close as you can get to Objective Software. Where they really seem to struggle is the other end of the spectrum

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

I feel like the 2026 Xbox and AI strategy is going to look and sound a lot like the 2013 Xbox and Azure strategy Third-party games are probably not going to do a bunch of custom integrations for the platform in last place, so not sure what gives

Mark Videon
@realmarkvideon.bsky.social

I think most people understand that existing data centres have considerably large energy requirements but the amounts required to support the most ambitious versions of the AI-powered future are eye-watering and almost certainly involve regressions toward a transition to renewable energy

The Salt Lake Tribune@sltrib.com

Backers of the massive data center campus say at full buildout it will consume 9GW of electricity, more than double the entire state of Utah’s current energy use. They say they intend to burn fossil fuels on site to make all that electricity. Box Elder County will vote on the proposal Monday.

sltrib.com‘Hyperscale’ data center project in Utah — expected to generate and consume more power than entire state — nears final approvalLed by "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary, a massive data center project is near final approval in Utah — including tax deals aimed at helping it “lure the hyperscalers” like Amazon, Microsoft and Google to the state.