Month: March 2023

Xbox VP’s wish to use acquisition to reform Activision Blizzard’s culture will be an uphill battle.

Microsoft’s proposed acquisition Activision Blizzard King has certainly come under a great deal of scrutiny. 

Putting aside the ongoing legal saga, however, it’s important to ask what exactly the acquisition would entail if it were to go ahead. I sat down with Sarah Bond, Corporate Vice President at Xbox, to get her take on what the acquisition might look like in practice. 

Bond wanted to reassure PlayStation users that: “the games [they love] will continue to be there” after any potential merger, stating that Xbox is committed to creating “cross-platform experiences” which “show up across all screens.” Bond continued by affirming that Microsoft is: “open to working with partners”; a commitment it’ll need to prove if it is to satisfy the anti-trust concerns of the FTC. 

However, the prospect of a merger raises important cultural questions, too, especially in the shadow of the ongoing sexual harassment scandals at Blizzard. Bond was keen to emphasize “the core tenets of [Microsoft]’s culture: diversity, inclusion [and] being customer-centric.” 

Bond continued: “there’s an opportunity to take the really creative teams [at Activision Blizzard] and give them the culture that we’ve found has been so successful in our own organization.”

 We don’t talk about Bobby 

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Microsoft has certainly done a better job than Activision Blizzard of putting its money where its mouth is. In November 2022, the company elected to embolden its anti-harassment and diversity rules following an independent review (via The Verge). The recent release of the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit also demonstrates a degree of social responsibility on Microsoft’s part – a quality Bond was keen to emphasize when discussing the company’s Net Zero Carbon Initiative and “commitment” to the environment. 

Microsoft takes great pains to occupy the moral high ground, and it’s clear that the video games industry benefits from these efforts in a tangible way. This places Microsoft in stark contrast to Activision Blizzard, the latter of which is subject to numerous allegations not only with regard to cases of sexual assault and abuse, but also when it comes to the treatment of their workers as they attempt to unionize (via TechCrunch). 

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room comes in the form of Bobby Kotic, who became CEO of Activision Blizzard once the companies were merged in 2008 and is slated to be kept on after the acquisition. Not only did Kotic preside over Blizzard during a period of toxic culture and widespread abuse, it has also been alleged in a Wall Street Journal investigation that he failed to share sexual assault and other allegations with the board. In addition, over 1,200 Activision Blizzard employees demanded that Kotick quit in a recent petition (via Kotaku).

The numerous allegations hanging over Activision Blizzard place the company in stark contrast to Microsoft

In a meeting shortly after the Wall Street Journal published its investigation, Kotick floated the possibility of his resignation, stating that he would consider leaving if the sexual misconduct issues across the company weren’t fixed “with speed” (via Wall Street Journal). So far, however, Kotik remains CEO despite another sexual harassment lawsuit being raised by an anonymous plaintiff in October 2022.

When I asked Bond whether or not Microsoft’s plans to keep Kotic as CEO after the merger, she replied: “I think culture is universal, and it’s not about any one person.” While this is true to some degree, when the person in question is the CEO of a major gaming juggernaut, it is only right that his actions be appropriately scrutinized.

Whether or not Microsoft has kept Kotik on as a political concession or out of ambivalence, the fact remains that allowing the Activision Blizzard CEO to remain in the role does undermine Microsoft’s stated cultural objectives. Though it doesn’t render the positive aspects of Microsoft’s initiatives irrelevant, it reminds us that the corporate world is messy, mercenary, and uncomfortable.

Activision Blizzard exec claims that Sony CEO “just wants to block” Microsoft merger

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E3 2023 has been canceled. In an interview, the organizers shone a light on what this means for the industry.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has formally announced that E3 2023 is canceled. 

E3 is a staple games industry showcase which has traditionally played host to previews for upcoming games as well as a celebration of the industry as a whole. The ESA, the owner of E3, issued a statement with producers Reedpop confirming the cancellation of E2 2023. (via Eurogamer). 

“This was a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen, but we had to do what’s right for the industry and what’s right for E3,” said Kyle Marsden-Kish, Reedpop’s Global Vice President of Gaming.

The cancellation comes in the aftermath of a string of publishers pulling out of the event. In addition to the absence of Nintendo, Microsoft, and PlayStation, Ubisoft, Sega, and Tencent also withdrew their support for the event. Even Devolver Digital, who traditionally set up their own expo in a parking lot opposite E3’s main building, decided not to go ahead this year.  

In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis shed some light on the organization’s decision to cancel the event. 

Pierre-Louis acknowledged three reasons for the cancellation, saying: “First, several companies have reported that the timeline for game development has been altered since the start of the COVID pandemic. Second, economic headwinds have caused several companies to reassess how they invest in large marketing events. And third, companies are starting to experiment with how to find the right balance between in-person events and digital marketing opportunities.”   

When asked whether or not the event would return in 2024, Pierre-Louis made no commitments, stating: “ We’re committed to providing an industry platform for marketing and convening but we want to make sure we find that right balance that meets the needs of the industry.” 

It looks like E3 is in limbo, at least for the foreseeable future.  

Eventually everything ends  

(Image credit: Future)

E3 has been, for the most part, a positive element within the industry. The prospect of its (possibly permanent) cancellation is not a good thing. Though Pierre-Louis was vague in some his answers, he was right to claim that E3 and the ESA play a role as a “convener” for the industry. 

Beyond the spectacle and the premiers, E3 played a vital role as a communications hub, allowing different sections of the industry to meet and greet one another. It provided a much-needed human element to an industry that is becoming increasingly remote. E3 was also a rite of passage for video games professionals, as well as a way for press, developers and fans alike to ignite their passion. 

Videos are a labor of love at their best. At its height,, E3 was a celebration and reflection of that love. Pierre-Louis was right to emphasize the event’s “legacy” in his interview. As a teenager growing up, I saw E3 as something of a holy grail, emblematic of experiences I love and the people who made those experience possible. 

The E3 of yesterday may well be over as we know it, but we must not let that be the end of meaningful opportunities for in-person communication within the industry. Communities are always stronger when its members humanize one another, and events like E3 have played a significant role in reminding us all that we’re all in this together. 

E3 is officially canceled, so what’s next?

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A new preview build also brings in a change for widgets that you’ll either love or hate.

Windows 11 has received another preview build in the Dev channel, and it brings in a number of tweaks and additions, including beefing up a feature that should help your PC use a bit less electricity.

That would be Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC), which as of preview build 23424, works not just with laptops on battery power, but when they’re plugged in – and indeed with desktop PCs too.

What CABC does is intelligently dim (or lighten) certain parts of the screen depending on what content is being displayed, the idea being that it can cut back power usage without hampering the ‘visual experience’.

In other words, the tweaking on the dimming front shouldn’t make any noticeable difference to the image you’re looking at on-screen, and it should save you a bit of power (and therefore cash, over time).

The feature can be set to be always on, or it can be disabled, or alternatively you can choose to have CABC kick in only if you’re on battery power (on a laptop of course).

(Image credit: Microsoft)

What else is new for build 23424? There’s a new widget board which is now bigger, so it’s three columns wide (rather than two) and much roomier (assuming the device’s screen has enough real-estate to cope).

Along with this, there’s the usual gamut of fixes and minor tweaks, all of which are detailed in the usual blog post published with every preview build.

Notable pieces of minor tinkering include improving the speed of running searches within the Settings panel, and a change to produce better performance when playing games with a high polling mouse (a super-precise fancy gaming mouse, basically).

Analysis: Small savings that could add up (we hope)

Bringing adaptive brightness control to a desktop PC might sound a bit daft, considering it’s really more a battery-saving feature for laptops. But if like us, you have your PC turned on for about 60 or 70 hours a week, tiny little power savings will add up across the year – especially with energy pricing being what it is these days (sky-high where we are).

So, this is a useful addition we think, providing that as Microsoft asserts, there’s no noticeable hampering of the quality of the monitor image when the feature is turned on. Of course, you don’t have to switch it on if you don’t want to.

Microsoft’s work with widgets seems to be progressing at a speedy pace, too. The more expansive widget board was previously seen in limited testing in the Canary channel, which is the earliest test channel, just a week ago. Now it’s already in the Dev channel and more widely rolled out.

There are other widget-related changes theoretically in the pipeline that we might see soon, too. That includes Microsoft’s experiments with animated icons for widgets (which we have to say look quite nifty), and the rumored possibility has been floated that users may eventually be allowed to drop widgets onto the desktop. It seems fairly clear that widgets are quite a big thing for Microsoft, so expect to see more of them in Windows 11 down the line.

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