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Another Xbocalypse begins: Microsoft are reportedly closing or spinning off Double Fine, Ninja Theory and Compulsion (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

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Xbox are reportedly closing or spinning off Psychonauts developers Double Fine, Hellblade studio Ninja Theory, and South of Midnight creators Compulsion Games, as Microsoft commence efforts to yet again "reset" their billion dollar gaming business after already laying off thousands of staff, cancelling games, and closing several studios over the past couple of years.

All three studios are apparently now haggling for their continued existence, as the end of Microsoft's financial year looms, with many other Xbox teams said to be affected, and certain employees quietly encouraged to start seeking work elsewhere.

The report comes from Bloomberg, who cite anonymous staff at several studios. The Verge (paywall) also have an article in which they claim that Ninja Theory are in the process of trying to find a buyer, after being informed that they will be closed on Monday. Ninja Theory have literally just announced a new Senua game. Like, days ago.

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

What pisses me off so much about the AI bubble as someone who was trained in science is the basic obvious fact that if you have a magic tool that can "solve any problem" but that takes a nearly impossible amount of energy to do so, taking so much energy that everything else has to be sidelined in order to power this magic problem solving tool..... than you are just restating that the tool you have is incapable of problem solving.

Suppose there are two problem solving machines A and B. Problem solving machine A does not work very well but it takes a small amount of energy and material to function, problem solving machine B is like AI in that it can tackle "any problem" if given nearly all the electrical power and computer chips that humans can produce.

Both problem solving machine A and B are equally useless even though the owners of problem solving machine B can make grandiose claims about the power of their problem solving machine if they conveniently exclude the "energy required" part, which as someone trained in science ends up seeming pretty damn similar to someone arguing that their perpetual motion machine is capable of perpetual motion so long as we feed all of the electrical power humanity can generate into it...

If your Oracle requires all the investment, electrical energy and computer chips earth can produce and more to tell you the future, it is not an Oracle but rather your own demise twisted into a promise of absolute power and knowledge.

Anybody who understands computer science should be able to grasp the basic idea that it is trivially easy to describe infinitely powerful computer programs that take essentially infinite time and energy to compute, that doesn't mean anything, in fact most of computer science has been the proactive study of how to rigorously talk about programs that are impossible to execute because of outsized material demands and develop an overarching theory of computer science that nonetheless accounts for that theoretical axis. Computer science people thus should be well equipped to understand AI is just bullshit being sold as genius by disguising the cost per unit of intelligence........ but they don't really seem to grasp that basic aspect of physics in how it limits computation and it doesn't say a lot of good about the whole industry.