About the ‘Billion’

Let’s start with the obvious. Layoffs suck. The Microsoft layoffs especially suck. These teams were told to make games for GamePass, and then told that their games weren’t profitable enough. There’s probably another essay I can write in there, but all the same: my deepest condolences to everyone affected, and a hearty ‘congratulations and good luck’ to Double Fine and Compulsion and everyone else who manages to escape with an independent studio. That being said, the big discussion on BlueSky was this snippet from Asha Sharma’s letter to the company titled ‘XBox Reset’. This immediately drew some reactions, most along the lines of “what is this person smoking?” To wit, there are only 8 billion people in the world. A big hunk of them have no microsoft compatible devices or Internet access. A huge number are babies or elderly. A vast number of them do not game, for reasons ranging from disability to preferring hobbies that involve touching grass. Also, and let me tell you this is…