As the video games industry violently contracts to ensure shareholder satisfaction at the cost of making thousands upon thousands of people unemployed, Skylanders studio Toys For Bob have announced they're splitting from Activision Blizzard and Microsoft to go independent. Good for them, but maybe too late for some. Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that it seemed Activision Blizzard were closing Toys For Bob's California headquarters and laying off 86 people. Still, the new independent Toys For Bob say they're working on something new and "exploring a possible partnership" with Microsoft.
Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 20-Year Formula for Success Has Expired
12.02.2024 - 02:01 / tech.hindustantimes.com / Mark Zuckerberg
The other day I did something I haven't done for years. I browsed Facebook. By which I mean: I really took a look around. Good grief, what a mess! It's like walking round an abandoned amusement park of badly executed ideas. Can you name a single person who's found love through Facebook Dating, which was meant to challenge Tinder? Is anyone viewing Facebook Watch, a supposed rival to Netflix? How about the Facebook Gaming portal, once billed as its foray into cloud gaming and an effort to take on streamer platforms Twitch and YouTube? Today it's littered with low-rent titles offering little more to the player than your typical fruit machine. Even some of the more popular ideas must be shared with warning labels — scammers are everywhere on Facebook Marketplace.
Fortunately for Mark Zuckerberg, the barnstorming success of other parts of Meta Platforms Inc. — the rebranding of the business meant to reflect his vision of the future — means its duds can hide out within the comically cluttered navigation menu on the main Facebook app. Besides, for 20 years, use of the main Facebook service — known as the “blue” app internally — has remained remarkably resilient. It attracted 3.07 billion monthly active users as of last quarter, the company said. Though, tellingly, Meta said it would no longer break out the number in future reports.
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The Blue app graveyard, and what it represents, is something worth thinking about as the company enters its 21st year with a record high valuation above $1 trillion. Investors see Zuckerberg as a weatherer of storms — bucking worries about the shift to mobile and, more recently, worries that Apple Inc.'s privacy changes would blast a hole in its targeted ads business model, which in 2023 accounted for 97.8% of its total revenue.
But the more cynical take on Zuckerberg has long been that he's lacked any fresh ideas of his own since creating the app in the first place — and even that's disputed, famously. When he saw that the promising image-sharing app Instagram was gaining traction, he bought it, saying in an email at the time that it would have been “really scary” if the company couldn't. Later, when messaging app WhatsApp looked to be gaining a foothold in how young people, particularly outside the US, were communicating — he bought that, too. Even progress in the metaverse, long seen as Zuckerberg's personal pet project, came in through the front door thanks to his acquisition of Oculus VR.
When he can't acquire, he copies. This approach has relied on the existing network effect of Facebook or Instagram to make the duplicate product a success through sheer brute force. There's no better example of this than Instagram Reels,
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Skylanders and Crash Bandicoot studio Toys For Bob is leaving Activision and going independent
Skylanders and Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob has announced plans to go independent.
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