Technology

Microsoft is continuing to invest in a broad spectrum of developers for its Xbox gaming ecosystem with the acquisition of Obsidian and InXile, makers of complex RPGs primarily aimed at PC users. The two studios will join four others snatched up in June, significantly bolstering Xboxfirst-party development resources.

The company announced the acquisitions (rumored for some time) at its XO18 event alongside numerous other interesting developments for the Xbox One and Windows gaming platforms. Xbox Director of Programming Larry Hyrb, better known by his pseudonym Major Nelson, welcomed them to the Microsoft Studios team of owned but independent devs:

Of the two studios Obsidian is probably the best known; Fallout: New Vegas is a modern classic of the open world genre, while Pillars of Eternity and its enormous sequel are a welcome revival of the classic isometric PC RPG. InXile is a bit more niche, though also successful: the Wasteland, Torment, and BardTale games are similarly appreciated by RPG lovers. The studios will, like the others in Microsoftstable, be given significant operational independence, not folded into some internal unit.

Microsoft announced the acquisition of Compulsion, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, and Playground Games in June. But whatclear from the more recent gets, that the earlier ones didn&t necessarily indicate, is a big focus on core PC gamers. Microsoft has had a rather mixed mission in that it wants to ensure the success of its Xbox One (and future) consoles, but also wants to bring the huge population of PC gamers into the fold somehow. It would help offset the significant but yet necessarily decisive lead Sony has in the ongoing console wars.

Numerous efforts over the years have failed to impress them and some are in fact still ridiculed. But the collection of some seriously PC-first developers commanding a hardcore audience may help bring some PC gaming wisdom to the Xbox world.

Although console exclusives are not as appreciated as they once were — gamers value cross-platform play far more — it doesn&t help to have a couple to sway undecided buyers or even tempt consumers to buy both. These acquisitions suggest an investment in Microsoftfirst-party development platform that could help close the gap, or prepare a real blitz for the next generation of consoles.

The studios issued videos talking about their take on the development, which you can watch below:

To offset the creepiness of having Facebook camera and microphone in your house, its new Portal video chat gadget needs best-in-class software. Its hardware is remarkably well done, plus Messenger and the photo frame feature work great. But its third-party app platform was pretty skimpy when the device launched this week.

Facebook is increasingly relying on its smart display competitors to boost Portalcapabilities. It already comes with Amazon Alexa inside. And now, GoogleYouTube is part of the Portal app platform. &Yes,YouTube.comis available through an optional install in the ‘Portal Apps& catalog& a Facebook spokesperson tells me. You can open it with a &Hey Portal& command, but there currently seems to be no way to queue up specific videos or control playback via voice.

The addition gives Portal much greater flexibility when it comes to video. Previously it could only play videos from Facebook Watch, Food Network, or Newsy. It also brings the device to closer parity with GoogleHome Hub screen, the Google Assistant-powered smart displays from JBL and Lenovo, and the Amazon Echo Show 2 which Google blocked from using YouTube before Amazon added a web browser to the device to reopen YouTube access.

Read our comparison of the top smart display gadgets

YouTube makes the most of the $349 Portal+15.6-inch 1080p screen, the biggest and sharpest of the smart display crop. Whether for watching shows or recipe videos while making dinner, instructional clips while putting together furniture, or Baby Shark to keep the kids busy, Portal becomes a lot more useful with YouTube.

But we&re still waiting for the most exciting thing Facebook has planned for Portal: Google Assistant. A month ago FacebookVP of Portal Rafa Camargo told me &We definitely have been talking to Google as well. We view the future of these home devices . . . as where you will have multiple assistants and you will use them for whatever they do best . . .We&d like to expand and integrate with them.& Now a Facebook spokesperson tells me that they &Don&t have an update on Google Assistant today but we&re working on adding new experiences to Portal.&

The potential to put both Google and Amazonvoice assistants on one device could make Portalsoftware stronger than either competitordevices. Many critics have asked if Facebook was naive or calloused to launch Portal in the wak of privacy issues like the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its recent data breach. But as I found when testing the Portal with my 72-year-old mother, not everyone is concerned with Facebookprivacy problems and instead see Portal as a way for the social network to truly bring them closer to their loved ones. With Amazon and Google racing to win the smart display market, Facebook may see it worth the tech insider backlash to have a shot at mainstream success before its boxed out.

When you&re launching a new social media product, like an image-sharing app or niche network, common wisdom is to make it available to everyone as soon as itready. But simulations carried out by Facebook — and letbe honest, a few actual launches — suggest that may be a good way to kneecap your product from the start.

Itfar from a simple problem to simulate, but in the spirit of the &spherical cow in a vacuum& iteasy enough to make a plausible model in which to test some basic hypotheses. In this case the researchers crafted a network of nodes into which a virtual &product& could be seeded, and if certain conditions were met it would either spread to other nodes or &churn& permanently, meaning this node deleted the app in disgust.

If you&re familiar with ConwayGame of Life itbroadly similar but not so elegant.

In the researchers& simulation, the spread of the product is based more or less on a handful of assumptions:

• User satisfaction is largely governed by whether their friends are on the app
• Users start using the app at a low rate and use it either more or less based on their satisfaction
• If a user is unsatisfied, they leave permanently

Based on these (and a whole lot of complex math) the researchers tried various scenarios in which different numbers and groups nodes were given access to the product at once.

It wouldn&t be unreasonable to guess that under these basic conditions, giving it to as many people as possible (not everyone, since thatnot realistic) would be the right move. But the model showed that this isn&t the case, and in fact creating a few concentrated clusters of nodes had the best results.

If you think about it, it becomes clear why: When you make it available to a large number of people, the next thing that happens is a large die-off of nodes that didn&t have enough friends at the start or whose friends weren&t active enough. This die-off limits the reach of other nearby nodes, which then die off as well, and although it doesn&t start an extinction-level event for the virtual app, it does permanently limit its reach due to the number of people who have churned.

On the other hand, if you seed a few clusters that are self-sufficient and keep usage high, then introduce it to others adjacent at a regular rate, you see steady growth, low churn, and a higher usage cap since far fewer people will have bounced off the product at the beginning.

You can see how this would work in real life: get the app to a few small, active communities (socially active photographers, celebrities, or influencers and their networks) and then create adjacent nodes through invitations sent out by existing users.

Turns out, lots of apps already do this! But now itsupported by science.

Will this affect the next big Facebook product rollout Probably not. Chances are the people in charge have a few other factors that figure into these decisions. But research like this, simulating crowds and group decision-making, will surely only increase in accuracy and usage.

The study, by FacebookShankar Iyer and Lada A. Adamic, will be presented at the International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications.