What to do about Xbox? + Fortifying COS Against the Homeless + Star Trek, Incubus!
The Raven Express #18 - 5/17/24
In this issue of The Raven Express, I talk about the recent developments around the Xbox operation following the closure of three popular studios, discuss COS’ war against the unhoused, reflect on 15 years since J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek and the new Incubus re-record of their 2001 classic with Morning View XXIII.
What to do about Xbox?
The internet has had a little over a week to digest and editorialize the recent closure of three game studios and the absorption of a fourth under the Microsoft/Xbox umbrella.
It’s been brutal on all sides — no one looks good after this series of decisions, a fact that’s particularly true of Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who many are calling for the head of.
Following the disastrous Xbox One TV-oriented reveal under predecessor Don Mattrick in an episode The Price is Right displayed on their new console before a single frame of any video game, Spencer has been a “hero of the gamers”, substantiated by nearly a decade of humble, gaming-first leadership.
Now Spencer is facing his own Price is Right moment.
After Microsoft’s first-party* lineup atrophied during the 2000s under Microsoft Game Studios head Shane Kim and then Mattrick, Spencer spent the past decade on a spending spree to bulk it up again. His reign kicked off with the $2.5 billion purchase of multi-platform cultural phenomenon Minecraft by tiny Swedish developer Mojang, a game that’s expanded and flourished under Microsoft’s stewardship.
In subsequent years, indie studios like Ninja Theory, Double Fine, Obsidian, inXile, Playground Games and more filled in the Xbox offering during a time when people were buying PlayStation 4s hand over fist, but not Xbox Ones. During this time, Microsoft also established their monthly Xbox Game Pass subscription which let you play all those games on-demand at any time.
But the wallet kept opening. In 2021, Microsoft dished out $7.5 billion to purchase Elder Scrolls and Fallout publisher Bethesda and just last year, they closed their nearly $70 billion purchase of gaming behemoth Activision Blizzard King, the maker of Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft and so many more iconic franchises.
Spencer had always pitched himself as a gamer first and a businessman second. In the past few months, he’s not held back on his subtle resentment of the fact that their Xbox business still needs to make money, especially as they’ve sunk billions into acquiring such a massive blanket of talent and building out infrastructure. But during this time, slumping year-over-year hardware sales spun up some pretty drastic rumors, like Microsoft was abandoning hardware entirely in favor of going third-party**.
In the decade after the disastrous Xbox One unveil, people still aren’t buying Xboxes. As altruistic as Microsoft and Spencer’s moves have been — or at least, how they’ve appeared — people are swapping out their PlayStation 4s for PlayStation 5s on pure momentum, not giving Microsoft’s offering much of a glance. This has put Spencer in a bit of a pickle because Mattrick’s critical failure came at the exact moment that platform holders were building robust long-term relationships with their gamers through digital game purchases and online play tied to digital profiles and friends lists — features that Xbox had once pioneered.
Ironically, despite their massive stable of developers, Xbox’s biggest problem is a lack of compelling games in a generation of console hardware that hasn’t seen many — or any — killer applications that get people excited to buy systems. Gears is tired. Halo Infinite immediately ran into problems after years of development hell. Some of their other original games have been crowd pleasers: Ghostwire: Tokyo, Psychonauts 2, Grounded, Pentiment and far more, but Microsoft still pushed ahead with misfires. Urban superpowered actioner Crackdown 3 debuted to middling reviews after years of development troubles while the lukewarm Forza Motorsport reboot seemed to offend everyone, especially the long-time fans who have been waiting most of a decade for a new installment.
I was always opposed to their massive Activision purchase. It seemed like a move that was less about making Xbox viable and more about saving the Call of Duty maker from dissolution or other, nastier buyout offers in the wake of reports that (now former) Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is a terrible human being. Now that the purchase has closed, Kotick is landing with a golden parachute that makes him nearly $400 million richer.
I had dreamt once that these studio closures — Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin and Alpha Dog Games, all carryover studios from the Bethesda purchase — would only come after Spencer’s reign had ended and a malevolent Mattrick-like had taken over. …and yet here we are. Microsoft gained Activision, one of the world’s largest publishers with a promise of casting light on their underserved IPs, but now they’re closing internal studios that were doing just that.
In so many ways, Spencer reminds me of his predecessor Ed Fries, Microsoft’s first gaming boss, who sought to prove to publishers that Windows was a valid gaming platform in the mid-90s to move them away from the much-older MS-DOS. He acquired game makers like Ensemble Studios (strategy game Age of Empires) and Bungie (first-person shooter Halo) that made Microsoft a reputable publisher and gave the Xbox a strong lineup. But Fries also invested in less-than-competent games from external studios that bolstered the portfolio, but not always in a good way. (Fries left Microsoft in 2004.)
Now any Xbox fan can worry about is which fan-favorite developers are going to face the axe next while the company as a whole mints tens of billions of dollars in net profit each and every quarter. Is it Ninja Theory after the imminent release of their hyper-cinematic, but niche Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga? Is it Obsidian for not shipping the next RPG sensation? Is it Double Fine before they’ve unveiled the next twisted adventure from the mind of LucasArts alum Tim Schafer?
I don’t know, but everyone’s afraid of Xbox right now, inside and out.
*First-party publishers and studios are game-makers owned by the platform holder that make games exclusively for the platform, like Santa Monica Studio and God of War for PlayStation or Turn 10 Studios and Forza Motorsport for Xbox.
**Third-party publishers/studios make games that aren’t tied to any specific platform exclusively, such as Electronic Arts, indie studios and, previously, Activision Blizzard King.
MEOW MEOW MEOW, SUBSCRIBE NOW.
- Captain Kirby Jack Raven, a.k.a. The alarm doesn’t go off for another half-hour dude, go back to sleep.
COS Pushes Back Against the Unhoused
A few weeks back, the Pikes Peak Library District proposed erecting a 7-foot fence around the Penrose Library. The location has become a magnet for the unhoused as their population has grown Downtown, where much of the city’s homeless aid, as well as the Springs Rescue Mission, reside. I’ve been to the Penrose Library several times in recent years for work and pleasure and I’ve witnessed the unhoused — who are still human beings, after all — improve their hygiene in the bathroom, scream out in the streets and otherwise loiter.
It’s been no surprise then, unfortunately, that the library was temporarily closed in 2023, as well as the bathrooms at the nearby bus terminal, due to methamphetamine contamination. It’s also no surprise then that this growing population has made people uncomfortable or contributed to actual security events around the facility, seemingly necessitating the need for the fence.
In the past year and a half, I’ve been tempted to write something about the lack of public bathrooms, especially Downtown, but then the Colorado Sun did just that, highlighting tight municipal budgets and the growing expense of repairing vandalism or decontaminating a facility after drug use.
As a multi-modal advocate and uber-pedestrian, something that I’m regularly challenged by is the lack of places to… well, pee while I’m out and about, a necessity for any person made difficult when you don’t have stable housing. This was exemplified personally in 2022 when I took on a 32-mile walk around the city and had to regularly enter private businesses to relieve my bladder, at least one of which required a keycode to access their bathrooms.
But in Downtown Colorado Springs, this problem is an acute one considering the number of restaurants. The bathrooms at the Acacia Park bandshell once seemed to be a reliable facility, but half of the time now, they’re locked. There’s no schedule posted and no information online. It’s no surprise that in lacking such a basic facility publicly, the unhoused will migrate to the Penrose Library because they have nowhere else to go, especially when they need to use the restrooms.
The defensiveness doesn’t end at seven-foot fences. Just this past December, ahead of a luncheon at Kinship Landing, I decided to check out the Pioneers Museum Annex at the Plaza of the Rockies as the museum proper undergoes an elaborate HVAC install and other improvements. After checking that out, as well as art on display in the main hall, I needed to use the restroom — something I have done without issue for six freaking years. Upon exiting, I was immediately greeted by a well-dressed security officer who inquired about my business in the building. Maybe it was because I was dressed down, but here I was now being accused of loitering when I’d been to this building several times in just the previous year to write stories about events happening there for the Indy.
I was tempted then to write immediately after the Plaza of the Rockies incident and found that contact information for the building, which is owned and managed by local developer Norwood, was hard to track down before my temper cooled. In so many words, yes, I wanted to talk to someone’s manager after that.
Downtown’s attitude toward homelessness is not unique in a time of growing inequality, drug use and abuse, despair and more. It’s also not shocking that Downtown is effectively the sole location, in a sprawling car-dependent city of nearly 200 square miles, where the unhoused can seek sanctuary or support.
At a February city council meeting, one that I attended in-person, many unhoused citizens and advocates spoke about the city’s lack of support after a vicious cold snap. When temperatures dipped below zero with frigid winds, weather that easily killed anyone exposed to it, the government had no plan and no support, even as the they spoke through tears of the incredible effort the city was putting into demolishing their homeless camps and annihilating their only worldly possessions. Several of the city councilors sat silent and stone-faced as citizens gave emotional testimony and many of those same councilors would go onto approve a purely symbolic anti-immigrant measure brought to the agenda by council member Dave Donelson that spurred even more hours of citizen comment. Several even remarked that they were treated so poorly at the Springs Rescue Mission, the city’s sole permanent homeless shelter, that it was similar to being at a concentration camp.
During several cold snaps this past, wet winter, an unhoused individual took refuge in my building’s laundry room, just down the hall. He’s been a regular in our neighborhood and I’ve seen him hop on and off the bus with all of his possessions in a bundle of bags that he hauls everywhere. But where else was he supposed to go when the weather was hazardous and CSPD’s HOTS team is slow to respond, if they’re available at all? Downtown is miles away and there are no facilities for the unhoused or support systems anywhere near here. Despite some helpful churches, nearly all stay closed during bad weather.
Building a fence around Penrose Library will certainly deflect vulnerable individuals from committing offensive or threatening deeds, but we are entering a period of pure reaction to the housing crisis — of literally building walls instead of opening doors. I know the city and the county takes homelessness seriously, to various degrees, but the need to support people in their time of need will always be more effective than brooming them along.
Until you provide better, more comprehensive options for the unhoused than to loiter at the Penrose Library, like… housing, they will continue to use it.
15 Years Ago, The “Star Trek” Reboot Kicked Off a Cinematic Cul-de-sac
I must’ve watched the above trailer for the Star Trek reboot film a hundred times before it premiered in May of 2009. Its hyper-kinetic handheld camera work, the whip-fast editing, that swelling, theater-pounding score by Two Steps From Hell? Muah! Beautiful! Exciting!
I’d consumed every crumb of new information about the film as it became available which gradually illuminated an elaborate and exciting new vision of a personal favorite science-fiction franchise. I even bought the lead-in comic book, Countdown, that tied together the canon of Picard-era Star Trek and the new film’s splintered timeline set nearly a century earlier under Kirk.
I grew up with syndicated, weekly episodes of The Next Generation in the 90s, but by the turn of the century, the franchise had become a turgid slog and creatively diminished, a property that only appealed to fanboys invested in its hundreds of episodes across five TV series and then ten movies. After Nemesis flopped in 2002, Paramount let Star Trek rest before signaling the need for fresh blood.
Out went 90s franchise master Rick Berman, in came TV producer J.J. Abrams, who had previously directed Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 3. Joining him to tell a prequel story of how Kirk and how his original Enterprise crew came together were writers Robert Orci (an admittedly huge Trek fan) and Alex Kurtzmann (not so much.)
Out went the timid movie budgets that made latter day Next Generation films look like overblown TV 2-parters, in came a 9-digit sum that gave the whole property a cinematic facelift and dramatically larger scope that better took advantage of the silver screen.
Rather than try to weave their new film through 40 years’ worth of existing lore, they built a new timeline that tossed nearly all of that out the window. (Abrams would repeat this trick with Star Wars a few years later when Disney de-canonized the Expanded Universe to make way for his new film.)
It was probably for the better: Star Trek embraced harder, more technical science fiction that endeared it to us nerds and Abrams was more of a fan of Star Wars’ more approachable action-oriented fantasy. Trying to reboot Trek while wondering about which character was where doing what because of a throw-away line in a single episode of a show was akin to tip-toeing through a minefield.
With a pitch perfect cast that brought the entire original series Enterprise crew together in less than two hours a little too conveniently, Star Trek wasn’t just a fun and enjoyable movie, it also made money. The future of this splintered “Kelvin” universe, separate from the original “Prime” universe, looked bright even without Abrams’ excessive use of anamorphic lens flares that quickly became a meme online.
Unfortunately, a disastrous, incoherent sequel (Star Trek Into Darkness) and a middling threequel (Star Trek Beyond) made less money and the Kelvin-verse ground to a halt. A fourth film has been stopped and started multiple times in the past decade with multiple combinations of screenplays and directors. Quentin Tarantino even tossed his hat in the ring to make a more “mature” flick, but quickly yanked it out when it became clear he just wanted a gangster-themed Star Trek flick based on an original series episode, but with a lot of swearing.
Despite bright starts, the cultural failure of Abrams’ Star Trek and Star Wars trilogies says much about his lack of consideration for story and his weakness as a storyteller. People have made far more articulate critiques about him than me, but his films are barely films — they’re often merely a series of scenes that only seem to exist to justify the next scene, a bit like a cinematic ChatGPT.
But even if the Kelvin-verse has ground to a halt, Star Trek hasn’t languished. Nearly half a dozen new Trek shows have dominated Paramount’s streaming service since 2017 to decent critical and fan acclaim with Alex Kurtzmann at the helm.
Even with Paramount’s corporate troubles, we’ll still have plenty of new Star Trek for years to come.
Incubus’ “Morning View XXIII” is a Rough Revisit
Rock band Incubus’ fourth full-length album, Morning View, built on their mainstream sound following their break out album, 1999’s Make Yourself, and it became one of the soundtracks of my short lived stint in art school. Recorded in a Malibu beach house, the album was — whether by mandate of their label or their youth — a tight, energetic 58-minute soundscape. It solidified Incubus as a Top Three band in my music roster for years to come.
But 23 years later, the band has revisited what some fans consider a “flawless” album and the results are… phew.
In those two-plus decades, the band has had an interesting journey. They dropped two more LPs (including my favorite, 2006’s Light Grenades) before going on a lengthy hiatus. They resurfaced with the sleepy If Not Now, When? in 2011, then two decent Trust Falls EPs and an eighth album so forgettable that it’s just called 8.
Morning View XXIII meows like a studio album, hitting a lot of the same emotional (and literal) notes as the original, but it barks like a live album with a mix that is distant, spacey and big, as if recorded in an empty theater. Several times, I expected the roar of crowd applause to fade in or for frontman Brandon Boyd to yell out a “c’mon, sing along!”
It lacks the urgency of the original album, sounding like the classic article being played at .75x speed, forewarned with an extended intro to the opening track “Nice to Know You.” It reminded me of those old YouTube videos that would slow even the most irresponsible pop songs down 800% or more to become pleasant ethereal drones.
Kilmore’s synths, and turntables feel lost in the sound, minus the interesting but weird new bass synth line in “Under My Umbrella”. Meanwhile, Boyd’s vocals sound way too front-and-center. He doesn’t just sound older, unable to reproduce the original album’s most defiant yells, which is completely understandable. The problem is the creative decisions he’s made to reinterpret how he pronounces, enunciates and otherwise presents the lyrics we’re all very familiar with in a kind of caricature of the original work (“Further down the reeee-vaaaaahhhhh.”) Even the call-and-response during the explosive outro to “Just A Phase” is so gated and loud that it sounds like Boyd’s running between microphones to pull it off.
“Aqueous Transmission”, the album’s zen, slow row of a conclusion — also, a fan favorite — can’t escape the album’s overly-layered and messy production either. It’s really not great.
I didn’t think Incubus would ever run out of ideas, but as they’ve changed their sound over the years from funky and in-your-face toward a mellower, less urgent tone, I feel proven wrong. I can see how this revisit would appeal to those who want to hear the boys age (plus a new girl, Nicole Row, who recently replaced long-time bassist Ben Kenney), but this is a misfire.
Maybe I just held on for hope longer than other fans who gave up after other twists in their career, but this messy revisit of what’s arguably their best album hits all the wrong notes.
The Raven’s Recommendation
This is something I’ve munched on since the last time we’ve chatted that I want to share with you.
Lots of us have thoughts on capitalism, for better and worse, but it’s fascinating to see breakdowns of how businesses thrive and fail. YouTuber ModernMBA discusses the economics of a lot of different consumer-oriented businesses and how companies can survive doing them, but for this episode, he’s changing the formula a little.
He starts out by tackling how the big players like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin operate, but then winds down to LA-native boutique donut businesses: one that’s pulling it off and one that’s… well, you’ll have to check it out yourself.
Lots of work and planning go into a donut business, much less making the pastries themselves, and it’s neat to experience this holistic view of how it all works.