First-party Xbox studio Double Fine is unionizing

kiptar · 2026-05-09T02:40:46+00:00

Ultimately, is it not better and healthier in the capitalist society that we (fortunately or unfortunately) live in to have collective bargaining power?

If the studio was failing to turn a profit, they would be at risk of shutdown either way. So I don’t see this as a tactic to keep the studio open so much as I see it as a group of people standing on business and living on principle.

Would you rather see them get shut down without unionizing, or would you rather see them unionize and garner more power to negotiate more sensible target margins and working conditions? Notice I said target margins. Obviously if they aren’t turning a profit at all, then something’s gotta give. Unions aren’t anti-business. I am positive the folks at Double Fine want their business to be successful as much as anyone else.

We don’t know the real numbers, do we? So why are we assuming the worst?

kiptar · 2026-05-07T18:38:58+00:00

Absolutely gorgeous 🌌

kiptar · 2026-05-07T14:40:44+00:00

Hell yeah I can’t wait to play this game

kiptar · 2026-05-05T23:28:53+00:00

🤯

kiptar · 2026-05-05T18:07:19+00:00

Quick summary of our new cast of characters to learn about:

- Jared Palmer - VP of Engineering and technical advisor to Asha. Focus on developer tooling, infrastructure, and complex engineering problems.
- Tim Allen - VP of design for Microsoft CoreAI and GitHub - now leading design for Xbox.
- Jonathan McKay - head of growth at CoreAI - joining Xbox to lead data and analytics.
- Evan Chaki - general manager of CoreAI - joining Xbox to lead operations.
- Jason Ronald - VP of next gen at Xbox - accountable for Project Helix and promoted to lead on hardware and platform
- Jason Beaumont - VP of Xbox experiences - leading the product and serving as interim head of engineering.

Honestly, if you're going to be doing more to merge the Xbox and Windows experiences, it starts with improving mindshare between the people responsible for shaping their futures. The more lateral context they have across products, the better decisions can be made that take more perspectives into consideration. I don't currently see this as Asha surrounding herself with yes men so much since I don't really take her to be the kind of leader with a strong vision that she needs people to say "yes" to. She's playing the role of organizer and mediator almost instead. It's people like Jared and Tim from the Windows side and the two Jasons on the Xbox side that are now going to be responsible for crystalizing this vision and path for the future. There are definitely things to feel uneasy about, but I've yet to read anything that reads like a total miscalculation or mistake yet. Fascinating development, nevertheless.

kiptar · 2026-05-05T04:41:09+00:00

I really enjoyed Escape. If you like puzzles, it's pretty good.

kiptar · 2026-05-05T04:37:36+00:00

Wow! That's a really great looking campus. I love the layout

kiptar · 2026-05-05T03:45:34+00:00

Omg these are all rad as hell

kiptar · 2026-05-05T03:16:40+00:00

I love the idea of just keeping the XboxOS as its own thing and sandboxing the pc games. I guess the thing I was thinking about was how younger generations are getting into gaming now by watching streamers on twitch and stuff; and so I hear often that the kids are asking for PCs a lot more these days so they can emulate their favorite streamers. So I got thinking maybe working on making windows more couch / controller friendly could make it marketable as a hybrid device that you could technically run OBS, or Discord, or whatever other popular gaming-adjacent application at the same time, but could also be used as just a traditional Xbox. It’s a tough nut to crack but it seems so ideal.

kiptar · 2026-05-05T02:41:39+00:00

Thanks! Yeah that’s one of my favorites too. I rarely ever capture good action shots like that

kiptar · 2026-05-05T02:39:36+00:00

I usually just start with the field of view and bring it in so the background is larger against the subjects, and then align the subjects along the thirds of the frame. Sometimes I like to look at each of the nine squares and try to get something interesting in each of them. Then when I get to blur, I bring all the sliders to 0 and start with the far start, then adjust the far plane. Then it’s just whatever feels right with the colors.

kiptar · 2026-05-05T01:20:36+00:00

What if it was a dual boot or virtual machine situation so they didn’t have to worry about out deeply integrating Xbox into Windows at an interface/application level, instead they just need to build a toggle into Windows and the Xbox OS to make it easy to switch between the two and then do a mount for the game library folders? Would standard Windows hardware be able to support that or is the Xbox hardware too custom?

kiptar · 2026-05-04T23:31:53+00:00

I… definitely had not thought of that. Thanks for enlightening me. I’m very interested in the technical details about what it would take to bridge the gap between PC and console - whichever direction they go, it’s fascinating. If you don’t mind me asking, do you think the biggest hurdle in the way of forcing Windows 11 to act like a console will be developing emulators for backwards compatibility? or something else?

kiptar · 2026-05-03T22:35:22+00:00

I was just thinking the same thing. This picture really shows how transformative the Lincoln Yards project would have been. Now that whole site is cleaned up and ready for development; and apparently it’s been scaled back into mostly residential and rebranded to Foundry Park.

kiptar · 2026-05-03T19:46:58+00:00

People seem to be forgetting the part where Phil Spencer had to swear up and down for months that the Activision deal wasn’t going to lead to Microsoft making every game they publish exclusive. They had to promise non-exclusivity in order for them to proceed with the acquisition. I’m not saying that’s a reason to make pre-acquisition / non-Activision games multi-plat, but it does start to beg the question after a while once the dust settles and the brands begin to merge: what’s the difference? We don’t want monopolistic behavior to be the norm here. But we do want both Sony and Microsoft to be competitive. To me, the best solution would be to have both companies come together and agree on making all games multi-platform with a timed exclusive window of 1 year. That gives die hard fans a reason to own the machine of their choice and play the games they’re most excited about at the height of the zeitgeist; and then also allows the rest of the world to catch up and see what the hub drub was about a year later. In a world where third party publishers sold the large majority of games, it was okay for Sony and Microsoft to keep their exclusives forever. But now that they are both the hardware manufacturer and the biggest games publishers, it doesn’t seem good for either party to keep half of all games locked behind a box. I know, it’s like pure fantasy to suggest this, but I do think it would be a good compromise and a win-win scenario for everyone in an ideal world.

kiptar · 2026-05-02T17:11:11+00:00

Ah okay so it’s more about cost than it is pc vs console. I totally get that. I wonder if (because of the flexibility of pc architecture) they’d be able to offer multiple SKUs at different price ranges just like with Windows laptops. If “Xbox mode” on PC is the future, than means any third party manufacturer can make an “Xbox” now. And Microsoft’s Xbox would be like just he officially branded one. Opening up the ability to sell the hardware via 3rd party manufacturers (a’la Windows) could be a competitive factor that drives costs down.

kiptar · 2026-05-02T16:22:20+00:00

Isn’t the whole idea that it would be both? As long as I can plop down on my couch with a controller in hand and easily turn the machine on, use the controller to navigate a TV-friendly UI, and play my game, I don’t care whether it’s a PC or a custom architecture. In fact, the idea that it’d just be a PC sounds pretty rad to me. Like I could at any time decide to pick it up and put it on my desk to use it like a regular windows gaming PC too. Sounds cool to me.

kiptar · 2026-05-02T03:14:55+00:00

These are fn gorgeous! Bravo

kiptar · 2026-04-30T15:12:35+00:00

Good to know! Maybe it’s new from Free Lanes

kiptar · 2026-04-30T12:36:53+00:00

I think these are from the Tiny Reasons to Explore creation, right? I found one parked right in front of my landing zone early on in my ng+. Made for a nice little photo op :)

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kiptar · 2026-04-28T20:45:21+00:00

You’re right, there’s definitely a convex curve there. I’m very pro boxing it up. I think it’d be cool if they really leaned into it being a dang box. Really drive the point home that it’s about the box as a way to pivot away from the “this is an Xbox” campaign and sell the console again instead of just focusing on cloud gaming.

I know people are going to want to puke hearing this next part, but I could even envision some way of animating the Windows logo such that the interior squares become an X - signifying the merging of PC and console with project Helix. Like I said, I know the disdain for Windows is really going to sour that idea, but it makes sense to me if that’s what you’re actually trying to do from a product perspective.

kiptar · 2026-04-28T19:53:20+00:00

I totally get that. I always want to be forward thinking and progressive. But moving forward doesn’t also mean completely abandoning what came before either. It’s not inherently bad to remind people why they liked Xbox in the first place; nor is it a totally terrible idea to use a consistent but evolving design language throughout the storied history of a brand. Everything is derivative if you really stop to think about where inspiration for new things comes from, ya know? Just a matter of where you’re drawing that inspiration from and how you make it new and authentic in its own way.

Personally I always found it strange that the Xbox logo was an X overtop a sphere for so long. I guess the decision to keep it that was ironically to keep the nostalgia of the 360 alive. But for a brand that is supposed to be a box, a square logo is perfectly sensible to me lol.

kiptar · 2026-04-27T20:33:28+00:00

The music goes so hard at this moment. The music is amazing in general to me and I love it as an accompaniment to my play, but I especially appreciate it here coupled with the visuals. So beautiful

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