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Viacom Buys Xfire For $102 Million
The New York Times is reporting that communications company Viacom has purchased the Xfire gaming network for $102 Million. From the article: "Judy McGrath, the chief executive of MTV Networks, which will oversee Xfire, said it would stay focused on building a community for game players, but its technology might be adapted for broader network services. Xfire has attracted four million users since it was introduced in 2004. Of those, one million are active and spend 91 hours each month using the service. The company sells advertising on its software and Web site, both to video game makers and to mass market marketers, including Dodge, Pepsi and Unilever."
When they say said it would stay focused on building a community for game players, but its technology might be adapted for broader network services.
what do you think that will entail? I am concerned about bloating.
Xfire is an amazing program, and most people I know online use it constantly, but it's memory footprint has been growing far too quickly. Right now it's using 25MB RAM. For most people who run demanding games, this is a significant chunk of RAM.
The only reason I have heard people not using this program is because of it's use of RAM.
I am concerned 'broader services' will mean this problem will get even worse. One can only hope they make some optimizations to dynamically grab more RAM when they need it. I only use tha basic components of xfire, like the friend status list and the test messageing. They support a myriad of otehr features like voice chat and video, etc, but I dont want those features loaded!