Facebook has been funding service providers in developing countries for some time now.
One example is MPT, a mobile network in Myanmar. MPT provides zero-rated Facebook access, ensuring that Myanmar's populace will choose Facebook over any less-scummy competitors—and Facebook provides so many services at this point that there's little reason to ever leave the site, especially when doing so will cost you. Facebook is the primary—if not only—source for messaging, digital marketplaces, news, and more; in conversation, "Facebook" is used synonymously with "the internet".
Facebook corners emerging markets like this and ensures that they continue to add to their user counts and become the go-to marketing avenue for each—and it'll continue this way until they run out of markets.
Presumably they've just decided that referencing Notch any more than they are legally-obligated to will bring them more problems than benefits.
So, yeah, CYA mode.
There are going to be a lot of people saying that Microsoft are "pandering to snowflakes" (or whatever the current jargon is) but any time a company "takes a step for more inclusivity" or the like it's only ever been about optics. They've never really cared about anyone's cause—save their own.
...Nintendo whining that they "only" make 40 billion as opposed to 50 billion (give me an effing break) doesn't make them look to good either IMHO.
You've misread the article. Nintendo may have published this game, but CyberAgent Inc. are the whining developers here:
...Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally.
I'm not expecting it to actually be cost-effective for consumers, I'm saying that their best advertising angle is CLAIMING that it is.
In order for it to look good next to buying a $1k+ Alienware monstrosity, it just needs to cost less than $500 per year, and they can say "Over 2 years of our service is cheaper than this PC! Plus, you'll never have to mess with hardware!"
It's not as good as having the hardware, no. But it's better than suffering through abysmal performance at bottomed-out settings on something that was never meant for gaming.
Lag from streaming gameplay is much better than the midpoint of "can't run it at all on my hardware" and "running it maxed out at 144fps", by virtue of being playable and running at higher settings, so they can sell it to those who already have capable rigs as "Cheaper than the equivalent gaming laptop! (for the first however-many months)", and they can potentially ALSO sell it to the netbook/prebuilt-home-office-computer crowd as "Cheaper than buying a prebuilt and easier than building your own!"
They can compare the cost of 13 months ("Over a YEAR!") of service with the cost of a PC build (and they're free to make that build as exorbitant as they want). You could argue that, by comparing the service favorably to buying your own PC, they might be competing with their own hardware sales. However, I'd imagine the profit margin will be better for them on this service than it is on prebuilts with Nvidia cards, and I find it likely that anyone who's in the market for buying a GPU on its own either 1.) isn't going to care about this service at all, because they're happy with their rig, or 2.) will react favourably to the "cheaper than a gaming laptop" bullet point. If Nvidia see that potential competition as an issue, they may still be able to compare favourably to the cost of a "pro" console and a year of XBL/PSN.
All they have to do is shoot for a "budget option" angle, and people will find ways to justify latency/occasional downtime because it's cheaper for them (for now).
That said, after seeing how they handled the Shield line, I'll be surprised to see ANY adverts for this.
As much as I like to complain about micro$oft, I'm hard-pressed to fault them for this event, and certainly can't fault their response to it.
I'd say most of the blame lies on the staff and, more so, the policies at the institutions where the event occurred. Government and healthcare orgs are notoriously slow to update mission-critical systems, and while some of this blame can be placed on their reliance on custom software built for old environments or a lack of funds for upgrades, at the end of the day all institutions had been given the same end-of-service deadline, and a majority of them cleared it.
Hospitals are far from the only organisation to rely on frequently-antiquated specialty software and embedded devices, but they are perhaps the most critical example.
Those responsible for this study likely picked this species to serve as an indicator species. Indicator species must be indigenous to the area (check) and are generally the most susceptible to ecological upset (also check). In high-profile environmental disasters (like reactor leaks), factors such as bio-amplification and bio-accumulation may lead to delayed consequences throughout an ecosystem; indicator species are used as canaries of sorts.
This seems to me like a commonplace study being somewhat misconstrued and given a click-bait headline (in the traditional Slashdot manner).
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook has been funding service providers in developing countries for some time now.
One example is MPT, a mobile network in Myanmar. MPT provides zero-rated Facebook access, ensuring that Myanmar's populace will choose Facebook over any less-scummy competitors—and Facebook provides so many services at this point that there's little reason to ever leave the site, especially when doing so will cost you. Facebook is the primary—if not only—source for messaging, digital marketplaces, news, and more; in conversation, "Facebook" is used synonymously with "the internet".
Facebook corners emerging markets like this and ensures that they continue to add to their user counts and become the go-to marketing avenue for each—and it'll continue this way until they run out of markets.
Presumably they've just decided that referencing Notch any more than they are legally-obligated to will bring them more problems than benefits.
So, yeah, CYA mode.
There are going to be a lot of people saying that Microsoft are "pandering to snowflakes" (or whatever the current jargon is) but any time a company "takes a step for more inclusivity" or the like it's only ever been about optics.
They've never really cared about anyone's cause—save their own.
...Nintendo whining that they "only" make 40 billion as opposed to 50 billion (give me an effing break) doesn't make them look to good either IMHO.
You've misread the article. Nintendo may have published this game, but CyberAgent Inc. are the whining developers here:
...Nintendo responded to players' complaints about Dragalia's loot box economy by asking the developer to "adjust the game" to reduce how much a player might spend in the game to progress normally.
(emphasis mine)
This is honestly quite refreshing to see.
I'm not expecting it to actually be cost-effective for consumers, I'm saying that their best advertising angle is CLAIMING that it is.
In order for it to look good next to buying a $1k+ Alienware monstrosity, it just needs to cost less than $500 per year, and they can say "Over 2 years of our service is cheaper than this PC! Plus, you'll never have to mess with hardware!"
It's not as good as having the hardware, no. But it's better than suffering through abysmal performance at bottomed-out settings on something that was never meant for gaming.
Lag from streaming gameplay is much better than the midpoint of "can't run it at all on my hardware" and "running it maxed out at 144fps", by virtue of being playable and running at higher settings, so they can sell it to those who already have capable rigs as "Cheaper than the equivalent gaming laptop! (for the first however-many months)", and they can potentially ALSO sell it to the netbook/prebuilt-home-office-computer crowd as "Cheaper than buying a prebuilt and easier than building your own!"
They can compare the cost of 13 months ("Over a YEAR!") of service with the cost of a PC build (and they're free to make that build as exorbitant as they want). You could argue that, by comparing the service favorably to buying your own PC, they might be competing with their own hardware sales. However, I'd imagine the profit margin will be better for them on this service than it is on prebuilts with Nvidia cards, and I find it likely that anyone who's in the market for buying a GPU on its own either 1.) isn't going to care about this service at all, because they're happy with their rig, or 2.) will react favourably to the "cheaper than a gaming laptop" bullet point. If Nvidia see that potential competition as an issue, they may still be able to compare favourably to the cost of a "pro" console and a year of XBL/PSN.
All they have to do is shoot for a "budget option" angle, and people will find ways to justify latency/occasional downtime because it's cheaper for them (for now).
That said, after seeing how they handled the Shield line, I'll be surprised to see ANY adverts for this.
https://xkcd.com/792/
As much as I like to complain about micro$oft, I'm hard-pressed to fault them for this event, and certainly can't fault their response to it.
I'd say most of the blame lies on the staff and, more so, the policies at the institutions where the event occurred. Government and healthcare orgs are notoriously slow to update mission-critical systems, and while some of this blame can be placed on their reliance on custom software built for old environments or a lack of funds for upgrades, at the end of the day all institutions had been given the same end-of-service deadline, and a majority of them cleared it.
Hospitals are far from the only organisation to rely on frequently-antiquated specialty software and embedded devices, but they are perhaps the most critical example.
Those responsible for this study likely picked this species to serve as an indicator species. Indicator species must be indigenous to the area (check) and are generally the most susceptible to ecological upset (also check).
In high-profile environmental disasters (like reactor leaks), factors such as bio-amplification and bio-accumulation may lead to delayed consequences throughout an ecosystem; indicator species are used as canaries of sorts.
This seems to me like a commonplace study being somewhat misconstrued and given a click-bait headline (in the traditional Slashdot manner).