GDC Taking Hits From Coronavirus
Publishers drop out of GDC 2020 and PAX East
EA has advised their staff to avoid GDC 2020 in San Fransisco according to EA employee Alex Sherer on LinkedIn. Sony, Oculus and Kojima Productions have also announced that they’ll be skipping the conference this year.
Capcom and Square Enix have also confirmed they will be not appear at PAX East. Square Enix specifically stated that their decision was made because of the coronavirus, while Capcom did not clarify why they decided to cancel their appearance.
- Coronavirus has hit the gaming industry hard, with numerous esports events being canceled entirely
- Several tech companies have pointed to coronavirus to explain why supplies are limited right now
EA issued a statement to Gamespot: “Having closely followed the global situation with Coronavirus and with the recent escalation of cases in new regions, we have decided to take additional steps to protect the wellbeing of our employees including the restriction of all non-essential travel.”
As a result, we are also canceling our official participation at GDC and limiting attendance to other events. We are continuing to monitor the situation and will adjust guidelines to our employees as we feel is appropriate.”
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
What animal mob in Minecraft accidentally served as the basis for the Creeper?
- Pig
- Chicken
- Sheep
- Wolf
The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today’s issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.
Daily Fact
Not Your Father’s Xbox
The next Xbox is being prepped for launch later this year, so it’s a good time to look back on the original Xbox.
The first Xbox got its name from DirectX, a collection of Windows multimedia APIs including their graphics API Direct3D. The Xbox was powered by a variant of the Windows NT kernel, and featured a custom version of DirectX 8.1.
The console launched in November of 2001 at a $299 price point, which sounds nuts by today’s standards, but was most likely heavily subsidised to be competitive with the PlayStation 2. Bill Gates didn’t originally want to compete directly with PlayStation, and would prefer to collaborate with Sony. Sony, of course, declined and decided to stick to its guns. The rest, as they say, is history.
The original Xbox was also the first console to feature a built-in hard drive as well as an ethernet port. At the time, this raised a few eyebrows and was seen as evidence of Microsoft misunderstanding the console market, but these days every console features internet connectivity and internal storage.
Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today’s fact.