01.20.25 |
film |
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I’ll never forget my first David Lynch movie and the one time I saw the visionary director in person.
Like many other budding teenage cinephiles, I was in a phase where I was actively seeking out “edgy” and “messed up” movies. It was the mid nineties, and I was on a tear: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, unrated cuts of Natural Born Killers, Scarface, and RoboCop. A friend recommended Blue Velvet as “dark shit”, so I rented it on VHS.
The film’s Rockwellian intro left me a little baffled. White picket fences, red roses, blue sky, fireman waving in slow motion — this was a dark film? But then a man watering the lawn had a stroke and fell to the ground. A nearby child looked confused by what was happening. A dog growled in slow motion as the camera pushed into the grass and the sound gave way to bugs gnawing and one of Lynch’s trademark drones. The transition from idyllic suburbia to dread piqued my interest. Lynch’s direction left me unsettled, even though nothing on screen was as explicit as the many other ultra violent movies I had watched prior.
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01.09.25 |
Gaming |
∞
It’s unsurprising to see Xbox fully embrace a multi-platform strategy. Lagging behind Sony and Nintendo in hardware sales and user base, Microsoft can ensure far larger revenue streams by porting its first party games to PS5 and Switch. It’s a strategy that reflects broader industry trends, as escalating development costs and a stagnating console market push publishers like Square Enix and even PlayStation away from long term exclusivity.
However, Microsoft’s Xbox ecosystem — comprising Xbox hardware, Game Pass, and the Windows PC Xbox app — is where they generate maximal revenue and retain full editorial control. Intra ecosystem Xbox keeps the full share of revenue from their own products, while taking a 30% cut from every non-Microsoft purchase. It’s also for now the only space where Microsoft can sell Game Pass and have the technical leverage to integrate a cloud centric, cross platform solution to suit their needs.
Yet the Xbox ecosystem itself feels increasingly under threat. Game Pass subscribers have plateaued, and Xbox Series S and X hardware sales are dropping precipitously.
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