I'm not sure how much my readers have been following the unfolding Unity licensing disaster, but either way I won't recount the whole episode-- a zillion other sites already have that covered. One thing which did catch my eye, however, was the name of Unity's CEO: John Riccitiello. Somehow, I had no idea he ran that company.
Regular readers already know this, but for those who don't my parents were huge Minnesota Vikings fans in the 80s and 90s. They would always try to get me to watch, but I thought it was boring. On 9/9/99, my dad bought for himself a copy of "NFL 2K" for our freshly-purchased Dreamcast. But I got so into the game that I memorized essentially every player in the NFL, started attending plus avidly taking notes at Vikings training camps in Mankato, and very nearly abandoned university to work for them as a computer play analyst.
I undoubtedly spent upwards of two hundred hours playing each of the NFL 2Kx games, first on the Dreamcast and then on the Xbox. In 2004 however, I gave up the NFL, the Vikings, and gridiron video games for over a decade, cold turkey: EA's CEO, unwilling to compete on the free market with Sega's $20, superior NFL 2K5, went behind everyone's back and moneyhatted a $300 million exclusivity deal with the NFL under-the-table, to kill off NFL 2Kx.
That CEO? John Riccitiello. Now I've read he sold a bunch of Unity stock, right before this licensing announcement went public. Once a sleaze, always a sleaze.
Of course, all of it worked out for the best: with the NFL out of my life, I found a way to start watching the football team I had always played with in the early-mid 90's FIFA games on the Mega Drive and PC: S. S. Lazio. And we all know where that passion went, and how it continues to go today, and how it will continue to go forever, provided Lazio or Italian Football don't cuck or do something to piss me off.
The Big Two, Plus One
Another disaster I've been watching unfold involves the car companies. Here is an interview with the CEO of Ford. It sounds like fault sits on both sides: the union is making absurd demands-- don't I wish I could get a forty percent raise and only work four days per week!-- while the CEO is taking a match to billions and billions of dollars trying to force EeeVees on the disinterested public.
This is kind of an aside, but ever since the day Chrysler was bought by Fiat, I've never understood why people still say "The Big Three". Uh, don't you mean "The Big Two"? These days Chrysler is wrapped up in the Stellantis umbrella, which is headquartered in Amsterdam. Chrysler is no longer an American company, and hasn't been for many years.
In any event, I don't like CEOs, I don't like the modern car companies, I can't stand EeeVees, and I've always detested labor unions. Time to grab the popcorn and watch all of those forces collide!
Switch 2 Pro Deluxe Ultra
If these "Switch 2" rumors hold, I may wind up selling my PlayStation 5 and just consolidating the console side of things onto a single platform. This specific leak may be false, but even in the worst case the new Switch will be Ampere-based using one of those "Orin" SoC designs-- still a lot of performance per watt.
To match that "Matrix Awakens" rumor, all the system would need to be able to do is run the demo at ~500p, then "DLSS it" to the 1080p native resolution of the handheld screen. I don't think that sounds unrealistic. I particularly hope that "Mario 64 Castle with path traced lighting" demo rumor is true: wouldn't that be surreal? Even in the framerate was somewhat poor, it would take me back to all of the famous industry-wide tech demos over the ages, such as the Gamecube unveil one with all of the Marios running around.
While I'm on the topic of the video game industry "over the ages", I had never seen this before! Absolutely hilarious. ".... not funny."
Hollywood
I didn't realize the state of contemporary film was quite this bad-- watch the embedded video in particular. I've never been much into movies, so I have a large blind spot there. And I complain about video games being woke!