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Microsoft Gambles Big on Hollywood-esque ‘Starfield’ Video Game 

Visitors wait for a film of the Starfield game at the Xbox booth at the Gamescom video game fair in Cologne, western Germany, on August 23, 2023. (AFP)
Visitors wait for a film of the Starfield game at the Xbox booth at the Gamescom video game fair in Cologne, western Germany, on August 23, 2023. (AFP)
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Microsoft Gambles Big on Hollywood-esque ‘Starfield’ Video Game 

Visitors wait for a film of the Starfield game at the Xbox booth at the Gamescom video game fair in Cologne, western Germany, on August 23, 2023. (AFP)
Visitors wait for a film of the Starfield game at the Xbox booth at the Gamescom video game fair in Cologne, western Germany, on August 23, 2023. (AFP)

"Starfield", one of the most-anticipated video games in years, launches worldwide on Wednesday with the hype -- and production standards -- of a Hollywood blockbuster.

And Microsoft has billions riding on its success.

The ever-evolving game is the tech giant's bid to lock players into its Xbox subscription service after some eye-poppingly enormous investments in the gaming sector, which is worth $200 billion globally.

A universe-spanning role-playing sci-fi game, "Starfield" is made by US studio Bethesda, which Microsoft bought as part of a $7.5 billion deal in 2020 to boost Xbox's appeal over Sony's PlayStation.

Microsoft is currently trying to get a $75-billion purchase of another studio, Activision Blizzard -- the makers of "Call of Duty" -- past regulators wary of rapid concentration in the sector.

The excitement for "Starfield" has been driven by a high rating of 87 out of 100 on review-aggregator Metacritic, based on early play-throughs by critics as well as strongly positive videos by gamers on YouTube.

Scale of 'Star Wars'

Reviews praise its epic scale, multitude of interactive stories, engrossing first-person combat and the way it conjured ersatz interactive versions of movie franchises "Star Trek", "Star Wars" and "Blade Runner".

Its appeal underscores growing fascination with games that have become increasingly cinematic, complete with nuanced acting, storytelling involving moral dilemmas and big-budget, multi-year evolving storylines.

Those qualities mean they are essentially "interactive movies", said Simon Little, head of Video Games Europe, an umbrella organisation representing European games developers.

Other titles this year boasting those same Hollywood-esque qualities include "Hogwarts Legacy", made by Avalanche Studios owned by Warner Bros. and tapping into the Harry Potter universe.

Another is "Baldur's Gate 3", a role-playing game made by Belgium-based Larian Studios that ranks a near-perfect 96 on Metacritic after coming out last month for PCs. Its PlayStation version goes on sale on Wednesday, the same day "Starfield" is released for the Xbox.

While "Hogwarts Legacy" surpassed one billion dollars in sales within a couple of months of release, Microsoft is primarily using "Starfield" to lock players into its Xbox console.

The game will be available under the Xbox games library subscription service Game Pass, which costs $11 a month -- substantially less than the $70 price to buy the base version outright.

The strategy is to keep players paying monthly for massive online games such as "Starfield", which can be constantly added to, with new storylines injected into them for years or decades to come.

Decades of gameplay

"Unlike a book or a film, where it's written, it's finished and that's it, a big online game from a development point of view is never really finished," said Little, of Video Games Europe.

"It's always being enhanced, it's being tweaked, it's being extended, just to keep players engaged and interested, and playing and enjoying the game."

Bethesda, for instance, made the still hugely popular sword-and-sorcery adventure game "Skyrim", part of the "Elder Scrolls" franchise, 12 years ago. That game is in many ways a template and point of comparison for "Starfield".

"If you go and look at our player numbers on 'Skyrim' and how many millions of people played 'Skyrim' like last month, you realize that this is not a game that gets measured in hours," Bethesda vice president Peter Hines said last month at Gamescom, a German video games trade fair.

The studio said it expects "Starfield", which boasts 1,000 planets to explore, will be played for decades to come as new narratives are bolted on to it, expanding the current story that already takes more than 100 hours to complete.

Video game observers say the prospect of such generational games is all the more likely given advances in artificial intelligence which can make in-game characters respond in life-like fashion to players' actions and dialogue.

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New Brazil Law Restricts Use of Smartphones in Elementary and High Schools

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks at a ceremony for the signing of a bill that restricts the use of cellphones in schools nationwide, at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks at a ceremony for the signing of a bill that restricts the use of cellphones in schools nationwide, at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)
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New Brazil Law Restricts Use of Smartphones in Elementary and High Schools

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks at a ceremony for the signing of a bill that restricts the use of cellphones in schools nationwide, at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks at a ceremony for the signing of a bill that restricts the use of cellphones in schools nationwide, at the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday signed a bill restricting the use of smartphones at school, following a global trend for such limitations.

The move will impact students at elementary and high schools across the South American nation starting in February. It provides a legal framework to ensure students only use such devices in cases of emergency and danger, for educational purposes, or if they have disabilities and require them.

"We cannot allow humanism to be replaced by algorithms," Lula said in a closed ceremony at the presidential palace in the capital, Brasilia, adding that the bill "acknowledges the work of every serious person in education, everyone who wants to take care of children and teenagers in this country."

In May, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, a leading think-tank and university, said Brazil had more smartphones than people, with 258 million devices for a population of 203 million Brazilians. Local market researchers said last year that Brazilians spend 9 hours and 13 minutes per day on screens, one of the world's highest figures.

Education minister Camilo Santana told journalists that children are going online at early ages, making it harder for parents to keep track of what they do, and that restricting smartphones at school will help them.

The bill had rare support across the political spectrum, both from allies of leftist Lula and his far-right foe, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Many parents and students also approved the move. A survey released in October by Brazilian pollster Datafolha said that almost two-thirds of respondents supported banning the use of smartphones by children and teenagers at schools. More than three-quarters said those devices do more harm than good to their children.

"(Restricting cellphones) is tough, but necessary. It is useful for them to do searches for school, but to use it socially isn't good," said Ricardo Martins Ramos, 43, father of two girls and the owner of a hamburger restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. "Kids will interact more."

His 13-year-old daughter Isabela said her classmates struggled to focus during class because of their smartphones. She approved the move, but doesn't see it as enough to improve the learning environment for everyone.

"When the teacher lets you use the cellphone, it is because he wants you to do searches," she said. "There's still a lot of things that schools can't solve, such as bullying and harassment."

As of 2023, about two-thirds of Brazilian schools imposed some restriction on cellphone use, while 28% banned them entirely, according to a survey released in August by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee.

The Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, Maranhao and Goias have already passed local bills to ban such devices at schools. However, authorities have struggled to enforce these laws.

Authorities in Sao Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil, are discussing whether smartphones should be banned both in public and private schools.

Gabriele Alexandra Henriques Pinheiro, 25, works at a beauty parlor and is the mother of a boy diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. She also agrees with the restrictions, but says adults will continue to be a bad example of smartphone use for children.

"It is tough," she said. "I try to restrict the time my son watches any screens, but whenever I have a task to perform I have to use the smartphone to be able to do it all," she said.

Institutions, governments, parents and others have for years associated smartphone use by children with bullying, suicidal ideation, anxiety and loss of concentration necessary for learning. China moved last year to limit children’s use of smartphones, while France has in place a ban on smartphones in schools for kids aged six to 15.

Cellphone bans have gained traction across the United States, where eight states have passed laws or policies that ban or restrict cellphone use to try to curb student phone access and minimize distractions in classrooms.

An increasing number of parents across Europe who are concerned by evidence that smartphone use among young kids jeopardizes their safety and mental health.

A report published in September by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said one in four countries has already restricted the use of such devices at schools.

Last year in a US Senate hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents of children exploited, bullied or driven to self-harm via social media. He also noted Meta’s continued investments in "industrywide" efforts to protect children.