Elon Musk has had a busy few days. In addition to delivering a disappointing Q1 Tesla earnings report and a dramatic SpaceX rocket explosion, the “distractor in chief” managed to get into a spat with Microsoft, threatening legal action against the tech giant. Well, it seems this latest provocation may be having an effect on Xbox owners.
At issue is Twitter’s decision to charge for use of its API (application programming interface) which allows developers to easily integrate Twitter into their apps. Despite obviously having enough money to pay for the API, Microsoft is declining to do so and announced that their Digital Marketing Center platform will no longer support Twitter as of next week. Musk then fired back in a somewhat confusing manner, saying that Microsoft “trained [their AI] illegally using Twitter data” and that he planned to sue the company. Will that actually happen? Who knows, but Musk’s gonna Musk.
Well, it seems this little Microsoft-Twitter spat isn’t just affecting those using Microsoft’s marketing tools, it’s also spilling over into the Xbox realm as well. Following Musk’s lawsuit threat, Xbox announced players will no longer be able to post gameplay videos directly from their Xbox or the PC Game Bar to Twitter. That said, doing so via the Xbox mobile map hasn’t been disabled (yet).
“We have had to disable the ability to share game uploads to Twitter directly from the console and Game Bar on [PC games for] Windows. You can still share your favorite moments to Twitter via the Xbox app for Android and iOS.”
Will this be the beginning of a wider removal of Twitter integration from Xbox? It seems likely. If Microsoft refuses to pay for the Twitter API, they’ll likely remove Twitter integration as they have to update their Xbox firmware and apps. Of course, this isn’t really a huge imposition for players, but it’s always frustrating when corporate feuding results in features being taken away from consumers.
You can keep up with Elon Musk’s latest antics (and their possible gaming implications) right here.
