What you need to know
- Recently, Twitter started charging a "starting fee" of $42,000 for companies to access its API features.
- As such, various Twitter integrations from third-party services are now being shut down.
- Microsoft pulled Twitter integrations from its ad delivery tools recently, with Musk threatening to sue the firm in response.
- Now, Microsoft has also pulled the ability to share gaming clips from Windows 11 and Xbox consoles directly.
The shitshow at Twitter continues.
Last year, Elon Musk was forced to purchase Twitter for $44 billion dollars, after entering into an agreement to acquire the firm on a whim, before getting near-immediate buyer's remorse. Twitter threatened legal action, leading to the begrudging acquisition, and life at Twitter has been rocky ever since.
Mass layoffs, policy revisions that promote hate speech, and desertion by advertisers continue to dog Twitter, as Musk desperately seeks profitability. Amidst all the chaos, another smaller casualty for Xbox fans has just been implemented.
Since the console's inception, the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S came baked with content-sharing capabilities. A flick of a button can capture the previous 30 seconds of content, making it a great way to share an epic 360 noscope or particularly exciting POTG in Overwatch. Using the Xbox DVR share flow, you could immediately upload that content to Twitter, showcasing your sick skillz to your pals. Sadly, that feature is going away.
We have had to disable the ability to share game uploads to Twitter directly from the console and Game Bar on Windows. You can still share your favorite moments to Twitter via the Xbox app for Android and iOS.April 20, 2023
Confirmed by the Xbox Twitter account, Microsoft announced that it has "had to disable" the ability to share game clips to Twitter directly from Xbox consoles and even the Xbox Game Bar on Windows 11 and 10. It remains to be seen if other similar integrations in PlayStation or Nintendo consoles will be affected as well.
Microsoft didn't offer a reason, but it's fairly obvious that this is due to Twitter's new policy of charging firms a starting fee of $42,000 dollars per month for API access. Given how many millions of users Microsoft has across Xbox consoles and Windows 10 and 11 PCs, it's not a stretch to expect that it no longer makes any business sense to maintain access to Twitter's APIs, which will cost the firm tens of thousands of pounds which could be spent on more productive things. The idea that Twitter would charge companies for content-sharing features is utterly absurd given that Twitter is all about, you know, social content — but absurd is the name of the game since Tesla's Elon Musk took over. Musk has even threatened to "sue" Microsoft after it removed similar integrations from its Bing Ads tools this past week.
In any case, Microsoft advises users to use the Xbox app on mobile to share clips directly from their own Twitter accounts. Microsoft could probably implement something similar on Xbox and Windows too unless Musk one day decides to start charging individuals for the privilege of tweeting, which isn't outside the realms of possibility given some of the other strange decisions being made at the company in recent years.
