AT&T said it has named former Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas to its board of directors, bringing the total number of members on the telecom giant’s board to 13.

“Luis is an accomplished executive and a terrific addition to our board,” AT&T chairman Bill Kennard said in a press release. “His leadership experience and expertise across broadband and wireless, government and the nonprofit sector align with our priorities to serve customers, investors and our communities.”

Ubiñas is currently lead director of video game giant Electronic Arts, serves on the board of publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) Tanger and is an adviser to several private and pre-IPO companies. 

Between 2008 and 2013 Ubiñas served as president of the Ford Foundation, the second largest foundation in the U.S. Prior to that he served 18 years with McKinsey & Co., including a stint as a senior partner and leader of the company's West Coast media practice. 

Ubiñas’ appointment comes a few days after AT&T’s Warner Media said it sold its mobile game unit Playdemic, Ltd. creator of Golf Clash, to EA for $1.4 billion in cash.  Separately, AT&T is in the process of merging WarnerMedia with Discovery Inc.  

MoffettNathanson initiated coverage of the video gaming sector Thursday, adding that sub-par broadband speeds in a large chunk of the country could affect growth at some of the biggest game makers. 

In a 104-page report, MoffettNathanson research analyst Clay Griffin issued “buy” ratings on top game makers Activision Blizzard and Take-Two Interactive and slapped a “neutral” rating on Electronic Arts. He outlined three “mega-trends” in the industry, two of which have at least some ties to the cable broadband business, with increased digitization of game distribution being the largest.

Griffin wrote that the movement from packaged games sold in stores to titles that can be directly downloaded to PCs has been going on for years, but that digital distribution of console games only recently passed 50% of total unit sales. While Griffin noted that Electronic Arts finished the last fiscal year with a 62% digital full game mix and Take-Two and Activision reported even higher percentages, he doesn’t see the total elimination of video game stores just yet. One of the reasons for that is the lack of availability of ultra-high broadband speeds throughout the country. 

“The convenience argument — ‘avoid the store, just click to buy’ — is diluted by the fact that modern games are huge files,” Griffin wrote. “Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War weighed in at 136 GB on XBox Series X/S. Broadband speeds have improved, but according to the FCC, about ⅓ of the country doesn’t yet have a connection capable of 100 Mbps.”

Griffin added that even at 100 Mbps, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War would take three hours to download.

President Joseph Biden has proposed spending about $100 billion for broadband deployment as part of his American Jobs Plan infrastructure package that would help close that digital divide. While the government’s definition of sufficient high-speed internet has been in the 25 Megabit per second range in the past, some Democrats have pushed for that minimum to be raised to 100 Mbps. 

Cable operators have noticed an uptick in take rates for higher speed broadband tiers during the pandemic, and many expect that trend to continue. Broadband speed has been a priority for cable operators for years — Comcast has increased the average speeds of its broadband service every year for the past 20 years, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said during the company’s Q1 earnings call.  Charter Communications said during its Q1 earnings call that most of its broadband customers opt for its entry-level 200 Mbps package. 

About a week ago (June 17), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIS) released an interactive map that shows key areas of broadband need across the country using data from public and private sources. According to that map, there are large pockets of the U.S. that have average broadband speeds of 25 Mbps or less. 

Though game developers have made it possible to start and play games without finishing the download and broadband speeds are expected to improve, game files will likely get bigger, too.  Data caps that limit downloads to 1 Terabyte per month seem huge on the surface, but could become another barrier, “especially as video streaming steadily replaces cable/satellite,” Griffin wrote.

Among gamers, that transition is already happening. 

Griffin cited a Deloitte study that showed 26% of Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2015) and 16% of Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) cited playing video games as their favorite entertainment activity. Watching TV shows or movies at home placed last for Generation Z (10%) and a close second for Millennials (18%, compared to 14% that picked listening to music). In comparison, 39% of Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) picked watching TV shows and movies at home as their favorite entertainment activity, with only 3% selecting video games.

While entertainment choices will likely shift once Generation Z gets older, that isn’t always the case, pointing to the 16% of Millennials who picked gaming as their favorite entertainment activity. 

“Over half of Millennials are now over 30 years old. Old enough where the “chains of habit” are starting to get pretty heavy,” Griffin wrote. “The implications of this are clear. Even if Gen Z were to look more like the Millennials do now a generation forward, Millennials and even Gen Xers, will undoubtedly be more involved with video games than Boomers are today.” 

Griffin referred to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s often-quoted remark that “people consume the media they fell in love with when they were 17 for the rest of their lives. We think there’s some credence to that idea.”

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Comcast confirmed that it and Electronic Arts will close down a beta service on April 12 that streams games to X1 set-tops and lets customers control the games via tablets and smartphones, but said the MSO remains interested in offering games via the platform.

DSL Reports was first to report that the beta trial was coming to an end. "EA pulled their financial and staffing commitment and has no intention of supporting the trial further," the report said, citing an industry source.

A Comcast spokesperson also confirmed that there is no currently plan to move forward with EA on a consumer launch, but added that "there was a lot of interest from X1 users” for the beta service, which was not available to all customers who are on X1.

"Our Xfinity Games trial was a beta that we used to experiment with gaming applications on X1.  We learned a lot and our curiosity and interest in gaming on the X1 platform remains high and we’ll continue to experiment.”

A web site with details about the trial is still active. With almost two weeks to go before the trial ends, it also remains an option when accessed via the Comcast Labs section on the X1 service.

Following tests with employees, Comcast and EA launched a consumer beta trial of the offering, called Xfinity Games powered by EA, in July 2015.

The free trial featured a batch of titles that could be streamed to IP-capable X1 boxes, including some ports of EA’s FIFA and PGA franchises and some home-grown games. Rather than running on a separate mobile app, users controlled games via a Web browser on their mobile devices, a decision that was supposed to reduce consumer friction for accessing the service.

At the time, Comcast and EA said they would use the beta to gather feedback before moving ahead on a commercial launch. An early review of the trial offering lamented its small library of titles and some lag issues.

It’s been a long time since Comcast and Electronic Arts began testing a service that brings “console-quality” games to X1, the MSO’s IP-capable video platform.

The trial, originally called Xfinity Games Powered by Origin, first appeared back in the second half of 2013, enabling a select group of Comcast invitees to play games on X1 using remote controls and mobile apps to control the action. 

According to DSL Reports, the service is nearing the launch phase. Citing an unnamed source familiar with the plan, DSL reports said Comcast and EA will offer a rotating package of about 50 games for about $10 per month, adding that it will be offered as a beta to about 100,000 subs by late July, and perhaps follow with a broad commercial launch by late August.  

Comcast isn’t commenting on the report.

It’s not clear why it’s taken this long for the service to launch or if this EA offering will be delivered over-the-top or as a managed IP service, but Comcast would certainly have a much larger X1 addressable to market for it now than it did back in 2013.  

Based on the MSO’s earlier estimation that it is deploying about 20,000 X1 boxes per day, Comcast should have about 10 million deployed by now (last fall, the MSO announced it had shipped 5 million X1 boxes).

As we mentioned in 2013, Comcast’s work with EA might remind some of The Sega Channel, the long-defunct subscription service that used cable connections and a specialized adapter to download game titles to  the 16-bit Sega Genesis console. The Sega Channel, originally backed by Time Warner Cable and Tele-Communications Inc. (now part of Comcast), was shut down in 1998. 

It also takes me back to circa 2001, when U.K.-based Pace trotted out a prototype set-top box (with a 40 GB hard drive) that integrated Sega's Dreamcast console. It was ahead of its time, not to mention clunky-looking...but it ran Crazy Taxi without issue when I had a chance to give it a test drive.