The original product was ungainly, over-budget and nearly canceled. Here’s how it became a hit and reshaped an industry.

By Dina Bass

The box looked like an old VCR, the controller was comically large, and it was made by one of the most boring companies on earth. Somehow, the Xbox triumphed and gave Microsoft Corp. the first — and last — successful video game console brand from an American company since Atari.

Twenty years later, Bloomberg asked two dozen people instrumental in creating the Xbox to recount how they did it. Microsoft broke into an industry dominated by Japanese companies and reshaped the business around shooting games and online play. Efforts by Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google to crack the industry in the years since have come nowhere close. …

By Ben Steverman

The number of Americans getting divorced plummeted last year, while the marriage rate also dropped precipitously as thousands of weddings were postponed or canceled, according to a new study.

The early look at Covid-19’s effect on U.S. divorce and marriage statistics comes from Bowling Green State University’s Center for Family and Demographic Research, which analyzed five states that have released monthly numbers for much of last year.

The data contradict early predictions that Covid-19 and the stresses of quarantine would cause divorce rates to surge.

In Florida, the largest state analyzed, marriage numbers from March through September were 33% lower than researchers would have expected based on previous years’ trends. …

By Ellen Milligan and Jonathan Browning

A U.K. judge blocked Julian Assange’s extradition, citing the risk of his suicide in a U.S. jail, in a decision that gives the WikiLeaks founder a legal victory after close to a decade of imprisonment or self-imposed exile.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled Monday that his extradition to face espionage charges would be oppressive because of the 49-year-old’s mental health, saying he was “a depressed and sometimes despairing man genuinely fearful about his future.”

Assange could be released from the high-security Belmarsh prison as soon as Wednesday, when his lawyers will return to court to make what they say are the “strongest grounds to granting bail” in light of Monday’s ruling. …

By Kelly Gilblom and Christopher Palmeri

Hollywood is grappling with tough choices because of the devastating rise in Covid cases in the entertainment capital: whether to restart film and TV production following a holiday break.

With Los Angeles County hospitals and health officials recommending a temporary pause in work where possible, some studios have opted to delay resuming work on shows that were on hiatus for the holidays. A major labor union, SAG-AFTRA, warned members that sets could be closed until at least the third week of January. Its leaders are assessing whether a longer pause is necessary.

Though the industry has taken steps to ensure filming is safe, a surge of new Covid cases demonstrates that the progress is fragile. One positive test result on set can shut down a whole production, costing millions and risking the safety of dozens. However, extreme caution also makes it harder for the beleaguered business to return to economic health. …

By Steven Church

Going bankrupt is expensive — especially for small businesses. As the pandemic intensified, even companies with enough cash to try to reorganize in court lost faith that they’d be able to stay open after cutting their debts.

On March 28, Carol and Henry Huffman of Pike Creek, Delaware, simply closed down their specialty catering shop, the Cheese Chalet, and walked away rather than seek court protection from creditors and chance a reopening.

“Waiting was not an option,” Carol Huffman said in an interview. “They kept saying there might be another shutdown in the fall.”

Hundreds of thousands of small business owners made the same decision in 2020, according to researchers. Collectively, they laid off millions of employees and walked away from small stores, restaurants and other enterprises in a wave of silent closures. Next year may be different if the widespread rollout of a vaccine gives entrepreneurs hope that cutting debt under court oversight is once again worth it. …

More competition, unforgiving algorithms and the pandemic. “Customers don’t understand that any rating less than five stars crushes us.”

By Jacqueline Davalos

As you mull ordering some last-minute gifts or goodies, chew on this.

Amid the frenzied journeys to restock fridges or drop off stocking stuffers, drivers and shoppers for on-demand delivery apps like Shipt, DoorDash and Instacart must navigate a maze of pandemic-induced obstacles, any one of which can shrink their pay.

Long lines, product shortages and temperature checks are just a few in the age of Covid-19. …

Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, was the top creator on YouTube this year. Now he wants to sell you hamburgers.

By Lucas Shaw and Mark Bergen

In the fall of 2016, Jimmy Donaldson dropped out of college to try to solve one of the biggest mysteries in media: How exactly does a video go viral on YouTube? Donaldson, then 18, had been posting to the site since he was 12 without amassing much of an audience. But he was convinced he was close to unlocking the secrets of YouTube’s algorithm, the black box of rules and processes that determines what videos get recommended to viewers.

In the months that followed, Donaldson and a handful of his friends tried to crack the code. They conducted daily phone calls to analyze what videos went viral. They gave one another YouTube-related homework assignments, and they pestered successful channels for data about their most successful posts. “I woke up, I studied YouTube, I studied videos, I studied filmmaking, I went to bed and that was my life,” Donaldson recalled during a recent interview. …

By Todd Shields and Ben Brody

Facebook Inc. says it’s time to rethink the legal immunity that protects it from lawsuits over what users post online, a position that’s leaving smaller websites concerned about the cost of accepting more responsibility for what appears on their platforms.

The social-media giant has been prominent in the debate in Washington over the liability shield contained in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which may be the subject of a proposal by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission as soon as Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, President Donald Trump is expected to veto a defense bill in part because lawmakers refused to include a repeal of the protections. Congress is planning to override the veto but lawmakers have said they want to address the liability shield in the coming term. …