Duke Nukem Forever Tops Vaporware List

Wired has an annual list of high-profile vaporware projects and the number of games on there is just depressing. Numbers 7, 6, 5, 2, and 1 are all videogame projects. When the Phantom is only #2, you know what has to be number 1. From the article: "Announced in 1997 and promised every year since, this game takes vaporware to new heights. Think about it, in just 13 months this game will have been in one form of development or another for a decade. This project started with a game based on the Quake 2 engine, then in 1999 it moved to the Unreal engine and has been stalled ever since."

Comments

Don't Panic

[someguy456]

Don't worry, it's painfully obvious that DNF will run on Vista running on a Phantom. In fact, these have the same launch day...

In other news...

[the_skywise]

Water is wet!

Although I think calling the new Legend of Zelda "vaporware" is off as its only late by... ooh...3 months.

google

[szembek]

I disagree with the author having the Google beta products in the list. Simply because a product doesn't change from beta to actual release for a while doesn't necessarily make it vaporware. Gmail has been implementing new features and improving ever since it was initially released as a 'beta'. I think I would file it under vaporware, if we kept reading slashdot posts about an upcoming mail service by Google only to never see anything. Also Google tends to use the term 'beta' quite loosely.

DNF

[singularity]

I just noticed this on the DNF FAQ:

1.8 - Will DNF be available on DVD?
This still has not been decided yet, however the chances of this happenning are slim. It is important to note that DVD's are not mainstream yet, at least not in the software industry.

Now, I almost never do any gaming on my computer, but I definitely think that any machine that is going to run DNF is going to have a DVD drive.

Amazing that this product has been in development so long that means of distribution have even changed.

Re:DNF

[bigbigbison]

To be fair, in America, there are still very few PC videogames released on DVD -- and when they are, it is usually as a more expensive "collector's edition" while the regular version is still released on CDs.

For those too lazy to RTFA

[ThomS]

The list: 10. High-def TiVo and TiVoToGo for Mac 9. AlphaGrip ergonomic keyboard/trackball 8. Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs 7. Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms 6. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 5. StarCraft Ghost 4. Microsoft's Vista and Internet Explorer 7 3. Google -- betas galore 2. Phantom Game Service 1. Duke Nukem Forever

For runners, DNF == Did Not Finish

[SurryMt]

Could there be a little similarity here?

The real vaporware

[dcapel]

is Desktop Linux. Sheesh, it is not the year of the Desktop Linux. It never will be. It will slowly grow, but just 'be' there. Yes, Martin Fink, I'm talking to you.

Re:The real vaporware

[aussersterne]

No, you don't get it, it works NOW. My friend, in a management position at Intel corp., recently called me to bitch about Windows. I overnighted him a Fedora Core 4 DVD.

He called me the next day, ready to try it out, apprehensive as hell. I told him not to sweat it, that he didn't even need me on the line.

He booted from DVD, "Next-buttoned" everything from then on. It detected his 3D accelerator, his flatscreen monitor, his wireless network, and all of his hardware and dropped him in a nice desktop.

He plugged in his late-model Brother laser printer. Autodetected upon plugin and away he went, printing.

He plugged in his USB flash drive to test out access to office files. BOOM, icon appears on desktop. He double-clicks and up pops a file manager window showing his files.

He double clicks on an MS Word file and it opens in OpenOffice, no problem.

He plugs in his scanner and asks what program he needs to use to scan. I tell him to start GIMP and use the acquire tool, just like he would in Photoshop. The nice, user-friendly scanner dialog was just like he was used to in windows, and he scans three or four test scans and says "all good!"

He wants to use his Olympus digital camera. I tell him to go for it, so he plugs it into USB and BOOM, an icon appears on his desktop. He starts copying images off of it.

He normally copies his images to DVD-RAM, and he's got an external DVD-RAM drive that he made by installing a Panasonic LFD-211 in a USB case. I get a little nervous about this one, but he plugs it in to his USB hub, inserts a 4.7GB disk, and BOOM, there it is on his desktop.

He drags-drops the files from his digital camera to the DVD-RAM drive, prints out the photo he'd scanned with gimp, and tells me that he has one last need: he's got to install MS Office, Photoshop CS, and FrameMaker.

FrameMaker and Office, I tell him, are a go. Photoshop CS, not so fast. Does he need the whole suite? No? Then does he have Photoshop 7 onsite? Can he use that? Yes? Then we have a go. I point him to the Codeweavers website and he buys Crossover Office for the price of pizza and soda delivery, well under the cost of similar software for Mac OS.

After downloading it, he double-clicks on the Crossover Office icon on his desktop. Up pops a window asking for his password, and a moment later, it's installed itself.

I tell him to insert the Office XP CD and double-click on the "Setup" icon, just like he would in Windows. He does, and a few minutes later, he's got Office XP installed, including completed activation. He quickly does the same for FrameMaker 7 and Photoshop 7.

He begins to ask "how do I start these," and a moment later cuts himself off with, "oh never mind, they've gone into the start menu in a group called 'Windows Applications'."

He launches each one to test that it opens, saves, and prints files.

An hour and forty five minutes after he originally called, we've gone from nothing to a full Fedora desktop, complete with printer, scanner, digital camera, flash drive, DVD-RAM drive, and major Windows applications, and I haven't had to answer a SINGLE QUESTION and have instead been listening to him talk mostly about his family.

It's two weeks later, and I haven't had a SINGLE CALL from him asking for tech support help. His one comment, sent via e-mail:

"Man, I can't believe how fast Linux is. Starting about last year I was thinkin' this PC was due for a replacement request, but I guess it was just XP."

--

Linux is ready NOW. Five years ago, there were a few unmitigated optimists that refused to admit that Linux wasn't ready yet. Today, there are a few unmitigated cynics that refuse to admit that it became ready sometime in the last 24 months.

Weak, as usual

[Godai]

Every year they hash in a bunch of weak entries.

Personally, I don't consider something vapourware that's delayed from the end of the year in question to first quarter of the following. Maybe I'm picky, but I prefer my vapourware to be talking in years, not months. But every year, they pick at least one or two. Zelda being delayed 3 months does not, I think, get it the 'vapourware' sticker.

And c'mon, Google? That's a real strech. All the things they mention you can use just fine. By other people's definition, they're finished, but Google's fussy. That's not 'vapourware'. Geez, they must have been seriously hard up for ideas or something.

Starcraft: Ghost is more on the nose, though not in Duke Nuke Em's league. The Phantom is aptly named. Complaining about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD seems a touch premature I think, given how long it takes hardware standards to formalize, but at least there's a little substance there. TF2 has been in the works forever.

Vista, well, it's been delayed a couple of years so I guess it qualifies, even if it's one of those things that's guranteed to come out, in a way like nothing else on that list, even if does take another three years.