I suppose the purchase of NeoPets bodes well for the future of Gaiaonline as well. My 12yo daughter used to be a big NeoPets fan, but she's moved on to Gaiaonline because NeoPets isn't considered to be cool anymore. At least it's not cool to her crowd. So if MTV and others are on the hunt for her demographic, I suppose they'll be knocking on Gaiaonline's door next. I find these sites very interesting in that they do a pretty good job of incentifying people to stay on the site and be social without using a lot of fancy tech. These are not hard core gamer sites, no 3D accelerators required! But honestly, I don't really see how they can make money given the cost of maintaining the sites and the difficulty of converting free internet content into paid services. NeoPets has a number of product licensing deals, but I'd never heard that they were making a big profit. So being bought out as a marketing tool by MTV is actually a pretty happy ending for them.
The problem of cheating is one reason that I tend to like consoles a bit better for online gaming than PCs. I know, console games can be hacked too, but usually with a much greater effort required than a PC game. But I wouldn't call using unusual in-game tactics cheating. Knowingly modifying the code in some out-of-game fashion, that's cheating. Exploiting game bugs in an in-game fashion is grey at best, but at least all players would have equal access to said bugs until fixed. If the game masters rule that exploiting said bugs is cheating, then players should abide by that.
the result would be wastelands of nothing but empty houses.
Sounds like the perfect setting for yet another game set in a post-apocalyptic world! Players would then just run around blowing each other up, as usual...
It really sucks that all of those people are being laid off, but I wonder if in the bigger scheme of things this was Monolith's plan all along. Monolith knew that the MMORPG market was a tough one and that it was probably saturated. But they had one of the premiere properties, The Matrix. Maybe they just decided to finish the thing and see what happened in terms of popularity. If the title was successful and generated good buzz, they would then cash out and sell to someone with the deep pockets needed to keep it going. Many of us MMORPG players complain about monthly fees and buggy releases and expansions. But it really takes truckloads of money to develop, release, and maintain even a successful and popular MMORPG. Perhaps Monolith knew they couldn't do this over the long haul.
Actually, when I worked phone support, the most hated words I remember were, "You're going to have to reinstall Windows." Heck, I just told my dad that on the phone last night!
I agree, as long as MacOS X is tied to Apple specific hardware it is no more of a threat to Linux adoption than it is now. Afterall, most people buying Macs are not making a choice between a Mac and Linux based PC. They just want an easy to use computer for the most part that runs some mainstream software. Moving to Intel processors is a move meant to benefit Apple's bottom-line more than anything else. Macs are not likely to be less expensive than now, and if Apple plays its cards right, the average Mac user won't notice any difference between using a PPC Mac or an Intel Mac except hopefully the new Intel Macs will be even faster. If Apple can get faster CPUs for less money from Intel, then more profit for them.
Now all SOE has to do is add it to the Station Access payment plan and my $21.95 / month goes even further!
Hmmm, if they play this right, SOE may have the answer for churn in MMO games. If they keep enough interesting games in their stable and offer them all via Station Access, then players can just cycle from one to the other as they feel like it. This of course only works if the games are interesting and SOE doesn't piss people off with bad service.
If Microsoft is really interested in getting businesses to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Longhorn, then all they need to do is a couple of things. One make the upgrade procedure from 2K to Longhorn as smooth and painless as possible and two provide the upgrade at a very good price, like the cost of media or shipping or some other nominal fee. Seriously! If progress is being held up (or support is costing too much) then Microsoft needs to offer a deal that cannot be refused. It cost more to get new customers than to keep old ones. Besides, Office is where the real money is anyway, so keep em hooked by keeping them on Windows by making it a no brainer.
This is a lot of work for Microsoft programmers and designers to pull off and a lot of expense. But most of this work needs to be done anyway and in the long term it can only pay off for the company and for its customers. Longhorn is going to take a while to get here, so they might as well make it worth the effort.
While I still believe that Apple is very unlikely to allow MacOS X to run on non-Apple hardware, there is a scenario in which this makes sense. Conventional wisdom says that Apple wants to continue making money by selling hardware and software bundled together at a good profit margin. Running on Intel has the potential to allow Apple to more easily maintain their profit margin (or increase it) because presumably they are getting Intel chips for less than they were getting PPC chips.
But suppose that even with all of that being true, selling computer hardware is still a losing proposition? Even if Macs and iPods are made in China right now, maybe trying to make money on hardware just doesn't add up for Apple. Perhaps they'll pull a Lenovo move like IBM did and basically sell off the manufacturing business in order to focus on software where the profit margins are much higher. An Apple Lenovo would keep making Intel based Macs and Apple itself would make money from licensing MacOS X for those machines. Apple could then sell MacOS X for non-Apple hardware and still have Apple branded hardware in the market without all of the risk and headache.
Of course this is all wild speculation. They may already have similar arrangements with their manufacturers.
Unfortunately, the little guy is already out of luck. Doesn't it cost something on the order of $10K or more to file a patent these days? And in the current round of patent abuse, much of the trouble is being caused by scum sucking companies whose business plan is to gather up patents and then sue everyone who is doing anything remotely related to those patents. Often their first targets are, you guessed it, the little guys. So the new law appears to shift the balance from the scum sucking patent aggregators back to the big "evil" corporations. The little guy is still on the ground being trampled!
Indeed, unless Apple decides to release MacOS X on Intel as a separate product that runs on standard PC hardware, Apple on Intel is no more of a threat to Linux than it has been in the past. And since Apple makes a nice bit of change selling Macs as they are now, why should they want to kill that off? I suspect that creating the "Apple Experience" would be a lot harder without control of both the OS and the hardware. Apple isn't likely to give up that control anytime soon, they'd be crazy to do that since so much of their reputation is built on design and ease of use!.
This also covers their butts if they are really unable to manufacture enough consoles, or they have planned to throttle production to control the amount of money they lose on launch for each console (and of course, keep demand high).
... built right into the operating system... just like IE, and Windows Media Player...
Hope not! Given that Microsoft bought Connectix (the Virtual PC developer) a while back, they should have the expertise to build something that won't be another vector for worms and viruses. I don't recall Virtual PC needing to be built into Windows to work well.
Shock and awe aside, the real question here is does this mean that Windows will finally have some serious competition on the desktop? From what I've read so far, MacOS X can essentially run on white box PCs right now. Not that Apple has released or plans to release it that way, but in house they've already done it and said as much today. I think Gates and Balmer may well have to change their pants today!
But hold on! Don't celebrate just yet. Apple has made a lot of their money for years based on the fact that there is no Mac clone market, Jobs killed that off when he returned to the company. So unless they've had a big change of heart, I don't expect to see MacOS X on Intel running on anything other than Intel based Macs, at least officially. If all goes well, maybe we'll see MacOS X on HP PCs just as there are HP made iPods now, but wouldn't expect that out of the gate.
We all know that Linux has made impressive gains over the years, but for ease of use in a unix-like OS, nothing beats MacOS X. The day I can go out and buy a boxed copy of MacOS X and load it up on my homebrew box, could be the beginning of the end for Windows on the desktop. Ok ok, that's a little over the top, but Windows on the desktop hasn't had a threat like this since OS/2 3 and 4 about ten years ago and that was mainly because OS/2 actually ran some Windows apps better than Windows.
When I first started using computers back in college, the thing that struck me the most was not the number crunching power, but its usefulness as a communications tool when coupled with the internet and the usenet groups of the time and of course email. I thought it was really cool being able to discuss anything with people down the block or on the other side of the planet. I spent a lot of time doing just that.
Since that time, the depth of virtual worlds has only increased and holds real potential for providing the environment for new game experiences. I play games to escape reality and do fantastic things that I cannot do in real life. And being able to do those things with other real breathing people is the thing that keeps me coming back. Now I'm not the most social person in the world (hey this is/. afterall), but in virtual worlds I can experiment and be more than I am in real life. That's the hook that I think will keep people coming back. Allow people to do more interesting things in virtual communities with each other (not just blowing each other up) and they'll keep coming back. What shape will these things take? I don't know, but almost anything you can do with friends is better than doing it alone with NPCs.
Sadly, as others have posted already, most coders can be easily replaced by local or, increasingly, overseas workers. The creative jobs are a bit more secure. But for the ultimate in security (and reward and risk!), start your own company! People in the games industry who really want a piece of the profits are best served by getting their buddies together and forming their own companies. This has been done before, and I think remains one of the best options for those wanting a bigger piece of the profits that come from their hard work. Granted, noncompete clauses and nda issues may need to be resolved, but an entrepreneural path is the surest way to sink or swim based on your own hard work.
Outside of starting a company, forming a union is the only other alternative. But even with massive overseas outsourcing and a general erosion of wages in the IT industry (at least at the coding level), unionization simply has not been embraced in the tech fields.
Call me crazy, but I can't help but wonder if spinning off Fedora will make it easier for a future Red Hat buyout by Microsoft because of issues concerning the GPL, a license that Microsoft considers viral. Not too long ago Microsoft and Red Hat sat down for a little chat and shortly before that, Michael Dell put a whole bunch of his own money in Red Hat. Are these all connected? Maybe, maybe not, but it does make you go hmmmmm.
Oh no! Not the console will kill PC gaming discussion again! I used to think that console gaming would kill off PC gaming, and I diligently planned ahead for it. I bought a Sega Genesis, played games on it, but still a few PC titles snuck in and at some point I upgraded my PC, for professional reasons. Time moved on, I got a Sega Saturn and a Sony Playstation and played a lot of games on them both. PC gaming was dead this time for sure, right? Uh, not quite.
Well you know how this goes by now... I moved on to Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. I play games on them, even online! But the PC is still kicking and being upgraded (almost always for professional reasons). So what am I saying? It seems pretty clear that PC gaming is here to stay, the only real question is what shape PC games will take. I see web based (via Flash or other) games continuing to grow. And who knows, there may be some PC/Console/Cell Phone hybrids in the future too.
Console games are going to continue to outsell PC games. But I don't see the PC disappearing anytime soon as far as games are concerned.
Still Playing Chicken?
on
HD-Less PS3?
·
· Score: 1
Oh well, I guess Sony is still playing chicken with Microsoft wrt standard hd for the ps3. Right now it looks like Xbox 360 will ship with a hd, in fact I would guess that's a definite if Sony announces definitively no hd for ps3. We all remember what happened with the hd for ps2 and all of those broken support promises (Square Enix remembers too!). I think that this time Sony has to ship with the hard drive or else they really will open the door a little wider for MS to gain market share. Why? Because I think the next generation of games are really going to make use of permanent storage on the console like we've not seen before. So I think Sony needs to stop playing chicken and line up a good hard drive supplier. This time around I won't be buying any games that require me to go out and purchase a hard drive at the same time.
As many have already posted, Sony is almost certainly not selling a million PSPs per month. And they are losing a lot of money for each hardware sale. Both of these are strong incentives to reduce costs. Indeed, the slippage of the European release date may have more to do with throttling the money hemorrhage than a problem supplying PSPs to that market. So I would wildly speculate that what they really want to do is drop the price before Xmas and perhaps even act as a foil to the Xbox 360 release, not to mention compete a little better with the DS on price. In order to lower the price any further, they have to get production cost down. Finally, a 3rd party may have more success in certain quality issues like the oft mentioned dead pixel problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I know what I need to do! No need to work hard at all.
1. Build crappy but cheap/free 3D engine.
2. Put lots of cops/reporters/hookers/whatever in the game to kill.
3. Contact the news media/self righteous watchdogs/politicians about horrible violent game
4. Profit!!
See, I always got confused by the ??? part before, but now it is sooo easy! Why have I been wasting so much time?
I suppose the purchase of NeoPets bodes well for the future of Gaiaonline as well. My 12yo daughter used to be a big NeoPets fan, but she's moved on to Gaiaonline because NeoPets isn't considered to be cool anymore. At least it's not cool to her crowd. So if MTV and others are on the hunt for her demographic, I suppose they'll be knocking on Gaiaonline's door next. I find these sites very interesting in that they do a pretty good job of incentifying people to stay on the site and be social without using a lot of fancy tech. These are not hard core gamer sites, no 3D accelerators required! But honestly, I don't really see how they can make money given the cost of maintaining the sites and the difficulty of converting free internet content into paid services. NeoPets has a number of product licensing deals, but I'd never heard that they were making a big profit. So being bought out as a marketing tool by MTV is actually a pretty happy ending for them.
The problem of cheating is one reason that I tend to like consoles a bit better for online gaming than PCs. I know, console games can be hacked too, but usually with a much greater effort required than a PC game. But I wouldn't call using unusual in-game tactics cheating. Knowingly modifying the code in some out-of-game fashion, that's cheating. Exploiting game bugs in an in-game fashion is grey at best, but at least all players would have equal access to said bugs until fixed. If the game masters rule that exploiting said bugs is cheating, then players should abide by that.
the result would be wastelands of nothing but empty houses.
Sounds like the perfect setting for yet another game set in a post-apocalyptic world! Players would then just run around blowing each other up, as usual...
It really sucks that all of those people are being laid off, but I wonder if in the bigger scheme of things this was Monolith's plan all along. Monolith knew that the MMORPG market was a tough one and that it was probably saturated. But they had one of the premiere properties, The Matrix. Maybe they just decided to finish the thing and see what happened in terms of popularity. If the title was successful and generated good buzz, they would then cash out and sell to someone with the deep pockets needed to keep it going. Many of us MMORPG players complain about monthly fees and buggy releases and expansions. But it really takes truckloads of money to develop, release, and maintain even a successful and popular MMORPG. Perhaps Monolith knew they couldn't do this over the long haul.
Well, just my wild speculations...
Actually, when I worked phone support, the most hated words I remember were, "You're going to have to reinstall Windows." Heck, I just told my dad that on the phone last night!
I agree, as long as MacOS X is tied to Apple specific hardware it is no more of a threat to Linux adoption than it is now. Afterall, most people buying Macs are not making a choice between a Mac and Linux based PC. They just want an easy to use computer for the most part that runs some mainstream software. Moving to Intel processors is a move meant to benefit Apple's bottom-line more than anything else. Macs are not likely to be less expensive than now, and if Apple plays its cards right, the average Mac user won't notice any difference between using a PPC Mac or an Intel Mac except hopefully the new Intel Macs will be even faster. If Apple can get faster CPUs for less money from Intel, then more profit for them.
Now all SOE has to do is add it to the Station Access payment plan and my $21.95 / month goes even further!
Hmmm, if they play this right, SOE may have the answer for churn in MMO games. If they keep enough interesting games in their stable and offer them all via Station Access, then players can just cycle from one to the other as they feel like it. This of course only works if the games are interesting and SOE doesn't piss people off with bad service.
This is good news, but I'll still be buying 2600 with cash, thank you very much!
Err, not that I read that, that is...uh yeah...
If Microsoft is really interested in getting businesses to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Longhorn, then all they need to do is a couple of things. One make the upgrade procedure from 2K to Longhorn as smooth and painless as possible and two provide the upgrade at a very good price, like the cost of media or shipping or some other nominal fee. Seriously! If progress is being held up (or support is costing too much) then Microsoft needs to offer a deal that cannot be refused. It cost more to get new customers than to keep old ones. Besides, Office is where the real money is anyway, so keep em hooked by keeping them on Windows by making it a no brainer.
This is a lot of work for Microsoft programmers and designers to pull off and a lot of expense. But most of this work needs to be done anyway and in the long term it can only pay off for the company and for its customers. Longhorn is going to take a while to get here, so they might as well make it worth the effort.
While I still believe that Apple is very unlikely to allow MacOS X to run on non-Apple hardware, there is a scenario in which this makes sense. Conventional wisdom says that Apple wants to continue making money by selling hardware and software bundled together at a good profit margin. Running on Intel has the potential to allow Apple to more easily maintain their profit margin (or increase it) because presumably they are getting Intel chips for less than they were getting PPC chips.
But suppose that even with all of that being true, selling computer hardware is still a losing proposition? Even if Macs and iPods are made in China right now, maybe trying to make money on hardware just doesn't add up for Apple. Perhaps they'll pull a Lenovo move like IBM did and basically sell off the manufacturing business in order to focus on software where the profit margins are much higher. An Apple Lenovo would keep making Intel based Macs and Apple itself would make money from licensing MacOS X for those machines. Apple could then sell MacOS X for non-Apple hardware and still have Apple branded hardware in the market without all of the risk and headache.
Of course this is all wild speculation. They may already have similar arrangements with their manufacturers.
Sure, they figure it out now that I'm married and totally committed, but noooooo, 15 years ago when I was 18 and single no one figured it out.
Heh heh! I hear you! But at least this gives me an excuse to say w00t! for the second time today!
Unfortunately, the little guy is already out of luck. Doesn't it cost something on the order of $10K or more to file a patent these days? And in the current round of patent abuse, much of the trouble is being caused by scum sucking companies whose business plan is to gather up patents and then sue everyone who is doing anything remotely related to those patents. Often their first targets are, you guessed it, the little guys. So the new law appears to shift the balance from the scum sucking patent aggregators back to the big "evil" corporations. The little guy is still on the ground being trampled!
It's a development language.
Yeah! w00t!
Indeed, unless Apple decides to release MacOS X on Intel as a separate product that runs on standard PC hardware, Apple on Intel is no more of a threat to Linux than it has been in the past. And since Apple makes a nice bit of change selling Macs as they are now, why should they want to kill that off? I suspect that creating the "Apple Experience" would be a lot harder without control of both the OS and the hardware. Apple isn't likely to give up that control anytime soon, they'd be crazy to do that since so much of their reputation is built on design and ease of use!.
This also covers their butts if they are really unable to manufacture enough consoles, or they have planned to throttle production to control the amount of money they lose on launch for each console (and of course, keep demand high).
Hope not! Given that Microsoft bought Connectix (the Virtual PC developer) a while back, they should have the expertise to build something that won't be another vector for worms and viruses. I don't recall Virtual PC needing to be built into Windows to work well.
Shock and awe aside, the real question here is does this mean that Windows will finally have some serious competition on the desktop? From what I've read so far, MacOS X can essentially run on white box PCs right now. Not that Apple has released or plans to release it that way, but in house they've already done it and said as much today. I think Gates and Balmer may well have to change their pants today!
But hold on! Don't celebrate just yet. Apple has made a lot of their money for years based on the fact that there is no Mac clone market, Jobs killed that off when he returned to the company. So unless they've had a big change of heart, I don't expect to see MacOS X on Intel running on anything other than Intel based Macs, at least officially. If all goes well, maybe we'll see MacOS X on HP PCs just as there are HP made iPods now, but wouldn't expect that out of the gate.
We all know that Linux has made impressive gains over the years, but for ease of use in a unix-like OS, nothing beats MacOS X. The day I can go out and buy a boxed copy of MacOS X and load it up on my homebrew box, could be the beginning of the end for Windows on the desktop. Ok ok, that's a little over the top, but Windows on the desktop hasn't had a threat like this since OS/2 3 and 4 about ten years ago and that was mainly because OS/2 actually ran some Windows apps better than Windows.
When I first started using computers back in college, the thing that struck me the most was not the number crunching power, but its usefulness as a communications tool when coupled with the internet and the usenet groups of the time and of course email. I thought it was really cool being able to discuss anything with people down the block or on the other side of the planet. I spent a lot of time doing just that.
/. afterall), but in virtual worlds I can experiment and be more than I am in real life. That's the hook that I think will keep people coming back. Allow people to do more interesting things in virtual communities with each other (not just blowing each other up) and they'll keep coming back. What shape will these things take? I don't know, but almost anything you can do with friends is better than doing it alone with NPCs.
Since that time, the depth of virtual worlds has only increased and holds real potential for providing the environment for new game experiences. I play games to escape reality and do fantastic things that I cannot do in real life. And being able to do those things with other real breathing people is the thing that keeps me coming back. Now I'm not the most social person in the world (hey this is
Sadly, as others have posted already, most coders can be easily replaced by local or, increasingly, overseas workers. The creative jobs are a bit more secure. But for the ultimate in security (and reward and risk!), start your own company! People in the games industry who really want a piece of the profits are best served by getting their buddies together and forming their own companies. This has been done before, and I think remains one of the best options for those wanting a bigger piece of the profits that come from their hard work. Granted, noncompete clauses and nda issues may need to be resolved, but an entrepreneural path is the surest way to sink or swim based on your own hard work.
Outside of starting a company, forming a union is the only other alternative. But even with massive overseas outsourcing and a general erosion of wages in the IT industry (at least at the coding level), unionization simply has not been embraced in the tech fields.
Call me crazy, but I can't help but wonder if spinning off Fedora will make it easier for a future Red Hat buyout by Microsoft because of issues concerning the GPL, a license that Microsoft considers viral. Not too long ago Microsoft and Red Hat sat down for a little chat and shortly before that, Michael Dell put a whole bunch of his own money in Red Hat. Are these all connected? Maybe, maybe not, but it does make you go hmmmmm.
Oh no! Not the console will kill PC gaming discussion again! I used to think that console gaming would kill off PC gaming, and I diligently planned ahead for it. I bought a Sega Genesis, played games on it, but still a few PC titles snuck in and at some point I upgraded my PC, for professional reasons. Time moved on, I got a Sega Saturn and a Sony Playstation and played a lot of games on them both. PC gaming was dead this time for sure, right? Uh, not quite.
Well you know how this goes by now... I moved on to Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. I play games on them, even online! But the PC is still kicking and being upgraded (almost always for professional reasons). So what am I saying? It seems pretty clear that PC gaming is here to stay, the only real question is what shape PC games will take. I see web based (via Flash or other) games continuing to grow. And who knows, there may be some PC/Console/Cell Phone hybrids in the future too.
Console games are going to continue to outsell PC games. But I don't see the PC disappearing anytime soon as far as games are concerned.
Oh well, I guess Sony is still playing chicken with Microsoft wrt standard hd for the ps3. Right now it looks like Xbox 360 will ship with a hd, in fact I would guess that's a definite if Sony announces definitively no hd for ps3. We all remember what happened with the hd for ps2 and all of those broken support promises (Square Enix remembers too!). I think that this time Sony has to ship with the hard drive or else they really will open the door a little wider for MS to gain market share. Why? Because I think the next generation of games are really going to make use of permanent storage on the console like we've not seen before. So I think Sony needs to stop playing chicken and line up a good hard drive supplier. This time around I won't be buying any games that require me to go out and purchase a hard drive at the same time.
As many have already posted, Sony is almost certainly not selling a million PSPs per month. And they are losing a lot of money for each hardware sale. Both of these are strong incentives to reduce costs. Indeed, the slippage of the European release date may have more to do with throttling the money hemorrhage than a problem supplying PSPs to that market. So I would wildly speculate that what they really want to do is drop the price before Xmas and perhaps even act as a foil to the Xbox 360 release, not to mention compete a little better with the DS on price. In order to lower the price any further, they have to get production cost down. Finally, a 3rd party may have more success in certain quality issues like the oft mentioned dead pixel problems.
This of course is just wild speculation!
Gee. A little full of ourselves aren't we?
Maybe, but you gotta love the attitude. Who knows, maybe this thing has wings. And I like the title too, carnivals make people happy! Right?