You've completely missed the point. The problem that the author (and various other developers in the iPhone community) are complaining about is the ranking of applications in the AppStore. Getting your app into the top 100 apps list is how you make the majority of your money, how you get noticed.
The problem is, criteria for the top 100 app is purely on units sold. A $5 app needs less sales to break even, but is also a lot less likely to enter the Top 100 (as it is currently decided). The complaint the developers are putting forward is to reform this Top 100 to something more sensible (something as simple as gross revenue would address this).
As it is now, most apps get priced at $1 so that they'll even have a chance to sell.
You can argue that there other ways to market your apps, and I would agree with you, but the top 100 is the main way to attract attention from iPhone customers, since the majority of them aren't spending their time reading reviews outside of the AppStore.
Fuck that. Why should I be forced to subsidize an artificially higher price for people or companies that can't operate as efficiently as others? If you want to pay the extra premium to support your local competitor, great, I wish you all the best, but don't force me to do the same. That's the beauty of a free market system.
Dear God I'm having trouble keeping track of all the mistakes in your one single post. Honestly, why bother commenting on things you don't know anything about? Did you even read the article?
Yeah, the 360 did not sell as much as EA expected to. But if you had read the article, you would have noted that they also said the same thing for the PSP and the PS2 (the lack of price drop adversely affect PS2 sales). I can't see why you would have a go at MS and not have a go at Sony.
I don't understand why people don't let up on the dreamcast references. This isn't 1999 anymore. And Microsoft isn't Sega. MS has deep pockets and has fully backing the 360. One thing you can count is that they won't fold up this battle. I don't expect the 360 to suddenly become the leader in the market, but it's definitely going to take a larger chunk of Sony's market this time around.
"They are going nuts over the PS3 devkits and are doing their best to avoid getting stuck doing 360 work". Are you shitting me? Have you actually developed for either of these platforms? No? Then please bite your tongue. Ea is definitely not going to let up on 360 development.
"The PS2 is flying off the shelves and it hasn't even dropped to 99 bucks yet." Again I refer you to the article. PS2 sales are sluggish this Christmas. Not that that's bad. The PS2 has a huge install base, but it is not selling as well as expected this holiday season.
You gotta remember, EA is not in it for one specific console. They will port as many of their games to as many consoles as possible. That's what they do. They're mass market, and they want to hit as many possible console as they can make a return on their investment on. I think the bigger issue here is that they didn't see this coming. The market has simply become saturated, and this dip in sales was inevitable.
I will agree with you on the Rev controller, but that's it. EA ain't pissed off at MS. If anything they should pissed off at themselves. Releasing crap like From Russia with Love. For shame. The market simply can't hold anymore. And EA will learn they can't keep popping yearly updates and sequels with the same success year in year out. After all, the bottom falls out, and we're seeing the beginning of it. You think the PS3 will solve everything next Christmas? If anything, they'll be a shortage, and at least the 360 will have a userbase of around 10 million.
Two comments. First, there several other examples of "free" MMO games. Second, it's probably not really free, as in you will have to buy things in game to improve your user experience (like in Project Entropia).
That's spot on. If anything the lack of drivers (and the difficulty in getting them installed) is what's holding Linux back.
Example: I'm constantly pushing Linux on people in the office. Not being an ass about, just regularly reminding them of what it can do. A co-worker decided to give it a go and install Mandrake on a laptop. He got almost everything set up within a day or two, having never used Linux before. Then he tried to get his wireless card working. For some reason Mandrake recognized his card, but didn't have the module available for his current kernel (the stock kernel from Mandrake btw).
Now, my co-worker's no lay-man. He's a decent programmer, and he set himself on the task of getting the driver working. He spent the next week fighting the OS to get his card working. He ended up learning how to recompile a kernel, and learning how modules work, and kernel versions and all that. The card is finally working, with various front-end guis installed to configure it as well. The point is, it's way too much work for the common pc user to have to go through to get the card working. And this is directly a driver's issue.
I know that's a feature that modules with a different kernel version than the currently compiled kernel won't work, but at the same time, requiring a recompilation of a driver because it's version 2.6.10 instead of 2.6.12 is ridiculous. It's not something that a normal user should be expected to do. Linux has a lot of catching up to do in this regard. And part of the responsibility falls on driver manufacturer's, part on the distributions, and part on the kernel writer's. It should be much simpler.
A couple years ago, I played through the whole koules game on whatever distro I was running at the time (I think it was Debian). Incidentally, it was the only game I ever got my ex-gf addicted to.
The package you're looking for is xkoules and should be available for whatever distro you're using.
Considering, Nintendo is "only" expecting to sell 4 million units by next march, and will "only" have 2 million units available at launch time (see this article), I think fulfilling 5 million pre-orders before the PSP launches will be a bit difficult. Wouldn't you agree?
However, I do agree that Nintendo will seriously outsell the PSP. I also think that the PSP will put a moderate dent into Nintendo's sales.
(Christ, I apologize for not using the preview button)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Can you guess what type of computer I'll purchase next?
Seriously, I nearly cried when I got outside in Far Cry, and everything started fucking up. I can't decide whether I want to install Doom 3 or just wait.
I know this isn't exactly on topic, but don't get a laptop for gaming.
My last two computers have been "gaming" laptop. It just isn't worth it. It really isn't. The cost of a laptop is so much higher than a desktop, and the performance is so much lower.
A Geforce4Go 5600 isn't anything like a Geforce 5600 FX. Laptops are essentially crippled by their graphic cards, no matter how hard Ati and nVidia try otherwise.
My biggest argument against laptop is that the graphic drivers aren't updated. nVidia specifically states on their driver pages that laptop users should get updated drivers from their manufacturers. Maybe this issue is limited to Toshiba, but my graphics card's drivers have not been updated once by Toshiba since I bought my laptop a year ago.
If you get a laptop, it will be fine for the first 6-8 months, but as soon as new games come out which rely on updated drivers, you will start missing out. I've tried upgrading my drivers, and all that does is create sub par performance and quite a few artifacts. Simply put, the graphic drivers are not optimized for laptops.
Having no protection won't cause people would rather pirate to game to suddenly decide to buy the game. I doubt it would increase sales. If anything, they would save on the small licensing fee they are paying for copy-protection software. If they're not going to put any protection, migth as well make the game available for free. If it's even easier to crack (all you have to do is download the iso), I believe sales would actually dip. Removing protection does not resolve the issue, the issue being the significant amount of sales lost to pirating.
Consoles have protection features as well. And it's just harder to get around them than for the pc. When the dreamcast's protection was cracked, the number of pirated dreamcast games exploded.
The solution is a strong protection which doesn't inconvenience the customer. I don't know if Erik has it all figured out, but it's a step in the right direction. Just because he acknowledges the inefficacy of weak protectipon doesn't mean they should just do away with it.
Few people wait two months to buy new games. Yes, patching issues do play a certain role, but it's a whole different subject. As he stated, most of the sales for new titles happen in the first few weeks.
If you develop a strong protection (and he has laid out methods to do so), then you know (to a certain degree of certainty) that your game will take longer to hack. Even two weeks can make a world of difference. If stronger protection begins to result in longer crack times, other developers will follow suit, and it will lead to longer delays for cracking.
There was this article on gamasutra a few years back about title for the ps1. This was when ps1 games were being heavily pirated. The developers went to great lengths to make their title harder to crack, using multiple consistency checks and introducing bugs when those checks failed. They wouldn't crash out, but once you progressed far along into the game, if you had a cracked copy, the game would start failing. It took about a month (my memory is vague on this) for the game to be fully cracked, and the developer reckoned they gained lots of extra sales from this delay.
Erik Simon's slideshow was really enlightening. It seems like the game industry is finally starting to realize that there are better methods to prevent pirated copies of games appearing in such time periods. The current copy-protections used are easily crackeable, and are usually more of an annoyance to legitimate customers than the pirating scene.
In his slideshow, Erik actually talks about the scene and how they function. It's nice to see that he is making an effort to understand how the enemy works, in order to develo pbetter methods to beat them.
Erik also makes an interesting observation. He says that there are only 12 people world-wide actual capable of cracking new protection codes in the "scene". That number seems a bit low, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was accurate.
Bioware's slideshow makes a strong emphasis on treating its employees with the proper amount of respect and courtesy. They use rewards to encourage good behavior, and keep all their employees informed of any major events involving the company. It's good to know that some companies out there still make an effort to treat their employees properly.
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You've completely missed the point. The problem that the author (and various other developers in the iPhone community) are complaining about is the ranking of applications in the AppStore. Getting your app into the top 100 apps list is how you make the majority of your money, how you get noticed.
The problem is, criteria for the top 100 app is purely on units sold. A $5 app needs less sales to break even, but is also a lot less likely to enter the Top 100 (as it is currently decided). The complaint the developers are putting forward is to reform this Top 100 to something more sensible (something as simple as gross revenue would address this).
As it is now, most apps get priced at $1 so that they'll even have a chance to sell.
You can argue that there other ways to market your apps, and I would agree with you, but the top 100 is the main way to attract attention from iPhone customers, since the majority of them aren't spending their time reading reviews outside of the AppStore.
Fuck that. Why should I be forced to subsidize an artificially higher price for people or companies that can't operate as efficiently as others? If you want to pay the extra premium to support your local competitor, great, I wish you all the best, but don't force me to do the same. That's the beauty of a free market system.
Dear God I'm having trouble keeping track of all the mistakes in your one single post. Honestly, why bother commenting on things you don't know anything about? Did you even read the article?
Yeah, the 360 did not sell as much as EA expected to. But if you had read the article, you would have noted that they also said the same thing for the PSP and the PS2 (the lack of price drop adversely affect PS2 sales). I can't see why you would have a go at MS and not have a go at Sony.
I don't understand why people don't let up on the dreamcast references. This isn't 1999 anymore. And Microsoft isn't Sega. MS has deep pockets and has fully backing the 360. One thing you can count is that they won't fold up this battle. I don't expect the 360 to suddenly become the leader in the market, but it's definitely going to take a larger chunk of Sony's market this time around.
"They are going nuts over the PS3 devkits and are doing their best to avoid getting stuck doing 360 work". Are you shitting me? Have you actually developed for either of these platforms? No? Then please bite your tongue. Ea is definitely not going to let up on 360 development.
"The PS2 is flying off the shelves and it hasn't even dropped to 99 bucks yet." Again I refer you to the article. PS2 sales are sluggish this Christmas. Not that that's bad. The PS2 has a huge install base, but it is not selling as well as expected this holiday season.
You gotta remember, EA is not in it for one specific console. They will port as many of their games to as many consoles as possible. That's what they do. They're mass market, and they want to hit as many possible console as they can make a return on their investment on. I think the bigger issue here is that they didn't see this coming. The market has simply become saturated, and this dip in sales was inevitable.
I will agree with you on the Rev controller, but that's it. EA ain't pissed off at MS. If anything they should pissed off at themselves. Releasing crap like From Russia with Love. For shame. The market simply can't hold anymore. And EA will learn they can't keep popping yearly updates and sequels with the same success year in year out. After all, the bottom falls out, and we're seeing the beginning of it. You think the PS3 will solve everything next Christmas? If anything, they'll be a shortage, and at least the 360 will have a userbase of around 10 million.
Two comments. First, there several other examples of "free" MMO games. Second, it's probably not really free, as in you will have to buy things in game to improve your user experience (like in Project Entropia).
For other examples, check out:
- Project Entropia http://www.project-entropia.com/
- Guild Wars http://www.guildwars.com/
- Roma Victor http://www.roma-victor.com/
I'm sure I was missing something. It sounded too funny to be true.
is this just a blip in Microsoft's dominance in controlling government software decisions?
Perhaps you've forgotten that Microsoft owns a sizeable amount of Corel and stands to profit from this deal anyways.
That's spot on. If anything the lack of drivers (and the difficulty in getting them installed) is what's holding Linux back.
Example: I'm constantly pushing Linux on people in the office. Not being an ass about, just regularly reminding them of what it can do. A co-worker decided to give it a go and install Mandrake on a laptop. He got almost everything set up within a day or two, having never used Linux before. Then he tried to get his wireless card working. For some reason Mandrake recognized his card, but didn't have the module available for his current kernel (the stock kernel from Mandrake btw).
Now, my co-worker's no lay-man. He's a decent programmer, and he set himself on the task of getting the driver working. He spent the next week fighting the OS to get his card working. He ended up learning how to recompile a kernel, and learning how modules work, and kernel versions and all that. The card is finally working, with various front-end guis installed to configure it as well. The point is, it's way too much work for the common pc user to have to go through to get the card working. And this is directly a driver's issue.
I know that's a feature that modules with a different kernel version than the currently compiled kernel won't work, but at the same time, requiring a recompilation of a driver because it's version 2.6.10 instead of 2.6.12 is ridiculous. It's not something that a normal user should be expected to do. Linux has a lot of catching up to do in this regard. And part of the responsibility falls on driver manufacturer's, part on the distributions, and part on the kernel writer's. It should be much simpler.
Webzen is the publisher for this game not the developer. The game's developer is Real Time Worlds.
A couple years ago, I played through the whole koules game on whatever distro I was running at the time (I think it was Debian). Incidentally, it was the only game I ever got my ex-gf addicted to.
The package you're looking for is xkoules and should be available for whatever distro you're using.
Considering, Nintendo is "only" expecting to sell 4 million units by next march, and will "only" have 2 million units available at launch time (see this article), I think fulfilling 5 million pre-orders before the PSP launches will be a bit difficult. Wouldn't you agree?
However, I do agree that Nintendo will seriously outsell the PSP. I also think that the PSP will put a moderate dent into Nintendo's sales.
Tell that to the PSP developers who have been told by Sony that they can't continuously stream data off the UMDs due to battery concerns.
Including game titles to be released in December:
Article
That's funny, I was actually wondering what games you would play on a powerbook...
(Christ, I apologize for not using the preview button)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Can you guess what type of computer I'll purchase next?
Seriously, I nearly cried when I got outside in Far Cry, and everything started fucking up. I can't decide whether I want to install Doom 3 or just wait.
I know this isn't exactly on topic, but don't get a laptop for gaming. My last two computers have been "gaming" laptop. It just isn't worth it. It really isn't. The cost of a laptop is so much higher than a desktop, and the performance is so much lower. A Geforce4Go 5600 isn't anything like a Geforce 5600 FX. Laptops are essentially crippled by their graphic cards, no matter how hard Ati and nVidia try otherwise. My biggest argument against laptop is that the graphic drivers aren't updated. nVidia specifically states on their driver pages that laptop users should get updated drivers from their manufacturers. Maybe this issue is limited to Toshiba, but my graphics card's drivers have not been updated once by Toshiba since I bought my laptop a year ago. If you get a laptop, it will be fine for the first 6-8 months, but as soon as new games come out which rely on updated drivers, you will start missing out. I've tried upgrading my drivers, and all that does is create sub par performance and quite a few artifacts. Simply put, the graphic drivers are not optimized for laptops.
Having no protection won't cause people would rather pirate to game to suddenly decide to buy the game. I doubt it would increase sales. If anything, they would save on the small licensing fee they are paying for copy-protection software. If they're not going to put any protection, migth as well make the game available for free. If it's even easier to crack (all you have to do is download the iso), I believe sales would actually dip. Removing protection does not resolve the issue, the issue being the significant amount of sales lost to pirating.
Consoles have protection features as well. And it's just harder to get around them than for the pc. When the dreamcast's protection was cracked, the number of pirated dreamcast games exploded.
The solution is a strong protection which doesn't inconvenience the customer. I don't know if Erik has it all figured out, but it's a step in the right direction. Just because he acknowledges the inefficacy of weak protectipon doesn't mean they should just do away with it.
Few people wait two months to buy new games. Yes, patching issues do play a certain role, but it's a whole different subject. As he stated, most of the sales for new titles happen in the first few weeks.
If you develop a strong protection (and he has laid out methods to do so), then you know (to a certain degree of certainty) that your game will take longer to hack. Even two weeks can make a world of difference. If stronger protection begins to result in longer crack times, other developers will follow suit, and it will lead to longer delays for cracking.
There was this article on gamasutra a few years back about title for the ps1. This was when ps1 games were being heavily pirated. The developers went to great lengths to make their title harder to crack, using multiple consistency checks and introducing bugs when those checks failed. They wouldn't crash out, but once you progressed far along into the game, if you had a cracked copy, the game would start failing. It took about a month (my memory is vague on this) for the game to be fully cracked, and the developer reckoned they gained lots of extra sales from this delay.
Erik Simon's slideshow was really enlightening. It seems like the game industry is finally starting to realize that there are better methods to prevent pirated copies of games appearing in such time periods. The current copy-protections used are easily crackeable, and are usually more of an annoyance to legitimate customers than the pirating scene.
In his slideshow, Erik actually talks about the scene and how they function. It's nice to see that he is making an effort to understand how the enemy works, in order to develo pbetter methods to beat them.
Erik also makes an interesting observation. He says that there are only 12 people world-wide actual capable of cracking new protection codes in the "scene". That number seems a bit low, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was accurate.
Bioware's slideshow makes a strong emphasis on treating its employees with the proper amount of respect and courtesy. They use rewards to encourage good behavior, and keep all their employees informed of any major events involving the company. It's good to know that some companies out there still make an effort to treat their employees properly.