Maybe my post wasn't too clear. Sorry for that. I also should have posted a source. The name of the company created by SOE is Station Publishing. Let me quote the home page for you:
" Station Publishing(TM) offers developers and publishers the opportunity to capitalize on Sony Online Entertainment's experienced and robust marketing, PR, sales and distribution services. Station Publishing meets the needs of a growing number of companies who may not have the capability or inclination to undertake this 'last mile' themselves. The scope of services offered under Station Publishing are matched to the needs of the distribution arrangement.
Our first titles to be released under Station Publishing will be Turbine Entertainment Software's Asheron's Call: Throne of Destiny and Asheron's Call 2: Legions. We are reviewing a number of other titles, and are open to discussions with developers and publishers for games on most platforms. For interested parties, please email us."
So yes, they only distribute. I never said say didn't, and I certainely never said SOE owns Turbine - just like NCSoft doesn't own all the companies they publis or distribute. I merely suggested that they could possibly include Turbine's games in the "All Access Pass". And that's not really the point anyway. Since they distribute their games under one banner, they are the second largest MMO distributor after NCSoft, according to the MMOG Chart.
Also, your statement about Lord of the Rings Online oughting the rights to VUG is wrong. In late march, they bought back the exclusive rights from VUG (press release). That leaves them free to use Station Publishing, doesn't it ?
And as for Dungeons and Dragons online, I guess that's the exception. But there's a logic to it. Atari has got a deal with Wizards of the Coast to publish most (if not all) of the games using their licenses (see Neverwinter Nights - Forgotten Realms -, for instnce).
So my post wasn't spreading rumors, I think. I was asking valid questions, making hypostesis, and I never said I was 100% sure or that I had "inside sources".
I'm wondering something, and maybe some of you who took marketing/business courses might help.
Is SOE changing its business plan? I remember SOE developping and keeping alive one (EQ) and then two (SWG) MMORPG at the same time. Then EQ2 came out, and they had 3. Then they created a company along with Turbine (Asheron's Call I & II, with Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online currently in development), so they can publish their games (and possibly use the "All access pass" options for both SOE and Turbine games) easily.
But if I remember correctly, the first developper/publisher that rolled out new MMO at a very fast pace was NCSoft. For the last 2 or 3 years, these guys just keep on releasing more and more games (Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, with at least two games in developpement - Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa, and possibly a third, heroic fantasy one developped by former Blizzard employees).
So my question is : Are SOE and Turbine trying to "eat" NCSoft's market share, beat them at their own game if you will, even if they have to merge and buy crappy games (like MxO, no offense to the ones who like it) so the other doesn't buy it ?
I wonder what's the story behind all this. Because, surely, he was offered a job or something by some government. You'd have to be stupid to let go somebody who can crack your most secure networks (I suppose here that Pentagon and NASA external networks are the most secure in US, I may be wrong). And if they offered him a job, and he accepted, we wouldn't even have heard about this story. So did he refuse, or something ?
Also, I can hear from here the TV journalist saying : "World's most wanted computer terrori... err, hacker, has been arrested today in London. Authorities estimate that his actions costed up to 1 billion dollars to the country. On another topic, Paris Hilton today announced....". Audience would just remember the following keywords "terrorist... arrested... costed 1 billion dollars", and wouldn't mind if the guy was sentenced to death. Who's gonna check the figures, anyway ?
Actually, I don't think it will be too hard to hack the XB 360. The development kits (you know, what the manufacturer sends to developpers so they can develop their games even before the console is available) consist of two G4's. This leaked out from E3 when two guys from some magazine noticed that the cables of the console displayed at the expo were running behind it, and they could see the G4's. No, I don't have the link right now, but if you dig some gaming websites they should have it.
I guess my point is : if the dev kits are using G4's PowerPC, does it make the console easier to crack ?
I can't wait to see somebody claiming that this is a good illustration of how dangerous Star Wars is. Not to mention Star Wars games.
"I was so disturbed after seing the movie/playing Jedi Knight IX that I thought the mediclorians made me do it, you honnor! I swear I'm not responsible!"
You can't deny that the French people is very chauvinistic. And I'm french so I can say that without any hatred.
chauvinism
1. Militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism.
Not "fanatically" but more so than most of the other countries in the world.
On a side note, I always fear when "France" or "French" is written in the news, because it usually ends up in a flamefest in the comments. Please behave, people!
If I were to be the owner of a company that is the leader of its field, I'd worry about Microsoft too. They proved a lot of time that if they want to get into any given market, they can, and the drums will be rolling for them. Because they can afford it. I think the best examples are they behavior when it comes to video games. For some reason, they wanted to create the best flight simulator to date. Boom, they buy flight simulator, throw a few million bucks in the project, and 10 years later, it's still the best flight simulator to exist.
They also wanted to get into the non-portable consoles industry - traditionnaly owned and led by Japanese companies such as Nintendo, Sega and recently Sony. All other non-japanese companies failed to get into that market. Microsoft announces the Xbox. It costed them millions in terms of investments. In the beginning, they were loosing 100$ for each console they sold. So what? The objective was to make themselves a room in the market, not to make money. They already make money with Windows, Office and other things other companies now totally rely on. The result : Sega is now dead as a console manufacturer, Nintendo is no longer leading the market, and only Sony can really stand up against Microsoft.
So I guess my point is that, given the billions Microsoft can invest in any given project, they can do whatever they want. They could have offered Adobe's developpers 3 times what they were paid so they would come over. They even could have had them move to another country than the US, so the clauses in their contracts that (I imagine) prevent them to work in another company doing the same thing would be void (I assume here that the devs would be motivated only by cash and not loyalty, but it's not the point, really, because Adobe's developpers are not the only ones with that kind of skill; but they allow a better example). So I think that in the end Adobe made a good move, because they only made Microsoft's eventual objective harder to reach. But not impossible.
Uh, you don't need to look at the code or images source to guess it's a fake. Just read the last sentence : "Sex before mariage is a sin". No need to check further after that:)
I for one think this is a great April's Fool, despites all the "f34r my HTML sk1lz"-wanabees opinion!
I second that. Troops is definitively the best fan-made movie (not like I've seen a lot, but still). It's a parody of Star Wars of course, but also of "Cops", the American show where you get to see a cop's day of work. Very funny, and very well adapted to a Sci-fi universe from what I can tell (I don't watch Cops, I'm not even in USA, and I'm not even American).
However I'm not sure one can say it's a solid, realistic view of Luke's background:)
Geez, it's amazing to see that so many countries have that kind of spam. Maybe because of the large number of operators? In France we only have 3 (Orange, SFR/Vodafone and Bouygues Telecom), I've had a line subscribed to two of them, and I never, ever received that kind of call/SMS on my cell. I mean never.
I *sometimes* have had telemarketers calling to my place, but not for a long time now. Maybe it's because it's illegal in France to sell your customer's database informations (name, phone, interrests, etc..) unless explicitely allowed by the said customer.
As for the topic at hand, I say they deserved that fine, and I hope to see anti-spam laws enforced in the same way in the future.
While we are off-topic, you might want to check out recently released Star Wolves, a very good Tactical/Space Opera/RPG (what's not RPG these days?). It may not have the same freedom feeling you get with Escape Velocity, but it's pretty cool.
Ubisoft is a french from France company, created by the Guillemot brothers. They also possess the Hercules hardware manufacturer (formelly known as the... "Guillemot" brand). Ubisoft also posses GameLoft, a cellphone games developper.
The company is spread like this:
- Headquarters are in Montreuil, a city right next to Paris. A few games are developped there, like Rayman. That's also where the websites are designed.
- European warehouse is located in Bretagne (a France's departement, what you guys in US would call a state althought it's quite different).
- And last but not least, the main development studio is located in Montreal, Canada. Games like Splinter Cell or Farcry are developped there. This is also where most of Ubi.com teams are located (aka the evil GMs that get you banned in Shadowbane or EverQuest Europe). The reason is that the Canadian government made a very, very good offer to Ubisoft, and as a result it's 40% cheaper for the management to send people there rather than having them work in France (where social security, health care and transports are to be payed at least at 50% by the company, that's the law).
I might be wrong here but... I believed that the US *redrew* themselves from the treaty, didn't they? Didn't Clinton sign the treaty but one of the first thing W. Bush did when he entered the White House was to cancel USA's participation, saying that the country's economy was more important? While it might be right, this is incredibly short-sighted (ie: what good will the economy do if the world is ravaged by disasters?).
Actually, the two 'official' languages in Europe are English and... French (/proud ^^). French is the "diplomatic language" because it allows a lot of subtelties (sp). ie: 10 words can have the same meaning to different degrees, whereas in English one word can have 10 different meanings. That's a global statement of course, and I'm sure exceptions can be found, but it's true.
Well, maybe something good could come out of this (hey, don't all look at me like that, I'm not done yet!:).
I don't know about you all but if I was in this government, I'd make sure that Danmark would ever, ever again buy a Microsoft product and move to an open source solution (or, rather, accelerate the migration since it seems many European countries are looking into that lately).
Bill, if you read, thank you for digging your company's own grave.
When companies/corporations begin trying to extort countries, and not the weakest countries mind you, something is wrong.
I'm beginning to believe that what I read in sci-fi will come true (ie: in the future, mankind is ruled by corporations that want to make money).
And even more scary is the fact that for one extortion of that kind we hear of, numbers of other extortions of the same kind happen and we never hear about it.
Brrr.
I agree. Saying video games, even the most realistic ones, improve your skill in driving/climbing/shooting/whatever is just plain stupid. Maybe they can teach you things (like how to set a rifle scope), but these informations can be found _anywhere_.
However, I do find the idea of inmates playing video games is pretty contradictory.
I'm not quite sure, Arka. I'm not sure they hire actual Network Architects/Strategists on a permanent basis. I'd be curious to know, but my best guess is that they hire a IT company with the specs they need. Like "Alright, we want to be able to handle 1 000 000 customers, on 100 servers, kthx". Then the company runs some tests to check the VLANs tags, routers capacities, throughput and what you will, but I'm not sure they do any very heavy, realistic load test. The technology to do that exists, but is expensive (usually customers are Cisco, Alcatel, Marconi, 3COM, that kind of giants). I'm not sure Blizzard or even Vivendi can afford, or is willing to afford, that kind of testing equipment.
Just in case some people didn't real the whole news on PA's website, it's good to know they were hired to do a few drawings for the official strategy guide - so they were 'officially involved' with Blizzard through Prima.
Also we all know that fanboys can turn to true haters when disapointed. But I don't undestand all the fuss about a webcomic removing an award - when it's not even the purpose of a webcomic in the first place.
They had plenty of time during the various stress testq they ran to evaluate the rupture point of their servers/bandwith. They even stated that if there was so much lag during the open beta, it was because they planned it to see the said limits.
Now, we are after release, and the servers still can't handle the load. It does seem an expensive business indeed, so they could have limited the number of available boxes, earn a few bucks with the subscriptions and then open more servers with more routers to handle the traffic. It seems to be the case already, only they sold too many boxes.
Or they could have tested their games with products from Spirent, Ixia or Agilent. Spirent's product can replay a PCAP capture. Record a few hundread of them, play them at the same time several time, and you get a pretty good idea of how your game will react. That's called application testing and every single datacenter has to go through this (although maybe only on lower layers, but since some equipments can handle layer 4 to 7 perfectly, I think it's still valid).
Not like I care, the game is still not released in Europe:)
Slashdot Mirror
*gollum, gollum*
Maybe my post wasn't too clear. Sorry for that. I also should have posted a source. The name of the company created by SOE is Station Publishing. Let me quote the home page for you:
So yes, they only distribute. I never said say didn't, and I certainely never said SOE owns Turbine - just like NCSoft doesn't own all the companies they publis or distribute. I merely suggested that they could possibly include Turbine's games in the "All Access Pass". And that's not really the point anyway. Since they distribute their games under one banner, they are the second largest MMO distributor after NCSoft, according to the MMOG Chart.Also, your statement about Lord of the Rings Online oughting the rights to VUG is wrong. In late march, they bought back the exclusive rights from VUG (press release). That leaves them free to use Station Publishing, doesn't it ?
And as for Dungeons and Dragons online, I guess that's the exception. But there's a logic to it. Atari has got a deal with Wizards of the Coast to publish most (if not all) of the games using their licenses (see Neverwinter Nights - Forgotten Realms -, for instnce).
So my post wasn't spreading rumors, I think. I was asking valid questions, making hypostesis, and I never said I was 100% sure or that I had "inside sources".
Kthx.
I'm wondering something, and maybe some of you who took marketing/business courses might help.
Is SOE changing its business plan? I remember SOE developping and keeping alive one (EQ) and then two (SWG) MMORPG at the same time. Then EQ2 came out, and they had 3. Then they created a company along with Turbine (Asheron's Call I & II, with Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online currently in development), so they can publish their games (and possibly use the "All access pass" options for both SOE and Turbine games) easily.
But if I remember correctly, the first developper/publisher that rolled out new MMO at a very fast pace was NCSoft. For the last 2 or 3 years, these guys just keep on releasing more and more games (Lineage, Lineage II, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, with at least two games in developpement - Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa, and possibly a third, heroic fantasy one developped by former Blizzard employees).
So my question is : Are SOE and Turbine trying to "eat" NCSoft's market share, beat them at their own game if you will, even if they have to merge and buy crappy games (like MxO, no offense to the ones who like it) so the other doesn't buy it ?
Also, I can hear from here the TV journalist saying : "World's most wanted computer terrori... err, hacker, has been arrested today in London. Authorities estimate that his actions costed up to 1 billion dollars to the country. On another topic, Paris Hilton today announced ....". Audience would just remember the following keywords "terrorist ... arrested ... costed 1 billion dollars", and wouldn't mind if the guy was sentenced to death. Who's gonna check the figures, anyway ?
I guess my point is : if the dev kits are using G4's PowerPC, does it make the console easier to crack ?
"I was so disturbed after seing the movie/playing Jedi Knight IX that I thought the mediclorians made me do it, you honnor! I swear I'm not responsible!"
chauvinism
1. Militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism.
Not "fanatically" but more so than most of the other countries in the world. On a side note, I always fear when "France" or "French" is written in the news, because it usually ends up in a flamefest in the comments. Please behave, people!
I hope they'll keep one or two handy. You never know when you can use Warp technology, and I'd hate disapointing Captain Picard.
Alright, I was wrong about Sega :) But I do think my point stands, though!
They also wanted to get into the non-portable consoles industry - traditionnaly owned and led by Japanese companies such as Nintendo, Sega and recently Sony. All other non-japanese companies failed to get into that market. Microsoft announces the Xbox. It costed them millions in terms of investments. In the beginning, they were loosing 100$ for each console they sold. So what? The objective was to make themselves a room in the market, not to make money. They already make money with Windows, Office and other things other companies now totally rely on. The result : Sega is now dead as a console manufacturer, Nintendo is no longer leading the market, and only Sony can really stand up against Microsoft.
So I guess my point is that, given the billions Microsoft can invest in any given project, they can do whatever they want. They could have offered Adobe's developpers 3 times what they were paid so they would come over. They even could have had them move to another country than the US, so the clauses in their contracts that (I imagine) prevent them to work in another company doing the same thing would be void (I assume here that the devs would be motivated only by cash and not loyalty, but it's not the point, really, because Adobe's developpers are not the only ones with that kind of skill; but they allow a better example). So I think that in the end Adobe made a good move, because they only made Microsoft's eventual objective harder to reach. But not impossible.
* : yes, lining up for more than a month is beyond reason, and if you think it's not, you need medical attention.
I for one think this is a great April's Fool, despites all the "f34r my HTML sk1lz"-wanabees opinion!
However I'm not sure one can say it's a solid, realistic view of Luke's background :)
I *sometimes* have had telemarketers calling to my place, but not for a long time now. Maybe it's because it's illegal in France to sell your customer's database informations (name, phone, interrests, etc..) unless explicitely allowed by the said customer.
As for the topic at hand, I say they deserved that fine, and I hope to see anti-spam laws enforced in the same way in the future.
While we are off-topic, you might want to check out recently released Star Wolves, a very good Tactical/Space Opera/RPG (what's not RPG these days?). It may not have the same freedom feeling you get with Escape Velocity, but it's pretty cool.
Crytek employees where hired with Ubisoft contracts and many of them worked in Montreal. I saw one of them sign his contract with my own eyes.
Ubisoft is a french from France company, created by the Guillemot brothers. They also possess the Hercules hardware manufacturer (formelly known as the... "Guillemot" brand). Ubisoft also posses GameLoft, a cellphone games developper.
The company is spread like this:
- Headquarters are in Montreuil, a city right next to Paris. A few games are developped there, like Rayman. That's also where the websites are designed.
- European warehouse is located in Bretagne (a France's departement, what you guys in US would call a state althought it's quite different).
- And last but not least, the main development studio is located in Montreal, Canada. Games like Splinter Cell or Farcry are developped there. This is also where most of Ubi.com teams are located (aka the evil GMs that get you banned in Shadowbane or EverQuest Europe). The reason is that the Canadian government made a very, very good offer to Ubisoft, and as a result it's 40% cheaper for the management to send people there rather than having them work in France (where social security, health care and transports are to be payed at least at 50% by the company, that's the law).
I might be wrong here but... I believed that the US *redrew* themselves from the treaty, didn't they? Didn't Clinton sign the treaty but one of the first thing W. Bush did when he entered the White House was to cancel USA's participation, saying that the country's economy was more important? While it might be right, this is incredibly short-sighted (ie: what good will the economy do if the world is ravaged by disasters?).
Actually, the two 'official' languages in Europe are English and ... French (/proud ^^). French is the "diplomatic language" because it allows a lot of subtelties (sp). ie: 10 words can have the same meaning to different degrees, whereas in English one word can have 10 different meanings. That's a global statement of course, and I'm sure exceptions can be found, but it's true.
I don't know about you all but if I was in this government, I'd make sure that Danmark would ever, ever again buy a Microsoft product and move to an open source solution (or, rather, accelerate the migration since it seems many European countries are looking into that lately).
Bill, if you read, thank you for digging your company's own grave.
I'm beginning to believe that what I read in sci-fi will come true (ie: in the future, mankind is ruled by corporations that want to make money).
And even more scary is the fact that for one extortion of that kind we hear of, numbers of other extortions of the same kind happen and we never hear about it. Brrr.
However, I do find the idea of inmates playing video games is pretty contradictory.
I'm not quite sure, Arka. I'm not sure they hire actual Network Architects/Strategists on a permanent basis. I'd be curious to know, but my best guess is that they hire a IT company with the specs they need. Like "Alright, we want to be able to handle 1 000 000 customers, on 100 servers, kthx". Then the company runs some tests to check the VLANs tags, routers capacities, throughput and what you will, but I'm not sure they do any very heavy, realistic load test. The technology to do that exists, but is expensive (usually customers are Cisco, Alcatel, Marconi, 3COM, that kind of giants). I'm not sure Blizzard or even Vivendi can afford, or is willing to afford, that kind of testing equipment.
Also we all know that fanboys can turn to true haters when disapointed. But I don't undestand all the fuss about a webcomic removing an award - when it's not even the purpose of a webcomic in the first place.
Now, we are after release, and the servers still can't handle the load. It does seem an expensive business indeed, so they could have limited the number of available boxes, earn a few bucks with the subscriptions and then open more servers with more routers to handle the traffic. It seems to be the case already, only they sold too many boxes.
Or they could have tested their games with products from Spirent, Ixia or Agilent. Spirent's product can replay a PCAP capture. Record a few hundread of them, play them at the same time several time, and you get a pretty good idea of how your game will react. That's called application testing and every single datacenter has to go through this (although maybe only on lower layers, but since some equipments can handle layer 4 to 7 perfectly, I think it's still valid).
Not like I care, the game is still not released in Europe :)