Another interesting option I found is a product called Via3 (www.viack.com). I use it for other work, but it has some nice features that could work quite well for remote tabletop sessions.
It has pretty solid Audio and Video, doesn't require you to host your own server, has built in Whiteboard and a feature called LiveView that you could use to show another applicatio (or battle map) to the players.
One other nice thing is it provides online storage tied to the app. You can use to store all your game note, maps, and such in so that everyone can view them when they want to outside the game. You can even set access rights on the files and folders to different players to view or edit. So one player might have rights to a secret letter from the king or the ransom note, while the others don't even know they exist.
A lot of people seem to be completely missing the details of the product here...
1) Unlike Origami, MS is actually making the hardware and software here. They are not bound to the hands of a lot of crappy Consumer Electronics device makers and PC OEMs that historically make ugly hardware (and huge hardware)
2) This is coming out of the team that made the Xbox and the Xbox360. They have proven that they can write lean/mean software that just works and has pretty and good UI
3) This device is not (currently) a video game player. As pointed out above, MS is still obviously making games for the DS, and no respectable news site has stated that it plays games, just that it might at some mysterious point in the future.
4) The leaked pictures show a fairly small device with a small attenna on the top. It has some blurry UI that doesn't look like Portable Media Center software, which implies that they wrote something specially for the device to go head to head with the iPod
5) Its not just a device, but also appears to include an iTMS competitor. In light of this, it looks like they aren't going to use the horrid "Play for Sure" crap. Instead, they are doing what needs to be done. Make something that actually just works well together. Not something they somehow make work together (like WMP in general with media devices)
6) MS already has relationships with most record labels due to the old MSN music store. They also have relationships with most movie studios due to the VC-1 codec that is in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
All in all, it sounds like MS did look at the market and realized that they had to make something that is small, is focused at just media (audio and video, no games). They also appear to be trying to innovate ever so lightly by adding WiFi and a lot of the potential that brings. One need only look at what MS did with Xbox Live and the 360 to think about what can be done with a permenant Internet connection on a Consumer Electronics device. There is a lot of potential here that if they live up to, could mean the next step in Portable Media Devices.
Worst case, MS shows what not to do with things like WiFi, then Apple comes out with the iPod WiFi and does it right.
That can be contributed to more than just the developers being "excited" about the Revolution.
One has to take into account that 1,000 development kits may sound like a lot until you put it into perspective.
The PS3 has over 5,000 development kits shipped to date (around 3,000 currently in circulation).
The Xbox360 is sitting somewhere around 30,000 final development kits out there.
So, now the question is, are the developers praising the system because they want to do so, or praising on condition of getting one of the rare development kits that are out there?
Did you even read your own article? That isn't just the Home and Entertainment division, or Xbox. They are talking about the combined losses of Xbox + MSN + Wireless + Small Business Software.
That is completely different. My numbers still hold true.
Prior to 2003, Xbox was wrapped up into another "division" that actually quoted a profit for the first 2 years of the system. I was unable to dig in and locate any direct financials for the the groups that would combine to make the H&E division.
FY 2003 (1,191) FY 2004 (1,215) FY 2005 (391)
So, in the last 3 years the division as a whole lost $2.8 Billion. Add on one more year at pretty much the same losses as in 2003 and 2004 and you end up at $4.0 Billion for the entire division.
Let us all not forget that the losses for the Home and Entertainment Division as a whole were $4 Billion USD. Not just Xbox.
If anything, Xbox only accounted for about $1.5 Billion of those losses and was also responsible for the profit in Q404.
Remember, The Home and Entertainment Division also encompesses the loss leading eHome team, DirectX group, Movie Maker, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Connect, Media Center Extender, IPTV, on and on.
Out of all of those, Xbox is pretty much the only one generating any significant revenue and has a chance for any significant profit within the next 2 years.
Actually, that would result in a product that doesn't meat customer demands.
What I have found tends to work best is to have Marketing drive the early feature criteria, Engineering Leads to determine what is and what is not feesable.
Then follow this up with actually constructing.
At the end game, have QA in charge of verifing that the constucted product meets the marketing demands and also in charge of working with PM's to determine what bugs can and cannot ship with the given release of a product.
OMG, I think I know who you are talking about. There was a manager at MS that I worked closely with who used to talk about a team in the same "division" that he worked for that stored alcohol in the testlab. I know of at least 2 employees of that team that were pot heads that got hired full time and one that hit the bottle way too much that also eventually got hired full time (though he cleaned up his act).
Though, this is not represenative of the org at large. There were a ton of great workers in that org as a whole. But sadly, a lot of them have had to move onto other orgs or other companies in part due to continued poor leadership.
Nothing like taking a reply to one question completely out of context...
So Google is not offering development capabilities yet. Of course, I expect they will. But they're not in that game at all today. In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. It's a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer.
So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.
He was not referring to the "Do no Evil"
Remember that in the game console industry, software (games) have to go through a certification process in order to get released on the system.
Undoubtably MS has setup the certification process to only allow titles to release on DVD discs, up to 2 layers.
MS is not a dumb company (dispite some of the arguements on slashdot). They know that if they allowed developers to release HD-DVD games that it would cause significant fragmentation to their market and would ultimately result in their failure in the market place and seriously hinder their ability to gain any significant marketshare the following generation.
In addition, sticking with DVD for this generation comes with some really solid benefits, not the least of which is read speed.
Unless Sony can pull out a 3x or faster Blu-Ray drive at launch (unlikely), PS3 games will have longer load times by default than the Xbox360 (or their developers will have to work harder to try to avoid the load times.
At the end of the day, developers will find a way to utilize the Blu-Ray disc space. Most of them will just put duplicate textures, models, and audio files all over the disc to help speed up loading by fractions of a second here and there (less seeking). Not surprising, most of the games that currently fill up a single layer DVD disc do so by duplicating similar items. If they removed all the duplicates, a lot of games that fill a DVD wouldn't even break 2.0gb in size.
Slashdot Mirror
Another interesting option I found is a product called Via3 (www.viack.com). I use it for other work, but it has some nice features that could work quite well for remote tabletop sessions.
It has pretty solid Audio and Video, doesn't require you to host your own server, has built in Whiteboard and a feature called LiveView that you could use to show another applicatio (or battle map) to the players.
One other nice thing is it provides online storage tied to the app. You can use to store all your game note, maps, and such in so that everyone can view them when they want to outside the game. You can even set access rights on the files and folders to different players to view or edit. So one player might have rights to a secret letter from the king or the ransom note, while the others don't even know they exist.
A lot of people seem to be completely missing the details of the product here...
1) Unlike Origami, MS is actually making the hardware and software here. They are not bound to the hands of a lot of crappy Consumer Electronics device makers and PC OEMs that historically make ugly hardware (and huge hardware)
2) This is coming out of the team that made the Xbox and the Xbox360. They have proven that they can write lean/mean software that just works and has pretty and good UI
3) This device is not (currently) a video game player. As pointed out above, MS is still obviously making games for the DS, and no respectable news site has stated that it plays games, just that it might at some mysterious point in the future.
4) The leaked pictures show a fairly small device with a small attenna on the top. It has some blurry UI that doesn't look like Portable Media Center software, which implies that they wrote something specially for the device to go head to head with the iPod
5) Its not just a device, but also appears to include an iTMS competitor. In light of this, it looks like they aren't going to use the horrid "Play for Sure" crap. Instead, they are doing what needs to be done. Make something that actually just works well together. Not something they somehow make work together (like WMP in general with media devices)
6) MS already has relationships with most record labels due to the old MSN music store. They also have relationships with most movie studios due to the VC-1 codec that is in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
All in all, it sounds like MS did look at the market and realized that they had to make something that is small, is focused at just media (audio and video, no games). They also appear to be trying to innovate ever so lightly by adding WiFi and a lot of the potential that brings. One need only look at what MS did with Xbox Live and the 360 to think about what can be done with a permenant Internet connection on a Consumer Electronics device. There is a lot of potential here that if they live up to, could mean the next step in Portable Media Devices.
Worst case, MS shows what not to do with things like WiFi, then Apple comes out with the iPod WiFi and does it right.
Either way, it only benefits us, the consumer.
That can be contributed to more than just the developers being "excited" about the Revolution.
One has to take into account that 1,000 development kits may sound like a lot until you put it into perspective.
The PS3 has over 5,000 development kits shipped to date (around 3,000 currently in circulation).
The Xbox360 is sitting somewhere around 30,000 final development kits out there.
So, now the question is, are the developers praising the system because they want to do so, or praising on condition of getting one of the rare development kits that are out there?
You can get to the original article here
http://www.ps3portal.com/ps3/article/352.html
http://www.ps3portal.com/ps3/article/352/2
Interesting side point to that.
In Japan, X is typically the cancel button and O is typically the select button in games.
Exactly opposite of what we have come to expect in the US.
Did you even read your own article? That isn't just the Home and Entertainment division, or Xbox. They are talking about the combined losses of Xbox + MSN + Wireless + Small Business Software. That is completely different. My numbers still hold true.
Just check their financials for the home and entertainment division.
r el_q4_04.mspxr el_q4_05.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY04/earn_
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY05/earn_
Prior to 2003, Xbox was wrapped up into another "division" that actually quoted a profit for the first 2 years of the system. I was unable to dig in and locate any direct financials for the the groups that would combine to make the H&E division.
FY 2003 (1,191)
FY 2004 (1,215)
FY 2005 (391)
So, in the last 3 years the division as a whole lost $2.8 Billion. Add on one more year at pretty much the same losses as in 2003 and 2004 and you end up at $4.0 Billion for the entire division.
So, how exactly was I wrong again?
Let us all not forget that the losses for the Home and Entertainment Division as a whole were $4 Billion USD. Not just Xbox. If anything, Xbox only accounted for about $1.5 Billion of those losses and was also responsible for the profit in Q404. Remember, The Home and Entertainment Division also encompesses the loss leading eHome team, DirectX group, Movie Maker, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Connect, Media Center Extender, IPTV, on and on. Out of all of those, Xbox is pretty much the only one generating any significant revenue and has a chance for any significant profit within the next 2 years.
Actually, that would result in a product that doesn't meat customer demands. What I have found tends to work best is to have Marketing drive the early feature criteria, Engineering Leads to determine what is and what is not feesable. Then follow this up with actually constructing. At the end game, have QA in charge of verifing that the constucted product meets the marketing demands and also in charge of working with PM's to determine what bugs can and cannot ship with the given release of a product.
OMG, I think I know who you are talking about. There was a manager at MS that I worked closely with who used to talk about a team in the same "division" that he worked for that stored alcohol in the testlab. I know of at least 2 employees of that team that were pot heads that got hired full time and one that hit the bottle way too much that also eventually got hired full time (though he cleaned up his act). Though, this is not represenative of the org at large. There were a ton of great workers in that org as a whole. But sadly, a lot of them have had to move onto other orgs or other companies in part due to continued poor leadership.
Nothing like taking a reply to one question completely out of context... So Google is not offering development capabilities yet. Of course, I expect they will. But they're not in that game at all today. In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. It's a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer. So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that. He was not referring to the "Do no Evil"
Remember that in the game console industry, software (games) have to go through a certification process in order to get released on the system.
Undoubtably MS has setup the certification process to only allow titles to release on DVD discs, up to 2 layers.
MS is not a dumb company (dispite some of the arguements on slashdot). They know that if they allowed developers to release HD-DVD games that it would cause significant fragmentation to their market and would ultimately result in their failure in the market place and seriously hinder their ability to gain any significant marketshare the following generation.
In addition, sticking with DVD for this generation comes with some really solid benefits, not the least of which is read speed.
Unless Sony can pull out a 3x or faster Blu-Ray drive at launch (unlikely), PS3 games will have longer load times by default than the Xbox360 (or their developers will have to work harder to try to avoid the load times.
At the end of the day, developers will find a way to utilize the Blu-Ray disc space. Most of them will just put duplicate textures, models, and audio files all over the disc to help speed up loading by fractions of a second here and there (less seeking). Not surprising, most of the games that currently fill up a single layer DVD disc do so by duplicating similar items. If they removed all the duplicates, a lot of games that fill a DVD wouldn't even break 2.0gb in size.