[MUD-Dev] Apple WWDC?

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 17 May 2002, John A. Bertoglio wrote:
> From: <amanda at alfar.com>

>> Any game development is highly speculative.  Targetting more
>> platforms expands your possible market: like anything else, you
>> look at the costs and benefits and make a SWAG.  Speaking
>> personally, as someone with a lot of multiplatform experience and
>> a fondness for niche markets, I think that the Mac & advanced
>> console markets have a lot of untapped potential for MMO games
>> and environments.

Erk, I hope you're not suggesting that advanced consoles are a niche
market. =) Consoles dominate the industry.
 
> Advance console: Absence of a keyboard and mouse is a major
> technical constraint. Not a killer. You could easily play
> Everquest on an XBox/PS2 with (I suspect) fairly minor
> modifications to the user interface.  I would be suprised if Sony
> does not do this given their involvement with EQ. For the same
> reason I would never expect to see it for the XBox. A little hard
> to see the development of a telnet mud client, though.

Sony is releasing Everquest Adventures Online for the PS2 next
spring. It'll be an original product, not a port, and will support
broadband and dial-up both. It won't require the PS2 add-on
harddrive.

Square just released Final Fantasy XI in Japan for the PS2 (US
release is next year sometime), and blundered it in a laughably
incompetent release. WebMoney, who is handling the payment and
monetary services for the project wasn't able to handle the traffic,
and the Playonline servers began crashing at about 2 am on the 17th
(released on the 16th). Further, people who tried to get support via
either web or telephone were met with an inability to reach
anyone. Then, just to make sure that no one was going to be happy,
Webmoney went ahead and accidentally charged quite a few registrants
multiple times for a single account.

LucasArts also announced today (I think it was today) that they will
be sticking the SOE-developed Star Wars Galaxies (to be a series of
games apparently?) on both the PS2 and Xbox.
 
> Linux: This is a wild card. There is a lot brewing under the
> surface in the Linux world. Linux is moving from a holy crusade to
> becoming a boring, stable and attractive platform for standard
> computing. The recent commiment of Sun to continue development on
> an Office alternative (Star Office) is just one of many things
> that could bring this platform very quietly into the
> mainstream. Of course, with Linux you buy some of the same
> problems as in the Windows world due to the large number of
> platforms. The killer app for Linux will be the $200-$400 complete
> computer system. A machine like this CANNOT have a $100 OS (read
> Microsoft). Every so often, I notice a Linux OS in a low end box
> in Fry's ads (my other retail benchmark).  The activation code in
> Win XP will serve to further accelerate this trend.

Not to start any sort of tired Linux war, but I don't see linux ever
being a serious gaming machine. It remains almost entirely unuseable
by the average non-techie user, and I, at least, find it to be a
serious pain-in-the-butt even for a semi-techie like myself. The
user interface is akin to something designed by a drooling moron
with input from a sadist. (I can't even get my floppy drive to work
on one of my linux boxes, despite it working fine in Windows.) 
Fantastic as a server, hopelessly crap as a desktop machine for the
average user, who presumably drives much of the games market.

--matt

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