we are in the worst depression since the 1930's and these guys want 'tax breaks'. Meanwhile back on earth the residents of the UK are facing the prospect of heading toward malnutrition for the first time since the victorian era because of food price hikes followed by income drops. The video game industry is nearing the end of its fourth decade, if it cannot stand on its own feet by now, let it move to canada. The uk consumer will not notice any change in game titles for sale.
Fascinating article. I have often wondered myself how the virtually untapped mine of interactive possibilities that computers offer, can be used more effectively. I spend my 'screen time' flipping between xbox live, and Second Life. I can see each has strengths that the other lacks; Xbox Live has uniform standard graphics and fantastic worlds to explore, but is populated with such utter 2 dimensional morons as "Dom" I despair of wanting to keep them alive. Second Life has a person behind each avatar and the interactions and scope for soap opera are off the scale. How about a future where everyone in a game is a person, and if Dom decides to cap his wife for not talking to him in 20 seconds flat, we can role play the woman's father and go hunt him down..
I have had a good laugh at non-gaming sites (read BBC) covering this story. Talk of entire sectors of the videogame industry falling are plain silly. All this is, as any good accountant will tell you, is moving goal posts for costing. The chips needed to run Crysis at full speed need to be somewhere, and they need to be paid for. It is irrelevant whether they are in your living room, or on a server. Somebody HAS to pick up the bill. This idea has potential, but until the net can run at good speeds everywhere, it will be a niche product, and the costing will be hidden in smoke and mirrors. Either it will be expensive to use, or performance will be degraded as more users tap into the servers.
the biggest hurdle to digital download growing wings, is console designers seeing the hard drive as the cash cow that covers the cost of the cpu and graphics chips they put into their products. In the UK, hard drives for the 360 are currently on Amazon at £1 per gig. That is bat-shit-with-rabies, crazy. Until this situation is changed and people are allowed to drop off the shelf PC hard drives in their consoles, DD is a threat to very few. As an example; my 360's paltry 20 gig HD is now full of downloadable content from just 4 games. That means the makers of the other 20 games I have, are getting no sales out of me. And I refuse point blank to pay M$ prices for their hard drives.
Network now...
Rob_Jackson's Comments
we are in the worst depression since the 1930's and these guys want 'tax breaks'. Meanwhile back on earth the residents of the UK are facing the prospect of heading toward malnutrition for the first time since the victorian era because of food price hikes followed by income drops. The video game industry is nearing the end of its fourth decade, if it cannot stand on its own feet by now, let it move to canada. The uk consumer will not notice any change in game titles for sale.
double post, deleted
Fascinating article. I have often wondered myself how the virtually untapped mine of interactive possibilities that computers offer, can be used more effectively. I spend my 'screen time' flipping between xbox live, and Second Life. I can see each has strengths that the other lacks; Xbox Live has uniform standard graphics and fantastic worlds to explore, but is populated with such utter 2 dimensional morons as "Dom" I despair of wanting to keep them alive. Second Life has a person behind each avatar and the interactions and scope for soap opera are off the scale. How about a future where everyone in a game is a person, and if Dom decides to cap his wife for not talking to him in 20 seconds flat, we can role play the woman's father and go hunt him down..
I have had a good laugh at non-gaming sites (read BBC) covering this story. Talk of entire sectors of the videogame industry falling are plain silly. All this is, as any good accountant will tell you, is moving goal posts for costing. The chips needed to run Crysis at full speed need to be somewhere, and they need to be paid for. It is irrelevant whether they are in your living room, or on a server. Somebody HAS to pick up the bill. This idea has potential, but until the net can run at good speeds everywhere, it will be a niche product, and the costing will be hidden in smoke and mirrors. Either it will be expensive to use, or performance will be degraded as more users tap into the servers.
the biggest hurdle to digital download growing wings, is console designers seeing the hard drive as the cash cow that covers the cost of the cpu and graphics chips they put into their products. In the UK, hard drives for the 360 are currently on Amazon at £1 per gig. That is bat-shit-with-rabies, crazy. Until this situation is changed and people are allowed to drop off the shelf PC hard drives in their consoles, DD is a threat to very few. As an example; my 360's paltry 20 gig HD is now full of downloadable content from just 4 games. That means the makers of the other 20 games I have, are getting no sales out of me. And I refuse point blank to pay M$ prices for their hard drives.
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