Some days, it's hard to know where to start. For instance, there is good news afoot in game development, as well as bad news, and a lot of stuff that is hard to figure out.
Sony is in a tailspin, according to the press, and is planning on laying of 20,000 people (13% of personnel) over the next couple of years. All this because their profit is down 91% from last year. This doesn't mean their in the red, it means they've got 9% of the profit they had previously. This seems to be readily attributable to the grotesque, and unpredictable success of GTA3 and a couple other big sellers, and the fact that nothing has /yet/ come out to buoy sales. Overall, this looks to me like a company that is still in the black spinning the situation to rationalize jettisoning their deadweight. So in essence, business as usual.
The US federal government, in a review of DMCA related issues, has granted a copyright exception for videogames that are based on obsolete systems. Does this make MAME legal? Can I expect to find Apple ][ games like Karateka legally now? What about arcade stuff? The one guy I'd most like to read commentary from on this is out of the picture because his wife is giving birth. The wording on the Gamasutra news bit is vague, but it seems more to be about being able to archive works that are specifically engineered around hardware that is no longer available. So no free games out of this, but it's no longer /illegal/ to hack a game that requires that a bit at a certain address on a 5/25" floppy be "bad" or the game won't play. This is a minor victory against the forces of the Copyright Industry, in their war to casually, indifferently rob us of the future.
Infinity Ward was captured, er... acquired by Activision, which is one of those "Yay... I guess..." moments. It's neat to see a new player on the scene, and it's probably great that they got bought by a publisher that seems to let the developer do what they need to, if they've a history of making hit games. On the other hand, publishers locking up a developer by definition gives them, by definition of ownership, the ability to mandate whatever they like. Any goodwill that had previously been in place because of the business realities of two entities trying to stay on each others' good side are transmuted into benevolence as an indulgence by the purchasing company toward it's new property.
Maybe it's not so bleak as that. Just an initial impression after only one cuppa coffee.
Sony is in a tailspin, according to the press, and is planning on laying of 20,000 people (13% of personnel) over the next couple of years. All this because their profit is down 91% from last year. This doesn't mean their in the red, it means they've got 9% of the profit they had previously. This seems to be readily attributable to the grotesque, and unpredictable success of GTA3 and a couple other big sellers, and the fact that nothing has /yet/ come out to buoy sales. Overall, this looks to me like a company that is still in the black spinning the situation to rationalize jettisoning their deadweight. So in essence, business as usual.
The US federal government, in a review of DMCA related issues, has granted a copyright exception for videogames that are based on obsolete systems. Does this make MAME legal? Can I expect to find Apple ][ games like Karateka legally now? What about arcade stuff? The one guy I'd most like to read commentary from on this is out of the picture because his wife is giving birth. The wording on the Gamasutra news bit is vague, but it seems more to be about being able to archive works that are specifically engineered around hardware that is no longer available. So no free games out of this, but it's no longer /illegal/ to hack a game that requires that a bit at a certain address on a 5/25" floppy be "bad" or the game won't play. This is a minor victory against the forces of the Copyright Industry, in their war to casually, indifferently rob us of the future.
Infinity Ward was captured, er... acquired by Activision, which is one of those "Yay... I guess..." moments. It's neat to see a new player on the scene, and it's probably great that they got bought by a publisher that seems to let the developer do what they need to, if they've a history of making hit games. On the other hand, publishers locking up a developer by definition gives them, by definition of ownership, the ability to mandate whatever they like. Any goodwill that had previously been in place because of the business realities of two entities trying to stay on each others' good side are transmuted into benevolence as an indulgence by the purchasing company toward it's new property.
Maybe it's not so bleak as that. Just an initial impression after only one cuppa coffee.
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