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[PATV] Monday, February 11, 2013 - CheckPoint Season 2, Ep. 35: A Door Closed, a Windows Open

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
edited February 2013 in The Penny Arcade Hub

image[PATV] Monday, February 11, 2013 - CheckPoint Season 2, Ep. 35: A Door Closed, a Windows Open

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  • TyphinTyphin Registered User regular
    The only reason I can think of for the Amazon coins is to allow parents to buy coins that their children can spend, without giving their children the ability to spend more than they allow.

    Right now, the options are "Allow purchases" or "Block purchases and require a password." This would basically give the option of "Allow $X worth of purchases without password."

    ...It's still not the best idea, though.

  • apollyonbobapollyonbob Registered User regular
    "A new, mobile friendly development tool allowing low budget indie titles to be simultaneously released on Xbox, Surface Tablets, Microsoft Phone, even desktops..."

    Guys, that already exists. It's called Unity. Seriously, Unity 4 does ... well, almost all of those things. They're still working on Windows Phone support. But it's already begun! http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/10/30/unity-windows-phone-8-demonstrated-at-microsoft-build-conference/

    From my perspective, as a .NET dev, it seems as tho Microsoft's new approach to development tools is to stop reinventing the goddamn wheel all the time. Hence jQuery and Knockout coming with the now open-source ASP.NET. Hence Visual Studio now natively being able to handle outside testing/source control engines within the existing UI. Microsoft is fully embracing not just the idea of open source, but the idea of actually using someone else's product.

    So it's like, oh hey, what if they made an inexpensive, but powerful, game engine that used C# and was cross platform will all of their products? Oh and could also be pushed to iOS and Android and the web? Well then, that would make 2 of such engines in existence, so why the hell should they bother?

    Instead of them making something new, I'd watch for Microsoft cementing a partnership with Unity Technologies for Microsoft's next-gen indie platform. The smartest thing Microsoft could do here is to have their Creator Club or whatever cost the same ($100 a year) but come with a free license for the Xbox plugin for Unity. (Or some kind of discount. Preferably free to avoid indie pain.) The second smartest thing Microsoft could do is help Unity Technologies upgrade their engine to C# 5, taking full advantage of the built in parallelism features such as TPL and async/await.

    I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't think Microsoft is turning their back on indies either. I just think that "not turning their back" isn't going to translate to Microsoft attempting to re-solve a problem that's already been solved.

  • rahkeesh2000rahkeesh2000 Registered User regular
    Already been announced that Amazon is going to be "giving" consumers alot ($5 mil) of "free" coins. There may be some hoops to jump through for consumers, but it is likely also an initiative to get more app developers making programs for whatever semi-closed, outdated version of android OS the fire is running.

  • sexy Enrico Fermi sexy Enrico Fermi Registered User new member
    what would the Wii U gampad be?
    "a map " i mouthed as my lemon tea steeped thoughtfully
    "wrong " Graham barked "a MAP"
    i was nonplussed but the lemon tea became visibly agitated, nearly unseating itself in a spasm
    "AND NOT A SNIPER SCOPE AS THIS..." my lemon tea could take no more of this indignity,
    you see despite being brewed mere minutes ago it was quite enamoured with Phantom Hourglass on DS and Splinter Cell and felt that a secondary map was great addition of the overall scope of the game. Your comments set it, shall we say... off, and it upended itself in a fit of passion.
    rest assured that lemon tea will be suing your pants off for gross endangerment, very soon
    ...the instant I'm done suing it out of MY slacks

  • sexy Enrico Fermi sexy Enrico Fermi Registered User new member
    what would the Wii U gampad be?
    "a map " i mouthed as my lemon tea steeped thoughtfully
    "wrong " Graham barked "a MAP"
    i was nonplussed but the lemon tea became visibly agitated, nearly unseating itself in a spasm
    "AND NOT A SNIPER SCOPE AS THIS..." my lemon tea could take no more of this indignity,
    you see despite being brewed mere minutes ago it was quite enamoured with Phantom Hourglass on DS and Splinter Cell and felt that a secondary map was great addition of the overall scope of the game. Your comments set it, shall we say... off, and it upended itself in a fit of passion.
    rest assured that lemon tea will be suing your pants off for gross endangerment, very soon
    ...the instant I'm done suing it out of MY slacks

  • enderandrewenderandrew Systems Engineer OmahaRegistered User regular
    Unity will get your game in a web browser, on consoles, on PC, Mac, Linux, phones, tablets and just about everywhere.

    http://unity3d.com/unity/multiplatform/

  • AxeloftheKeyAxeloftheKey Registered User new member
    XNA DID work on multiple platforms. It was built for PC's, Xbox, and Windows Phone 7.

  • bengbeng Registered User new member
    They used a pic of Amsterdam, my hometown, in that 'augmented reality crap' example!

    .. i bet they googled for augmented reality and found a pic of layar, a dutch 'augmented reality' service/company..

    still thrilling to see Amsterdam in a checkpoint video :-)

  • TuskusTuskus Registered User regular
    Amazon knows that Amazon points aren't convenient. It's not about convenience, it's about profit.

  • FramlingFramling FaceHead Geebs has bad ideas.Registered User regular
    I've been working here at Microsoft for a little better than four and a half years, working almost entirely on stuff hardly anyone would ever see. I think this is the very first time I saw something online that I actually can't comment on!

    FULL DISCLOSURE: I AM A FULL-TIME EMPLOYEE OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION. ANY OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE MY OWN, AND NOT THOSE OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION OR ITS SUBSIDIARIES OR AFFILIATES. NORMALLY THIS IS WHERE I SAY "I WAS NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THE DEVELOPMENT, MARKETING, PUBLICATION, OR DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRODUCT OR PRODUCTS IN QUESTION," BUT THIS TIME I AM INVOLVED, SO I'M NOT ACTUALLY SAYING ANYTHING. I MEAN, USUALLY I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT GIVING ANYTHING AWAY BECAUSE I USUALLY DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW ANY MORE THAN WHAT I'VE READ ON THE INTERNET, SO I'LL JUST SAY WHATEVER AND THEN INCLUDE A GOOFY DISCLAIMER. BUT THIS TIME, I PROBABLY DO KNOW STUFF YOU CAN'T JUST FIND ONLINE, AND MAN, I DON'T HAVE THE ENERGY TO SORT OUT WHAT I CAN AND CAN'T SAY. SO I'M JUST GOING TO NOT SAY ANYTHING, OTHER THAN THAT THIS IS A NOVEL SITUATION FOR ME. ANY LIKENESS TO ANY PERSONS OR EVENTS, LIVING OR DEAD, ARE COINCIDENTAL. THIS DISCLAIMER NOT TO BE REMOVED UNDER PENALTY OF LAW EXCEPT BY THE END CONSUMER. THIS TELECAST IS COPYRIGHTED BY THE NFL FOR THE PRIVATE USE OF OUR AUDIENCE. ANY OTHER USE OF THIS TELECAST, OR OF ANY PICTURES, DESCRIPTIONS, OR ACCOUNTS OF THE GAME WITHOUT THE NFL'S CONSENT IS PROHIBITED.

    you're = you are
    your = belonging to you

    their = belonging to them
    there = not here
    they're = they are
  • Sterling7Sterling7 Registered User regular
    Congratulations on both an entirely well-thought-out prediction and an ending that succeeded in making me laugh aloud.

  • japhjaph Registered User regular
    Tit-calmer as raygun!

  • MinuteWaltMinuteWalt Mister Registered User regular
    The snark is strong in this episode.

  • gapMindfulgapMindful Registered User new member
    So, on the dropping XNA for mobile prediction. XNA ran on Windows Phone 7, and I doubt there's a great tech reason that a .NET framework tool-set like XNA couldn't have been easily ported directly to Windows Phone 8. It also runs on XBOX, Win7 and can run on Win8 for the same reason cited previously. So I'm thinking the reasoning for dropping the framework wasn't that it didn't live up to unifying the experience. It looks like it was capable on that end. My guess is that it incurred a lot of overhead and headaches on Xbox Live that Microsoft never really monetized well (see the indie arcade getting buried deeper and deeper with each UI update to Live). I'll bet they are killing it to try and reboot on finding a way to make money off of indie game development. While that's hardly abandoning indie devs, still feels like a bit of a wash.

  • Kathleen_LRRKathleen_LRR Registered User regular
    @apollyonbob - While I totally agree with you on the Unity front, MS will not do that unless they can buy Unity. Which I can't see being sold considering its privately owned, massively profitable and extremely secretive about its financial situation. ( http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2012/03/12/unity-revenues-up-130-percent-more-than-50-percent-of-business-is-now-mobile/ ) We actually had a pretty involved discussion about Unity while writing this story. But, just because there is already an established market leader it doesn't mean that MS doesn't want to try its luck anyhow. *Surface, cough*

  • enderandrewenderandrew Systems Engineer OmahaRegistered User regular
    Not that I'm trying to fixate on Kathleen's appearance (a subject deemed taboo consistently in these threads) but when she posts, I always find it an odd juxtaposition that someone who is particularly thin uses an avatar of what appears to be a fat unicorn.

    Maybe it is a reference to something I'm missing, but it seems an odd representation.

    That is all.

  • Viktor WaltersViktor Walters Registered User regular
    @enderandrew

    You a robot?

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor Registered User regular
    I am, in fact, a 1920's Rhode Island police inspector wearing a Groucho disguise before they were cool.

  • Kathleen_LRRKathleen_LRR Registered User regular
    @enderandrew - because the picture in this avatar is hilarious and it makes me laugh every time I look at it. No deeper meaning.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    "A new, mobile friendly development tool allowing low budget indie titles to be simultaneously released on Xbox, Surface Tablets, Microsoft Phone, even desktops..."

    Guys, that already exists. It's called Unity. Seriously, Unity 4 does ... well, almost all of those things. They're still working on Windows Phone support. But it's already begun! http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/10/30/unity-windows-phone-8-demonstrated-at-microsoft-build-conference/

    Yes, but as Kathleen notes further below, Microsoft does not own it. Therefore, it is unacceptable.

    You think that MS would proceed with a devkit they don't utterly control?

    Commander Zoom on
  • EDDnorrisEDDnorris Registered User new member
    Amazon Coins is a way to allow for microtransactions without having to pay a service charge to a credit card company every time the charge occurs. It is a grab for money but its directed at credit card companies or paypal. It's appears weird but overall it takes your money that you were going to give to a credit card company and gives it to amazon... So yea... Not the worst thing?

    There are currently many businesses perusing online gambling "game" development, which could allow amazon to essentially become a casino, which becomes especially advantageous for them if they "print" their own money/coins; this isn't currently legal to do, but there is lots of money going towards changing that.... not saying I agree with this fact, but yea, its happening.

    I <3 the show,
    EDD

  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    But I don't pay Visa - Amazon does.

    And now they want me to give them all of it upfront and covert it to Amazon FunBucks so they lock me into spending it with them and they save fees. So I assume anything bought with Amazon Coins will cost less since they're benefiting from me. :rotate:

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