[Industry Thread] I shall call him...Mini Wii.

Maddoc · November 2012

or because most of these OSes have been shit at launch and need to be worked into a stable state over the course of its shelf life

And people pretty much loved Win 7

mere_immortal · November 2012

Double Fine is doing interesting things with the latest humble bundle.

Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight has become a fairly well known event by the developer. For two weeks every year, everyone at the company stops what they’re working on, and get together in small teams to create prototypes for new game ideas. And since 2009, all the games the studio have released have been born from these creative weeks. The likes of Costume Quest and Stacking came out of this elaborate brainstorm. This year they’re doing it differently. “We’re letting the world in on it,” explained studio head Tim Schafer to me this evening, in an interview to appear later tonight. Via Humble Bundle, we get to vote on the 23 pitches to pick the four that will be created as prototypes. And then the whole process of developing will be live-streamed, with the finished projects available to everyone who paid.

And because it’s a Humble Bundle, that’s paying whatever you like, including diverting all the money to the Child’s Play charity, should you so wish. Once you’ve paid, along with receiving the four prototypes once they’re completed, you’ll also get the prototype versions for two previous Double Fine projects. Happy Song is the earliest incarnation of what would become their making-a-Kinect-worth-owning Once Upon A Monster, and Costume Quest is – well – the prototype for Costume Quest. Both are hugely different from the finished projects, says Schafer, which he hopes should be interesting for fans of their games.

You can view all 23 of the 30 second pitch videos on the Humble site, and then decide which you want to see made into the games before the games. Will they include Cloud Prix – a cloud surfing side-scroller? Or Primordial Slime, a touch-screen game (What they? -Ed) helping a blob of ooze escape from a lab. Maybe Black Lake, in a forest filled with the dreams of the inhabiting animals, protecting them from a darkness that wants to consume their sleepytime thoughts. Or perhaps Silent But Deadly – a smell-based game where you “must escape an office building after pooping your pants.” EVERYONE VOTE FOR SILENT BUT DEADLY.

Tim Schafer explains more in this inevitably hilarious video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WTl2V3EDJik

And I’ve had a chat with him about it that I’ll post as soon as I’m done frantically transcribing.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/19/amnesia-fortnight-decide-double-fines-next-prototypes/

cloudeagle · November 2012

Synthesis wrote: »

It probably shouldn't have. Am I the only one who thinks this is just...how these things have always played out?

Windows XP comes out. No one likes it. Windows Vista comes out. No one likes it. Windows 7 comes out. People are okay with it, but hardly in an uproar.

I distinctly remember 98 and 95 having their own share of negative controversy as well.

Actually Win XP and Win 7 were really popular. Win 7 largely because of "it's like Vista, only good this time!"

But yeah, new versions of Windows have never ever ever sparked revolutions in PC/laptop hardware by themselves.

Dehumanized · November 2012

People hated the shit out of Windows XP until SP2.

Dark Raven X · November 2012

IIRC it was to Windows ME what 7 was to Vista.

So people leapt on it as a fix to a very badly received iteration.

SyphonBlue · November 2012

Vista was nowhere near as bad as ME.

Microsoft is lucky ME came out before The Internet was what it is today.

cloudeagle · November 2012

For you fans of technobabble:

Curious about what silicon is powering Nintendo's Wii U? So was Anand Lal Shimpi, who tore his brand new console to pieces in the name of science. At its heart is a multi-chip module with a PowerPC-based CPU, built on IBM's 45-nanometer process, paired with a GPU similar to AMD's RV7xx design. These two components share 2GB of DDR3 RAM (plus an unspecified amount of eDRAM), while Anand calculates memory bandwidth to be 12.8GB/s. That's around the same as as the Nexus 10 and new iPad, but should throw more frames at your eyeballs because those other devices are operating at much higher resolutions. In terms of power consumption, the Wii U's innards draw a pretty constant wattage regardless of load, drawing 32.8W when rendering the disc menu and 33.0W when playing Super Mario U -- for comparison, that's around a third of the appetite of the greedy little PlayStation 3 Slim.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/19/nintendo-wii-u-teardown/

Wii U an iPad cut in half confirmed.

Also, looks like Nintendo is still obsessing about keeping power use down.

Automaticzen · November 2012

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Vista was nowhere near as bad as ME.

Microsoft is lucky ME came out before The Internet was what it is today.

Preach it.

L Ron Howard · November 2012

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Donnicton · November 2012

mere_immortal wrote: »

Double Fine is doing interesting things with the latest humble bundle.

Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight has become a fairly well known event by the developer. For two weeks every year, everyone at the company stops what they’re working on, and get together in small teams to create prototypes for new game ideas. And since 2009, all the games the studio have released have been born from these creative weeks. The likes of Costume Quest and Stacking came out of this elaborate brainstorm. This year they’re doing it differently. “We’re letting the world in on it,” explained studio head Tim Schafer to me this evening, in an interview to appear later tonight. Via Humble Bundle, we get to vote on the 23 pitches to pick the four that will be created as prototypes. And then the whole process of developing will be live-streamed, with the finished projects available to everyone who paid.

And because it’s a Humble Bundle, that’s paying whatever you like, including diverting all the money to the Child’s Play charity, should you so wish. Once you’ve paid, along with receiving the four prototypes once they’re completed, you’ll also get the prototype versions for two previous Double Fine projects. Happy Song is the earliest incarnation of what would become their making-a-Kinect-worth-owning Once Upon A Monster, and Costume Quest is – well – the prototype for Costume Quest. Both are hugely different from the finished projects, says Schafer, which he hopes should be interesting for fans of their games.

You can view all 23 of the 30 second pitch videos on the Humble site, and then decide which you want to see made into the games before the games. Will they include Cloud Prix – a cloud surfing side-scroller? Or Primordial Slime, a touch-screen game (What they? -Ed) helping a blob of ooze escape from a lab. Maybe Black Lake, in a forest filled with the dreams of the inhabiting animals, protecting them from a darkness that wants to consume their sleepytime thoughts. Or perhaps Silent But Deadly – a smell-based game where you “must escape an office building after pooping your pants.” EVERYONE VOTE FOR SILENT BUT DEADLY.

Tim Schafer explains more in this inevitably hilarious video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WTl2V3EDJik

And I’ve had a chat with him about it that I’ll post as soon as I’m done frantically transcribing.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/19/amnesia-fortnight-decide-double-fines-next-prototypes/

Oh, god, Silent but Deadly has far more votes than the concept deserves. Please don't let that thing win.

KiTA · November 2012

Henroid wrote: »

Frozenbyte comments on Nintendo's restructuring of indie game price setting and the cost of patching removed. The short of it, as described Saturday night, is, "Hooray!"

While I kinda sorta (not really) get why the other players charge for patches, the fact that Nintendo doesn't is amazing.

Hey, question: Are WiiU Indy Devkits available for anyone, or do you have to have a proven track record? I just realized that a retraux 8 bit RPG would work pretty well with that tablet.

cloudeagle · November 2012

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

SyphonBlue · November 2012

cloudeagle wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

First thing I got when I installed Windows 8 on my desktop at home.

Renzo · November 2012

SyphonBlue wrote: »

cloudeagle wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

First thing I got when I installed Windows 8 on my desktop at home.

Yep, Start 8 helps turn Windows 8 into a normal, useful OS.

Without it you must go on a scavenger hunt for your old programs. If you upgraded from an earlier version of Windows, anyway.

Fawst · November 2012

cloudeagle wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

I don't follow your logic here. Do you mean that you think people will hate Windows 8 so much that they jump ship from the desktop to a non-Windows 8-based tablet? That seems like an extreme reaction. From everything I've read, it's not like Windows 8 is bad, it's just that the Start Screen is "change," and as we all know, change is bad.

Renzo wrote: »

Yep, Start 8 helps turn Windows 8 into a normal, useful OS.

Without it you must go on a scavenger hunt for your old programs. If you upgraded from an earlier version of Windows, anyway.

Again, having not used Win 8 myself, I heard that you can add your Start Screen to the taskbar which essentially creates a Start menu. Not the case?

On a different topic, regarding the supposed Xbox info, does anyone else get the impression that the future augmented reality device will turn out to be the Occulus Rift? Am I crazy, or would the Rift used in conjunction with Kinect 2 be "the coolest thing ever?" It would be a total accident waiting to happen, what with full range of physical motion while completely blind to your immediate surroundings, but, you know, immersion.

SyphonBlue · November 2012

Fawst wrote: »

cloudeagle wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

I don't follow your logic here. Do you mean that you think people will hate Windows 8 so much that they jump ship from the desktop to a non-Windows 8-based tablet? That seems like an extreme reaction. From everything I've read, it's not like Windows 8 is bad, it's just that the Start Screen is "change," and as we all know, change is bad.

Nah, there are some seriously legitimate gripes with Windows 8 when it comes to anything that isn't a tablet:

The Start Screen removes Jump Lists, which I use exhaustively
It is more difficult to get to the Control Panel and the shut down menu
Instant Search breaks things up into inane categories instead of giving me everything (for instance, if I search for Programs and Features to remove an installed Program, I have to click an additional tab instead of it just showing me what I'm looking for)
The removal of the Start button is such a terrible idea for laptops/desktops I really can't believe it got through more than 1 email before someone laughed that person out of the office

That said, I did buy Win8 because there are lots of improvements also made, but had to buy Start8 so I can get my Start menu back and use it as a normal OS. That really should have been a config option that shipped with the OS.

cloudeagle · November 2012

Fawst wrote: »

cloudeagle wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

I don't follow your logic here. Do you mean that you think people will hate Windows 8 so much that they jump ship from the desktop to a non-Windows 8-based tablet? That seems like an extreme reaction. From everything I've read, it's not like Windows 8 is bad, it's just that the Start Screen is "change," and as we all know, change is bad.

Honestly, it could be too much change for most people. You could make a strong argument that Vista wasn't really all that bad, but people hated it largely because it was different. But back then, there wasn't really an alternative... they just waited until Win 7 comes out.

This time around people don't have to wait. There's already an alternative out there that is already eating away at PC marketshare. Rather than waiting, your average user who doesn't need much from their computer other than internet and email could just decide to get a tablet instead. In fact some were already deciding that before the big, tea table-upending change happened.

This is something my wife is strongly considering. And she works in a pretty technical/computer-oriented field.

L Ron Howard · November 2012

From a business perspective, change is horrible. I know of quite a few business that haven't even fully adopted Win7. And those aren't like tiny mom-and-pop sized shops either. It's not just a matter of money. It's also a matter of having old programs that do something very specific, and not having those applications be compatible with Win7's new architecture. Win8 might be the most amazing thing since sliced bread, but if your programs don't run, and it's been deemed to be too expensive to try to get newer versions of the program, due to whatever reason (usually incompatible data and whatnot), you're stuck.
And let's not forget there's a completely new paradigm on Win8. Now, in my experience with said decent-sized businesses, even though they have IT departments, and they're trying to be hip IT companies, they never will be. They employ people that should never be around computers at all. That's not a bad thing, but it's just how it is. Now these people might be able to somewhat adapt to Win7's scheme, because it's at least somewhat familiar. Win8 would be totally new, and I think confound people too much. That gives support even more issues as they're working with the usual stuff, and then Mary up in accounting that doesn't work on computers.
Anecdotes and all that, but that's my experience.

Synthesis · November 2012

Dehumanized wrote: »

People hated the shit out of Windows XP until SP2.

I distinctly remember people not liking XP as well.

I have never been an early adopter for new operating systems. Not coincidentally, Vista was perfectly adequate for me (except for being 32-bit because of my cheap ass), as was XP, 98, 95.....

EDIT: Shit, one thing 8 has going for it is that it's as memory efficient, or more so, than its predecessor (assuming reviews and word of mouth aren't blatantly wrong, which they might be I guess). People bitched up and down about XP being such a resource hog when it came out...I don't think "people" know what they want aside from things not changing and wanting to use Windows machines in general, which is why despite all this "BAHHHHH," in the last decade, they're still sitting pretty on 80% of the market share.

Fawst · November 2012

That's true, the casual PC user is probably just as well-served by a tablet as by a desktop/laptop, so it would make sense to jump ship there. Shit, now you've got me interested in looking at Surface, simply because I actually do want a tablet and I don't know that an iPad is the best option. Considering the integration of Xbox Live with Windows 8, I wonder if we're going to see it used in the next Xbox?

Synthesis · November 2012

Fawst wrote: »

That's true, the casual PC user is probably just as well-served by a tablet as by a desktop/laptop, so it would make sense to jump ship there. Shit, now you've got me interested in looking at Surface, simply because I actually do want a tablet and I don't know that an iPad is the best option. Considering the integration of Xbox Live with Windows 8, I wonder if we're going to see it used in the next Xbox?

Media out the ass. Oh, and smartglass, but no one likes that.

Gaslight · November 2012

I am almost positive there were tales of the OBox having overheating problems at launch. In fact, I thought I remembered an early PA comic about it, where Gabe is laughing at an out-of-order demo OBox in a store. But PipeFour search is down.

PipeFour is civilization.

Synthesis · November 2012

Gaslight wrote: »

I am almost positive there were tales of the OBox having overheating problems at launch. In fact, I thought I remembered an early PA comic about it, where Gabe is laughing at an out-of-order demo OBox in a store. But PipeFour search is down. PipeFour is civilization.

It's possible, but this sounds like complaints about Gamecubes having poor QC at launch (I know multiple people who "outused" their early Gamecubes through what seemed like intensive but reasonable playtimes). Of millions and millions of units sold, yeah, chances are something went wrong somewhere, but I don't think you could call it a trend. Never heard of overheating myself, so much as the console freezing/locking up during games. Anecdotal stuff, primarily. I still have my launch oXbox (with the main fan's bearings starting to wear out and screech) for whatever that's worth.

There certainly wasn't anything approaching the area of the court-involved debacle with the PS2. Granted, neither console was as popular either.

Namrok · November 2012

With respect to businesses upgrading their OS and retraining employees along with generic human studity:

I frequently run into companies that still have to support IE7. Especially in the government. Because there is a class of people out there that literally lose their mind and start flinging shit at the walls when the one application they use, IE7, has slightly different looking buttons and icons in IE8. Oh and tabs. We can't expose a certain class of people to tabbed browsing. They just can't be trusted with it.

SyphonBlue · November 2012

Actually, it's usually because whatever apps they use were coded in 1997 and management refuses to update.

skeldare · November 2012

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Actually, it's usually because whatever apps they use were coded in 1997 and management refuses to update.

Try 1982.

Couscous · November 2012

So Treyarch pulled Nuketown from the normal rotation and can only play it in custom games and special events. This kind of makes all those ads kind of hilarious.

cloudeagle · November 2012

Couscous wrote: »

So Treyarch pulled Nuketown from the normal rotation and can only play it in custom games and special events. This kind of makes all those ads kind of hilarious.

What's the reasoning behind that?

skeldare · November 2012

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/379459/black-ops-2-nuketown-2025-map-pulled-from-online-playlists/

Posting via Twitter, game design director David Vonderhaar confirmed, "Double XP weekend is official over. That means Nuketown 2025 / 24-7 is as well. I know. RIGHT? Don't kill the messenger."

Essentially, this means that the Nuketown playlist has been removed, and the map has not been put into circulation with other maps in regular playlists.

In a subsequent post, Vonderhaar goes on to explain that Nuketown 2025 will only be back for "special events".

"Nuketown 2025 / 24-7 will be back for special events. You can always play it with your friends in Custom Games," he said.

The Nuketown 2025 map - a remake of Black Ops favourite Nuketown - was offered as a redeemable DLC map to those who pre-ordered the game and, was assumed to be permanently available for online play, not as an 'events-only' temporary map.

Dehumanized · November 2012

cloudeagle wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

So Treyarch pulled Nuketown from the normal rotation and can only play it in custom games and special events. This kind of makes all those ads kind of hilarious.

What's the reasoning behind that?

It's a mystery. Here's both of the statements by a Treyarch employee:

https://twitter.com/DavidVonderhaar/status/270596627067195393

Double XP weekend is official over. That means Nuketown 2025 / 24-7 is as well. I know. RIGHT? Don't kill the messenger. +

https://twitter.com/DavidVonderhaar/status/270597235513884672

Nuketown 2025 / 24-7 will be back for special events. You can always play it with your friends in Custom Games.

No further statements have been made.
ProGenTactics.com ‏@ProGenTactics
@DavidVonderhaar Will Nuketown 2025 be available in the regular playlists?

David VonderhaarVerified ‏@DavidVonderhaar
@ProGenTactics Yeah. Probably eventually. We are talking that over internally.

Ragnar Dragonfyre · November 2012

cloudeagle wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I must be the only one who never had any real issues with ME.
And, in fact, I reluctantly upgraded to XP, because I didn't like it. I thought ME played games pretty well, and I didn't have any issues or major crashes, to be honest.

Though, since Win8 isn't selling very well, I do wonder what that means for PCs in the future. Will MS pull support for Win7 in like March to force everyone onto 8, even though it's still a perfectly fine platform? I know they seemed to pull support for Vista as soon as they could, but I thought that since Win7 was and is a success, they'd stick with it for a while.
I know there are still many businesses that haven't fully upgraded to 7 yet, and I'd imagine they're still working on converting everyone still. I'd imagine that for businesses, they'll never embrace 8, and they'll just skip it in favor of 9 or whatever, due to the slow adoption rate.

Yep. The new Start screen makes absolutely no sense for businesses.

I seem to remember that for Vista, the slow sales forced them to keep extending support for XP things for much, much longer than they would have otherwise. I would think they'd do the same for 7 this time around, but Microsoft is betting so heavily on the whole unified 8 experience they might not.

One strong possibility is that distaste for Win 8 just accelerates the transition from PCs to tablets.

Yeah, the ISP I work for is still running XP and we only recently got updated to IE8. In the time I've been here we've gone through two new database applications and still haven't upgraded our OS. At this rate, I don't see us updating for another couple years.

As far as I'm concerned, most PC users that have been around for a decade or more had forgone the conclusion that Win8 was going to suck and would be followed up by a much better OS only a year or two later. M$ has shot themselves in the foot with their history of OS releases.

Win95 -> Win98
Windows 2000 -> Windows ME -> Windows XP (all within a year of one another)
Windows Vista -> Windows 7

Microsoft ALWAYS follows up with a better version typically within a year or two of launch. Since support for the prior OS isn't shelved immediately, people can safely continue with their old OS until the better version drops.

I know I had already decided I wouldn't upgrade until Windows 9. Win7 is fucking fantastic, why would I shell out for an OS that's primarily designed for tablets?

Undead Scottsman · November 2012

Wow, preorder bonus's that aren't even available all the time.

This industry is getting better and better!

agoaj · November 2012

As I understand it, all that's gone is the 24/7 list. Anyone can still make a custom game with nuketown, and you can still filter for nuketown if you have it right?

Dehumanized · November 2012

My understanding is now there are no ways to play ranked games on the map.

Couscous · November 2012

The problem is is that a shitload of people don't play custom games at all so removing it from the playlist makes it kind of worthless for them and would be the kind of thing that they would have liked to known before preordering. From what little I have heard, not that many people play custom.

Blendtec · November 2012

Microsoft OSes kinda follow the Star Trek movie rule, only every other one is actually good.

I work for a rather large university. All the students here get free copies of all the newest PC and Mac software. The school itself? We're still using XP on almost all the computers. Many of them still use old versions of IE. Even with a staff computer I had to fight to be able to put Adblocker on Firefox. Big companies are slow to adapt and anyone who knows better is going to avoid 8 anyways.

Cade · November 2012

cloudeagle wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

So Treyarch pulled Nuketown from the normal rotation and can only play it in custom games and special events. This kind of makes all those ads kind of hilarious.

What's the reasoning behind that?

Speculation is because the map is so small it enables people to get more XP which allows them to level up faster than any other map and if people level up everything too fast.....

Couscous · November 2012

It is misleading because this is probably one of those cases where the lack of a disclaimer creates the assumption that the map works like every other normal map. It is one of those things where not having a disclaimer implies stuff. Saying that it is OK because they never specifically promised it would work like a normal DLC map kind of assumes the world works differently from how it actually works.

Cade · November 2012

Now everyone can sing their praises for returning something they had taken away!

Dragkonias · November 2012

Undead Scottsman wrote: »

Wow, preorder bonus's that aren't even available all the time.

This industry is getting better and better!

Actually, it wasn't even really a preorder bonus.

Every new copy of the game comes with a code for the map.

Penny Arcade

Quick Links

[Industry Thread] I shall call him...Mini Wii.

Posts