spawn more overlords!

[erf_]

Game industry, I love you, but you're bringing me down.

Do you remember when the Xbox 360 launched at $400? And the PS3 at $500? It never crossed my mind to buy either of those consoles at launch. Not because the launch titles were disappointing (promises of then-distant Lost Planet, Halo 2, and Gears of War for Xbox and Metal Gear Solid 4,

Comments

[kezinge]

I'm in a semi-frantic preparing for class mode, but the $200 pattern is interesting. As part of my semi-frantic preparing, I just happened upon the statement that the home version of Pong, released in 1974, was $350.

Also, there were early software contracting companies, starting in 1955, that were just a couple of programmers. They didn't have computers. They'd either rent computer time or do their testing on their clients' machines.

Neither of these is that pertinent, except in the whole standard historian's observation that this isn't a new phenomenon way.

How much of this price and performance increase in the consoles do you think is a result of competition between them and how much do you think is competition with PCs? I might elaborate on this when I have actual time tonight.

[erf_]

Yeah, it's fascinating how consumer perceptions of what a video game console is have changed. In 1974 Pong was a frivolous luxury item, a useless but fancy tech toy (like those Sharper Image LED waterfalls). In 1977 the Atari 2600, while still a luxury item, was marketed as a useful everyday gadget that also gave the kids something to do--it was a low-end home computer. By 1983 the late Atari, Magnavox, and Coleco models were seen as over-expensive, under-useful toys in an emerging desktop PC market, and their advertisers fruitlessly tried to advertise them as accounting and calculating machines that did more than just play video games. It wasn't until after the crash that the Famicom/NES cemented the console's position in the American household as an affordable entertainment device, so much so that More Than Just A Console projects like the 3DO and the Jaguar never took off. And now, after 20 years, we're back in high-end luxury device land again. I guess a PS3 is now what a cable box was in the 1990s, or what a VCR was in the 1980s

[erf_]

Sixteen. Sixteen years ago, in 1994, the AWE 32 was the price of an SNES. I forgot that it's 2010 already.

*sigh* We grow old fast these days.

[retch]

Man, I'm about to hit the point of being out of college 4x as long as I was in it...

[erf_]

For what it's worth, I keep forgetting just how much older you are than me.

[retch]

For what it's worth, younger people always come off as ridiculously young (so far), while older people can be progressively more years older than me without seeming older... Pretty much by the time I graduated, freshman seemed like small children. Now anybody in their mid-20s seems like a small child. On the other hand, when I graduated, people in their late 30s seemed old. Now people have to be in their 60s or something to seem old... :)

[erf_]

I guess age sort of compresses over time? I don't see you (and my other thirtysomething friends) as being all that different from me, age-wise, and even fortysomethings just feel like people who are really good at being thirty. But people five years younger than me seem really tiny, and ten years younger than me are children.

Marriage and childbirth change everything, though.

[retch]

pretty much, though my married friends with kids don't seem older, just more constrained in their lifestyles...

[erf_]

As for the grit-of-their-teeth garage developers...oh man, those were the days. Only place where that exists anymore is the casual market. Which is where I am currently headed. :]

[retch]

So what's your work situation at the moment? :) How much time for doing game development do you have, if somebody were looking for a programmer to help build some designs into sellable iphone/ipad/web/download versions? :)

[erf_]

I am currently doing CMS management work for a friend (who began a startup a couple months ago and is not making money), but my contract expires on March 10. I will likely be looking for work again after that date, and would love to do some mobile gaming stuff (aside from what I'm already doing on the side).

Do you have something in mind? You have my email address, right?

[retch]

dunno, did you get my email, I didn't see a response...

[erf_]

I did send a response on the 4th, am curious why it hasn't gotten to you yet...

[retch]

hmm, didn't get it as far as I can tell. Email me again!