JBird - Slashdot User

Why Warhammer Online Failed — an Insider Story 235

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday October 14, 2010 @01:06AM from the truth-or-dare dept.

sinij writes "An EA insider has aired dirty laundry over what went wrong with Warhammer and what could this mean for the upcoming Bioware Star Wars MMORPG. Quoting: 'We shouldn't have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn't done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out. We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down ever since. It's 'stable' now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade [old] make more money than our biggest project." The (unverified) insider, who calls himself EA Louse (named after the EA Spouse who brought to light the company's excessive crunchtime practices) says similar trouble is ahead for the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA has not commented yet. God of War creator David Jaffe has criticized the insider for having unrealistic expectations of working in the games industry.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 57

by JBird on Tuesday February 09, 2010 @07:46AM (#31070440) Attached to: Virtualizing a Supercomputer

They'll be able to reload the image of your stellar evolution simulation in a few seconds after the guy doing nuclear weapons simulations has had his time. Never mind that the two simulations don't even run under the same OS.

Sounds like the supercomputer in Greg Egan's short story Luminous. It was basically built from light and was reconfigured specifically for each different application.

Comment Re:The first and foremost issue: (Score 1) 460

by JBird on Monday January 04, 2010 @07:31AM (#30639206) Attached to: At Current Rates, Only a Few More Years' Worth of IPv4 Addresses

$ host -t AAAA google.com
google.com has IPv6 address 2001:4860:c004::68

Why Is It So Difficult To Allow Cross-Platform Play? 389

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 28, 2009 @12:39AM from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

cookiej writes "I just got the most recent version of the Madden franchise ('10) for the PS3. Can somebody explain to me why EA has separate networks for the different platforms, only allowing players to compete with people using the same console? Back in the day, there were large discrepancies between the consoles, but these days it seems like the Xbox and the PS3 are at least near the same level. After so many releases for this franchise, they've got to have a fairly standardized protocol for networking; it seems arbitrary not to let them compete. Or am I just missing something obvious? Is it just a matter of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network not working together?"

Submission + - U.S. citizens to require consent to leave country

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04, 2006 @07:05AM

An anonymous reader writes: On http://sianews.com yesterday: "Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we'll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States. It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. Passport — a "travel document" that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says "no" to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States." Also discussed here.

Submission + - Posthumous GPLing?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04, 2006 @05:29AM

An anonymous reader writes: Has anyone ever heard of somebody GPLing his/her work posthumously?

I ask because in the small world of screen reading software for the blind, the owner of a small business that had a product called Slimware Window Bridge died suddenly and his product, if it had been GPLed, could be helping millions of blind people in developing countries today; not to mention some of you.

Journal Journal: API nightmares: what's your story?

Journal by vaspersthegrate on Saturday November 04, 2006 @04:54AM

While I gather my thoughts and references, relative to API design, testing, and promotions, let me ask you a question. Feel free to respond. What API disasters have you experienced? Tell me about your API nightmares. APIs that changed, didn't work, had bad documentation, poor presentation format, were hard to work with, had a buggy core product, had lousy developer support, etc. Help me compile my research into API Marketing, and ride my coattails into oblivion! Actual research findings, UR

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