I REALLY hope they don't go into consoles ... everytime a company does that they become infected with the "Christ this audience is easy to please" taint and PC gaming becomes an afterthought ... eg. Epic, Bioware - even ID has shown signs of this terminal, incurable sickness.

Stardock ... for the love of all that is good and holy ... just say "NO!"

Dano

500million+ PCs. The Business issue is not what is reality at any given time, its what the consumer perceives to be reality that matters. Its not the price point that matters, its the consumers perception of the Value of the Product or Service - maybe low price, but if the mechanic is a dork and couldnt put a fuse in a plug, let alone fix an engine, value is garbage, we move on. Price maybe slightly higher than others, but if quality and Service is fantastic, you'll buy ...

From where I am sitting, Stardock are now superbly positioned in the Market Space. They have focused on understanding their customers perception of needs, and supplied it with an unmatched quality of service and customer relations. Now innovate a new Product (Hybrid RTS/TBS, Hybrid RTS/RPG), and you have products that no one else will get near for a considerable period of time - they will have a development lead. Now consider where competitors are - running like lemmings around consoles and attached marketing ...

Launch new products, to existing very happy consumer base, in comes revenue, use that to promote the new products and unique position in the market ...

Its too late even now for competitors to stop them.... Size of niche ? Pick your number .....

Regards
Zy

Actualy, if you start developing games away from the RTS and TBS genre. then i wouldn't respect any of you on a busness level if you didn't even try to tap into the console market.

Quoted For Truth.

This whole "console vs. PC" thing is just fundamentally stupid. You put the games where they will do well. Most traditional RTS games don't do well on consoles due to interface (though I'd love to see someone have a go with the Wii Remote's mouse-like behavior). Likewise, most traditional third-person action games don't do well on PCs due to interface (too clunky, and nobody avails themselves of the option to use a GamePad). Where there is intersection (RPGs, etc), not taking advantage of both markets is just dumb.

Hey Frogboy since you've met Chris Taylor, i was wondering have you met Lewis Castle (creator of Command and Conquer)?

If your asking that in the view that C&C went to consoles, your forgetting that so did supreme commander.

Hmm, so basicly they will take an "here's what we offer, download it if you wish" kind of deal useing stardock as the medium in which to do this?

It's funny that Chris Taylor is so proud about the XBox 360 interface for supreme commander. The PC game clearly showed that the company has not even the slightest understanding of good interfaces. Well, I wish the XBox 360 players the best of luck at handling this thing. Topping the PC interface shouldn't be too difficult.

Demigod also sounds quite 'uninteresting'. I don't think the game will be a success on the PC. They should release if just for the XBox 360.

I say wait for the reviews before you put it down. Or at least the Beta.

Anyway I just want to say that to get my last post out, because of the weard forum system I was unable to just edit the post so I posted two.

If there are any problems then if a moderator could merge them it would be super awsome and such.

Well said.

The game decides the platform. Not vice versa.

Wow. That's extremely ambitious. If you've worked out a serious deal with some of the major OEMs - you just might have something that could give Steam a run for its money.

I was having doubts when I first read the article, because Steam is quite a juggernaut. Then I looked at these comments and saw the hint about OEM deals . . .

This could really push Stardock into the mainstream.

Just promise me you won't sell Stardock, or become publicly traded so somebody can buy it. You see what Microsoft is trying to do to Yahoo!?



Totally agreed. And I'd like to add that cross platform games are very common, and that there's nothing mutually exclusive about the platforms. Just because consoles are booming doesn't mean that PC games are dying. PC games are very much alive, and will continue to live as long as the PC platform exists.

I've had friends that have more than one console, or that have a console and a PC, with games on both.

I'd also like to say that PCs are development platforms and have very flexible hardware. Because of this, they remain and will continue to remain the experimental playground for new game technologies. The future will be written for PCs first, then later moved to consoles.

In addition, it's very thrilling that the competition is heating up! I've always been a big fan of competition, because it drives new ideas and better products. I think it's great that there's going to be viable competition for Steam, and I do think that electronic distribution of software and games may be the future (as long as I can keep a copy backed up).