It would appear that our good friends Blogger went and implemented themselves a new site. It’s got many things that are much nicer about it, and it looks like their acquisition by Google is going well. Except for the fact that at the moment it chokes on long posts – which is of course a big problem for me. I had this incredibly long post ready and Blogger wouldn’t take it. I guess it’s a good thing I compose them in w.bloggar first. In any event, for the time being, I decided on the compromise of splitting the post into three separate posts (and I had to post them in reverse order so they’d look right here) so please read the three posts below as if they were the same post.

Hey, at least I can fix my template now. Still, if they don’t fix this soon I’m writing my own blogging utility – something which doesn’t make me pay for RSS.

Last week saw the launch of Star Wars Galaxies, an MMORPG so long in the making that it predates The Phantom Menace. Or maybe development didn’t but speculation did. I think it went along the lines of Lucasarts thinking of making “an MMORPG” and everyone naturally assumed it would be Star Wars related.

The MMORPG has evolved from text-based MUD’s but the first graphical milestone came with Meridian 59, which is apparently being relaunched by Near Death Studios. The first “MMORPG” termed as such was 1996’s Ultima Online, which is still going on to this day. The first MMORPG to hit critical mass was EverQuest, which was developed and published by Sony/Verant/989, the same basic entitiy that is publishing SWG.

The basic premise of an MMORPG is that of a massive, persistent online world in which people log on and play as an ongoing character. For this the players pay a recurring fee. Early MMORPG’s launched at just under $10 a month, but more recently most go in the $12-$13 a month range. SWG is setting a record by launching at $15 a month (or $12 a month if you pay a year in advance). This is in addition to the $50 for the boxed product (though that price does include a month of playtime).

A looming problem with the MMORPG concept which has already started to manifest itself is with the notion that the market is simply not going to tolerate them all. By this I mean – you can go and buy a “regular” game for around $50. You can play that game as much as you want, or as little as you want, it still costs $50. People on the whole don’t seem to mind the concept of buying a game, playing it for a bit, maybe even a lot, and then shelving it. The nice thing about “unattached” games is that you don’t have to commit to how much you will play prior to purchase. However, buying an MMORPG means that you fully intend on playing it a lot – enough to merit a $10-$15 hit per month. This is more than some people pay for some of their individual utilities.

A buddy of mine bought SWG to try it out and apparently has every intention of playing for the first month and then not subscribing until much later, if at all. This kinda blew my mind, to which his retort was that it’s not unheard of to buy a game for $50, play it for a month, then put it on the shelf indefinitely. I suppose that’s true, but the difference to me is that if I put the game on a shelf and then decide to pick it up much later, I don’t have to go pay again to play it. For that matter I don’t like the idea of having to decide within just a month whether or not I like a game. I lost interest in Neverwinter Nights but I’m starting to pick it up again. To me, this concept of paying to continue to use something you already own is the sort of thing that killed Divx (the DVD variant, not the codec). Still, to each his own.

But still, even $15 a month isn’t too much in and of itself. However it does limit you somewhat. There are dozens of MMORPG’s in existence vying for your money, and dozens more on the horizon. The looming problem is that many or most of these games are destined for failure, simply because they’re competing for the notion that they are the game which is worth the money you might be willing to spend on them. Some games, like Motor City Online – based on the thin premise of racing – have already folded. Sony has already unveiled a $22/month service wherein you can play all their MMORPG’s like EverQuest and PlanetSide (though SWG isn’t included). However, the prevailing theory is that the MMORPG’s that survive will have some compelling reason for doing so – such as having been around long enough to have an impact, or having a popular license. EQ and UO fit the first bill, SWG fits the second.

But then again a good license isn’t always enough. The Sims Online launched and since the original Sims game sold some 8 million copies, it was thought that a million people would buy SO. However, initially only 110,000 bought the game, and only 40,000 stuck around for the second month. Complaints about the game mostly centered around the notion that it was essentially a very graphical chat client. Speculation by analysts seems to indicate that most of the copies sold of The Sims were to casual gamers and less likely gamers (like women in their 30’s) and few of them are interested in the MMORPG concept.

Last I heard, EQ had some 200,000 active paying users. If each of them pays $10 a month, then the game pulls in $2M a month. Of course at $10 a month, it was claimed that EQ wasn’t covering costs at that rate and the price has shot to $13 a month. This, if it is true, means for the most part that these games are not as profitable as was initially thought. It also explains why most MMORPG’s won’t forego the initial boxed product. The boxed product price cover the initial development, the subscription covers the maintenance of servers and such.

If a typical game sells some 200,000 copies then it’s considered a hit. Each of those 200,000 people might never go home and play the game, but it sold anyway. However, an MMORPG that goes on to sell 200,000 copies and sees few of those people actually playing is considered a dud. Worse yet, the MMORPG might go under – in which case you are in the possession of a game that you can no longer play – not even offline. This is also something of a problem for other types of games – shortly after launch it was complained that despite selling over 800,000 copies, few people were playing Unreal Tournament 2003 online. Offline games have quieter demises.

And there’s other problems with MMORPG’s as well – such as launches which are usually disasterous. UO was even launched way back when most people were on 28.8K modems, so lag was a major issue. Games like Anarchy Online have had nearly textbook cases of maddening issues. World War II Online was shipped extremely early due to the major investor threatening to pull out. Some games, like Dark Age of Camelot go off without much of a hitch, but they’re generally the exception. And now I see that most people today are unable to play SWG due to server issues – especially disasterous due to the large number of people who probably have been holding out on MMORPG’s until SWG.

There was a time in which Star Wars games were impeccable. X-Wing set the standard for space shooters, and Tie Figher raised it. The Dark Forces line of FPS games were magnificent. Even Rebel Assault games, in the despised category of rail shooters in CD-ROM infancy, were the gold standard. Games like the ill concieved Masters of Tera Kasi (a PSX fighting game – imagine Chewbacca beating the crap out of Princess Leia) were rare.

Then again all Star Wars games were rare back then. My theory at the time lied within the fact that, unlike other movie tie-in games, the Star Wars games didn’t have deadlines. The movies they were based off of were twenty years old. If you want to make a movie tie-in game you basically have three options. Option one is to develop it ahead of time, which allows you enough time to make a good game (or at least it should), but you run the risk of the movie being a flop and therefore your game is virtually unsellable (see the Judge Dredd games). The second option is to wait until the movie comes out and then quickly make a game before the hype wears off. The problem here obviously is that it doesn’t leave much time to make a good game. The third option is to wait until the movie is a hit, make the game, and spend as much time as you need. The problem here is of course that the hype and therefore your potential sales have worn off before the game ships. In this case the movie can no longer carry the game, so the game just has to be good. This can work (Goldeneye being the textbook example) but it’s rare (on in the case of Goldeneye, developed by Rare). The Star Wars games were this third option taken to its extreme.

But then again, there was a time in which Star Wars in general was impeccable. Or at least untouchable. Then George Lucas decided to revamp the original three films and while the results (the “Special Edition”s) were mostly harmless, it nevertheless ruffled lots of geek feathers. Then he decided to make a trilogy of prequels and fans everywhere were elated – until their 19 years of expectations were deflated by The Phantom Menace. TPM wasn’t a horrible movie, but it was marred by characters aimed at children, a horrible child actor, and cynicsm over marketing hype. Attack of the Clones fared better – for the forgiving geeks who bothered to go see it. Now Episode III is on the horizon, so we’ll see. Perhaps the prequels will hold up better as a trilogy, but perhaps it was best left alone. Still, just about every geek who thinks they should have never made Episodes 1-3 still thinks they should make Episodes 7-9. Go figure.

In any event, the existence of new Star Wars movies to tie into meant that Star Wars games went from games allowing people to re-enact old movies, to tie-ins of upcoming films. At some point Lucasarts completely turned to the new prequel games (though nowadays OT games do still get made). Games went from a rare occurence with amazing quality to a frequent happening, with spotty quality. Episode I: The Phantom Menace was a spotty top-down RPG for the PSX, Episode I: Racer was a decent pod racing game with an unimaginitve name, Jedi Power Battles was essentially a 3-D side scroller with jumping issues, and Demolition was for all intents and purposes Vigilante 8 with Star Wars characters. And not very good either.

Ironically Star Wars games ran the “version of” gamut with good luck for a time. X-Wing and its offspring were the Star Wars version of dogfighting flight silmulators, with no pesky ground or gravity. Dark Forces and its sequel Jedi Knight were the Star Wars verions of a FPS, etc. The version of an RTS was supposed to be Force Commander, but at the last second they tacked 3-D into the game (it was originally 2-D, ala Command & Conquer) and ruined it. Rebellion was their version of Master of Orion, so if you “got” it, then you loved it – otherwise you totally hated it.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is an entire Star Wars universe beyond Return of the Jedi – in the early 1990’s George Lucas allowed for others to write books continuing the Star Wars storyline. Dubbed the Extended Universe, there have been hundreds of books, comics, and even an occasional game in this storyline. Some feel that this would be the best fodder for future Star Wars games, especially the New Jedi Order series. The unlikeliness of the general public to agree though makes it unlikely. Oddly enough the game Knights of the Old Republic, a Star Wars RPG in development at Bioware, takes place hundreds of years before the original trilogy.

Things have started to look up recently, mostly coinciding with Lucasarts’ decision to not rely totally on internal game engines and to outsource the development of some games. They licensed the Age of Empires II engine and made Galactic Battlegrounds, a proper RTS. They tapped Factor 5 to make the Rogue Squadron series of games, culminating in the amazing Rogue Leader on the GameCube. And they had Raven do Jedi Outcast, the third Dark Forces game.

Remember how at the beginning of this latest season of South Park, Kenny returns with no explanation?

Here’s something I see a lot of people getting screwed up and/or confused on, so I’ll shed some attentive light on the subject.

id Software’s 1992 shareware smash Wolfenstein 3-D spawned a lot of sales, and a lot of imitation. Suddenly everyone wanted to clone the first person shooter. Some created their own engines and others licensed the Wolfenstein Engine for the tune of $50K. Most of the games were bad, and the ones that did come out based off of the Wolfenstein Engine (like Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold) took on the order of two years or more to make, whereas Wolfenstein 3-D took between six and eight months to write, including engine coding. By the time Blake Stone came out, DOOM had been released.

And the process more or less repeated itself with a vengance, even giving rise to the term “DOOM Clone”. And again, none of them came close, even the ones that had licensed the DOOM Engine. Pretty much the coda to this period is the title Duke Nukem 3D, which pretty much bested DOOM, but Quake was right around the corner.

About this same time game developers/publishers realized that their games would not have to best the current game on the market, but rather be competitive with the next game on the market, since that was the timeframe most were thinking of. Also they realized the potential was with the “game with single word name and groundbreaking graphics”. To this end many started work on their next game with their sights set on id. The two big ones were 3D Realms’ Prey and Epic’s Unreal.

Unreal‘s big claim to fame was to be its use of MMX, a set of added instructions Intel had added to the Pentium chip, but this idea was ditched in favor of the rapidly-progressing 3D graphics card market. Unreal came out some time after Quake II and blew everyone away with its 3D accelerated graphics and visual style. Despite the fact that it had been delayed numerous times, it delivered when it finally was released. So impressive was it that 3D Realms, who had since killed off their Prey switched their Duke Nukem Forever project from the Quake Engine to the Unreal Engine.

Which is another lucrative practice id Sofware begat. They licensed out their engines to those who were adept and could afford it. id Software has always re-written their engines more or less from scratch for each game. Wolfenstein 3-D and Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny shared the same engine, as did DOOM and DOOM II (both of these were shareware games with retail sequels). Quake was a new engine, and Quake II was a revamped Quake Engine game. Quake III was a new engine, and DOOM III will be a new engine as well. Ergo, when you license an engine from id Software, you license “the Quake Engine” or “the Quake III Engine” – a particular version of a particular engine named after a particular game.

Epic, however, went a different route with the Unreal technology. Instead of starting over, they added to it and expanded it. However, since id Software set the trend of the engine being different with each game, people figured that the same thing happned with Unreal, i.e. – Unreal Tournament uses the “Unreal Tournament Engine” and while this was harmless enough for a while, it’s not true. It’s all the Unreal Engine. Whatever game comes out with it doesn’t use the “Unreal ____” engine, they just use the latest code drop of the Unreal Engine. Tim Sweeney admitted in an interview that it might have been a mistake to call the first game simply Unreal.

So here’s a recap:

Unreal (1998) – The first Unreal Engine game, it had single and multiplayer components.

Unreal: Return to Na Pali (1999) – single player expansion to Unreal, developed by Legend.

Unreal Tournament (1999) – The follow-up to Unreal, it was a multiplayer-only affair. Coincidentally it came out around the same time as the also-multiplayer-only Quake III Arena. Also on the Sega Dreamcast and the Sony PlayStation 2.

Unreal Tournament 2003 (2002) – Sequel to Unreal Tournament, stirred controversy due to its faster pace and naming scheme implying a yearly series. Also available on the Macintosh.

Unreal Championship (2002) – Xbox-only Unreal Engine game, multiplayer-only and capabale of playing over Xbox Live.

Unreal II: The Awakening (2003) – Single player only sequel to Unreal developed by Legend, regarded as marriage of specacular graphics and unremarkable gameplay.

Each one of the above games used a more advanced version of the Unreal Engine (except for the expansion pack and to some degree the console versions). A version of the original Unreal was planned for the PlayStation but never completed (it likely would have been horrible had it been completed), and early in the pre-life of the Dreamcast, Sega boasted how Unreal compiled and ran with no difficulty on their console, but never released.

The Unreal Engine has powered too many games to fully list here, but amongst them are Splinter Cell, The Wheel of Time, the free America’s Armygame, the two PC Harry Potter games, a TNN deer hunting game, a Nerf game, and a horrible Klingon game. To say nothing of games like Duke Nukem Forever which have yet to be released. Ironically Epic’s eagerness to license the engine has resulted in a larger number of bad games using it as opposed to the Quake Engine.

Up next is Unreal Tournament 2004, the realization of the fear of gamers once Unreal Tournament 2003 was named. It is known that it will incorporate everything from Unreal Tournament 2003 and at least 100% more content and reverse compatibility, but whether gamers will have an “upgrade path” or have to fork over from scratch remains to be seen.

Also known is the title Unreal Warfare, but it remains to be seen what this title means – it may be another Unreal game, it may be the abandoned name of Unreal Tournament, it may be some new concept (like a PlanetSide-esque MMORPG).

So that’s the Unreal Engine in a nutshell.

Our good friends Metallica are releasing their new album, St. Anger, on Thursday. St. Anger will be the band’s first all-new studio album since 1996’s Load.

The Metallica releases since 1996 have been mostly of the “right before Christmas” variety, annoying otherwise dedicated fans who really wanted new studio material. 1997’s Reload was really the leftovers from the Load sessions, a distinction muddied by the fact that the CD had videos and a tour supporting it. 1998 saw the release of a 2-CD set, Garage, Inc.. The first disc was a series of cover songs recorded over the previous year. The second disc contained the limited edtion and widely bootlegged The $5.98 E.P.: Garage days re-revisited from 1987, as well as cover songs recorded in the 1980’s which never saw the light of day. In my opinion this is an underrated release. Then in 1999 we saw S&M (Symphony & Metallica) which was Metallica performing live with Michael Kamen’s orchestra. In my opinion this is a terrible album and concept. They contributed a new song, “I Disappear”, to the 2001 Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack, but that’s the last we’ve seen of Metallica material until now.

“I Disappear” was also the first Metallica material to be released after the departure of Jason Newsted, their bassist of fourteen years. Newsted left for “personal and physical reasons”, but shortly after formed a new band. Newsted himself had replaced original bassist Cliff Burton who was killed in a tour bus accident. In light of recent revelations (see below) it’s likely that Newsted left due to differences with the band.

Also in the years since a new studio release Metallica became caught in the MP3 crossfire. They were one of the few artists to speak up against MP3 piracy and the rise of P2P networks, most notably Napster. With drummer Lars Ulrich as their moutpiece, they obtained a court order ousting some 30,000 Napster users with Metallica songs for download. While other artists were silent, indifferent or even supportive of MP3 downloads (viewing them as publicity), Metallica was adamantly against them – many believe it was due to their better-than-average record contract, meaning that lost sales affected them more. In many ways the move backfired, since it led to the viewpoint that Metallica was “suing their fans” and “greedy”.

Which leads into the other thing angering Metallica fans. Metallica’s sound has changed and evolved over the years as most groups’ will. However, many view Metallica’s earlier material as their best, labelling anything after 1991 as substandard. Metallica was one of the few artists to be able to thrive in the 1980’s despite not releasing music videos. In 1989 they released their first video for the lengthy song “One” off of their fourth album …And Justice For All. The song was from the viewpoint of a man whose limbs were claimed by a land mine in a war, which also claimed his face. He discovers himself in a hospital unable to do anything. The video laced images of the band performing the song with those of a movie named Johnny Got His Gun whose plot was the same (and likely the source for the song’s inspiration).

Their 1991 album was named simply Metallica and was recorded at a cost of a million dollars (mostly due to the triple-digital recording process). It’s usually referred to as “The Black Album”, due to it’s nearly pitch dark cover and the fact that it was confusing to some newer fans since artists usually self-title their first album, not their fifth (it also tied nicely into a joke in the movie This is Spinal Tap). As part of subsidizing the costs, the group gave up their self-imposed ban on music videos (since videos help sell more copies). It’s the most successful album the band has done yet.

But then 1996’s Load came, weighted down by some ballads and more experimental material. Older fans didn’t go for it, and newer fans didn’t go for in en mass either (especially those who had since discovered their skateboard-fan-era earlier material). Then with 1997’s Reload came the aforementioned confusion that it was a followup album – while the CD had some gold on it, it had more chaff then the typical Metallica release. Couple all of this with the declining place of hard rock and Metallica’s attitude and you get today’s situation – a lot of former Metallica fans who would prefer it if they sounded a lot like their former selves.

And apparently internally Metallica wasn’t faring much better either. James Hetfield went into rehab and Lars let it slip that his problems might spell the end of the group. But in recent weeks it came out that the band actually went to therapy together to try and sort things out. The result was a hug between James and Lars and a resolve to record an album that returned to Metallica’s roots. Early word is that, while it’s not the second coming of …And Justice, St. Anger is easily the hardest album Metallica’s ever attempted and the best since The Black Album.

Its release date was originally June 10th, but it was bumped up to Thursday (the 5th) to “thwart piracy”. I’ve never understood the logic behind this – my best guess is that there’s a subsection of people who would only pirate it if they could do so prior to its release. This is following similar moves by Eminem and Beyonce Knowles. Some analysts say it’s really to make first week numbers look better.

The CD will come with a DVD with the band performing the entire album in the studio. This, too, is a recent trend. It gives the consumer “value added content” and extra incentive to purchase what you could otherwise download. While there’s nothing stopping anyone from ripping the contents of the DVD into a DivX file, most people don’t have the ability to burn this onto a DVD and recreate the experience, so it makes sense to incluide it.

Of course I can smell what’s coming. If the album sells less than they anticipate then it will be blamed on piracy (the piracy they think they’re avoiding). If it breaks records it will be “blamed” on the DVD (saying they have to now bribe consumers to buy what they used to buy ordinarily). I can’t help but wonder if it chaps the ass of the recording industry that now they have to include freebies from a (currently) more successful industry to entice people to come back to their product.

So I can’t decide if I want to buy this album or not. On the one hand I want to since I’m not really opposed at all to compensating artists. On the other hand, reinforcement of the physical-product industry is not something I’m sure I want to do. Plus if I do buy it, it means I went for their DVD bait hook line and sinker. However, a vote for Metallica is a vote for hard rock, especially this album.

Couple that with the recent reintroduction of Headbanger’s Ball on MTV2 (which I get now) and things are looking better for hard rock. I’m listening to 97.1 The Eagle in Dallas, which is the station KTSR used to be, and better to boot. Plus apparently there’s a lot of rock acts touring this summer (Ozzfest, Metallica, etc), and of course Dallas is one of the stops on every tour. Perhaps there’s hope for music after all. I guess the ultimate irony would be for music history to repeat itself and this wave of hard rock lead into a new alternative wave of the second coming of Grunge. And that would be just peachy, too.

Now all that needs to happen is for St. Anger not to suck. One way or another I’ll know soon enough.

Alrightythen, it’s been a few weeks since I blogged here. In the meantime, I got a new job, quit my old job, moved, started my new job and moved this site to non-Tripod hosting. Quite a bit.

I don’t like harping on personal bits here but the gist is this – my Wife moved to her new job in Plano in April, crashing with her dad in Addison. I finally got a job in Lewisville (for non-Texas types, these cities are all near Dallas) about two weeks ago, so I served notice and moved in the meantime. We found a rental home in Frisco, and that’s where I am now. I’ve only been in this job for two days now, both of which consisted of training, but I already can tell I like it better. Life is pretty good at the moment.

Ironically the hosting service I went with (the guy I know) lives some three miles away from me. There’s still some kinks to work out (and Blogger is acting up lately) but I kinda like it better this way (the “hard way”).

What else? I finally got an Xbox, making my console triumvurate complete. I must say, I am impressed by the console itself. I like the way the wires give way in case you trip over them, I like the games on the bundled disc enough (Sega GT and Jet Set Radio Future) and of course I like Halo. I also like that they went with the smaller Controller S. I’ll comment more later.

Anywho, I’m sure I have more to say but at the moment I still have a crapload of boxes to unpack. I never realized I had so much crap (confession time: I had to have my parents roll into town to help me).

The banner is gone. Read into this what you will.

In 1997, Sega arrived at E3 with an announcement. Their game system, the Sega Saturn, was dropping its price by $50. Prior to then, it was $249.99, now it was $199.99. This meant that it was now the same price as the Nintendo 64, and the Sony PlayStation was now the most expensive console on the market at $249.99. The price drop went into effect immediately. When asked about whether or not they were going to drop their prices, Sony and Nintendo replied that they weren’t. However, the next day they both did.

And so born was a tradition. At E3 each console company announces that they’re going to slash the price of their consoles. This happened last year – the PS2 and Xbox were both $299.99 and the GameCube was $199.99. The PS2 and Xbox both got $100 cuts to $199.99 and the GameCube got a $50 cut to $149.99. This year they’re rumored to all three be recieving a $50 cut, making the PS2 and Xbox $149.99 and the GameCube $99.99. It took five years for the Nintendo 64 to be slashed to $129.99, so to have the GameCube be slashed down to under $100 so quickly says something about how competitive the console market is.

Obviously now each console company comes to E3 armed with price cuts ready (and in this case people working at game retailers are reporting that their stores have already recieved the literature), but I think it’s still as simple as the 1997 situation at heart – in theory all three companies could decide that they simply won’t drop their price and the other two companies will follow suit. But of course that will never happen. Either Company A or Company B will drop their price, rendering the other of those two companies in the unpopular situation of having the most expensive console, so the other of those two will then go on and drop their price. Then Company C (always Nintendo) will have a console with the same price as both Company A and Company B, so they’ll drop their price as well, since one of their strongest selling points will be the fact that they’re cheaper.

So that’s what’s going to happen next week. Ergo, hold off on buying that new console until then – you can get a game for the money you’ll save.

The price drops are an extension of the “give away razors to sell razor blades forever” idea. For the most part the consoles are more expensive to make then they sell for, so when manufacturing costs go down a peg, the price goes down another peg. At some point the price goes low enough to stay there a while. The price of the PlayStation went down until it hit $99.99, then it stayed there for a few years. Of course, it was estimated at one point that the PSX’s manufacturing costs went down considerably – in 1999 they’re still making this 1994 console with a 2X CD-ROM drive and 2MB RAM, so it probably cost about $25 to make. 2000 saw the release of the PS2 and the PSOne, a $50 reslimming of the console aimed at the somewhat-portable market.

The reason for the E3 timing is simple – a big media event to pull off the price drop right before the typically slim summer months. Plus they’re getting people hyped about the games they plan on releasing in the Fall.

On the one hand I don’t see the prices of any of these consoles going lower next year. Then again I didn’t see them going so cheap so fast, so who knows. I don’t think next year the GameCube will drop to $50. $75 maybe, but not $50. The other consoles might drop to $125 or $129.99.

I wonder who will benefit most from this drop. My bet is Nintendo – there’s probably enough people out there who are interested in Metroid or Zelda and figure $99.99 is worth it.

Of course this brings in the other big unknown – the deals. Nintendo’s giving away a free game with their console (not technically bundling) and Microsoft has a disc with the Xbox giving away Sega GT 2002 and Jet Set Radio Future for free. I don’t know if these deals will still be there once the price drops.

I promise I have lots of way-cool stuff to say and posts to make, but with my current situation (job search, Wife already working in Plano, the Damocles Sword of packing), posts will be few and far between. However, this one I couldn’t resist.

Infogrames has now officially changed its name to Atari. This is after they bought out the name/assets of Atari from Hasbro and after they used the Atari name as a label for years.

I personally think this is cool, since I like the idea of Atari living on as something other than a label on a piece of software. Of course, the main reason a lot of people like Atari is because they associate them with the memories of their console youth. I also like Atari since, they were an American console company (albeit with a Japanese name). However, the headquarters of what was called Infogrames is located in the UK.

Of course if I was really sold on this “American” idea I’d have an Xbox by now, but I think I’ll have one of those soon enough.

My wife says I’m boring since I never update. However, I’ve been working for quite some time on an article on .NET, and finally finished it. I bet she’ll think I’m really boring now.