operating systems

From: John Higginbotham <higginbo_at_netpath.net>
Date: Mon Jan 5 12:07:05 1998

At 08:48 AM 1/5/98 -0600, you wrote:

>Two, that today's computers run old software too quickly - that doesn't
>sound like archaic software to me, if it's running directly on today's
>machines and OSes.

Try loading up Buck Rogers and the Planet of Zoom! on a Cyrix 200 and see
how well it plays. Same goes for Frogger. :) They run blindingly fast,
making them utterly worthless unless you use one of those slowdown utils,
but most of those only run right on 486s.

  Three, that ancient games don't "hurt" today's
>software market. Doing what?

Doing what? Being available for "free" (illegally) out there for people to
get to them. The fact that people are still playing them doesn't affect
today's game market at all. It's a whole different ballpark out there these
days.

>so ... so, you say they should give up on them? A tenth of something is
>still something.

But repackaging the games and shipping them would up the price to at least
$10.00 a piece, and you would have to come up with a cheap way to make sure
the games ran at original speed on all systems, another few bucks for R&D
right there, so you'll probably end up spending $50.00 for a compilation CD
with maybe 10 games on it, and nothing else. (Can you say "Roberta Williams
Sierra Compilation"?)

Why not release the games as shareware, with no set ammount defined? People
could pay what the game is worth to them. I think Maxis did that with the
original SimCity.

>Don't get me wrong and think I'm just flaming you... I agree, I wish

Oh, not at all. I expected alot more flak from people when I started this
thread, but was suprised at how well the members of the list are taking it.
(so far)


- John Higginbotham
- limbo.netpath.net
Received on Mon Jan 05 1998 - 12:07:05 GMT