[casual_games] languages... (that's an 's' at the end!)

[Hal Barwood]

Last post on this one for me:

I'm willing to stipulate that .NET is great.  And further, that few will 
hesitate to download it -- from Microsoft, but maybe not from Joe X's 
Shady Game Site -- if they need it for something regarded as important 
and useful, like security software.

No one needs games.  Hard core maniacs will run out and buy a new 
Alienware box for $3K if they need it to play the latest Doom or 
Half-Life, but casual gamers are, almost by definition, behind the power 
curve.  Not only is their hardware old and slow on average, but their 
fear (and ignorance) of the world of computing is often high.

Our audience in aggregate does not resemble us developers, right?

Hal





Joe Pantuso wrote:
> That's a fair point about the year.  It doesn't change the numbers though
> 98/ME machines being less than 10% of all Internet connected machines now.
> I can't prove it easily, but I'd bet that of people with machines that old
> they are considerably less likely to pull out a credit card and pay for a
> game, so they probably aren't interesting to us anyway.  After all we do all
> have to pay the bills regardless of who our players are.
> 
> We had market figures at McAfee 18 months ago that showed people with 98
> were not buying software in significant enough numbers to keep supporting
> them.  That's two annual release cycles ago.
> 
> Mac is a more interesting market, and bigger as far as sales into a
> population go.  Completely beside the point right now I know, but with the
> Mono guys already having a working XAML compiler I have every expectation of
> porting our .NET based stuff over there at some point, maybe 2 years?
> Certainly if Mac gains market share that will become ever more likely on
> both fronts.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
> On Behalf Of Chris Berry
> Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 7:00 PM
> To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [casual_games] languages... (that's an 's' at the end!)
> 
> Joe Pantuso wrote:
> 
> 
>>.NET capable systems with a moderns OS underneath (meaning XP and 2K)
>>represent 80-85% of all desktop PCs world wide.  Remember a Win98 box
>>was purchased 8 years ago!
> 
> 
> Not wishing to detract from your point, but Windows XP was released in
> October 2001, which would mean that Windows 98 and ME boxes were being 
> sold to home users at least until 4 years ago.
> 
> Windows 2000 was out in the beginning of 2000, but your average home 
> user likely doesn't run Windows 2000 (I appreciate that many casual 
> games are played in offices, though).
> 
> 
> Chris.
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