[casual_games] Portal Sales

[Adam Martin]

On 21/12/06, Chuck Walbourn <chuckw at microsoft.com> wrote:

>

> Again based on many of the posts I've seen on this list the past few days, it seems pretty

> clear that the level of engagement and education with respect to Windows Vista is pretty

> low. There's a lot of speculation and rumors.


Yes, a lot of us have been completely missed by the MS marketing
machine, and/or didn't have the time to spare to learn all about an EA
that would change substantially by RTM (as you yourself mentioned has
happened) causing us to have to re-learn all over again.

I'm not in any way bitter, that's just how life is, and I plan around
it. I'd just like you to be aware that a lot of us have been through
major underlying systems upgrades like this before and know what to
expect - and MS should expect that many of us will therefore wait
until the late stages before taking their new versions seriously.


> The Windows Gaming DRG group is not that big, so we have to rely heavily on events like

> our GDC developer day and GameFest to reach developers, and it seems like few people

> on this list actually make it to those events. Please take a look at the current SDK and

> the presentations on the DirectX Developer Portal (http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/).


I would humbly suggest that a few emails (maybe even just one) to each
of the relevant IGDA lists (of which off the top of my head I can only
think of two - this and online games) would have an effect on a
similar scale as that of a GDC session, and perhaps MS should plan to
mail IGDA lists every 6 months?. Obviously its going to hit different
people, but so many teams cannot make GDC or cannot make a given
session compared to the number of teams who are on the relevant IGDA
lists.

On a different note, the way that GDC sessions are scheduled there's
always a lot competing for your time, often 2 or three sessions clash
and their repeats ALSO clash (whih really doesn't help!). There's a
lot of weighing of relative value of competing sessions that goes on,
and IMHO if you're counting on a sessoin getting the message out it
either needs to be a keynote (look how many people attend those
despite the lines all round the SJ Civic auditorium), or you have to
distribute the same info afterwards to all the people who couldn't
make it. Simply saying in the proceedings that slides would be
available afterwards at the booth or similar IIRC has worked well.
Just a suggestion.

Adam