The big story this week for us was the release of TotalGaming.net. But what made just as much noise was a blog I wrote about why PC games sales are going down (or at least my take on it). Got a lot of email on that. It's kind of a weird dual job here. Those of you who use WinCustomize may not even realize Stardock makes games. And those people who use our games may have no idea about Object Desktop. Separate worlds.  So yea, this week was mostly a game week. It could have ended better, one publisher can't pay its bills and another publisher seems intent on antagonizing us for no apparent reason. But that's another story. Suffice to say, being a game developer isn't always all it's cracked up to be.

On the other hand, we're having a blast with the betas of DesktopX 2.2.  If you don't use DesktopX already, I really hope you try out DesktopX 2.2 when it comes out. Even if you tried out DesktopX 1 or something long ago and hated it, it's really come a long way.  Even DesktopX 2.1 to this new version is a big step. For me, the big thing is the new overlays feature.  Hit F9 (which is settable) and your widgets/objects that are set to normal z-order will pop on top, disappear, or return to normal. It's almost like having a whole new product because it can fundamentally change the way you use your desktop.  On my computer, I have a bunch of really cool stuff on my desktop (bandwidth monitor, store status, weather, clock, task list, handles monitor, and a few other little widgets). But I keep them hidden. When I hit F9, they all appear on top of what I'm doing.  So if I quickly need to check out something, I hit F9 and voila, there they are. Very handy.  We should have DesktopX 2.2 available on Object Desktop towards the end of next week. The public version will have to wait until mid August due to vacations.

We hope to use DesktopX 2.2 as the way to kick off our upcoming corporate solutions initiative. Stardock is increasingly licensing its technology into the corporate markets. But we've been very slow to push this aspect.  Go onto Stardock.com and try to find a way to find out how to license our software for corporate use. Good luck. We suck, what can I say.  But that's going to change.  With DesktopX 2.2's release we can start really pushing DesktopX Pro on a large scale.  I saw in PC Magazine recently this program that lets you build your own custom web browsers. It was something like $200. Just remember that DesktopX standard is only $20 right now and can do a lot more than that.

Awhile back we were noticing how awful most auto-runs look.  So we decided that this was an area we should get into. After all, we were using DesktopX Pro to make our auto-runs for our games. So why not make a product designed specifically for that based on it? The result is ImpressionCreator. A program that we'll be releasing next month (also based on DesktopX 2.2).

Meanwhile, work on ObjectBar 2 continues. I should probably mention what the big things in it are so people aren't surprised that we aren't doing the things they thought we would do with it.  First off, it's basically a rewrite.  A lot has been learned and we want to apply that here.  The biggest change you'll notice is that it'll have a whole new UI.  Secondly, we are going to set it up so that it will be able to embed DesktopX widgets.  So instead of poor skin authors having to jump through incredible hoops to make interesting bars and menus and such, we decided it would make sense to combine the strengths of DesktopX and ObjectBar together.  Hence, a bar with a widget integrated into it.  And lastly, we hope to make it so that you can export your finished bar as a stand alone program.  That will allow us to build ControlCenter 2.0 with it.  If you have Object Desktop, we hope to have that out for you in late Fall but it's been slow going, this stuff isn't easy to do as you can probably imagine.

I had hoped we would have an ObjectDock Plus update tonight. There's been a lot of new fixes this week to it but as we start getting close to "gold" with it, the last fixes get increasingly hard to duplicate and fix. We feel the stability and reliabilty are going to be tantamount here as ObjectDock, while looking fantastic, is really about making Windows fundamentally better as a useful environment which means users have to feel like they can completely rely on it. For me, it'll reach that point when I can ditch the Start bar entirely.  Think about it, ObjectDock Plus can do the Start menu, it can organize your programs and websites, it can handle the taskbar including grouping, and it it'll do the system tray better than the system tray does.  So it's all there potentially. It's just a matter of making sure it's bullet proof.

The other big thing going on these days is the development of WinCustomize v4 (which is also known as WC2K5).  The site is being recreated from scratch using .NET which allows for all kinds of improvements to performance. It's going to be a very different site from today and a lost faster one too. But fundamentally, we think it'll be a better website. The current WinCustomize was born in the days when skinning (ahem, "customization") was still kind of niche. But that time has passed.  We need to have a lot more community features, a lot more skinner appreciation features, and a lot more ways of empowering users to influence the direction of things themselves.  For instance, most people like these "blogs" but some people don't. I can see where those people are coming from because they're news items masquerading as blogs.  in WC4, subscribers and apprentices and up will be able to write their own articles and help contribute to the community in ways currently not possible. There's nothing quite like it out there.  I'm told that we'll be able to start phasing it in when I get back from Higgin's Lake (second week of August).

Meanwhile, next week, we hope to have a certain super hero premium suite done.  I.e. licensed from Marvel and all that. Had to make sure it was done correctly to ensure we had Marvel's approval. It's going to be slick.

One last thing, somebody asked why we support "non-Stardock" "competitors". Let me tell you why: A rising tide lifts all boats. The better legitimate customization software developers do, the better we all do. We want to support those who in turn will help support the rest of the community. We want to see other hard working developers succeed because if we all help each other, we all win...

I got this in my email today:

A concerned Canadian has invited you to join the georgebush.ca petition and stand side by side with other Canadians that believe George W. Bush and his administration need to be voted out of power.

As Canadians, we have a special opportunity to help inform our American friends exactly how Canada feels about the current US government headed by George Bush.

This November 2nd, we can't vote but we certainly can make our voices heard. Join the growing list of Canadians that are against the re-election of George W. Bush!

http://www.georgebush.ca

There's a great discussion on one of my favorite websites, Quarter To Three about why PC sales are in decline which I wrote about here.

Brett Todd and I are taking different approaches. He makes a good argument that basically boils down to this: It's so easy to download games illegally that increasing numbers of people are doing so and that is now showing a real impact on the bottom line.

Here's our discussion.

Most of the games I mentioned as mega-games aren't ones that I personally get into. I'm talking purely in terms of gross revenue.  If we're talking about overall sales, then it's all about the numbers.  If 2003 had "Titanic" and "Phantom Menace" (for instance) and 2004 didn't have Spiderman II or Harry Pottery released yet, we might have people discussing why movies have declined too.

I like UT and think City of Heroes is a cool game and so forth. But they're not the mega sellers (well UT2004 probably sells well). Maybe when they get a couple of sequels under their belts. (Though UT 2004 is obviously a sequel but it's only one game! It has a heavy load! <g>).
 

Hence our debate. I don't think it's obvious that it's a major factor. I don't think it's a significant cause of overall sales declining.

I see piracy has being a "leech" factor on PC game sales. I.e. X% of sales are lost to it. And I don't see X% having grown significantly in the past year or two.

Instead I believe:

a) Mega titles havne't been released this year.

More and more PC gaming time is spent playing MMORPGs which is taking away from # of games purchased.

c) The PC gamer demographic has gotten somewhat older and lacks the patience to mess around with obnoxious copy protection, buggy games, unrealistic hardware requirements, and incompatibilities. Alienated, these potential buyers become much more picky.

I would assert that fewer PC games are pirated OR purchased right now.

I'll even provide an example: Supernova's Alexa ranking is stale or declining. I suspect eventhe warez people are being alienated too!
 

Am I the only Ultimate Spider-Man addict around here? I've been collecting them for the past couple of years.

They start the Spider-Man mythos over at the start and really modernize it with Peter Parker a 15 year old kid.

If you have any interest in Spider-Man or comic books, I really recommend these. They're well written and the artwork is terrific.

Funny thing about numbers and what they mean.

Take this exit poll from CNN from the 2000 election. Overall, the voters are about even.

Most people who make less than $30,000 a year do not pay any federal income tax.  You may pay some at the time but you get a tax refund at the end of the year.  As someone who supports progressive taxes, this doesn't really bother me -- though I do think everyone should have to pay a certain flat fee so that they feel the pinch of what supporting expensive and wasteful federal programs means.

If you take out those two groups, you have 23% of the voters (at least) who pay no or virtually no federal income taxes.

So if you break it out like that you end up with:

I've been getting a lot of email and posts from game developers who are wondering what our overall strategy is with getting new games on TotalGaming.net. Let me take a quick stab at that in plainer terms than any spindoctored marketing document could:

TotalGaming.net is a gaming network for obtaining games electronically and downloading them right away. What makes it different is that it also includes retail games as well as indie titles and that there is no sort of DRM type scheme or "renting" involved. You're buying games.

From there, you can purchase games either individually OR purchase a TotalGaming.net subscription which contains most of the games available in the whole network.

Regarding royalties: The developer's game is made available as a seperate purchase. What % of the sale the developer gets is based on a number of factors but one of which is whether the game is also part of TotalGaming.net's subscription as well.  Their royalty of the TotalGaming.net subscription also depends from game to game.

A developer can opt out of having their game available as part of the subscription but their stand-alone royalty would be smaller since they are, to a degree, riding on the popularity of the subscription to get users to notice their games on the site.

The challenge for us is both repeat and avoid what happened with Object Desktop.

Object Desktop sells a LOT of copies each year. Object Desktop has sold more copies in the time GalCiv has been out than GalCiv has. And its sales INCREASE over time. So in that sense, we want to repeat that experience in being able to have a suite of software so compelling that it reaches critical mass and people just buy the whole thing even though there's only X programs they'll end up using.

But originally, Stardock intended for Object Desktop components to be developed mostly by third parties (like we did on OS/2 with "OS/2 Essentials"). But developers would focus too much on the per unit royalty rather than on the big picture. Is it better to make $20 per copy but only sell 500 per year? Or is it better to make $1 per copy but sell 100,000 copies per year? Year after year after year? So ultimately we ended up making most of the Object Desktop components with our own development team. Which worked out for us but it took longer for us to reach critical mass.

With TotalGaming.net, IF we can just get enough games on there that it reaches critical mass, then you get to that "no brainer" level of value that people just plunk down $89.

I've talked to a lot of indie developers over the years and the typical indie develoepr game sells far fewer than 5,000 per year. In fact, the majority sell less than 1,000 units per year. So if their $40 game sells 1,000 units, that's $40,000. On the other hand, if we can combine our strengths (and stardock is willing to eat it quite a bit on this to make it happen) we can have a gaming network that sells 20,000 copies per year, then 40,000 then 60,000 until we reach whatever the maximum sales level that can be attained. So then the developer making $1 or $2 per unit is making quite a decent amount of money just on the subscription.

Throw in another 500 to 2000 units sold stand alone where they get a good chunk of it and they have a pretty sustainable base.

Atom Films proudly presents a hilarious satire of Bush and Kerry in a duel.  A duel of songs and dancing!

Must see: http://www.jibjab.com/

IBM, never shy about blowing an opportunity to take over the market, was working on an iPod type product with the company that later went on to supply the hardware to Apple long before Apple showed up.

Among the interesting nuggets is the fact that PortalPlayer was working with a number of companies, including IBM, before concentrating its efforts on Apple. According to Knauss, IBM's plan was to create a small player built around its Microdrive (IBM later sold its drive business, including the Microdrive to Hitachi, which now sells it to Apple for use in the iPod Mini.) IBM also planned to use Bluetooth headphones--something that a few folks here have been wanting for some time.

I always wondered where the IBM executives who were in charge of OS/2 went to. Now I guess we know...