OiOi! Go EA!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7052420.stm

I do so agree with this. True open coss platform is the most LOGICAL option! This would thankfully put an end to the annoying directX-only dominance (where pcs are concerned anyway).

So basically EA wants an 'open-platform' in the way a DVD-player is open as many manufacturers create for the given standard?

Never going to happen, not until the game market crashes.....again.

Looks like it :/

Sounds like another attempted monopoly, too.

No, it'd mean the end of competition among hardware manufacturers. Thhe drive to improve hardware would decrease and lead to games not evolving as fast as they do now.
The other problem with this is that you wouldn't even get games that take full advantage of the hardware, because they would have to work on the cross platform layer, it'#s basically java.

Hmm, Interesting point, but you cant really monopolise an open standard as its not 'yours', you can only exploit it. (unless of course you buy absolutely everybody)
I reckon its easier to have a monopoly as it is, because only the biggest of them have the resources to develop for such a range of platforms.

I dunno, back in the days of the virtually non-upgradables like the amiga 500, the cutting edge was with the software cleverness, not with constant hardware upgrades. Those guys pushed and squeezed every ounce of power out of that machine and games evolved just fine. To be honest I dont think any PC hardware has ever been truely pushed to its absolute limits development wise, as cleverly or as innovatively.

Also why would it mean an end to competition? Nvidia(for example) could say their new chip can run the open standard protocols much faster than ATI can (&vicevrsa). The only difference would be (for PCs at least) its not another corporation monopoly (eg. MS) telling them "this how its gonna be!". The same "ours does it better than theirs" would apply to the console world too.

Rest assured that EA aren't in the business of opening up the market to more people. They're in the business of closing the market to what few people are still left in it. This proposal would probably achieve it too.

It'll drive huge amounts of money out of the industry. You might not like the huge portion which Sony and Microsoft pocket on every game, but a lot of it gets pumped back into developers pockets one way or another. Some of them even being small developers like the ones releasing games on XBLA and the developers of Little Big Planet and Flow and stuff like that.

Don't let's pretend that the current position is perfect - or even particularly good, but I have to think that several partial monopolies are better than one total monopoly.

So do I to a point, but allowing EA to define an "Open Platform" as it were would be like allowing Microsoft to define "Trusted Computing". Which they did by the way, but that just underlines how bad an idea it is.

No actually. The reason EA are doing this is so they can lay off 80% of their staff. Right now they have 6 or 7 times as many people working on the next boring, formulaic, repetitious sports franchise game, as they would need to if they only had to hit one target.

A diverse market is in the consumers best interest, and the way the "console wars" are playing out this time around, with an almost even playing field, there isn't much incentive for publishers to develop "exclusive" titles, and cut themselves off from 2/3's of the market. That's EA's problem - the PlayStation doesn't rule the world anymore, and you can't get away with inferior ports on the "runner-up" platforms.

It doesn't really matter. With companies like Grey Matter and Aspyr having a business model revolving solely around porting games to less popular platforms (PC and Mac), who cares what API was originally used?

Well that's not going to take long. Just look at the Christmas season line-up for PC sales (and if not this year, try and remember any good games that came out last year). A handful of very high quality releases, and a shovel load of spreadsheets pretending to be games. Remind you of say, the Amiga release chart around Christmas 1994?

Why?

Here is a little newsflash for you. Video games are not what creates competition amongst hardware vendors.

How is that a problem? Ever heard of JNI? It would just mean that the lions share of the code that doesn't hit the hardware directly anyway, could be written once, run everywhere.

The open platform already exists. PC's baby! Make the consoles and set them free.

Gnu

I'm just concerned that EA, being the ones who are creating this generic platform, would have vested interests in steering its direction and controlling it and those ties to it make it a monopolistic thing.

I actually think the idea of a single unified level playing field is a good idea, but not necessarily quite so good for competitive sales.

"Here is a little newsflash for you. Video games are not what creates competition amongst hardware vendors."

If not so what does. You must explain this.

For a PC it used to be business that needed accelarated hardware capabilities and companies that used/produce 3D animation/Multimedia etc. But now that the there's nearly a PC in every home the lines have become blurred and the entertainment market is big business with lots of profit, thats one of the reseaons why Microsoft developed the X-BOX, and those of use that are old enough will remeber that Microsoft used to produce games for the old home computers (Commoder/Sinclair etc) as well some home computer O/S's.

"I'm just concerned that EA, being the ones who are creating this generic platform, would have vested interests in steering its direction and controlling it and those ties to it make it a monopolistic thing."

hmmm ..... Sounds familiar .... Microsoft / Intel / IBM

Whre is there a monopol dawlane?
There is Linux and if Microsoft wouldn't be there, apple wouldn't even exist anymore. (just to remember those "i love apple but hate MS" people: if microsoft didn't buy nearly 50% of apples shares, they would have to have close down their doors instead of creating the iPod!!)

I would even go that far and say that without Windows, Linux wouldn't exist in its current way as it wouldn't have anything to "fight against" ... you know, you can only get people follow you if it is for the same target or even simpler: the same enemy.

Dreamora, where did you get that figure from (50% of stock).

At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be entering into partnership with Microsoft. Settlement discussions regarding Apple's "Look and Feel" lawsuit and the QuickTime piracy lawsuit resulted in a five-year commitment from Microsoft to release Microsoft Office for Macintosh as well as a US$150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock. (This event is often inaccurately described as a "bailout" of Apple by Microsoft. At the time Apple had a little over US$1 billion in cash and cash equivalents according to their 10-Q statement.[29] Microsoft later sold its shares for a tidy profit.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer

I have read that this equated to 0.04% of apple stock (which was non voting anyway)

"Whre is there a monopol dawlane?"

The point I was trying to make is that the dominate party or parties would be calling the shots. After all which drives which in regards to graphics hardware DirectX or
nVidia/ATI(AMD) ? ( Some games say "A DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card is required" and lets not forget DX10.1 and not a card insight (yet) please tell me if I'm wrong))

Now here's a thought what if Microsoft had not devised Windows and had not used a bit of clever sales/licensing pitching.
What O\S would be dominate now. Would it be ...

1) Unix ( I read somewhere was partialy funded by the U.S. government)
2) Linux ( My favorate because its free, but can be complex for new users)
3) Mac OS ( Unix\Linux like but tries to hide the complex stuff )
4) O/S 2 ( This was a joint venture between M$ and IBM, but it was not to be and you will have to read the wiki to find out more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 )
5) DOS (lol)

"There is Linux and Microsoft wouldn't be there, apple wouldn't even exist
anymore"

Are we talking OS's here ?
Apple like IBM have always be a computer manufacture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer.
Linux (if compiled for it) would run quite well on Apple Computers ( or any other architecure) it's just fate the IBM-PC clones were cheaper.


Apple was doing well until Windows and the PC were joined together (they did have a rough patch with the Apple III and Lisa, the Macintosh and PowerBook saved their bacon. And lets not forget the Apple vs Microsoft lawsuit when apple sued over theft of intellectual property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer%2C_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation and the Quicktime fiasco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company (that would explain the M$ shares)

One other factor is what I would call "the market", that is to say the who is the biggest buyer of computers, of course as we all know it's buiseness companies big and small. These in the end decided the fate of the small home computer manufactures ( like those that produced the Amiga/ZX Spectrum though CBM is another story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International) and is one of the reasons of why Apple are in their current position (Apple hardware is too expensive and so buiseness will always go for the option that will increase their profit margin).

And one more thing a PC is a lot more configurable that a iMac and a Mac Pro.

And don't you just love wikipedia for finding infomation :-)

See the caption under the main image:


Hilarious. UT3 graphics were dumbed down for the console.

Within one year people will start complaining about the lousy computing power of consoles compared to a good PC. It's starting already.

I dont see how having an open standard would make for any less competition amongst hardware developers than say.. the 'direct'-3D/2D/play/sound standard (& whatever api's the others use). .

I see the points raised above about EA setting a standard. This would be a problem i guess. When i first read it I thought they were talking about a cross platform 'open' programming standard (eg. graphics language, network gaming, sound etc). But as a lot have pointed out, its not their usual business ethic. (unless as flameduck pointed out they are simply fed up of paying so much for conversions) - if the case then they may actually benefit from encouraging & investing in a 'free for all' standard along with everone else.

The OS is reduntant. The hardware is already open and standardized in PC's. They could make their own OS if they couldn't agree on a current brand. That would be the only hard decision software houses have to make. It's all smoke and mirrors right now with regards to consoles.

Gnu

"The OS is reduntant. The hardware is already open and standardized in PC's. They could make their own OS if they couldn't agree on a current brand"

"The OS is reduntant"

A PC or a console will still need a OS at some level.

"The hardware is already open and standardized in PC's"

Not the hardware only the specifications are open and standard. Intel did try and introduce us to Rambus Memory, but the specifications were propriety and hence memory manufactures would have had to pay a license fee making the memory expensive.

"They could make their own OS if they couldn't agree on a current brand"

They already do make their own OS's for consoles. PC's though are complicated beasts. In the old days of DOS a software house would have had to write device drivers for every piece of hardware that was available. The question here is wether the hardware manufactures released their specifications to the public domian ( unlikely ) or if a software house had the license them. Most just licensed ready made driver libs from other companies.

With the advent of Windows becoming popular this changed. Now a hardware manufature writes the drivers to interface with the OS and applications talk to the hardware through it.

Which will bring us to "the market" yet again. Microsoft Windows is on lets say 95% of all computers, if some one was to make there own OS, then its got to talk to the hardware and since hardware manufactures specifications are propriety, they will have to purchase a license or/and sign a no discloser agreement, then they would have to write their own drivers as a hardware manufacture would not put money and resources into a unproven product ( unless the has been extensive market research ).

This is one of the reasons why Linux has driver issues, the Linux kernal is released under the GPL and you will have to read the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License for some sort of explanation. And is why ATI/nVidia video drivers for linux have to be downloaded separately.

"The other problem with this is that you wouldn't even get games that take full advantage of the hardware, because they would have to work on the cross platform layer, it'#s basically java."

I think what he was trying to say here is that gaming experience wouldn't be the same on all the platforms, some hardware features would have to be emulated or omitted. One example would be a game Played on a high-end PC, wouldn't play the same on a low-end PC, though there would be little difference in game play.

Not so blurred that your state-of-the-art "gaming" graphics chip isn't essentially a workstation chip that failed quality testing.

Yes. Particularly since you can now charge money, for what you used to have to throw away.

No actually. The reason Microsoft developed the XBox was because WebTV wasn't doing too hot. Set top boxes did not become the hot item everyone thought they would be, so they reevaluated their "Microsoft in every home" strategy to include video game consoles.

Boy are you ever wrong. I'm 32 and the only thing I remember Microsoft releasing "back then" were poor basic interpreters (originally for the Altair 8800).

Well I'd like to say Amiga Workbench, but the fact of the matter is that IBM totally dominated the market at that time, and if it hadn't been for Microsoft flooding the market with inexpensive, sub-standard software, designed not to work with anything else (a luxury IBM could not afford) everyone would be using OS/2 - or rather one of its successors.

No actually. It's because the US government intervened and IBM, fearing another anti-trust lawsuit, chose not to go after the producers who were intentionally and illegally infringing on their patents.

Your assertion about what constitutes profit margins, is somewhat flawed. Businesses will generally go with the solution that gives the best benefit/cost ratio (low cost, high benefits). What platform or vendor that happens to be is individual. In my experience the focus is more on productivity and interoperability, rather than brand loyalty - after all, you don't have to waste too many hours in front of a computer, before the cost of the computer is dwarfed by the cost of the person using it.

No they aren't. Almost every specification maintained by a standards governing body (be it PCI, USB, whatever) is exclusive to members only (thus not open), and also different manufacturers use different technology (HyperTransport, PCI Express, QuickPath, etc.) so it's hardly a standard by any stretch of the word.

There's no arguing with make-believe numbers. 95% of the worlds "computers" are embedded systems, and none of them run Windows at all - even if you wanted to. Ignoring that "Microsoft Windows" is no more a concise platform than "Linux". Or "Posix". Or "DOS". I think it would be much fairer to say that about 40% of the installed desktop computers are running a Microsoft OS that has stable and available drivers, for any significantly large percentage of all conceivable hardware.

Could you, please, provide some real-life facts and numbers substantiating this statement?


So you were using Altair when you were 2-3 years of age? And you remember that MS BASIC was poor. My, my... we have a genius here on the forum ;)

I am 50 and I actually used the Altair and MS BASIC. The computer is still in my attic and I can tell you that MS BASIC, which was available for many personal computers of the era was quite capable and it was anything but poor.

Barney

Im not sure what flameduck means in the above, but i do know that the geforce was originally a workstation chip, for super hi-end industry standard quadro cad & 3D stuff which was twice as fast as any of the game stuff (3dsx,voodo etc) as technology advanced it brought the previous chips price down to the PC owners reach. How do we know for sure if the off the shelf GPUs are really the state of the art? I doubt it, the real cutting edge stuff must cost 1000s. However, these days mabe the demand has sped up the 'handmedown' time.

Im 32 and i remember GW-Basic (horrid) which came on dos 3.2 (my first dos sniff) Wasnt this a derivative or an 'improvement' on MS-basic?

"and those of use that are old enough will remeber that Microsoft used to produce games for the old home computers (Commoder/Sinclair etc) as well some home computer O/S's.
"
I was wrong it wasn't Commodore/ZX Spectrum it was the apple II (though I'm sure I have a Spectrum/Amiga game knocking aroud somewhere in my collection)

http://www.mobygames.com/game/microsoft-decathlon
http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm

"Not the hardware only the specifications are open and standard."

Perhaps I should have said "Not the hardware only the interface specifications are open and stanard". Intel released the PCI (PCIx I believe isn't, read somewhere that Intel wasn't renewing ATI's license when ATI was bought out by AMD) spec's to the public domain so it would make it very attractive to manufacturers. USB though is a team effort between Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Microsoft, Intel, and Agere Systems and as far as I can tell (without the aide of a solicitor) a manufacturer has to sign up for a membership at $4000 a year.

"Microsoft Windows is on lets say 95% of all computers"
My be I shoud have said "Microsoft Windows is on lets say 95% of all Personal Computers (Desktop)". After all which is the richest software company on the planet and why (dodgy buisness practices included).

Apart from that "The GeForce chips are the exact same chips as those found in high-end Quadro cards, only clocked to a lower frequency, and with different firmware because they failed the quality assurance test"? No. Sorry. But why do you think overclocking occasionally works? Because the chip was originally designed to only run at 500Mhz? Please.

What? Did you miss this paragraph from the (woefully factually and historically inaccurate) article you linked to?

Although titles such as Olympic Decathlon and Adventure are among the company's consumer hits, this effort is eventually folded back into the company, and the consumer market doesn't really take off for more than a decade. - 1979

I know it was. All the way from 1.1 to Visual Basic, not a single version of which was the least bit capable of running a program written in an earlier version. It wasn't even proper BASIC. More like Bastard BASIC. Before Microsofts hatchet job, BASIC was a well defined and well respected language. If you want to know why people today look down on BASIC as a poor language, well here's your explanation.

Intel did not come up with the PCI specification, and it is not an open standard, it is governed by the PCI Special Interest Group. The specification is not in the public domain, nor wholly or partially owned by Intel, nor has it ever been. I think you may be confusing it with older buses (AT/XT) designed and unilaterally enforced by IBM. The PCI specification is only available for purchase, by members of the PCI-SIG (including but not limited to AMD).

Then you'd still be wrong (in China and India for instance, the two most heavily populated countries in the world, Linux is quite popular, moer so than Windows), and still wouldn't have addressed the fact that "Microsoft Windows" is a brand name for at least 12 different MAYOR versions of more or less different operating systems, several versions of which are not intercompatible, and a brand name that spans more than 2 decades.

Well companies aren't "rich" - they have equity. As for software companies, I'm thinking Novell, as Microsoft hasn't really been a software company for a while, and their home entertainment division (responsible for such run-away successes as the WebTV and XBox brands) is hemorrhaging half a million dollars a day.

Everyone is trying to do just this ... all based on the Web. As always it's going to come down to content. Those without the killer apps will be out of a job.