1. Re: more about serious
On Sat, 06 Nov 1999, Norm wrote:
.....
> It is just my opinion,
> personal and professional business-wise, that the use of programming
> language directed towards PCs of all types, has hit its high-water mark, and
> will soon become second-tier to the combined might of other, lesser thought
> of devices. If one looks at the total amount of memory sold right now,
> embedded devices take the cake. This will only accelerate over the next few
> years. Consoles (game machines) are a case in point. The Sega Dreamcast,
> for example, is a proper 128 bit machine (64 X 2 data; 128 X 1 graphics),
> and has a two proper operating systems. One of these is Windows CE, said by
> it's Master to be especially tweaked for the Sega box. The other OS is
> Sega's own primitive Game OS, though it still is a legitimate system... <snip>
I think someone has overlooked the number one consideration here:
Game boxes, even if they are capable of keeping up with a Cray, are
not going to replace the generic IBM or MAC. Why? First of all, because it's in
the best interest of the game machine's makers to _change_ the guts every
couple of years. Partly in order to take advantage of better and faster
hardware, but mainly to create a market for new games, which is where the
profit lies. So you'll be in a constant re-write mode. With an up-front cost of
$28,000, you'll have to sell a lot of copies of your programming language/os to
break even. OTOH, I don't _need_ a multi-thousand dollar license to design
programs for the pc or the mac. And programs I wrote 12 years ago still run on
a new pc. A lot of effort has been put into "compatability" in the pc world.
Regards,
Irv
