Java games can only be indie games

General Discussions
#21

As much as I share you enthusiasm for Java in games I am not sure whether a balmer-mcnealy handshake means instant gaming success. (this is what you post sound like)

Anyway JavaOne is currently blowing a lot of hot air around … I wonder how much of it this turns in reality. (eg. Phantom console with Java support, JDIC/JDNC success, Looking Glass release (in 2 years), …)

[quote]Don’t underestimate where Java will show up next. We are going to suprise you.
[/quote]
Ok I am waiting … but being well grounded.

#22

Show me the money ;D

#23

…now, what chances of OpenGL appearing on the Xbox? One of my old friends works at Nvidia as one of their main demo coders. It turns out that the Xbox Nvidia chipset was almost entirely developed under OpenGL. They moved to DirectX “at the last minute”. Interesting eh?

Cas :slight_smile:

#24

OK I have been bashed around for that statement long enough. So remove the last part (from Professional…), I take it back :wink:

Now the top point is indeed valid, and noone have commented it. How many million PS1 and PS2 + Xboxs have been sold?.

The Phantom console is great. But can it break through?

The whole point about this thread is to know your limitations. We cannot run on PS1 and PS2, Xbox DOES have directX and Phantom havent been sold yet.
Where are we going? What should we aim at?

I

#25

Stick to where the mass market penetration is: the desktop. No more, no less. There is no other market for J2SE, nor will there ever be: J2SE is designed from the ground up for the desktop. It can’t hope to work properly on anything else.

Cas :slight_smile:

#26

In all seriousness, why don’t you do something new and NOT surprise us? (or, at least, not all of us). Serious players like MS and Sony don’t surprise their developers, nor do the other the big players - it’s bad for business, bad for relationships, and artificially increases time-to-market.

If you have some agreement going down right now, take a leaf out of everyone else’s book and invite developers to sign NDA’s to get early involvement. IIRC it was a major part of how Sony managed to make PS1 so incredibly successful - instead of doing a Nintendo and having two or three developers with games ready early, they had dozens of them (helped, of course, by doing things like buying out existing studios and turning them into PS1 specialists…). You could get an N64 with…3 great games, 4 OK games, and 2 crap ones. Or a PS1 with … 30 great games, 50 OK ones, and who cares how many crap ones.

#27

Actually, on the previous page, I replied with:

Yes, they just hit 100 million mark. Approximately 30% each to Europe, USA, Japan (more in Europe than in USA, apparently…).

XB and GC have approximately 15-20 million each (off the top of my head) and PS2 approximately 35-40 million (approximately the total sales for XB and GC). Figures approximate because I haven’t checked for the last 5-6 months. But 3 minutes on google will give you accurate figures if you could be bothered.

I’m not sure how your point is valid. Yes, there are lots of consoles out there. There’s lots of conclusions you could draw from that, but the only one I’ve understood so far (forgive me if I’m missing something) is that this currently represents a percentage of the market that java games cannot be sold to. OK. Fine. And? There is no clear leap from that concept to the one enshrined in the topic title that I can see…or have we moved on to a new topic :slight_smile: ?

#28

Is there any estimate on prices for this Phatom thing? It is interesting to have Java on a console, but it would mean nothing if it won’t sell. And PS, XB and GC have good prices. No matter how good it is, Phatom won’t sell without an aggressive pricing…

Now thinking about the Chris’s surprises. Maybe Sun is negotiating the presence of the JRE in the PS3, XB2 and GC2? It would be great! Or I am totally crazy! :wink:

#29

the phantom thing will be $199, however, if you subscribe to the service for 2 years (24 months ), paying $25.99 a month, you would get the console for free. ($623.76 in total - $199 = $424.76, thats alot of money for me personally)

PS. Honestly speaking, why waste so much money, when you could plug your pc (using your graphics card) to the tv, get a controller, and play all you want? ::slight_smile:

is it true that you wont be able to play games already downloaded without the subscription?

DP

#30

[quote]the phantom thing will be $199, however, if you subscribe to the service for 2 years (24 months ), paying $25.99 a month, you would get the console for free. ($623.76 in total - $199 = $424.76, thats alot of money for me personally)
[/quote]
Doom! Gloom! That business model has already sent several companies bankrupt…and IIRC at least one (2?) was a console (anyone remember the names? ???). Funny how the old (failed) ideas keep coming back. Hey, maybe next JavaOne, Scott will introduce a NetworkComputer, and explain to us all how the TCO is so much cheaper with NC’s that thousands of people will dump their PC’s ;D :P.

However…in all fairness…the Amstrad Em@iler has far far less reason to live and - shock! horror! - actually managed to make a healthy, multi-million-pound, profit recently. It’s true; you can sell snow to Eskimos!

#31

You are correct. We should not “suprise” you. When we have something, that is appropriate for public consumption, to tell you about Java technology on game consoles, we will let the community know. (BTW, I’m not being sarcastic here, I mean it. )

However, this is not a closed developers forum, it is a public forum. You are correct in that there will be developers who know about it first under NDA. This is standard practice. Do you know which developers have
spec. dev kits for the PS3? No. Why? Under NDA :slight_smile:

-Chris

#32

blahblahblahh my topic was a cheap provocation intended to get attention I admit that. But its also valid when we look at how things are now. I dont think Java is taken too seriously

Thats why I petetion for some kind of focus. Java could breakthrough if we could excel in some kind of niche production. Draw attention to Java. That dosent have to be a game, but a way of marketing… whatever… :wink:

But I am thrilled by the support of SUN, and as
Cpt./Lt. Johnny Rico says in the movie Starship Troopers

I’m doing my part

#33

Sure, and all I’d expect to be said publically was “games developers interested in java on consoles apply [to email address xxx]. We will review your work, and get you to sign an NDA. If, after further discussion, it seems your work is relevant, we may accept you onto a secret program. We reserve the right to reject any applications, even once under NDA” or similar.

Which of course tells everyone else precisely nothing - other than that Sun is working on something to do with consoles (which we’ve known for a long time anyway :)).

OT, but…Actually, if you want to know, you can normally find out who many / most of them are. It’s pretty difficult to construct a legal document that says you aren’t allowed to tell anyone you are constrained by a legal document (doesn’t stop lawyers trying, but what do you do when someone asks “are you under NDA on this subject?” - if you lie, and work for a public company, you have broken public company laws. If you tell the truth, you’ve broken the NDA. And if you say “no comment”, then everyone knows you meant “yes” :stuck_out_tongue: )

Or there’s the tried and tested tactic of asking “what console is your game coming out on” and then looking at the recent hires (just look at job adverts on AASwift etc), which tends to quickly find the anomalies (e.g. superficial example: company has hired lots of multi-threaded programmers but has no PS projects at all. Hmm. Suspicious. Probably they’re not doing PS2 because they’re working on PS3 instead…)

So…news quickly spreads about who has and has not been NDA’d on something, even if few of the details of the thing itself spread.

#34

[quote]… I dont think Java is taken too seriously

… That dosent have to be a game, but a way of marketing… whatever… ;-)]
[/quote]
Actually, it does have to be a game.
It has to be a big fat successful award winning, money making game.
Then it’s done, Java MAY be taken seriously after that.

#35

Let’s see if I can get my games bundled on Dell then :wink:

Cas :slight_smile:

#36

Thats actually not a bad idea

#37

I didnt read this entire thread but it seams to me that once we have jogl with capability to work with opengl extensions we can pretty much put the fireworks you can see in any other game without any lack of quality compared to C++ code.

The argument that consoles dont run jvm is a little suspicious. Consoles, except for the XBox, dont run on windows either. Most consoles have a specific developing plataform made just for it. So i dont think java is in more disadvantage here than C++.

On the publishing part, these guys dont care if the game is made in java, prolog or whatever even more crazy language. If a game passes their quality tests they will publish, but you need to provide proof of concept.

#38

The point is that you couldn’t develop a Java game for any of the consoles if you wanted to. For a C++ game, you can support XBox, PS2, Windows, Mac, and Linux by abstracting the platform specific-code. Granted, that’s a lot of work. But there are games out there that have been developed for multiple platforms in that way. Just look at the Unreal Engine. If you want a Java game to run on a console (at present anyway) you would have to rewrite the entire game in C++.

#39

I know some guys ate IOInteractive (people behind Hitman). They do what aldacron just described. Write in C++ and then compile to the different boxes.

Besides all SDKs for the boxes are written for and in C++. All professional engines are written for and in C++. All the tools are aimed at C++. :stuck_out_tongue:

#40

Things will turn better with the next generation consoles i hope. With more memory they can put a jvm in there. If they can put one in a mobile phone they wont have any trouble with a console. Isnt there a version of linux that runs on ps2 ?