wehn is the build 2 comming out and when is the final release comming out???
and jeff- do u have a good time and date for world peace?
The EA2 is being released in 5.25 gerflickles.(1)
The final release will be in 7 hozzickles.(2)
(1) A gerflickle is the amount of time in days from now to the EA2 release, divided by 5.25
(2) A hozzickle is the amoutn of time in days from now to the commercial release, divided by 7.
I suppose it isn’t entirely unreasonable to ask for a ballpark target for planning purposes… e.g. “not until some time next year, at least” or, “hopefully by fall 2006”
Well it wouldnt be if I hadnt already said multiple times I don’t know yet.
When I have anything I can commit to, you guys will be the first to know. Realistically on EA updates we want to get them to you as soonas we can, which probably means by the time I know a release is happening it will be because it is happening.
On the commcerical side, as I’ve said, thats all still in planning stages.
I understand, Jeff, that you cannot tell us the release date which you dont know by yourself now. But I hope you can understand that we need something more concrete … will we see a commercial release soon (within one year from now) or do you think it will take some more years to come?
The cause we ask this is simply because we need to know if we should switch our current projects to SGS technology or not.
Ragosch
Yup I am VERY aware.
What I can tell you is that I expect an answer “soon” (within the next 3 to 6 weeks) on at least when I will have answers available.
I know its frustrating. Trust me I wanted this all figured out before we released the SDK. i am very very aware, having been in the business, how important these details are to you guys.
BUt Sun is a big company and its amazing how slow big companies can be to galvanize. Trust me at least thatits your burining interest(and that of others in the industry not represented here) that ash finally gotten Sun to move at all on making real concrete plans.
I’m prodding the dinosaur with the sharp stick you’ve handed me, guys, really I am 8)
also when is the battel trols demo comming out ??? :
Jeff, any idea of of what it will cost ?
I mean no exact price, just the about price ? $100 ? or $1 million ?
In regards to releases. I can say this much now:
We are targeting a bug fix EA2 in approximately a month. After that, baring a change in plans, it will be more like 3 months til the next major release
As for cost, the business model is still being developed. Everyone invovled agrees that we want to (a) preserve our value but (b) also keep it accessible for small developers. My gut says that probably means a service model, at least for the developer, which would include hosting and ancilalry services such as billing, with some kind of fee schedule pegged to the developer’s economic model, but this is just gut and nothing is set yet.
Sound like its unlikely to support free games then?
Kev
just want a copy of the software and host it on your own grid… none of that sun network mumble… if we cant host our own stuff yourselfs then the SGS is pointless… shame i think the thing is very good jeff- nice work… hope sun dont drop the ball and mess it up when it comes to selling it…
Hi
It sounds like the change of CEO will continue suns service driven goals, ie, the hosting. Which may allow for single node open source versions, but it’s pure speculation. I know Jeff was keen to keep us little guys in the game.
Endolf
It depends on what you mean by free. 100% free, we will probably have some support for. (Thats ia a “probably” not a promise. I can’ty make any promises yet because we are still workign out the detailed business models on our end.) We see this as important for things like ecouraging student use and development. Obviously we are going to limit our exposure in terms of total usage of compute resources we might make freely available. I think we’re aprticualrly interested in making our resources available for open-source projects because they benefit the entire community and, lest face it, unltimately benefit the money making side of this.
For Universities and other non-profits I also strong suspect we will have ways for them to get the software and host it themselves. If other not-for-profit fiolks want to self host my guess is we could make similar arrangements, Again, this is all guess-work at this stage.
However if you are making money on it in any way (advertising, whatever) then obviously we would want to share in that.
I should stress btw that its likely that there won’t be a single model. The service model is ideal for about 80% of our poitential customers, but we DO have some kinds of customers who prefer to own their own infrsatructure and as soem of thiose customers are VERY large I doubt we’ll just leave it on the table and walk away.
ANother thing I am looking at right now is the LAN-play part of the equation. Some games wont even necessarily need or want an internet host., or if they do its just for matchmaking Its something Im aware of and working on how we handle Obviosuyl since the economic mdoel of those games is SKU based we need to see if we cna come up with a SKU based pricing structure that works for those…
Really though, this is ALL still in the planning stages and will be for at lest the next 3 months or so. Right now we ar doing thinsg like detailed load testing to find out exactly what the typical cost requirements ARE to run an SGS back-end. Until we have that all econmomic models are by nature incomplete.
What I CAN tll you is we were just in a meeting with some of the highest execs there are at SUn and one of them said, “You really wan’t to get the developers that are 3 guys and a dog.” SO not only am i comitted to having mdoels that work for small shops, so is the sun Executive team.
What about 1 guy and 3 cats? 
Endolf
My only question in that case would be - which one of the cats is in charge?
Kev
I recon Ozzy, the stupid cat that forgot to grow and likes sticking his tail in candles and watching it burn. I think he’d be the purrfect one to run any home project I’m involved in
Endolf
Nope, sorry, cats are useless, except for fuzzy therapy…