Breaking News: Electronic Arts 'Taps Privateer (March 9, 2006)

Ijuin said:
DOS died when Win98 became the dominant operating system.
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Wrong. Win9x is just DOS with a GUI loaded on top of it. Before Windows XP (and ancestors NT/2k) became mainstream the personal computer market was filled with expansive, Win32 DOS boxes.

Besides, DOS isn't even dead, it's still used by many companies such as IBM, HP/Compaq, Nortel, etc for many specific needs where a lightweight OS is needed. We have many brand new medical eqipement still using DOS in our hospital (although it is true that more and more uses Windows 2000 embeded). DOS is even still developed and enhanced by open-source people.

DOS is just not the main personal computing OS anymore, but it's not dead yet.
 
PopsiclePete riposte is true...shame a lot of people don't know about the true value that DOS has still to offer. Medical, Business and even Dentistry still use DOS for their mainstream business needs.
Windows 9x-Win98 were just DOS-converted software systems until Windows XP came along in the new fangled days of 2000 and onwards, for operating systems becoming somewhat 'built from scratch' again.

(Fingers crossed) Im sure EA have finally come to their senses of bringing back some old WC adventure to our PCs.
:D
 
WOW! AWESOME!:D

Well after getting over the initial excitement and going out to Gametap here’s what I’ve determined.
The concept is interesting. :cool: Paying a monthly fee to have permanent access to a growing list of old game which, as best as I can tell will be playing on their server and displaying the images on your computer. Not a bad idea…accept for people like me who have very little time to play. :( Maybe once ever two months I can play a game and paying that is just not worth it. For those who do have that time it’s worth it. Now IF they would allow a one time permanent access fee per game I would be interested that way I could pay once and play it when ever I had time. Sadly that is not the case…(crossing my fingers) maybe in the future?!:confused:
 
I would imagine that the service will expand now that a heavy hitter like Electronic Arts is attached. I can only speculate, but we'll probably see international expansion and more options in terms of what you pay for in the future...

I think the most exciting fact, though, is just that Privateer was in EA's first set of titles made available... next to three others that are very important to their current business.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I think the most exciting fact, though, is just that Privateer was in EA's first set of titles made available... next to three others that are very important to their current business.
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Indeed. I shows us that EA is still "aware" of Wing Commander being part of it's successull franchises. This might indicate that EA is only waiting for a market opening for the genre to consider developing a new WC game. That's for the exciting part.

Personally, I don't know what to think about GameTap, though. Online playing of an emulated game ? Not only it seems far-streached of an idea (is it even feasible ?), I am not too sure I like the idea of not being able to keep the game.
 
I think EA likes WC, they put millions of dollars on it, and hold on to it. The moment there's something to do with it, you can expect a game.
 
PopsiclePete said:
Personally, I don't know what to think about GameTap, though. Online playing of an emulated game ? Not only it seems far-streached of an idea (is it even feasible ?), I am not too sure I like the idea of not being able to keep the game.
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And a monthly fee to play old games as well. To me, it just doesn't seem like it's going to be very successful. When given the choice between $15 a month to play decade old or older games, or to play something like World of Warcraft, most people are going to choose the latter, I would think.
 
I must assume the service works -- as Chris pointed out, they're spending millions to promote it and now have secured an alliance with the largest game publisher in the world... it's hard to imagine they wouldn't have perfected the concept yet (and in a practical manner, it must work now... there are people happily Tomb Raiding away at this very moment).

If this service expands at its current rate, it could end up being amazing and well worth the monthly fee. A legal way to play all the games of your youth (plus the million you couldn't afford)? Sign me up!

Imagine what else it could do, too -- if whatever the emulator is works on a PC, how long will it be until it works out some deal so you can play these titles on your Y-Box? The future for classic gaming looks very bright today.
 
if you add Game Tap to the promised virtual console of the Nintendo REvolution, you get a lot of nostalgia gaming...
 
:D WOW It is about time for Privateer will come out, Trust me guys, I am hoping that they could pull through the marketing.
 
Exarch said:
And a monthly fee to play old games as well. To me, it just doesn't seem like it's going to be very successful. When given the choice between $15 a month to play decade old or older games, or to play something like World of Warcraft, most people are going to choose the latter, I would think.
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Not really. The vast majority of people are seriously not up to an MMO game. Of course the perspective at a gaming message forum will be totally different from the real (more casual) world, but even here most of the population isn't into MMOs. The total number of people who are interested in something like World of Warcraft is like ten or twenty million people. The market for people who are nostalgic or otherwise interested in playing simpler old games is easily at least five hundred million people. Most people are totally jazzed by those little $20 game-in-a-controller boxes that you plug into your TV and it lets you play Pac Man and Ms Pac Man. They sell like hotcakes. Most people's reaction to hearing about WoW's subscription is "Yuck, $15 a month just to play one game!?" On the other hand, I've had a number of non-gamer coworkers and relatives ask me about "that GameTap thing they saw on tv" because "it sounds like a great way to play hundreds of games for only $15 a month." EA owns Pogo.com and has over a million paying subscribers there, and that's just very simple games like chess, checkers, backgammon, sudoku, etc, which is pretty damn impressive since Yahoo Games and such offers most of that for free.

Don said:
PopsiclePete riposte is true...shame a lot of people don't know about the true value that DOS has still to offer. Medical, Business and even Dentistry still use DOS for their mainstream business needs.
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Yeah, even dentists!

PopsiclePete said:
Indeed. I shows us that EA is still "aware" of Wing Commander being part of it's successull franchises. This might indicate that EA is only waiting for a market opening for the genre to consider developing a new WC game. That's for the exciting part.
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Yeah, definitely. This can't be overstated. EA makes a partnership with the biggest venture to ever allow people to play classic games, and they trot out Wing Commander Privateer next to Sim City, Ultima and Command & Conquer. That's incredible!
 
A lot of people probably won't like to be messing around with complicated DOS emulation if they could just run games easy and fast. I think it has a good chance of being a success, but of course that thing can't be known. If EA signed in, the prospect must be good.
 
I think it's an interesting prospect, and if they get full franchise line-ups hosted, I'll likely check it out. I'm not enthused about "renting" games, but then again this fee isn't for one game. Like Chris said, when faced with paying a fee for one game, or a fee for a thousand games, most people are going to take the latter. It's a good deal if you go through two or three of these games a month.
 
I wonder what having these games licensed to gamptap means for older boxed copies floating around on CD? I don't mean the ones on E-bay but at on-line stores that sell never sold leftovers or at some swapmeets for example.

Of course I also wonder what that means for selling your own older copy of the game.
 
I dunno, it kind of would be helpful for those who want to aquire old boxes intact with all the documents for collector's value, but never intend to install the game (take it out of the shrink wrap etc...)

I'd rather play gametap than mess up my cds.
 
Sonic TH said:
I wonder what having these games licensed to gamptap means for older boxed copies floating around on CD? I don't mean the ones on E-bay but at on-line stores that sell never sold leftovers or at some swapmeets for example.

Of course I also wonder what that means for selling your own older copy of the game.
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It shouldn't have any impact whatsoever, especially for older games that already exist. Lots of software has been offered in dual formats (both digital delivery and boxed retail product) for a number of years now. You can buy EA's new Battlefield addon from the EA Downloader service or you can pick it up at a store. This is a new way of delivering games, not one that renders the old way obsolete at all. When they made Prophecy for Game Boy Advance, it didn't render the PC version of the game unlicensable or anything like that. That's not how stuff works.
 
And actually, I bought the original privateer game in a box from a thrift store a few weeks ago!!

Unfortunitly, the game with 6 Floppy Disks instead of a CD-Rom.
 
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