This was the era when I had replaced explorer.exe with litestep and had a reminder to reinstall Windows every six months to keep the computer running smoothly. It wasn't MS "shipping" stuff that broke it IIRC (though patches did have that effect), but rather a steady degradation in performance over the months. I tried to hold in abeyance with tools like defrag, but to no avail.
* Surfing the web
* Using Eudora lite for email
* Playing Quake1 and GLQuake, probably some Quake 2 and StarCraft around that time
* Using mIRC a ton to chat on undernet
* Using Xylinx to do my coursework for CS314
* Using MS Visual J++ do do more coursework (good riddance!)
* Writing papers in (I think) StarOffice, but it might have been just "Word" at that point.
This was right around the year I switched to Linux because of the issues. Though, I have to admit, it was a memory and DVD drive upgrade that drove me over the edge. I guess MS had a "point" system for each hardware component, and if enough points of components changed, they considered the machine a different computer, and would refuse to boot (since you didn't buy a license for that "different" computer). They told me I had to call them so I could boot my machine, at which point I table flipped, formatted my drive, and asked my buddy to burn a whole bunch of floppies so I could install Slackware.
They were essentially just huge steaming piles of shit.
What you are describing was true at the time for Linux. It was an absolute bear to set up (at the time of win95/98) if you had anything unusual but once it ran it ran.
This has never been true for windows although the reasons why have shifted over time: it used to not work primarily because it was just shit. Now it additionally doesn't work because it is actively malicious.
I am writing this from the perspective of someone who is regularly forced to use Microsoft's products for work. I am familiar with the subject matter.
Random existing Windows bugs breaking things, third party software breaking things on install/uninstall, and bloat causing problems are very different from Microsoft forcing an update that introduces new flaws in windows and breaks Windows in ways that had been previously working.
Windows was always buggy as hell, but windows updates didn't break windows as often and most importantly they were also optional. For decades people would go online on Patch Tuesday to look to see if people were reporting problems with the newest round of Windows updates. Maybe there'd be a problem with an update and a specific network card, or a certain video driver, but Windows didn't usually break Windows.
Even if it did, you at least had the option to just not update. These days Microsoft doesn't care about problems with their updates. Even when they are warned ahead of time that there are problems they're happy to shove them down our throats, at any time of the day or night, and break Windows or even delete your personal files (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/microsoft-suspends-d...) in the process.
Why is it a cluster fuck? When it's been virtually unchanged and stable for the past 30 or so years, which is how Winamp 2.95 can run on WIndows 11 today and how Wine can so easily run Windows games. Way better than Linux and Mac have historically provided for compatibility.
>when I was partially responsible for hardware refreshes in a UK public sector organisation with around a thousand endpoint PCs we budgeted something like £600 a box.
Same here in EU mainland, at every org I worked we used to get budget notebooks to do SW dev on, also in the 600-800 Euro range.
I think because the US is so much wealthier and can afford to spend more on tech without breaking a sweat. Hence the "Europoor" meme where Europeans can't comprehend the material abundance and spending power of the US.
>Repairing a broken PC was a trivial help desk ticket; my PC was restored in an hour or two.
Except that even IT would know that a missing 8MB RAM stick is not a defect, it's (petit) theft, since RAM stick have no legs to just wander around by themselves. If it's gone, then an employee stole it.
Defect is when that 8MB stick would be ... defective.
Couldn't be more wrong. The market for new RTSs is too tiny and saturated to turn a profit on any new IP. The small existing player base is too entrenched to move away from the old established IPs that are still popular to something new and unproven.
>Tempest Rising made more in profits than Marathon
Choosing the biggest flop as your benchmark is a very poor argument. If you lose half as much money as Marathon, you're technically twice as good, but it's still a flop and investors and publishers want successes, not half flops.
Marathon existing does not justify the investments into new RTS games. Quite the contrary. Marathon got hundreds of millions in cash because the shooter genre was making billions (at the time) so for them it was worth the gamble even if they lost. But the RTS genre is not making nearly enough money to justify Marathon levels of gambling on new IPs.
Quite the contrary. Marathon got hundreds of millions in cash because the shooter genre was making billions (at the time) so for them it was worth the gamble even if they lost.
Two shooters were making billions at the time Marathon began pre-production (Fortnite and Destiny). Only two other live-service AAA shooters have made back their budgets (Apex Legends and The Division). Most live-action shooters generated huge losses; even Destiny wasn't doing great anymore by the time Sony acquired Bungie. Sony itself had a horrendous track record with live-service games (of any genre). Other than Final Fantasy Online they have no profitable live-service games developed internally (Destiny and Helldivers are both acquisitions).
But the RTS genre is not making nearly enough money to justify Marathon levels of gambling on new IPs.
We agree on the first half of that statement, but (a) RTS games don't need Marathon levels of gambling to be successful and (b) live-service shooters also aren't worth the gamble of Marathon levels of spending. Tempest Rising cost less than $10 million to develop, which is less than 1/25th of what Marathon cost. Starcraft 2, the most expensive RTS of all time, cost about $150 million (in today's dollars) and made that back in its first month and made at least $240 million in revenue before going free-to-play. COH3 cost somewhere between $25m and $50m, and earned approximately $50m in sales but also received significant tax incentives in Canada, for a modest profit. On the AA front, Iron Harvest cost approximately $5 million and grossed $15m ($10m going to the studio), for a 100% profit. Similarly, Zerospace has grossed over $5 million on a $2.5m budget.
Meanwhile, Fortnite, Destiny, Marathon, and Apex Legend revenues have all been trending downhill for several years. All of the studios behind these games have had sizable layoffs. Sony has lost more on Marathon alone than every AA and AAA RTS game's development budget in the last decade. To put it bluntly: the era of the live-service shooter is almost as dead as the RTS era. Fortnite is the only thing keeping the genre alive.
Objectively speaking, if the goal is to make a profit, RTSs are a lower risk than shooters. If the goal is to lose money, make a live-action shooter.
>Meanwhile, Fortnite, Destiny, Marathon, and Apex Legend revenues have all been trending downhill for several years.
Other games having done bad is not proof that your unique RTS will do good. That's my argument.
> If the goal is to lose money, make a live-action shooter.
When your examples that lost money got the green light to start development, the shooter market was very different which is why they got all that money to begin with. But then you take 5-7 years to ship, and by that time the market has changed, so they lost the gamble but that doesn't mean that at the time it was a bad business decision.
Meanwhile new RTS is known for the start it won't make any money since the young players are captured by MOBAs and boomers still play the OGs. That's also my argument.
>Objectively speaking, if the goal is to make a profit, RTSs are a lower risk than shooters.
Feel free to put your money where your mouth is. THere's some indie RTS games out there who probably need some money.
hen your examples that lost money got the green light to start development, the shooter market was very different which is why they got all that money to begin with.
No, it wasn't. You are just ignoring the dates. When Marathon got the green light, the shooter industry was already a feast-or-famine niche, with most entrants starving to death.
Meanwhile new RTS is known for the start it won't make any money since the young players are captured by MOBAs and boomers still play the OGs. That's also my argument.
Which is false. Almost every AA and AAA RTS in the last decade has made a profit. My point is that they don't make much of a profit, but a small profit is better than a huge loss.
Feel free to put your money where your mouth is. THere's some indie RTS games out there who probably need some money.
I probably already have purchased them.
By the way, I used to work in the video game industry, so my knowledge is firsthand.
And how many copies are they gonna sell? How big is their player base?
All important things bean counters want to know before they pony up north of seven figures of investor money into another RTS and not into another looter shooter instead with a 100x revenue and 100x player base.
>Starcraft 2 was over 6 million sales before its final expansion even came out.
GTA 6 preorders beat that in like a week and the game isn't even out and no gameplay footage was even show.
>That seems like the obvious player base for a Starcraft 3
A lot of that player based has aged out of the game or will stick to playing SC2 instead of spending 80-100$ on buying the same game over again. RTS have reached diminishing returns. There's not much more you can add to SC2 to improve it and convince people to spend on buying a new game. SC2 is feature complete.
> GTA 6 preorders beat that in like a week and the game isn't even out and no gameplay footage was even show.
Really? That's going to be your measuring stick? So anything that isn't as successful as GTA 6 is a failure that shouldn't ever exist again? In fact any genre that isn't as successful as GTA 6 should just be wholesale cancelled?
A game is successful if it makes a profit. Other games making more profit doesn't suddenly make them failures. This isn't a zero-sum game.
> A lot of that player based has aged out of the game
What does this even mean? Gamers don't "age out". We're long past the era of pretending Nintendo is a children's toy...
Tempest Rising was taunted as the old school C&C RTS comeback and it ended as niche game with small player base and 9.5k player peak on Steam.
Probably best RTS game going on currently is Beyond All Reason, and that's because guys are doing it as an open source clone/followup to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander Alliances and not actual business (but they started to look for a way to monetize it to fund future development).
Gon on, as in you mean like to explain the obvious? Just google/chatgpt sales of RTS games vs shooters and other shit.
Good luck convincing an exec to give you 200 million $ to make a new RTS for the 50 player based market out there who's playing the oldies anyway: AOE, RA, SC, etc.
It's a small and saturated market that's long been fished out and no point investing into, other than HD remakes/remasters of previously mentioned established IP.
It's almost certainly A/B test. Essentially everyone does it.
You can even sometimes see when a list of videos on YT first loads and a given video has one title, and it suddenly switches to another without you reloading the page.
On several channels I watch, I've noticed the top comment is always along the lines of "who was here when the video title was XYZ" because you know it's going to change.
Have you noticed that has become more common recently? Because I have. It seems over the past 3/4 months, reload and see a new title happens pretty much daily to me (it also seems to work because sometimes it causes me to click the video I didn't click with the old title).
I hate how this has become so normal. It degrades trust when people are fed different versions of the same experience without being informed. How are you supposed to reference something when the title changes without notice? Makes me feel like I’m going crazy sometimes.
>If you think him getting money from Jack Dorsey and Michael Dell has no political implications,
And the device you type this on is made by which company? Apple? Google? Microsoft? Lenovo? They all involved in politics and lobbying. And it's powered by which ASICS? Apple? Intel? AMD? Nvidia? All of them are involved in lobbying and politics you might disagree with. And yet you still use them and nobody is giving you shit about it.
You're a pot calling the kettle black here. If you wanna get online and do work, unless you're fabbing chips and laptop boards in your garage, you're gonna be directly or indirectly funding some tech business involved in politics you might not like.
So it's pretty hypocritical and somewhat mental of you to spend so many comments here trying to dunk on people willing to use Omarchy just because the owner has politics you disagree. Why can't you live your life and let others live their own in piece without turning discussions into your own political war (which BTW is also against HN rules)?
I am much more likely to get someone to stop using omarchy and actually learn something about computers doing this than I am to convince someone to stop using a Google product. If I be can active when something like this is fresh, I will. And if you think this is just about DHHs politics, think again, its also about having that maniac in any kind of position of power anywhere. I'd say the same if he were an MLM or Kim family fanatic, but those people dont really exist, where weirdo racists do, and in large numbers.
I really dont care about the guidelines on politics here. They seem to have been made by children who are afraid to have their monied friends political passion projects criticized by smart people.
Can you share specifically what did those OS exactly break back then? And were the breakages more common than competing OSs used in similar fashion?
My memory of those OSs things would break due to the drivers and hacks of third party SW, not due to things MS was shipping like today.
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