Re: $500 <= chump change, was Re: Port I/O

[Tom Moran <tmoran@bix.com>]

>These days, sucessful video games cost well into 7 figures to develop
>...
>but the days when high school students could do interesting things in
>the game market is long gone!
  The problem with $500 for the game SDK is not that I expect high
school kids to develope Wolfenstein XXXVII, but that the real
innovations, the first computer game, etc, usually do not arise from
heavily funded projects.  And if doing port IO on a PC requires high
up-front expenditures, it greatly reduces the likelihood of any really
novel thing using port IO.  Of course successfull players are rarely
eager to change the rules of the game, and MS in particular is probably
not eager to repeat anything like their recent experience with the Web
and Netscape etc so it makes eminent economic sense for them to
encourage all new products to be minor variations of current ones, with
MS getting a slice of the pie.