A Reminder That Even Big Brands Experience Long Delays...

[kagato]

Pandora isn't the first, and it won't be the last, device to experience extended delays.

Bigger brands like ASUS aren't immune either.
ASUS EeeKeyboard gets really, really official

It's already gone up for pre-order and been unboxed, but ASUS has only just now really, officially "launched" its EeeKeyboard, completing a long, strange journey that began way back at CES 2009. Since then, we've seen the keyboard PC get a June launch date, run Moblin, get an August launch date, get gutted, hit the FCC, get an October launch date, hit the FCC again, get a capacitive touchscreen upgrade, get a price and a February launch date, get delayed, lose a space, and get a late-April launch date before now finally launching... in May. Thanks for the memories, ASUS.

 

[Monk]

Yeah - even 3D Realms hit some unexpected delays with Duke Nukem forever

Duke Nukem Forever was a computer game that had been under development by 3D Realms since its announcement on April 28th, 1997, originally slated to use the (then) state of the art Quake II 3D engine. A few months later, screen shots were published in PC Gamer magazine, along with an intended release date of mid-1998. Excitement grew in May of 1998 when a few short video clips of Duke Nukem Forever were shown at E3... Surely a final release of the game was right around the corner!

Just about when mid-1998 arrived (June, specifically) 3D Realms announced they were changing 3D engines to Epic's Unreal engine. George Broussard, the producer and co-creator of the Duke Nukem series insisted that this change would not cause any significant delay, despite all logic pointing to the contrary. Also at this point, Broussard assured everyone Duke Nukem Forever would see a 1999 release.

And so on, and so forth.

(from http://duke.a-13.net/)

Delays are nothing new.

 

[ledow]

Should I tempt fate here and point out that *neither* of those are actually available to buy yet?

And DNF was cancelled officially, officially dead around this time last year when the creators said it basically didn't exist and had never existed in a really complete form - basically they rewrote it every couple of years and never really got anywhere, nor had any "great idea" like HDR, physics, etc. that would actually make it saleable. It was just a clone-FPS using some new artwork and they couldn't even pull it together in the longest game development time in history. The programmers were finally fired and the company sued by a publisher / investor for not delivering *anything* worthwhile.

The EEE Keyboard is in a similar spiral at the moment - Amazon don't even bother to give it an estimated release date any more because of its constant failure to deliver on time.

As with everything - wake me up when you can *actually* buy any of these things and then I'll make purchasing decisions / take notice. Until then, it's just vapour. I have no interest in the Pandora myself, it's not what I want in a portable gaming machine, but until it exists to buy I can't even try to factor it into my budgets. 40 years ago they said there would be an "Italian Job 2" (of the original, not that US-crap that stole the name) but it never happened. There's no point getting excited about, say, 100Gb Ethernet to the home if it doesn't exist as a product yet. Nor is there any point in laying down money on such a thing in the promise of future developments. If you can't buy it today, it doesn't exist, and it can't be sold, or purchased, or even (in my opinion) reviewed. Ask anyone who was dealing on the futures market in the last few years how reliable that sort of dealing is.

I really, really honestly do *not* understand this "Pre-order" fad that has swept the Internet - everything from Steam games to iPad's. The only reason to do it is if quantities *really* are limited and it's being sold but just not in large enough quantities - in which case, it's just a fashion statement because most likely your friends won't be able to join you in playing with whatever you've bought. "Pre-order" a download game? Why? Wait a day or two and then you have the same game and know about any problems with the DRM, gameplay, etc. The buzz around a new game isn't going to die in the first few months unless it's crap.

You might succeed, you might get your hands on a gadget first, but similarly if you just waited until release you'd *ALSO* get your hands on a gadget, without risking anything. And for every project that succeeds, there are 10 that fail and you never hear about them because of that. And for every item that "gets delivered eventually" there are dozens that are permanently on hold.

I see your "Asus EEE Keyboard" and raise you "Daikatana". It *was* released, after much, much delay, and had to be rewritten because every time they did a demo at E3, it was stomped on by the competing games. And in the end, it was *shit* despite being one of the most-hyped, most-anticipated titles ever. Lots of people pre-ordered that too. Nobody can stop you pre-ordering, but you're taking a risk, and cherry-picking the few examples that worked is hardly going to satisfy the nay-sayers.

 

[Monk]

Should I tempt fate here and point out that *neither* of those are actually available to buy yet?

Was I too subtle? AGAIN? Darn!

And DNF was cancelled officially, officially dead around this time last year when the creators said it basically didn't exist and had never existed in a really complete form

Yup.

I have no interest in the Pandora myself

So you're here to...?

If you can't buy it today, it doesn't exist, and it can't be sold, or purchased, or even (in my opinion) reviewed.

You certainly can't review something that doesn't exist, but things that don't exist are bought and sold every day. Actually, most of the money you use to do that with doesn't exist.

I really, really honestly do *not* understand this "Pre-order" fad that has swept the Internet - everything from Steam games to iPad's. The only reason to do it is if quantities *really* are limited and it's being sold but just not in large enough quantities - in which case, it's just a fashion statement

So you understand one reason - fads/fashion/keeping up with the Jones's. But there are others. One that come sto mind is "to make something happen". Without preorder money, the Pandora would never have gotten this far - never mind to release. Member sof the community preordered in order to try and actually make it happen. That's considerably different to ordering a PS3 the day before release.

You might succeed, you might get your hands on a gadget first, but similarly if you just waited until release you'd *ALSO* get your hands on a gadget, without risking anything.

Not if no single individual or company had the funds AND design of gadjet that you want. Then people have to pool their funds, or the gadjet does not come into being.

Nobody can stop you pre-ordering, but you're taking a risk, and cherry-picking the few examples that worked is hardly going to satisfy the nay-sayers.

Absolutely taking a risk, 100%. Thrilling, eh? And who cherry-picked good examples> As you've pointed out, neither example given in the thread before you has even made it to markey... one never will, following your Italian Job example.

 

[ledow]

So you're here to...?

I'm reading the GP2X forums, actually, and private-messaging. I only read the Wiz or Pandora boards when they have a vaguely-interesting tagline on the main page (or in that "last post" bit of the forum listings) and I don't read the GP32 boards at all. It's called discussion and community. Those communities that don't want to hear opposing opinions tend to die out quite quickly. Think of my reasons for being here as "comment and opinion", like every other forum on the net. Look at my post history for the last couple of years, I have a couple of comments on the Pandora and the rest of the time I barely comment at all, except on my own things, or open discussions about programming. I really don't care if Pandora fails or not, it's not a device I will ever use.

(If I'm honest, it's "too" new for me... too fast a processor, 3D, runs bog-standard desktop Linux distro, etc.... it's just a PC in a small box, and it'll get every software it needs ported across without too much hassle - there's no "fun" in that for me. I like to have to squeeze and squish and think my way out of problems, and I don't like huge-capabilities on machines because it just means that everything that runs on them is therefore the same as on desktops - 3D for the sake of it, a Quake-port for the sake of it, etc. etc. etc. Call me an old fogie, I like emulators etc. as much as the next person but when I buy something like a GP2X / Pandora, it's not just to play games on - I like the limited capabilities as a small programming exercise. I have a dual-core, 3D-enabled laptop but I spend most of my leisure time on it playing silly 2D games or emulators. The games that stretch it to the limits very, very rarely interest me at all. Call me weird, but that's how I work. Hell, I just spent 20 minutes shrinking a C structure by 20 bytes on a program that's going to run on a 2Gb RAM laptop.)

One that come sto mind is "to make something happen". Without preorder money, the Pandora would never have gotten this far - never mind to release. Member sof the community preordered in order to try and actually make it happen. That's considerably different to ordering a PS3 the day before release.

I'm pretty sure that the pre-order cash doesn't form 100% of the investment costs of the Pandora. 4000 pre-orders (at max., because people are cancelling and/or other taking their places all the time even for "first batches" etc.) times by, what, £250-300? That's about £1 million - you'll be lucky if that covers the board manufacture for the first batch, let alone all the extras and administration. There are other funds, from what I remember - and a damn lot of "personal cash" in the business from some of the company owners? Isn't OpenPandora Ltd. bouyed up by one of the company director's personal cash / existing businesses at the moment?

And pre-orders aren't *necessary* for any business. I'm wary of any business that states they are. If you have an idea that something will sell, you can make it and sell it. You might have to sell your first-born, get a bank-loan, find an investor or something, but it can be done. The only difference is that in those last two cases you have to present a valid business case, which shouldn't be hard for any established business because most banks don't understand anything but previous success and credit histories. Pre-order here is nothing more than an nice safety blanket for the company - it has some *real* cash should it need it, rather than having to hope its bank-loans can be paid off by the time things are produced (we assume), and it has no-one who it has to legally answer to. If you want to say anything, you can say that pre-orders saved the company from paying 2+ years of interest on a bank loan of equivalent amount without having to prove its creditworthiness at all. 2 years of interest on a £1m loan at, say, a generous 8% APR is approximately £160,000 extra that would have had to be paid. And you don't have to "pay" pre-orders back at a later date from sales - you pay them directly from base price units (i.e. pre-markup hardware) that you make with that money. Without pre-orders, you would have to make **profit** equivalent to the value of all loans + interest before you were debt-free. With pre-orders, you just have to build some units using the money and ship them. The business case for pre-orders is a no-brainer. The consumer case isn't so clear cut.

I agree though that not many OS hardware projects get off the ground. The Open Graphics Project is failing quite spectacularly over a similar timescale (a $750 development board that hardly has working drivers, gets 20 and 30 FPS on Quake III, hasn't even got anything but a PCI / AGP interface yet, and which has been dead for the past year, they are asking for pre-orders in order to recoup the multi-million dollar cost of fabricating the cards on any non-development scale). I'm just saying that it's a huge risk and the project's detractors have many good reasons for having doubts. To say that somehow "emulating" big projects by burning through every deadline is something to find solace in, as the original poster insinuated, is quite laughable, though.

 

[lulzfish]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Fortress_2

"The game was announced in 1998"
"first released ... October 10, 2007"

Of course that includes all the time they spent fiddling with art directions, changing from GoldSrc to Source, etc.

So as long as the Pandora is exactly the same as a first-person shooter and it was announced after 2001, we're still in the clear for "worth the wait".

 

[Monk]

I love deadlines. I love the "Whoosh" sound they make as they rush past.

OpenPandora wasn't a pre-existing company, so they didn't have history to show the banks, and as for a business plan... somehow, I doubt it. they simply didn't know what they were doing well enough to put together a business plan about it. While there are certainly other ways to go about raising cash - and yes, at least 2 of the "Team" have supposedly mortgaged their homes to part-fund the project - I doubt that OpenPandora would have gone for any but the model they have.

OpenPandora incentive for pre-orders: Free money!
Custome rIncentive for pre-orders: A neat gadget that won't exist unless we all gang together!

In concept it's very much more like a community project than a business, except that a few of the community members have been canny enough to clutch all the rights to themselves (in exchange for which they have also put in a pile more money than anyone else and have put in a bunch of work). I kinda hope that MWeston and DaveC have grasped the majority of the rights (it certainly seems that MWeston has, based on the PCB) but... well, they wouldn't pass much of an inspection as a business affair (and that's int he wake of just how well run banks are).

Of course, without a meddling time-traveller we'll never really KNOW whether OpenPandora would have gone ahead some other way, but it seems doubtful.

The whole "Everybody else does it so it's alright" is of course no excuse for anything, much less breaking promises (implicit or implied), including failure to deliver.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Should I tempt fate here and point out that *neither* of those are actually available to buy yet?

And DNF was cancelled officially, officially dead around this time last year when the creators said it basically didn't exist and had never existed in a really complete form - basically they rewrote it every couple of years and never really got anywhere, nor had any "great idea" like HDR, physics, etc. that would actually make it saleable. It was just a clone-FPS using some new artwork and they couldn't even pull it together in the longest game development time in history. The programmers were finally fired and the company sued by a publisher / investor for not delivering *anything* worthwhile.

Wait what?! The last I heard was that DNF was not cancelled but paused and will be possibly be finished one day (even though if this means a story redesign and a new team). The leaks after 3D Realms was "almost" closed have shown long documents describing the story and missions. The developers and artists have demoreel which shows how complete some parts of the game were.
Additional pictures of complete maps, vehicles and characters have shown up. According to most people at 3D Realms the game was almost done. There was also an exclusive preview on the game month earlier which confirmed that the game was working.
However, the game would have required more work which was too expensive for 3D Realms and the publisher didn't want to throw more money into it. 3D Realms did also claim that much of the promised money never arrived (iIrc - but very unsure!) while Take 2 claimed that 3D Realms didn't finish the game in time and that 3D Realms would have to open the source code to them (which they didn't afaik).

The last information I have seen about DNF were only one month ago in april.


Seeing that there is so much new stuff in there it's highly unlikely that it is fake.

 

[ledow]

Wait what?! The last I heard was that DNF was not cancelled but paused and will be possibly be finished one day (even though if this means a story redesign and a new team).

Topic-fork! But I'm just going by what's on the Wikipedia (which is probably crap, I know):

"Although Take-Two Interactive still owns the publishing rights to the game, they do not have an agreement with 3D Realms to provide funding for the game's continued development, and its future remains unclear. At the same time, Take-Two Interactive filed a lawsuit against 3D Realms over their failure to finish development of the game."

So 3D Realms *never* finished it, according to that, and won't get any more money to do so (someone else is unlikely to step up to help 3D Realms finish a game that only Take Two can publish). It's easy to make "videos", it's easy to make a demo. But to make a game that actually *runs* on anything other than a super-powered development machine with all the right licensed libraries, etc. is another matter entirely. Bugs, speed, running on various common graphics chips instead of a small subset, making sure you've paid to use the various sound / graphics / physics libraries, etc. - no matter how many generic libraries you use and testing you do you can't even be sure it'll run on anything else enough to sell it as a game. Even games that have been supposedly tested fail to run on many machines at launch. There's a difference between "a development version exists somewhere that can generate those videos" and "it's something we could sell to the general public" and that difference is HUGE.

And if 3D Realms own the code, and Take-Two are suing them, then it's unlikely that Take-Two would *EVER* see the code (publisher's rarely do, in fact, they just get a binary most of the time). And if Take-Two own the trademarks / publishing rights etc. then you will never see Duke again until they decide they have permission to distribute something that's distributable. Or someone buys them *both* out. Or they restart the entire DNF project from scratch (AGAIN!). They are also on about the third redesign, the second programming team, etc. before they cancelled the project officially lasy year. Just because a couple of videos are floating around doesn't mean anything. Think of it as "concept art", just concept art that's moving. It doesn't mean the game actually *works* at all.

And I never said DNF was fake - I just hinted that it was atrociously behind schedule and probably quite, quite crap. Or if I didn't, hopefully that sentence clarifies my opinion. DNF went the same way as Counterstrike:Condition Zero - which was originally slated as a CS single-player mod and ended up, after several development teams / companies, several rewrites and several restarts, becoming CS with an upgraded bot, a new weapon or two and slightly better graphics / maps (that work on the same Goldsrc engine as the original Counterstrike, so can easily be moved from one to the other, although that's not "officially" supported). The difference was that CS:CZ was actually playable all the time and if you buy it you even get the "Deleted Scenes" which was the previous attempt at the game - it's a complete mod, working and finished.

DNF, in it's current form and previous forms, is dead. No-one seems to have taken up the reigns or resolved their lawsuits sufficiently for anything even *called* that to actually be started. They laid off the development team on a thirteen-year project just last December (and they weren't the first lay-offs - I'm pretty sure that *nobody* who started on any of the DNF projects (note the plural) is still working on one. I'd be surprised if the new team even managed to *understand* whatever code they've been given in that timespan, let alone finished it off.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Do you have any offical source which says the game was "offically canceled"? All I find is: "Paused". You are right, its stuck and not much will happen until Take Two and 3D Realms are fine again, but to say that the game is the problem is not right I think.

Independent sources have confirmed that the game is in a playable state, Broussard or Siegler - can't remember - released a screenshot of the buglist on the 3DR forums and twitter and said there were minor issues left. The only bigger problems they seemed to have were getting vehicles right, adding some pieces of art in some levels (as shown on the leaked docs, mainly optional things) and getting the money to fix the remaining the bugs to give it the final touch. The estimated time to finish by 3DR was said to be less than a year.
The game was also tested on a broad range of systems at that point as it was confirmed by one of the developers after 3DR had to lay-off the team.

Judging from the videos, screenshots and leaked docs it had innovative puzzles and cool cutscenes and features which made the series successful. It's far from being quite, quite crap - especially with the previews and opinions on artwork and the mission design after those informations were leaked.