Amazon's Double-Helix Acquisition Hints At Gaming Console 116
Nerval's Lobster writes "A more prominent role in video-game development could prove the latest territory on Amazon's 'attempt to conquer' list. Yes, there's already Amazon Game Studios, which produces smaller games such as Air Patriots (a tower-defense title), but that evidently wasn't enough — Amazon has acquired Double Helix, most notably the developer behind Killer Instinct and other big-action games for PCs and consoles. Amazon confirmed the deal to multiple media outlets, suggesting that it would use Double Helix's developers and intellectual property 'as part of our ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers.' Why would Amazon want to bulk out its game-creation abilities? Rumors have floated for the past couple weeks (hat tip to Gamespot) that the company is hard at work on an Android-based gaming console that will retail for below $300. Over the past year, it's also hired gaming luminaries such as Halo author Eric Nylund, which it probably wouldn't have done without something big — or at least interesting — in the works. Amazon would doubtlessly position such a device (if it actually becomes a reality) as the low-cost alternative to Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. But even the cheapest console won't sell without some killer games to attract customers — and that's where Double Helix might come in. ... With Nintendo flagging, there's potentially an opening for a third console ecosystem to take hold."
So, about Beta (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck it
Re:Dice have already written off Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
So instead of turning off the lights, they're burning down the house?
Slashdot BETA (Score:4, Insightful)
For the time being you can do this: www.slashdot.org?nobeta=1
Make you voice heard here:
http://beta.slashdot.org/fireh... [slashdot.org]
To quote Steve Jobs (rip) - "..and one more thing.."
"..FUCK BETA..."
Who the hell wrote this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Beta Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
By now, a professional organization would have at least acknowledged the complaints. Slashdot hasn't yet, and I'm willing to bet they never do. For a site that posts so many stories complaining about what other people do, they're remarkably slow to admit when they make a mistake.
Continue to turn the comments threads into a trash heap to drive people away. And don't forget to turn on your ad blocker. Do what you can to get their attention until they publically acknowledge that this is a mistake -- because they're not going to pay attention otherwise.
So isn't Slashdot.org code open source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dice have already written off Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this logic is that all of those visitors only come to the site to read (if not engage in) the commenting that goes on. Really the (relatively high-quality) comments are the only thing that differentiate Slashdot from any other website. Once you make commenting/discussion more cumbersome, it will go away, and all you will be left with is the Slashdot "brand". But does that brand really have any weight? It only does with the small community of tech-enthusiasts that you just drove away from your site. It's not like the average person is going to see a "friendlier jazzier Slashdot" and immediately think "Wow, finally a Slashdot I can enjoy!".
If you look into the financial details, it appears [prnewswire.com] that Dice considers Slashdot a loser:
Note that this isn't saying that Slashdot's ad revenue isn't enough to pay for operating Slashdot; merely saying that the ad revenue is falling with time. They are no doubt desperate to increase profits. It's actually quite possible that Slashdot's ad revenue is undervalued (because it isn't taking into account that many Slashdot users hold key positions where they influence what tech is purchased by companies, friends come to them for tech advice, etc.). But overall the idea that they can increase ad revenue by revamping the entire site is a bad gamble: the community will disappear in a flash, and ad revenue will drop to zero.
Ultimately, Dice management appears willing to take the gamble. It is one they will most likely lose, and we will lose Slashdot in the process. But they won't care much, since Slashdot as-is just isn't pulling in that much money. It's a sad reality that even a community as big and stable as Slashdot (generating constant ad revenue) is still too small/niche to satisfy their money-lost. Our last hope may lie in efforts to build a new site that we can migrate to (e.g. AltSlashdot.org [altslashdot.org]).
Re:Dice have already written off Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Half of the existing community is vocally ignorant of most of the things they post on.
Its very possible that the existing community ISNT that valuable. For every truly insightful post out there, there are 5 ignorant posts that were modded insightful. Many of them are factually wrong, and some reek of idealism (like the folks who worship communism and praise Cuba's government or wonder why we need a 5th amendment), but most are just hysterical off-topic comments on whatever the news-of-the-month is (see: constant posts trying to bring the NSA into any and every article). Even the submitted articles are usually not that great; a lot of submissions have headlines that straight up contradict the summary and / or story.
I do still like to come here because there are a lot of oldtimers who periodically surface and provide actual content-- but increasingly thats drowned out by the hysterics and the nonsense of all the newer users. Im strongly considering jumping ship for reddit-- they have a ton of nonsense too, but at least they tend to be pretty solid at filtering out the off-topic crap.