Sometimes the stories sort of write themselves. This is one of those times. The two most prominent and widely ridiculed examples of vapour-wear are about to be released, possibly within months of each other.
IGN Entertainment, a gaming news site published by Fox Interactive reports today that Take-Two Interactive has signed a $4.5 million agreement with 3D Realms to distribute a video game that was “highly anticipated†six years ago. A bonus clause in the agreement promises $500K if the game is delivered before December 31. It looks like Duke Nukem really will return, likely sooner than later.
Meanwhile, down the road in Redmond Washington, an inevitable and unenviable announcement has leaked from Microsoft. A devastating bug was found in Vista (Build 5824) two weeks ago. Though the bug was fixed in Vista Build 5840, reprogramming will cause yet another delay in shipping the software to PC manufacturers.
According to Ethan Allen, a software tester contracted by Microsoft who discovered the bug, the problem, “…totally crash the system, requiring a complete reinstall,†Allen made his comments in an interview with CIO.com writer Al Sacco.
Spokespersons for Microsoft say this delay will not push the scheduled January 2007 commercial roll out of the operating system back though some early users of Vista Basic might wish it would.
In an interview with PCPro Magazine, Acer Vice President, Jim Wong said, “”The new [Vista] experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you won’t feel it at all. There’s no [Aero] graphics, no Media Center, no remote control.” Wong believes Microsoft is releasing an inferior product in order to bump up market demand for the more robust Vista Premium, which costs approximately 10% more than the XP Home OS most PC currently run on.
So what, besides a penchant for missing due dates, does the development of Duke Nukem and Microsoft Vista have in common? Virtually nothing except that some PC experts suggest that initial versions of Vista might not be fast enough to run advanced games like Duke Nukem Forever.
2007 already feels like it is going to be a weird year. If Microsoft really does release Vista and 3D Realms really does release Duke Nukem Forever, I strongly urge readers to think about betting on the Toronto Maple Leafs in the late-spring Stanley Cup Playoffs. They say these sorts of things come in threes eh?
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