day 92

twitch 4: vc whispers

Fig. 4. I-Man might get excited, if he knew what a VC was. Everything in capitalist Silicon Valley society is driven by VCs (Venture Capitalists). The John Doerrs, Tom Perkins, and Davidows place huge bets every day for a living. As cavalier as this sounds, their free-spending ways often ignites a new technology, new idea, new market, or new fashion along the Bayshore freeway. And right now the VCs think alike: "an online component will be a necessary part of [education and entertainment] titles from even the most established gaming companies," according to the Red Herring. One approach goes like this. Video game manufacturers already have a $6 billion presence in the home. All that they need to do is borrow some technologies from the Internet, and they can invade Wired World. Maybe more -- maybe they can take over Wired World, because a video game costs $200 instead of $2,000. Consumers are too cheap to pay $2,000 for a real computer when they can access the Internet for $200 with Nintendo's Ultra64 or Sony's Playstation. These companies figure that it is better to adopt WWW technologies such as multicast protocols or DOD's DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation) protocol to game machines than it is to bring the price of a network computer down to the consumer level. Who needs a PC or an NC when they can surf the Web from a game console? The problem with this is that the game companies miscalculated. The VCs who have recently poured millions into vid-game software companies like 3DO, Mpath, and TEN are about to lose it all. Tomorrow I will tell you why.

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