What do y ou think of the Yankee Group now?

The numerically impaired Yankee Group has issued a revision:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/yankee-group-says-hype-second/story.aspx?guid=%7BD46F4180-C9AB-438F-8CE8-306403319D93%7D

I think they're criticizing apples for not being oranges.

Quote:

"All is not lost with virtual worlds," said Christopher Collins, senior analyst in Yankee Group's Consumer Research group. "However, for virtual worlds and metaverses to achieve greater potential in the marketplace and grow beyond early adopters, the experience must be untethered to meet the needs of the Anywhere Consumer(TM). Companies that provide remote access--through mobile devices or other means--to their web experience will have a greater impact than pc-centric companies."

This reveals a deep, phenomenal disconnect with what is going on here.

While remote access is great, I just can't imagine trying to drive, shop at a supermarket, or be 'on the go' and meaningfully interact in any useful way in a virtual world.

That's voice and IM territory. Unless you can somehow interact in a 3D metaverse while dodging rush hour traffic - now that would be bloody interesting!

I can see the bumperstickers now: "Get out of SL and drive, *******"

SL already works on laptops well enough. So while it would be nice to have flying submarines, good airplane food and everyone driving horse carriages instead of cars so we can pay attention to the Metaverse instead of driving... the point is profoundly lost.

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Also, a word about the 1% stat. The difference with SL is that we can *know* if people tried the product and walked.

If Yankee Group had a stat for everyone that looked at their reports, went "eh" and moved on without reading, that would be a pretty interesting stat too.

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A friendly offer to any Yankee Group analyst: PM me in these forums, I'll be genuinely as helpful as possible, and maybe I can guide you to someone that 'gets' this application (I should probably recuse myself due to my critique here).

"Analysing" SL in the manner documented is rather like analysing airplanes in 1910 with regard to their heavy freight capacity - a *profound* "I don't get it" that says more about the reviewer than the reviewed.

What the heck was that article about? It's like their agenda is to push mobile devices. 'Well for Second Life to be really popular they need to put it on mobile devices...' Clueless.

I agree, Desmond. Hell, most people with PC's or Mac's already have trouble with lag. Can you imagine trying to navigate on a Iphone-type device ? Yes, I know they could cram it full of bleeding edge hardware but how many people would want to pay $1000 USD for an Iphone to play Second Life ? Not many is my bet. The hardware on the PC and Mac is still playing catch-up with the demands of SL.

3.8 hours per month in-world? I couldn't survive on that!!!

And average use fell 66% in last year? Who the hell's average?

Growing 300% doesn't even get a look-in ROFL!!!

looks like a bunch of CYA to me...

Translation:
Hi, we screwed up, so instead of taking a serious reevalution of our previous dimissal (due to our own lack of math skills), we figured we'll just run with it and make up "a different excuse"....

I mean seriously? intensive 3d graphics.... on a phone!? WTF were they thinking!?

well, gaming won't grow because you can't play WoW on your phone, and engineers would hate not being able to do 90 down the road while trying to navigate a virtual world....[/sarcasm]

do they not realize that LL is aiming for a business market? that SL is just a fun "proof of concept"? an easy way to test and discover alternate uses while covering their costs for expansion?.... guess not

looks like a bunch of CYA to me...

Translation:
Hi, we screwed up, so instead of taking a serious reevalution of our previous dimissal (due to our own lack of math skills), we figured we'll just run with it and make up "a different excuse"....

I mean seriously? intensive 3d graphics.... on a phone!? WTF were they thinking!?!?

well, gaming won't grow because you can't play WoW on your phone, and engineers would hate not being able to do 90 down the road while trying to navigate a virtual world /sarcasm

do they not realize that LL is aiming for a business market? that SL is just a fun "proof of concept"? an easy way to test and discover alternate uses while covering their costs for expansion?.... guess not

Mebbe Yankee Group need to watch CSI

One of the goals of the Architecture Work Group is to get SL capable of running on handhelds. AWG is made up of community members and Lindens to work towards the goal of designing then publishing a grid architecture standard.

is that so LL can profit from those sex pose mobile downloads direct from SL? "Hi I'm Debbie from Dallas, like my picture, IM in-world and lets more FUN!"

Omigod the accident rate in RL if and when that happens...

I believe The Sims is now available for handhelds. I never understood that. How the hell would you see what you are doing? To expect SL to be on handhelds and be truly useful shows pure ignorance.

Yes, the future is in the smaller devices but the desktop computer is not going away anytime soon. There's far too many things that just can't be done properly otherwise. Do they think I'll start using Photoshop or build webpages on a handheld? HA!

I would like to see something where you can play with prims on a mobile device. That would be awesome. Then allow us to upload it.

About the closest you would get to "anywhere" would be running SL off a flash drive:



I agree that this is an article which reveals the researcher knows little, if anything, about how resource-intensive SL is. It's like dismissing Halo 3 or some other high-end game because it won't run on an iPod.

File under D for "duh".

It's quite easy to reconcile Desmond's "IM and Voice Territory" with Strife's mention of the AWG. Core to the process of mapping out that architecture would be, I'm sure, to sortof compartmentalize various functional capabilities in the client-server relationship.. clients would be developed to comply with the standards and protocols laid out, -within the constraints- of the platform for which they're developed.

I think it's clear that we are never going to see a full featured client written for an iPhone. It just wouldn't be practical, or even possible. What WOULD be practical, possible, and exceedingly useful would be a client written to tie into IMs, voice chat, snapshot exchanges, little things like that that mobile handheld devices already do with other services today.

I haven't read the Yankee article mentioned, but I certainly don't take issue with the suggestion that the Metaverse will gain greater marketplace potential by expanding its reach into handheld and other mobile device markets - again, within the various platform constraints.

And everyone should try SLeek, it already does run on hand helds. Yes, you are virutally blind, but that is merely being differently abled

SLeek *can* view snapshots, so if someone can just give you one once in awhile, you wouldn't even be blind.

Well, not for *today's* iPhone. How about the new iPhone that comes out in 2009? It doesn't need an ATI/nVidia 9999XXX, only the equivalent of 2005 graphics technology.

Hell, I want SL on two iPhones, one for each eye, true stereoscopic. Can you say eyePhone?

Strife, with all due respect to you and the Architecture Work Group, this particular goal is not worth wasting time on. At best, it would provide a marginal experience, as mentioned here. At worst, it would degrade the main architecture in a misguided attempt to achieve "commonality".

With all due respect, Huh?

It sounds to me like the Yankee group has some ulterior motive, perhaps they are spinning the statistics for a customer or product they support.

I can't speak for Lindal, but I think the point was that efforts toward SL on an embedded processor, say the gorilla powered iPhone, is pretty close to asinine. The iPhone has a display size of 480x320, 8MB of (slow) flash memory disk, 128MB working RAM 11 of which is given to the display memory, a blazing 4Mhz processor and no GPU, all of which combine to give a postage stamp sized SL window with perhaps less than 1fps. All this ignores the networking throughput.

Me, I'd be impressed if they could get SL to work on desktop machines reliably.

See post #15 of this thread. I don't think the goal of the working group is to enable production of full featured clients on every platform imaginable.

My apologies for not having read that earlier and responding to a later query, you are quite correct, #15 does speak to that.

On the other hand, I've reviewed the AWG materials to date and expect that it could be functional around the release time of Duke Nuke'em Forever. They have multiplied entities extravagantly with a huge number of interconnection protocols. Following the Dennis Ritche maxim "code that you don't write has no bugs" the AWG strikes me as more complicated and harder to implement than many ISO standards.