is SL about to be sold?

SL is far from big in terms of users compared to other MMORPG.

Money changes anyones mind.

Money causes people to sell their grandmothers, money causes breakups fights and stress.
Money causes the cheap police officers to get a pecan pie instead of a jelly filled donut.

I don't care who owns SL

As long as im not lagging

But i wish Philip would not sell though its a great project and we all love him, plus he is a sex symbol... suuuuuuchhhhhh a sexy nerrrrd.

Okay, where are these rumors coming from? They're ricockulous.

First off... Why would Philip EVER bother selling?

The man has already sold off enoug stock to make anything else irrelevant. He was a primary investor in realaudio.com... which became realplayer.com.... which become real.com. Okay, so he's already worth millions, established.

In addition to being worth, let's say 100 million, he's still interested in being a computer geek.

Okay, let's assume that - he's now got, let's say, 30 million invested.

We could go on, but it would be a useless proposition.

If you believe Philip Rosedale NEEDS Second Life to pay his bills - you're more than mistaken. The simple fact is that Philip Rosedale could have retired, oh, YEARS ago.

The remainder is whether or not he'll put up with us. What say you?

Regards,

-Flip

amen brother.

And by 'us' he of course means me...



You're all fucked!

heheheh. somehow I dont think benchmark would invest in something that is merely the playtoy of a rich computer geek.

Awww, but cynicism is so much more chic in SL these days! (And remember, if you're positive AT ALL about SL, you might be summarily labeled a suck-up, or a FIC fanboi.)

Ya gotta wonder what holds the Eeyores here, who are so bound and determined to paint SL/LL as a failure.

C'est la Vie I am really glad some of these folks aren't RL friends, I'd never make it through a dinner with them without pulling my fucking hair out what with the lust for negativity.

I've got an idea for all those people who think they know how to run LL better - go do your own MMOE if you're so goddamned wise. Been listening to this line of reasoning nigh on 3 years, and you ain't been right yet.

They might not realize that. Or they might figure that the when the technical geek gets tired of his toy, that would be a good time to put in their hardnosed business guy to run things and straighten the place out.

Welllll I think they moved in fleck for that particular purpose. also yoon, if you google him, has a long history of mergers and aquisitions.

edit: removed the america psycho play on mergers and aquisitions, don't want to get banned for life here..

Lordfly, while I share most of your enthusiasm with the potential of Second Life, the number of residents quoted on the home page is hardly a measurement of "revenue growth". The number of residents currently grows at a rate of 15% per month, but most of those new members don't contribute much to SLs revenue - they come in on free or "once a lifetime 9.95" accounts. The major revenue sources for SL are land sales and tier.

If you look at some other number the growth rate aint that impressive - while still "good". The number of concurrent users online is only growing by 5% per month or less (this growth rate was at 15% some months ago). This is in line with the growth rate of the area of SL (number of sims online), too.

Im am not saying that these are not impressive numbers, but they slowed down significantly in the last months.

While I love Second Life, I have to say that this is still a product for a comparitatively small target audience with much of the attributes of a beta release. (This might change; who knows ...) If you can make a profit - or only brake even - with it depends on many, many more factors then the number of residents listed in the homepage.

Yup, you noticed it too, eh?

I think there was the big free version / christmas rush and now we seemed to have peaked.

I think I made a prediction last year not to worry cause around now (after the christmas rush) would be when they'd make the call to do something drastic.

I think they're about to make that call.

Flipper, I don't know where you got the numbers for Phils private fortune. But even if they are correct ... there have been many cases in the industry where a rich guy - who did not need the money - still sold his company. The need for money rarely has got much to do with that. Heck, there are cases of people who were worth a few billions and they still sold "their" companies. It's hard to understand, but the super-rich still like to make a nice deal once in a while.

If it would be a good idea to sell - or buy - Linden Lab now, I am not qualified to answer. This depends on too many factors and assumptions. Most of them are not public knowledge.

On the other hand: It's hard to understand why most of the posters in this thread seem to think it would be so horrible if such a deal would happen. Linden Lab - or Second Life - surely could use some better marketing (and the funds for that). And imagine someone, who really believes in the potential of the Web 3.0/D/Metaverse, would buy the company and finance a major overhaul of the Second Life platform ...

Mergers and Acquisitions are not always marriages in heaven, but they are rarely a straight way to hell either.

I agree again. I am mostly hanging in here hoping someone will buy them out and fix things up.

Exactly.

Looking back at the thread, I'd say that it's a minority that thinks it would be horrible. Most seem to have written it off as fate thats sure to come true, because they think LL isn't financially viable, which ties into the first paragraph I quoted from you above. It's pure speculation, and calling people liars (in this case Philip) based on speculation, is lame. Sure he's got to make sure to keep customer morale in the right place, and be careful what he says, but I hardly doubt he would answer a question about it with "Are you kidding?", if LL was indeed on the verge of financial failure. Indeed I would expect a much meeker reply that that, if he were hiding something.

I can't speak for Flipper or LF, but my issue is with the pre-emptive write-offs, not the fact that they may sell SL at some point. That, in and of itself, is nothing unusual, as you've stated, and certainly not always something to fear. Who would want to buy a trainwreck, after all?

I have been listening to "LL is financially unsound and doomed to close or be sold off" for a long time now, and I've yet to see any predictions of that come true. In fact, I have heard several people make statements like, "SL will not be around in a year folks, unless they <insert armchair developer wisdom here>!", yet here we are, well past those deadlines.

More people invariably mean more land. I haven't seen new sims stop going up, so that must mean their revenue stream is going. SOMEBODY has to pay that tier.

If LL is making a profit that increases by 20% every month... why in the h*ll are the tier and sim monthly fees STILL so outrageously high? I'd dearly love to "own" a sim but at over 3300 USD for the first year and over 2400 USD per year every year after the first... I don't know about the rest of you but I don't see how I could ever afford that much. Not with the rising costs of living. Heck I'm doing good just to pay the 50 USD a month I pay now. And I was paying over 200 USD a month!! IF SL is so profitable for LL they should come down off the high fees which would give those with lower incomes a chance to enjoy it along with the everyone else. In other words don't keep SL exclusively for those with higher incomes. That is a form of discrimination even if it is unwittingly.

The way I see it, these things are holding back SL's mainstream adoption:

1. definition: What is SL and what is good for? What is the point of SL? What is its purpose? Is it a multi-user level editor or just some sandbox-style toy for kids and artists to dork with?
   
2. lag: Whether it's client-side framerate (like from lit primhog blingheads) or server-side script/physics, lag is a SERIOUS issue in SL which makes people not want to stay
   
3. vehicles: Let's face it, they suck. Grand Theft Auto 3+ SL ain't.
   
4. sim size/cost: Sims are ridiculously small and outrageously expensive.
   

What possible game developer (to create, say, a 3D game like Grand Theft Auto 3) could justify paying for such small spaces and dealing with so much lag? Not many, if any, I suspect.

If SL is to be taken seriously, it needs to define itself more specifically. This has been Active Worlds' (AW) problem, but at least it's TRIED defining itself (with no success) over its history. I still think gaming is the direction AW and SL should move towards. Granted, SL has many gaming features (vehicles, av jumping, physics, inventory, etc) but it still has a ways to go.

A true (full-GUI) first-person view would be a start but SL really needs to support external models, or at least provide more detailed prim editing down to, at least, the polygonal level. It wouldn't be that hard to, say, remove at least a prim's side from being rendered. So many hidden sides contribute to lower framerates it's ridiculous! AW allows both 1st- and 3rd-person views with full GUI in both.

External models could allow basic changes (overall texture, scale, rotation, position, color, transparency, etc) but none of the prim-manipulation stuff (cut, hollow, twist, etc) would be applicable (unless certain parts were remodelled with prims, that is). For the most part, external models would be static, but they would at least allow for more detailed modelling in external modellers (with SL being the showcase). AW allows external models and simple changes to them.

SL's water needs a lot of work too. Sure, it looks nice but that's the only good thing about it. There's no default float functionality for avs/objects and user-made scripted workarounds aren't that great. AW's water is much better in this respect (but it just doesn't look as nice as SL's).

The problem is: AW isn't as interactive as SL can be scripted to be. AW's action commands pale in comparison to SL's scripting language (LSL). AW's worlds dwarf SL sims at 1/10 the cost. AW has crap physics (only avs) while SL's physics is much better (though still needs work).

I just think SL and AW should merge. I've read about some modellers implementing collaboration (shared modelling) but I don't have any details on how it works. However, if modellers do MOVE to this, it will mean competition for AW/SL/etc. Granted, it's unlikely lots of people could be modelling at once, as in a massively mulitiplayer environment/game, but once games get the idea of shared level design (multi-user level editor), I think AW/SL/etc's clock will be pretty much up--unless they too can adapt and incorporate game level (environment, really) design.

and why would that be?

Perfectly plausible, Lordfly. Rereading my post, I can't see that I denied that, though.

What struck me as implausible was only the equation that you seemed to imply with your comment stating a 20%/month growth rate of revenues because of some information on the SL home page.

As stated before, the growth rate of residents is 15%/month currently (it was around 20%). All the other indicators (including world area) point to monthly growth rates between 3% and less than 10%. Which is not exactly bad either ...

I would say it's pretty cheap, actually.

Look at what we know about SL's underlying hardware (correct me if I'm wrong here):

SL uses server type machines (IE, big ones that go in racks, not desktops), with 2 or 4 CPUs. They probably have a fairly large amount of RAM, perhaps 2GB or more, which is almost certainly ECC Registered (more $). Servers often run SCSI disks (more $), and there's certainly a RAID somewhere, although not necessarily on each server.

Now, the 4 CPU ones run probably dual core CPUs. A dual core Opteron is about $1000. That's right, $1000 for just the chip. That's the price I get for a 2.4 GHz one, and it'll need two of those. Then add the rest of the hardware required, and a 4-way box very easily comes out to be $3000 - $4000.

Now consider that all this stuff needs to be installed somewhere. That means a server room, air conditioners to keep the server room cool, an UPS and probably standby generator, electrical circuits capable to handling this load.

Then there's the maintenance: The sysadmins, the electricity bills, the support contract.

Consider it from LL's perspective: When you get a sim all for yourself you might not bring them any benefit with it. You could just leave it empty. Then LL would need to pay for that expensive box and get no benefit from it. So what can they do? Make you pay for all the hardware you require and its support. Then they don't need to care about that.

IMO, the startup cost covers the cost of the hardware you need, and doesn't seem all that expensive considering the hardware that seems to be involved. The monthly quota might carry a larger profit margin, but it's hard to tell.

To make it cheaper, LL could allow you to bring your own box to their data center. Then you could assemble a cheap server... But again, server hardware is expensive, and it'd be crap if you spent much less than $1000 on it! For instance, I have a dual motherboard at home. The board was $250. Then $150 for each CPU. Then $80 per each stick of RAM. And we're at $710 already and don't even have hard disks.

Philip created SL. Why would he sell it to someone if he has his heart set on running it a certain way it makes no sense. And sure stuff takes a little while to get into the game but if your trying to change the entire rendering engine it would take awhile for any game. Mind you most games are set graphically from the get go for what they are going to look like. Where as SL is actually trying to develop to get better. A side note a new rendering engine was never promised but is said to be in the works its more along the lines of re-writing the code though. If you are reffering to havok 2 (3) or whatever thats isnt rendering its a Physics engine movement how vehicles behave etc. They do fine financially when u consider all the premium accounts plus then the people with tons of land and stuff. There is no way LL is in financial trouble enough to even bail on SL . And in all honesty ... What can you do after making SL lol . Most games they could do just seem sub par to SL's world. As i say SL may be copied by other people or attempted to be at least. But they will never truly be SL please note (alterlife by NCsoft >>> stupid cartoony game) and many other virtual worlds that had existed seem a bit blahsay after playing second life. They are doing a good job and if they have enough to continue development as strongly as they have (look at 1.9) then they are fine. So trust me when i say SL will NOT be sold!!

Let's look at this logically.

Philip founded a company that pretty much invented video streaming and sold it to Real.com during the HEIGHT of the dot-com '90s. He was then their CTO and a major shareholder.

My guess is that Philip will never have to worry about money again if he doesn't want to. SL is his dream; he doesn't have to work, per se, but chooses to do this because he loves it. I don't see a CEO in that position selling any time soon, unless its a perfect fit... like http://metaverse.google.com!

Regards,

-Flip

they are that high because it costs money to maintain a server. You are paying for matinance of your regions etc. You opt to pay full tier or not its totally up to you. If you cant afford it you cant afford it you can always rent a sim in game from Anshe or someone else really. Just gotta make money in game to do it

Looking at this both hypothetically and logically Flip, I can see two reasons Phil might ditch SL

1. he might be a 'starter upper' - once it's up and running, interest wanes - bear in mind what happened at Real?

2. it might be that, at this point, he believes that SL is a blind alley and that his best shot at realising his dream is to start fresh - so, would he just throw it away? Of course not, he'd recover as much of his investment as possible, then start over with a clean sheet of paper.

Two purely hypothetical reasons which make quite good sense I think?