<<At this point I think it is a rumor based on the fact that they called
this patch the FINAL patch. Who is to say if it is reality or not?>>
Microsoft, whose John Browne promised this NG updates, welcomed input,
and said he was here to help. From his post regarding the departure of
Dean Lester, and his (John Browne's) assumption of the NG lightning rod
post:
<<Subject: Microsoft is still around
Date: 1997/12/15
Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators
[More Headers]
Yes, it's true that Dean Lester had to pack it in. He actually has a lot
of products to worry about, not just CPR. I, OTOH, only have to worry
about CPR and Monster Truck Madness. So let me try to set a few
expectations:
1) We're working on a patch. It is totally a response to some of the
comments made on r.a.s., many of which we agree with. A list of items
addressed in the patch has been forwarded up to this ng, and most of
them will indeed be in the patch. A couple of items may not make it.
2) The patch won't make the game perfect. But it will make it better. We
think it's a pretty good game right now, and we're all jazzed at the
improvements in the patched builds....[major snip]>>
To his last recorded post in the group, on December 16, 1997:
<<Subject: Re: Microsoft is still around
Date: 1997/12/16
Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators
[More Headers]
Thanks for all the kind words. Let the fracas begin!
--
Cheers,
John Browne
MS CART Team>>
Well, the fracas began, all right, but John Browne seems to have decided
to sit this dance out, as not a single word from him has been posted
here since that invitation to the dance on 12/16.
I think John Browne's words regarding the patch for the preemie CPR bear
repeating and emphasizing:
"let me try to set a few expectations:
"...It is totally a response to some of the comments made on r.a.s.,
many of which we agree with...most of them will indeed be in the patch.
A couple of items may not make it.
"The patch won't make the game perfect."
Within this vague latitude expressed by Mr. Browne as to just how much
they would attempt to improve the game, there is more than enough room
for an infinite gulf of possible outcomes for the patch and the sim it's
designed to resuscitate -- and judging from the pleas, prayers, and
dreams expressed in the NG by people waiting for the patch, their
expectations run the gamut from the staunchly pessimistic to the wildly
euphoric.
IM(extremely)HO, I think you would all do well to reconsider what John
Browne has promised -- which is, essentially, that MS/Tri will attempt
to improve the game. period.
Also, IMHO, I think it has to be accepted that Microsoft's ONLY business
is profit. They're not a Mom 'N' Pop codehouse whose brave few are
putting their all into a sim becuase they are totally zonked on
motorsports, and the near-as-possible-to-real simulation of racing. At
some point, the bean counters will have determined (as they did in
releasing the sim prematurely to catch the Christmas grunion run), that
the expense required to keep people working on CPR (what a prophetic
choice of initials) does not present a positive profit/loss ratio based
on projected sales, and that, therefore further man-hour expenditures
are not in the best financial interests of MS. If it was an office suite
product, or a web browser -- a killer app that was going to determine
the history of a large segment of the computing population for years to
come -- there would be a tremdous incentive to work on the project at a
loss. A very small niche-market game is never going to win the hearts
and minds of John Q. MIS, or Jane Q. Netsurfer. MS made their Christmas
sales with CPR, and by a HUGE margin those sales were made to people
who've never HEARD of RAS, and couldn't find it if they wanted to: guys
who bought it for themselves, or their kids, stoked by the box graphics,
and the hyperbolic blurbs on the package. Do think the vast bulk of
CPR's Christmas sales was made to people who read "PC Gamer"? Not too
likely. So they get the game, and they (somehow) get it installed, and
it's jerky, it freezes, and the other cars are doing Linda Blair
imitations in mid-air. Do they blame the game? Not very often -- John
and Jane Q. Silent-Majority are so intimidated by the computer that they
almost always blame any glitch as a result of their own self-perceived
ineptitude. It's a GAME, they think -- I can NEVER get games to work on
my PC, is their surrender. I've heard it thousands of times.
*You* guys on this NG know what you're doing, and you CARE about what
you're doing -- but in all honesty, the people this NG represents isn't
even a pimple on a blip on MS' profit sonar.
When they've spent as much money as they long-ago determined was within
the positive profit/loss envelope for this project, the Patch will be
heralded as "as good as we can make it", and any further complaints by
the knowledgeable people on this newsgroup will be dismissed as the
rantings of the technologically inept, the unreasonably perfectionistic,
or -- the great catch-all that Microsoft actively cultivates and uses
as an excuse for everything they can't (or won't) explain -- the dark
forces of the "Anti-Microsoft crowd" -- very much like Spiro Agnew
explaining away those who questioned his iron-clad integrity as
"nattering nabobs of negativism" -- even AFTER his criminal
conviction...
Just my 200 cents
Bart Brown
