Highly Improbable Predictions

So, I guess that I'll have to come up with some sort of column here, otherwise, people will think that I'm just slacking off again. Predictions for what we will and won't see in the industry for the coming year tend to be a popular topic around this time of year, so I guess that I can look into the raytraced crystal ball over here in the den and attempt to make a couple of predictions, that is if the new MMX processor that just got added to DeeDee (the other Pentium) ever decides to finish rendering the blasted thing. But until then, I'll try to come up with some predictions out of thick air (there seems to be a shortage of thin air in here as of late...

• Unable to get things back in order, AOL will experience a total meltdown. It was at the beginning of last year that AOL found that they were in trouble, with several state attorney general offices investigating them for poor customer service, an unreliable and inaccessible network, and other things that caused customers to complain all over the place. Since then, despite what you'll hear from their advertisements, it's only gotten worse at AOL. Finding that they suddenly only have a fixed amount of money from subscribers, they have begun selling ads like there's no tomorrow... Isn't it funny how for the same price you can get a reliable connection without ads at every turn? I suspect that in the end, AOL will find out the hard way that advertising is definitely not the answer to all this.... in bankruptcy court.

• The concept of "thin client" systems will never shape up as a serious threat to full-function computer systems. already, it has become fairly obvious that the concept of the network computer lives on only by the force of the egos who continue to push the concept forward. To the trained industry observer, one sees that although the costs of purchasing thin clients would be reduced in comparison to regular PCs, the cost for servers that would be needed to support these systems would be greatly increased. Besides, as someone in an IRC channel I frequent (#mamegames on EFNet) pointed out, these days a fully functional low-end system with a Cyrix MediaGX processor could be put together for a price competitive with an NC. And with a system like that, you might actually be able to do something with it. and besides, when the driving force behind most of the computer upgrades out there is in order to play new games, who's going to want a non-upgradable, dumbed-down PC-like thingy on their desktop anyway? I mean, other than Packard Bell users...

• Windows98 will not be showing up anytime soon. With the government now meddling in just about everything Microsoft does nowdays, they are going to try to force MS to remove the web integration components in Win98 from the operating system, despite the fact that Microsoft claims that this is quite impossible. The Justice Department will say "well, do it anyway punks," and they won't allow MS to release anything with Web integration, and since they're being so stubborn about it, we will not be seeing Windows98 until at least early 1999.

• As high technology starts reaching common household appliances en masse, life as we know it will be doomed. Eventually, it will reach the point where it will take reading a manual and 2 calls to tech support every morning just to figure out how to get out of bed in the morning.... if you can figure out how to use the phone. It's not necessarily that all this stuff is going to be that hard to figure out how to use, but that from my experience in tech support, most people can't figure out the simplest task without detailed instructions from someone else, despite the fact that this mystical book that holds the key to using said product is sitting right in front of them, and is called a manual. Unfortunately for them, the geeks seem to be in control of many of the household products that they use on a regular basis, meaning that the imbeciles of the world are in for a tough time when technology takes over their lives.

• The video game industry is in for a serious reality check. It doesn't take much looking around these days in the modern arcade to see one thing.... most of the games in there are your typical beat-em-up fighter, essentially a clone of the last bazillion or so. Not only that, but that quarter of yours is going to buy you about 1/4 of a game of whatever it is . The fact is, that about 14 years ago, this very thing led to what is now known in video gaming lore as the crash of 1984, which led to the demise of many of the major players in the video game market, such as the Colecovision and Intellivision at the time. This happened largely because the companies were putting out all sorts of mediocore games , and people were starting to notice. It's fairly obvious that once again, we're seeing all sorts of clones of the same thing, and eventually the breaking point will be reached. The lesson needs to be learned once again by the industry that flashy graphics do not make a game an instant success... Unfortunately for some, it will be too late...

Copyright (C) 1998 Brian Lutz. All rights reserved.
"I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world."
-Georges Duhamel