Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfyre
HLC supports the company via the data packages I suspect. Once they convert a system to HLO you they will still make the money of the data packages, but it sounds like they will now need to develop two version for each release, but intend to only charge us once. In essence there development cost will increase, so either our cost to buy needs to go up or they need to sell a lot more copies or discontinue one of the 2 lines, which would obviously be HLC.
This tells me the entire point of HLO is likely to force every member of the gaming group to buy HLO, all of the data packs the group is using and pay a monthly subscription fee in order to drive the number of data packs sold.
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This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we have been repeatedly stating. So I'm at a loss for how to make this clear. Regardless, I will try again.
The game system infrastructure IS NOT CHANGING for existing games. That means that we can support them on BOTH PLATFORMS, with negligible extra effort. One set of data files works on both platforms, with a few minor tweaks.
In contrast, the UI has to be completely re-written for both platforms. But that only happens ONCE. Not on an ongoing basis, as is the case for data packages. The UI development cost for each game system is part of getting everything converted to HLOnline, so it's a one-time cost that we've planned for. We believe that users will want the features and device access afforded by HLOnline, so they will want all their games available on the platform. Hence it's in our best interests to offer that.
This is also the reason we are NOT bringing Starfinder to HLClassic initially. We would have to invest in all the work to re-implement the UI. And doing the UI on HLClassic is significantly more work than doing it for HLOnline. We are avoiding that specifically to avoid the accompanying resource costs.
As for the rest of your assertions, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I view things very differently from you and find your examples to be highly unlikely to occur within the vast majority of gaming groups. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I expect things to play out very differently from you, and that means our respective visions can't coexist in the same space. Only time will tell which of us is right.