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| Thursday April 15, 1999 |
Apple's Second Quarter Results Good News for Gamers
For the doubters who would still question if the Mac is truly a viable platform financially as well as in terms of power and performance, Apple has announced further remarkable results for its fiscal 1999 second quarter which ended March 27, 1999. Furthermore the growth of Apple has been significantly greater than forecasted.
What does this mean? It means that our favorite computer producers are making money, and quite a decent amount of it too. Sure, Steve Jobs isn't about to challange Bill Gates as the richest man in the world, but we can rest assured that proceeds from Mac sales are actually being used to develop better Macs rather than lining the pockets of the company's heads. These results have been attributed to the continuing popularity of the iMac and the new flavoured G3. However even as this story was posted at Apple, another was posted mentioning that the iMac has become even more powerful with a 333 MHz processor. With the G4 peeking over the horizon and Mac OS X knocking on the window, this can only be the beginning!
From the press release:
Apple Computer, Inc. today announced financial results for its fiscal 1999 second quarter which ended March 27, 1999. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $135 million, or $.84 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $55 million, or $.38 per diluted share, achieved in the year-ago quarter. Revenues for the quarter were $1.53 billion, up 9 percent from the year-ago quarter, and gross margins were 26.3 percent, up from 24.8 percent in the prior year quarter. International sales accounted for 50 percent of the quarter’s revenues...
Strong sales of iMac™ and Power Macintosh® G3 computers drove overall unit growth to 27% year-over-year. This compares favorably to IDC’s worldwide forecast for industry growth of 14%.
“We are delighted that Apple grew faster than the industry in its sixth consecutive profitable quarter,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s interim CEO. “Demand for iMac exceeded our most optimistic forecasts, with Apple’s share of U.S. retail and mail order desktop sales climbing as high as 12.5 percent during the quarter, as reported by ZD Storeboard. And Apple continues to lead the industry in asset management by ending the quarter with a record 1 day of inventory, beating Dell for the third quarter in a row.”
“Strong demand for iMac and new Power Macintosh G3 computers combined with continued operational efficiency and asset management improvements resulted in positive cash flow from operations of $269 million,” said Fred Anderson, Apple’s CFO. “Apple now has over $2.9 billion in cash and short-term investments.”
What does it mean to gamers? Well, a healthy Apple with an expanding marketshare allows them to make an even stronger case to game developers to encourage them to bring their games to our platform. [Simon]
 Blizzard Reveals Paladin from Diablo II
Blizzard has release a new movie (Quicktime 3 required for playback) its Paladin character from the upcoming Diablo II RPG. Also available is a movie of the Amazon character, an obvious nod to Xeena: Warrior Princess fans everywhere.
Diablo II is the long-awaited sequel to Diablo, Blizzard's award-winning realtime RPG. No word of a Mac version has been announced, but since Blizzards record for porting their games to the Mac is nearly 100% so far, we expect an announcement soon. [Eilers]
Updates on Quake III Arena Test
iD Software game designer Graeme Devine has updated his .plan file again with many a juicy detail from the upcoming Quake III Arena Test:
We're getting closer to releasing the test version of Quake 3 Arena. It's worth going over our expectations from the test vs. the world's expectations from the test. I appreciate all the voice mails, faxes, and emails with suggestions, death threats, and comments, and I do read each and every one of them. I try to respond to a lot of them, but obviously I can't respond to them all.
At this point, we still have no release date on the test. We're testing builds here and at Activision and continuing to go through cycles. As soon as feedback from both internal testing and our testers at Activision dies down, we'll be ready, but while this is providing heavy reports, as it still is today, we're still not ready to come out with the public test.
There will be two maps in the test; these maps will also be in the final product. The feedback we're looking for is specific to the technology in the test. We're pretty happy with the design, and feedback on things like weapon switch times, models, gibs, and so forth are not things we'll pay as much attention to as real issues with the technology. We're looking closely at modem, ISDN, and cable play to see how our new network code works, and how that works when a bunch of different connections are playing together on the same server. We're anxious to gauge server load and use with the maps we have to see how the server works under heavy use, and to make sure we've got a lot of the new client/server communication working reliably and securely.
That said, we do and will watch you play, read the message boards, and try to gauge feedback. But the main thing to remember is that this is a test technology build, not a demo, there will be a demo, we plan on a demo, but this is a test. A lot of you will want to wait on the demo rather than playing the test.
The test will be on all three platforms, Mac, Linux and Win32. We're still working on minimum and recommended specs. There are no bots in the test. We do plan on revving the test once it's out at regular intervals to get fixes out there.
There is no spoon.
For those who are new or recent comers to the Internet, .plan files are little scraps of text that used to reside in people's personal directory on the server of their ISP. Acessible through the Unix "shell," these .plan files were a place for personal self-expression and slef-definition. If you wanted to know more about someone, you would "finger" them in the Unix shell and be able to read their .plan file. Now, the iD staff uses their .plans to keep people updated on their progress... Kind of like using a chisel and stone tablets in the days of the waterless ink sheet-fed press, is it not? Not that we are complaining! [Eilers]
Unreal 224, Unreal Tournament News
A major report on game site Adrenaline Vault has many updates on the upcoming Unreal 224 patch and Unreal Tournament. Some of the enhancements planned for the 224 update include a graphical in-game server browser which allows you to look for servers while playing and find servers without having to leave the game or run a utility in the background; special "continuous level of detail" enhancements to the game engine which allow for smoother movement with many players onscreen; and a special "mod installer" which will allow easy installation (and removal) of third-party mods such as Serpentine. As sson as the final PC 224 patch is released, Mac Unreal players can expect Westlake Software to begin working feverishly to update our version as well. In other news, Epic confirmed that a demo for Unreal Tournament will be released (a demo for Unreal never was) but hedged on the expectation that this Unreal sequel will be out "within the next two months." Read the full article for more details. [Eilers]
 Myth 2 Tourney Based on WWII Conversion
For those of you who downloaded the WWII conversion for Myth 2, a new tournament has been announced. "Axis and Allies" is still currently in development, but its final intent is to be a tournament based on the WWII Recon total conversion and Map. Stop by and check it out today! And if you haven't tried this amazing total conversion, download it and give it a try. And if you don't have Myth 2: Soulblighter--for shame! Get thee to a store! [Eilers]
Quake Utilities Moved
Modeler and utility-maker "extreme" Loren Petrich has announced that his page of utilities has been moved to a new server:
My three Quake utilities,
WADder -- composes texture archives from image files
MDL Viewer -- views model files
LW2Quake -- turns Lightwave objects into Quake maps
have now moved to MacQuake Infinity's servers
Stop by and check them out, Quake fans! [Eilers]
Ambrosia Software Chat Tonight
Ambrosia, maker of fine shareware games and publishers of the upcoming RPG Cythera and action game Ferazel's Wand have announced a chat:
Shoot the breeze with Ambrosia personalities. Join Marketdroid Jason Whong and whoever else decides to show up (Glenn Andreas, Ben Spees, JesseLiesch, and of course Andrew Welch have been known to show up on occasion).
Chat starts at 6:00 pm pacific/09:00 pm eastern
Just point your Java enabled browser to http://worldwithoutborders.com and
click on ChatNow! Netscape 3.0+ or IE with MRJ 2.1.1 recomended by the site.
So if you want the scoop on upcoming Ambrosia products, be there! I know I will... [Eilers]
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| In Other News |
Vitrual PC Update: This minor update doesn't add any new features, just fixes bugs with Powerbooks and some Y2K problems.
New VillageTronic Drivers: VillageTronic has released new drivers for their NextGen MP850 graphics acceleration card.
Railroad Tycoon II Site: if you want an in-depth look at this upcoming game, visit the Station.
NoBeige previews new iMacs: they've got the scoop on the new, faster iMacs and when they will be available.
Even Columnists Like Games: Tom Lovino of the great Mac website About This Particular Macintosh confesses that he uses his Mac for games. Hey, is that so wrong?
UnrealFinder Updated: this utility for finding online servers for Unreal slaughterfests is now at 1.0.2 and requires Unreal version 2.2.0.
Get Games 4 your Mac: The Games 4 Mac Campaign website has ben updated with a new campaign to convince UbiSoft to bring the racing game Speed Busters to the Mac. Stop by and sign up, and sign their many other petitions while you are at it!
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