It seems Sun and IBM have realized there is coin to be had by investing in servers and software for Online/MMORP Games. This is good for future competition, and the ability of smaller shops to be able to compete with the larger established companies.
IBM is backing Butterfly.net, a growing effort to apply grid supercomputing power to operating online games.
Sun also is working to ensure their software and big iron runs Online Worlds through their Game Tech Group.
The North American online game market earns roughly 1 billion per year, and is expected to have heavy growth in the near future.
As reliability and scaleability become better, and total cost becomes cheaper we should see some amazing advanced in online games.
In the future, given more companies are either purchasing ready made 3D engines or have ones already available, we could see development cycles being cut in half or more, as the pieces to the puzzle of MMORPGs and Online games are ready made and available.
A future MMORPG project could start out 80% done. A team would purchase servers ready made from IBM with Linux loaded with Oracle grid technology. Then after licensing an engine, the game would be in alpha practically from the beginning of the project, and the development cost would be greatly reduced.
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