Where did 'Soon™' originate?

Question

I've seen coming Soon™ attached to some Valve and Blizzard products, but did it start with one of them (and if so, which)? What was the first game (or other product) that was to be launched with the blatantly tongue-in-cheek Soon™?

Asked by Nick T

Answer

I think the phrase itself is older than World of Warcraft; certainly older than the Burning Crusade expansion. I remember seeing the phrase on Bungie fan sites during the Marathon and Myth heyday. For example, here's a post from 2001 on myth.bungie.org where Soon(tm) appears, and here is a page on the Marathon's Story website that contains the phrase all the way back in 2000 (you'll have to search the page for "soon(tm)" as it's a big page). Both of these predate WoW's announcement in September of 2001.

I would venture to guess that the phrase has been around almost as long as release dates have been left unannounced for popular titles, which is a very, very long time and may even predate the web (which is to say, you may need to dig through AOL discussion board or Usenet archives to find the real origin).

Given that it's been around so long, I'd be surprise if Blizzard were the first to ever "officially" use the term as a way of saying "we aren't telling you the release date yet."

Answered by Josh Petrie

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Why aren't all games available on all platforms?

Question

Is there a technical reason as to why aren't all games released on every platform, or is it just marketing/politics?

I'm guessing that would cause you to buy a playstation if you really like a game that's only available there, but perhaps there's also other reasons.

Answer

There are many different reasons for not supporting every game on every platform.

1. Money Involved: Consider the case of Games for Windows and the Xbox games, although almost every game can be ported between these two platforms (excellent ports of Dead Space and Gears of War come to mind) but Microsoft will not do that(Gears of War2, Halo2,3), because that may impact the sales of Xbox in a negative manner. Similarly the games produced and published by Sony Computer Ent. will not be released on Xbox or Windows. What I think is Games released for Xbox give a huge chunk of money to MS (because of the licensing), games released for Windows add a lower amount and hence the former are released by both MS and others(EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc) and latter are generally released by others.

2. Technical Difficulties: Porting a game from PS3 to Xbox is very difficult as the guys above said they use totally different libraries.

3. Debugging factor: Every Xbox has same architecture, so is every PS3. Releasing a game on these 2 is easier and the debugging afterwards is still easier. A game which crashes on one Xbox (because of developer side bug) can be patched easily. But n different PCs generally have n different configurations, what causes a bug due to my Nvidia driver may not cause the bug in your updated/older driver or an ATI graphics card.

4. Piracy: There is no need to say that games are easily pirated on PC than on any other platform. The architecture plays a very important role. The general purpose functionality of PC makes it easily crackable but the other dedicated platforms makes it extremely difficult and the cracks can be "filled" with a firmware upgrade.

5. Scaling: For platforms like PSP, you need to do a LOT of scaling which makes the process difficult or rather impossible. PC games are generally released later than the console counterparts so that the designers get time to scale down the game. This directly affects the sales as more people can now play the game. The initial release of GTA4 PC was frowned upon by the gamers as the "scaling down" they did wasn't up to the mark.

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What announcements have been made in reference to the beta release date of Minecraft? [closed]

Question

I was thinking of purchasing minecraft once it's ready, but I've read it will increase in price after leaving alpha stage. Now I'm trying to decide whether to go for it or not, but I have no idea how much time I've got left.

I am hoping to find anymore information that he has put out pertaining to pricing or moving to beta.

I couldn't find that information in the website.

Answer

Notch announced today that the beta release of Minecraft will be on December 20th.

In addition to the version bump and associated fixes the price will rise from €9.95 to €14.95, and people who purchase after this date will not get all future updates for free.

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Has a release timeframe for Scrolls been announced yet? [closed]

Question

Mojang (makers of Minecraft) have made quite a bit of news with there plans to release a Customizable Card Game style PC game called Scrolls. Unfortunately, information about this game that hasn't been repeated over and over again is hard to find, due to the lack of new information.

Does anyone have a source (old or otherwise) where Notch (or anyone at Mojang), has at least released a statement of when they hope to release Scrolls?

Answer

Information about this title seems limited and I think it's because of the ongoing legal battle between Mojang and Bethesda regarding the name 'Scrolls'.

Anyway, I found this trailer that was posted on August 30th (can't find anything more recent) and the release date is only listed as "eventually".

I'm guessing that the legal process will likely need to be resolved before this is actually released.

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When was Civilization 2 released?

Question

When was Civilization 2 released?

Answer

According to Wikipedia, February 29, 1996 for the PC version and January 20, 1998 for Playstation version.

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Is there a plan for more Red Dead Redemption DLC after Undead Nightmare?

Question

I think the title says it all.

Answer

There is an additional DLC pack to be released in Sep 2011. "Myth & Mavericks"

Source : Rockstar Official website.

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