Daniel.Hjelmtorp.com

One of the biggest news today in Sweden (and on the web as well) is that Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have been bought by Global Gaming Factory, another Swedish company. GGF claim to wanna turn the site into a legal company and platform. In an interview by Swedish television he said we wanted to change the business model and pay! for those to share files.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Hans Pandeya, CEO of GGF

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.

“Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File-sharers need faster downloads and better quality,” he added.

Gamesindustry.biz

What I find interesting is that I have been in contact with that company and even had a meeting in our old office. But they didn’t make a good impression and the GGF company feel like a real scam business. Its gonna be interesting to see were this is going. Now, what can you say, all the “philosophical” self-righteous people out there who claim that The Pirate Bay isn’t out for making money?

The most comical thing about this whole deal is how a company(site) that claims everything should be free, now sells it self for millions of dollars. If they should have stuck to their philosophy they should have given it all away, the way they proclaim content creators should do.

Its hard to ignore the success of the iPhone. Just the fact that the new version sold 1 million in 3 DAYS! And with the new version just released with increased processor speed and combination with a newer OS (3.0), game developers have something new to look forward to. I will get one imidiately when it launches in Swedish stores.

Just recently the legendary developer John Carmack at id Software talked about developing games for the iPhone in an interview, with the pros and cons of the phone.

But I hope I can wind up doing something in the good old classic way of doing things, where I do something that’s just amazingly cool to look at but maybe a little thin on the ground in terms of what the actual substance is there. But do that to kind of get things out and test it and see what’s going on. Because our mainstream development is going to be focused on the original baseline platform. The 3GS will always run it faster and smoother, and maybe we can add a few simple things to add on there, but you just can’t–especially scaling all the way from fixed functions to programmable shaders–it’s just a completely different development strategy if you want to max it out.

John Carmack – Shacknews Interview

And it is still very earily time for the iPhone platform and the best is probably yet to come. Looking forward for it.

The talk of how the internet have changed our society and business work can’t be understated. In so many way, some we haven’t thought of yet. One of the most interesting opportunities the web brings is the easy and fast possibility of Self-Publishing. With the internet as our new open tool, a band, game developer or author doesn’t have to rely on a bigger company to (maybe) get published. The big record label might fear this more than others as medium to smaller bands have a platform to do distributing and marketing themselves through sites like MySpace, Spotify and IMEEM, they can reach out directly to their fans.

The role of the publishers, labels and big media companies have really changed. With all the new technology available for everyone and just a little bit of knowledge and common sense everyone can make it on their own. Okey, you probably won’t get into retailers like Wallmart and such, but with the web, you can have your own shop, opened 24/7. You can reach out to new or potential fans with your Myspace page, mod an open source game-engine to make your own game, and distribute you homemade video on Youtube. For those who aim to break it to the top you still need the knowledge, contacts and financial support for the big boys. But they should still be a bit affraid I believe.

One of those smaller studios or self publishers, can become quite the threat for bigger players. Example from the gaming industry is Valve and Blizzard. They began as small developers and are now both milion if not bilion dollar companies. Still, its the never ending loop, when small companies become big and they have to addapt to stay big and they often lose their soul. And with it their core fans. And it can take away focus from that spark and the creativity which made them big. Then companies grow to be really big, it becomes more business and the people and company have to addapt to survive. It sad in many ways but thats probably the price they are willing to pay.

Now have the new version of Apples iPhone been reveiled, iPhone 3G s. The “s” according to Apple stands for Speed. I watched the presentation from WWDC09 yesterday. Unfortunatly Steve Jobs weren’t there to present it which is a shame. But I just waited for a new version of the iPhone before buying a “real” one. Feature-wise there isn’t any real news in the phone other than better battery and processor speed, and of cause the video camera. What I am interested in is trying out the App store and to be able to upgrade the software. Something I can’t do today.

What’s really interested to try out are all the games for the iPhone. Throughout the Gameing community and press the interest for the iPhone as a gaming plattform have only increased! And now with more processing power and the SDK this will become really interesting.

Apple iPhone 3G s

Now its been a while since I wrote something here, but we have had a really busy time lately. Specially at GamersGate that have been taking most of my time and energy.
Among all the new things we have rolled out is the new design of the site. It feels great and fresh to finally open the new design along with some new features. Check it out!

New GamersGate Design

Also we now offer Mac games for purchase and download. Something that I have been a driving force on the office to implement. I have long felt that we have to cature the Mac market and there are lots of great games for Mac available. We just need to find them and offer them to our customers and new customers.

Besides Mac games we released digital game strategy guides. We still have a lot of guides we need to prepare.

And this weekend we will attend DreamHack to promote our site and company. Hope to show some pictures next week.