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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5031614" data-attributes="member: 32740">Because there IS potential to make money with these sorts of devices.That is entirely irrelevant.  Microsofts involvment here is buliding hardware and software to run it.  What ANYBODY does with it beyond that is all but beyond Microsoft's control.  And why would MS care at that point WHAT people use it for?  What it's used for doesn't affect their profits - that they use it for as much as possible DOES.Are you kidding?!  This has been Wizards HOLY GRAIL of gaming since 2000 and the release of 3E.  Yes it IS too expensive right now, but this sort of thing is called Research & Development.  It's only a bad investment if they were to sink money into it (and right now it's not costing them a CENT) and nothing ever came of it.  If this were able to fully run 4E right now I have no doubts that WotC would integrate it with DDI and arrange for people to pay for the hardware on installments along with their monthly D&D subscription.  With multiple surfaces linked over the internet DM's wouldn't even have to have players in the same room - or even have a surface of his own since it's an application run from a laptop, not the surface itself.  This combination for D&D could stand a solid chance of finally knocking over the 800# gorilla that is World of Warcraft.  Get FLGS's to invest in Surface tables to run games at the store or in concert with other stores if the hardware initially remains too expensive for reasonable home purchasing.  Etc. etc. You are NOT seeing the bigger picture here.  You're looking at what can be done right now, but this is all about what can be done a year, 2 years or 5 years down the road.  It DEFINITELY seems to me that this could be the Next Big Thing and the bad investment would be instead of putting money into this to put it into... say, designing another collectible card game.Now there's nothing wrong with healthy skepticism.  Virtual Reality, for example, was being touted as "just around the corner" TWENTY years ago and it never amounted to squat.  But - and I honestly don't mean to be insulting about this - you have no vision, and it's a good thing YOU are not in charge of R&D funds or our gaming computers would still be Commodore 64's, Atari's and Apple II's. It may indeed be 10 years before it REALLY has an impact but WotC was right - even though they havee failed at achieving their dreams for 10 years.  THIS is where the future of tabletop RPG's is at, and quite probably the future of gaming in general.  If you can't see that you're blind.</blockquote>

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