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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 5316874" data-attributes="member: 9225">I read technology news. Every major consumer electronics manufacturer has tablets due in this period, and many of them are around $300 to try to compete with the iPad on price point. Meanwhile, if I recall correctly Apple will probably report that the iPad has shipped in excess of 28 million units. At that rate of adoption we will probably see something like 1-2% of Americans own *just* iPads by the end of next year. Depending on the success of alternatives like Samsung's Galaxy Tab and offerings from ASUS, HP, etc, we could see that rise as high as maybe 5%. So by the end of 2011 we may have 1 in 20 Americans own a tablet device. Tabletop gamers tend to adopt technology faster for cultural and demographic reasons, so I could see easily doubling or tripling this number among tabletop RPG players for 10% to 15%. That assumes a relatively steady rate of adoption and not some kind of near paradigm shift in casual computing that some analysts are predicting.And RPG apps are on the rise in both Android and iOS. The one gap in their function which would take advantage of form is in map displays. The App Store already has one (expensive) third party battle map app. I already routinely display ad hoc sketched maps on my iPad, and I know many other people who do so on standard laptops. So demand and early usage are there, the form factor is there -- all that's missing is software from a company that made it one of its first promises for electronic support, and who then completely failed to back that up.As I said at a panel recently and in conversation with a publisher. the first company to provide an integrated RPG game and toolset -- including a map -- using an HTML5 framework that can be ported to mobile, tablet and traditional computer, will probably become hugely successful if they do it at all competently. But that willingness to take electronic support seriously seems to be minimal to nonexistant. Companies are instead directing people to some subset of their site, telling people to buy PDFs, or letting third parties bear the load with scattered tools that are annoying to use together. So WotC sucks and every other company sucks for this. The difference is that WotC made a promise they would not suck, and continue to suck.</blockquote>

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