Software Reviews

People use Twitter to warn of natural dangers including earthquakes and hurricanes. Other environmentally related uses for the micro-blogging tool include measuring energy use at home and rigging up plants to “tell” Twitter when they’re thirsty.

For a green-news junkie overwhelmed by dozens or even hundreds of RSS feeds, Twitter can be an entertaining and mobile filter. Writers at blogs and traditional publications increasingly use it to broadcast 140-character alerts of stories and observations, which can provide an early and more casual take on their blog posts and formal articles.

Plus, you can interact with the authors via replies and direct messages that can be more immediate than an e-mail or comment on a full-length story.

Here are some of the “green” feeds we keep up with on Twitter. Some simply provide instant links to freshly published stories, while others mix in commentary and personality. Check out who they’re following to find even more feeds.

• To start, find CNET’s Green Tech posts here.
• Think of the never-dull Grist as The Onion for green news, only with more truth than truthiness.
• Preston Koerner of Jetson Green focuses on green building, and compiled this exhaustive list of green Twitter feeds.
• The EcoGeek team tracks green tech.
• Green Options is a network of a variety green-themed blogs.
• GreenBiz.com is a hub for green business news.

• Inhabitat’s bloggers share a fine eye for ecologically appropriate design.
• Sustainablog from Jeff McIntire-Strasburg is one of the longest-running green blogs.
• The Greenwash Brigade from American Public Media’s Public Insight Network investigates sketchy-sounding green corporate claims.
• Green Wombat is the work of Fortune writer Todd Woody.
• DotEarth comes from Andy Revkin of The New York Times.

• TheOilDrum covers energy and “peak oil” issues.
• Global Warming and ScienceNews mention related stories around the Web every week or so.
• Ecorazzi: Think Us Weekly meets An Inconvenient Truth, launched by Michael Destries.
• Worldchanging’s writers keep up with cutting-edge trends in sustainability.


Green lifestyle pointers and DIY tips come in more than a few flavors:

• Siel, aka GreenLAGirl, writes the Emerald City blog for the Los Angeles Times and still keeps up her original blog of her tips and adventures around town.
• Surveys show that people become more concerned about greening their lives when they become parents. Eco Child’s Play speaks to them.
• Beth Terry’s well-researched Fake Plastic Fish blog chronicles her quest to reduce her use of plastic.
• Green Map guides, in hundreds of cities, chart local green resources.
• Pointers for crafts enthusiasts come via Craft and Make magazines and Crafting a Greener World.
• The Green Guide from National Geographic offers household-greening tips. So do LighterFootstep and GreenTweet. Earth911 is a go-to guide for recycling and much more.


Micro-bloggers from green nonprofit groups and businesses share their inside perspective:

• AIDG “tweets” often from Haiti, where the Boston nonprofit helps communities with renewable energy and more. The abbreviation stands for a mouthful: Appropriate Infrastructure Design Group.

• Enviroblog from the Environmental Working Group details toxic ingredients in everyday products.

• NRDCSwitchboard comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which prints the excellent On Earth magazine. The
  National Wildlife Federation and
  Sierra Magazine use Twitter, too. Greenpeace activists are ever-active.
• The World Resources Institute think tank is based in Washington, D.C.
• Can you build a green home for $100,000? Philadelphia developer Chad Ludeman takes up the challenge with the 100kHouse.
• Max Gladwell, whose blog blends social media with green living, describes on Treehugger how to add your “tweets” to a GreenStream channel to make them easier to find.
• Strategist and GreenBiz founder Joel Makower just began using Twitter in September.
• Social entrepreneur and GreenSkeptic Scott Edward Anderson challenges conventional assumptions about green tech.
• CleanTech.org says it’s “where entrepreneurs and investors meet to commercialize clean technologies.
• CleanTech is updated by Denis DuBois, an expert on marketing for sustainable energy.
• Marc Alt, a sustainability consultant, also develops environmental conferences.
• Sopogy is among the solar start-ups with a Twitter presence.

• The Greensearch search engine donates part of ad profits to environmental groups.
• The GreenCollarGuy, from Green Collar Media, and GreenJobs specialize in sustainable employment.

Of course, you’ll find some of the same voices on rival services to Twitter, but it happens to be the most popular. Feel free to chime in with more suggestions in the comments.

See also:
The greening of social networking, Wikipedia’s Wales launches Wikia Green,
Growing green friends,
Will social networking stop greenwashers?

A sampling of green-tech news, with a quick commentary:
• Solar-painted steel could electrify buildings - Renewable Energy World
  A Welsh lab is developing photovoltaic coatings for steel, which could lead to buildings with energy-generating walls.
• Compact fluorescent bulbs may pollute more than incandescents - Environmental Science & Technology
  Californians and others in regions where utilities offer a mix of renewable energy might do better by the environment to keep their incandescent lightbulbs rather than switch to mercury-laced CFLs, Yale researchers suggest.

• Tiny sensors tap tree power to prevent fires - MSNBC
  MIT researchers harnessed the electrical currents within trees to power wireless sensors that sniff out forest conditions and warn of potential wildfires. Start-up Voltree aims to outfit forests with wireless mesh networks of humidity and temperature sensors.
• Mature forests absorb more carbon than thought - Environmental Research Web
  Contrary to popular belief, forests older than 200 years trap significant amounts of carbon over the centuries, according to Belgian researchers.
• Solar companies lead record green-tech funding - Greentech Media
  The flow of venture capital to clean tech start-ups more than doubled, to $2.8 billion, in the third quarter from the second quarter of 2008.
• Sharp to dominate thin-film solar market? - Earth2Tech As the electronics giant aims to capture half of the market for thin-film solar, will smaller solar start-ups shrivel in its shadow?
• Wind power doesn’t knock out bird populations - New Scientist
  British researchers found that wind turbines on farmland don’t threaten birds such as crows and skylarks, though pheasants appeared to be harmed. Other studies have found turbines to pose a danger to raptors.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime holds up the new DS-i handheld device. It will not appear in the United States until well into 2009, he said, because the existing DS Lite is still selling very well here. Instead, the DS-i will be available in the short term only in Japan.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Updated at 10:42 a.m. with new information from the rest of the Nintendo press event.

SAN FRANCISCO–Nintendo on Thursday said it expects to ship a much higher number of Wii video game consoles to retailers this holiday season than it did last year.

At its annual fall media event here, the Japanese company’s North American president, Reggie Fils-Aime, told the gathered media that the company intends to try to address the well-documented shortages of the Wii that occurred during the 2007 holiday season.

He didn’t say exactly how many Wiis had been available last year, nor how many more would be making their way into consumers’ hands this time around. And he didn’t even commit to being able to satisfy all demand this year.

“Will there be enough (Wiis) to meet demand?” Fils-Aime said. “Talk to me in January.”

Still, it’s important for the company to at least try to address the shortages that resulted in long lines at retailers that happened to have a few Wiis available.

But Fils-Aime added that the company is in uncharted territory with the Wii, and he suggested that the company doesn’t have the ability to judge exactly how many units would be required to satisfy all consumers this holiday season.

He did say, however, that Nintendo expects to increase production of the Wii by about 50 percent in the fourth quarter of this year.

Asked how much more demand there had been for the Wii during last year’s holiday season than available units, he said there was no way to quantify that.

“All we know,” Fils-Aime told me, “is that as soon as units were available at retailers, they were gone in seconds.”

Fils-Aime opened his remarks by unveiling Nintendo’s new DS-i handheld console. However, because Nintendo also had a media event in Japan last night, that news had already made its way around the world.

A publicity photograph of the new Nintendo DS-i.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

He said the DS-i will not be available in North America until well into 2009 because there is still strong demand here for the existing DS Lite. He explained that the DS Lite is still selling better here than any device ever has and that there is still a large amount of penetration to be had.

In fact, he said that while one in every two Japanese households already has a DS or DS Lite, that number is just one in five in North America. Nintendo said it won’t release the DS-i, which is expected to cost the equivalent of $180 in Japan, in North America until that penetration rate is higher.

Whether there are warehouses full of DS Lites that still need to be sold is not clear, and Nintendo isn’t saying what its specific game plan is regarding the North American transition from DS Lite to DS-i.

It’s pretty likely, however, that there will be substantial demand for the DS-i wherever and whenever it is available, as it features dual cameras, one that faces outward, and another that faces the user. This means that images from the two cameras can be combined. Photos taken with the DS-i can be sent to friends and family via the device’s built-in wireless capability.

The DS-i will also have built-in MP3 playback capabilities, as well as the ability to move music from a computer to the DS-i via SD cards. In an attempt to make the new device a little slimmer than the existing DS Lite, it will lose its Game Boy Advance-compatible slot, though it will still play any existing DS games.

After Fils-Aime finished his remarks, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing took the microphone to introduce a slew of new games for the Wii and DS platforms.

Most notable, perhaps, for the Wii were Punch Out, a return of a classic game that will now take advantage of the motion-sensitive Wii controller. Other titles in the works for Wii include Call of Duty: World at War, Sega’s Mad World, Capcom’s Deadrising: Chop till you Drop, and others.

Among the new games for the Wii is ‘Punch Out,’ a return of a classic game, which will take advantage of the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Most interesting was a new demo for Wii Music, during which the audience was able to see the many ways that players will be able to layer tunes from different instruments over each other in the pursuit of complex, rich music.

Finally, Nintendo Executive Vice President Cammie Dunaway briefly introduced what will be called the Wii Speak Channel, a system that will utilize a Wii microphone to allow up to four players to communicate with each other across wireless networks. That is expected to be available November 16, 2008.

She also said Club Nintendo, a program popular in Japan and Europe that allows players to accumulate points by buying various products and taking Nintendo-related surveys, and then trade points garnered for new gear, will be coming to North America.

But none of the Nintendo executives addressed the rumors that made their way across the Internet yesterday that the company was planning on bringing out a new, HD-capable Wii by 2011.

After fighting off an unsolicited buyout offer and reviewing its options with other potential suitors over the past five months, Take-Two Interactive Software announced Thursday it has decided to pursue a path of remaining an independent company.

Take-Two, publisher of the popular software game Grand Theft Auto and other titles, said it has completed its strategic review and determined it would continue to its company as an independent entity, following a couple of strong quarterly results.

“Take-Two’s recent performance demonstrates our potential to create value for the long term. We have delivered solid financial results and expanded our portfolio of leading titles, which includes the powerful Grand Theft Auto franchise,” Ben Feder, Take-Two chief executive, said in a statement.

He added that Take-Two also has no debt and has yet to draw on a $140 million credit line, giving the company financial flexibility.

Nonetheless, Wall Street has yet to applaud the company, since Electronic Arts withdrew its unsolicited $2 billion buyout offer in mid-September. After that announcement, Take-Two shares plummeted nearly 25 percent to end the day at $16.57 per share. The stock closed Wednesday at $15.93 a share.

“Take-Two’s board of directors and management have a clear mandate from stockholders to maximize value,” Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two chairman, said in a statement.

EA went public with an unsolicited buyout offer for the company in February at $26 a share and then launched into a hostile bid in March. Then in August, EA dropped its hostile tender offer and the companies entered into negotiations up until several weeks ago, when EA stepped away from the deal.

SAN FRANCISCO–The United States government has been unable to fix the country’s energy problems, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said, but the Internet giant on Wednesday proposed its own 22-year solution.

“We have seen a total and complete failure of leadership in the political parties of the United States,” Schmidt said in a speech at the Commonwealth Club here. “We’ve been working on a plan to help solve this problem.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes the company’s energy plan.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Earlier in the day, Google unveiled that plan, which doesn’t lack for chutzpah: Clean Energy 2030 aims to wean the United States from its dependence on fossil fuels within 22 years.

Schmidt said the plan requires $4.5 trillion in spending to pull it off, but it’ll pay for itself with $5.5 trillion in savings. “With this plan, it’s cheaper to fix global warming than it is to ignore it,” Schmidt said.

The general plan consists of various efforts to save energy; a shift to renewable wind, geothermal, and solar energy; and a complete cessation of energy from coal and oil and halving of natural gas. Those changes would cut energy production-related carbon dioxide emissions from about 6 billion metric tons per year today to 4 billion per year in 2030.

Energy efficiency is at the forefront of Google’s thoughts: the company operates hundreds of thousands of servers, and the company has warned that energy costs could outpace server hardware costs. So a decline in energy costs makes practical sense, Schmidt said.

“We save a lot of money when prices go down. It’s good for shareholders, good for earnings,” he said.

However, he made clear in a meeting with reporters later that the effort is also driven by the moral beliefs of Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Also on Wednesday, Google announced the fruits of its effort to increase the energy efficiency of its data centers.

Google’s Clean Energy 2030 plan would completely eliminate coal and oil use for energy production in 22 years.

(Credit: Google)

Economic stimulus
The present financial crisis, with an expected bailout that will cost $700 billion, likely will be followed by further economic stimulus spending that likely will reach $100 million, Schmidt predicted.

“Why not use that money to solve once and for all the things we debate: energy security, rising oil prices, a lack of jobs–especially in rural areas–(and) a lack of technology investment?” Schmidt said. “If you follow my reasoning and take advantage of the technological opportunities–and the apparent willingness of the government to write large checks during a crisis–we can do this.”

He acknowledged that the problem will require sustained attention to solve, but said that’s the job of governments. “The government spends lots of money on many things that are strategic. It seems to me that energy independence, given the history of the last 10 years, should be at the top of the list,” Schmidt said.

Google predicts energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will drop by about a third with its plan.

(Credit: Google)

Energy plan details
How does Google propose to transform the country’s energy usage? Here’s Google’s description:

• Deploying aggressive end-use electrical energy efficiency measures (about 1.4 percent per year savings) to reduce demand 33 percent.

• Replacing all coal and oil electricity generation, and about half of that from natural gas, with renewable electricity: 380 gigawatts (GW) wind: 300 GW onshore + 80 GW offshore; 250 GW solar: 170 GW photovoltaic + 80 GW concentrating solar power; 80 GW geothermal: 15 GW conventional + 65 GW enhanced geothermal systems

• Increasing plug-in vehicles (hybrids & pure electrics) to 90 percent of new car sales in 2030, reaching 42 percent of the total U.S. fleet that year

• Increasing new conventional vehicle fuel efficiency from 31 mpg to 45 mpg in 2030

• Accelerating the turnover of the vehicle fleet from 19 to 13 years (resulting in 25 million new vehicle sales per year in 2030, a 31 percent increase over the baseline)

Advising Obama
Schmidt, who said he’s an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, said he prefers that candidate’s energy plans. “The Obama program is more in line with the one I’m describing,” Schmidt said.

He also dinged Republicans for using the term “clean coal,” which he called an oxymoron not unlike “limited nuclear war,” and said that offshore oil drilling, although a lively topic of debate, will satisfy only a tiny fraction of the nation’s needs and only five years from now at that.

Now is the time to offer the plan, according to author Jeffery Greenblatt, climate and energy technology manager for the company’s philanthropic Google.org arm.

“With a new administration and Congress–and multiple energy-related imperatives–this is an opportune, perhaps unprecedented, moment to move from plan to action,” Greenblatt said.

Video game retail chain GameStop announced Wednesday that it has agreed to purchase France-based Micromania for $700 million in cash from a private equity fund.

The acquisition is part of GameStop’s efforts to expand in Europe, increasing its store count in that region to 1,077, according to a Bloomberg report. Texas-based GameStop currently has no stores located in France, while Micromania has 332 store locations in the country.

Under the deal, the company will purchase Micromania’s outstanding shares from private equity fund L Capital, which gained control of the video game retailer in 2005, according to Bloomberg.

The deal, which will still need approval by the European Commission, is expected to close in November.

Solar thermal equipment maker Ausra raised $60.6 million Wednesday from an international group of investors including KERN Partners of Canada, Starfish Ventures of Australia, and Generation Investment Management of London, whose chairman is Al Gore.

They are joined by the high-profile Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which in August raised $24.5 million for Ausra. The solar start-up secured $30 million in February.

Ausra aims to use the latest funds for research and development, as well as to finish a 5-megawatt solar thermal installation near Bakersfield, Calif.

Ausra’s pilot solar-thermal power plant in Australia.

(Credit: Ausra)

“This round of technology will enable us to accelerate delivery of our technology to our customers,” said Bob Fishman, Ausra CEO and president, in a statement.

Ausra began producing reflectors in June at its new Las Vegas plant.

It’s working with utility Pacific Gas & Electric to build a 177-megawatt solar plant near San Luis Obispo, Calif.

A March report from Ausra predicts that solar thermal technology could provide most of the U.S. grid’s electricity within half a century.

Solar thermal equipment converts heat to energy. In part due to its relatively low cost, the technology is key to the massive solar power farms bound for the deserts of California and Nevada.

Typically more expensive, photovoltaic solar technology used in solar panels converts light to energy.

Executive Vice President John O’Donnell is leaving Ausra to push for renewable energy policies, including those of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, according to the Cleantech Group.

The Palo Alto, Calif., start-up originated in Australia.

A group of the biggest Hollywood studios said Wednesday that they will invest more than $1 billion to upgrade 20,000 North American movie theaters to digital projector systems.

According to Reuters, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Lions Gate Entertainment have reached a pact with investors, including Blackstone Group and JPMorgan Chase. The work would begin in 2009 and could take as much as 3 and 1/2 years to complete.

For some time, the studios have wanted to embark on the upgrade project, Reuters wrote, but have been unable to nail down the financing. But now, with the money in place, work can begin with the goal of making it possible for the studios to send films digitally to theaters–which would be a sea change for studios, allowing them to cut costs immensely on prints and distribution–as well as to more easily present 3D films.

“Our initial goal is to convert existing theaters of our owners, AMC and Cinemark, and Regal, which operate a little over 14,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada,” Travis Reid, CEO of Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, told Reuters, adding that each screen upgrade costs around $70,000.

Already, Hollywood and theaters around North America are in the middle of a major expansion of 3D screens and a major change in the technology being used for 3D films. In the spring of 2007, there were just 720 screens equipped to run 3D films, but that number has now jumped to 1,300, Reuters reported.

For the studios and the theaters alike, adding 3D screens is a boon because of ticket premiums of $3 or more.

And that’s why several studios are planning on rapidly increasing the number of films they release in 3D.

Update at 2:10 p.m.: This story now reflects Nintendo’s response to a request for comment.

If there’s one thing that’s sure to get video gamers talking, it’s a rumor that there could be a new Wii, Xbox, or PlayStation console on the horizon.

Well, the hot topic of discussion du jour is that there could be a new Wii by 2011, according to a post on the blog What They Play.

That site “has heard from multiple sources in the game development and publishing community that Nintendo is currently showing early presentations of its next home console hardware. Apparently set to hit the market ‘by 2011,’ the device is said to be the true ‘next generation’ Nintendo console, and far more than a simple refresh of the current (Wii) hardware.”

The post continued, asserting that this rumored new device could have high-definition capabilities, as well as a “greater emphasis on digitally distributed and backwardly compatible content.”

For its part, Nintendo said it does not comment on rumors.

It could be mere coincidence (because odds are that even if the rumors are true, Nintendo wouldn’t want to confirm them for quite some time), but on Thursday, the company is hosting its annual media day here in San Francisco. And I’d been told that it would “have news” it would be releasing at the event. Until now, I’d assumed the news would be something only minimally consequential, but of course, announcing a new Wii development project would make a few headlines, I would think.

More likely, the news that Nintendo will put out Thursday will be about a new multimedia DS handheld device, such as the one the video game blog Joystiq says could be unveiled at a separate press event in Japan Wednesday night.

Still, if the new Wii rumors are true, it will be a long time before Nintendo would be ready to unveil any details–think maybe the Game Development Conference in March, 2009, or E3 next July. Or possibly not even then.

One big question is why Nintendo would be rushing to put out a new console when the Wii is selling at unbelievable levels, far outselling Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. In August, according to industry analysts The NPD Group, the Wii sold 453,000 units, while the Xbox moved 195,000 and the PS3 just 185,000.

Of course, as has been made abundantly clear over the last year or so, many people don’t consider the Wii to be a direct competitor to the Xbox and the PS3. Rather, some see the Wii as complementary to the other two consoles, despite the fact that before any of them hit the market, all three were touted as “next generation” devices.

But the Xbox and the PS3 are both HD consoles that provide very high-quality graphics capabilities. By contrast, the Wii’s graphics are not nearly as powerful; instead, the console’s success is based mainly on its innovative motion-sensitive controllers.

Some gamers, however, would most likely love to see a console from Nintendo that can offer high-quality graphics and HD capabilities, which is why any new Wii, such as the one talked about in these rumors, centers on that functionality.

It would be fair to ask why a Nintendo console would need HD capabilities, and the answer there could easily be that just because any new device had them doesn’t mean all new games for it would have to take advantage of them. Some could, however, and I’m sure gamers would like the variety of choices that such a development would offer.

Price-wise, however, it’s hard to see how a new Wii device would make sense. One way the Wii has arrived at its dominant position–one few expected before the three consoles hit the market in 2005 and 2006–is by having the lowest price.

Now, however, the lowest-end Xbox costs less than the Wii. Last month, Microsoft said it was lowering the price of the Xbox Arcade to $199, becoming the first next-gen console to break the $200 price barrier that many industry observers feel is the magic price point that opens up a market to mass consumers. The Wii still costs $249.

But in my opinion, that $50 price difference would not be enough to discourage Wii buyers–holiday 2008 sales will tell the story, I suppose–and I expect that in the near term, Nintendo will continue to see its sales be an order of magnitude higher than the Xbox or the PS3.

And over the next couple of years, the Wii’s price could drop further, joining the Xbox below the $200 threshold and ensuring continued strong sales.

So why would Nintendo want to put out a new console that would almost surely cost more?

That’s the question I think is hard to answer. The company would almost certainly have to subsidize the price to keep it low, and as long as there wasn’t yet a new Xbox or PlayStation–some think Microsoft may have a new device in the works, while almost no one foresees a PlayStation 4 any time soon–a new HD Wii would mean that Nintendo would have to lose money in the short term to build market share with a new device, even as the Wii would likely still be selling well.

All in all, it’s hard to know how to take rumors like these. There are certainly some reasons to think Nintendo would want to go this direction, and there are other reasons why it wouldn’t.

Eventually, of course, Nintendo will have to release a new console–and the traditional five-year console cycle would have the company coming out with a new one in 2011. But why mess with the kind of success the Wii is having?

For fans of the Electronic Arts franchise Command and Conquer looking forward to the spinoff game, Tiberium, I’m afraid I have some bad news.

According to a story in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, EA has decided to shutter production of the new first-person shooter, citing quality issues.

Tiberium was “not on track to meet the high quality standards” EA sets for its games, a spokesperson told the Journal. “A lower quality game is not in the best interest of the consumers and would not succeed in this market.”

The Journal article calls the move a setback for EA, saying the company “has been working to turn itself around under (CEO) John Riccitiello (who) has made moves to help boost the game publisher’s growth and lower development costs that have contributed to six straight quarters of loss.”

But to me, I think it’s a good move by EA to yank the cord on games it sees as sub-standard. To be sure, it would have been better for the company to have Tiberium be a big commercial hit; short of that, however, it shows a bit of maturity on the part of management to make the decision to cut short development of sub-standard games that would, in the end, water down its brand.

And that’s because one of the reasons the company has seen quarterly losses piling up is a sense in the marketplace that its games have stagnated a bit. Of course, it has its regular stable of big hits like Madden football and FIFA soccer, and new games like Spore. But one big criticism of the company over the last few years is that it has relied too much on low-quality franchise games that have ceased to get the faithful worked up.

In a recent interview, EA Games label president Frank Gibeau told me that, “We (had) lost faith with our customers because we were churning out games that might have made sense from a financial standpoint, but frankly we had walked away from the art of making games and offering breakthrough creative experiences. There weren’t as many games in our lineup that I wanted to play anymore.”

Tiberium was a new game, but it was a spinoff of the Command and Conquer series, and so I suspect that the quality bar for it was very high. So I think it’s good to see EA realize that it’s better to lose a year’s worth of development time than to keep throwing good money after bad, especially on a game that was not an entirely new experience.

Hopefully, the design team behind the game can now put their energies and efforts to work on something new that will excite them, the company as a whole, and the market down the line.