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22 May, 2002

TransGaming is at it again. Stuff like this illustrates my main dislike of
said company. TransGaming has a tendency to use blatantly false information to
promote their company and it offends me. Here is their press release, with
my corrections appended.


TransGaming and Transitive Anounce [sic] Breakthrough in Cross-Platform Game Delivery

Issued on Wednesday May 22, 2002

Los Angeles, Ca. TransGaming Technologies, in partnership with
Transitive Technologies, unveil their game-porting technology that can allow
Windows-based x86 games to be simultaneously released onto multiple platforms.
These include the Sony PlayStation 2, Apple Mac OS, set-top boxes, PDAs and
wireless devices.


No it can't. It just can't. Now WineX can run on other processors, sure, but
I can almost guarantee that Transitive's (admittedly impressive) technology
doesn't translate WineX's X11 API calls into PS2-specific hardware interfacing.
It doesn't shrink a game's graphics to 240x320 for use on a PDA, or chop 64MB
off the memory requirements for a game so it can run on a settop box. What
TransGaming says is now possible isn't possible without a "time-consuming
overhaul of the source code." It's just not.

Vikas Gupta, President and COO of TransGaming stated, "Our portability
technology allows applications originally designed for PCs to run seamlessly
and transparently on alternate platforms without the need for an expensive and
time-consuming overhaul of the source code. What other companies can accomplish
in two years of re-engineering, our technology can accomplish within two
months." Gupta made this announcement to game developers and publishers at the
2002 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), here. E3 is the interactive
entertainment event that annually attracts major interactive entertainment
companies from around the world.


Vikas is talking about Loki, Hyperion, and Tribsoft when he refers to "other
companies." In a sense, these now-defunct companies were TransGaming's only
corporate competition, and Vikas loves to claim the inferiority of their
approach whenever he can. In reality, no Loki game took 2 years to "overhaul."
This figure does not even closely represent reality. In fact, the "overhaul"
of at least three of Loki's products took less than a week and a half.
TransGaming has one product. They can't even begin to make a rational
judgment on what a typical timeframe for finishing a game is using their
process.

People were waiting a long time for a few Loki products. These delays were
almost without exception due to problems added by packaging games and
interaction with other companies, not due to an inferior process.

"We are delighted to collaborate with TransGaming to expand their product
market," says John Graham, Transitive's President and CEO. "It is a clear
example of how Transitive's translation and optimization product, Dynamite,
allows developers to migrate content to other platforms, reducing their costs
and giving consumers wider choice and access to content."


TransGaming and Transitive have developed a technology that allows
portability faster, cheaper, and better than anyone else. "Imagine being able
to release an award-winning game on the PC, Mac, and PlayStation 2
simultaneously." Mr. Gupta remarked. "The solution leverages the large
investment made in product development, marketing and content, while realizing
deep market penetration for a fraction of the cost of developing for each
platform independently. Now imagine taking games to set-top boxes, wireless
and PDA devices."


This is just more false propaganda. TransGaming's process is no cheaper and no
faster than Loki's process, and Loki's end-products are vastly superior than
TransGaming's, based on the general consensus of Linux gamers. Again, even
with Transitive's help, WineX still won't run a PS2, a PDA, or a settop box
without some serious code reworking.

The press release goes on, but I don't have the stomach to point out any more
logical or factual flaws. For the record, I use and am impressed with Wine.
TransGaming has made unquestionably significant improvements to Wine, but I
have chosen not to use WineX due to the empty propaganda spewn forth in every
press release from TransGaming. I've spent the majority of my time as a Linux
user dabbling with games, specifically native ports. I would like nothing
more than to see a company succeed in putting out native games for Linux, but
TransGaming's relentless attack of the native porting process and their false
claims of superiority are not helping.

You may not agree with my ideology, and that is fine. However, I strongly
recommend that people not support TransGaming in their quest to destroy native
Linux gaming.

When this .plan was written: 2002-05-22 14:52:12
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