Second Life Bright Canopy Update

Inara has a good summary of what has happened and what is going on with Bright Canopy, the SL Go replacement. The TL:DR is simple. User behavior was not what the Bright Canopy peeps expected. The change from expected behavior drove up backend costs of the service. They were losing money and things had to change. Thus the service shut down.

See: Bright Canopy update

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Basically, no one other than Amazon is making money from this project. If they cannot figure out how to turn that around, expect the doors to close.

There is a future in being able to stream high end games. With VR coming there will likely be more demand for the service. The challenges and/or symbiosis come from Intel, who is working to add more graphics power to their CPU, Apple and others wanting to challenge the NetFlix style streaming services and add gaming, those battling to take over cable and satellite delivery services, and others that want to add gaming as a facet of their entertainment services.

My point is there is industry interest in what Bright Canopy is doing. There may eventually be some way to deliver a SL/Sansar experience to lesser powered hardware.  But, as fast as hardware is developing/advancing the need deceases each year. That makes it hard to predict whether Bright Canopy will find an economic model that fits enough people’s needs for their service to remain viable. It is life and death for them, so the motivation is there. At some point the hardware and tech they need will be cheap enough, it is just a matter of timing.

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