Today I see the new SL Community Site is up. Not working, but there is a new landing page.
No posts are showing. I can’t post anything. But, there is progress… I think…
Changes
Gaming in 2016 – Predicting 2017?
According to SuperData Research people spent US$91,000,000,000 on games. Billion… This is an all-time record. But, they are hyping things a bit. In 2015 Statistica shows $91.5 billion spent and $99.6 billion in 2016. I suppose it depends on where one gets their numbers and categorizes them. Game revenue is notoriously flaky as companies like to hype their increasing sales and keep decreases secret.
Still that is about a 10% increase year-to-year. Eight billion isn’t chump change, unless your spending $10 trillion on credit, like some governments…
They break the revenue down into subcategories. Handheld games are dying. Smartphone games are the hot item. They show the largest growth from 2015 to 2016 and that is expected to continue, which seems reasonable as smartphones are selling well.
In 2005 smartphones sales were just $3.8 billion. Eleven years later in 2016 sales of smart phones was $55 billion, a 1,447% increase. So, as more people get smartphones there are more possible users of smartphone games. According to Statistica a little less than half of the 2016 game revenue was from smartphone gaming.
Second Life: The Linden Review
I used to do a review of the past year. See my Annual Review tag. But, that is a lot of work and time. So, not this year.
This year the Lindens have done a year in review piece. See: Putting a Big Ol’ Bow on 2016 in Second Life! It is a good quick review of what has changed in 2016.
Second Life: Buy More Prims – Private Regions
Recently the Lab gave land owners more prims, well changed the prim limits on land. Today about 10 AM (12/7 – Pearl Harbor Day) the Lab announced Land owners can buy even more prims, push the limit from 20,000 to 30,000 prims… or more accurately change their Land Impact limit for some money.
See: Upgrade Your Full Private Region to 30,000 Land Impact Today!
For a one time US$30 fee private region owners can upgrade from 20k prims to 30k prims. This also adds a monthly cost of $30 USD per region. See the Knowledge Base, Managing Private Regions – Section 5.
You request the upgrade by submitting a Help Case.
Second Life News 2016 w/49
Servers
The main channel got the RC package Tuesday. This is another of those packages with “minor internal” changes.
The RC channels got a new package too. The release notes tell us:
- Adds Feature: BUG-6377 llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE])
- Adds Feature: BUG-40871 Add new llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus”
- Internal Changes
These features haven’t made it to the wiki yet. They are at this point beta versions of the functions. The SLOTS_AVAILABLE item is for those working with Experiences. It is handy to know if an avatar has used up all the attachment slots before trying to attach something else to the avatar.
Second Life News 2016 w/48#2
In the Server-Scripting meeting Simon Linden told us the regions were being restarted to enable the increased prim limits. So, as of today, all the regions in all the channels should have the new prim limits in place.
Jo Yadley, Inara, Linden Blog, and I have all covered the change in prim limits. Designing Worlds had an interview with Patch Linden talking about the change. The video of the meeting will be out in early December.