Train tracks shrouded in fog. Photo courtesy of vsz.

According to Wikipedia, vaporware is "a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product." Every year, the tech industry gets us journalists all wound up about its new products, so we in turn wind you up, but a lot of them don't make it to market; hence the term vaporware. Wired has been handing out its Vaporware Awards for eleven years; you can see its 2008 list here.

My thoughts? While the recently released Home virtual chat room for Playstation 3 is certainly deserving of criticism, its inclusion on the list violates the spirit of the Vaporware Awards. After all, if a released product's beta status were enough to make it eligible, shouldn't Gmail (yup, still officially in beta) get a Lifetime Achievement Award? Other entries, like the Zap-X all-electric SUV (#7), GPS-maker Garmin's Nuvifone mobile phone (#5) and Blizzard's real-time strategy game StarCraft II (#4) are all worthy of the honor. As for the #1 choice--the twelve-years-in-development videogame Duke Nukem Forever (most games are completed in 12-36 months)--all I can say is, hail to the king.

An image from Atari's original patent application for its "video game control unit"

The folks over at Technologizer have put together a gallery of images taken from patent applications for electronic gaming systems ranging from the original Television Gaming Apparatus in 1969 to the Nintendo Game Boy in 1989. The text of the applications is rather geeky, but the images therein make for memory-prompting journey through our not-too-long-ago interactive past. Enjoy.

 Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games

Yesterday, the stock price of Take-Two Interactive fell after the company announced a fourth quarter loss of $15 million (up from a loss off $7.1 million a year ago) even though its revenue of $323 million (up from $293 million a year earlier) was greater than expected. What's interesting is that in early November, according to Bloomberg, Zelnick all but declared Take-Two recession-proof, stating "With entertainment products, if there’s something you must have, typically consumers are going to buy it....So far, we’re not seeing any negative influence of the overall economy on sales of our titles.” Yesterday, however, Zelnick was siging a different tune. "We too are influenced by a very difficult set of economic conditions and the world looks a lot worse than it did just a couple of months ago," he admitted.

The news wasn't all bad, however. For the entire fiscal year, Take-Two is projecting a profit. And the best news of all was that the core staff of the studio that's primarily responsible for those profits--Rockstar Games' Dan Houser, Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and unnamed others--has signed new contracts with Take-Two through the year 2012. More interesting, however, than the fact that the new deal would be "primarily based on a profit sharing agreement," was the following paragraph:

In addition, Take-Two has agreed to fund the future development of certain new intellectual property to be owned by a newly formed company controlled by key Rockstar Games team members and published exclusively by Take-Two.

In other words, the Housers and their inner circle retain creative control of the franchises they've created, including Grand Theft Auto. They received a rich new deal. And they will also be able to create brand-new franchises for a separate company that they control--note that the release doesn't specify who owns the company, so Take-Two could have a stake in it--with those new games being funded and distributed by Take-Two. We were impressed when Bungie got to keep its name upon departing from Microsoft during the Flight of the Killer B's, but this strikes us as a far better and shrewder deal, with the Housers and company having the best of both worlds: they get to strike out on their own without ceding control of the house that they built.

For further analysis, we turned to Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter. Here's what he had to say: