I disagree with this. A well looked after MMORPG can be a very entertaining thing, the problem is that market segment only has a limited number of people, with limited amounts of cash and naturally limited amounts of time... so someone might only subscribe to one (possibly two) at any time.  Hence a load of them just went to the wall, partly because they couldn't woo customers from others and erm... well by all accounts they were actually a bit naff to begin with.

Of course the first person to figure out how to shoe horn a MMORPG like WoW on to say... XBox is going to make more money than god if it takes off.

However, I think the very linear first person shooter games we're seeing as AAA titles DO loose their fun factor very quickly, sometimes even before the first play through has been finished, if the game is annoying or has a poorly thought out story.  I've completed BioShock, as a randomly selected linear FPS, I've had whichever of the two endings I got and probably seen the other on YouTube (if I was that bothered by it), what exactly is there to replay?  It'll be the same maps, same enemies spawned, same story, same route through the maps with the exact same scripted events happening to the exact same character.  In fact you could substitute Bioshock for Doom 3, Quake 4, Dead Space or a multitude more and it wouldn't make a jot of difference.   These titles seem to hang around for two - three months and vanish from shelves.

Fallout 3 is the red headed step child of the above, you complete the main campaign and the game tells you that you're done playing it.  Which is odd, but means I've zero interest in any of the expansions for the game.   Weird little title.

Starcraft: Battle Chest was ranked 17 in sales last year. Won't be dying anytime soon

Wow, I just downloaded x-com again, but couldn't get a grip on dosbox. Try Jagged Alliance 2 if you haven't.

Also, consider trying the open source alternative to X-Com: UFO Alien Invasion. It is based upon X-Com with upated graphics and is available for free at http://www.http://ufoai.sourceforge.net. Pretty cool.

I still play Doom1, released 16 years ago The sourceports like ZDoom make it work perfectly wiht modern OS's, and JDoom (a.k.a. Doomsday engine) allows 3d models and (nearly) photorealistic textures, so games lifetime is really limited only by the devotion of the fanbase.

I downloaded DOSbox a few days back too. If you open it and type "intro" you will get a lot of help texts and see some useful commands that can be run manually. But you can also edit the 'DOSbox.conf' file (in notepad or similar) and at the very bottom under [autoexec] you can type in what commands it should run on startup. I only use DOSbox for MoM at the moment so these are the commands I added:

[autoexec]
keyb sv
mount m c:\games\master~1
m:
@echo Run 'magic' for Master of Magic

(keyb sv - gives me swedish keyboard layout instead of the default US one, because our fingers up here are all bent and knobbly from fighting with the polarbears, so we need this...)

(mount m c:\games\master~1 - makes it possible for DOSbox to find the folder where the game is at, without this it just don't have access to anything on your computer at all. I picked m only because MoM starts with an m, z is already used by DOSbox but all other letters are available (it is an emulated environment, no conflicts will occur from using driver letters like c or d if you choose to), c:\games\master~1 is the name of the folder, in XP it looks like 'c:\games\master of magic' but DOS only handles 8 characters so the fancy long folder names can't be used)

(m: - the game folder is now accessible, this command moves me there)

(@echo is just to show a message on screen, in case I feel lost or drunk. I could have written 'magic' instead and have DOSbox start the game automatically, but prefer this way)

Also, in order to get MoM to run a bit smoother on my machine I changed the emulated cpu speed under [cpu] by changing:

cycles=auto

to

cycles=11500

I should really increase this number though, it makes the game a bit slow. The cycle speed can be increased inside the game by pressing 'ctrl-F12'. each time will add another 500 cycles. Different games might prefer different cycle values for best performance.

Hope this helps, good luck

(edit: small cleanup)

I downloaded DOSbox a few days back too. If you open it and type "intro" you will get a lot of help texts. You can also edit the DOSbox.conf file (in notepad or similar) and at the very bottom under [autoexec] you can type in what commands it should run on startup. I only use it for MoM at the moment and these are the commands I run with it:

[autoexec]
keyb sv
mount m c:\games\master~1
m:
@echo Run 'magic' for Master of Magic

(keyb sv - gives me swedish keyboard setup instead of the default US one)

(mount m - makes it possible for DOSbox to find the place where the game is at, without this it just don't have access to anything on your computer. I picked m only because MoM starts with an m, feel free to use any letter you like)

(c:\games\master~1 is the name of the folder, in XP it looks like 'c:\games\master of magic' but DOS only handles 8 characters so the fancy long folder names can't be used)

(@echo is just to show a message on screen, in case I feel lost or drunk)

Also, in order to get MoM to run more smoothly on my machine I changed the emulated cpu speed under [cpu] by changing:

cycles=auto

to

cycles=11500

This number works okay for me, a tad slow perhaps. The cycle speed can be increased by pressing 'ctrl-F12'. each time will add another 500 cycles (ctrl-F12 and 500 are default, can be changed). Different games might prefer different cycle values for best performance.

Hope this helps, good luck

Just thought I'd doo sailorjoe a favor and post what he said in white and bigger

Fujuki

It looked okay on my screen  But thanks.

Also made a small edit, same content, just a little easier to read I hope.

Anyway, I am back to play MoM again so I don't have time to post my thoughts on the life time of old games.

I dusted off 'Warzone 2100' a while back. It's an old games (Win 98), but still enjoyable many years later. The graphics are a bit dated, but gameplay - the important thing - is still absorbing & challenging

That's another game that has gone into open source, with updated graphics that look much better than the original. Available: http://wz2100.net/

Heft, I bought that UFO Alien Invasion when it first released. I was expecting a clone to Xcom, and was disappointed when it turned out to be 'just' the tactical combat. Then was even more disappointed when the tactical combat turned out to be weak as water. I played maybe 10 hours before I tossed it.  Has it improved greatly since release?

I didn't know you could buy it. It's free. And I think it's more than tactical combat (though it does have that). You choose and outfit your team, design your base, and earn more to updgrade, etc.

I think you're confusing UFO: Extraterrestrials with UFO: Alien Invasion, which is an open-source project.

http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/