If you were hoping that Blue Mars was going to rise to directly challenge Second Life's virtual world dominance, you may be in for disappointment today. In a letter to Avatar Reality's fans, CEO Jim Sink announced that the company is restructuring and dropping Blue Mars' PC development to focus solely on Apple's iOS. As a result, Blue Mars is now Blue Mars Mobile.
"With over 50 million new tablet devices projected to reach consumers this year along with tens of millions of iPhones and iPod Touch devices, the market for Blue Mars Mobile is a massive opportunity for our company and our customers. We already have a functioning alpha in house and we aim to release the first builds of Blue Mars on iOS next month," Sink said. Sink also announced that a number of Avatar Reality employees, including himself, have been let go from the company.
Unfortunately for PC users, Avatar Reality is limiting development to mere bug fixes for the forseeable future. While the company will not charge users of the PC client, there will also be no technical support for the user client.
Reader Comments (10)
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 10:49AM bobfish said
TL:DR
"Thank you for all your money to date, but we no longer care about any of you PC users as this isn't making us enough money. In addition to this, myself and everyone else who thinks that making Blue Mars solely for iPad / iPhone is a stupid idea have been fired."
"Thank you for all your money to date, but we no longer care about any of you PC users as this isn't making us enough money. In addition to this, myself and everyone else who thinks that making Blue Mars solely for iPad / iPhone is a stupid idea have been fired."
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 10:49AM Unverfied B said
That's a great way to ensure failure of your product considering it already was in a half-dead market niche to begin with.
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 11:28AM Sonoran said
This may answer the question: "Is there life on Mars?" once and for all.
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 11:34AM Unverfied B said
@Sonoran
But the more important question - "Is there INTELLIGENT life on Mars?" remains as ambiguous as ever :)
Reply
But the more important question - "Is there INTELLIGENT life on Mars?" remains as ambiguous as ever :)
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 1:24PM Daedalus1969 said
Hurray! An MMO for Apple Fanbois and vacuous mall brats to play on their iThingys. Once more its demonstrated that you don't have to have a brain on your head to sell something to the sycophantic public.
Posted: Jan 17th 2011 6:55PM fagdroidlol said
@Daedalus1969
Thanks, I suppose. While I own an iPhone 4, I greatly dislike anything else Apple makes. And I don't go to the mall unless absolutely necessary, and it's filled with skanky teenaged girls looking for a boyfriend and creepy gothic kids. I'm also 24, almost 25, if that helps.
Anyway, I'm going to go enjoy my phone and it's nice platform filled with excellent applications and games, now. Oh, and if I wanted an online game on my phone, I'd fire up Pocket Legends, although the beta of Blue Mars I partook in a while back was interesting to say the least.
Reply
Thanks, I suppose. While I own an iPhone 4, I greatly dislike anything else Apple makes. And I don't go to the mall unless absolutely necessary, and it's filled with skanky teenaged girls looking for a boyfriend and creepy gothic kids. I'm also 24, almost 25, if that helps.
Anyway, I'm going to go enjoy my phone and it's nice platform filled with excellent applications and games, now. Oh, and if I wanted an online game on my phone, I'd fire up Pocket Legends, although the beta of Blue Mars I partook in a while back was interesting to say the least.
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 2:08PM The Million Dollar Prons said
I won't miss it. I've seen Blue Mars during several stages of its development and it just had nothing to offer. It was just a prettier, featureless, Second Life.
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 3:59PM EvaliaMagic said
Blue Mars has never been good enough to compete even with the dreadfully out of date and ugly Second Life.
Posted: Jan 16th 2011 5:32PM (Unverified) said
rejoice applites! now not only can you sit at the coffee shop pretending to write your latest script, you can play this trash also.
I hope the pc market can recover from this blow.
I hope the pc market can recover from this blow.
Posted: Jan 17th 2011 6:54AM Joystiq Login Bugs SUCK said
After trying BlueMars a few months ago and being creeped out y the animations of my avatar... No thanks, I will stick with a certain opensim grid that is actually booming.









