I have received an unconfirmed report that the following is happening :
- Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world
- Most of Lab’s development resources are already working on it.
- Smaller dev team headed by Oz Linden remains working on SL.
- The new worlds will be closed sourced, and not backward compatible with content from SL.
This information is allegedly from Ebbe Altberg who apparently dropped by the third party developers meeting to share the news.
Latif Khalifa of Radegast shared the news on SLUniverse, where Catznip developer Trinity Devaju also hints that this was said, although they are being a bit coy right now.
Latif also shared the news on Twitter :
Most of #LindenLab development resources are already dedicated to their next gen #VirtualWord with a small remaining team on #SecondLife
— Latif Khalifa (@lkalif) June 20, 2014
Without official news, comments and information it’s difficult for me to say much, so we’ll all just have to watch the Linden Lab spaces to see what transpires.
With every bug that they fix in SL, they break something else. There is still so many problems in SL, so maybe SL can’t be fixed and it makes sense to build a new and modern platform. Though it would be stupid to not somehow build in a gateway to SL, because that still is where the people are and the content is. Then I wonder, why would they invest in High Fidelity and at the same time build a new world themself?
Inara Pey will post soon but this seems to have its roots back in October 2012 when Rod Humble talked of other worlds by LL, I think we had all forgotten about that.
However you really hit an important point when you say : “Though it would be stupid to not somehow build in a gateway to SL, because that still is where the people are and the content is. ”
I’ve said many times that Second Life’s big advantage is that in virtual world terms it’s where it’s at in terms of people being there, a new world will not have that advantage.
You see? All that courting of Facebook with that competition had a purpose after all.
I’m excited over this news. Linden Lab has the power and the influence to control this market. And I’m all about the devil you know over the devil you don’t.