Oh here’s a big shock — Dataplay is on the verge of a major business failure.
For the last four years, were frequent stories in the computer press about Dataplay’s small 500 megabye optical disc format that was going to revolutionize data storage, MP3 players, etc. What Dataplay never came up with, until recently were actual shipping products.
And then when they did they completely screwed themselves by putting the interests of big corporations above users. The few Dataplay devices that are out there are hip deep in DRM schemes that render them pointless. As ZDNet’s Patric Houston noted in August 2001, “The antipiracy aspects subverted the fact that the sheer capacity and flexibility of the DataPlay rewritable disc could make way for a whole slew of ways to provide consumers with more content, not less. ”
Plus Dataplay was overtaken by CD-R and the continuing falling price of the various flash memory products (who would pay $10-$20 for a 500 mb optical disk today?).
Source:
DataPlay employees put on leave as company struggles to stay afloat. Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News, September 27, 2002.