Stardock's success in the Windows game market has been mixed. In 2003, Stardock became a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with their "Designed for Windows" certification of WindowBlinds. DesktopX competes with Konfabulator and Kapsules in the widget arena. This has not had such a wide uptake as other products some believe this is because it is harder to use and to create for, others because users do not understand the functionality that it offers. In 2001, they added a widget creation and desktop modification tool, DesktopX, based on Alberto Riccio's VDE. The release of Windows XP stimulated sales in Stardock products, and despite growing competition proportional to the market the company remains in a strong position. There turned out to be a large market for skinnable products, and Stardock prospered, growing significantly in the following five years.
Stardock's first major Windows success was with WindowBlinds, an application originated by a partnership with developer Neil Banfield. Having put together a basic package (including some old favorites from the OS/2 era) Stardock began to bring in external developers to create original products. The newer, smaller Stardock was heavily reliant on the goodwill of its previous customers, who essentially purchased Windows subscriptions for Object Desktop in anticipation of the products it would consist of.
Brad Wardell estimates that the death of OS/2 set the company back by about three years. A key revealing point was the failure of its game Trials of Battle, a 3D hovercraft fighting game, which Stardock expected to sell a million copies and instead sold in the hundreds. With the advent of Windows NT 4, Stardock found that their core user base was slipping away, and was forced to reinvent itself as a Windows developer, but not before it lost most of its money and staff. However, they did not make this decision public, and Stardock continued to develop applications software and games for the platform, including Avarice and Entrepreneur. Stardock went on to create OS/2 Essentials, and its successor, Object Desktop, which provided the company with a large base of users.Īt about this time, IBM decided to abandon OS/2. Stardock did not receive the majority of royalties from the initial sales of Galactic Civilizations due to publisher bankruptcy in addition to taking on many of the publisher's responsibilities, but the market had been created for subsequent addon packs including the Shipyards expansion, and Stardock later sold a significant number of licenses to IBM for part of its Family FunPak (under the name Star Emperor). Stardock's initial product was a computer game for OS/2 called Galactic Civilizations. Stardock began as a custom PC maker and expanded into making software. Stardock was founded by college student Brad Wardell and named after Raymond E.
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