haha..nice work, Ive actually been dealing with the front office of the New Orleans Saints after designing an NFL theme for them for quite some time now.

Good to see commercial theming is taking an upward turn! Great news!

and claims some of the world best skinners among its team of artists

I checked my email TWICE and haven't been contacted. Stardock, please check your email system.

I don't think the community has lost anything. We are gaining visability.

Good luck team!

While I admire Brad's entrepreneurial spirit. After checking the site, my stomach became a bit queezy. Initially it appeared you are/were targeting the commercial market but, it seems you are also targeting the consumer market as well?

Could this be why some of the questions haven't been answered regarding desktopgadgets.com? I've been working on a Slot Machine gadget for sometime and have been considering desktopgadgets as the potential marketing avenue; so, when I saw the Texas Hold Em Suite for $8.95 you could imagine my concern.

Obviously, who's going to pay $5 or $6 bucks for a gadget when they can get an entire suite for practically the same price? Also, after the significant wait for placement is an updated suite or new suite going to appear containing similar gadgets to those developed by independent developers? Is the inside team going to get newer development versions ahead of the market? Just a lot of questions, concerns, and worries.

The reason I bought DesktopX Developer Edition was for the eventual creation of gadgets that could earn me a little cash.

Is the inside team going to get newer development versions ahead of the market?

No. The most that the team would recieve would be the beta versions that are available to anyone with an Object Desktop subscription.

I think this is a good thing for the community overall. It gives more exposure to WindowBlinds, gadgets and skinning in general and it gives more credibility, in the eyes of some people, by making it more "official", i.e. taking it from the realm of a niche product used by few hardcore fans to a commercial product with, what will hopefully become, wider distribution and consequently wider exposure and adoption by the general public. Well that was droll... Stardock rules! WindowBlinds FTW!... that's better

Kind of sad, IMHO, as I'm sure more and more creators will be lured to the profit side with less and less quality material available for free. So we buy a subscription in order to buy skins. What a deal.

Stardock Design is not WinCustomize.  There will always be free content on here.  If anything, the ability to make money off from the work now and then *keeps* people in the community.  They make their own skins for fun (and learning) and then are able to get paid for commissioned work.

it just doesn't seem to make much sense for a Texas Hold'em suite (poker theme) to have a BLACKJACK gadget.

Well...I poker gadget would be too hard.  So, we stuck to a simply card game. 

Obviously, who's going to pay $5 or $6 bucks for a gadget when they can get an entire suite for practically the same price?

 

Stardock Design is primarily Corporate work.  However, we also handle the consumer themes that you have seen come out lately (Logika 2007 on).  DesktopGadgets.com isn't going anywhere, and WC is going to have a premium section for Masters and above to sell work through.  If a gadget fits a premium theme or corporate use, Stardock Design may approach the owners and commission a custom version (such as Fortune ball).  I see it as a success for all involved.

 

In the end, artists need to make money just like anyone else.  If they can turn their hobby into a business, what is the harm?  We still get free skins from the people involved (just look at GUI Champs).  If anything, I think that the quality of the free skins has increased since the premium skins started picking up momentum.  Seems like a win-win situation.

 

Alright lots of new suite coming, but is there any way that you could bring back X-men or Spiderman deskstop suite? Even i pay double for it!

While I admire Brad's entrepreneurial spirit. After checking the site, my stomach became a bit queezy. Initially it appeared you are/were targeting the commercial market but, it seems you are also targeting the consumer market as well? Could this be why some of the questions haven't been answered regarding desktopgadgets.com? I've been working on a Slot Machine gadget for sometime and have been considering desktopgadgets as the potential marketing avenue; so, when I saw the Texas Hold Em Suite for $8.95 you could imagine my concern. Obviously, who's going to pay $5 or $6 bucks for a gadget when they can get an entire suite for practically the same price? Also, after the significant wait for placement is an updated suite or new suite going to appear containing similar gadgets to those developed by independent developers? Is the inside team going to get newer development versions ahead of the market? Just a lot of questions, concerns, and worries. The reason I bought DesktopX Developer Edition was for the eventual creation of gadgets that could earn me a little cash.

The primary purpose of Stardock Design is to create content for corporate customers not consumers. It does create content for Stardock to sell to consumers (like premium suites) but 95% of its efforts are on corporate work.  The FSU suite is the first of many many such examples of companies, universities, sports teams, OEMs etc. that want to provide a custom-branded experience to their users.

Stardock Design is totally unrelated from WinCustomize.com. It's like Pixtudio or Skinplant and such but taken to the next level (in fact, Stardock Design involves the skinners from both).  As it grows, we'll tap more and more people from the community (RomanDA comes to mind on gadgets). 

WOW

I say about time this happened. This is what I hoped would happend a couple of years ago. I guess there is a time for everything. I hope it works out for the best. I think it will.

the future is looking brighter...nice move Stardock

Contrary to popular belief, Stardock is not an unlimited fountain of resources and people. They are a small company, and as a result, must direct resources to what they feel is most important. As stated on several occasions, the current focus is the re-vamp of WinCustomize for the coming year. I would suggest emailing support@stardock.com again with your question about SoundPackager, making an attempt to use proper grammar and punctuation. There is much less chance of getting filtered out as spam that way.

(By the way... the developer of SoundPackager is also the dev for SkinStudio, and I suspect he's pretty busy with the ongoing development of WindowBlinds Vista... patience! )

its a good good news that commercial skinning is gaining grounds...good luck to Stardock design!