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The blue gravel was Goldfish. MA was part of the last two Microsoft Plus packs (though I only agreed to the first one). It was a limited 3-fish demo which was supposed to bring customers to our site to buy the full version. MS did some market studies and found that people would buy the Plus Pack just for the Aquarium, and would pay a lot more than they had planned on charging. At the last minute, they doubled the price to $40. We got customers all right - a lynch mob. People were understandably angry to find that they just spent $40 to get a limited version, and would still have to pay the full $19.95 for the full version. MS asked me to reduce the price for customers who came through the Plus Pack, but never offered a dime of those millions of dollars they made from it. I refused. I had also been promised help from the DirectX team. Never happened. Also, testing by MS on a variety of machines and operating systems. Never happened. Also, a link to SereneScreen on the MSN site. Never happened.
We had some talks with Apple a few years ago about making the Aquarium the default screensaver in OS X, but they didn't want to pay anything. Been there.
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