Well crap.

For the past week, I've been refreshing iTunes to get the next 1upShow podcast. Today I finally pointed my browser to the google and found out why.

The website (and thus podcast) had been bought and half the staff fired. Now what am I going to listen to? Listening to TWIT mangle the truth is no substitute.

2009 is going to a tough year.

For the past 3 years, I have listened to two gaming podcasts every week. I loved them.

There was the Computer Gaming World podcast and the 1UpShow. They were the yin and yang of gaming podcasts.

About a year ago, CGW morphed into Game for Windows Magazine but the staff and the podcast endured. This past summer Ziff Davis went bankrupt. A few months ago, GFW disappeared. They pulled the plug on the Magazine and went 100% web. A few months later, the staff went too. (So much for Microsoft's Game for Windows initiative.)

With the new year, the same thing happened again. Ziff Davis sold the 1Up website. The staff got axed. The podcast halted.

In the big picture this was a minor thing but that silly podcast really was the highlight of my week and now its gone. And this is the first week of the year.

I fully expect continuous damage throughout the year as companies try to adjust to a new economic order.

One of the big threats I see lurking out there is free. In the software world, we get more and more for less and less. Consumers expect almost everything on the Internet to be free.

Businesses in software and media are struggling to make a profit and stay in business. We still want their product but their business models dont support it anymore. Although the cost of production is being lowered, the big companies are dying and the overall result is cheaper products that are more cheaply made by smaller and smaller companies.

I expect this trend to continue too and Im not sure the outlook is all that positive. Innovation is great but sometimes quality really does cost money.