The Seattle Times picked up on a story about Pottermore’s server platform, Windows Azure, and how it has helped it succeed in launching. However, its coverage of it was much more interesting in that it included some revealing comments from the CTO of Pottermore, Julian Thomas.
There was one particularly eye-catching comment: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets will be released this summer.
Still, “we found when we opened up to the world that the architecture wasn’t enough to accommodate the massive demand,” said Julian Thomas, Pottermore’s chief technical officer.
When the beta version launched, and hundreds of thousands of people wanted in — especially at peak times such as when new content was added — some of the rich features had to be turned off in order to keep the website working, Thomas said.
Thomas anticipates more such peaks occurring when new content is added: Such as when content for the second book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” launches. Thomas did not give a specific date for that but said it would be sometime this summer.
Pottermore.com will also be translated into more languages, including “some Far Eastern languages that will be announced shortly,” he said, and Pottermore will also appear on more mobile devices in all sorts of forms. One example: The just-announced “Book of Spells,” a partnership between Rowling and Sony in which users can learn about spells in the Harry Potter books via Sony’s PlayStation 3 Move.
Although this story reveals a lot, it still keeps some questions unanswered. For instance, which “rich features” were turned off in order to keep the site running? Are they features that we have already seen?
This is the first time that we have gotten a specific timeframe for the Chamber of Secrets release since the launch of Pottermore. Originally book two was supposed to be released in early 2012, about four months after the initial launch of Pottermore in October 2011. Beta was then pushed back and obviously then was Chamber of Secrets, too. If they still plan to release it four months after the official launch, the book could be available in August.
For its part, Pottermore’s official blog has recently provided small progress updates about the second book.
At least now we have a tentative release for Chamber of Secrets: summer 2012.
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