CompuServe Messages

I talked today with CBM's John Campbell, to ask why the CDTV per-disc royalty rose from 25 cents to $3. His reasons: 1) Because everyone else (that is: Sega, 3DO, CD-I, but except MPC) is doing it. 2) Because 25 cent royalties didn't make it worthwhile to sue the companies who didn't pay the royalty in the past. 3) Because $3 a disc would generate cash to help justify future development and support of the CDTV mastering tools. I pointed out that this doubles the parts cost of CD-ROM products made with CBM's tools. A minimal CD-ROM title might cost about $3 to produce a disc in a jewel box with a color cover. Of course, this doesn't account for other overhead costs, or the costs associated with the actual data on the disc. Syndesis has been working on a CD-ROM product. We had hoped to use CBM's tools, but they've just priced us out of the market. I had high hopes that more Amiga developers would produce non-CDTV discs, because of the inexpensive access to CBM's pre-mastering tools. Now it's a lot more expensive to do so. I think they've just priced several other companies out of the market, or at least cut their profits… like Hypermedia, who sells Fish discs at $69 retail, and quarterly updates for about $20… or Xetec, who was giving away two CDTV-compatible CD-ROMs with their CD-ROM drive bundles… and certainly Walnut Creek won't bother to make their discs CDTV compatible if the royalty is $3. You've got to pay $3 a disc if you used CBM's pre-mastering tools to make the disc. (Using their tools makes the disc CDTV-compatible.) I think this means that all the non-CDTV-specific Amiga discs will be mastered on other platforms. I think a lot of CDTV titles will be priced out of the market… a $6 raw parts cost instead of a $3 parts cost means a $50 title barely makes any money. If distributors are buying it for $20, and the raw cost is $6, there's only $14 for overhead and R&D, instead of $17. In other words, CBM just imposed a 17 percent tax on low-cost discs. From my discussions with present CDTV developers, sales were so dismal to begin with – now a $3 royalty to CBM can only make it worse. Most CDTV titles were in minimal packaging in order to preserve margins while maintaining a $50-or-so price point. On the other hand, if you send $4,000 to Pinnacle Micro, they'll send you a Mac-based CD-ROM writing drive and pre-mastering software. This writes $39 "one-off" discs in ISO-9660, audio, and Mac HFS formats. If you planned to sell at least 2,000 discs, would you rather send $6,000+ to CBM, or would you rather send $4,000 to Pinnacle and have an in-house system?