CompuServe Messages

Wayne, I definitely agree. Much of the difficulty I think publishers have had in the past is CBM's track record of supporting their own machines, from a marketing standpoint. Trouble is, CBM now has a history of blowing smoke, so developers are doubly wary of CBM whenever CBM promises a new push, a new breakthrough system, a new ad campaign, whatever. It's a self-perpetuating problem, one that will only be solved when CBM actually does break through with something. I don't know if anyone would agree with this, but I've had a theory for years about what CBM did wrong initially. When the Amiga came on the market, MS-DOS was not yet a common *household* computer (it was still primarily an office system; EGA was still very expensive and there was a severe lack of household utilities and games for MS-DOS). The Apple II+/e/c and the C64 were definitely on their way out; the Mac was going nowhere and neither was the IIgs. If Commodore had positioned the Amiga as, primarily, a GAME/HOUSEHOLD computer, they could have stolen the niche that had previously been filled by the C64 and Apple II. Instead, they positioned the Amiga as a powerful graphics workstation and all-around system…which isn't something most users are interested in. The "all-around system" position is so vague and mushy that nobody knew what to think. And then, of course, there were distribution problems, since CBM didn't want the thing in toy stores. Instead of getting an Amiga, American users bought MS-DOS machines and Nintendos instead to fill the same need that the C64 used to fill. The "GAME/HOUSEHOLD" position is exactly the position CBM took in the UK, for some reason. And it succeeded in a major way there. Most home users in the UK don't have videogame machines and don't have MS-DOS machines; they have an Amiga to take the place of both. That's why the Amiga is the top-selling computer in the UK, and has been for a long time. It was a clear, easy-to-understand position. Had they taken the same position with the US market, they might've passed the 5 million mark four years ago. –Josh