Demand for Amigas
No, you probably can't sell enough scala and toaster boxes alone to have a
profitable company. If you try to mark up your product enough to make a
profit in that market, you become too expensive to compete for more than
the next few months (until the right software is available elsewhere). The
Amiga has always been competitive mostly on price. Until a couple of
years ago, when the high-end machines became overpriced (and now they're
really overpriced). A few years ago, if you asked me whether to push the
Amiga primarily as a game box or as a "real computer," I would
unhesitatingly have responded "real computer." Now I'm not so sure.
CD32 makes a great Scala delivery platform (although it'd be a little
better with a couple of built-in serial ports). It is also a great video
game console. If it were marketed with big bucks (ala nintendo and sega),
it could sell like hotcakes. If a steady supply were available, you might
find people developing multimedia apps with Scala on a PC and then
realizing that buying 10,000 CD32s for kiosks (or whatever) is much more
economical than buying 10,000 PCs for kiosks, and so using Scala on CD32.
Hence, Scala being available on PCs could sell more Amigas, if the company
with the Amiga technology does the right things. Moving millions of CD32s
each year would save current Amiga technology, at least for another year
or two.
With a huge market for CD32, the "upgrade" to a real computer, the A1200,
would be a natural for many home users to consider making, and A1200 sales
would continue at a brisk pace.
A right-priced A4000 is the right box to develop for CD32 and the A1200 —
sales to developers alone ought to keep it profitable.
Could it be done? Sure, I think it could. You need a lot of money and a
lot of marketing smarts right now. The number of original titles which
you'll see first on CD32 is going to decline fast (if it hasn't dropped
severely already) without a lot more units shipping. The foothold held by
nintendo and sega and 3do is growing all the time. (As soon as 3do gets
to about $300, it'll probably take off like crazy — I hear good titles
are finally available for it.)
Of course, if you get your foot back in the US market with millions of
CD32s, and you make a good profit on the way, you're that much closer to
being able to successfully introduce next-generation Amiga technology.
Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com)
"That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."