CompuServe Messages

"I suppose you're motivated by irresistable financial considerations – everyone is, all the time, and that's that." Ah, it's precisely that kind of thing that makes the business go around. Developers support the machines with market share. Last year, for instance, Commodore sold 937,000 machines of all types. To a software publisher looking for a return on investment, that is not a big number. You have to consider that a tremendous amount of money goes into the development of a product. As a publisher, you want a payback on that investment within a reasonable period of time. The smaller the market, the less likely the possibility of that happening. Marketing is the next major consideration. Develop for Windows and you have approximately 14,000 places that might sell your product. But if it's a specialty product, the number drops dramatically. Macintosh developers face somewhat slimmer pickings. And Amiga publishers have virtually no place to sell their products. The mail order houses are nice, but if you look at their circulation figures, you can't exist on people who read the Amiga magazines. Amiga retail distribution is practically non-existent, a situation Commordore itself created. Right now, it's the specialty producers like NewTek, ASDG, Innovision and others, who can still make a buck in the Amiga market. But general-purpose applications, such as word processors and spreadsheets, are goners. The economics just don't work and it isn't worth the effort to develop and sell for the Amiga market. Commodore, of course, does nothing to help things. They don't evangelicize developers, they do nothing to bolster their distribution and seemingly treat the US market as an afterthought. I enjoy using my Amiga solely for video products like the VideoToaster, AdPro and so on. But I don't expect I'll be getting another one because I don't think there's going to be another Amiga and by the time Mac and Windows based publishers really get moving, the VideoToaster will be facing serious competition. I wouldn't be at all surprised, in fact, if you see a machine from NewTek itself with chipsets licensed from Commodore. There's nothing inherently wrong with the Amiga. It's a fine machine. But you can't expect publishers to support a platform that has so clearly lost in the marketplace – and there's no one to blame but Commodore for that situation. Jerry