Amiga Game Support?
2 messages in this thread
Chris,
I'm sorry to hear about Sierra and Dynamix dropping support for the
Amiga. It is a very poor decision on their part. THis is a turning point
in the computer gaming industry. In about a year there are going to be 5
or 6 different OSs competing for the PC market. This will probably split
the market into smaller factions which will incumber development for the
PC. I know DOS will always be around (Thank GOD!) but this is a point
where there might be an increase in Amiga sales. In fact it is already
happening. The Amiga 1200s and 4000s are selling like "Hotcakes". In one
year Commodore broke the 4 million users mark and are very close to 5
million at this time. I know that the PC will dominate the market for
some time, but is it now a wise decision to leave 5 million users behind?
AGA makes porting games to the Amiga easy and inexpensive. Graphics modes
are now COMPATIBLE with VGA on the PC.
I know that you are just a tech support person and I'm sorry I threw
all this at you. However, I am a very dedicated Amiga user and Sierra
game purchaser. I would hate to lose my favorite game publisher.
Peter
Peter,
What may look like a poor decision from a user's standpoint may be a good
decision from a company's standpoint. Sierra is a public company and has
a responsibility to its stockholders to invest time and money
intelligently.
Publishing Amiga gameware has never been a very profitable business in
this country (overseas may be another story, but we're an American
corporation). That's why the vast majority of American game publishers
abandoned the platform years ago. Sierra was one of the last holdouts; we
were releasing Amiga gameware at a time when most other companies had
abandoned it…or gone broke trying to support it. And while Sierra wants
very much to support EVERY viable platform, there comes a time when you
have to take a hard look at profits and say, "Yes, Amiga owners love their
systems, but they're not buying enough games to make it worth our time to
support."
Every couple of years we hear about a NEW Amiga system that's going to
revitalize the Amiga market. It hasn't happened. Commodore has lied to
us more times than we can count. Software stores (like Software ETC.
here) are liquidating their entire stock of Amiga software.
>>"It is not a wise decision to leave 5 million users behind."<< Five
million Amiga owners is NOT the same thing as 5 million game customers.
There are over 45 million PC owners in America; fewer than two million of
them buy games. The PC games market is SMALL, yet it's where the greatest
business is. Take a market that's ten times smaller — the Amiga market —
and you have a market that's simply not worth the development cost to
support.
Moreover, you say it's easy to port things to the Amiga from the PC given
AGA. Well, we DID port games to the Amiga from MS-DOS, and got slapped in
the face repeatedly with cries of, "This is an MS-DOS game that's been
PORTED, this isn't an AMIGA game. We want AMIGA games." So for all the
pains we took to support the Amiga when nobody else was, we got a lot of
abuse. What's the incentive for us to support this customer base? There
aren't enough of them to make a good profit from (at least, not enough for
a publically-held company…a privately-held company can do what it likes
and show a profit of $50 a year if it wants. We can't afford that.).
This could all change if the Amiga becomes a truly viable market, on a
level with even the Mac (which is still a much smaller gaming market than
the PC market). But for the time being, I don't think you'd think dropping
Amiga support was such a poor decision if you were responsible for the
success and solvency of the company.
–Josh