Falcon 3.0 for the Amiga
14 messages in this thread
All,
I really don't think all of you have taken my plea for help seriously.
I am currently compiling a list of names for Amiga users who want to see
Falcon 3.0 published in Amiga format.
Not all of you have to like the game, the underlying fact is thatt
Falcon 3.0 is a VERY POPULAR flight simulator. Some Amiga users have left
the world of the Amiga just to be able to play this game. To the Amiga
one less user can be like seavering a finger. There is more to this than
just getting Falcon ported. It is a chanse to be heard. Since this
campaign started, Sierra Online and Accolade have also expressesed their
desire to leave the Amiga market. How can we go on if all of our software
publishers are leaving?
I ask everyone to consider what all this means. If you truly love the
AMIGA as I do PLEASE Email me yours and as many other names of people who
want Falcon 33.0 for the Amiga.
Please don't stop at your name, see if you can get names of other users
that don't connect via CIS or GEnie.
Thanks again. Email is better for me but if you are set on posting the
NAMES it is fine.
Peter,
[Flying the only way to go!] Way High On AutoPilot
Peter,
I'd have to disagree with you on this one. Your results will have a lot
more credibility if you can deliver to Spectrum Holobyte a list of people
that would seriously consider purchasing Falcon 3.0 for the Amiga, instead
of just asking for people who would 'like to see it ported' in order for
their favorite computer platform to get the 'respect' that they feel it
deserves. Remember, you're trying to convince them that they can make a
profit by porting Falcon 3.0 to the Amiga, not that they have some sort of
obligation to do so no matter how much they might lose by doing so. If
I'm somehow misinterpreting your latest message please let me know, but,
that's how it struck me.
The number of Amiga's sold is an obtainable number for them. What they
would find more meaningful is knowing how many people would seriously
consider the purchase of the product – not a committment, but an honest
survey of the level of interest.
The Amiga is a great machine and certainly my favorite computer to use.
But, if the user base, due to either piracy or lack of interest, will not
purchase enough product so that the company can make a fair profit, then I
see the lack of software problem as being the fault of that user base, and
not the companies.
To sum up, my recommendation would be to ask for names only of people who
would consider the purchase of the product, and, if you really want to be
helpful, some idea of the price range those people would be willing to pay
for a well done port, with the accent on 'well done.'
David
David,
Pehaps I am misrepresenting myself in my messages. I do think I
started this to get them to realize that there is money to be made in the
Amiga market. After reading my posts it seems that I left this way of
thinking. All I want to do is wake up a few developers and show them that
there is still enough of a market here to make a profit.
Falcon 3.0 took three man years to develop. It took another two to
support it so I put the cost of that at $125,000. Add to that
distribution and advertising and we are looking at $300,000. If Falcon
3.0 sold 20,000 in Amiga format at an average price of $45 to the retailer
Spectrum would gross $900,000. NOT. I think I have had a revalation.
Mabe there are not enough of us afterall.At 10,000 ot would be $450,000.
Where would the break even point be. I think a $200,000 profit would be
acceptable.
Peter,
[Flying the only way to go!] Way High On AutoPilot
Peter,
Reality and your numbers simply don't agree. 3 man-years of
development and two man-years for support costs more than $125K. More in
the range of $200K to $250K or more. On top of that, what about hardware
costs? Software costs? QA costs? Other costs of doing business? Most
of this is money invested before any returns are seen. Even that costs
money.
Second, if you're talking average price of $45 per unit, you are
probably talking about a SRP of $60, of which SH is probably getting
anywhere from a low of 32 percent to a high of 40 percent. Being
optimistic, we're talking a 'take' of $24 per unit. So maybe we're
talking about the possibility of breaking even if they sell 20K copies.
However, 20K is a bit high (although not unreachable) for an Amiga product
— especially if that Amiga product requires more hardware than the "base"
system of a 1-meg A500 with 2 floppy drives.
However, I'm not sure you want to consider the realities. You
effectively ignored my previous message about the hardware requirement
issues. Remember that these decisions have to be made on the basis of
facts, not emotions. I'm as much of an Amiga enthusiast as you, but I'm
also in the position of having to decide the platform directions of a
company involved in the development of Entertainment Software. Trust me –
it's not an easy decision to make. (Note that I am in no way associated
with Spectrum Holobyte).
– BobR
Bob,
Thanks. These are the numbers I was looking for. I didn't know what
they would be. I took a sho in the dark.
As far for including info about systems, since your sugestion, about
90% of the people that Emailed me have included system information. I
gues the other 10% have stock Amigas. The percentage of contributors to
the petition who have 68020 + processors and hard drives is about 60%.
However this is still a far cry from what I need to show them.
I don't know if your trying to burst my bubble or offer constructive
criticism. I should have known that this would not be an easy task and I
probably should have researched things a bit more. But I feel that i am
fighting for a just cause. If it is not Spectrums fault that they are
leaving, is it Commodores for the failure to support software development?
And if it is, am I petitioning the wrong people? Will Amiga 1200 and 4000
sales bring enough new Amiga users to justify new development work?
Should we all get 486 bridgeboards and quit our whining? I don't know.
I'm not knowledgable in these areas. That's why I access CIS. I crave
information and it is people like You (Bob, Mike, Steve, Betty, and the
rest) who give it to me. I am a bit naive, but that helps sometimes.
Perhaps this petition will help save us the last of the game publishers
left for the Amiga. And if it does it happened because e took action and
spoke up.
Games are what sell the HOME COMPUTER. You can tell me all you want
about how someone buying a computer looks for a machine to run the same
software as the computer at work. When I go to aa software retailer like
Egghead, Software Etc., or Microcomputers, all I see are games. Are 20
million PCers only doing work on their computers. Do the base their
purchase soley on games…NOT! But it has a fair amount to do with it.
Original PC users bought their machines because of Lotus, Wordstar, and
Wordperfect. Amiga did not have these titles so the Amiga took a back
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seat to the MS-DOS machines. The Amiga became a game machine for the home
user. PC soon surpassed the graphics and speed of the Amiga and took away
the game market. The Amiga became a Home computer without a home. We
have Final Copy II, Superbase, and the best operating system around but no
one cares outside of the few hundred thousand of us in the states
(2million abroad) but we don't have Lotus, Wordperfect or even any support
at all from any major PC software publisher.
I guess I should add a point to this jibberish. Will the Amiga,
regardless of the release of the new line, soon fade away in the Home
Computer market???
Peter,
[Flying the only way to go!] Way High On AutoPilot
Peter,
First, I'd like to say that I'm pleased that we are able to get a
dialog going on this issue, as I think it's a very important issue. I
have really not been trying to "burst your bubble", but trying to get a
little more "fact-based", as opposed to "emotion-based" perspective thrown
on the real underlying issues.
Personally, Falcon 3.0 has little appeal to me — it's just not my cup
of tea, as far as games go. However, the issue of the Amiga market losing
many (if not most) of the "major" Entertainment Software publishers is
quite germaine to the way that I make my living.
I am one of the owners of White Wolf Productions, Inc. We are a
software development house, specializing in Entertainment Software. I am
also the "Amiga-head" among the decision-makers of the company. It was
solely because of me that our last effort, The Perfect General, was not
only ported to the Amiga, but was released at the same time as the MS-DOS
version. I like the Amiga, and want to continue to support the platform
with our current and future efforts.
However, it really is an uphill battle. Our current project is a game
called Empire Deluxe, which is a total rewrite of the classic game Empire
– Wargame of the Century. Our primary focus is (due to overwhelming
financial considerations) the MS-DOS market. Since this is a rewrite of a
quite successful earlier product, one of our design goals is to "push the
envelope" and take advantage of the remarkable advance in technology that
has appeared in the home market since the product originally was released
(1988). The "base-level" machine for the 1988 product was an IBM-XT with
512K of memory, 1 floppy drive, and a CGA color monitor, although EGA was
highly recommended. Our comparable "base-level" machine for the 1992/1993
version is a 386SX system with 2 megs of memory, hard drive, and VGA
graphics (SuperVGA and sound-board recommended). This is a "comfortable"
target machine in terms of the market-size. (Note that this is not the
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"optimal" machine configuration, but the lowest-common-denominator that
we'll support).
In 1988 in the Amiga market, the "base-level" machine was an Amiga 500
or 1000, with 512K of memory and 1 floppy drive. At the time, fitting the
original Empire on that machine was a tight-fit, but it did work. It
worked a lot better on a 1-meg machine, but it would have been financial
suicide at the time to require 1-meg. The graphics were mediocre at best.
The sound support was poor. The game itself was great! Most of the blame
for the shortcomings belong to me – I was inexperienced and misjudged the
market's demands for flash over substance. In my defense, I was also
under unrealistic scheduling demands (from the publisher) that I believed
had more importance than the final quality.
Now it's the end of 1992. Looking at the Amiga market, I see the
"base-level" machine as an A500 or A600 with 1-meg of memory and two
floppy disks. True, there are more accelerated machines out there now
than in 1988, and there are more machines with hard disks. However, is
the size of the market big enough to be able to eliminate the lower end
and still have enough potential customers? What level of machine can I
safely target and still have the potential for enough sales to recoup our
development costs and for the publisher to recoup their production,
marketing, testing, and support costs? And how to I squeeze the PC design
and implementation to fit this target machine, without significant
compromises? If I could afford a total rewrite specifically targetted for
the Amiga, I _may_ be able technically to solve the problems and get it to
fit. However, there's no way to justify that level of expense or that use
of significant resources. The projected returns are just not there, and
those resources could be better (i.e., more profitably) spent on the next
MS-DOS project.
Emotionally, it's an easy decision for me to make. However, I also
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have to look at it objectively and decide what is best for my company's
health and growth. It's definitely not an easy decision to make. In this
specific example, the jury's still out. We have decided to spend some
money and resources in investigating the feasibility of the conversion, so
we'll have more facts with which to be able to decide. Unfortunately, I
think the deck's stacked against us.
Now, most publishers don't have the emotional investment in the Amiga
market like I have. They're just looking at the facts, and it's a lot
easier for them to dismiss the marginal market. If they're going to risk
losing money, it would make more sense for them to gamble in the markets
that have a higher chance of hitting it big, rather than in markets where
they have a chance of "breaking even".
This is a REAL problem for the Amiga market and the Amiga users.
Luckily, there are still companies who are stilling to focus on the Amiga
market and provide good software in both the entertainment arena and in
productivity software. The Amiga market is not dead, and some folks are
able to make enough in it to keep paying their bills. But it's d*mn hard,
and very insecure. We are seeing a trend where the "major" companies,
never having focused solely on this market, are abandoning the Amiga
because it just doesn't make economic sense. This trend, I'm afraid, will
continue.
I think that's enough "food for thought" for now.
– BobR
BobR,
Thanks for your objective and expert observation. Just one question, do
you think it will be easier to port a successful MS-DOS game to the Amiga
now that the AGA standard offer nearly the same resolutions and colors?
This assumes a large enough market could sustain the investment.
"In case of doubt, make it sound convincing" ***Sensor***
Victor;
I can comment on that one… If the machine you asked about was the "base
machine" then the answer would be yes. However, are there a thousand of
those machines in use now (mostly developers)?
-bill
I think you answered your own question. Yes, of course, similar color
depth and screen resolution makes it relatively easy (usually) to port
games. If the market among machines with AGA abilities can sustain
developer enthusiasm, of course.
Victor,
Whether AGA will help in porting an MS-DOS game to the Amiga or not
really depends on the game. For something like The Perfect General, it
wouldn't have helped a lot, as we were only using 16-color graphics, but
it would have helped some due to the graphics speedup provided by both the
AGA design and the software improvements that Commodore made in version
3.0 of the operating system.
For games that were designed for 256-color 320 x 200 resolutions, it
helps in that the graphics don't have to be converted down to 32-color or
64-color, which can affect the graphics quality. However, I personally
don't think that this is much of an issue per-se, especially since there
are graphics utilities available today that do an excellent job of
remapping pics down, like ADPro and Imagemaster.
The new A1200 may help a lot more because of the 68EC020 and 2 megs of
memory standard than because of the AGA chipset, but that will only happen
when and if the A1200 sells well enough that it can be considered the
"base-level" Amiga, and publishers can afford to no longer support lesser
machines. For that to happen (IMHO), Commodore must give up on the idea
of creating the next generation C64, and work at establishing a powerful
low-end machine, even if it means not having a $400 computer to sell. No
more A500's, no more A600's, no more 68000's!
I apologize if anyone takes offense at what I said. I am not insulting
you or the computer you chose to purchase. I am merely pointing out the
realities that I am having to face as an Entertainment Software
developer.
– BobR
Bob and all,
Here's hoping folks buy the A1200 in droves. I kind of think this machine
will be more popular than the A600 which I heard have sold nearly 300,000
in Europe.
Years ago, I heard the A1000 redesign (Amiga 500) was code named the
"B-52" because one engineer said if the Amiga 500 was not successful, they
might as well bomb the place with a B-52 since it wouldn't be worth it
anymore. Maybe we should call the A1200 the "B-1B."
I have to agree with one individual. The stock Amiga just might not have
enough horsepower to cope with Falcon 3.0. Anything less than the MS-DOS
version would piss off the buyers even worst.
Perhaps the best thing is to buy the new machine and encourage others
whose needs are like ours to buy. Amiga was a fairly successful machine
with just word of mouth. With Commodore slowly sobering up, with
advertising, the words from our mouths can work again.
"In case of doubt, make it sound convincing" ***Sensor***