Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!apple!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: An issue for the entire Amiga Community. Message-ID: <1990Jun1.115922.3297@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 1 Jun 90 11:59:22 GMT References: <136118@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1401@faatcrl.UUCP> <9132@pogo.WV.TEK.COM> Organization: SF Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 53 In article <9132@pogo.WV.TEK.COM> bluneski@pogo.WV.TEK.COM (Bob Luneski) writes: [We've seen the inclusion three time or more!] > >The only excuse for the above post is utterly shamless ignorence. > >You obviously don't even have a clue to the amount of work required to bring >a commercial product to market. And after the dealer takes his cut, and the >software distibutor takes his cut, and the software publisher takes his >cut, and after packaging costs and marketing costs and product support costs >why there's usually enough left over to buy a stick of gum. > Then I suppose you will be easily able to explain why perfectly playable games for the Amiga are for sale in the $25 and under range, while completely worthless games are going for $45 and up? I even bought one eminently playable game for $15 early in my Amiga's career. Fact of the matter is, except for profits, the cost of getting that $15 game to me was the same as the cost of getting that $45 game to me, OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN. Obviously you have your choice between deciding the more expensive game is a total rip-off, or that the management where it is produced has never heard of cost control. When I go to my local Amiga shop and see the hundreds of current titles on the game side of the shelves, I have a great deal of trouble believing that the Amiga game market is a profitless desert, and a deep and abiding suspicion that it is instead a vast well being tapped by every passerby, ethically or not. I've decided to start focusing my attention on the $30 and under market. If enough folks did the same, perhaps the word would get out. Similarly, rather than buy two-bit paperback novels at $4.95 and up (a TWENTY-FOLD increase in price since I started buying them in 1959), I patronize the library and the used book stores a lot. If the sales of $50 Amiga games drop to zero, and the sales of $25 Amiga games soar, it might be that the food chain from coder to your pocketbook would get the hint, who knows. The sad thing about the shareware market isn't that it drives the commercial vendors away; the sad thing is that it doesn't pay off for the shareware authors. It really disappointed me to see Matt Dillon saying he was releasing DICE (his C compilation system) shareware; the Amiga C compiler system market needs another commercial player, not so much to contain costs, as to push Manx and Lattice to start doing some quality control, instead of foisting off one buggy release after another on us. A single author product set would, I think, have a better chance than anything in sight of giving us a truly robust compiler system. It is always impressive to learn that the system was used in it's own development, as Matt's DICE was and is. But, with the little he will get from releasing DICE shareware, Matt will not be able to provide the kind of full time support a big product like that deserves, and the needed Darwinian selection in this market won't happen. Of course, you could all make him rich as Croesus, and surprise me to death, but I'm not holding my breath. Kent, the man from xanth.