Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!grebyn!ckp
From: ckp@grebyn.com (Checkpoint Technologies)
Subject: Re: Toaster news
Message-ID: <1991Apr17.134058.4503@grebyn.com>
Summary: NewTek's bailing out of the Amiga market
Keywords: Amiga Toaster Apple?
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
References: <1991Apr16.060721.4531@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: comp
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1991 13:40:58 GMT

In article <1991Apr16.060721.4531@neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) writes:
>
>  There's an interesting tidbit of news in this week's MacWeek magazine.
>Quoting from an article about the National Association of Broadcasters
>show, to be held in Las Vegas next week:
>
>"NewTek Inc.  The maker of the popular Video Toaster, a Commodore
>Amiga-based video editing system, will announce a standalone Toaster
>that can read Macintosh files directly.
>  Price at $3,995 and due in June, the new Toaster no longer requires
>users to buy an Amiga.  "We've taken the cool parts of the Amiga and
>put it together with the Toaster into a single box," said Steve
>Hartford, NewTek product manager.

It seems that NewTek has decided that betting their company's future on
the Amiga platform is not a good idea.  And I think they're right.

In any case, they stand to profit more per unit. That $4K price surely
does not contain an additional $2500 cost in parts, over the card in the
Amiga box.  But they could never sell a $4K add-on to Amiga owners, no
matter what it did.

This now seems to be a common occurance.  Take a successful Amiga
product, migrate to a different platform (or in the case of NewTek, no
platform at all), and sell it for a lot more.
And succeed in selling it.  ByteByByte did this with Sculpt-4D.
It cost $250 on the Amiga.  The Mac version, not as powerful, sells for
$2500. The Mac magazines gave it favorable reviews.
-- 
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