Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!microsoft!tom From: tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom MCCONNELL) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: New Thread: What _REALLY_ makes a product successful? Message-ID: <72306@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 13 May 91 02:21:47 GMT Reply-To: tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom MCCONNELL) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 91 In recent history :-) I have begun to sense that there is something other than technical features which drives products success. This whole train of thought was prompted by a visit to the local Toys-R-Us store, and gazing apon an Atari Lynx and a Nintendo Game Boy. Both systems came out at essentially the same time. But the Game Boy has easily twice to 3 times the number of "software" available for it, even though it is clearly an inferior machine. This is a familiar pattern. Why did the Apple 2 do so much better than the C-64, and why did the C-64 do so much better than the Atari 800 system? It is quite easy to argue that the Apple II did not have a real hardware feature edge over the other systems. The C64 had sprites and more memory, better graphics, cheaper etc. and the Atari had even more sophisticated graphics than the C64. Now the C64 clearly in the long run became a winner, but _only_ by postioning itself as a game machine, and that was the market it won. It _never_ achieved market penetration outside of that realm. (I know that in my experience in a software developement house that our business software did much better on the Apple as on the C64, while our games did much better on the C64 than the Apple.) The same situation seems to have happened in the case of the Amiga. It is clear that the Amiga when it was introduced was a _far_ superior machine than the current IBM and Mac machines available. I and many of you have spend hours and hours of our lifetime arguing the sophistication of the Amiga OS, Hardware etc. But the rest of the world has paid little attention. We are now to the point where the IBM and MAC machines have similar enough offerings that the Amiga does not offer a lot to convince people to change over from a system that they are used to. Now the Next has come along with all of it's great hardware and software features, but faces yet again many entrenched factions. If people were to decide to buy a system based wholly on the hardware and software capibilities that were the most sophisticated, then every one would have bought Amiga's 5 years ago, and we'd all be buying Next's now. And also, there is the whole CDTV vs CDI war. What's most important.... technical features or something else. I think that it is the _something else_ which drives the acceptance of a platform. This is really disapointing to me, as I have spent what seems a lifetime looking for _THE BEST_ of whatever it was I was buying. But the world doesn't seem to follow and accept what's best. I have come to the conclusion that any company which fails to take into account what this _something else_ is which determines what makes a successful product is doomed to remain a sideline player. --------------------------------------------------------- So now I post the question to the net: What is this _something else_ which drives product acceptance? What is really the driving force behind successful systems? Is it simply all just marketing? Why did the Game Boy beat the Lynx? Why did the Amiga fail to win more converts than it did? Will CDTV really win, or will it be another also ran? Why is Windows so successful? Why hasn't Unix taken over the world? Why is Next failing to take over the world? Will my flame-retardent suit hold up ? :-) ;-) :-) What do _YOU_ think? ---------------------------------------------------------------- I am seriously curious, and not trying to provoke anyone, so all flames > /dev/null -Tom -- "Hey COW!" _____________(( / ** o \ ______ _______________________ /| **** \ _/moo...\ | Tom McConnell | / | ** /\__/ \______/ | uunet!microsoft!tom |