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STATEMENT TO THE AMIGA COMMUNITY From VULCAN SOFTWARE LIMITED ------------------------------------------------------------- Wow! where to begin? We have been inundated with emails regarding our future plans for 1998, some best wishes, some disgust, some confusion and some worries. As Vulcan is the oldest, most active, longest surviving Development and Publishing company the Amiga has left I feel a certain responsibility towards the Amiga community and would like to make an official statement to endorse some facts about the Amigas commercial market and Vulcans plans for the future. This statement is very long indeed and comes from the heart, hopefully it will answer all the questions `I receive daily` about the decisions and changing direction of Vulcan aswell as giving a true account of our experiences over the last 4 years in the Amiga market. I dont know what reaction this statement will receive but, as it is based on our commitments, efforts and dreams for the Amiga platform then I am hoping it will be understood. TRUTH ----- Not many companies have really spoken out about the past, current and future Amiga market, instead wild rumours seem to circulate based on past events and lies, I feel it is about time to lay down some facts about the Amiga market, some are not what people want to hear, some are already well known, some simply are so unbelievable they make you weep. Nevertheless with our 4 years experience in this ever changing market I feel we are in a very good position to be able to comment truthfully and openly about the Amiga market which is based on our experience and ventures. Background & Overview --------------------- Since 1994 Vulcan has been developing and Publishing Amiga games for the Amiga market. To date we have released 10 x floppy titles, 3 x CDRom titles and have several Amiga CDRom titles still in production which includes some PPC specific projects. PAST ---- In 1994 we developed our first title, as you all know, this cult classic (Valhalla) was either hated or loved, either way this title was developed, manufactured and Published, but most importantly it was distributed in retail outlets around the UK using a software distribution company. The point here is that this fully boxed floppy based title was available in the shops! At that time in the UK there were 8 Amiga magazines, all of which reviewed the title, carried demos of the title and advertised the title not to mention newspaper coverage, radio coverage, television coverage with personal appearances and interviews. The upshot was, that if an Amiga user heard about Valhalla and liked the product then the next time they went into their computer shop they could pluck it from the shelf and buy it. PERFECT MODEL ------------- Sounds perfect doesnt it? And it was, as it meant a developer could develop a product, a publisher could publish a product, a distributor could distribute a product, a magazine could advertise and review the product, a retailer could sell the product and a user could buy the product. When the Amiga market in the UK worked like this it was fair all round, and everybody made money from their efforts as tens of thousand of units could be sold in the first week of launch. WHAT DID IT RELY ON ------------------- The above model relied completely on one thing to make it all work, and that was, that there had to be a good healthy `available pool` of Amiga buying users and accessibility. Sure the Model would fail if inferior products were developed but overall the only reason a publisher published, a distributor distributed and a retailer sold was due to the users purchase. Adding to this model the Amiga user could only purchase the product if they new about it from magazines and other media and also had access to the product via shops, so its easy to see that the whole intricate commercial Amiga software market was finely balanced and self perpetuating. Of course the Amiga users had to have an Amiga! :) WHAT WENT WRONG --------------- The 69 thousand dollar question, many things went wrong with this model, becoming apparent in the middle of 1994. Dont forget, that at this time in the UK you could go into any high street electrical store and buy an Amiga computer and many pieces of software from publishers as it was a rife and healthy commercial market. What went wrong can be blamed on many things but to start with, this was the year that Commodore went into liquidation, reasons why have always been given and attributed but for now I am only interested in what happened with the Amiga commercial market. HARDWARE TO BLAME? ------------------ In 1994 the most popular Amiga computer in the UK was the A500, Some lucky users had souped up A500`s in the `desktop form` of the A1500 and there were also some A2000`s. Commodore tried to push the Amiga hardware forward, the market saw the A500+ were a percentage of loyal users upgraded instantly, we saw upgraded Operating Software, we saw the dying CDTV, we saw the A600 which sounded great with its 1Mb chip but was smaller and cheaper looking, we saw the dying CD32 (way ahead of its time) and we eventually saw the A1200 with 2Mb chip, AGA chipset and 68020 CPU. Throughout this gradual advancement we saw many third party devices such as external/internal Hard Drives, ram expansions, extra floppy drives, flicker fixers, monitors, accelerators, OS chip upgrades and many more interesting devices for connection. Sure these hardware improvements were absolutely vital to the Amiga`s future (as if a technology stays still it dies) but with so many failings of hardware launches the UK Amiga community was definitely becoming split and diversity was rife. For example you had Amiga users screaming for AGA specific or CD32 specific or Hard Drive Installable specific aswell as floppy A500 users still wanting 1Mb floppy based titles. This was not too much of a big problem but developers and publishers had to strike a balance whether to support the low spec machines for bigger sales or higher spec machines to advance the market or in some cases both but there was something vitally important missing and that was an owner of the Amiga who could officially advance its technology. OTHER COMPETITION ----------------- Just around the corner in 1994 something was happening, it was called the PC, now the PC was used all around the world but mainly in educational and business situations. The big change was when PC hardware prices tumbled and PC technical specifications rose, both at incredible rates and I also believe a game `I had never heard of` called DOOM had something to do with it! Suddenly average home computer users could find themselves in a position were they could afford a PC, after all thats what they used at work or at school and its technology was being pushed and advanced at incredible rates and DOOM offered something unique and wonderful to games enthusiasts. PUBLISHERS ---------- The big publishers at this time (many who had begun on the Amiga platform) saw an opportunity to develop for this growing market, and why not? After all they were mainly business motivated and with the Amigas technology in a temporary halted state it seemed a good gamble. I remember at that time (in June 94) when Vulcan was working on our next Amiga title `Valhalla II` that all the companies we spoke to on a regular basis kept saying that they were going to PC formats. It was a strange time as I began to notice distributors and retailers and users alike all asking if we were developing for PC, `no` we said, `whats wrong with the Amiga market?` we said, `its a big market and we have only just begun`... AS TIME WENT ON --------------- From June 94 to June 95 it became apparent that this delicate commercial Amiga market model had been altered, with no new Amiga hardware to compete, with Amiga users moving to PC, magazines moving to PC, Developers and Publishers moving to PC, distributors moving to PC and retailers moving to PC the whole thing was hit hard. By the time Vulcans third Amiga floppy title `TimeKeepers` was released in June 95 there was no longer a distribution network in the UK, our Amiga products (and others) found it harder to be available to Amiga users via the shop shelf. This was mainly due to the distributors who would only distribute a title if it was on the PC format as this was the format that the retailers could sell and the users were buying in vast quantities. Now sure there were still Amiga users around the country who wanted Amiga titles but due to the way business decisions dictate market changes the majority market soon became the minority market and things got harder. I remember many heated conversations with distributors trying to get them to stock our Amiga titles and often blamed them for killing the Amiga market but at the end of the day the Amiga platform had no active owner, no new hardware development, fewer users, fewer developers, fewer publishers and allot of PC competition. AND ON... --------- Vulcan had a decision to make, we either went with the flow and switched to PC or.....and heres the or.....adapt to the changing market and base our companies future on a dream. We chose the latter, we believed that it would only be a matter of time before a new owner was found for the Amiga and when it was supported again we believed we would be right at the top of the proverbial ladder as a mainstream development and publishing company on the Amiga platform. HOW TO SURVIVE WITH NO COMMERCIAL RETAIL MARKET ----------------------------------------------- Many people over the years have enquired as to how Vulcan managed to survive in the Amiga market were others could not and this has been the key to our existence. In June 95 to account for the lack of retail support in the UK we set-up Vulcan Mail Order to provide our products direct to the Amiga user. VULCAN MAIL ORDER ----------------- This turned out to be an excellent move for Vulcan at the time as it meant that Vulcan as a developer and Publisher could now distribute and sell our own products direct to the user which meant allot more revenue was generated for per title (as we cut out the middle men) and allowed us to sell our titles cheaper (around 12.99 as opposed to 24.99) which resulted in more Amiga users buying our software due to the price drop and the direct personal attention they received through our company. Because of this unique set-up (being 3 companies in 1) we were able to continue as normal and did not notice the pinch in the Amiga market as other companies had, towards the end of 95 we released Hillsea Lido and had just started signing external development teams to our label, the year ahead 1996 was looking great! PIONEERING ---------- In 1996 Vulcan took on a pioneering role and we dedicated allot of our time to getting our products back in the UK shops, alas without much success. We did however start to supply many independent retail outlets in the UK with our software range but could not convince any UK mainstream distributor to stock our products in favour of PC titles. Beginning our expansion and aswell as selling our products to Mail Order users and UK retail outlets we started to convert and develop our titles for the German market. Running up to the middle of 1996 we saw Valhalla III and the TimeKeepers Expansion being released with now 6 external development teams signed to the Vulcan label. To keep pushing forward we founded Vulcans own International Distribution Company whos main purpose was to distribute our products by bulk retail and wholesale outlets around the world. Vulcan Distribution supplied our products to retailers spanning 14 countries, Vulcan Mail Order supplied our products to many thousands of registered users, Vulcan Development signed up many teams and individuals. Briefly (now and then) we glimpsed at the Amiga markets commercial situation, but only briefly. RECAP AND WARNINGS ------------------ To recap, by the middle of 96, there was still no Amiga owner (or perhaps there was a brief handling by an Eskimo? or something), very slowly we began to notice some new changes. Amiga magazines were starting to close and many Vulcan registered users were asking to be removed from the Vulcan database as they had moved to the PC platform. Now this change should have been more noticeable to us and a bigger warning sign but as we had now entered the world distribution market, were now supporting other languages, were receiving allot of publicity and talking to allot more developers, we got carried away with our own companies expansion. The run up to the end of 96 saw us release Bograts AGA and Jetpilot.....Happy X-mas! :) THE SMACK IN THE MOUTH ---------------------- January 1997 was the hardest month of Vulcans entire existence, I still joke about the fact that Santa Claus delivered a Playstation or Multimedia PC to every household for Xmas of 96. Literally overnight Vulcans Amiga Mail order sales plummeted, now we are not just talking about latest release performance, if we were then I could understand the change but we are talking about all Vulcan titles that sold regular and maintained a constant level for years suddenly decreasing to an all time low. We lost over 4,000 registered Amiga users in a 4 week period, Vulcan Distribution saw previous bulk purchasing retailers around the world go bankrupt, we saw wholesalers ceasing to order, we saw more Amiga magazines fold, we saw development companies go into liquidation, we saw developers leave the Amiga platform, we saw hell itself and all at Vulcan had to come to terms with this new reality. PLODDING ON ----------- End of January 97 we plodded on, releasing Burnout AGA and Tiny Troops, we feared the worst and were proven right, the sales were not there in any quantity to justify the investment. Sure we could say its the type of title but sales right across the spectrum of the entire range were getting smaller and smaller, registered users, retailers and web ordering was diminishing fast. By March 1997 we had 2 Amiga magazines left in the UK and in vain we saw many small Amiga companies start up and try to do something like, Mediasoft who tried to publish a new Amiga fanzine, Direct software who promised new hardware bundles, both of which folded, we saw long established mail order companies like Premier Mail Order collapse along with others. The commercial Amiga software market was at rock bottom with only the strongest companies surviving. COMPETITION ----------- Thinking back to March 97 we saw PC computers in shops, not just in shops but in a world of their own, namely PC World were they had slowly been selling to millions of users all around the world. Walk in and be bombarded with hundreds of PC system choices that had plenty hardware and software support. Now Im not talking an 020 CPU, 2Mb Memory, extended keyboard with a floppy drive attached for 350.00 via mail order, No no, Im talking all singing all dancing complete systems at 133Mhz, 16Mb memory, Graphics Cards, Hard Drives, modems, Monitors, keyboards, floppy drives, sound cards, software bundles and a bill gates special promotion devil hat for 500.00 in every shop in the high street that has been advertised to the hilt in every paper, magazine, television program you can imagine. Now anyone in the Amiga community knows that the Amiga has a far better approach to things but lets face it if your a family purchaser who uses a PC at work and your kids use a PC at school or your a student who uses a PC at college or your a games freak who simply must have Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider, Star Trek, Theme Hospital and zillions of other software tiles and applications `right now` then it doesnt take Einstein to figure out what the average computer purchaser will buy. I mean, just look at the Investment, the hardware, the software, the promotions and the technology that the PC has had over the previous years compared to the orphaned Amiga with no owner. MIRACLE ------- Would you believe it! We couldnt! Just as everything was about to hit the fan, in March 97 the Amiga found an owner, not just any owner but an owner with money, namely Gateway 2000. Immediately Vulcan planned for the future! Our dreams that held us tight were going to happen, our hopes raised at the prospect of new Amigas being made, perhaps a complete unit ready to buy that will be marketed, distributed all over the world and available to users in the high street shops at a price that would compete with current PC`s and with technology to match. Vulcans plans for the rest of 1997 was to make Amiga titles for higher specifications, we chose to go CDRom only with all future titles knowing that we could catch up with PC competition, we started catering from other language support to ensure world wide penetration, we invested heavily in our company and started to live again, we signed up more development teams, we started on higher specification development strategies catering for graphics cards and sound cards. Throughout the rest of 97 we published Strangers, Uropa2 and Finally Odyssey which were all re-vamped and turned into Multi language Amiga CDRom titles. Hellpigs the Multi-CDRom adventure was going to be awesome, Wasted Dreams was looking incredible, Hard Target the virtua cop clone is looking fantastic, Genetic Species is absolutely outstanding, Breed2000 was being revamped, Valhalla IIII was re-written to cater for full actor speech, 3D Games creator was re-designed to cater for Graphics cards, JetPilot expansion was initiated, Desolate was signed, overall 1997 was looking great with renewed hope, Phase 5 with PPC boards, Vulcan signing the World Foundry with PPC projects like Explorer and Maim & Mangle, investing in development hardware, PPC boards, Graphics Cards, faster processors, going to Cologne and meeting the new owners of the Amiga, new contacts, new possibilities, everyone I spoke to was excited, magazines were happy, developers were happy, publishers were happy, I was ecstatic at Sadeness starting in the games market, finally some good competition, I helped AliveMedia start up their games publishing company and finally felt like the market was coming together, I was encouraged by Aurora works entering the publishing market from across the water, Amiga shows began popping up, Ohio, Italy, Germany Belgium, what a brilliant beginning to the rest of 1997 indeed! ...but all the while....software sales were falling, companies were closing, projects were being cancelled...... Forget it! because Amiga speeches were being made, hope was back with vengeance, everyone I spoke to was on a high, other developers stated CDRom only titles, more projects were being developed for graphics cards, high CPUs and now PPC specific......we saw the potential in the platform, we opened up Vulcan America to supply our titles to America and Canada, our expanding development and publishing responsibilities became more demanding so we transferred our Mail order operations to Weird Science Limited and we transferred our Distribution company to GTI in Germany so we could spend more energy in our development dream, we established a development network of support and help for all our new Amiga development teams, we concentrated on bigger and better Amiga CDRom productions, we were on the road to glory! Nothing could alter our destiny, nothing can stop the Amiga being reborn! .....this is where we were wrong..... 2 things, just 2 little things kicked us where it hurts.................... .....one thing is something we RELIED on, and the other is something we ASSUMED. SOMETHING WE RELIED ON ---------------------- The Amiga has something unique, a community, many individuals and companies who believe in the Amiga and its future with many users around the world. All sounds great but lets analyse it in detail to get a complete picture of what the Amiga community is made up from and what makes it work commercially. Youve got Amiga magazines all around the world who love doing what they do, putting so much of their lives into their jobs and all need advertising revenue and Amiga users buying their magazines to continue. Youve got Amiga web promoters who, review Amiga software and hardware and offer excellent Amiga support to users around the world with information and news, they do this because they love doing it and many are non-profit orientated. Youve got hardware development companies like Index and Phase5 who are trying to push the Amigas hardware forward, realising there is a commercial gap to be filled and doing what they do out of inspiration, they depend totally on the Amiga users buying their hardware. Youve got shops and mail order companies around the world who sell hardware and peripherals who advertise in magazines who all rely on Amiga user upgrading their hardware. Youve got shops and mail order companies selling software around the world who advertise in magazines who all rely on Publishers publishing and Amiga users purchasing new software. Youve got dedicated Amiga distribution companies who exist in the minority market who all rely on the Amiga retailers purchasing the Software. Youve got thousands of talented artists, musicians, coders, developers and teams who invest their time, money and lives to create software on their prized platform because its in their blood who all rely on the Amiga Publishers Publishing their creations. Youve got Amiga publishers who publish Amiga products, invest their time, money and lives into producing and marketing Amiga titles and making them available in the market place to retailers and distributors who rely on the Amiga developers developing and the Amiga users purchasing the software. The list goes on and on but the moral of the story and the `simplistic flow chart` dictates that every single related Amiga company and active individual in the Amiga commercial market all rely on each other, and all rely ultimately on one thing to make it all possible! One thing that makes everything else work. One thing to give it a purpose and a way of making a living. One thing to ensure magazines keep printing new issues. One thing to ensure hardware developers continue to progress. One thing to keep all the retail outlets in business. One thing to ensure the publishers remain. One thing to ensure the developers remain. One thing to keep the Amiga Alive! And that one thing is the Amiga user Buying the merchandise, whether its magazines, hardware or software. I cant speak for magazines sales but there are fewer magazines around with extremely low ABCs compared to 94. I cant speak for Hardware sales but I do know we get so many complaints about supporting CDRoms, Graphic Cards, fast CPUs, Hard Drives and even AGA...and why Genetic Species wont be on floppy for the A500 :) However I can speak for software sales and sadly this element has decreased ridiculously over the last 4 years from mail order, retail and wholesale all around the world. They say that hundreds of thousands of Amiga users still use their Amigas, I honestly dont know the number but I do know that Amiga software piracy is rife and with the total Amiga buying user base at its lowest current level, that there is simply no longer enough users left who BUY software to justify the developers and publishers investment. PIRACY ------ A quick note about piracy. It does sadden me to see our latest Amiga releases and other recent Amiga titles available on pirated CD`s. It tears me up to think that people are making money from the illegal duplication instead of my developers, my company, my distributors and all the other hard working people in the Amiga industry who deserve that revenue, however I do not blame the pirates or the piracy for the current Amiga situation. Piracy is rife in any industry whether its, designer jeans, music, video or other computer platforms but because the buying share of these markets is large enough, it can sustain the illegality and still continue. The Amiga market however cannot sustain the piracy due to its size, an Amiga users who uses pirated software cannot really care about the Amigas future so do not enter into the equation but the Amiga users who truly cares about the Amiga`s future make up the users who BUY. USERS WHO BUY ------------- The Amiga user who BUYs is the thing we relied on (and many other companies too). Yes there are allot of you out there who have upgraded your machines, bought your towers, bought your CD drives, bought your Memory and CPU upgrades and bought all the latest software and my hat comes off to you, I understand that you also share the same frustrations as we do and that you have done everything in your power to help keep the Amiga market alive, but unfortunately your numbers are at an all time low right across the scale all around the world. This results in developers, publishers, distributors, retailers and mail order companies all feeling the squeeze and licking their wounds. SOMETHING WE ASSUMED -------------------- From March to December 1997 (10 months) Vulcan prepared for the Amigas future, I know things dont happen overnight but with the Amiga market being at its most critical and at its lowest point ever I knew that if Vulcans dreams and hopes for the Amiga as a commercially successful platform did not materialise in that specific period of time then the Amiga market would never recover. Perhaps its time to share Vulcans vision, I know from my experience and my logic that the only way the Amiga computer can ever make a commercial comeback (and I enforce the word commercial) and for the Amiga to once again have stupendous and vast software development, once again have millions of buying software users, once again have huge publicity with a plethora of magazines, once again have hundreds of publishers, retail outlets, distributors, once again have continued and advanced 3rd party hardware development, once again be the leading computer in technological advancements and as a result once again be the best home computer used throughout the world, it all comes down to one essential ingredient called...................Money. Certainly by licensing the Amiga technology and allowing many companies to build components, motherboards, and complete systems allows the Amigas technology to progress but we must ask ourselves a simple question, who is going to buy this upgraded technology? Certainly not the new computer purchaser in the high street, as for one they cant see it in their shops, would be hard pushed to hear about its availability, cannot see the vast software support to the scale of other platforms and certainly would not be turned on by the end price of the components or systems being sold. So that simply leaves the existing Amiga users and loyal enthusiastic upgraders. The problem is that this number alone is way too small. This means that re-sellers of systems and components need to rely on mail order and specialised outlets and due to small potential sales it requires higher purchase prices which causes the vicious circle creating fewer upgraders. Not even thinking about the small amount of developers and publishers who would support this new technology due to the small amount of potential software sales. You see the idea of technological advancement with PPC, Graphics Cards, 3D Chips, better motherboards faster CPUs, towers etc. is all very well and all something I believe the Amiga needs but the current Amiga community or market is already way too small to make any of this worth while. To me it seems that, the companies and users who really care about the Amigas future and have stuck it out through the worst of times and invested a good number of years of their life into the Amiga and want to build the Amigas future suddenly have the whole responsibility, with all the risk, expense and investment to bring the Amiga back to glory, this is something that will not happen at the current level, no matter how hard Phase5, Index and other hardware companies try, no matter how hard developers push the limits, no matter how hard Publisher promote, no matter how hard the re-sellers sell and no matter how hard the existing users buy, this approach is never going to work due to the size of the existing user base and it will never encourage new users to the platform as there is no cohesion, no distribution, no marketing, no price benefits, no software support and no overall direction for it to become apparent and compete in the world computer industry. MONEY ----- The only way the Amiga has a chance of revival in Vulcans opinion is Money! Money poured into the cream plastic until it spews out the sides, money at the level of Sonys investment into its Playstation. We are talking a complete base Tower computer system, with High resolution Monitor, keyboard, floppy drive, a 24xSpeed CDRom, 1Gig to 10Gig hard drive, a modem, A graphics card with 4Mb on board, 3D Chipset, 32Mb memory, combined 060 CPU with 200Mhz PPC board, Mpeg decoders, sound card, external speakers, (backward compatible only) AGA chipset, new operating system, pre-installed web broswers, Email applications, word processors, spreadsheet and accountancy software, and bundled games software which has all been invested into and acquired for the purpose and finally the word AMIGA on the outside. This is not good enough on its own, no far from it, this needs to manufactured in masses by one company or at least co-ordinated by one company, this needs to be sold to distributors and re-sellers all around the world, this item needs to be available to buy in every shop on the planet, this system need to be backed up by world-wide advertising and marketing promotional campaigns in consumer press, magazines, radio and television adverts, it needs to be launched as an awesome computer with an incredible future that is an alternative the current PC platform and finally this system has to be around the user buying price of 400 to enable it to work. Anything less, anything removed, anything left out and the Amiga has not got a hope in hell of catching up in the ever moving commercial computer market....even the above specs will only work with dedicated software, massive marketing and extremely low price point. No money will be made by the company who initiates these actions, on the contrary money will be lost as the hardware and software would cost far more than the distribution price, but the money spent now will be creating a future goldmine with greater potential than any one can imagine. If this `base level` launch was combined with investment in future hardware advancements, investment in software support to allow developers to excel it would give reasons for publishers, magazines and shops to once again think `Amiga` and this dream will become a reality. Currently the Amiga community has all the people and companies available to make the above system a reality...the thing lacking is the direction and the money. REFLECT ------- So to reflect, Vulcans Amiga vision and Vulcans existence in the commercial Amiga market relies on 2 things which are not making themselves apparent. Throughout the last 10 months our Amiga development and Publishing continues whilst the commercial Amiga market gets worse. If Vulcan continues its recent strategy on the same level of waiting for the Amiga market to recover whilst still investing in a decreasing and more diversified market then it would only be a matter of time before Vulcan Software would cease to exist and only the 2 mentioned things can alter that fate for us and others. As we have invested so much of our lives into the Amiga market, we do not wish or intend to leave it, but rather see it through to its ultimate destiny, as with any good book or film the Amiga market is the similar where you never know whats going to happen next. The only way Vulcan can remain active in the Amiga market and to support its future to the full is if we can stay financially sound, strong in resource and talents and function as a successful business. This is why in 1998 Vulcan plan to develop entertainment titles for the PC and Playstation platforms where there is a combined and large active user base. Certainly we are aware that these markets are saturated but these market do have active distribution network with millions of potential customers. AMIGA TITLE CANCELLATIONS ------------------------- To enable a smooth transition to other platforms we have invested a great deal in our teams and development operations and as a consequence many Amiga development projects have been cancelled namely, Breed2000 CDRom, 3D Games Creator CDRom, JetPilot expansion CDRom and Valhalla IIII CDRom so the teams and individuals can concentrate on other formats and other projects. This is a decision that didnt come easy for us but one that is vital to our future plans that enable us to support the Amiga. AMIGA TITLE CONSEQUENTIAL EFFECTS --------------------------------- As a consequence of the last 10 months the development team responsible for Hellpigs the Multi-CD adventure title has halted development of that title and also decided to move onto other business ventures. AMIGA TITLE PENDING ------------------- Currently the Wasted Dreams development team is waiting another few months to see if anything happens in the Amiga market that would indicate a reason to continue with their development plans. AMIGA TITLE FUTURE RELEASES --------------------------- Genetic Species CDRom is all ready for a February 98 launch and close behind it we will see Desolate CDRom and Hard Target CDRom closely followed by the Genetic Species World Creator CDRom. AMIGA DIRECTION --------------- Our future Amiga development is based on extremely high specifications and will take advantage of Graphics Cards, fast CPUs and 060/PPC boards. We are actively supplying a selection of our developers with PPC boards and along with Explorer 2260 and Maim&Mangle we will see other exciting high specification Amiga titles being developed and published by Vulcan through 1998. PUBLISHING ---------- We will still operate our Amiga Publishing operations and actively sign new Amiga development teams and individuals. As long as there are developers developing for the Amiga we will always be available as a mainstream commercial publisher. OVERVIEW -------- I hope all the above will clarify Vulcans future plans and that it shows that our plans are not carried out in spite or malice but are simply choices that our company is forced to make if we are to continue. Vulcan as with many other Amiga companies have worked extremely hard and you will find no one more loyal to the Amigas future than we `are` and `have been`, but we simply cannot change the Amigas future with all our efforts alone. 2 things are needed if the Amiga is going to survive, 1 thing is in your grasp and the other is the responsibility of the owner of the Amiga. Live Long & Prosper! Paul Carrington BA Director Vulcan Software Limited --------------------------------------------------- (c) 1998 Vulcan Software Ltd. This document must not be altered or extracted, if used in a news context it must remain `as is` with no editing to ensure statement adheres to Vulcans wishes. Kind Regards Paul Carrington BA (Director) Vulcan Software Limited http://www.vulcan.co.uk