NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/cbm/206

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.1 KB

Path: news.paonline.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: [e-mail] (Doug Cotton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: C64 CDROM
Date: Thu, 04 Jan 1996 19:32:40 -0500
Organization: Creative Micro Designs, Inc.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4c78qf$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] wrote:

> The Reason the C64 market has virtually died is because all the software
> companies (Except for a few small ones) have moved onto bigger machines
> which can actually make them a lot more money. They simply moved there
> resources onto systems that will make them 10 times for income. It is
> the same with everything, as technology improves the companies have to
> move along with it or get swept aside. Piracy is not the problem, the
> systems the major companies have moved onto (Consoles,PC's etc) are
> having there software distributed more than they ever did on the C64 or
> any other old machine.

I don't agree. Piracy played a big role in companies leaving the 64
market. I know -- I worked for one that left for that reason, and talked
to many others that did so as well. Piracy was far and away too rampant in
the 64 market, and still is today. We estimate that there are roughly two
million C64's still in use. Out of that number, about 40,000 actually buy
products, with an even smaller percentage of that being software sales.

From our own company's standpoint, software makes up only about 10% of our
overall sales. That's sad. You have to know that piracy is playing a large
role in making that such a small percentage, and that without piracy the
amount of software sold should easily be four to five times the current
amount (if not a LOT MORE). Since software is so easy to illegally
distribute, we've kept our main focus on hardware -- and that's the only
way we've managed to survive.

> I believe there was 1 titles released here in the UK last year (1995)
> commercially. It is only small companies (Like yourselves?), Public
> Domain and Scene programmers that still support the machine. But that is
> NOT enough to keep the C64 an active part of todays market.

I have no doubt that there has been little in the way of new software in
your country in the last year, but I think you've got things backwards.
Again, no-one is going to make new software if they can't sell it. There
are plenty of users out there to make selling a reasonable amount
feasible, but users won't plop down $20 or $30 for a single new package
when they know it will be pirated and available for the cost of
downloading in a month or two.

> The fact is
> that the C64 (No matter how great a machine it is) is yesterdays
> technology and nobody is interested in supporting it any longer, except
> a few small companies.

Your opinions as to the viability of the technology are your own.
Regardless, there's a large number of people still using the 64, and if
even half of them bought one new software package a year, it would be
enough to entice several companies into producing that software. Companies
don't walk away from an opportunity to make a profit.

> May I ask if you guys release software for other
> machines than the C64? Obviously you do or you would not be around
> still.

Everything we do is specific to the 64/128. If all we did was make
software, we'd have left this market long ago.

> There has not been a real market for the c64 for over a year, and
> that is down to the large companies dropping the machine in favour of
> better technology which will provide a better profit margin.

Again, some of these companies would still be here if their products sold
in reasonable numbers.

> Maybe if
> Escom actually decide to start shipping the C64 again worldwide and puts
> money into getting some software companies interested in the system
> again there will be hope. But I can NOT see that happening.

There's obviously no reason to believe Escom will do anything with the
64/128. While there are many things they COULD do that would be
profitable, we doubt they have the resolve to devote any of their
resources to such projects. The way the China deal fell through should
serve as a good example of this. While Escom is perfectly willing to
license someone else to produce 64's, they will not put any of their own
money into such a venture.


Doug Cotton
E-mail: [e-mail]


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