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1993-09-27
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Programmer's Newsletter - November 1993
Copyright 1993 Public (software) Library
1. The Future of Shareware/Software?
Someone asked on the ASP forum on CompuServe for people's views of the
future of software distribution. Here was my response:
I think that the "new trend" closest on the horizon is the move to CD-ROMs.
Shareware CDs have been around a long time, but the industry has only recently
entered the stage where drives are included with many systems and the price of
adding on a drive is quickly approaching the $150-and-under range. (In fact,
if you deduct the value of bundled CDs, they are already in that range.)
I expect that within the next couple of years, a basic CD-ROM drive will be
available for $75 or less.
In response to this trend, my company, Public (software) Library, recently
began issuing a monthly CD-ROM for under $20 (on a subscription basis) with all
the new programs received during the last month, which has been running from
550 to 700 programs a month.
As subscription volumes increase, prices will drop, and I expect that before
long, "slapped-together" versions of what we are doing at PsL will be available
for less than $10. CDs with compilations of "older" (than one month) programs
are already being marketed by other companies for under $10.
What impact this will have on the shareware market? First of all, I think
registrations will go up in total as people are no longer spending so much
money just to get the shareware versions and as people are exposed to programs
on CD which they might not have seen otherwise.
On the other hand, the registrations for individual authors may go down. Some
of the largest vendors (in $ sales) have the smallest selection of software.
Authors fortunate enough to make it into these catalogs have little competition
for their programs. With CDs, ALL authors get a chance to get their programs to
the public, so it stands to reason that registrations will be spread over a
greater number of programs.
Secondly, CD distribution should put a serious crimp in rack vendors, shareware
"vending machines", etc, along with many shareware diskette vendors. Why should
people pay $2-$5 per disk for one pd/shareware program when they can get
hundreds or even thousands of programs for the cost of a few shareware
diskettes?
Sure, there will continue to be people without CD drives, just as there are
still a small percentage of users who only have 1 or 2 360k floppy drives and
no hard disk, but I can't see them keeping any major shareware vendors in a
thriving condition.
Multimedia is no longer new, but graphics, speech, music, sound effects, etc.,
all take a lot of disk space. At PsL we see many, many programs now which take
3 or 4 diskettes (or more). This trend is only going to get increase. We see
retail games now which come on 20 or 30 disks. Can such monster games in
shareware be far behind?
Several years ago, PsL started charging a low, flat fee for multi-disk programs
($6.99/set for an average of 4 disks) and for sets ("MegaDisk Sets") of similar
or related programs, but other major shareware vendors charge $3-$5 for each
disk in a set. How long will people be willing to pay $12-$20 for the shareware
version of ONE program like PC-FILE or PC-WRITE when they can get the same
version of that and hundreds or thousands more programs on a CD for the same
price or less?
Another technolog which is lurking around the corner and which could have a
profound effect on shareware is in-home distribution via cable.
I've read that when cable companies have 500+ channel cable connections in
place, they will be able to download software to users in a flash. You could
view screen shots, write-ups, etc, on screen, push a button, and get the
software downloaded to your computer via your cable hookup.
IBM and BlockBuster have developed a system which also produces software
packages on demand from a central computer and which is expected to reach into
homes at some point.
I still think that CD-ROM's have a fighting chance against such technology
because you have thousands of programs in the palm of your hand.
Next subject: "How much more sophisticated can shareware become?" - Infinitely!
We've both got a long way to go. Speech control of computers is in its infancy.
The number of programs which try to learn from the user in any significant way
are virtually nil. How about games which learn from the human opponent?
And once again, this gets us back to the fact that the more sophisticated
software is, the larger it is.
2. Return the Keyboard, Please
A set of games we reviewed this month had excellent VGA graphics and good
implementations of original ideas.
However, when the game was over, our reviewers found their keyboard typeomatic
rates maxed out, requiring them to save and unload everything and reboot to
get the keyboard back to normal.
If you speed up the keyboard, please put it back the way you found it when you
are doneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. (There it goes again!) <g>
3. Software Excitement!, which had a very good, although very small, catalog
has gone bankrupt. Unfortunately, they were also providing a registration
service for some authors. (Many of whom are now scrambling to get with PsL.)
People used to think that shareware vendors were raking in the dough at the
expense of poor programmers who were doing all the work.
As most people realize these days, not only is running a good shareware
distribution business a lot of work, it is very costly and business failures
are not rare.
Software Labs was quoted in a trade magazine as saying they expect $20 million
in sales in 1993. Big riches, right? Well later in the article they also said
that they will mail 20 million catalogs in 1993.
You can take a guess at what a good sized four-color catalog costs to print
and to mail and figure how much of those riches really make it to their bottom
line. (And catalogs are just one part of a vendors total expenses.)
Also, with those kinds of expenses, it only takes a bad quarter or two to put
a company in the dumpster.
Public Brand was another company that was riding high for a while, even making
Inc. Magazine's annual list of fast-growing companies in America. But then
sales dropped and PBS sold out to Ziff-Davis.
Shareware authors who get into the big time are not immune to financial
disaster either. Two shareware pioneers - Button (PC-File) and Wallace
(PC-Write) have suffered financial disasters.
And then there's IBM... At PsL, we like to say: "Well, we may not be rich, but
we made billions more than IBM did last year." <g>
So if you ever get discouraged by what you consider low registrations, you may
want to look at the bright side.