Vulcan Software have released a Press Release which states their plans for the future and their views on the future of the Amiga and on Piracy which remains within the Amiga Games Market.
Although the statement written by Paul Carrington, Managing Director of Vulcan Software is very long it is important for readers to read through this and perhaps you will come to understand more about Vulcan Software and the Amiga and what has been happening over the last few years with them both - for they have been talking to both Amiga Inc and Amiga International.
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STATEMENT TO THE AMIGA COMMUNITY From VULCAN SOFTWARE LIMITED
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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`...
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.
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.
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HOW TO SURVIVE WITH NO COMMERCIAL RETAIL MARKET
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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.
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!
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.
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! :)
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.
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.
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.
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 Visit their web site at :-
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amigaflame.demon.co.uk