| From: | Matt Sealey |
| Date: | 22 Jun 2001 at 12:18:39 |
| Subject: | Re: Whinge,whinge!!!! |
Hello Don
On 22-Jun-01, you wrote:
>>> Amiga have produced product, the famed party pack. (Whether it is any
>>> good or not is another matter).
>>
>> Does anyone actually have it?
>>
>> May I remind you that the Party Pack is no more than a pre-release of
>> the AmigaDE software with a good few important features stripped and
>> a rather crappy and not-so-crystal-clear deal attached to make up for
>> it.
>
> A year's updates is included, which will take users from pre-release to
> full release. The Party Pack DE is very much a pre-release. It does
> include the Koan software.
Right.. okay.. so if I handed out beta software and made you pay for it,
you'd be pleased as long as I promised to mail you updates to it?
This argument is raging in the games industry atm: companies are all
too fond of letting a game hit some level of maturity and then releasing
it - and then releasing patch after patch after patch. Tribes 2 is a big
example. They did it on Tomb Raider 3 on the Playstation - how do you
release a patch for a bug which means you CANNOT PASS A CERTAIN
LEVEL (how do you NOT find that bug in testing?) when there is no
mechanism for patching?
The X-Box is going to make this worse.
No, sorry Don, if I'm going to buy something it'd better be of release
quality - that is, fully featured and of a modicum of stability.
The AmigaDE 1.0 was a farce: a jumped up Tao SDK with a boing
sticker, the reasoning being that we should take the chance to
"learn VP coding". Okay.. is there not a C compiler for Tao? Why
should I buy $100 of development kit for a package which is basically
a crap gcc port, and a bare-bones graphics subsystem?
The AmigaDE 1.1 is no less a farce: a jumped up Tao SDK with
*AUDIO SUPPORT*. Wow.. audio support for.. a Soundblaster card
that costs another $100. And what.. some new GUI buttons? It's
odd that they're shipping this Party Pack now, yet they have NOT
released a single specification of the featureset of either the pack,
or the pack as it will be when it reaches a "full release".
I wonder how long it will take them to get to a "full release". Dare
I say about a year? Oops. That's the "year of updates" down the
pan, isn't it? ;)
> That does not constitute "product".
>
> If X hands over some money, and Y gives him a CD and a book, I reckon
> that is "product". The quality of the contents is irrelevant, and a
> matter of opinion.
If X hands over some money, and Y gives him a giftwrapped box with
no certain contents, when X is simply buying from Y out of loyalty
and to get a "deal" on some other product which is nowhere to be seen,
I reckon that is bullshit.
> However, the main purpose of this offer was not to bring in cash but to
> gauge interest. A finished consumer version of the DE is to be released
> later this year.
Gauge INTEREST? How can you gauge interest on a product (the DE) when
you splash discount deals over it? Are you gauging interest in the DE, or
interest in Amiga? Or is it not interest at all, but a measure of gullibility?
Why not put an ad in some place that people OTHER than the Amiga Zealot
Task Force (otherwise known as TeamAMIGA) may see it - where we can
get competant, unbiased developers that AREN'T deep inside Fleecy Moss'
crevice?
If Amiga want to make a "convergence company" out of the current
Amiga Community, then they can - I won't stop them, but I resent the
fact that you're trying to say that pandering to a bunch of certified
idiots and using them as cheap guinea pig test subjects for your
nefarious schemes is somehow "the best plan".
How about Amiga release something REAL for once?
Thanks
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