It seems a paradoxical situation for the Amiga at the moment. On the one hand, the future is looking great - at least compared to recent years. A new owner with money that wants the Amiga to succeed, PPC, finally new Amigas, great games that require more than a 2MB A1200...
But on the other hand, things couldn't be worse. Users still leaving the platform, only two Amiga UK magazines remaining, shrinking games sales. Looking at the PC side of things, the machines are everywhere. Low end Pentiums for silly prices, loads of users, loads of software, and most people wouldn't think that other platforms existed. How can the Amiga compete?
How can any other platform compete?
Indeed, we mustn't reduce it to a PC vs Amiga situation. When considering if the Amiga will ever be popular again, we must ask if any platform (existing, or new) can take on the might of the PC.
Well, what is so wrong with the PC? Not everyone's reasons will be the same of course, but for the majority of people, it will be Windows, and to a lesser extent, the architecture. After all, there's nothing particularly wrong with the Pentium processor, and as for PCI cards - this is the sort of thing we want to see in the Amiga!
We could all 'ok, the Amiga's dead', and go and buy a PC. Mac users could do the same, not to mention anyone with BeBoxes, Archimedes, Unix boxes, Ataris. People with PCs running OS/2 or Unix could switch happily to Windows.
Mission One complete for Bill Gates; 100% market share of operating systems. What next - 100% market share of all software?
Ten years down the road, we have super advanced computers, but the available OSes, and all the software, is produced by one company. It doesn't matter if we're talking desktop computers, workstations, laptops, palmtops, wristtops (as I'm sure we will soon have), interactive TV set-top box thingys. While the hardware comes from a multitude of companies, the software will all come from... guess. (Actually, regarding hardware, I wouldn't be surprised if the CPUs are all made by another one particular company...)
Of course, this isn't the reason why people buy (or don't buy) a particular computer - it's not up to them to prevent such things from happening. I keep my Amiga because I like using it. But such a future scenario looks very likely - and that is not a good thing.
Could the Amiga make a comeback? If it is to, we must realise that this is not a short term process - there is no 'quick fix' solution for Gateway 2000 to follow. This may have been possible in part for Escom - produce an uprated A1200, for example, and begin development into PPC Amigas - but now, the Amiga situation has grown worse, and the PC technology more advanced.
Basically, despite the recent developments in the Amiga world, sales of Amiga games are still falling. As a result, they have had to reduce their Amiga production, and will be moving into PC and Playstation game development. It is not all bad though; the games they will be developing for the Amiga will be extremely high end (ie, PPC, graphics card, etc), which can only be a good thing.
The letter talked of how a new Amiga is needed to have any chance of competing. Well, we must remember that this doesn't involve lots of time and money developing a completely up to date chipset, and wondering if an '060 can be made to compete with a 300MHz Pentium II. Thanks to licensing, we have already seen new motherboards, but although better than previous Amiga technology, they are still way off the latest PC.
But hopefully, it won't be long before we see a board similar to the BoXeR and DCE one, but with PPC and 680x0 sockets on the main board, and also PCI slots instead of Zorro. A new version of the AmigaOS as is promised should do nicely, too. We now have an Amiga that can be made just as modern and capable as the latest PC.
The next question is price. On the one hand, most parts will be standard components, and just as cheap as in a PC. The only problem is with the motherboard. Having to have 680x0 and the AGA chipset additional will increase costs, and also, there won't be the economies of scale compared to a PC motherboard to keep costs down.
Such cost increases would make producing a £400 Amiga just out of the question - but one at £1500 quite reasonable.
For this is another point - the Amiga is not a £400 machine. The A1000 was released at 1500 pounds (and think in 1985's money). The A500 was released at 700 pounds in 1987; the 400 pound price point was a more recent event.
On the other hand, PCs are reaching that price point. You can now get low end Pentiums with reasonable graphics card for less than 500 pounds; the point is they aren't produced at this price of course, rather, they are old stock being sold off to make way for newer machines. True, they will be outdated by these new machines straight away, but the fact remains; there is no way a new Amiga could compete at these low prices.
At the high end though, it becomes easier. Top of the range PPC Amigas with the latest graphics card could compete with PCs, given the chance. Maybe more expensive still, but nowhere near the price gap we have at the moment.
Sure, the average man isn't going to buy one, just like he isn't going to buy a G3 Mac, but think long term. To begin with, there are the upgrading Amiga users who would have otherwise reluctantly bought a PC. We also have the Amiga's niche markets. The Amiga is still used for video, 3D, animation, multimedia, even though there is only the overpriced A4000T to do the job. A much better valued new Amiga (not to mention the possibility of specialised Amiga clones produced specifically for that particular purpose), would sell to these markets.
Long term, the Amiga can grow, feeding off these niche markets, and the remaining users (who no longer have to worry about the least expensive way to upgrade their A1200). In time, we could see software companies returning, prices becoming more in line with those of PCs, and a more advanced OS ready more than ever to show up Windows - it is then we can look forward to the rebirth of the Amiga.
Returning to the Vulcan letter; they talked of producing PC and Playstation games, whilst still producing some Amiga games, but suggested these would be different games. Why not produce the same games for both the Amiga and PC (or Playstation). They stated they would be producing very high end for the Amiga, and such a specification is more than up to the job of competing with a Playstation (actually, a PPC Amiga with CybervisionPPC would kick Playstation butt...)
Okay, agreed - there isn't enough demand to make producing Amiga games worthwhile, but what about ports, or producing multiplatform? You no longer have to refund the development costs, only the costs of porting.
Take a look at the Mac; I have no idea how the commercial Mac games scene is doing (if at all), but you get plenty of PC ports (Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, etc). If it is profitable on the Mac, surely it would be on the Amiga? It doesn't matter how many Macs are used in desktop publishing, or in schools and universities or whereever - it is home users who buy games, and them only. Sure, the average Mac owner tends to have a higher specification machine than an Amiga owner (particularly concerning PPC), but even so; in fact, Amiga games sales are still above those of the Mac.
Thankfully, ClickBOOM have seen the oppurtunities offered by porting - and games companies are letting them port their games. I only hope that there is demand for them, and they continue to port games to the Amiga.
There is another benefit of porting as opposed to developing - you can select the best PC games available, rather than risking producing a poor product. To be honest, none of Vulcan's games particularly caught my attention. In fact, no Amiga games of the last two years or so got me interested enough to buy it (I only got AB3D2 because it came with my accelerator board) - except Myst.
And that isn't a one off - plenty of games in their Conversion Wish List I would have loved to buy (Civilization 2, particularly). Okay, some of the forthcoming 'home grown' Amiga games have caught my eye (Foundation, especially), but I believe porting games has far more potential for the Amiga at the moment, at least.
Mark