The past and the year ahead
At that time I was working for a CAD/CAM software company and spent most of my working time writing specialist software for AutoCAD on the PC. The Amiga was very guilty of opening my eyes to the fact that there were other platforms out there capable of competing with the PC's in areas that the PC's were thought to excel in. Then came the release of the A4000 and A1200, a home computer much in the vain of the A500/+ range, only this little baby was as good as a pc if not better in several respects. It sold in high numbers and looked set to finally break into the area's that the OCS/ECS Amiga's had failed to until Commodore for some reason went mad and released the CD32 to a console market dominated by the big boys at SEGA and Nintendo. Against all odds it actually almost succeeded but in the true spirit of brave ideas failed to make any great or lasting impact and brought about the inevitable demise of Commodore.
This left us, the Amiga owners in a bit of a dilemma. Did we stick with the Amiga and wait to see if someone would jump in and rescue it or did we jump ship to the PC or the Apple Mac. Unfortunately large numbers of Amiga owners and developers jumped ship at the first sign of trouble and left behind them what was left of the once strong Amiga community. Eventually a German PC manufacturer called ESCOM did buy the rights to the Amiga, but they also bit the dust soon after and it looked as if the Amiga would surely die with them. Gateway, another German PC manufacturer, then appeared as if from nowhere and quickly signed up the Amiga and began making promises and plans for a new Amiga, the Amiga NG, to be released late 1999, early 2000, but as of yet all that has been seen is a lot of words, a lot of promises and an ever changing policy.
It's now February 1999 and as yet there are no November Boxes as promised, no sign of WB3.5 (still being developed), and no sign of the market picking up (Vulcan are the latest in a long line of Amiga Developers/Publishers to switch to the PC). What can we do to change this trend. What can we do as a community to promote the Amiga and get people to stand up and take notice. How can we get Amiga Technologies and International to realise that we need more than promises and plans.
Well, first we must put our differences aside and stop fighting amongst ourselves, the community needs unity in order to achieve anything. We have to realise that the Amiga is no longer the great Machine it once was, it is badly in need of new Software and Hardware. We need AI or AT to help us out, by paying for rights to certain so-called industry standard software as too much is now expected of the Shareware programmers. For example, Shockwave, MS indeo Video, and Real Video are standard formats used by almost every platform on the planet except the Amiga. AT/AI should be working to get these formats made available to us sooner, rather than later. We have put our faith in AI/AT it's time they returned that faith with something that we can actually use. However, we the Amiga community are not blameless in this, it is thought that a large percentage of Amiga owners use unexpanded 1200's, this is no longer acceptable, and is guilty of holding the Amiga back. The aged 020 and to an extent the 030 are no longer capable of providing adequate performance to compete with the ever increasing speeds offered on other platforms. To be honest I would like to see the community on a whole taking the PPC route as at the moment this appears to be the most sensible and quickest route to catching up with other platforms. As for people using anything slower than an 020 I won't even comment. People will argue, however, that it's too expensive to upgrade from 020 to PPC. Well what do you expect, you are upgrading from a 1992 chip to a modern processor, if the new Amiga had been PPC would you still have said it was too expensive.
The PPC based Amiga's are now in there fledgling stage and software support is slowly beginning to grow, this could be speeded up if more users were available to sell to, it would also be a great leap forward in bringing the Amiga back onto an even playing field once again.
While on the subject of Amiga Hardware prices, I would like you all to consider this. Tornado PPC costs £179.95, the equivalent package, Cinema 4d, on the PC cost in excess of £900, the same applies to most productivity software, the Hardware may be expensive but the software is far cheaper. The Aminet has some amazing software available for free or for a small charge, a lot of the packages would be sold on the PC or the MAC at full price and probably without the constant free upgrades and level of support on offer. So as far as I am concerned that argument holds no water. It is an excuse used by people who do not wish to upgrade. The harsh reality is that if the community continues to stand still, so will the Amiga.
What else can we do. Well we can encourage Pirates to stop dealing in Amiga warez and encourage people to only use official, licensed software. This may be an old and repeated subject but it is probably the one that hurts the Amiga more than any other platform. We simply do not have the user base to cushion the blow of piracy. The pirate's always argue that it happens on other platforms, why should the Amiga be any different. I'll tell you why, if a piece of Amiga software is used illegally it provides yet another reason for Software companies to hightail it to another platform. For example, Shadow of the Third Moon PPC has now been cancelled because of the effect piracy had on the sales of the 68k version, this has to stop now. If you can't afford the legal version of a piece of software then don't use it, period. Support Amiga publishers and programmers because without them we won't have a Platform to rebuild.
Now 1999 stretches out in front of us and who knows what it holds. Several new games have been promised, new hardware has been revealed and WB3.5 and the November/February/March/Whenever Box is still to come. This could be an exciting time for the Amiga if we allow it to happen, if we don't and continue down the road we are currently on then the end could come a lot sooner than any of us expect. I want the Amiga to succeed, we all need the Amiga to succeed, it is truly in our own hands to make sure it succeeds, and if it doesn't at least we can look at ourselves in the mirror and say that we gave it our best shot.
Slarti. Feb. 1999