🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan Moore writes:

>	"Financial justification" means it may not be worth trying to
>sell either version 3.0 or Empire II on the ST.  The last time I talked
>to Mark about sales the ST was the lowest of the three machines it is
>currently out on (ST, Amiga and PClones).  That's pretty bad when the
>ST version came out about a year before the Amiga and PC versions.

>	Given the limited programmer resources of a small company
>(Interstel isn't very big) they may not be able to afford to port a
>program to a machine where sales will be relatively low (less than
>10,000 copies).  Instead they will spend time porting the program to a
>machine where they expect high sales or developing new programs for a
>machine where software sales are high.  Mark and the other programmers
>that work with or for Interstel have to make a living.  Spending 3 to 6
>months porting a program to a machine where less than 10,000 copies
>will sell isn't how you do it.  (10,000 copies means about $15,000 to
>$20,000 to the author, which sounds good till you realize that it may
>take 2 years for that many copies to sell.)  Mark and I both used to
>write software for the ST and 8 bit Atari's, and neither one of us
>could afford to continue.  Mark started writing games for more
>profitable computers (PClones), I got a real job where I'm paid every 2
>weeks instead of every 3 to 9 months.

        If you were trying to port Empire to some machine that was 
strange and new, I would agree.  Porting Empire II wouldn't make sense
considering the low volume of sales in the Atari arena.  However,
the Atari is Mark's "ole stompin' grounds."  Will it really take more
than 2 or 3 months to port it over?

	I don't know about the rest of you Atari guys, but I'm beginning
to look just a little bit closer at those clones.  I'll be walking
around the electronics section at some department store and there's 
some "Clones 'R' Us" computer for $799.99999999999... and I start
thinking "Gee, imagine having a choice of 14,000 games without driving
more than a mile from my home.  Imagine getting on any one of 17,000
BBS's with programs for my machine without dialing long distance..."

	Well, I'm still hangin' in there with my old Atari but Dan's
analysis makes you wonder if its just a matter of time before the 
Atari ST finds itself in that special place reserved for obsolete
computers whose architecture was left behind.  There you'll find
the TRS-80, the Commodore 64 and many other fine machines.

							  Ron Abramson
							  rona@hpdml92!hpdml93!hplabs



	"Does anyone remember the Atari ST computer?"

	"Yeah, my uncle used to have one.  That was the one with the 
times...