🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23991@cup.portal.com> Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes:
>Maybe you're easily satisfied with the three or four Atari magazines that
>are left in the market...   unfortunately, you've got to cross ANALOG and
>ST-LOG off your list, since Atari Corp's capricious treatment of the US
>marketplace has forced ANALOG out of business after many years of trying to
>support Atari.

I don't think you can really blame Atari for ANALOG's problems.  (I thought
someone recently said here that they've simply gone to a "one title, mostly
ST-oriented" magazine.  I don't think they're dead, are they?)  I talked to
the people at ANALOG several times when they were based out this'a'way a few
years ago, and they seemed rather, well, disinterested in growing or taking
any risks at all.

Tom Hudson, who was technical editor at ANALOG for some time, wrote a good
deal of DEGAS while there (I was told).  I was given the impression that Tom
had tried to interest ANALOG in promoting DEGAS.  They weren't interested,
Tom left, and DEGAS quickly went on to become a best-seller for Batteries
Included (who has since folded, true -- but at the time the ST market looked
a lot brighter).

The editors at ANALOG also pointed to the START/ANTIC software line with
great derision, saying that "people have tried to interest us in this sort
of thing, but ANALOG won't do it" (I suppose because of the questionable
morality of reviewing your own wares, and I must admit I think START has an
abysmal record on that score).  Well, laugh -- but I'm sure ANTIC makes
money doing so, and promotes their magazine with every software sale.  It
needn't have been handled as badly at ANALOG.

One day they mentioned that Optimized Systems Software was "shopping around
for a buyer for their ST product-line", and had (they said) "contacted us".
At the time, Personal Pascal was selling at least middling well.  You guessed
it -- "not interested".

Who knows -- perhaps they did the prudent thing every time.  I suppose it's
easy for me to say they should've taken more risks when it wasn't MY $$$
at stake.  And none of the magazines can do much about the crappy U.S. ST
market, I know.  But I can't imagine "getting ahead" without taking a few
gambles.  They were nice people, but they seemed more interested in going
to Star Trek conventions & talking SF than in the future of their magazine.
Just my opinion, and based on happenings in the 1986-87 time-frame.  I've no
idea what ANALOG is doing these days, though I wish them well.  I was sad to
see them move out of Worcester.

>The point is, magazine publishing is NOT an altruistic profession.. Atari
>Corp is playing with people's lives and livelihoods with their game playing.
>Who can afford to support a company like Atari when it becomes a decision
>between blindly supporting Atari, or eating..?

Well, ANTIC has begun moving into the Amiga market, but I don't see them
dropping Atari coverage ( don't know whether to :-( or to :-).  ANTIC is
SOOOOO obscenely gung-ho Atari! that I took everything I read therein with
large salt-blocks (the kind farmers put out for their cattle) anyway.
My own favorite U.S. ST magazine (never read any from Europe) was CURRENT
NOTES; the "newsletter" from a Virginia-based Atari user's group (WAACE?).
Much more objectivity than START/ANTIC/ANALOG, I thought.  It wasn't easy
to find around here, though.

I wonder; do people revile T.I. for the failure of the 99/4 to grab the home
market?  Or Exidy for the Sorcerer?  Or Kodak for the disc-camera?  Someday,
I'll bet someone does a thesis of market-psychology with the Atari ST as a
case-study...

--
>>"Aaiiyeeee!  Death from above!"<< | Steve Rehrauer, rehrauer@apollo.hp.com
   "Flee, lest we be trod upon!"    | The Apollo Computer Division of H.P.