Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (04/09/89)
One thing that troubles me more than anything its the
complacency of some important people on the nationwide networks
who fail to confront and challenge a company even if the company
spreads the very rumors and un-truths that the entire ST community
has been fighting for YEARS. You can speculate on the reasons
behind this on your own...
.
Fortunately the ST user base is not taking Spectrum
Holobyte's open letter so lightly. ST users on FNET, UseNet,
GEnie, and elsewhere were already screaming bloody murder about
Spectrum Holobyte's 'open letter'. Now Spectrum Holobyte has
decided to add injury to their previous insult by spreading the
letter among NON-ST specific magazines. I and many other have
been FIGHTING for YEARS for greater recognition for the ST in
magazines such as Computer Gaming World. I and many other ST
owners have written letters to major software developers pleading
with them to re-examine the ST market and see it as it really is
and not base company decisions on unsubstantiated rumors.
.
With the tremendous success of DungeonMaster and many other
ST programs we were finally actually getting somewhere, and now
this. It seems to me that the very people who should now be
speaking out and facing this threat to our user base and community
are simply being blindly lead like so many sheep with blinders on!
.
Let me try one more time to show the flaws in Spectrum
Holobyte's 'open letter'. (Mind you that I have four years of
College level theoretical math and statistics behind me, but all
thats required to under this is a basic high school education...)
.
The crux of Mr. Louie's letter is that since sales of ST
FALCON were running behind that of FALCON versions for other
computers, that somehow piracy was to blame and **ONLY** piracy
was to blame. To back this nonsensical claim Mr. Louie brings in
some sales figures. I took those SAME FIGURES he provided and
viewed them in a PROPER context. Allow me to illustrate (which I
have already done...)
.
Ex: Machine Type Sales of a 'good-selling' game program
-----------------------------------------------------
IBM 40,000-100,000
MacIntosh 20,000- 40,000
ST 15,000
.
Ex: Machine Type Sales over a week period of FALCON
-------------------------------------------------------
Amiga 3x
ST x
.
.
The actual sales figures were not provided, this is
deduced from Mr. Louie's comment that the Amiga version
of FALCON sold twice as many copies of FALCON in six
weeks as ST versions in nine.
.
Now mind you that these figures are not dreamed up, they are
estimates provided by Mr. Louie himself. From these two
'statistics' ALONE Mr. Louie draws the flawed conclusion that ST
sales have been hurt by piracy and that the ST is indeed a 'pirate
machine'! That is completely unfounded and utter nonsense. Were
Mr. Louie to present his claim in a Math class he would get an F.
.
Why? Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to draw ANY conclusions from
sales figures without knowing the market size! A first semester
business student knows that...
.
To get a better picture of what the REAL LIFE situation was I
decided to examine the figures from a more logical and REALISTIC
viewpoint by ADDING market size figures to the figures presented
by Mr. Louie. The figures I stated were also not dreamed up, they
come from reputable sources. I read the New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, Current Notes, ST-Log, STart, MacWorld, MacWeek,
MacUser, InfoWorld, Computer Shopper, ST-Express and many other
business and computer magazines on a regular basis. When I see
generally agreed upon sales figures appear in several different
magazines from several different sources, in addition to financial
reports posted by the major computer companies listing units sold,
I'm sure you'll agree that the figures are generally accurate if
not exact. Those figures are as follows (all figures for the
United States alone.):
.
Atari ST: 350,000
MacIntosh: 1,500,000
MS-DOS: 10,000,000
.
Now lets compare the figures Mr. Louie provided with the the
market size figures to get a MUCH MORE REALISTIC picture of the
situation.
.
Atari ST: 15,000 sales over 350,000 market size
MacIntosh: 20-40,000 " " 1,500,000 " "
MS-DOS: 40-100,000 " " 10,000,000 " "
.
Now lets look at the ratios. Using Mr. Louie's figures lets
change the 20-40,000 MacIntosh figure to 30,000 and the 40-100,000
MS-DOS figure to 60,000. According to a bell curve this will give
the average of a 'good selling' game program's sales figures for
each of these machine types.
.
Atari ST: 15,000 3
------- or -- or 4.2%
350,000 70
.
MacIntosh: 30,000 3
--------- or --- or 4.0%
1,500,000 75
.
MS-DOS: 60,000 3
---------- or --- or 0.6%
10,000,000 500
.
.
(No Amiga figures are given since I don't know the
generally accepted Amiga sales figures.)
.
.
So now does Mr. Louie's claim a program released for the ST
will not sell because of piracy? The answer is DEFINITELY NOT.
In fact it, quite the opposite is true. The odds of an ST owner
buying a new game program are on par and even slightly more likely
than the odds of his MacIntosh counterpart buying one! The ST
piracy stigma has been put to death, and long may it rest in
peace.
.
Now unlike Mr. Louie I understand that there are many other
factors involved. Facts such as MS-DOS machine sales figures
include the vast number of machines bought solely for business
use, that will tend to skew the MS-DOS figure, but mind you that
this does NOTHING to alter the ST figures, they are mutually
exclusive.
.
So what factors will affect the ST figures? How about
advertising. Spectrum Holobyte claims that it spent $312,000
in advertising last year, yet they conveniently fail to mention
that the amount spent specifically ST magazine advertising
was ZERO.
.
Not until the February March issues of this year did ads for
FALCON in appear in ST magazines. The ads which Spectrum Holobyte
claims to have run were placed in Computer Gaming World and other
NON-ST magazines, and given the MS-DOS and Amiga bias of many of
these magazines, few ST owners were reached by these ads. And
the ST owners who did see these ads were not aware that FALCON was
out for the ST NO MENTION of this was made, only the words 'coming
soon'.
.
How about magazine reviews? Again, those did not start
appearing until after January of this year, and yet by this time
Spectrum Holobyte was ALREADY proclaiming poor ST sales due to
piracy!
.
If Spectrum Holobyte finds the same slow level of sales of ST
FALCON six months from now then they *may* have a case. But so
far the evidence is running against this 'worst case' scenario
ever happening. Spectrum Holobyte listed sales of around 2,000 in
late January, yet the disks which I just received are number 8,663
with advertising for ST FALCON being just a month old. Tevex, a
national software mail order firm reports that sales of ST FALCON
are running at a 'good clip' and ST WORLD, a leading European St
magazine lists ST FALCON at the top of its sales charts beating
out many fantastic European game titles.
.
I hope this 'open letter' gets passed around so that it may
undo some of the damage Spectrum Holobyte has done to the ST
community. Unfortunately I seriously doubt this rebuttal will
ever reach the computer owners and developers that were blessed
with Spectrum Holobyte's letter in the issues of Computer Gaming
World and other magazines.
.
Peter Szymonik
Xorg@cup.portal.com