xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (04/22/91)
njacobs@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov writes: > I have seen estimates that the PC market worldwide is about 85% > IBM-compatible, about 10% Mac, with the others negligible. The other markets may be negligible in percentage terms, but think before you ignore them as a games market. While the IBM-compatible and Mac entries indeed dominate the installed base, the games market for the IBM-compatible machines is extremely competitive, and a dandy living can be made in one of the niche markets. With 40,000 unit sales a reasonable goal for a successful game, the Amiga market, with 2 million installed base and rising rapidly, only needs a 2% market penetration for success. The Atari market is probably similar. The Mac market, another poster notes, seems to have a dearth of _good_ games, and (if 10% is accurate), an installed base of 5,000,000 units is a juicy target. My only guess for why so few excellent games exist on the Macs is the rumored difficulty of fighting ones way past the operating system's barriers to successful code. Somewhere in there is a moral lesson; sooner or later, software sales drive hardware sales, so if you want your machine to sell, make software for it easy to write. On that basis the NeXT, with its rumored incredibly easy to program applications interface, may be a market to watch for games programmers, even with its current laughably small market share. For one thing, if you have the money to spend, it might be a great platform on which to _prototype_ a game rapidly, even if it is not the eventual target machine, and if you use your sales success in the target market to fund selling your prototype to the NeXT market (quite possibly for no profit but the prospects of future profit) and thus drive up NeXT sales, there may be a stronger NeXT market the next time you go back. And, for at least a little while, the existing NeXT market is going to be _very_ hungry for games, so you might surprise yourself and do better than break even. I've cross-posted and sent followups to comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, as this kind of PC comparision discussion tends to go downhill rapidly from this point, and that group is designed for the usual breast pounding responses a posting like this elicits. Anyone with a non-defensive and non-abusive comment is free to answer back into rec.games.programmer instead, of course. /// It's Amiga /// for me: why Kent, the man from xanth. \\\/// settle for <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> \XX/ anything less? -- Convener, COMPLETED comp.sys.amiga grand reorganization.
awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) (04/22/91)
In article <1991Apr21.190034.7785@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >The Mac market, another poster notes, seems to have a dearth of _good_ >games, and (if 10% is accurate), an installed base of 5,000,000 units is >a juicy target. My only guess for why so few excellent games exist on >the Macs is the rumored difficulty of fighting ones way past the >operating system's barriers to successful code. I'll tell you why the Mac doesn't have the game market other machines have. There are basically 2 reasons. First, Apple has actively discouraged thinking of the Mac as a game machine. The other reason is that the installed color base hasn't been that large. Both of these things have changed in the last year or so. As far as excellent games go, I like Falcon, Vette!, Harpoon, Sim City, and SimEarth on the Mac. We also have icky ports of things like Curse of the Azure Bonds.
farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) (04/23/91)
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >With 40,000 unit sales a reasonable goal for a successful game, the Amiga >market, with 2 million installed base and rising rapidly, only needs a >2% market penetration for success. The Atari market is probably similar. The Atari market is much smaller, even in Europe, and dropping fast. SSI for example, will do no more Atari ST projects. >The Mac market, another poster notes, seems to have a dearth of _good_ >games, and (if 10% is accurate), an installed base of 5,000,000 units is >a juicy target. My only guess for why so few excellent games exist on >the Macs is the rumored difficulty of fighting ones way past the >operating system's barriers to successful code. It's a different world. The installed base of Macs is relatively large. The installed base of Macs which are a market for games is incredibly small - almost all Macs are being used for "serious" work, and their owners are not in the least bit interested in games. Mac games don't sell - Mac owners don't buy them. Simple as that. >On that basis the NeXT, with its rumored incredibly easy to program >applications interface, may be a market to watch for games programmers, >even with its current laughably small market share. Not a hope in hell. Small market share plus smaller percentage of machines devoted to (even partly) "recreational" use means truly miniscule market potential. -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.us