Will the Amiga ever regain it's footing in games?

[gary_c]

As for Amiga, Inc. itself trying to rally game developers to code for AmigaOS, the company is kind of at cross purposes on this issue, with both the proprietary AmigaOS (loosely defined, with Hyperion actually in charge at this stage) and the cross-platform AmigaAnywhere as products. In view of the fact that the potential AmigaAnywhere market is many orders of magnitude larger than the AOS market, I imagine Amiga, Inc. will continue to put its efforts into getting games and other apps written for AmigaAnywhere. If and when AmigaDE/Anywhere merges into or is hosted by AOS, then the Amiga platform will get these games, too. But I don't see how it'd be in Amiga's best interests to push for AmigaOS content ahead of AmigaAnywhere.

Really, the Amiga platform would have brighter prospects if Amiga, Inc. itself wasn't fielding a competitor in the form of AmigaAnywhere. I know we like to think of AmigaAnywhere eventually bringing content to the proprietary platform, but the other side of the coin is that people wanting that content can just enjoy it on their current (non-Amiga) platforms; and developers who do hear the Amiga appeal can write for the largest possible audience by targetting AmigaAnywhere.

Any apps (including games) written for the AmigaOS platform will be labors of love, in my opinion, not commercially motivated endeavors. Of course, given the sales record of AmigaAnywhere content so far, the Amiga platform may indeed turn out to be the richest market for Amiga, Inc., which is sad indeed.

-- gary_c

[gary_c]

There's already a backlit-display GameBoy Advance in development, so Amiga wouldn't have an advantage here, since the new GBA will hit the shelves before anything Amiga (/partners) could produce. Also, a number of old Amiga games are already being ported to GBA (Cinemaware, etc.) so, if you had the rights to an old game like these, which would you rather target, a gazillion GameBoys -- a proven platform -- or a fledgling Amiga handheld with arguably poorer specs?

Keep in mind that Amiga, Inc. itself doesn't hold the rights to any of those old games. And in fact the original source code has been lost in many cases.

And we're also back to the issue of AmigaOS or AmigaAnywhere for projects like this. I'm sure whenever anybody at Amiga, Inc. thinks of "handheld," they think of AmigaAnywhere. It's custom-made for this kind of application, whereas AmigaOS isn't. So, yes, there could be "Amiga" handhelds at some point in the future, but they'll have AmigaAnywhere software and so won't benefit the AmigaOS desktop at all other than, perhaps, keeping the Amiga, Inc. phone lines paid for.

-- gary_c (not really intending to be the voice of doom)