CommodoreUSA CEO Interview Answers

[Nameless]

I first want to give Barry credit for answering all (or most) of the questions. He did seem to put some thought into his answers.

The problem is, none of those answers really solve the problem of what his vision of what an Amiga is, vs what everyone here, and a large percentage of former users, think.

It can be summed up in this line he gave: 'I think of the Amiga as more a concept, rather than it must be this hardware or this software'.

I don't think that is the same, or similar, mindset to anyone who owned an Amiga in the past. I could use that same logic to say almost anything is an Amiga. My mac mini has a lot of nice features, it could be considered high performance and has a lot of entertainment value... is it an Amiga? I think my HP Touchpad is cool... should I just all of a sudden say it's an Amiga? You get the point.

Unless CUSA somehow gets around that licensing agreement, so they can either port AOS, or provide an OS with Amiga-like elements, I think they'll never get the support of former Amiga users. In my opinion they really should have never used the Amiga license without such an agreement in place first. They might as well just called their lineup Commodore PCs (which admittedly failed when Commodore Gaming tried it).

I wish I followed this earlier, as I would have added my own questions. But one key one which wasn't touched upon so much, but brought up briefly with FPGAs... why assume it has to be an expensive FPGA device? Why does CUSA think there is no market for such retro devices? They must be aware of Jeri Ellsworth's 'C-64 on a chip'. That is the way they should have went for their Amiga products (again, in my opinion).

As for Roms, I have heard various things. On the CUSA site they seem to indicate they will use the AROS rom. But I guess they could get around some legalities if they got a license from Cloanto instead. End users may still need to use WB 3.1 though to run certain programs, so not sure how they plan to get around that. Unless they just say to download AROS, download AROS roms, and... well, hope whatever they want to run, works.

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@Persia

Yeah, I had that same issue brought up when I posted in CUSA's site too. When I say porting AOS, I mean updating it, as well.

It can be argued that it's not worth it. That it's too far behind to even bother with. Okay, but then why does CUSA say in the same breath that they'd like to offer AROS as a complimentary OS with their systems?

A port of AOS or Morphos does not have to remain stagnant. And neither would have to be the sole OS on the system either.

But even if we go with the idea that both are too far behind to be salvaged...

Then create a new OS, but add Amiga-like elements, graphics, certain levels of compatibility, etc. COS isn't it. By law, they can't make their OS anything like an Amiga OS.

Which is the key problem for them and why calling their systems an Amiga seems somewhat silly to me. If it's nothing like an Amiga besides an engraving, what's the point?

As for a C-64, the selling point is the retro design. I can understand (although disagree with the pricing), someone wanting one of those. Their Amigas look nothing like the original Amiga, has no similarity regarding software or OS, there is nothing unique about the hardware... so... again, there is nothing remotely Amiga-like about it.

Another thing I was not aware of was the reason for the advertising budget claim of 30 million dollars, or however much they stated. I am curious if Barry will answer a question that immediately comes to mind...

Why did CUSA not correct this mistake immediately? It's one thing to apologize and blame their advertising company, but they knowingly allowed the lie to persist. One could call it creative marketing... or as that Dibert comic amusingly illustrates, it could also be called fraud as marketing.