The $500 000 Question: How much is Amiga *worth*?

[stone]

The total market for AmigaOS right now is the retrocomputing market. There are much more modern operating systems out there, including Linux which can be downloaded for free, which are much better choices for desktop and embedded applications.

the amiga market is what you make it to be. its only retro if nothing new gets added or noone steps up to lead it on. you cant do any serious buisness from a retromarket though, so its either growing or dying.

this entire thread seriously lacks any form of visions. its a good thing that most companies look for oppotunities opposed to you guys.

as for window, linux and macos to more modern is only correct to the extend that amigaos doesnt get any further development. with any even minor backing the amigaos holds a lot of strengths that can easily put it on par in all areas an surpass them in others.

as for them being better dekstop and embedded systems is entirely incorrect. neither of them really fits on embedded systems at all. windows even has to do a completly specialized version for it.

The only product I see a possibility of comercial success would be a DTV type

that wouldnt be much of an amiga product. there is plenty of room for the operating system on a wide host of different hardware. good thing you arnt the one trying to move amiga forward, eh?

I hate to be so negative, but I think that's the state of the market and the brand name.

then dont be so negative. you dont seem to have any arguments for your negativity except your view from your bedroom window.

The Amiga as a brand has become a laughing stock.

where exactly? the only place its a laughing stock is among those few with a different agenda. the amiga brand seems very strong among common people as well as most enthusiasts.

amiga to those companies and people i meet, is simplicity, elegance, fun and power. only few people know about the problems resolving around the amiga, and the laughing stock seems to be the idiot fans and nay sayers, with their pathetic limited views and their rediculous conspiracies. not the amiga itself. these forum posts are the only laughable thing really.

But I seriously doubt it would sell for anything even approaching $100,000

based on what facts? i think you could easily add a zero to that. the commodore brand sold for $32 million in 2004, so amiga would easily sell for 1 million.

The games industry could leverage an Amiga brand license for retro releases on either modern platforms like PSP

and where would that bring us? exactly nowhere. at best it would be an income, but it wouldnt in any way drive amigaos forward or secure any kind of viable future use.

An outfit like BestBuy or Wal~Mart or Sears (Canada) or Bay (Hudson's Bay Company, Canada) would easily make this kind of revenue

they would easily turn over 500.000 on a daily basis. possible even hourly. for some reason people seems to think 500.000 is a lot, when its really next to nothing. the 150 man company i work in, turn over 50.000 a day and we arnt exactly big by any means. yes, it excludes your average bedroom or two man company, but those companies cant do anything useful anyway. producing around 1000 amiga compatible motherboards really is irrelevant in creating a userbase or any kind of future to build upon.

personly i would like to see troika and other small companies produce hardware, but under no circumstances will such little scale make or breake anything.

Unfortunately the Amiga etc name is worth nothing apart from as a purchase for retro-emulation on e.g. IBM etc PC clone.

what exactly are you guys basing sentences like this on?

the amiga brand might not be worth anything to a company like ibm, but the operating system sure is. while ibm daily buys up bunches of smaller companies with less relevancy than amiga, other companies could easily turn in millions based on the amiga name. and ibm is just an example. there are bunches of similar companies that would have an interest.

its a matter of keeping things in persepctive. there are a lot of companies similar to ibm that easily could put a couple hundred programmers behind amigaos a couple months to make amigaos fill out a desktop and embedded segment that noone else covers as efficiently.

there isnt any reason to be afraid of multimillion dollar deals or be afraid that amigaos doesnt offer anything. there are plenty of oppotunities and putting down a few million a day is peanuts for any serious buisness.

you are only limited by your own inefficiency, lack of selfconfidence and lack of understanding of how the world turns around and how companies operate.

/stone

[stone]

I don't think Commodore brand was sold for 32million$. Escom bought Commodore and Amiga for 25mill$ with many things left to sell (A1200s, A4000s, semi-produced machines, etc...)...

regardless, it was sold for that amount of money.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/29/tulip_sells_commodore/

i realise some of the numbers and millions sounds like a lot, but really, its next to nothing compared to large scale buisness.

This 500.000$ licence fee is very interesting, what company would pay 1 million $ (licence and HW R&D) to run OS4 that don't exist ? How much units they have to sell (and at what price) to come to any profit ?

its not a fee. its not an expense to the company, its merely a treshold that amiga takes into consideration as to how capable the company is.

/stone

[stone]

you and your friends need to step out of the 90's.   Only a few people know about the Amiga and its problems is because the rest of the fans left years ago.

what does being stuck in the 90s have to do with anything except some kind of childish insult?

i dont know what your definition of 'a few' is, but millions of people isnt a few in my book. these are people to whom the word amiga rings a bell in one form or another, and for by far the largest part of these a very positive bell too, though most of them never even owned an amiga.

the fans isnt what cuts it anyway. you cant expect a company to base any kind of product on the tiny amiga fan base. amiga would in many ways be better off without these 'fans' that does nothing but bring everyone down. the only positive thing is that the generel public doesnt take notice to those people.

The whole situation is disappointing but if you've followed the Amiga from day one through all its owners and broken promises then you'd realize what a laughing stock it is.

i have followed the amiga since the middle 80s. personally i see great strengths in the operatingsystem, but besides from that, i try to look at things from a buissness point of view and not that of a disgruntled user who feel let down by broken promisses.

what matters is the possiblities and the investments that needs to be done. what exactly is there to laugh about? the only thing thats worrying is leagal complications.

Again, what company would want to do anything like that?

its not a matter of what company wants to do it, but solely a matter of getting someone in on the idea since every company would want to 'do that' if they can see a profit.

there are several hundreds of possible customers in different companies. you sound like someone not sending the job application because you dont feel good enough. you'd be surprised if you actually got in touch with any of those companies.

The Amiga OS isnt anything thats so wanted like you're assuming.  In the past it was good in its prime.

what exactly has changed? operatingsystems isnt rocket science and there hasnt been any revolutions in this area since the 80s. amigaos still holds nearly all of its strengths as it did then. nowadays since windows, linux and macos all have grown into unhandly mastodonts it holds even more value as a lightweight scaleable system.

Maybe IO Interactive can plunk down the money since they have so much and port Amiga OS to the PS3?   I mean you have coders there dont you?  Should be a piece of cake.

as i wrote. its not a lot of money for any decent company. why do you insist on making it a huge deal when its a minor investment for someone with a vision? sure we have programmers and im sure we could do an operatingsystem too, but its hardly our scope of work.

Sorry to sound so negative but I see nothing of any value from any AI employee until there is proof, a live demo at a big show etc.  Too many broken promises and delusions of grandeur.

thank god its the disgruntled user who feels let down that is speaking. luckily buisneses see things in a different light.

/stone

[stone]

Could I possibly be any worse than the FIVE companies that have owned the Amiga brand over the last TWELVE years? Anyone who thinks the market is healthy

its no a matter of being worse, than being good enough. nobody claimed the amigamarket is healthy, actually its been completly nonexistant for many years already.

I'm no major player and never have been, but I have been in the game. In this market there is NO major players and there is NO serious market.

Since you issued the challenge, what have YOU done that trumps MY right to have an opinion besides looking out your basement window?

and what challenge are you talking about? why is this always about hostility, dont you get the point at all? its not about your personal feelings, letdowns and disapointements. its about oppotunities from where we stand today, and they arnt significantly worse just because of a few amigausers feels trampled on and have to voice it.

i dont belittle your personal opinion or right therefor. but opposed to you i dont take the view of someone who got cheated. i dont feel the need to slam other users on their head because i myself feel miserable, but rather i try to show you the perspective that a potential investor could have.

It's called reality, take a deep breath. How big do you really think this community is? How many of those people do you really think would pony up to actually buy a product if produced? The total "community" worldwide is in the (very) low thousands.

i clearly stated the amiga community isnt worth a dime to anyone. its not existant and highly irrelevant to anyone interested in amiga as a brand or amigaos as an operatingsystem. now, thats reality for you and the standpoint i took from my first post.

what is important though, is the massive amounts people who nods their head when they hear the name.

Prove to me otherwise? 2006 is almost over and what is left of this very, very small community is bleeding away a few users a day. What product will come out in 2007 to reinvigorate the market? 2008? 2009? 2010? Hard facts please, not over exuberant optimism, not religious speak.

you make up something i never stated, then wants me to prove it for you? it doesnt matter what products comes out, but what the options are and what value potential interested parties can see. then take it from there and do anything, or nothing, as you please.

personally im not optimistic about the future. i dont hold much hope for the operatingsystem of my dreams, but im no more blind than i know how buisness works and that there is a lot of possibilities.

Your head is in the 90's and that's no insult the only one here throwing insults is yourself. There are no "millions" of people, they've all moved on. They owned a product and when that product didn't fill their needs they moved on. None of these people will buy a substandard product for 10-100X price of a mainstream product

please point me to my insulting paragraphs since that would help me improve my forum posts in the future.

exactly, there are millions of people who have moved on. those are preciesly the potiential ones as well as newcommers. the rest is irrelevant.

you are the one expecting a substandard product. im talking a scope thats in a realistic league for any decent sized company that wants to make a profit. not a couple tousand hobbyiests who wont make a difference anyway.

Actually I disagree, your head is in the 80's, not the 90's. In the 80's a single person or 2 could cobble together something killer and make a mint

and why exactly is that? i seem to be the one who takes a step back and looks at the real possibilities from where we stand. where did i talk a two man operation?

Nowadays it takes huge corporations with tons of researcgh, funding and quality control. It also takes buttloads of major partnerships, political connections and such. No one with even the slightest interest in the Amiga comes near to these requirements.

and there are plenty of those giant cooperations who could be potential partners or licensees of something amiga related.

you are badly mistaken when you figure noone has an interest, but im sure its way easier to sit and moan and complain that the world is unfair than actually go look at the world and poke it for a response.

You can have your head in the clouds all you want, it won't change anything. People like you come and go. Come in raving how negative everyone is and how great everything will be shortly, and in a few months to a year when it doesn't pan out they quitely disapear without a word.

do i really have my head in the clouds? its not really that complicated. put up a list of amigaos's strengths compared to windows/linux/whatever and then list the companies that could have an interest, no matter how odd or unexpected, and you will get a substantial list.

im pretty confident that you havnt been on the amiga ride any longer than i have, so why you figure that  people like me 'come and go' really is bogus. the only difference between us in that regard is our standpoint and view upon the situration. you seem far to concerned with something as irrelevant as the fact that someone played fool on you personally with 10 years of let downs.

/stone

[stone]

ok, but you were just talking about the millions... and MILLIONS of Amiga fans..ok they dont count.  nevermind.

i really dont have time to start a discussion on stuff you make up. i have consistantly talked about people to whom the amiga name rings a bell. i have consintantly pointed out that there isnt any viable amiga fan based market.

Really?  Tell that to the Friedens (sp?) or the MOS devel group.  Those are some of the smartest people working on AOS4 and MOS respectively.  But you're right, I bet you can make some sort of PlaystationOS (POS) (no pun intended..lol) that resembles AOS 4 or MOS "in about two weeks" right?

hyperion and the friedens brothers are without doubt already aware of this fact, and there are a lot of exellent books on the teoretics of operatingsystems.

you are assuming its rocketsscience based on your own lack of insight into the topic. its complex for for sure, and definitly time consuming. throw some more mud in random directions and you might hit a valid point sooner or later.

MacOS/Linux EASILY trumps any incarnation of any Amiga OS out there currently.

not really. they are more complete and contains a lot of applications and subsystems that amigaos lacks. except for a few more or less mportant features such as memory protection, the vital parts are very much on par, with amigaos lacking in a few areas while being ahead in others.

the features you claim easily trumps amigaos isnt operatingsystem features but part of the application layer which is irrelevant in this context, and can 'easily' be added whenever someone gets the time.

/stone

[stone]

you tried to explain us that Amiga Inc. has more value then 20000-50000-100000$ for brand, and from "millions Amiga users" you moved to "millions that Amiga name rings a bell" ?

eh, no i didnt. can you even read? if so, please point out where i write that. there is no point in having a discussion if all the arguments you have are based on asumptions and stuff i never wrote.

i would appriciate if you would actually produce from real arguments at some point. preferable some thats actually reletated to the the context and posts i have done.

What bell ? "buy all new Amiga products" ? I doubt.

a brand is valuable when the name means something to a lot of people. its not about buying or not, its about millions of people who will get some kind of assosiation when they hear the name.

And please stop that 'Amiga OS rulez' nonsense, yes it RULED some 20 years ago, but try connecting to internet out-of-the-box or try reading modern web documents. Amiga OS today needs a lot of work to be done, and that is almost as rewriting the OS from scratch.

and where do i write that amigaos rules? please grow up a little and try to lead a sober discussion. putting words in my mouth really is a waste of everyones time.

besides, a modern webbrowser is not a part of the core operatingsystem, and is only an important part if you are trying to sell it to a desktop user. there are hundreds of other uses for an operatingsystem in other areas.

yes, we need a good modern browser, but you are mixing up the operatingsystem with the application layer which is a completly different thing.

/stone

[stone]

[..] it's plain to most rational folks, there is no market left.  There are thousands (in the four digits) of customers out there, not tens of millions nor one million like so many would like to believe.

the difference here is that we are talking about different markets. i really think its quite clear from my previous posts that i dont see any valuable in the current userbased market, regardless of you repeatedly trying to imply that i do.

so far all newer amiga productions has been targeted at the enthusiast market and the last remaining fans. this market is incredible small and difficult to make any profit in.

we have yet to see a product thats targeted at the mainstream market and those potential new and has-been amiga users.

/stone