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

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The $5 000 000 Question: How much is Amiga *worth*?

The brand name if put up for auction would get somewhere in the low 5 figures. Maybe $10,000 - $20,000.

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@stopthegop

There seems to be 2 different themes here.

1) Amiga Inc's licensing requirements. Bill Mc has stated this to be $500,000, a company must be grossing this much to request a license.

2) What people think Amiga Inc as a company themelves are worth at this point in time.

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Tomas wrote:
The Amiga brand might not be as strong as the commodore brand, but alot of gamers still have found memories of Amiga games.

The problem is the brand has not only withered on the vine, but has quite a lot of negative sentiment to it. The Amiga as a brand has become a laughing stock. I also think simply far too much time has passed. The only product I see a possibility of comercial success would be a DTV type product if done right. Even then I doubt it would sell anywhere near it's C64 DTV counterpart.

Who would buy the Amiga name now if auctioned? Someone from this community no doubt. They don't have the kind of deep pockets big companies have. I'll admit it could go for over $20,000, you never know. But I seriously doubt it would sell for anything even approaching $100,000. I hate to be so negative, but I think that's the state of the market and the brand name.

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@redfox

Large retailers wouldn't give you or me the time of day, they only deal very high end with multinational corporations.

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Quote:
The only product I see a possibility of commercial 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?

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 and Amiga Inc
is slaving away to make products the community wants has
obviously not been paying attention.

Quote:
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.

Hmm let's see, I helped run what was likely the top grossing
Amiga shop in 2003-2004. I'd bet a mint we grossed more than
Amiga Inc themselves during this time. We bought out the
remaining stock of a product that had been dead for years
(Prometheus) and sold every last piece. We were even
influential in getting new drivers to the Prometheus.

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?

Quote:
    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.

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. The active users who actually use and own
Amiga computers would be in the hundreds.

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.
Every year that has passed since C='s death has been worse
then the one before it. The market has been practically dead
for nearly a decade, for the last 5 years it has been
totally dead.

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Quote:
    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.

No, TheMagicM is correct. 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. Only a handful of hobyists will and that handful keeps getting smaller with time.

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. 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.

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.

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So if Linux and Crapos can rise from the dead, so can Amiga.

And who will do this and on what hardware? How will it get marketed?

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@neon32

I don't have strong views against the Amiga. I would love to see the Amiga make a comeback. I just don't see where any of the players involved have either the vision or the means to make it happen.

Linux is a success because it runs on commodity hardware, it's very mature and it's free. The Amiga doesn't have any of this going for it.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see Amiga Inc make the hard choices to take a final stand, but even then it is probably too late. I want a new Amiga, but there is none on the horizon. What is there upcoming in the forseeable future?

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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.

Who says I feel cheated? I enjoyed my little experiment in the market and I made a profit, a small profit but a profit. Who's miserable? I'm just a realist who found the time / effort of a contracting market getting progressively worse to not be worth the effort.

Heck, I am still considering re-entering as a seller, but purely as a hobby. I hope one day the Amiga marlet can become like the C= 8bit market, which sadly is much healthier.

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This conversation is getting pointless and going in circles. Some think OS design is "trivial" and that the Amiga is going to take over the world.

You can't argue with baseless enthusiasm, sorry. I've been there myself, up to about 2002. In these very forums in ~2001 Wayne scoffed at the very notion I was putting forward that the Amiga could make a serious comeback. So shocking I thought, he couldn't possibly be right. I couldn't handle that iea. Wayne was right 5 (FIVE) years ago. Nothing has changed except even the dream has faded away with a wimper. The Amiga is a historic retro computer and unless you see someone with extremely deep pockets take stupid pills, it will stay that way.

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@dammy

I hear you, been there myself.