Forget petitions, money talks, you want software?

[Corrie]

I would like to put across an idea to you all. I first got an A500 in the late 80s and I have seen the decline of support and popularity of our machine. I have seen in the latter years numerous attempts at petitions to get the latest and best software ported to Amiga, but honestly only a handful of games have actually been done by the companies with the know how.

At the end of the day, we all need money to survive exactly the same as companies need money to stay alive. Companies cannot allocate resources just for the "love of the amiga" as most of us do. They need to make money and therefore most companies have now gone to the pc or consoles, because the sheer buying power is there.

Instead of signed petitions with say 2000 willing amiga users in support, why not cut the crap, approach the companies with the know how like Hyperion and Clickboom and show them how much money can be paid for what we want.

For example say we wanted Ghost Recon on Amiga. Would it be to much to ask for someone with some initiative to approach Hyperion and say "how much is needed to get this?" Money buys you what you need. Why the hell would any company want to continue support for the Amiga, when there is simply no money being offered.

If you are all serious about wanting more and more products for the Amiga, why not have "an amiga only" development account with a few different companies, is it that much of a crazy idea? I have no drama with donating a few hundred US$ into Hyperion and Clickboom...

Please tell me what you think?

[Kronos]

Thats the final step from hobby to (bizzare) cult .....

Porting open-source stuff or writing something exclusive for non-profit is a hobby.

Doing it for just enough money to recoup the cost is still a hobby.

Doing it for money, while taking the risk of failure is also o,k.

Put giving a company money to port something that one allready played (*)
in the hope that these will eventually really finish it, is insane.

(*) let's face it, most of us do have a Wintendo-box, or would we know these
games in the 1st place  :-o  ;-)

[Corrie]

I agree to an extent, however do you really think companies are going to make games, just for the hobby!?!

Everyone of us at some stage has complained about lack of software on the Amiga, why not put our heads together and get the software we want?

It will soon sort out the true amiga supporters to those among us who are full of hot air. Why not gather the funds and start approaching Amiga companies?

Is it that much of a dream, that we cannot make it reality?

Would it be too hard for an Amiga company to say we need X amount of money to make this happen, and then we provide the funds as a "preorder" ?

I honestly don't see the difficulty in this other then Amiga users not wanting to put some money on the table....

Any further thoughts?

[KennyR]

Licences of these games can be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. No community could cough up that much.

[porneL]

What you propose will bring you only a single, very overpriced game. Thats not how sane market should work.

What we need is more Amiga users. If you have too much money - buy your friend an Amiga! (or Pegasos
This way there will be more potential customers for this and next games. If userbase grows to sensible minimum companies will start to make/port games without users' begging.

[meerschaum]

screw getting games ported, get the apps to create games ported and then you will see native games emerge.