It worked for Apple. Build it, and they will come (with wods of cash).
I think that was more of the Nxt than Apple at the time. Certainly the genuine "wod holders" went that way, and gave some to Mr Jobs and friends.
It was a kind of elephant in the room, this thing called Unix, a mainframe operating system... on a desktop. NxtCube was clearly something different, and the 3000UX - looked like a Commodore PC.
The other elephant in the room was Unix's "owner" at the time, AT&T, who'd been told to start getting more of their projects into the domestic sector (people like Commodore, Apple and Next). Or else get further split up and broken apart as an unfair monopoly. It is surely no coincidence that the Targa Truevision series of graphics cards started with AT&T people. They were like an ogre who'd been told to share some sweeties with the little players who made cool toys. They did that, learned an awful lot, and then made their own even nicer toys...
One example of how hopeless CBM were at investing for potential return - the A2410 started as a student project more than any serious development to make a genuine application friendly device. Likewise, software support for it - all end user based, almost no input from CBM at all. It was built around Unix and X mostly. Now it has RTG support.
