Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 09:07:45 11/10/00
My little analysis of the software chess market will not give me the nobel prize on the field, but at leats lighted a little war between an electric engineering and a master or doctor in english. It was not my purpose. I am a man of peace. Should I know... Now respect what has been said of CM, I think it only support what I have said. Chess master has been sucessuful, yes, but because: a) low price, right. b) great distribution gear, right. c) being just one product of the manufacturer. So if it gives just a couple of dollars of profit, why not. But it gives that because is part of a greater company. Imagine Ed, with his discrete size, trying to sell an equivalent, that is to say, trying to put a kind of Rebelmaster 16000 in the shells of all software shops, toy sections in malls, etc. Then imagine Ed trying to get some profit and earn a living selling that at 29 or even 19 bucks the second month. After that Imagine Ed paying the cost of designing a flashy box. Even paying the cardboard. And the rest: distributions chains, middle men multiplied by hundred, retailers asking the lion share, etc. I cannot imagine ALL that. In other words, Chessmaster has been commercially succesful due to conditions the rest of chess producer has not. So the rest has been, at his best, commercially defensible, no more. And how long you can just defend in an encroaching-price market? I do not say this with nonchalance. I am afraid of the day I will not get a program if it is not chessmaster 12.000 or Bilgates4000. I am afraid of the day the only alternative will be amateur programs without the enormous amount of work a commercial one has behind. Crafty and the rest are great, but of course we could not ask Bob to engage 12 hours a day in hard work and retire from his academic engagements just to give us a program with the features -frills, databases, decent guis, etc- a commercial program can deliver. The withdrawal from the field of one programmer after another is not a good sign. Marty Hirsh was not capable of getting blue numbers. Lang, I am not sure, but clearly he would stay If enough reward was the result of his great effort. And before them a great lot whose names begin to vanish. Do not forget the official bad guy of this site, Chris W. Surely he would insist in working over his CSTAL if money was the result. He does not. He will not. By now, as a chess programmer, he is a ghost trying to make some noise moving a chain. So we have Rebel company, Millenium and Chessbase stil breathing and fighting. I wonder how many we will have next year. We will see novelties, I bet. Not good ones. Fusions, sellings. Farewells perhaps? Just remember what happened to chess computers industry. How many of them are alive by now? Fernando
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.