Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 14:31:11 11/01/98
The very first colaboration I ever wrote about chess computer in the net was about what I thought it was a dangerous saturation of the market. Two years after that "historical" post -in CCR- I see more and more post where the same or similar thoughts appears. To think in the future of this market, his producer, products, etc has became one of the issues of the field in itself, sometimes even more than the usual discusions about the products. The price slash of Ed has been just another episode to trigger this worry of all us and a new crop of "what-is-being-to-happen -to-this-thing" posts. Well, as probably -as far as I know- the first Casandra to forecast Doomsday was me, let me now make a second, more dramatic statement: collapse is already here. Once I wrote a very elaborated post about the factors and reasons, both economiccal and sychological behind that, but all that can be reduced to this interaction of variables: Being M the size of the market for pro. chess soft.. his change of size is based in: A) increase trought the arrival of new interested people with money to purchase B) decrease thorought the saturation of those that have already bought too much programs already a lot beyond his strenght. being D the size of the distribution chain, his change in size -number of outlets, etc- is based in: A) the operation of the precedent factors translated, finally, as the amount of money each year available to purchase chess programs B) the margin of utility produced by each purchase, in average. This factor depends of the next one, the offer. Respect to offer, being O the size of the offer of chess products, his size change is based in: A) the number of upgrades of differents versions eaxch company produces each year B) The number of companies -or individuals- that stay in business each year If you observe the facts asociated to each of these factor and make a very simple math analysis, you will find that the market growth is a lot slower than the growth of the offer, that is, of price reduction and margin of utility decrease, with the consequence that the economical fundation of the industry is foundering. In simple words: 15 years ago three companies shared a market not too much different at the actual one - but a lot slower in his operations due to Internet unexistence- selling few products with very high margin of utility to a market that was very far of getting a product capable of giving real satisfaction in terms of playing strenght. This was a situation good for producers, interesting for the public and profitable for distributors. Compare with actual situation, where you have at least 20 strong programs in any moment, some of them for free, with a rate of production of about 6 new each year at very low prices or non and to almost the same market. Surely this is a non sustainable situation. That's the reason one magazine after another has closed, one company after another has been ruined, one programmer after another must go or get another job to keep alive, on new crop of programs after another is selling for less and so one store after another dedicated only to this must change his bussines or run risks. 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.