Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 15:17:07 11/01/98
Go up one level in this thread
Fernando and I seem to have dissenting positions at times. I certainly respect his position, and recognize his greater experience. However, I would like to demonstrate that the market is not only thriving, but could possibly explode. What needs to change is the way of doing business. Go to your nearest large software dealer or bookseller and look. You will see that they have chess software for sale. This is generally not true of most major games like checkers or backgammon. One manufacturer claims 4,000,000 copies sold. That is not a small market. It appears (to me) that the real problems are in advertizing, manufacture, distribution, and technical support. ADVERTIZING: When is the last time you saw an advertizement for chess software in a newspaper, on TV or on the radio? The Anand match, for instance, could have been MUCH better hyped. Something like that could have gathered world-wide attention. "MICRO-MACHINE TAKES ON TITAN OF CHESS -- WILL KASPAROV BE NEXT?" (Nothing wrong with being a little absurd) You could even ask, "Is Kasparov cowering in fear? Why would he refuse such a match otherwise?" Newspaper ads, radio ads, television ads. They can be properly targeted and effective. Matches like Kasparov-Deep Blue and Fisher-Spasky command the attention of the buying public. This sort of thing can be coat-tailed to gather interest. MANUFACTURING: Manufacturing can bring the cost of a single CD+packaging down to a little over a dollar. Using JIT techniques, you can nearly eliminate warehousing costs. Partnership with large software vendors may be able to realize resources for streamlining. DISTRIBUTION: You can have transactions take place using a web server for a miniscule cost. The entire process can be automated to eliminate most human intervention. You can tie in database systems to validate addresses and credit card transactions which reduces fautly transactions. TECHNICAL SUPPORT: There is clearly a weakness in technical support. Perhaps this is caused by insufficient testing of the products or undermanned tech support staff. An effectively run technical support staff has access to and updates a database which stores the customer problems. These can be recaptured into a knowlege base which can in turn be used to solve customer problems off-line. I predict the opposite. Chess software will roar into the future with an enormous sales and incredible advances. Those that are able to capture the market will do incredibly well. Every problem is an opportunity. The current problems seem to be all solvable. If one program is outselling all others by orders of magnitude, why is that? The product itself may have impact, but look at the advertizing employed, the packaging, the distribution channels and all of the other ways opportunity is captured. If there is a problem with the cost of a transaction closing in on the profit for a transaction, then you must lower the cost of a transaction. Have you ever seen tpc type benchmarks? They have figures of thousand TPS per dollar. That's right, the cost of a transaction is measured in dollars. With the right equipment, they can be very inexpensive. Perhaps the chess programmers lack sufficient capital for expansion into new market opportunities. What about partnering? What about venture capital? A time frame like this where a shake-out is occuring is the perfect time for a tremendous opportunity.
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