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Subject: Re: chessbase to become the microsoft of chess

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 14:46:48 11/02/98

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On November 01, 1998 at 23:27:26, Christophe Theron wrote:

>Again, this is not directed at you. In case Microsoft enters the computer chess
>market, you would be a victim. Exactly as I would be. I hope we would keep on
>developping our programs and make them fight against each other, but we would
>not earn a single dime with them anymore.

All that would happen is that there would be another mass-market program
competing with CM6K, unless the program was actually good, in which case it
would put more pressure on the high-end programs than is already being put on
them by CM6K, and to a much lesser extent by others who are taking the computer
chess market away from its cottage industry beginnings.

The same thing happened with fantasy/adventure titles.  Used to be a guy could
make one of these in his garage, now they are so complex you need a huge staff
of artists and designers, etc.  Computer chess programs will do the same thing
as people expect more graphics and video and sound and tutorials and other
content, etc.  Gone are the days when you could draw pieces on the board using
character graphics and people would think you are high tech.

I would be anything that Microsoft will not release something like ChessBase.
They would go to the middle of the market and try to sell chess programs to
generic software buyers at $40 a pop.  They seem to like going for the center of
the melon rather than messing around the edges where the seeds are, which is
obviously a great strategy if you can do it.

What you'd have wouldn't be something like Excel, which kills everyone, it would
be more like Age of Empires, which you could/can buy everywhere but doesn't
dominate the real-time strategy segment to the exclusion of other good products.

bruce



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