Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 17:16:03 01/10/06
Go up one level in this thread
On January 10, 2006 at 18:23:11, Uri Blass wrote: >On January 10, 2006 at 15:56:37, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On January 10, 2006 at 15:33:33, Joseph Ciarrochi wrote: >> >>>even if vasik aggressively advertises rybka, i think that it fine. He has >>>delivered a great product and i hope that enough people recognize this and buy >>>it, so that he can keep developing it. >>> >>>my fear is that these talented programers will leave the chess programing, >>>becasue they simply can't afford it. >> >>I think that everyone who does chess programming does it for the love of the >>art. >> >>Absolutely for sure, they can make more money with their talent doing something >>else. > >I am not sure. > >You assume that somebody with the talent to write a strong chess program has >also always the talent to earn money from other programming jobs. It does not have to be a programming job. >I am not sure about it. > >The knowledge that is needed about programming to write strong chess program is >limited(for example you do not need to know nothing about graphics) and a >programmer of strong chess program may not be the best choice for different >programming tasks. Bad programmers can write a good chess program. But if so, they are smart enough to earn a lot of money doing something. And I am fairly sure that they can earn more than they could at chess programming. I think the only chess programmers with potential to be rich are J.D.K. and whoever else can get hooked up with ChessMaster. Assuming that the 600K units/year estimate elsewhere is correct (and considering their sales claims for CM it ought to answer pretty nearly) if the royalty were only 50 cents per sale, that is still $300K/year. Even at a royalty of 25 cents, it would amount to 150K/year. With some other company and assuming 10K sales per year you would need $15 per sale to equal it. Unlikely scenario. Now, if you could achieve the same shelf space as CM with a superior product, you might equal it. But it would take a couple million in startup money for advertizing, etc. and I doubt if any venture capitalist would want to take that risk.
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.