Predictions for the Amiga's Future?

[W.K]

true, however I don't know if the UAE Community attract other people besides us who grew up with Amiga and its games. It will soon also fall into dust, when we are no longer there with it. I wonder how future people will look at Amiga, I can picture people living in Gigantic Cyber Cities playing "Wings" and look dreamily at a time long gone, a time we experienced in the first place. They'll think "What was it like?"...

[Kepler]

Originally Posted by leroq

in 10 or 15 years, all real Amiga machines will be dead, their condensators dried up, their chips corroded and electro-migrated...

Apologies for resurrecting a 20 year old thread...but I couldn't resist responding with the words: "that's not quite correct!".

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Peanutuk

My one fear is that as the idea of 'retro' gaming spreads companies may buy certain rights that they know little about in order to provide consumers with a retro gaming 'ideal'. This may lead them to try and enforce their property upon the retro community even if it has nothing to do with them.

Reckon this dude should get a job at the horoscope desk for the local paper

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Kepler

Apologies for resurrecting a 20 year old thread...but I couldn't resist responding with the words: "that's not quite correct!".

Tough little hombres for sure. Of course it is partly true because a lot of them will have required maintenance to keep functioning. I will never buy a real Amiga anymore because I can't keep it alive.

[Seiya]

Future is: WinUAE and every fork from it

[TCD]

I haven't used my real Amiga in... a long time. 'The Amiga' is surely in an interesting place today 20 years after this thread was created. Calling it dead is not quite correct for sure

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Kepler

Apologies for resurrecting a 20 year old thread...but I couldn't resist responding with the words: "that's not quite correct!".

Indeed, though at least the part about capacitors failing has something to it.

[Megalomaniac]

Thankfully enough people knew about the capacitor issue and saved their machines, and enough others have the skill / enthusiasm / time / money to restore damaged machines. New emulation solutions keep coming too.

What is far more vibrant than any of us could have dreamed is the market for new games - brand new creations (Reshoot 3 Promixa, Aquabyss), second attempts at conversions (Final Fight Enhanced, Bomb Jack Beer Edition), PC and other games adapted for high-end hardware (Death Rally, Dark Forces), even multi-format new games (Cecconoid, Ooze, Tenebra) - and more to come. Even if you thought you'd exhausted every great Amiga game in 2017, they've kept on coming - with plenty more on the way.

[Predseda]

Reviving this old thread just now is super cool (no sarcasm).

[alexh]

The classic computer scene follows the classic car scene. Cars from the 1920s-1950s used to be highly collectable and demanded high prices but not today because everyone who ever drove one or was driven in one when they were young are either dead or no-longer car owners. The highest priced classics tend to be the ones that were new when the people with the highest disposable income today where young (10-18). That group is the 40-65. So today cars from 1968-1994.

The classic computer market is following that trend. A generation who never saw 8-bit have no affinity to them and are instead choosing to collect classic PCs. 8 bit prices have gone down and 16-bit through to PC prices are rising. Obviously the computer market is much younger and so there is still some demand but not for much longer.

Of course they are classics which transcend time , were made in small numbers and their beauty can be seen by the next generation who never had any contact with them and will always be collectable.

(I can't see it being A500 but maybe A1009 or A3000T?)

Plus there will always be those collectors who are like Pokémon trainers and gotta get them all.

Ultimately our children are unlikely to be collecting Amigas and more likely PlayStation's

[giantclam]

Originally Posted by alexh

The classic computer scene follows the classic car scene. Cars from the 1920s-1950s used to be highly collectable and demanded high prices but not today because everyone who ever drove one or was driven in one when they were young are either dead or no-longer car owners. The highest priced classics tend to be the ones that were new when the people with the highest disposable income today where young (10-18). That group is the 40-65. So today cars from 1968-1994.

The classic computer market is following that trend. A generation who never saw 8-bit have no affinity to them and are instead choosing to collect classic PCs. 8 bit prices have gone down and 16-bit through to PC prices are rising. Obviously the computer market is much younger and so there is still some demand but not for much longer.

Of course they are classics which transcend time , were made in small numbers and their beauty can be seen by the next generation who never had any contact with them and will always be collectable.

(I can't see it being A500 but maybe A1009 or A3000T?)

Plus there will always be those collectors who are like Pokémon trainers and gotta get them all.

Ultimately our children are unlikely to be collecting Amigas and more likely PlayStation's

Yeah, I suspect the same future ~ but I liken the situation to older electronics gear...ie; pinball machines, radios etc...even cash registers for that matter. Same turnout though, when the older generations are gone, so are the 'real' memories, and the machines become fodder for 'classic collectors'....(I just had a vision of Jay Leno =)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Reviving this old thread just now is super cool (no sarcasm).

In a way it is Finding 15 year old posts by me is... interesting

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by alexh

The classic computer market is following that trend. A generation who never saw 8-bit have no affinity to them and are instead choosing to collect classic PCs. 8 bit prices have gone down and 16-bit through to PC prices are rising. Obviously the computer market is much younger and so there is still some demand but not for much longer.

I know you're fond of that classic car analogy, but it doesn't really fit this market and timeframe. The 8-bit prices over the last few years have been rising, which is easily demonstrable by checking what I purchased my micros for and what they cost now. The only one that remains about on the same level are C64 not-breadbin models.


This refers mostly to Poland, but I don't think it's some great outlier.

[CCCP alert]

I had assumed the SMT based motherboards of things like the 600/1200 and CD32 would have been more reliable, like in the rest of the electronics world, and easier to find in working condition than Amiga 1000's.

Who knew in 2005 that 90% of Amiga's with a battery backed clock would also slowly commit suicide via corrosion, not me sadly.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I know you're fond of that classic car analogy, but it doesn't really fit this market and timeframe. The 8-bit prices over the last few years have been rising, which is easily demonstrable by checking what I purchased my micros for and what they cost now. The only one that remains about on the same level are C64 not-breadbin models.


This refers mostly to Poland, but I don't think it's some great outlier.

I think Poland and the other ex-communist (or generally regions with import restrictions) countries are.


I've always understood that once trade restrictions opened up in the early 90's a lot of 8bit machines got a bit of a second life there.


Which kind of explains the 10 year delay on the retro wave in eastern Europe.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Locutus

I've always understood that once trade restrictions opened up in the early 90's a lot of 8bit machines got a bit of a second life there.

Which kind of explains the 10 year delay on the retro wave in eastern Europe.

That's true to some extent: some Atari and Commodore models became available in certain shops. But that doesn't mean the 8-bit scene didn't exist before that.


So, I doubt there was any "delay" at all (I didn't live there for a long time), I'm pretty sure it was about the same as everywhere else. Maybe there would be more hardcore users who have just carried on without any break, but the rest of us followed a very similar trajectory.

[Kepler]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I know you're fond of that classic car analogy, but it doesn't really fit this market and timeframe. The 8-bit prices over the last few years have been rising, which is easily demonstrable by checking what I purchased my micros for and what they cost now. The only one that remains about on the same level are C64 not-breadbin models.


This refers mostly to Poland, but I don't think it's some great outlier.

I find myself agreeing with this. I have not noticed 8 bit prices reducing at all - I wish they would - even the price of breadbin C64s are rising...

[Daedalus]

Technologically, 8-bits might seem an entirely different generation to the 16/32-bit home computers, but realistically, they spent more time together in the market than separate. You don't have the distinction there that there is between different car generations separated by decades. The C64 launched only a couple of years before the Amiga, and was on sale alongside the Amiga until the demise of Commodore. The generations overlap for the majority of their commercial lives in terms of eras - I got my first computer (an Atari 8-bit) around 1990 - a time when rich kids were getting A500s. So for me, and many others I'm sure, there's not a whole lot to separate 8-bit and 16/32-bit eras in terms of time.

[Dastardly]

Interesting to see this old thread resurface after almost 20 years. It’s great to see that EAB is still going strong as is the Amiga love.

[Kepler]

I decided to resurrect this thread as I was browsing this section in chronological order and thought it would be interesting for people to see what the predictions of the earliest members were...I also wonder how many of the original batch are still present and post...